GI have just returned from a devotional meditation. It is the anniversary of Sri Aurobindo. He left his body 72 years ago, as they say here.
I have been thinking and talking a lot about his commentaries on the Kena Upanishad over the last few days. I came across the word 'intermiscence'. It is almost only used by Aurobindo. I asked all the people I met what the word meant. A friend here found a translation into German as 'ineinanderfließen' (it describes the mixing of liquids in German).
This word appears in such a central place in Aurobindo, and it is so unique that my academic mind has become curious. Why such an unusual word in such an important place?
Kena Upanishad
What is it about? In the Kena Upanishad, the central question is who thinks while thinking, who hears while hearing, who sees while seeing... Aurobindo's commentary is a philosophical analysis. He describes a whole philosophical system, a sketch of epistemology, metaphysics, empiricism, philosophy of language, theory of consciousness.
The Upanishads repeatedly deal with the question of who or what we are. Our spirit, our individuality, our soul, what is the world, who created it, how does the cycle of life work. Similar to Deleuze, many things begin with vibration, then comes rhythm and then grouping, differentiation and movement. Strength and finally form emerge through stabilization. This is the secret of creation, the vibration, the elemental force.
In the rational world, this vibration is understood scientifically. In the spiritual world as consciousness, a primordial consciousness - Brahman - that differentiates itself in order to recognize itself. The world exists as a manifestation of this primordial consciousness and everything is ultimately one. Aurobindo's philosophy could be described as an attempt to identify the different levels of this differentiation in the different levels of consciousness: Life force, which we find even in the smallest creatures, various forms of perceptual consciousness and their synthesis, reflective and linguistic consciousness, intuition, cognition. They form different relationships to the world (Aurobindo refers here to vijñāna, prajñāna, saṁjñāna and ājñāna).
How does that which thinks while thinking connect with that which is thought?
A central question is who or what has 'my' consciousness, how it is synthesized and how it relates to the primordial consciousness Brahman.
The paragraph in which the word 'intermiscence' appears describes a deepening of contact. Contact here can be understood as broadly as possible: Contact between energy (rhythm), matter, consciousness, sensory perception etc... The addition of 'intermiscence' to contact describes what we cannot actually understand, i.e. the connection between consciousness and matter. And it makes sense to use a word that is theoretically not preloaded, a fresh word so to speak.
"But this vibration of conscious being is presented to itself by various forms of sense which answer to the successive operations of movement in its assumption of form. For first we have intensity of vibration creating regular rhythm which is the basis or constituent of all creative formation; secondly, contact or intermiscence of the movements of conscious being which constitute the rhythm; thirdly, definition of the grouping of movements which are in contact, their shape; fourthly, the constant welling up of the essential force to support in its continuity the movement that has been thus defined; fifthly, the actual enforcement and compression of the force in its own movement which maintains the form that has been assumed. In Matter these five constituent operations are said by the Sankhyas to represent themselves as five elemental conditions of substance, the etheric, atmospheric, igneous, liquid and solid; and the rhythm of vibration is seen by them as śabda, sound, the basis of hearing, the intermiscence as contact, the basis of touch, the definition as shape, the basis of sight, the upflow of force as rasa, sap, the basis of taste, and the discharge of the atomic compression as gandha, odour, the basis of smell."
This became clearer to me today during my devotional meditation.
OM, peace, peace, peace
If you would like to delve a little deeper into the Kena Upanishad, please refer to this: Sri Aurobindo Vol 18 , p. 58
