I have just returned from a devotional meditation. It is Sri Aurobindo’s anniversary. He left his body 72 years ago, as people say here.
Over the past few days I have thought and spoken a great deal about his commentaries on the Kena Upanishad. There I came across the word ‘intermiscence’. It is used almost only by Aurobindo. I asked everyone I met what the word means. A friend here found ‘flowing into one another’ as a German translation (in German it describes the mixing of liquids).
This word appears at such a central point in Aurobindo, and is so unique, that my academic mind became curious. Why such an unusual word in such an important place?
Kena Upanishad
What is it about? At the center of the Kena Upanishad is the question of who thinks in thinking, who hears in hearing, who sees in seeing… Aurobindo’s commentary is a philosophical analysis. He describes an entire philosophical system there, a sketch of epistemology, metaphysics, empiricism, philosophy of language, theory of consciousness.
Again and again, the Upanishads concern the question of who or what we are. Our mind, our individuality, our soul, what is the world, who created it, how does the cycle of life work. Much begins—similarly to Deleuze—with vibration, then comes rhythm, then a grouping, differentiation and movement. As it becomes sustained, force arises, and finally form. This is the secret of creation, vibration, the primordial 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 know itself. The world exists as a manifestation of this primordial consciousness, and ultimately everything is one. Aurobindo’s philosophy could be described as an attempt to identify the various levels of this differentiation in the different levels of consciousness: life force, which we find even in the smallest organisms, various forms of perceptual consciousness and their synthesis, reflective and linguistic consciousness, intuition, insight. They form different relationships to the world (Aurobindo refers here to vijñāna, prajñāna, saṁjñāna and ājñāna).
How does that which thinks in thinking connect with what is thought?
A central question, surely, is who or what has ‘my’ consciousness, how it is synthesized and what relationship it has to the primordial consciousness Brahman.
The paragraph in which the word ‘intermiscence’ appears describes a deepening of contact. Contact can be understood as broadly as possible here: contact between energy (rhythm), matter, consciousness, sensory perception, etc… Supplementing contact with ‘intermiscence’ (flowing into one another) describes what we cannot really understand, that is, the connection between consciousness and matter. And it makes sense to use a word not burdened with theory, 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
Those who would like to go a little deeper into the Kena Upanishad are referred here: Sri Aurobindo Vol 18 , p. 58
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