THE SYNTHESIS OF YOGA
The Synthesis of Yoga is one of his primary works, which focuses on the practical steps to transforming ones life into The Life Divine. It is an epic work of about 1000 pages of incredible difficulty and value. I have been working on this book for 3 years and consider myself still scratching the surface. It is divided into 5 sections, the Introduction, the Yoga of Divine Works, the Yoga of Integral Knowledge, the Yoga of Divine Love and the Yoga of Self-Perfection. Here is a link to some amazon reviews of the Synthesis of Yoga.
The Synthesis of Yoga Online by surasa.net The Synthesis of Yoga -- A Study Guide compiled by David Hutchinson, A View of the Heights: Sri Aurobindo's Integral Yoga, an essay on The Synthesis of Yoga, by David Hutchinson Synthesis of Yoga Excerpts from greatchange.org THE SYNTHESIS OF YOGA CONTENTS:
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BASIC SYNTHESIS OF YOGA CONTENTS:
Introduction - The Conditions of the Synthesis
Part I - The Yoga of Divine Works
Part II - The Yoga of Integral Knowledge
Part III - The Yoga of Divine Love
Part IV - The Yoga of Self-Perfection
Introduction - The Conditions of the Synthesis
Part I - The Yoga of Divine Works
Part II - The Yoga of Integral Knowledge
Part III - The Yoga of Divine Love
Part IV - The Yoga of Self-Perfection
EXTENDED SYNTHESIS OF YOGA CONTENTS:
note: numbers on right side of chapter indicated the number of quotations present
INTRODUCTION - THE CONDITIONS OF THE SYNTHESIS
I - Life and Yoga (1)
II - The Three Steps of Nature (1)
III - The Threefold Life (1)
IV - The Systems of Yoga (2)
V - The Synthesis of the Systems
PART I - THE YOGA OF DIVINE WORKS
I - The Four Aids (2)
II - Self-Consecration (3)
III - Self-Surrender in Works - The Way of the Gita (4)
IV - The Sacrifice, the Triune Path and the Lord of the Sacrifice (13)
V - The Ascent of the Sacrifice - 1, The Works of Knowledge - The Psychic Being (1)
VI - The Ascent of the Sacrifice - 2, The Works of Love - The Works of Life (1)
VII - Standards of Conduct and Spiritual Freedom (3)
VIII - The Supreme Will (1)
IX - Equality and the Annihilation of Ego (5)
PART II - THE YOGA OF INTEGRAL KNOWLEDGE
I - The Object of Knowledge
II - The Status of Knowledge
III - The Purified Understanding
IV - Concentration
V - Renunciation
VII - The Release from Subjection to the Body
VIII - The Release from the Heart and the Mind
IX - The Release from the Ego
Part III - The Yoga of Divine Love
Part IV - The Yoga of Self-Perfection
note: numbers on right side of chapter indicated the number of quotations present
INTRODUCTION - THE CONDITIONS OF THE SYNTHESIS
I - Life and Yoga (1)
II - The Three Steps of Nature (1)
III - The Threefold Life (1)
IV - The Systems of Yoga (2)
V - The Synthesis of the Systems
PART I - THE YOGA OF DIVINE WORKS
I - The Four Aids (2)
II - Self-Consecration (3)
III - Self-Surrender in Works - The Way of the Gita (4)
IV - The Sacrifice, the Triune Path and the Lord of the Sacrifice (13)
V - The Ascent of the Sacrifice - 1, The Works of Knowledge - The Psychic Being (1)
VI - The Ascent of the Sacrifice - 2, The Works of Love - The Works of Life (1)
VII - Standards of Conduct and Spiritual Freedom (3)
VIII - The Supreme Will (1)
IX - Equality and the Annihilation of Ego (5)
PART II - THE YOGA OF INTEGRAL KNOWLEDGE
I - The Object of Knowledge
II - The Status of Knowledge
III - The Purified Understanding
IV - Concentration
V - Renunciation
VII - The Release from Subjection to the Body
VIII - The Release from the Heart and the Mind
IX - The Release from the Ego
Part III - The Yoga of Divine Love
Part IV - The Yoga of Self-Perfection
FULLY EXPANDED SYNTHESIS OF YOGA CONTENTS:
INTRODUCTION - THE CONDITIONS OF THE SYNTHESIS
I - Life and Yoga
all life is yoga;
II - The Three Steps of Nature;
the three successive elements;
III - The Threefold Life;
the characteristics of Life, Mind and Spirit;
IV - The Systems of Yoga
the five schools of yoga, the omnipresent trinity, Jnana Yoga: the Path of Knowledge, Bhakti Yoga: the Path of Devotion; Karma Yoga: the Path of Works, three paths as one;
V - The Synthesis of the Systems
PART I - THE YOGA OF DIVINE WORKS
I - The Four Aids
the lotus of the eternal knowledge, time, the fourth aid
II - Self-Consecration
the value of sublimation, on what to concentrate upon, the transformation of desire
III - Self-Surrender in Works - The Way of the Gita;
three first approaches of Karma Yoga, on equality, on purifying ego and desire, on cultivating equality
IV - The Sacrifice, the Triune Path and the Lord of the Sacrifice:
sacrifice, the redeeming principle, the ruthless sacrifice, compensation for sacrificed discipline of the lesser for greater, fruits of the sacrifice, the recipient of the sacrifice, the one entirely acceptable sacrifice, the demand on us, the three results of effective practice: devotion, the central liberating knowledge and purification of ego, the lord of the sacrifice and the measure of our works, the fundamental experience, Purusha and Prakriti, the Divine Personalities, the threefold character of the union
V - The Ascent of the Sacrifice - 1, The Works of Knowledge - The Psychic Being (1)
the inability to know
VI - The Ascent of the Sacrifice - 2, The Works of Love - The Works of Life (1)
the spiritual force behind adoration
VII - Standards of Conduct and Spiritual Freedom (3)
the four standards of spiritual conduct, upon a supramental collective
VIII - The Supreme Will
the three stages of the ascent
IX - Equality and the Annihilation of Ego
the first necessity, the best we can conceive as the thing to be done, the first period of endurance, the philosophic second period of indifference, the supreme third period of greater divine equality
PART II - THE YOGA OF INTEGRAL KNOWLEDGE
I - The Object of Knowledge
II - The Status of Knowledge
III - The Purified Understanding
IV - Concentration(1)
V - Renunciation(2)
VII - The Release from Subjection to the Body(5)
VIII - The Release from the Heart and the Mind(3)
IX - The Release from the Ego(1)
Part III - The Yoga of Divine Love
Part IV - The Yoga of Self-Perfection
INTRODUCTION - THE CONDITIONS OF THE SYNTHESIS
I - Life and Yoga
all life is yoga;
II - The Three Steps of Nature;
the three successive elements;
III - The Threefold Life;
the characteristics of Life, Mind and Spirit;
IV - The Systems of Yoga
the five schools of yoga, the omnipresent trinity, Jnana Yoga: the Path of Knowledge, Bhakti Yoga: the Path of Devotion; Karma Yoga: the Path of Works, three paths as one;
V - The Synthesis of the Systems
PART I - THE YOGA OF DIVINE WORKS
I - The Four Aids
the lotus of the eternal knowledge, time, the fourth aid
II - Self-Consecration
the value of sublimation, on what to concentrate upon, the transformation of desire
III - Self-Surrender in Works - The Way of the Gita;
three first approaches of Karma Yoga, on equality, on purifying ego and desire, on cultivating equality
IV - The Sacrifice, the Triune Path and the Lord of the Sacrifice:
sacrifice, the redeeming principle, the ruthless sacrifice, compensation for sacrificed discipline of the lesser for greater, fruits of the sacrifice, the recipient of the sacrifice, the one entirely acceptable sacrifice, the demand on us, the three results of effective practice: devotion, the central liberating knowledge and purification of ego, the lord of the sacrifice and the measure of our works, the fundamental experience, Purusha and Prakriti, the Divine Personalities, the threefold character of the union
V - The Ascent of the Sacrifice - 1, The Works of Knowledge - The Psychic Being (1)
the inability to know
VI - The Ascent of the Sacrifice - 2, The Works of Love - The Works of Life (1)
the spiritual force behind adoration
VII - Standards of Conduct and Spiritual Freedom (3)
the four standards of spiritual conduct, upon a supramental collective
VIII - The Supreme Will
the three stages of the ascent
IX - Equality and the Annihilation of Ego
the first necessity, the best we can conceive as the thing to be done, the first period of endurance, the philosophic second period of indifference, the supreme third period of greater divine equality
PART II - THE YOGA OF INTEGRAL KNOWLEDGE
I - The Object of Knowledge
II - The Status of Knowledge
III - The Purified Understanding
IV - Concentration(1)
V - Renunciation(2)
VII - The Release from Subjection to the Body(5)
VIII - The Release from the Heart and the Mind(3)
IX - The Release from the Ego(1)
Part III - The Yoga of Divine Love
Part IV - The Yoga of Self-Perfection
INTRODUCTION - THE CONDITIONS OF THE SYNTHESIS
I. Life and Yoga
all life is Yoga;
"In the right view both of life and of Yoga all life is either consciously or subconsciously a Yoga. For we mean by this term a methodised effort towards self-perfection by the expression of the secret potentialities latent in the being and—highest condition of victory in that effort—a union of the human individual
with the universal and transcendent Existence we see partially expressed in man and in the Cosmos. But all life, when we look behind its appearances, is a vast Yoga of Nature who attempts in the conscious and the subconscious to realise her perfection in an ever-increasing expression of her yet unrealised potentialities and to unite herself with her own divine reality. In man, her thinker, she for the first time upon this Earth devises self conscious means and willed arrangements of activity by which this great purpose may be more swiftly and puissantly attained.Yoga, as Swami Vivekananda has said, may be regarded as a means of compressing one’s evolution into a single life or a few years or even a few months of bodily existence. A given system of Yoga, then, can be no more than a selection or a compression,into narrower but more energetic forms of intensity, of the general methods which are already being used loosely, largely, in a leisurely movement, with a profuser apparent waste of material and energy but with a more complete combination by the great
Mother in her vast upward labour."
all life is Yoga;
"In the right view both of life and of Yoga all life is either consciously or subconsciously a Yoga. For we mean by this term a methodised effort towards self-perfection by the expression of the secret potentialities latent in the being and—highest condition of victory in that effort—a union of the human individual
with the universal and transcendent Existence we see partially expressed in man and in the Cosmos. But all life, when we look behind its appearances, is a vast Yoga of Nature who attempts in the conscious and the subconscious to realise her perfection in an ever-increasing expression of her yet unrealised potentialities and to unite herself with her own divine reality. In man, her thinker, she for the first time upon this Earth devises self conscious means and willed arrangements of activity by which this great purpose may be more swiftly and puissantly attained.Yoga, as Swami Vivekananda has said, may be regarded as a means of compressing one’s evolution into a single life or a few years or even a few months of bodily existence. A given system of Yoga, then, can be no more than a selection or a compression,into narrower but more energetic forms of intensity, of the general methods which are already being used loosely, largely, in a leisurely movement, with a profuser apparent waste of material and energy but with a more complete combination by the great
Mother in her vast upward labour."
II. The Three Steps of Nature
the three successive elements:
"The progressive self-manifestation of Nature in man, termed in modern language his evolution, must necessarily depend upon three successive elements, that which is already evolved, that which is persistently in the stage of conscious evolution and that which is to be evolved and may perhaps be already displayed, if not constantly, then occasionally or with some regularity of recurrence, in primary formations or in others more developed and, it may well be, even in some, however rare, that are near to the highest possible realisation of our present humanity. For the march of Nature is not drilled to a regular and mechanical forward stepping. She reaches constantly beyond herself even at the cost of subsequent deplorable retreats. She has rushes; she has splendid and mighty outbursts; she has immense realisations. She storms sometimes passionately forward hoping to take the kingdom of heaven by violence. And these self-exceedings are the revelation of that in her which is most divine or else most diabolical, but in either case the most puissant to bring her rapidly forward towards her goal."
the three successive elements:
"The progressive self-manifestation of Nature in man, termed in modern language his evolution, must necessarily depend upon three successive elements, that which is already evolved, that which is persistently in the stage of conscious evolution and that which is to be evolved and may perhaps be already displayed, if not constantly, then occasionally or with some regularity of recurrence, in primary formations or in others more developed and, it may well be, even in some, however rare, that are near to the highest possible realisation of our present humanity. For the march of Nature is not drilled to a regular and mechanical forward stepping. She reaches constantly beyond herself even at the cost of subsequent deplorable retreats. She has rushes; she has splendid and mighty outbursts; she has immense realisations. She storms sometimes passionately forward hoping to take the kingdom of heaven by violence. And these self-exceedings are the revelation of that in her which is most divine or else most diabolical, but in either case the most puissant to bring her rapidly forward towards her goal."
III. The Threefold Life
The threefold life includes the physical(matter and life/biology), the mental and the spiritual. Physical nature is primarily based upon repetition and changes rather slowly. This is the basis for the higher Mental and Spiritual lives. Most men live a primarily physical existence, worried about survival, vital desires and perhaps some physical progression or development. The nature of evolution promotes technology so that more time is freed up for mental pursuits.
Mental nature is primarily dynamic which its constant quality being change. Men sometimes try to escape the physical life in an attempt to live a purely mental life; those of the philosopher, poet, artist, scientist and such. Preferring Solituide to the World. Spiritual nature is absolute and perfect, unchanging. Men who try to live the Spiritual Life may leave both the physical and mental life just for this one path, to try to climb to the greatest of heights unhindered by physical and mental obstacles. Sri Aurobindo in his works, aims to unite all three lives, so that none are pursued to the exclusion of any other. I especially find interesting how the higher natures can uplift the lower, such as the mind uplifting the body or the spirit uplifting the mind.
the characteristics of Life, Mind and Spirit:
"The characteristic energy of bodily Life is not so much in progress as in persistence, not so much in individual self-enlargement as in self-repetition. There is, indeed, in physical Nature a progression from type to type, from the vegetable to the animal, from the animal to man; for even in inanimate Matter Mind is at work. But once a type is marked off physically, the chief immediate preoccupation of the terrestrial Mother seems to be to keep it in being by a constant reproduction. For Life always seeks immortality; but since individual form is impermanent and only the idea of a form is permanent in the consciousness that creates the universe, —for there it does not perish,— such constant reproduction is the only possible material immortality. Self-preservation, self-repetition, self-multiplication are necessarily, then, the predominant instincts of all material existence.
The characteristic energy of pure Mind is change and the more it acquires elevation and organisation, the more this law of Mind assumes the aspect of a continual enlargement, improvement and better arrangement of its gains and so of a continual passage from a smaller and simpler to a larger and more complex perfection. For Mind, unlike bodily life, is infinite in its field, elastic in its expansion, easily variable in its formations. Change, then, self-enlargement and self-improvement are its proper instincts. Its faith is perfectibility, its watchword is progress.
The characteristic law of Spirit is self-existent perfection and immutable infinity. It possesses always and in its own right the immortality which is the aim of Life and the perfection which is the goal of Mind. The attainment of the eternal and the realisation of that which is the same in all things and beyond all things, equally blissful in universe and outside it, untouched by the imperfections and limitations of the forms and activities in which it dwells, are the glory of the spiritual life."
The threefold life includes the physical(matter and life/biology), the mental and the spiritual. Physical nature is primarily based upon repetition and changes rather slowly. This is the basis for the higher Mental and Spiritual lives. Most men live a primarily physical existence, worried about survival, vital desires and perhaps some physical progression or development. The nature of evolution promotes technology so that more time is freed up for mental pursuits.
Mental nature is primarily dynamic which its constant quality being change. Men sometimes try to escape the physical life in an attempt to live a purely mental life; those of the philosopher, poet, artist, scientist and such. Preferring Solituide to the World. Spiritual nature is absolute and perfect, unchanging. Men who try to live the Spiritual Life may leave both the physical and mental life just for this one path, to try to climb to the greatest of heights unhindered by physical and mental obstacles. Sri Aurobindo in his works, aims to unite all three lives, so that none are pursued to the exclusion of any other. I especially find interesting how the higher natures can uplift the lower, such as the mind uplifting the body or the spirit uplifting the mind.
the characteristics of Life, Mind and Spirit:
"The characteristic energy of bodily Life is not so much in progress as in persistence, not so much in individual self-enlargement as in self-repetition. There is, indeed, in physical Nature a progression from type to type, from the vegetable to the animal, from the animal to man; for even in inanimate Matter Mind is at work. But once a type is marked off physically, the chief immediate preoccupation of the terrestrial Mother seems to be to keep it in being by a constant reproduction. For Life always seeks immortality; but since individual form is impermanent and only the idea of a form is permanent in the consciousness that creates the universe, —for there it does not perish,— such constant reproduction is the only possible material immortality. Self-preservation, self-repetition, self-multiplication are necessarily, then, the predominant instincts of all material existence.
The characteristic energy of pure Mind is change and the more it acquires elevation and organisation, the more this law of Mind assumes the aspect of a continual enlargement, improvement and better arrangement of its gains and so of a continual passage from a smaller and simpler to a larger and more complex perfection. For Mind, unlike bodily life, is infinite in its field, elastic in its expansion, easily variable in its formations. Change, then, self-enlargement and self-improvement are its proper instincts. Its faith is perfectibility, its watchword is progress.
The characteristic law of Spirit is self-existent perfection and immutable infinity. It possesses always and in its own right the immortality which is the aim of Life and the perfection which is the goal of Mind. The attainment of the eternal and the realisation of that which is the same in all things and beyond all things, equally blissful in universe and outside it, untouched by the imperfections and limitations of the forms and activities in which it dwells, are the glory of the spiritual life."
IV. The Systems of Yoga
five schools of yoga:
"For if, leaving aside the complexities of their particular processes, we fix our regard on the central principle of the chief schools of Yoga still prevalent in India, we find that they arrange themselves in an ascending order which starts from the lowest rung of the ladder, the body, and ascends to the direct contact between the individual soul and the transcendent and universal Self. Hathayoga selects the body and the vital functionings as its instruments of perfection and realisation; its concern is with the gross body. Rajayoga selects the mental being in its different parts as its lever-power; it concentrates on the subtle body. The triple Path of Works, of Love and of Knowledge uses some part of the mental being, will, heart or intellect as a starting-point and seeks by its conversion to arrive at the liberating Truth, Beatitude and Infinity which are the nature of the spiritual life.Its method is a direct commerce between the human Purusha in the individual body and the divine Purusha who dwells in everybody and yet transcends all form and name."
the omnipresent Trinity:
"In practice three conceptions are necessary before there can be any possibility of Yoga; there must be, as it were, three consenting parties to the effort,—God, Nature and the human soul or, in more abstract language, the Transcendental, the Universal and the Individual. If the individual and Nature are left to
themselves, the one is bound to the other and unable to exceed appreciably her lingering march. Something transcendent is needed, free from her and greater, which will act upon us and her, attracting us upward to Itself and securing from her by good grace or by force her consent to the individual ascension. It is this truth which makes necessary to every philosophy of Yoga the conception of the Ishwara, Lord, supreme Soul or supreme Self, towards whom the effort is directed and who gives the illuminating touch and the strength to attain. Equally true is the complementary idea so often enforced by the Yoga of devotion that as the Transcendent is necessary to the individual and sought after by him, so also the individual is necessary in a sense to the Transcendent and sought after by It. If the Bhakta seeks and yearns after Bhagavan, Bhagavan also seeks and yearns after the Bhakta. There can be no Yoga of knowledge without a human seeker of the knowledge, the supreme subject of knowledge and the divine use by the individual of the universal faculties of knowledge; no Yoga of devotion without the human God-lover, the supreme object of love and delight and the divine use by the individual of the universal faculties of spiritual, emotional and aesthetic enjoyment; no Yoga of works without the human worker, the supreme Will, Master of all works and sacrifices, and the divine use by the individual of the universal faculties of power and action. However Monistic maybe our intellectual conception of the highest truth of things, in practice we are compelled to accept this omnipresent Trinity."
Jnana Yoga, the Path of Knowledge;
"The Path of Knowledge aims at the realisation of the unique and supreme Self. It proceeds by the method of intellectual reflection, vicara, to right discrimination, viveka. It observes and distinguishes the different elements of our apparent or phenomenal being and rejecting identification with each of them arrives at their exclusion and separation in one common term as constituents of Prakriti, of phenomenal Nature, creations of Maya, the phenomenal consciousness. So it is able to arrive at its right identification with the pure and unique Self which is not mutable or perishable, not determinable by any phenomenon or combination of phenomenon. ... And on the basis of this realisation a yet further enlargement is possible, the conversion of all forms of knowledge, however mundane, into activities of the divine consciousness utilisable for the perception of the one and unique Object of knowledge both in itself and through the play of its forms and symbols. Such a method might well lead to the elevation of the whole range of human intellect and perception to the divine level, to its spiritualisation and to the justification of the cosmic travail of knowledge in humanity"
Bhakti Yoga, the Path of Devotion;
"The path of Devotion aims at the enjoyment of the supreme Love and Bliss and utilses normally the conception of the supreme Lord in His personality as the divine Lover and enjoyer of the universe. The world is then realised as a a play of the Lord, with our human life as its final stages, pursued through the different phases of self-concealment and self-revealation. The principle of Bhakti Yoga is to utilise all the normal relations of human life into which emotion enters and apply them no longer to transient worldly relations, but to the joy of the All-Loving, the All-Beautiful and the All-Blissful. Worship and meditation are used only for the preparation and increase the intensity of the divine relationship. And this Yoga is catholic in its use of all emotional relations, so that even enmity and opposition to God, considered as an intense, impatient and perverse form of Love, is conceived as a possible means of realisation and salvation. ... We can see how this larger application of the Yoga of Devotion may be used as to lead to the elevation of the whole range of human emotion, sensation and aesthetic perception to the divine level, its spiritualisation and the justification of the cosmic labour towards love and joy in humanity."
Karma Yoga, the Path of Works;
"The Path of Works aims at the dedication of every human activity to the supreme Will. It begins by the renunciation of all egoistic aim for our works, all pursuit of action for an interested aim or for the sake of a worldly result. By this renunciation it so purifies the mind and the will that we become easily conscious of the great universal Energy as the true doer of all our actions and the Lord of that Energy as their ruler and director with the individual as only a mask, an excuse, an instrument or, more positively, a conscious centre of action and phenomenal relation. The choice and direction of the act is more and more consciously left to this supreme Will and this universal Energy. To That our works as well as the results of our works are finally abandoned. The object is the release of the soul from its bondage to appearances and to the reaction of phenomenal activities. Karmayoga is used, like the other paths, to lead to liberation from phenomenal existence and a departure into the Supreme. But here too the exclusive result is not inevitable. The end of the path may be, equally, a perception of the divine in all energies, in all happenings, in all activities, and a free and unegoistic participation of the soul in the cosmic action. So followed it will lead to the elevation of all human will and activity to the divine level, its spiritualisation and the justification of the cosmic labour towards freedom, power and perfection in the human being."
three paths as one;
We can see also that in the integral view of things these three paths are one. Divine Love should normally lead to the perfect knowledge of the Beloved by perfect intimacy, thus becoming a path of Knowledge, and to divine service, thus becoming a path of Works. So also should perfect Knowledge lead to perfect Love and Joy and a full acceptance of the works of That which is known; dedicated Works to the entire love of the Master of the Sacrifice and the deepest knowledge of His ways and His being. It is in the triple path that we come most readily to the absolute knowledge, love and service of the One in all beings and in the entire cosmic manifestation."
five schools of yoga:
"For if, leaving aside the complexities of their particular processes, we fix our regard on the central principle of the chief schools of Yoga still prevalent in India, we find that they arrange themselves in an ascending order which starts from the lowest rung of the ladder, the body, and ascends to the direct contact between the individual soul and the transcendent and universal Self. Hathayoga selects the body and the vital functionings as its instruments of perfection and realisation; its concern is with the gross body. Rajayoga selects the mental being in its different parts as its lever-power; it concentrates on the subtle body. The triple Path of Works, of Love and of Knowledge uses some part of the mental being, will, heart or intellect as a starting-point and seeks by its conversion to arrive at the liberating Truth, Beatitude and Infinity which are the nature of the spiritual life.Its method is a direct commerce between the human Purusha in the individual body and the divine Purusha who dwells in everybody and yet transcends all form and name."
the omnipresent Trinity:
"In practice three conceptions are necessary before there can be any possibility of Yoga; there must be, as it were, three consenting parties to the effort,—God, Nature and the human soul or, in more abstract language, the Transcendental, the Universal and the Individual. If the individual and Nature are left to
themselves, the one is bound to the other and unable to exceed appreciably her lingering march. Something transcendent is needed, free from her and greater, which will act upon us and her, attracting us upward to Itself and securing from her by good grace or by force her consent to the individual ascension. It is this truth which makes necessary to every philosophy of Yoga the conception of the Ishwara, Lord, supreme Soul or supreme Self, towards whom the effort is directed and who gives the illuminating touch and the strength to attain. Equally true is the complementary idea so often enforced by the Yoga of devotion that as the Transcendent is necessary to the individual and sought after by him, so also the individual is necessary in a sense to the Transcendent and sought after by It. If the Bhakta seeks and yearns after Bhagavan, Bhagavan also seeks and yearns after the Bhakta. There can be no Yoga of knowledge without a human seeker of the knowledge, the supreme subject of knowledge and the divine use by the individual of the universal faculties of knowledge; no Yoga of devotion without the human God-lover, the supreme object of love and delight and the divine use by the individual of the universal faculties of spiritual, emotional and aesthetic enjoyment; no Yoga of works without the human worker, the supreme Will, Master of all works and sacrifices, and the divine use by the individual of the universal faculties of power and action. However Monistic maybe our intellectual conception of the highest truth of things, in practice we are compelled to accept this omnipresent Trinity."
Jnana Yoga, the Path of Knowledge;
"The Path of Knowledge aims at the realisation of the unique and supreme Self. It proceeds by the method of intellectual reflection, vicara, to right discrimination, viveka. It observes and distinguishes the different elements of our apparent or phenomenal being and rejecting identification with each of them arrives at their exclusion and separation in one common term as constituents of Prakriti, of phenomenal Nature, creations of Maya, the phenomenal consciousness. So it is able to arrive at its right identification with the pure and unique Self which is not mutable or perishable, not determinable by any phenomenon or combination of phenomenon. ... And on the basis of this realisation a yet further enlargement is possible, the conversion of all forms of knowledge, however mundane, into activities of the divine consciousness utilisable for the perception of the one and unique Object of knowledge both in itself and through the play of its forms and symbols. Such a method might well lead to the elevation of the whole range of human intellect and perception to the divine level, to its spiritualisation and to the justification of the cosmic travail of knowledge in humanity"
Bhakti Yoga, the Path of Devotion;
"The path of Devotion aims at the enjoyment of the supreme Love and Bliss and utilses normally the conception of the supreme Lord in His personality as the divine Lover and enjoyer of the universe. The world is then realised as a a play of the Lord, with our human life as its final stages, pursued through the different phases of self-concealment and self-revealation. The principle of Bhakti Yoga is to utilise all the normal relations of human life into which emotion enters and apply them no longer to transient worldly relations, but to the joy of the All-Loving, the All-Beautiful and the All-Blissful. Worship and meditation are used only for the preparation and increase the intensity of the divine relationship. And this Yoga is catholic in its use of all emotional relations, so that even enmity and opposition to God, considered as an intense, impatient and perverse form of Love, is conceived as a possible means of realisation and salvation. ... We can see how this larger application of the Yoga of Devotion may be used as to lead to the elevation of the whole range of human emotion, sensation and aesthetic perception to the divine level, its spiritualisation and the justification of the cosmic labour towards love and joy in humanity."
Karma Yoga, the Path of Works;
"The Path of Works aims at the dedication of every human activity to the supreme Will. It begins by the renunciation of all egoistic aim for our works, all pursuit of action for an interested aim or for the sake of a worldly result. By this renunciation it so purifies the mind and the will that we become easily conscious of the great universal Energy as the true doer of all our actions and the Lord of that Energy as their ruler and director with the individual as only a mask, an excuse, an instrument or, more positively, a conscious centre of action and phenomenal relation. The choice and direction of the act is more and more consciously left to this supreme Will and this universal Energy. To That our works as well as the results of our works are finally abandoned. The object is the release of the soul from its bondage to appearances and to the reaction of phenomenal activities. Karmayoga is used, like the other paths, to lead to liberation from phenomenal existence and a departure into the Supreme. But here too the exclusive result is not inevitable. The end of the path may be, equally, a perception of the divine in all energies, in all happenings, in all activities, and a free and unegoistic participation of the soul in the cosmic action. So followed it will lead to the elevation of all human will and activity to the divine level, its spiritualisation and the justification of the cosmic labour towards freedom, power and perfection in the human being."
three paths as one;
We can see also that in the integral view of things these three paths are one. Divine Love should normally lead to the perfect knowledge of the Beloved by perfect intimacy, thus becoming a path of Knowledge, and to divine service, thus becoming a path of Works. So also should perfect Knowledge lead to perfect Love and Joy and a full acceptance of the works of That which is known; dedicated Works to the entire love of the Master of the Sacrifice and the deepest knowledge of His ways and His being. It is in the triple path that we come most readily to the absolute knowledge, love and service of the One in all beings and in the entire cosmic manifestation."
V. The Synthesis of the Systems
Aurobindo states that although it is possible to do each in succession, as was the case with Ramakrishna, he believes in may be more beneficial to grab upon the common principles that they all carry to try to develop a sense of leverage and harmonious integral development.
Aurobindo states that although it is possible to do each in succession, as was the case with Ramakrishna, he believes in may be more beneficial to grab upon the common principles that they all carry to try to develop a sense of leverage and harmonious integral development.
PART I - THE YOGA OF DIVINE WORKS
I. The Four Aids
This section outlines the four primary aids for the Yoga of Works, which include Shastra, Effort, Guru and Time.
The first aid, Knowledge/Shastra, is used in two ways ideally it is through direct experience of God, though since for most this occurs much later in the path it is often that the first contact with the Higher Aspiration comes from outside of oneself, and is as Aurobindo put it, used merely as an excuse for the inner awakening. This first opening can come from anything from another person, to a written word or an inner word. Aurobindo speaks also of the importance of realizing that no shastra (or sacred text) regardless of its scope and depth can be perfect, for the truth is ever changing and for this he recommends choosing texts that are as wide in their scope as possible, and that a sadhaka(aspiring yogi) should not limit them self to any single path because they are the sadhaka of the infinite. Another important note is that regardless of what shastra one follows, that the measure of the value should be in how much like the thing studied or worshipped one becomes, ie becoming like Buddha or Christ. The second aid, Effort, is the means to which ( ...) The third aid, Guru, as it is used, refers to three forms: the living Guru, the past Guru and the Inner Guru. Of these what matters most is how much we are awakening to our highest nature. If we are to worship Jesus, Buddha or Krishna it is not enough unless we become more and more like Jesus, Buddha or Krishna. Then he speaks of the three tools of the Guru: Teaching, Example and Influence. Of the three Influence is said to be more important then example and example more important then teaching.
The fourth aid, is Time. He explains that time is the necessary condition for the unfolding of Spirit through Matter and how it seems like a barrier to the individual Jiva but more and more becomes an condition and eventually an Instrument. The ideal attitude of the sadhana is to have an endless patience as if one has all of eternity for ones realization yet cultivate increasingly the effort and momentum to needed to reach the miraculous instantaneous realization now.
the first aid, shastra,
the lotus of the eternal knowledge:
"The supreme Shastra of the integral Yoga is the eternal Veda secret in the heart of every thinking and living being. The lotus of the eternal knowledge and the eternal perfection is a bud closed and folded up within us. It opens swiftly or gradually,petal by petal, through successive realisations, once the mind of man begins to turn towards the Eternal, once his heart, no longer compressed and confined by attachment to finite appearances,becomes enamoured, in whatever degree, of the Infinite. All life,all thought, all energising of the faculties, all experiences passive or active, become thenceforward so many shocks which disintegrate the teguments of the soul and remove the obstacles to the inevitable efflorescence. He who chooses the Infinite has been chosen by the Infinite. He has received the divine touch without which there is no awakening, no opening of the spirit; but once it is received, attainment is sure, whether conquered swiftly in the course of one human life or pursued patiently through many stadia of the cycle of existence in the manifested universe.
Nothing can be taught to the mind which is not already concealed as potential knowledge in the unfolding soul of the creature. So also all perfection of which the outer man is capable, is only a realising of the eternal perfection of the Spirit within him. We know the Divine and become the Divine, because we are That already in our secret nature. All teaching is a revealing,all becoming is an unfolding. Self-attainment is the secret; self knowledge and an increasing consciousness are the means and the process."
the second aid, utsaha,,
the need for effort and aspiration:
"The development of the experience in its rapidity, its amplitude, the intensity and power of its results, depends primarily, in the beginning of the path and long after, on the aspiration and personal effort of the sadhaka."
the intensity of the turning:
The first determining element in the siddhi is, therefore, the intensity of the turning, the force which directs the soul inward. The power of aspiration of the heart, the force of the will, the concentration of the mind, the perseverance and determination of the applied energy are the measure of that intensity. The ideal sadhaka should be able to say in the Biblical phrase, "My zeal for the Lord has eaten me up." It is this zeal for the Lord, -utsaha, the zeal of the whole nature for its divine results, vyakulata, the heart's eagerness for the attainment of the Divine, - the devours the ego and breaks up the petty limitations..."
"So long as the contact with the Divine is not in some considerable degree established, so long as there is not some measure of sustained identity, sayujya, the element of personal effort must normally predominate. But in proportion as this contact establishes itself, the sadhaka must become conscious that a force other than his own, a force transcending his egoistic endeavour and capacity, is at work in him and to this Power he learns progressively to submit himself and delivers up to it the charge of his Yoga."
the third aid, guru
the inner guide:
"[it is the inner guide] who destroys are darkness by the resplendent light of his knowledge; that light becomes within us the increasing glory of his own self-revelation. He discloses progressively in us his own nature of freedom, bliss, love, power, immortal being. He sets above us his divine example as our ideal and transforms the lower existence into a reflection of that which it contemplates. By the inpouring of his own influence and presence into us he enables the individual being to attain to identity with the universal and transcendent."
the fourth aid, time, kala,:
"The sadhaka who has all these aids is sure of his goal. Even a fall will be for him only a means of rising and death a passage towards fulfilment. For once on this path, birth and death become only processes in the development of his being and the stages of his journey.
Time is the remaining aid needed for the effectivity of the process. Time presents itself to human effort as an enemy or a friend, as a resistance, a medium or an instrument. But always it is really the instrument of the soul.
Time is a field of circumstances and forces meeting and working out a resultant progression whose course it measures.To the ego it is a tyrant or a resistance, to the Divine an instrument.Therefore, while our effort is personal, Time appears as a resistance, for it presents to us all the obstruction of the forces that conflict with our own. When the divine working and the personal are combined in our consciousness, it appears as a medium and a condition. When the two become one, it appears as a servant and instrument.
The ideal attitude of the sadhaka towards Time is to have an endless patience as if he had all eternity for his fulfilment and yet to develop the energy that shall realise now and with an ever-increasing mastery and pressure of rapidity till it reaches the miraculous instantaneousness of the supreme divine Transformation."
This section outlines the four primary aids for the Yoga of Works, which include Shastra, Effort, Guru and Time.
The first aid, Knowledge/Shastra, is used in two ways ideally it is through direct experience of God, though since for most this occurs much later in the path it is often that the first contact with the Higher Aspiration comes from outside of oneself, and is as Aurobindo put it, used merely as an excuse for the inner awakening. This first opening can come from anything from another person, to a written word or an inner word. Aurobindo speaks also of the importance of realizing that no shastra (or sacred text) regardless of its scope and depth can be perfect, for the truth is ever changing and for this he recommends choosing texts that are as wide in their scope as possible, and that a sadhaka(aspiring yogi) should not limit them self to any single path because they are the sadhaka of the infinite. Another important note is that regardless of what shastra one follows, that the measure of the value should be in how much like the thing studied or worshipped one becomes, ie becoming like Buddha or Christ. The second aid, Effort, is the means to which ( ...) The third aid, Guru, as it is used, refers to three forms: the living Guru, the past Guru and the Inner Guru. Of these what matters most is how much we are awakening to our highest nature. If we are to worship Jesus, Buddha or Krishna it is not enough unless we become more and more like Jesus, Buddha or Krishna. Then he speaks of the three tools of the Guru: Teaching, Example and Influence. Of the three Influence is said to be more important then example and example more important then teaching.
The fourth aid, is Time. He explains that time is the necessary condition for the unfolding of Spirit through Matter and how it seems like a barrier to the individual Jiva but more and more becomes an condition and eventually an Instrument. The ideal attitude of the sadhana is to have an endless patience as if one has all of eternity for ones realization yet cultivate increasingly the effort and momentum to needed to reach the miraculous instantaneous realization now.
the first aid, shastra,
the lotus of the eternal knowledge:
"The supreme Shastra of the integral Yoga is the eternal Veda secret in the heart of every thinking and living being. The lotus of the eternal knowledge and the eternal perfection is a bud closed and folded up within us. It opens swiftly or gradually,petal by petal, through successive realisations, once the mind of man begins to turn towards the Eternal, once his heart, no longer compressed and confined by attachment to finite appearances,becomes enamoured, in whatever degree, of the Infinite. All life,all thought, all energising of the faculties, all experiences passive or active, become thenceforward so many shocks which disintegrate the teguments of the soul and remove the obstacles to the inevitable efflorescence. He who chooses the Infinite has been chosen by the Infinite. He has received the divine touch without which there is no awakening, no opening of the spirit; but once it is received, attainment is sure, whether conquered swiftly in the course of one human life or pursued patiently through many stadia of the cycle of existence in the manifested universe.
Nothing can be taught to the mind which is not already concealed as potential knowledge in the unfolding soul of the creature. So also all perfection of which the outer man is capable, is only a realising of the eternal perfection of the Spirit within him. We know the Divine and become the Divine, because we are That already in our secret nature. All teaching is a revealing,all becoming is an unfolding. Self-attainment is the secret; self knowledge and an increasing consciousness are the means and the process."
the second aid, utsaha,,
the need for effort and aspiration:
"The development of the experience in its rapidity, its amplitude, the intensity and power of its results, depends primarily, in the beginning of the path and long after, on the aspiration and personal effort of the sadhaka."
the intensity of the turning:
The first determining element in the siddhi is, therefore, the intensity of the turning, the force which directs the soul inward. The power of aspiration of the heart, the force of the will, the concentration of the mind, the perseverance and determination of the applied energy are the measure of that intensity. The ideal sadhaka should be able to say in the Biblical phrase, "My zeal for the Lord has eaten me up." It is this zeal for the Lord, -utsaha, the zeal of the whole nature for its divine results, vyakulata, the heart's eagerness for the attainment of the Divine, - the devours the ego and breaks up the petty limitations..."
"So long as the contact with the Divine is not in some considerable degree established, so long as there is not some measure of sustained identity, sayujya, the element of personal effort must normally predominate. But in proportion as this contact establishes itself, the sadhaka must become conscious that a force other than his own, a force transcending his egoistic endeavour and capacity, is at work in him and to this Power he learns progressively to submit himself and delivers up to it the charge of his Yoga."
the third aid, guru
the inner guide:
"[it is the inner guide] who destroys are darkness by the resplendent light of his knowledge; that light becomes within us the increasing glory of his own self-revelation. He discloses progressively in us his own nature of freedom, bliss, love, power, immortal being. He sets above us his divine example as our ideal and transforms the lower existence into a reflection of that which it contemplates. By the inpouring of his own influence and presence into us he enables the individual being to attain to identity with the universal and transcendent."
the fourth aid, time, kala,:
"The sadhaka who has all these aids is sure of his goal. Even a fall will be for him only a means of rising and death a passage towards fulfilment. For once on this path, birth and death become only processes in the development of his being and the stages of his journey.
Time is the remaining aid needed for the effectivity of the process. Time presents itself to human effort as an enemy or a friend, as a resistance, a medium or an instrument. But always it is really the instrument of the soul.
Time is a field of circumstances and forces meeting and working out a resultant progression whose course it measures.To the ego it is a tyrant or a resistance, to the Divine an instrument.Therefore, while our effort is personal, Time appears as a resistance, for it presents to us all the obstruction of the forces that conflict with our own. When the divine working and the personal are combined in our consciousness, it appears as a medium and a condition. When the two become one, it appears as a servant and instrument.
The ideal attitude of the sadhaka towards Time is to have an endless patience as if he had all eternity for his fulfilment and yet to develop the energy that shall realise now and with an ever-increasing mastery and pressure of rapidity till it reaches the miraculous instantaneousness of the supreme divine Transformation."
II. Self-Consecration
the value of sublimation:
"And since Yoga is in its essence a turning away from the ordinary material and animal life led by most men or from the more mental but still limited way of living followed by the few to a greater spiritual life, to the way divine, every part of our energies that is given to the lower existence in the spirit of that existence is a contradiction of our aim and our self-dedication. On the other hand, every energy or activity that we can convert from its allegiance to the lower and dedicate to the service of the higher is so much gained on our road, so much taken from the powers that oppose our progress. It is the difficulty of this wholesale conversion that is the source of all the stumblings in the path of Yoga. For our entire nature and its environment, all our personal and all our universal self, are full of habits and of influences that are opposed to our spiritual rebirth and work against the whole-heartedness of our endeavour."
on what to concentrate upon:
"It is, then, in the highest mind of thought and light and will or it is in the inner heart of deepest feeling and emotion that we must first centre our consciousness, —in either of them or, if we are capable, in both together,— and use that as our leverage to lift the nature wholly towards the Divine. The concentration of an enlightened thought, will and heart turned in unison towards one vast goal of our knowledge, one luminous and infinite source of our action, one imperishable object of our emotion is the starting-point of the Yoga. And the object of our seeking must be the very fount of the Light which is growing in us, the very origin of the Force which we are calling to move our members. Our one objective must be the Divine himself to whom, knowingly or unknowingly, something always aspires in our secret nature. There must be a large, many-sided yet single concentration of the thought on the idea, the perception, the vision, the awakening touch, the soul's realisation of the one Divine. There must be a flaming concentration of the heart on the All and Eternal —and, when once we have found him, a deep plunging and immersion in the possession and ecstasy of the All-Beautiful. There must be a strong and immovable concentration of the will on the attainment and fulfilment of all that the Divine is and a free and plastic opening of it to all that he intends to manifest in us. This is the triple way of the Yoga."
the transformation of desire:
"Into all our endeavour upward the lower element of desire will at first naturally enter. For what the enlightened will sees as the thing to be done and pursues as the crown to be conquered, what the heart embraces as the one thing delightful, that in us which feels itself limited and opposed and, because it is limited, craves and struggles, will seek with the troubled passion of an egoistic desire. This craving life-force or desire-soul in us has to be accepted at first, but only in order that it may be transformed. Even from the very beginning it has to be taught to renounce all other desires and concentrate itself on the passion for the Divine. This capital point gained, it has to be aught to desire, not for its own separate sake, but for God in the world and for the Divine in ourselves; it has to fix itself upon no personal spiritual gain, though of all possible spiritual gains we are sure, but on the great work to be done in us and others, on the high coming manifestation which is to be the glorious fulfilment of the Divine in the world, on the Truth that has to be sought and lived and enthroned for ever. But last, most difficult for it, more difficult than to seek with the right object, it has to be taught to seek in the right manner; for it must learn to desire, not in its own egoistic way, but in the way of the Divine. It must insist no longer, as the strong separative will always insists, on its own manner of fulfilment, its own dream of possession, its own idea of the right and the desirable; it must yearn to fulfil a larger and greater Will and consent to wait upon a less interested and ignorant guidance. Thus trained, Desire, that great unquiet harasser and troubler of man and cause of every kind of stumbling, will become fit to be transformed into its divine counterpart. For desire and passion too have their divine forms; there is a pure ecstasy of the soul’s seeking beyond all craving and grief, there is a Will of Ananda that sits glorified in the possession of the supreme beatitudes.
When once the object of concentration has possessed and is possessed by the three master instruments, the thought, the heart and the will,—a consummation fully possible only when the desire-soul in us has submitted to the Divine Law,—the perfection of mind and life and body can be effectively fulfilled in our transmuted nature. This will be done, not for the personal satisfaction of the ego, but that the whole may constitute a fit temple for the Divine Presence, a faultless instrument for the divine work. For that work can be truly performed only when the instrument, consecrated and perfected, has grown fit for a selfless action,—and that will be when personal desire and egoism are abolished, but not the liberated individual. Even when the little ego has been abolished, the true spiritual Person can still remain and God’s will and work and delight in him and the spiritual use of his perfection and fulfilment. Our works will then be divine and done divinely; our mind and life and will, devoted to the Divine, will be used to help fulfil in others and in the world that which has been first realised in ourselves,— all that we can manifest of the embodied Unity, Love, Freedom, Strength, Power, Splendour, immortal Joy which is the goal of the Spirit’s terrestrial adventure." Pg 84-85
the value of sublimation:
"And since Yoga is in its essence a turning away from the ordinary material and animal life led by most men or from the more mental but still limited way of living followed by the few to a greater spiritual life, to the way divine, every part of our energies that is given to the lower existence in the spirit of that existence is a contradiction of our aim and our self-dedication. On the other hand, every energy or activity that we can convert from its allegiance to the lower and dedicate to the service of the higher is so much gained on our road, so much taken from the powers that oppose our progress. It is the difficulty of this wholesale conversion that is the source of all the stumblings in the path of Yoga. For our entire nature and its environment, all our personal and all our universal self, are full of habits and of influences that are opposed to our spiritual rebirth and work against the whole-heartedness of our endeavour."
on what to concentrate upon:
"It is, then, in the highest mind of thought and light and will or it is in the inner heart of deepest feeling and emotion that we must first centre our consciousness, —in either of them or, if we are capable, in both together,— and use that as our leverage to lift the nature wholly towards the Divine. The concentration of an enlightened thought, will and heart turned in unison towards one vast goal of our knowledge, one luminous and infinite source of our action, one imperishable object of our emotion is the starting-point of the Yoga. And the object of our seeking must be the very fount of the Light which is growing in us, the very origin of the Force which we are calling to move our members. Our one objective must be the Divine himself to whom, knowingly or unknowingly, something always aspires in our secret nature. There must be a large, many-sided yet single concentration of the thought on the idea, the perception, the vision, the awakening touch, the soul's realisation of the one Divine. There must be a flaming concentration of the heart on the All and Eternal —and, when once we have found him, a deep plunging and immersion in the possession and ecstasy of the All-Beautiful. There must be a strong and immovable concentration of the will on the attainment and fulfilment of all that the Divine is and a free and plastic opening of it to all that he intends to manifest in us. This is the triple way of the Yoga."
the transformation of desire:
"Into all our endeavour upward the lower element of desire will at first naturally enter. For what the enlightened will sees as the thing to be done and pursues as the crown to be conquered, what the heart embraces as the one thing delightful, that in us which feels itself limited and opposed and, because it is limited, craves and struggles, will seek with the troubled passion of an egoistic desire. This craving life-force or desire-soul in us has to be accepted at first, but only in order that it may be transformed. Even from the very beginning it has to be taught to renounce all other desires and concentrate itself on the passion for the Divine. This capital point gained, it has to be aught to desire, not for its own separate sake, but for God in the world and for the Divine in ourselves; it has to fix itself upon no personal spiritual gain, though of all possible spiritual gains we are sure, but on the great work to be done in us and others, on the high coming manifestation which is to be the glorious fulfilment of the Divine in the world, on the Truth that has to be sought and lived and enthroned for ever. But last, most difficult for it, more difficult than to seek with the right object, it has to be taught to seek in the right manner; for it must learn to desire, not in its own egoistic way, but in the way of the Divine. It must insist no longer, as the strong separative will always insists, on its own manner of fulfilment, its own dream of possession, its own idea of the right and the desirable; it must yearn to fulfil a larger and greater Will and consent to wait upon a less interested and ignorant guidance. Thus trained, Desire, that great unquiet harasser and troubler of man and cause of every kind of stumbling, will become fit to be transformed into its divine counterpart. For desire and passion too have their divine forms; there is a pure ecstasy of the soul’s seeking beyond all craving and grief, there is a Will of Ananda that sits glorified in the possession of the supreme beatitudes.
When once the object of concentration has possessed and is possessed by the three master instruments, the thought, the heart and the will,—a consummation fully possible only when the desire-soul in us has submitted to the Divine Law,—the perfection of mind and life and body can be effectively fulfilled in our transmuted nature. This will be done, not for the personal satisfaction of the ego, but that the whole may constitute a fit temple for the Divine Presence, a faultless instrument for the divine work. For that work can be truly performed only when the instrument, consecrated and perfected, has grown fit for a selfless action,—and that will be when personal desire and egoism are abolished, but not the liberated individual. Even when the little ego has been abolished, the true spiritual Person can still remain and God’s will and work and delight in him and the spiritual use of his perfection and fulfilment. Our works will then be divine and done divinely; our mind and life and will, devoted to the Divine, will be used to help fulfil in others and in the world that which has been first realised in ourselves,— all that we can manifest of the embodied Unity, Love, Freedom, Strength, Power, Splendour, immortal Joy which is the goal of the Spirit’s terrestrial adventure." Pg 84-85
III. Self-Surrender in Works - The Way of The Gita
three first approaches of Karma Yoga:
"Equality, renunciation of all desire for the fruit of our works,action done as a sacrifice to the supreme Lord of our nature andvof all nature,—these are the three first Godward approaches in the Gita’s way of Karma yoga."
on equality:
"To be perfectly equal in all happenings and to all beings, and to see and feel them as one with oneself and one with the Divine; to feel all in oneself and all in God; to feel God in all, oneself in all." - Pg 101
on purifying ego and desire:
"The elimination of all egoistic activity and of its foundation, the egoistic consciousness, is clearly the key to the consummation we desire. And since in the path of works action is the knot we have first to loosen, we must endeavour to loosen it where it is centrally tied, in desire and in ego; for otherwise we shall cut only stray strands and not the heart of our bondage.These are the two knots of our subjection to this ignorant and divided Nature, desire and ego-sense. And of these two desire has its native home in the emotions and sensations and instincts and from there affects thought and volition; ego-sense lives indeed in these movements, but it casts its deep roots also in the thinking mind and its will and it is there that it becomes fully self conscious. These are the twin obscure powers of the obsessing world-wide Ignorance that we have to enlighten and eliminate.
In the field of action desire takes many forms, but the most powerful of all is the vital self's craving or seeking after the fruit of our works. The fruit we covet may be a reward of internal pleasure; it may be the accomplishment of some preferred idea or some cherished will or the satisfaction of the egoistic emotions, or else the pride of success of our highest hopes and ambitions. Or it may be an external reward, a recompense entirely material, —wealth, position, honour, victory, good fortune or any other fulfilment of vital or physical desire. But all alike are lures by which egoism holds us. Always these satisfactions delude us with the sense of mastery and the idea of freedom, while really we are harnessed and guided or ridden and whipped by some gross or subtle, some noble or ignoble, figure of the blind Desire that drives the world. Therefore the first rule of action laid down by the Gita is to do the work that should be done without any desire for the fruit, niskama karma. ...
The test it lays down is an absolute equality of the mind and the heart to all results, to all reactions, to all happenings. If good fortune and ill fortune, if respect and insult, if reputation and obloquy, if victory and defeat, if pleasant event and sorrowful event leave us not only unshaken but untouched, free in the emotions, free in the nervous reactions, free in the mental view, not responding with the least disturbance or vibration in any spot of the nature, then we have the absolute liberation to which the Gita points us, but not otherwise."
on cultivating equality:
"For it is certain that so great a result cannot be arrived at immediately and without any previous stages. At first we have to learn to bear the shocks of the world with the central part of our being untouched and silent, even when the surface mind, heart, life are strongly shaken; unmoved there on the bedrock of our life, we must separate the soul watching behind or immune deep within from these outer workings of our nature. Afterwards, extending this calm and steadfastness of the detached soul to its instruments, it will become slowly possible to radiate peace from the luminous centre to the darker peripheries. In this process we may take the passing help of many minor phases; a certain stoicism, a certain calm philosophy, a certain religious exaltation may help us towards some nearness to our aim, or we may call in even less strong and exalted but still useful powers of our mental nature. In the end we must either discard or transform them and arrive instead at an entire equality, a perfect self-existent peace within and even, if we can, a total unassailable, self-poised and spontaneous delight in all our members."
8.0 Elimination of desire and ego are the two practical steps in karmayoga.
8.1 Desire is rooted in the emotions, ego in the mind.
8.2 The first rule of the Gita is to act without any desire for the result of our actions; because the most powerful form of desire is the craving for that result.
8.3 The test for this achievement is equality.
8.4 There are lesser forms/types of equality, which may be used but must be overpassed: stoicism, equality of pride, hard indifference.
8.5 At first we bear shocks in our most inner being; later this equality is extended to the outer person.
9. Once desire is gone, action is surrendered to the Divine, the felt Will of the Eternal.
10. The three first approaches are: equality, renunciation of desire for the result of action, and action done as a sacrifice to the Lord.
three first approaches of Karma Yoga:
"Equality, renunciation of all desire for the fruit of our works,action done as a sacrifice to the supreme Lord of our nature andvof all nature,—these are the three first Godward approaches in the Gita’s way of Karma yoga."
on equality:
"To be perfectly equal in all happenings and to all beings, and to see and feel them as one with oneself and one with the Divine; to feel all in oneself and all in God; to feel God in all, oneself in all." - Pg 101
on purifying ego and desire:
"The elimination of all egoistic activity and of its foundation, the egoistic consciousness, is clearly the key to the consummation we desire. And since in the path of works action is the knot we have first to loosen, we must endeavour to loosen it where it is centrally tied, in desire and in ego; for otherwise we shall cut only stray strands and not the heart of our bondage.These are the two knots of our subjection to this ignorant and divided Nature, desire and ego-sense. And of these two desire has its native home in the emotions and sensations and instincts and from there affects thought and volition; ego-sense lives indeed in these movements, but it casts its deep roots also in the thinking mind and its will and it is there that it becomes fully self conscious. These are the twin obscure powers of the obsessing world-wide Ignorance that we have to enlighten and eliminate.
In the field of action desire takes many forms, but the most powerful of all is the vital self's craving or seeking after the fruit of our works. The fruit we covet may be a reward of internal pleasure; it may be the accomplishment of some preferred idea or some cherished will or the satisfaction of the egoistic emotions, or else the pride of success of our highest hopes and ambitions. Or it may be an external reward, a recompense entirely material, —wealth, position, honour, victory, good fortune or any other fulfilment of vital or physical desire. But all alike are lures by which egoism holds us. Always these satisfactions delude us with the sense of mastery and the idea of freedom, while really we are harnessed and guided or ridden and whipped by some gross or subtle, some noble or ignoble, figure of the blind Desire that drives the world. Therefore the first rule of action laid down by the Gita is to do the work that should be done without any desire for the fruit, niskama karma. ...
The test it lays down is an absolute equality of the mind and the heart to all results, to all reactions, to all happenings. If good fortune and ill fortune, if respect and insult, if reputation and obloquy, if victory and defeat, if pleasant event and sorrowful event leave us not only unshaken but untouched, free in the emotions, free in the nervous reactions, free in the mental view, not responding with the least disturbance or vibration in any spot of the nature, then we have the absolute liberation to which the Gita points us, but not otherwise."
on cultivating equality:
"For it is certain that so great a result cannot be arrived at immediately and without any previous stages. At first we have to learn to bear the shocks of the world with the central part of our being untouched and silent, even when the surface mind, heart, life are strongly shaken; unmoved there on the bedrock of our life, we must separate the soul watching behind or immune deep within from these outer workings of our nature. Afterwards, extending this calm and steadfastness of the detached soul to its instruments, it will become slowly possible to radiate peace from the luminous centre to the darker peripheries. In this process we may take the passing help of many minor phases; a certain stoicism, a certain calm philosophy, a certain religious exaltation may help us towards some nearness to our aim, or we may call in even less strong and exalted but still useful powers of our mental nature. In the end we must either discard or transform them and arrive instead at an entire equality, a perfect self-existent peace within and even, if we can, a total unassailable, self-poised and spontaneous delight in all our members."
8.0 Elimination of desire and ego are the two practical steps in karmayoga.
8.1 Desire is rooted in the emotions, ego in the mind.
8.2 The first rule of the Gita is to act without any desire for the result of our actions; because the most powerful form of desire is the craving for that result.
8.3 The test for this achievement is equality.
8.4 There are lesser forms/types of equality, which may be used but must be overpassed: stoicism, equality of pride, hard indifference.
8.5 At first we bear shocks in our most inner being; later this equality is extended to the outer person.
9. Once desire is gone, action is surrendered to the Divine, the felt Will of the Eternal.
10. The three first approaches are: equality, renunciation of desire for the result of action, and action done as a sacrifice to the Lord.
IV. The Sacrifice, The Triune Path and the Lord of the Sacrifice
Sacrifice is the law of the universe, even to those who do not know the law. The triune path, trimarga, is the triple path of works, knowledge and devotion.
This may be the essence of Karma Yoga for each sacrifice is reaffirming that you are not your limited ego and are that, the Self, to which you give, the Lord of the Sacrifice. In the end all must be done as consecrated acts of sacrifice, from eating to giving all that one is. The Lord of the Sacrifice is both the Being to which is doing the sacrifice and to who receives it.
sacrifice, the redeeming principle:
"The law of sacrifice is the common divine action that was thrown out into the world in its beginning as a symbol of the solidarity of the universe. It is by the attraction of this law that a divinising principle, a saving power descends to limit and correct and gradually to eliminate the errors of an egoistic and self-divided creation. This descent, this sacrifice of the Purusha, the Divine Soul, submitting itself to Force and Matter so that it may inform and illuminate them, is the seed of redemption of this world of Inconscience and Ignorance."- 106
the ruthless sacrifice:
"The vulgar conception of sacrifice is an act of painful self-immolation, austere self-mortification, difficult self-effacement; this kind of sacrifice may go even as far as self-mutilation and self-torture. These things may be temporarily necessary in man's hard endeavor to exceed his natural self; if the egoism in his nature is violent and obstinate, it has to be met sometimes by an answering strong internal repression and counterbalancing violence. But the Gita discourages any excess of violence done to oneself; for the self within is really the Godhead evolving, it is Krishna, the Divine; it has not to be troubled and tortured as the Titans of the world trouble and torture it, but to be increased, fostered, cherished, luminously opened to a divine light and strength and joy and wideness. It is not one's self, but the band of the spirit's inner enemies that we have to discourage, expel, slay upon the alter of the growth of the spirit; these can be ruthlessly excised, whose names are desire, wrath, inequality, greed, attachment to outward pleasures and pains, the cohort of usurping demons that are the cause of the soul's errors and sufferings. These should be regarded not as part of oneself but as intruders and perverters of our self's real and diviner nature; these have to be sacrificed in the harsher sense of the word, whatever pain in going they may thrown by reflection on the consciousness of the seeker."
compensation for sacrificed discipline of the lesser for greater::
"...a passage from a lesser satisfaction to a greater Ananda. There is only one thing painful in the beginning to a raw or turbid part of the surface nature; it is the indispensable discipline demanded, the denial necessary for the merging of the incomplete ego. But for that there can be a speedy and enormous compensation in the discovery of a real greater or ultimate completeness in others, in all things, in the cosmic oneness, in the freedom of the transcendent Self and Spirit, in the rapture of the touch of the Divine."
fruits of the sacrifice:
"The soul knows that it does not give itself to God in vain; claiming nothing, it yet receives the infinite riches of the divine Power and Presence." -109
the recipient of the sacrifice:
"Whoever the recipient, whatever the gift, it is the Supreme, the Eternal in things, who receives and accepts it, even if it be rejected or ignored by the immediate recipient."
the one entirely acceptable sacrifice:
"And the fruit of also of the sacrifice of works varies according to the work, according to the intention in the work and according to the spirit that is behind the intention. But all other sacrifices are partial, egoistic mixed, temporal, incomplete, - even those offered to the highest Powers and Principles keep this character: the result too is partial, limited, termporal, mixed in its reactions, effective only for a minor or intermediate purpose. The one entirely acceptable sacrifice is a last and highest and uttermost self-giving, - it is that surrender made face to face, with devotion and knowledge, freely and without any reserve to One who is at once our immanent Self, the environing constituent All, the Supreme Reality beyond this or any manifestation and, secretly, all these together, concealed everywhere, the immanent Transcendence. For to the soul that wholly gives itself to him, God also gives himself altogether. Only the one who offers his whole nature, finds the Self. Only the one who can give everything, enjoys the Divine All everywhere. Only a supreme self-abandonment attains to the Supreme. Only the sublimation by sacrifice of all that we are, can enable us to embody the Highest and live here in the immanent consciousness of the transcendent Spirit."
the demand on us:
"This, in short, is the demand made on us, that we should turn our whole life into a conscious sacrifice. Every moment and every movement of our being is to be resolved into a continuous and devoted self-giving to the Eternal."
the three results of effective practice: devotion, the central liberating knowledge and purification of ego;
"...it leads straight and inevitably towards the highest devotion possible;.. There is bound up a growing sense of the Divine in all things, a deepening communion with the Divine in all our through, will and action and at every moment of our lives, a more and more moved conscecration to the Divine of the totality of our being....
...next, the practice of this Yoga demands a constant inward rememberance of the one central liberating knowledge, ... In all is the one Self, the one Divine is all; all are in the Divine, all are the Divine and there is nothing else in the universe, - this thought or this faith is the whole background until it becomes the whole substance of the consciousness of the worker. ...
Lastly, the practice of this Yoga of sacrifice compels us to renounce all the inner supports of egoism, casting them out of our mind and will and actions, and to eliminate its seed, its presence, its influence out of our nature. All must be done for the Divine; all must be directed towards the Divine."
the lord of the sacrifice and the measure of our works:
"The Divine, the Eternal is the Lord of our sacrifice of works and union with him in all our being and consciousness and in its expressive instruments is the one object of the sacrifice; the steps of the sacrifice of works must therefore be measured, first, by the growth in our nature of something that brings us nearer to the Divine Nature, but secondly also by an experience of the Divine, his presence, his manifestation to us, an increasing closeness and union with that Presence."
the fundamental experience:
"There must awake in us a constant indwelling and enveloping nearness, a vivid perception, a close feeling and communion, a concrete sense and contact of a true and infinite Presence always and everywhere. That Presence must remain with us as the living, pervading Reality in which we and all things exist and move and act, and we must feel it always and everywhere, concrete, visible, inhabiting all things; it must be patent to us as closely as their inmost Spirit. To see, to feel, to sense, to contact in every way and not merely to conceive this Self and Spirit here in all existences and to feel with the same vividness all existences in this Self and Spirit, is the fundamental experience which must englobe all other knowledge."
the Purusha and Prakriti:
"... On one side he becomes aware of a witness recipient observing experiencing Consciousness which does not appear to act but for which all these activities inside and outside us seem to be undertaken and continue. On the other side he is aware at the same time of an executive Force or an energy of Process which is seen to constitute, drive and guide all conceivable activities and to create a myraid form visible to us and invisible and use them as stable supports for its incessant flux of action and creation."
the Divine Personalities:
"But behind all these and in them he has felt a Divinity who is all these things, a Bringer of Light, a Guide and All-Knower, a Master of Force, A Giver of Bliss, Friend, Helper, Father, Mother, Playmate in the world-game, an absolute Master of his being, his soul's Beloved and Lover. All relations known to human personality are there in the soul's contact with the Divine; but they rise towards superhuman levels and compel him towards a divine nature."
the threefold character of the union:
"The first is the liberation from the Ignorance and identification with the Real and Eternal, moksa, sayujya, which is the characteristic aim of the Yoga of Knowledge. The second, the dwelling of the soul with or in the Divine, samipya, salokya, is the intense hope of all Yoga of love and beatitude, The third, identity in nature, likeness to the Divine, to be perfect as That is perfect, is the highest intention of all Yoga of power and perfection or of divine works and service. The combined completeness of the three together, founded here on a multiple Unity of the self-manifesting Divine, is the complete result of the integral Yoga, the goal of its triple Path and the fruit of its triple sacrifice."
1.5 True sacrafice is not denial but self-giving with a mutual return from the Divine; it is an interchange between the soul and the eternal Spirit.
6.0 The goal of the sacrifice -- the union of our being with That omnipresent Reality -- has three characteristics.
6.1 One is union by identity; this brings liberation, the goal of jnana, yoga of knowledge.
6.2 Two is dwelling of the soul with the divine; goal of bhakti, yoga of devotion.
6.3 Three is identity in nature, a union of our instrumental being; goal of yoga of works.
Sacrifice is the law of the universe, even to those who do not know the law. The triune path, trimarga, is the triple path of works, knowledge and devotion.
This may be the essence of Karma Yoga for each sacrifice is reaffirming that you are not your limited ego and are that, the Self, to which you give, the Lord of the Sacrifice. In the end all must be done as consecrated acts of sacrifice, from eating to giving all that one is. The Lord of the Sacrifice is both the Being to which is doing the sacrifice and to who receives it.
sacrifice, the redeeming principle:
"The law of sacrifice is the common divine action that was thrown out into the world in its beginning as a symbol of the solidarity of the universe. It is by the attraction of this law that a divinising principle, a saving power descends to limit and correct and gradually to eliminate the errors of an egoistic and self-divided creation. This descent, this sacrifice of the Purusha, the Divine Soul, submitting itself to Force and Matter so that it may inform and illuminate them, is the seed of redemption of this world of Inconscience and Ignorance."- 106
the ruthless sacrifice:
"The vulgar conception of sacrifice is an act of painful self-immolation, austere self-mortification, difficult self-effacement; this kind of sacrifice may go even as far as self-mutilation and self-torture. These things may be temporarily necessary in man's hard endeavor to exceed his natural self; if the egoism in his nature is violent and obstinate, it has to be met sometimes by an answering strong internal repression and counterbalancing violence. But the Gita discourages any excess of violence done to oneself; for the self within is really the Godhead evolving, it is Krishna, the Divine; it has not to be troubled and tortured as the Titans of the world trouble and torture it, but to be increased, fostered, cherished, luminously opened to a divine light and strength and joy and wideness. It is not one's self, but the band of the spirit's inner enemies that we have to discourage, expel, slay upon the alter of the growth of the spirit; these can be ruthlessly excised, whose names are desire, wrath, inequality, greed, attachment to outward pleasures and pains, the cohort of usurping demons that are the cause of the soul's errors and sufferings. These should be regarded not as part of oneself but as intruders and perverters of our self's real and diviner nature; these have to be sacrificed in the harsher sense of the word, whatever pain in going they may thrown by reflection on the consciousness of the seeker."
compensation for sacrificed discipline of the lesser for greater::
"...a passage from a lesser satisfaction to a greater Ananda. There is only one thing painful in the beginning to a raw or turbid part of the surface nature; it is the indispensable discipline demanded, the denial necessary for the merging of the incomplete ego. But for that there can be a speedy and enormous compensation in the discovery of a real greater or ultimate completeness in others, in all things, in the cosmic oneness, in the freedom of the transcendent Self and Spirit, in the rapture of the touch of the Divine."
fruits of the sacrifice:
"The soul knows that it does not give itself to God in vain; claiming nothing, it yet receives the infinite riches of the divine Power and Presence." -109
the recipient of the sacrifice:
"Whoever the recipient, whatever the gift, it is the Supreme, the Eternal in things, who receives and accepts it, even if it be rejected or ignored by the immediate recipient."
the one entirely acceptable sacrifice:
"And the fruit of also of the sacrifice of works varies according to the work, according to the intention in the work and according to the spirit that is behind the intention. But all other sacrifices are partial, egoistic mixed, temporal, incomplete, - even those offered to the highest Powers and Principles keep this character: the result too is partial, limited, termporal, mixed in its reactions, effective only for a minor or intermediate purpose. The one entirely acceptable sacrifice is a last and highest and uttermost self-giving, - it is that surrender made face to face, with devotion and knowledge, freely and without any reserve to One who is at once our immanent Self, the environing constituent All, the Supreme Reality beyond this or any manifestation and, secretly, all these together, concealed everywhere, the immanent Transcendence. For to the soul that wholly gives itself to him, God also gives himself altogether. Only the one who offers his whole nature, finds the Self. Only the one who can give everything, enjoys the Divine All everywhere. Only a supreme self-abandonment attains to the Supreme. Only the sublimation by sacrifice of all that we are, can enable us to embody the Highest and live here in the immanent consciousness of the transcendent Spirit."
the demand on us:
"This, in short, is the demand made on us, that we should turn our whole life into a conscious sacrifice. Every moment and every movement of our being is to be resolved into a continuous and devoted self-giving to the Eternal."
the three results of effective practice: devotion, the central liberating knowledge and purification of ego;
"...it leads straight and inevitably towards the highest devotion possible;.. There is bound up a growing sense of the Divine in all things, a deepening communion with the Divine in all our through, will and action and at every moment of our lives, a more and more moved conscecration to the Divine of the totality of our being....
...next, the practice of this Yoga demands a constant inward rememberance of the one central liberating knowledge, ... In all is the one Self, the one Divine is all; all are in the Divine, all are the Divine and there is nothing else in the universe, - this thought or this faith is the whole background until it becomes the whole substance of the consciousness of the worker. ...
Lastly, the practice of this Yoga of sacrifice compels us to renounce all the inner supports of egoism, casting them out of our mind and will and actions, and to eliminate its seed, its presence, its influence out of our nature. All must be done for the Divine; all must be directed towards the Divine."
the lord of the sacrifice and the measure of our works:
"The Divine, the Eternal is the Lord of our sacrifice of works and union with him in all our being and consciousness and in its expressive instruments is the one object of the sacrifice; the steps of the sacrifice of works must therefore be measured, first, by the growth in our nature of something that brings us nearer to the Divine Nature, but secondly also by an experience of the Divine, his presence, his manifestation to us, an increasing closeness and union with that Presence."
the fundamental experience:
"There must awake in us a constant indwelling and enveloping nearness, a vivid perception, a close feeling and communion, a concrete sense and contact of a true and infinite Presence always and everywhere. That Presence must remain with us as the living, pervading Reality in which we and all things exist and move and act, and we must feel it always and everywhere, concrete, visible, inhabiting all things; it must be patent to us as closely as their inmost Spirit. To see, to feel, to sense, to contact in every way and not merely to conceive this Self and Spirit here in all existences and to feel with the same vividness all existences in this Self and Spirit, is the fundamental experience which must englobe all other knowledge."
the Purusha and Prakriti:
"... On one side he becomes aware of a witness recipient observing experiencing Consciousness which does not appear to act but for which all these activities inside and outside us seem to be undertaken and continue. On the other side he is aware at the same time of an executive Force or an energy of Process which is seen to constitute, drive and guide all conceivable activities and to create a myraid form visible to us and invisible and use them as stable supports for its incessant flux of action and creation."
the Divine Personalities:
"But behind all these and in them he has felt a Divinity who is all these things, a Bringer of Light, a Guide and All-Knower, a Master of Force, A Giver of Bliss, Friend, Helper, Father, Mother, Playmate in the world-game, an absolute Master of his being, his soul's Beloved and Lover. All relations known to human personality are there in the soul's contact with the Divine; but they rise towards superhuman levels and compel him towards a divine nature."
the threefold character of the union:
"The first is the liberation from the Ignorance and identification with the Real and Eternal, moksa, sayujya, which is the characteristic aim of the Yoga of Knowledge. The second, the dwelling of the soul with or in the Divine, samipya, salokya, is the intense hope of all Yoga of love and beatitude, The third, identity in nature, likeness to the Divine, to be perfect as That is perfect, is the highest intention of all Yoga of power and perfection or of divine works and service. The combined completeness of the three together, founded here on a multiple Unity of the self-manifesting Divine, is the complete result of the integral Yoga, the goal of its triple Path and the fruit of its triple sacrifice."
1.5 True sacrafice is not denial but self-giving with a mutual return from the Divine; it is an interchange between the soul and the eternal Spirit.
6.0 The goal of the sacrifice -- the union of our being with That omnipresent Reality -- has three characteristics.
6.1 One is union by identity; this brings liberation, the goal of jnana, yoga of knowledge.
6.2 Two is dwelling of the soul with the divine; goal of bhakti, yoga of devotion.
6.3 Three is identity in nature, a union of our instrumental being; goal of yoga of works.
V. The Ascent of the Sacrifice - 1,
The Works of Knowledge - The Psychic Being
the inability to know
"In sum, it may be safely affirmed that no solution offered can be anything but provisional until a supramental Truth-consciousness is reached by which the appearances of things are put in their place and their essence revealed and that in them which derives straight from the spiritual essence. In the meanwhile our only safety is to find a guiding law of spiritual experience - or else to liberate a light within that can lead us on the way until that greater direct Truth-consciousness is reached above us or born within us."
The Works of Knowledge - The Psychic Being
the inability to know
"In sum, it may be safely affirmed that no solution offered can be anything but provisional until a supramental Truth-consciousness is reached by which the appearances of things are put in their place and their essence revealed and that in them which derives straight from the spiritual essence. In the meanwhile our only safety is to find a guiding law of spiritual experience - or else to liberate a light within that can lead us on the way until that greater direct Truth-consciousness is reached above us or born within us."
VI. The Ascent of the Sacrifice - 2,
The Works of Love - The Works of Love - The Works of Life
the spiritual force behind adoration
"All love, indeed, that is adoration has a spiritual force behind it, and even when it is offered ignorantly and to a limited object, something of that splendor appears through the poverty of the rite and the smallness of its issues. For love tat is worship is at once an aspiration and a preparation: it can bring even within its small limits in the Ignorance a glimpse of a still more or less blind and partial but surprising realisation; for there are moments when it is not we but the One who loves and is loved in us, and even a human passion can be uplifted and glorified by a slight glimpse of this infinite Love and Lover. It is for this reason that the worship of the god, the worship of the idol, the human magnet or ideal are not to be despised; for these are steps through which the human race moves towards that blissful passion and ecstasy of the Infinite which, even in limiting it, they yet represent for our imperfect vision when we have still to use the inferior steps Nature has hewn for our feet and admit the stages of our progress. Certain idolatries are indispensable for the development of our emotional being, nor will the man who knows be hasty at any time to shatter this image unless he can replace it in the heart of the worshipper by the Reality it figures. Moreover, they have this power because there is always something in them that is greater than their forms and, even when we reach the supreme worship, that abides and becomes a prolongation of it or a part of its catholic wholeness. Our knowledge is still imperfect in us, love incomplete if even when we know That which surpasses all forms and manifestations, we cannot still accept the Divine in creature and object, in man, in the kind, in the animal, in the tree, in the flower, in the work of our hands, in the Nature-Force which is then no longer to us the blind action of a material machinery but a face and power of the universal Shakti: for in these things too is the presence of the Eternal."
2.1 Three aspects to a complete act of divine love: the act, a symbol (the form of the act), and the inner seeking for oneness.
2.4 Adoration in the act is itself powerful, and brings joy into the way of works.
The Works of Love - The Works of Love - The Works of Life
the spiritual force behind adoration
"All love, indeed, that is adoration has a spiritual force behind it, and even when it is offered ignorantly and to a limited object, something of that splendor appears through the poverty of the rite and the smallness of its issues. For love tat is worship is at once an aspiration and a preparation: it can bring even within its small limits in the Ignorance a glimpse of a still more or less blind and partial but surprising realisation; for there are moments when it is not we but the One who loves and is loved in us, and even a human passion can be uplifted and glorified by a slight glimpse of this infinite Love and Lover. It is for this reason that the worship of the god, the worship of the idol, the human magnet or ideal are not to be despised; for these are steps through which the human race moves towards that blissful passion and ecstasy of the Infinite which, even in limiting it, they yet represent for our imperfect vision when we have still to use the inferior steps Nature has hewn for our feet and admit the stages of our progress. Certain idolatries are indispensable for the development of our emotional being, nor will the man who knows be hasty at any time to shatter this image unless he can replace it in the heart of the worshipper by the Reality it figures. Moreover, they have this power because there is always something in them that is greater than their forms and, even when we reach the supreme worship, that abides and becomes a prolongation of it or a part of its catholic wholeness. Our knowledge is still imperfect in us, love incomplete if even when we know That which surpasses all forms and manifestations, we cannot still accept the Divine in creature and object, in man, in the kind, in the animal, in the tree, in the flower, in the work of our hands, in the Nature-Force which is then no longer to us the blind action of a material machinery but a face and power of the universal Shakti: for in these things too is the presence of the Eternal."
2.1 Three aspects to a complete act of divine love: the act, a symbol (the form of the act), and the inner seeking for oneness.
2.4 Adoration in the act is itself powerful, and brings joy into the way of works.
VII. Standards of Conduct and Spiritual Freedom
the four standards of spiritual conduct:
"There are four main standards of spiritual conduct that make an ascending scale. The first is personal need, preference and desire; the second is the law of good of the collectivity; the third is an ideal ethic; the last in the highest divine law of the nature."
upon a supramental collective:
"But if a collectivity or group could be formed of those who had reached the supramental perfection, there indeed some divine creation could take shape; a new earth could descend that would be a new heaven, a world of supamental light could be created here amidst the receding darkness of this terrestrial ignorance."
2.0 Because mental laws are not binding on the supreme Truth, these laws must be forever temporary and progressive; but this makes good and evil relative qualities.
3.0 The four standards of conduct are personal need/desire; the collective good; a mental ideal; and the divine law.
3.1 A standard born of personal need/desire is the result of our physical and vital nature.
3.2 The law of the collective arises because of the interdependence of the individual and the group; it is the genesis of the ethical impulse.
3.21 The law of the group is actually subordinate to that of the individual; the group law is useful for the crude man, but a hindrance to the adult spirit.5.0 Above the vital demand of the person or the group is the mental ideal.
5.1 This is always an individual standard, not a creation of the mass mind.
5.2 The thinker imposes it on all his thought can reach.
5.3 But society turns it into custom, because society is external in method.
5.4 The ideal is absolute, and thus potential rather than practical; no society actually accomplishes it.
5.5 Even in practice, the absolutes of justice, love or reason conflict with each other; in action we compromise.
Personal preference is bound tightly to the ego, the collective good (seen as social standards) is limited to the value structure of the culture, the mental ideal is a more dynamic and changing principle based on expansion of the individual and divine law is beyond constructions and must be felt.
the four standards of spiritual conduct:
"There are four main standards of spiritual conduct that make an ascending scale. The first is personal need, preference and desire; the second is the law of good of the collectivity; the third is an ideal ethic; the last in the highest divine law of the nature."
upon a supramental collective:
"But if a collectivity or group could be formed of those who had reached the supramental perfection, there indeed some divine creation could take shape; a new earth could descend that would be a new heaven, a world of supamental light could be created here amidst the receding darkness of this terrestrial ignorance."
2.0 Because mental laws are not binding on the supreme Truth, these laws must be forever temporary and progressive; but this makes good and evil relative qualities.
3.0 The four standards of conduct are personal need/desire; the collective good; a mental ideal; and the divine law.
3.1 A standard born of personal need/desire is the result of our physical and vital nature.
3.2 The law of the collective arises because of the interdependence of the individual and the group; it is the genesis of the ethical impulse.
3.21 The law of the group is actually subordinate to that of the individual; the group law is useful for the crude man, but a hindrance to the adult spirit.5.0 Above the vital demand of the person or the group is the mental ideal.
5.1 This is always an individual standard, not a creation of the mass mind.
5.2 The thinker imposes it on all his thought can reach.
5.3 But society turns it into custom, because society is external in method.
5.4 The ideal is absolute, and thus potential rather than practical; no society actually accomplishes it.
5.5 Even in practice, the absolutes of justice, love or reason conflict with each other; in action we compromise.
Personal preference is bound tightly to the ego, the collective good (seen as social standards) is limited to the value structure of the culture, the mental ideal is a more dynamic and changing principle based on expansion of the individual and divine law is beyond constructions and must be felt.
VIII. The Supreme Will
2.1 The individual "ego" is really Nature, Prakriti, acting.
3.0 The first thing is to get rid of the sense of an "I" who acts.
4.1 Three stages of its emergence: dominance of personal will; emergence of the Divine; supramental guidance.
4.3 Necessary at every step: faith; true aspiration; sincere practice.
the three stages of the ascent:
"There are three stages of the ascent, —at the bottom the bodily life enslaved to the pressure of necessity and desire, in the middle the mental, the higher emotional and psychic rule that feels after greater interests, aspirations, experiences, ideas, and at the summits first a deeper psychic and spiritual state and then a supramental eternal consciousness in which all our aspirations and seekings discover their own intimate significance. In the bodily life first desire and need and then the practical good of the individual and the society are the governing consideration, the dominant force. In the mental life ideas and ideals rule, ideas that are half-lights wearing the garb of Truth, ideals formed by the mind as a result of a growing but still imperfect intuition and experience. Whenever the mental life prevails and the bodily diminishes its brute insistence, man the mental being feels pushed by the urge of mental Nature to mould in the sense of the idea or the ideal the life of the individual, and in the end even the vaguer more complex life of the society is forced to undergo this subtle process. In the spiritual life, or when a higher power than Mind has manifested and taken possession of the nature, these limited motive-forces recede, dwindle, tend to disappear. The spiritual or supramental Self, the Divine Being, the supreme and immanent Reality, must be alone the Lord within us and shape freely our final development according to the highest, widest, most integral expression possible of the law of our nature. In the end that nature acts in the perfect Truth and its spontaneous freedom; for it obeys only the luminous power of the Eternal. The individual has nothing further to gain, no desire to fulfil; he has become a portion of the impersonality or the universal personality of the Eternal. No other object than the manifestation and play of the Divine Spirit in life and the maintenance and conduct of the world in its march towards the divine goal can move him to action. Mental ideas, opinions, constructions are his no more; for his mind has fallen into silence, it is only a channel for the Light and Truth of the divine knowledge. Ideals are too narrow for the vastness of his spirit; it is the ocean of the Infinite that flows through him and moves him for ever."
2.1 The individual "ego" is really Nature, Prakriti, acting.
3.0 The first thing is to get rid of the sense of an "I" who acts.
4.1 Three stages of its emergence: dominance of personal will; emergence of the Divine; supramental guidance.
4.3 Necessary at every step: faith; true aspiration; sincere practice.
the three stages of the ascent:
"There are three stages of the ascent, —at the bottom the bodily life enslaved to the pressure of necessity and desire, in the middle the mental, the higher emotional and psychic rule that feels after greater interests, aspirations, experiences, ideas, and at the summits first a deeper psychic and spiritual state and then a supramental eternal consciousness in which all our aspirations and seekings discover their own intimate significance. In the bodily life first desire and need and then the practical good of the individual and the society are the governing consideration, the dominant force. In the mental life ideas and ideals rule, ideas that are half-lights wearing the garb of Truth, ideals formed by the mind as a result of a growing but still imperfect intuition and experience. Whenever the mental life prevails and the bodily diminishes its brute insistence, man the mental being feels pushed by the urge of mental Nature to mould in the sense of the idea or the ideal the life of the individual, and in the end even the vaguer more complex life of the society is forced to undergo this subtle process. In the spiritual life, or when a higher power than Mind has manifested and taken possession of the nature, these limited motive-forces recede, dwindle, tend to disappear. The spiritual or supramental Self, the Divine Being, the supreme and immanent Reality, must be alone the Lord within us and shape freely our final development according to the highest, widest, most integral expression possible of the law of our nature. In the end that nature acts in the perfect Truth and its spontaneous freedom; for it obeys only the luminous power of the Eternal. The individual has nothing further to gain, no desire to fulfil; he has become a portion of the impersonality or the universal personality of the Eternal. No other object than the manifestation and play of the Divine Spirit in life and the maintenance and conduct of the world in its march towards the divine goal can move him to action. Mental ideas, opinions, constructions are his no more; for his mind has fallen into silence, it is only a channel for the Light and Truth of the divine knowledge. Ideals are too narrow for the vastness of his spirit; it is the ocean of the Infinite that flows through him and moves him for ever."
IX. Equality and the Annihilation of Ego
the first necessity:
"An entire self-consecration, a complete equality, an unsparing effacement of the ego, a transforming deliverance of the nature from its ignorant modes of action are the steps by which the surrender of all the being and nature to the Divine Will can be prepared and achieved, -- a self-giving true, total and without reserve. The first necessity is an entire spirit of self-consecration in our works; it must become first the constant will, then the ingrained need in all the being, finally its automatic but living and conscious habit, the self-existent turn to do all action as a sacrifice to the Supreme and to the veiled Power present in us and in all beings and in all the workings of the universe. Life is the altar of this sacrifice, works are our offerings; a transcendent and universal Power and Presence as yet rather felt or glimpsed than known or seen by us is the Deity to whom they are offered. This sacrifice, this self-consecration has two sides to it; there is the work itself and there is the spirit in which it is done, the spirit of worship to the Master of Works in all that we see, think and experience."
the best we can conceive as the thing to be done:
"The work itself is at first determined by the best light we can command in our ignorance. It is that which we conceive as the thing that should be done. And whether it be shaped by our sense of duty, by our feeling for our fellow-creatures, by our idea of what is for the good of others or the good of the world or by the direction of one whom we accept as a human Master, wiser than ourselves and for us the representative of that Lord of all works in whom we believe but whom we do not yet know, the principle is the same. The essential of the sacrifice of works must be there and the essential is the surrender of all desire for the fruit of our works, the renunciation of all attachment to the result for which yet we labour. For so long as we work with attachment to the result, the sacrifice is offered not to the Divine, but to our ego..."
the first period of endurance:
"Ordinarily we have to begin with a period of endurance; for we must learn to confront, to suffer and to assimilate all contacts. Each fiber must be taught not to wince away from that which pains and repels and not to run eagerly towards that which pleases and attracts, but rather to accept, to face, to bear and to conquer. ... This is the stoical period of the preparation of equality, its most elementary and yet its heroic age."
the philosophic second period of indifference:
"There is next a period of high-seated impartiality and indifference in which the soul becomes free from exultation and depression and escapes from the snare of eagerness of joy as from the dark net of the pangs of grief and suffering. All things and persons and forces, all thoughts and feelings and sensations and actions, one's own no less than those of others, are regarded from above by a spirit that remains intact and immutable and is not disturbed by these things."
the supreme third period of greater divine equality:
"If we can pass through these two stages of the inner change without being arrested or fixed in either, we are admitted to a greater divine equality which is capable of a spiritual ardour and tranquil passion of delight, a rapturous, all-understanding and all-possessing equality of the perfected soul, an intense and even wideness and fullness of its being embracing all things. This is the supreme period and the passage to it is through the joy of a total self-giving to the Divine and to the universal Mother. For strength is then crowned by a happy mastery, peace deepens into bliss, the possession of the divine calm is uplifted and made the ground for the possession of the divine movement. But if this greater perfection is to arrive, the soul's impartial high-seatedness looking down from above on the flux of forms and personalities and movements and forces must be modified and change into a new sense of strong and calm submission and a powerful and intense surrender. ..."
2.2 We must learn to see the one Divine in all things, not be attracted or repulsed.
2.4 Equality too towards all events, even failure.
3.0 Equality comes only after self-discipline, and in stages.
3.1 First endurance; but with a sense of submission to the Divine will.
3.2 Then indifference, a calm superiority to things.
3.3 Then the divine equality embracing all things, capable of spiritual ardour, intensity and wideness.
Perhaps this is why my daily practice is so important for it is doing the divine will, overcoming desire to eventually sublimate it. For it is easy to claim Equality in situations where one has no choice, but that is not the type of active Equality required for Divine Realization.
Another important element is doing things for others, even doing the Dishes for karen. there is something Golden there waiting.
Equality's role in renunciation aswell, for as I mentioned, it is easy enough to be equanimous towards things out of my control, but it is certainly another matter to have such calm in relation to desires of things to do or not do when choice is involved.
4.0 For equality to reach perfection, the abolition of ego is necessary.
4.1 Also occurs in stages.
5.2 Then all of Nature-Force in us can be transformed into divine equivalents (tamas into calm, rajas into tapas, sattva into illumination).
I imagine an interesting measure may be how often one thinks of oneself. I want... etc
X. The Three Modes of Nature
2.0 The three modes (gunas): sattva (force for equilibrium, light, harmony); rajas (force for kinesis, struggle, passion); tamas (force of inertia and inconscience).
3.1 Sattva must predominate over tamas and rajas if one is to become an instrument of the Divine.
4.0 The solution is for all three to be transcended by the Witness consciousness.
4.1 This frees one from a sattvic egoism as well as a tamasic or rajasic kind.
4.2 The first step is for the soul to stand detached, above Nature.
5.0 Then begins a dynamic transformation of the Nature.
5.1 Each part opens to a greater light, power, illumination -- another kind of action becomes possible, with a higher force acting.
6.0 Next comes the working of a triple mode of Divine Nature.
6.1 Tamas is replaced by a divine calm; rajas by a self-possessed power; sattva by a spiritual bliss and illumination.
6.2 This is the state of dynamic freedom or transcendence; the gunas not just transcended but transformed into their divine equivalents.
XI. The Master of the Work
2.0 The Master reveals himself gradually, so there are stages in our approach to the realisation.
2.1 Thus, faith and patience are essential, especially for the novice.
3.0 The Master works through our existing nature.
3.1 Failures and mistakes are His methods, as well as success.
3.2 The three steps are consecration of works, renunciation of the fruit of works, and renunciation of the sense of being a worker
4.0 The renunciation of the sense of ego, of being a worker, has stages; at first we have to see ourselves as an instrument.
4.1 However, normal egoism can be replaced by an egoism attached to being an instrument of God.
4.12 This can be engrossing, enormous, dangerous, and more intense than normal egoism.
4.13 The perception of a higher force working may be correct, but the most such persons see is a cosmic Force.
4.2 Every person is an instrument of a higher force; there is no essential difference between one kind of instrument and another.
6.0 Proceeding from the Absolute Transcendent is a divine Truth-Consciousness, a Supermind, a Gnosis.
6.1 The Gnosis is active here but veiled by the Yoga-Maya.
6.2 The Divine appears from below as a dual being, a Witness Spirit and a Cosmic Energy.
6.3 The third aspect is a personal Immanent divine which brings the ecstasy of divine Love.
6.31 This relationship may be intense, but must also open out to the Universal and upward to the Transcendent.
7.0 Each of these three -- the Immanent, the Transcendent, the Universal -- can stand out as separate realisations.
7.1 But in an Integral yoga they must be unified, and for that one must rise out of mind into a supramental gnosis.
8.0 The Master of the work appears through symbol signs and forces while the seeker is still on the level of mind.
8.1 These can be godheads, ideals, abstract powers; or a Voice, and Will, a Knowledge, a Beatitude; or intimate personal relations.
8.2 These are real but partial; not symbols but truths; they are the working out of self-expressive realities by a supreme Reality.
8.3 Because the lower is a reflection of the Supramental, not a thing totally divorced from it.
XII. The Divine Work
Appendix to Part I
XIII. The Supermind and the Yoga of Works
the first necessity:
"An entire self-consecration, a complete equality, an unsparing effacement of the ego, a transforming deliverance of the nature from its ignorant modes of action are the steps by which the surrender of all the being and nature to the Divine Will can be prepared and achieved, -- a self-giving true, total and without reserve. The first necessity is an entire spirit of self-consecration in our works; it must become first the constant will, then the ingrained need in all the being, finally its automatic but living and conscious habit, the self-existent turn to do all action as a sacrifice to the Supreme and to the veiled Power present in us and in all beings and in all the workings of the universe. Life is the altar of this sacrifice, works are our offerings; a transcendent and universal Power and Presence as yet rather felt or glimpsed than known or seen by us is the Deity to whom they are offered. This sacrifice, this self-consecration has two sides to it; there is the work itself and there is the spirit in which it is done, the spirit of worship to the Master of Works in all that we see, think and experience."
the best we can conceive as the thing to be done:
"The work itself is at first determined by the best light we can command in our ignorance. It is that which we conceive as the thing that should be done. And whether it be shaped by our sense of duty, by our feeling for our fellow-creatures, by our idea of what is for the good of others or the good of the world or by the direction of one whom we accept as a human Master, wiser than ourselves and for us the representative of that Lord of all works in whom we believe but whom we do not yet know, the principle is the same. The essential of the sacrifice of works must be there and the essential is the surrender of all desire for the fruit of our works, the renunciation of all attachment to the result for which yet we labour. For so long as we work with attachment to the result, the sacrifice is offered not to the Divine, but to our ego..."
the first period of endurance:
"Ordinarily we have to begin with a period of endurance; for we must learn to confront, to suffer and to assimilate all contacts. Each fiber must be taught not to wince away from that which pains and repels and not to run eagerly towards that which pleases and attracts, but rather to accept, to face, to bear and to conquer. ... This is the stoical period of the preparation of equality, its most elementary and yet its heroic age."
the philosophic second period of indifference:
"There is next a period of high-seated impartiality and indifference in which the soul becomes free from exultation and depression and escapes from the snare of eagerness of joy as from the dark net of the pangs of grief and suffering. All things and persons and forces, all thoughts and feelings and sensations and actions, one's own no less than those of others, are regarded from above by a spirit that remains intact and immutable and is not disturbed by these things."
the supreme third period of greater divine equality:
"If we can pass through these two stages of the inner change without being arrested or fixed in either, we are admitted to a greater divine equality which is capable of a spiritual ardour and tranquil passion of delight, a rapturous, all-understanding and all-possessing equality of the perfected soul, an intense and even wideness and fullness of its being embracing all things. This is the supreme period and the passage to it is through the joy of a total self-giving to the Divine and to the universal Mother. For strength is then crowned by a happy mastery, peace deepens into bliss, the possession of the divine calm is uplifted and made the ground for the possession of the divine movement. But if this greater perfection is to arrive, the soul's impartial high-seatedness looking down from above on the flux of forms and personalities and movements and forces must be modified and change into a new sense of strong and calm submission and a powerful and intense surrender. ..."
2.2 We must learn to see the one Divine in all things, not be attracted or repulsed.
2.4 Equality too towards all events, even failure.
3.0 Equality comes only after self-discipline, and in stages.
3.1 First endurance; but with a sense of submission to the Divine will.
3.2 Then indifference, a calm superiority to things.
3.3 Then the divine equality embracing all things, capable of spiritual ardour, intensity and wideness.
Perhaps this is why my daily practice is so important for it is doing the divine will, overcoming desire to eventually sublimate it. For it is easy to claim Equality in situations where one has no choice, but that is not the type of active Equality required for Divine Realization.
Another important element is doing things for others, even doing the Dishes for karen. there is something Golden there waiting.
Equality's role in renunciation aswell, for as I mentioned, it is easy enough to be equanimous towards things out of my control, but it is certainly another matter to have such calm in relation to desires of things to do or not do when choice is involved.
4.0 For equality to reach perfection, the abolition of ego is necessary.
4.1 Also occurs in stages.
5.2 Then all of Nature-Force in us can be transformed into divine equivalents (tamas into calm, rajas into tapas, sattva into illumination).
I imagine an interesting measure may be how often one thinks of oneself. I want... etc
X. The Three Modes of Nature
2.0 The three modes (gunas): sattva (force for equilibrium, light, harmony); rajas (force for kinesis, struggle, passion); tamas (force of inertia and inconscience).
3.1 Sattva must predominate over tamas and rajas if one is to become an instrument of the Divine.
4.0 The solution is for all three to be transcended by the Witness consciousness.
4.1 This frees one from a sattvic egoism as well as a tamasic or rajasic kind.
4.2 The first step is for the soul to stand detached, above Nature.
5.0 Then begins a dynamic transformation of the Nature.
5.1 Each part opens to a greater light, power, illumination -- another kind of action becomes possible, with a higher force acting.
6.0 Next comes the working of a triple mode of Divine Nature.
6.1 Tamas is replaced by a divine calm; rajas by a self-possessed power; sattva by a spiritual bliss and illumination.
6.2 This is the state of dynamic freedom or transcendence; the gunas not just transcended but transformed into their divine equivalents.
XI. The Master of the Work
2.0 The Master reveals himself gradually, so there are stages in our approach to the realisation.
2.1 Thus, faith and patience are essential, especially for the novice.
3.0 The Master works through our existing nature.
3.1 Failures and mistakes are His methods, as well as success.
3.2 The three steps are consecration of works, renunciation of the fruit of works, and renunciation of the sense of being a worker
4.0 The renunciation of the sense of ego, of being a worker, has stages; at first we have to see ourselves as an instrument.
4.1 However, normal egoism can be replaced by an egoism attached to being an instrument of God.
4.12 This can be engrossing, enormous, dangerous, and more intense than normal egoism.
4.13 The perception of a higher force working may be correct, but the most such persons see is a cosmic Force.
4.2 Every person is an instrument of a higher force; there is no essential difference between one kind of instrument and another.
6.0 Proceeding from the Absolute Transcendent is a divine Truth-Consciousness, a Supermind, a Gnosis.
6.1 The Gnosis is active here but veiled by the Yoga-Maya.
6.2 The Divine appears from below as a dual being, a Witness Spirit and a Cosmic Energy.
6.3 The third aspect is a personal Immanent divine which brings the ecstasy of divine Love.
6.31 This relationship may be intense, but must also open out to the Universal and upward to the Transcendent.
7.0 Each of these three -- the Immanent, the Transcendent, the Universal -- can stand out as separate realisations.
7.1 But in an Integral yoga they must be unified, and for that one must rise out of mind into a supramental gnosis.
8.0 The Master of the work appears through symbol signs and forces while the seeker is still on the level of mind.
8.1 These can be godheads, ideals, abstract powers; or a Voice, and Will, a Knowledge, a Beatitude; or intimate personal relations.
8.2 These are real but partial; not symbols but truths; they are the working out of self-expressive realities by a supreme Reality.
8.3 Because the lower is a reflection of the Supramental, not a thing totally divorced from it.
XII. The Divine Work
Appendix to Part I
XIII. The Supermind and the Yoga of Works
PART II - THE YOGA OF INTEGRAL KNOWLEDGE
I. The Object of Knowledge
"Behind the traditional way of Knowledge, justifying its thought-process of elimination and withdrawal, stands an over-mastering spiritual experience. Deep, intense, convincing, common to all who have overstepped a certain limit of the active mind-belt into the horizonless inner space, this is the great experience of liberation, the consciousness of something within us that is behind and outside of the universe and all its forms, interests, aims, events and happenings, calm, untouched, unconcerned, illimitable, immobile, free, the uplook to something above us indescribable and unseizable into which by abolition of our personality we can enter, the presence of an omnipresent eternal witness Purusha, the sense of an Infinity or a Timelessness that looks down on us from an august negation of all our existence and is alone the one thing Real. This experience is the highest sublimation of spiritualised mind looking resolutely beyond its own existence. No one who has not passed through this liberation can be entirely free from the mind and its meshes, but one is not compelled to linger in this experience for ever. Great as it is, it is only the Mind's overwhelming experience of what is beyond itself and all it can conceive. It is a supreme negative experience, but beyond it is all the tremendous light of an infinite consciousness, an illimitable Knowledge, an affirmative absolute Presence."pg. 278-279
The Object of Knowledgeis the descending of Spirit into all of ones Being so that God is Known through direct experience in such a manner that His Work will be done by the Subject.By God, it is meant that which is All and Nothing, Everything that has been, is, ever will be and will never be. This also includes all that is not included by this definition. And by Known, Aurobindo refers not to Intellectual knowledge, but by Knowledge through direct experience and realization as of an obvious apparent truth.
4.0 Traditional Jnana yoga rejects successively the body, life and mind to reach the Absolute.
4.1 A way of integral knowledge eliminates the falsity associated with each of these, not the aspect itself.
"Behind the traditional way of Knowledge, justifying its thought-process of elimination and withdrawal, stands an over-mastering spiritual experience. Deep, intense, convincing, common to all who have overstepped a certain limit of the active mind-belt into the horizonless inner space, this is the great experience of liberation, the consciousness of something within us that is behind and outside of the universe and all its forms, interests, aims, events and happenings, calm, untouched, unconcerned, illimitable, immobile, free, the uplook to something above us indescribable and unseizable into which by abolition of our personality we can enter, the presence of an omnipresent eternal witness Purusha, the sense of an Infinity or a Timelessness that looks down on us from an august negation of all our existence and is alone the one thing Real. This experience is the highest sublimation of spiritualised mind looking resolutely beyond its own existence. No one who has not passed through this liberation can be entirely free from the mind and its meshes, but one is not compelled to linger in this experience for ever. Great as it is, it is only the Mind's overwhelming experience of what is beyond itself and all it can conceive. It is a supreme negative experience, but beyond it is all the tremendous light of an infinite consciousness, an illimitable Knowledge, an affirmative absolute Presence."pg. 278-279
The Object of Knowledgeis the descending of Spirit into all of ones Being so that God is Known through direct experience in such a manner that His Work will be done by the Subject.By God, it is meant that which is All and Nothing, Everything that has been, is, ever will be and will never be. This also includes all that is not included by this definition. And by Known, Aurobindo refers not to Intellectual knowledge, but by Knowledge through direct experience and realization as of an obvious apparent truth.
4.0 Traditional Jnana yoga rejects successively the body, life and mind to reach the Absolute.
4.1 A way of integral knowledge eliminates the falsity associated with each of these, not the aspect itself.
II. The Status of Knowledge
"Still, right thought only becomes
effective when in the purified understanding it is followed
by other operations, by vision, by experience, by realisation." Pg. 303
3.1 Self-analysis is necessary and directs us toward the knowledge, but it only shows the modes of the self, not the Self.
4.0 Vision (drsti) is a power of the soul by which things become directly evident to the soul.
4.1 To the soul, not the intellect.
4.2 This vision may be clouded, but once gained it is never lost irretrievably.
"Still, right thought only becomes
effective when in the purified understanding it is followed
by other operations, by vision, by experience, by realisation." Pg. 303
3.1 Self-analysis is necessary and directs us toward the knowledge, but it only shows the modes of the self, not the Self.
4.0 Vision (drsti) is a power of the soul by which things become directly evident to the soul.
4.1 To the soul, not the intellect.
4.2 This vision may be clouded, but once gained it is never lost irretrievably.
III. The Purified Understanding
"But for the knowledge of the Self it is necessary to have the power, of a complete intellectual passivity, the power of dismissing all thought, the power of the mind to think not at all which the Gitain one passage enjoins. This is a hard saying for the occidental mind to which thought is the highest thing and which will be apt to mistake the power of the mind not to think, its complete silence for the incapacity of thought. But this power of silence is a capacity and not an incapacity, a power and not a weakness. It is a profound and pregnant stillness. Only when the mind is thus entirely still, like clear, motionless and level water, in a perfect purity and peace of the whole being and the soul transcends thought, can the Self which exceeds and originates all activities and becomings, the Silence from which all words are born, the Absolute of which all relativities are partial reflections manifest itself in the pure essence of our being. In a complete silence only is the Silence heard; in a pure peace only is its Being revealed. Therefore to us the name of That is the Silence and the Peace." Pg. 302
1.0 The knowledge aimed for requires a preliminary preparation of the soul and its instruments.
1.1 As this preliminary purification occurs, illuminations and realisations increase.
4.0 The first cause of impurity in the understanding is the immixture of desire.
4.1 For the understanding to be above the vital and emotions, they must be tranquilised and mastered.
4.2 This is achieved by equality; hence equality is the starting point of the path of knowledge, as it is for works.
5.0 The second cause of impurity is the reliance on the subjection to the senses.
5.1 Thought must be taught to stand back from the sense-mind and its habitual concepts, associations,
6.0 The third cause of impurity is an unequal action of the will to know, which produces attachment to certain ideas.
6.1 The remedy is a perfect equality of mind, a mental disinterestedness that is not attached or repelled by any particular idea.
7.0 Yet since true knowledge is supra-intellectual, the understanding thus purified must cultivate two kinds of passivity.
7.1 One is openness to the intuitive.
7.11 This includes allowing the intuitive to work free from the intellect, just as the intellect must be free from the emotions.
7.12 The understanding must be trained to look upward and refer all to the divine.
7.2 Second is a total stillness, of dismissing all thought.
"But for the knowledge of the Self it is necessary to have the power, of a complete intellectual passivity, the power of dismissing all thought, the power of the mind to think not at all which the Gitain one passage enjoins. This is a hard saying for the occidental mind to which thought is the highest thing and which will be apt to mistake the power of the mind not to think, its complete silence for the incapacity of thought. But this power of silence is a capacity and not an incapacity, a power and not a weakness. It is a profound and pregnant stillness. Only when the mind is thus entirely still, like clear, motionless and level water, in a perfect purity and peace of the whole being and the soul transcends thought, can the Self which exceeds and originates all activities and becomings, the Silence from which all words are born, the Absolute of which all relativities are partial reflections manifest itself in the pure essence of our being. In a complete silence only is the Silence heard; in a pure peace only is its Being revealed. Therefore to us the name of That is the Silence and the Peace." Pg. 302
1.0 The knowledge aimed for requires a preliminary preparation of the soul and its instruments.
1.1 As this preliminary purification occurs, illuminations and realisations increase.
4.0 The first cause of impurity in the understanding is the immixture of desire.
4.1 For the understanding to be above the vital and emotions, they must be tranquilised and mastered.
4.2 This is achieved by equality; hence equality is the starting point of the path of knowledge, as it is for works.
5.0 The second cause of impurity is the reliance on the subjection to the senses.
5.1 Thought must be taught to stand back from the sense-mind and its habitual concepts, associations,
6.0 The third cause of impurity is an unequal action of the will to know, which produces attachment to certain ideas.
6.1 The remedy is a perfect equality of mind, a mental disinterestedness that is not attached or repelled by any particular idea.
7.0 Yet since true knowledge is supra-intellectual, the understanding thus purified must cultivate two kinds of passivity.
7.1 One is openness to the intuitive.
7.11 This includes allowing the intuitive to work free from the intellect, just as the intellect must be free from the emotions.
7.12 The understanding must be trained to look upward and refer all to the divine.
7.2 Second is a total stillness, of dismissing all thought.
IV. Concentration
6.3 Another route is to still the mind; this can be done in various ways.
6.31 When the mind becomes silent a great calm descends, and strenuous concentration is no longer necessary.
" By concentration on anything whatsoever we are able to know that thing, to make it deliver up its concealed secrets; we must use this power to know not things, buttheone Thing-in-itself. By concentration again the whole will can be gathered up for the acquisition of that which is still ungrasped, still beyond us; this power, if it is sufficiently trained, sufficiently single-minded, sufficiently sincere, sure of itself, faithful to itself alone, absolute in faith, we can use for the acquisition of any object whatsoever; but we ought to use it not for the acquisition of the many objects which the world offers to us, but to grasp spiritually that one object worthy of pursuit which is also the one subject worthy of knowledge. By concentration of our whole being on one status of itself, we can become whatever we choose; we can become, for instance, even if we were before a mass of weaknesses and fear, a mass instead of strength and courage, or we can become all a great purity, holiness and peace or a single universal soul of Love; but we ought, it is said, to use this power to become not even these things, high as they may be in comparison with what we now are, but rather to become that which is above all things and free from all action and attributes, the pure and absolute Being. All else, all other concentration can only be valuable for preparation, for previous steps, for a gradual training of the dissolute and self-dissipating thought, will and being towards their grand and unique object."
6.3 Another route is to still the mind; this can be done in various ways.
6.31 When the mind becomes silent a great calm descends, and strenuous concentration is no longer necessary.
" By concentration on anything whatsoever we are able to know that thing, to make it deliver up its concealed secrets; we must use this power to know not things, buttheone Thing-in-itself. By concentration again the whole will can be gathered up for the acquisition of that which is still ungrasped, still beyond us; this power, if it is sufficiently trained, sufficiently single-minded, sufficiently sincere, sure of itself, faithful to itself alone, absolute in faith, we can use for the acquisition of any object whatsoever; but we ought to use it not for the acquisition of the many objects which the world offers to us, but to grasp spiritually that one object worthy of pursuit which is also the one subject worthy of knowledge. By concentration of our whole being on one status of itself, we can become whatever we choose; we can become, for instance, even if we were before a mass of weaknesses and fear, a mass instead of strength and courage, or we can become all a great purity, holiness and peace or a single universal soul of Love; but we ought, it is said, to use this power to become not even these things, high as they may be in comparison with what we now are, but rather to become that which is above all things and free from all action and attributes, the pure and absolute Being. All else, all other concentration can only be valuable for preparation, for previous steps, for a gradual training of the dissolute and self-dissipating thought, will and being towards their grand and unique object."
V. Renunciation
5.4 The soul must be free also from attachment to inaction.
three knots binding us to our lower nature:
"Again our renunciation must be obviously be an inward renunciation; especially and above all, a renunciation of attachment and the craving of desire in the sense and the heart, of self-will in the thought and action and of egoism in the centre of the consciousness. For these things are the three knots by which we are bound to our lower nature and if we can renounce these utterly, there is nothing else that can bind us." - The Synthesis of Yoga, Renunciation, pg 329
renunciation as a means:
"Therefore renunciation must be for us merely an instrument and not an object; nor can it be the only or the chief instrument since our object is the fulfilment of the Divine in the human being, a positive aim which cannot be reached by negative means. The negative means can only be for the removal of that which stands in the way of the positive fulfilment. It must be a renunciation, a complete renunciation of all that is other than and opposed to the divine self-fulfilment and a progressive renunciation of all that is a lesser or only a partial achievement. We shall have no attachment to our life in the world; if that attachment exists, we must renounce it and renounce utterly; but neither shall we have any attachment to the escape from the world, to salvation, to the great self-annihilation; if that attachment exists, that also we must renounce and renounce it utterly." - The Synthesis of Yoga, Renunciation, pg 329
notes on this chapter:
- Renunciation is the means to which one overcomes desire, and as I see it in my mind, clears the space for which Concentration becomes truly powerful. From this concept I believe it may be possible with the purest of renunciation that any concentration will suffice, for while travelling in empty space there is no resistance and thought becomes effective. Renunciation is also the final step, for as one approaches God, the self must step entirely out of way so that God may descend. Concentration may bring you to God, but not God to you.
- there is an important, but sometimes confusing difference, between inner and outer renunciation, where giving up something externally is not as important as giving it up internally, because the inner turmoil is still present. so for example, to give up something for a year is pointless, if it troubles the mind the entire time, that though importantly, strengthens the will, whereas to renunciate something internally gives one liberation from it. so in the context of freedom from subjection to the body it is not just about not moving while in meditation to itch while still wanting to but rather to realize that one is not the body, the itch not only is not to be scratched but to lose the desire to do it? to look upon the itch rather as if it were on someone elses body.
5.4 The soul must be free also from attachment to inaction.
three knots binding us to our lower nature:
"Again our renunciation must be obviously be an inward renunciation; especially and above all, a renunciation of attachment and the craving of desire in the sense and the heart, of self-will in the thought and action and of egoism in the centre of the consciousness. For these things are the three knots by which we are bound to our lower nature and if we can renounce these utterly, there is nothing else that can bind us." - The Synthesis of Yoga, Renunciation, pg 329
renunciation as a means:
"Therefore renunciation must be for us merely an instrument and not an object; nor can it be the only or the chief instrument since our object is the fulfilment of the Divine in the human being, a positive aim which cannot be reached by negative means. The negative means can only be for the removal of that which stands in the way of the positive fulfilment. It must be a renunciation, a complete renunciation of all that is other than and opposed to the divine self-fulfilment and a progressive renunciation of all that is a lesser or only a partial achievement. We shall have no attachment to our life in the world; if that attachment exists, we must renounce it and renounce utterly; but neither shall we have any attachment to the escape from the world, to salvation, to the great self-annihilation; if that attachment exists, that also we must renounce and renounce it utterly." - The Synthesis of Yoga, Renunciation, pg 329
notes on this chapter:
- Renunciation is the means to which one overcomes desire, and as I see it in my mind, clears the space for which Concentration becomes truly powerful. From this concept I believe it may be possible with the purest of renunciation that any concentration will suffice, for while travelling in empty space there is no resistance and thought becomes effective. Renunciation is also the final step, for as one approaches God, the self must step entirely out of way so that God may descend. Concentration may bring you to God, but not God to you.
- there is an important, but sometimes confusing difference, between inner and outer renunciation, where giving up something externally is not as important as giving it up internally, because the inner turmoil is still present. so for example, to give up something for a year is pointless, if it troubles the mind the entire time, that though importantly, strengthens the will, whereas to renunciate something internally gives one liberation from it. so in the context of freedom from subjection to the body it is not just about not moving while in meditation to itch while still wanting to but rather to realize that one is not the body, the itch not only is not to be scratched but to lose the desire to do it? to look upon the itch rather as if it were on someone elses body.
VI. The Synthesis of the Disciplines of Knowledge
VII. The Release from Subjection to the Body
5.0 When the purusha takes up the attitude of witness, bodily inaction tends to grow.
5.1 This is not a problem so long as it is not inertia, tamas.
5.2 The power to do nothing in immovable calm is a great power, just as is the power to cease from thought.
5.3 Aversion to action is undesirable, however.
5.4 When the body and life are mere instruments of the Purusha, action or inaction are immaterial.
5.5 Until then, moderation is best, though periods of absolute calm and solitude are helpful.
"This is a working of Prakriti, this is neither thyself or myself; stand back from it."
"This detachment of the mind must be strengthened by a certain attitude of indifference to the things of the body; we must not care essentially about its sleep or its waking, its movement or its rest, its pain or its pleasure, its health or ill-health, its vigour or its fatigue, its comfort or discomfort, or what it eats or drinks. This does not mean that we shall not keep the body in right order so far as we can..." -Pg 344
"We may even come to feel that the body is in a certain sense non-existenct except as a sort of partial expression of our vital force and of our mentality. These experiences are signs that the mind is coming ot a right poiose regarding the body..." pg 345
"Secondly, with regard to the movements and experiences of the body te mind will come to know the Purusha seated within it as, first, the witness or observer of the movements and, secondly, the knower or perceiver of the experiences. It will cease to consider in thought or feel in sensation these movements and experiences as its own but rather consider and feel them as not its own, as operations of Nature governed by the qualities of Nature and thier interaction upon each other. This detachment can be made so normal and carried so far that there will be a kind of division between the mind and the body and the former will observe and experience the hunger, thirst, pain, fatigue, depression, etc. of the physical being as if they were experiences of some other person with whom it has so close a rapport as to be aware of all that is going on within him. This fivision is a great means, a great step towards mastery; for the mind comes to observe these things first without being overpowered and finally without at all being affected by them, dispassionately, with clear understanding but with perfect detachment. This is the initial liberation of the mental being from servitude to the body; for by right knowledge put steadily into practice liberation comes inevitably" - pg 345
"By a similar process the habit by which the bodily nature associates certain forms and degrees of activity with strain, fatigue, incapacity can be rectified and the power, freedom, swiftness, effectiveness of the work whether physical or mental which can be done with this bodily instrument marvellously increased, doubled, tripled, decupled." - Pg 346
thoughts on this chapter:
- I think that a strength training practice done with the intention of gaining freedom from subjection to the body and identification with the Purusha could sublimate a physical practice into a powerful spiritual one. Perhaps the getting out of bed is not so much a physical issue as a desire-mind issue.
- in regards to my sitting practice, keeping absolutely still will create a strong foundation in this area probably rather quickly, not only that but to purify the body in this way is impossible without also in some way purifying the desire-mind, which is the thing that wants the body to be moved or itched.
5.0 When the purusha takes up the attitude of witness, bodily inaction tends to grow.
5.1 This is not a problem so long as it is not inertia, tamas.
5.2 The power to do nothing in immovable calm is a great power, just as is the power to cease from thought.
5.3 Aversion to action is undesirable, however.
5.4 When the body and life are mere instruments of the Purusha, action or inaction are immaterial.
5.5 Until then, moderation is best, though periods of absolute calm and solitude are helpful.
"This is a working of Prakriti, this is neither thyself or myself; stand back from it."
"This detachment of the mind must be strengthened by a certain attitude of indifference to the things of the body; we must not care essentially about its sleep or its waking, its movement or its rest, its pain or its pleasure, its health or ill-health, its vigour or its fatigue, its comfort or discomfort, or what it eats or drinks. This does not mean that we shall not keep the body in right order so far as we can..." -Pg 344
"We may even come to feel that the body is in a certain sense non-existenct except as a sort of partial expression of our vital force and of our mentality. These experiences are signs that the mind is coming ot a right poiose regarding the body..." pg 345
"Secondly, with regard to the movements and experiences of the body te mind will come to know the Purusha seated within it as, first, the witness or observer of the movements and, secondly, the knower or perceiver of the experiences. It will cease to consider in thought or feel in sensation these movements and experiences as its own but rather consider and feel them as not its own, as operations of Nature governed by the qualities of Nature and thier interaction upon each other. This detachment can be made so normal and carried so far that there will be a kind of division between the mind and the body and the former will observe and experience the hunger, thirst, pain, fatigue, depression, etc. of the physical being as if they were experiences of some other person with whom it has so close a rapport as to be aware of all that is going on within him. This fivision is a great means, a great step towards mastery; for the mind comes to observe these things first without being overpowered and finally without at all being affected by them, dispassionately, with clear understanding but with perfect detachment. This is the initial liberation of the mental being from servitude to the body; for by right knowledge put steadily into practice liberation comes inevitably" - pg 345
"By a similar process the habit by which the bodily nature associates certain forms and degrees of activity with strain, fatigue, incapacity can be rectified and the power, freedom, swiftness, effectiveness of the work whether physical or mental which can be done with this bodily instrument marvellously increased, doubled, tripled, decupled." - Pg 346
thoughts on this chapter:
- I think that a strength training practice done with the intention of gaining freedom from subjection to the body and identification with the Purusha could sublimate a physical practice into a powerful spiritual one. Perhaps the getting out of bed is not so much a physical issue as a desire-mind issue.
- in regards to my sitting practice, keeping absolutely still will create a strong foundation in this area probably rather quickly, not only that but to purify the body in this way is impossible without also in some way purifying the desire-mind, which is the thing that wants the body to be moved or itched.
VIII. The Release from the Heart and the Mind
4.1 Two stages then are possible: an entire calm, and an intense divine love and oneness.
4.2 Equality is the basis, love is the positive fulfillment in action.
5.0 The desire-mind must also be rejected from thought; this is done by the Purusha detaching itself from thought itself.
5.1 The same method and process follow: negation of identification, detachment, withdrawal of sanction, liberation, mastery.
"Therefore the mental Purusha has to separate himself from association and self-identification with this desire-mind. He has to say "I am not this thing that struggles and suffers, grieves and rejoices, loves and hates, hopes and is baffled, is angry and afraid and cheerful and depressed, a thing of vital moods and emotional passions. All these are merely workings and habits of Prakriti in the sensational and emotional mind." The mind then draws back from its emotions and becomes with these, as with the bodily movements and experiences, the observer or witness. There is again an inner cleavage. There is this emotional mind in which these moods and passions continue to occur according to the habit of the modes of Nature and there is the observing mind which sees them, studies and understands but is detached from them. It observes them as if in a sort of action and play on a mental stage of personages other than itself, at first with interest and a habit of relapse into identification, then with entire calm and detachment, and, finally, attaining not only to calm but to the pure delight of its own silent existence, with a smile at thier unreality as at the imaginary joys and sorrows of a child who is playing and loses himself in the play. Secondly, it becomes aware of itself as master of the sanction who by his withdrawl of sanction can make this play to cease. When the sanction is withdrawn, another significant phenomenon takes palce; the emotional mind becomes normally calm and pure and free from these reactions, and even when they come, they no longer rise from within but seem to fall on it as impression from outside to which its fibres are still able to respond; but this habit of reponse dies away and the emotional mind is in time entirely liberated from the passions which it has renounced. Hope and fear, joy and grief, liking and disliking, attraction and repulsion, content and discontent, gladness and depression, horror and wrath and fear and dishust and shame and the passions of love and hatred fall away from the liberated psychic being." - TSOY, the release from the heart and the mind, pg 352-353
4.1 Two stages then are possible: an entire calm, and an intense divine love and oneness.
4.2 Equality is the basis, love is the positive fulfillment in action.
5.0 The desire-mind must also be rejected from thought; this is done by the Purusha detaching itself from thought itself.
5.1 The same method and process follow: negation of identification, detachment, withdrawal of sanction, liberation, mastery.
"Therefore the mental Purusha has to separate himself from association and self-identification with this desire-mind. He has to say "I am not this thing that struggles and suffers, grieves and rejoices, loves and hates, hopes and is baffled, is angry and afraid and cheerful and depressed, a thing of vital moods and emotional passions. All these are merely workings and habits of Prakriti in the sensational and emotional mind." The mind then draws back from its emotions and becomes with these, as with the bodily movements and experiences, the observer or witness. There is again an inner cleavage. There is this emotional mind in which these moods and passions continue to occur according to the habit of the modes of Nature and there is the observing mind which sees them, studies and understands but is detached from them. It observes them as if in a sort of action and play on a mental stage of personages other than itself, at first with interest and a habit of relapse into identification, then with entire calm and detachment, and, finally, attaining not only to calm but to the pure delight of its own silent existence, with a smile at thier unreality as at the imaginary joys and sorrows of a child who is playing and loses himself in the play. Secondly, it becomes aware of itself as master of the sanction who by his withdrawl of sanction can make this play to cease. When the sanction is withdrawn, another significant phenomenon takes palce; the emotional mind becomes normally calm and pure and free from these reactions, and even when they come, they no longer rise from within but seem to fall on it as impression from outside to which its fibres are still able to respond; but this habit of reponse dies away and the emotional mind is in time entirely liberated from the passions which it has renounced. Hope and fear, joy and grief, liking and disliking, attraction and repulsion, content and discontent, gladness and depression, horror and wrath and fear and dishust and shame and the passions of love and hatred fall away from the liberated psychic being." - TSOY, the release from the heart and the mind, pg 352-353
IX. The Release from the Ego
"In the path of Knowledge one attempts this abolition, negatively by a denial of the reality of the ego, positively by a constant fixing of the thought upon the idea of the One and the Infinite in itself or the One and Infinite everywhere. This, if persistently done, changes in the end the mental outlook on oneself and the whole world and there is a kind of mental realisation; but afterwards by degrees or perhaps rapidly and imperatively and almost at the beginning the mental realisation deepens into spiritual experience - a realisation in the very substance of our being." - TSOY, the release from the Ego, pg 363
"For even before complete purification, if the strings of the egoistic heart and mind are already sufficiently frayed and loosened, the Jiva can by a sudden snapping of the main cords escape, ascending like a bird freed into the spaces or widening like a liberated flood into the One and Infinite. There is first a sudden sense of a cosmic consciousness, a casting of oneself into the universal; from that universality one can aspire more easily to the Transcendent. There is a pushing back and rending or a rushing down of the walls that imprisoned our conscious being; there is a loss of all sense of individuality and personality, of all placement in ego, a person definite and definable, but only consciousness, only existence, only peace or bliss; one becomes immortatlity, becomes eternity, becomes infinity. All that is left of the personal soul is a hymn of peace and freedom and bliss vibrating somewhere in the Eternal." TSOY, the release from the Ego, pg 363-364
2.0 For spiritual fulfilment, the ego must be exceeded: must either disappear or fuse into a larger entity.
4.0 The fulfilment of the individual has a real place.
4.1 Yet this only happens when the individual knows and possesses the larger whole of which it is a part.
7.0 The stages of release from the ego.
7.1 First an effort to deny the ego or fix thought on the One.
"In the path of Knowledge one attempts this abolition, negatively by a denial of the reality of the ego, positively by a constant fixing of the thought upon the idea of the One and the Infinite in itself or the One and Infinite everywhere. This, if persistently done, changes in the end the mental outlook on oneself and the whole world and there is a kind of mental realisation; but afterwards by degrees or perhaps rapidly and imperatively and almost at the beginning the mental realisation deepens into spiritual experience - a realisation in the very substance of our being." - TSOY, the release from the Ego, pg 363
"For even before complete purification, if the strings of the egoistic heart and mind are already sufficiently frayed and loosened, the Jiva can by a sudden snapping of the main cords escape, ascending like a bird freed into the spaces or widening like a liberated flood into the One and Infinite. There is first a sudden sense of a cosmic consciousness, a casting of oneself into the universal; from that universality one can aspire more easily to the Transcendent. There is a pushing back and rending or a rushing down of the walls that imprisoned our conscious being; there is a loss of all sense of individuality and personality, of all placement in ego, a person definite and definable, but only consciousness, only existence, only peace or bliss; one becomes immortatlity, becomes eternity, becomes infinity. All that is left of the personal soul is a hymn of peace and freedom and bliss vibrating somewhere in the Eternal." TSOY, the release from the Ego, pg 363-364
2.0 For spiritual fulfilment, the ego must be exceeded: must either disappear or fuse into a larger entity.
4.0 The fulfilment of the individual has a real place.
4.1 Yet this only happens when the individual knows and possesses the larger whole of which it is a part.
7.0 The stages of release from the ego.
7.1 First an effort to deny the ego or fix thought on the One.
X. The Realisation of the Cosmic Self
4.0 The realisation of cosmic consciousness has three successive stages or aspects.
4.1 First is the Self in whom all beings exist; image of the ether.
4.2 Second is the immanent, indwelling Self in all.
4.3 Third is identity with all existences, in name and form, mind and life and body.
XI. The Modes of the Self
XII. The Realization of Satchidananda
XIII. The Difficulties of the Mental Being
XIV. The Passive and Active Brahman
XV. Cosmic Consciousness
XVI. Oneness
XVII. The Soul and Nature
XVIII. The Soul and Its Liberation
XIX. The Planes of Our Existence
XX. The Lower Triple Purusha
XXI. The Ladder of Self-Transcendence
XXII. Vijnana or Gnosis
XXIII. The Conditions of Attainment to the Gnosis
XXIV. Gnosis and Ananda
XXV. The Higher and Lower Knowledge
XXVI. Samadhi
XXVII. Hathayoga
XVIII. Rajayoga
4.1 The rules of yama cure rajasic egoism; niyama create a sattvic calm and purity.
5.0 Concentration in Rajayoga.
5.1 Four stages: withdrawal of the senses, holding the mind on an object, absorption in the object, absorption in oneness.
5.2 The object of concentration is a name or form of the Divine.
4.0 The realisation of cosmic consciousness has three successive stages or aspects.
4.1 First is the Self in whom all beings exist; image of the ether.
4.2 Second is the immanent, indwelling Self in all.
4.3 Third is identity with all existences, in name and form, mind and life and body.
XI. The Modes of the Self
XII. The Realization of Satchidananda
XIII. The Difficulties of the Mental Being
XIV. The Passive and Active Brahman
XV. Cosmic Consciousness
XVI. Oneness
XVII. The Soul and Nature
XVIII. The Soul and Its Liberation
XIX. The Planes of Our Existence
XX. The Lower Triple Purusha
XXI. The Ladder of Self-Transcendence
XXII. Vijnana or Gnosis
XXIII. The Conditions of Attainment to the Gnosis
XXIV. Gnosis and Ananda
XXV. The Higher and Lower Knowledge
XXVI. Samadhi
XXVII. Hathayoga
XVIII. Rajayoga
4.1 The rules of yama cure rajasic egoism; niyama create a sattvic calm and purity.
5.0 Concentration in Rajayoga.
5.1 Four stages: withdrawal of the senses, holding the mind on an object, absorption in the object, absorption in oneness.
5.2 The object of concentration is a name or form of the Divine.
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PART III - THE YOGA OF DIVINE LOVE
I. Love and the Triple Path
3.0 There must be no depreciation of any one of these three paths.
3.1 The limitations of any one path are in the practice, not the principle.
3.2 True love is not inferior and ignorant, but purifies and enlarges; love is an equal power to knowledge, though different.
3.3 Bhakti begins when inner adoration starts; this passes to divine love, then to union.
4.0 Mind finds the abstract and impersonal to be more true than the close and personal.
4.1 But to the spirit these are both aspects of a Reality.
5.0 Devotees see knowledge as dry and abstract.
5.1 But love is not complete without knowledge; the passion that says "I do not understand, I love" is love's first, not last expression.
6.0 As knowledge is the state of oneness and love its bliss, works are its living power.
II. The Motives of Devotion
5.0 Prerequisites for a yoga of devotion.
5.1 The divine must be a conscious being who meets us in the cosmos, and is capable of personal relations with us and responds to our emotions in kind.
5.4 The Divine, being universal, answers to all our emotions and relations; "as men approach him, so he accepts them."
6.1 The motives of devotion then must fall away, for love is the one emotion that is self-existent; it needs no motive.
7.0 All other questions about bhakti are subsidiary.
7.1 Such as the form of the divine, or the exact nature of the relation.
7.3 All that concerns the bhakta is the purity of the devotion and the final arrival in union.
III. The Godward Emotions
2.3 And the divine as the almighty spirit, which brings in the relation of father to child.
4.0 Love and service are the key to the relation of servant to the divine master, not fear.
5.0 Prayer is a part of this relation.
5.1 Prayer is a form of the human will, aspiration and faith.
5.2 Its power is to put these into touch with the divine Will as a conscious Being.
5.3 Prayer, even if deluded, prepares the soul.
5.4 The conscious interchange with the divine that takes place through prayer brings spiritual growth.
6.0 One can approach the divine looking for many objects.
6.1 The Gita speaks of those looking for help, for knowledge, or for release of suffering.
6.1 These bring the relation of fatherhood, friend, and mother.
6.2 But the highest is that of Lover and Beloved, which springs from the nature of Love itself.
IV. The Way of Devotion
1.0 Bhakti has no set method.
1.1 Yet resolves itself into four general movements: straining of emotion towards God, the pain of love, the delight of love, the Divine lover.
2.0 The first form of devotion is adoration, which takes the external form of ceremonial worship.
2.1 But when adoration becomes inner worship, yoga begins.
2.2 Adoration brings consecration, which brings katharsis.
3.2 Thought may use image or mantra, and may pass through stages.
3.3 But the one essential is the intense devotion of the thought.
3.4 This is an ecstatic contemplation, not the still contemplation of the yoga of knowledge.
V. The Divine Personality
1.1 But an integral devotion is only possible if there is a real Beloved for the Lover.
2.1 The intellect needs to recognize the intution of the heart and life as well as its own.
5.0 Our first view of the Divine Personality is as a spirit with fixed qualities, "an enlarged edition of our human character."
5.1 Or pantheism, closer to the truth, conceives of the existence of many divine personalities.
5.2 A total spiritual experience shows us that within is "an infinite being with the potentiality of all qualities, of infinite quality, anantaguna."
5.3 And even though this seems to disappear in pure existence, that very meeting is one aspect of ourselves, as is the meeting with the conscious Person in the universe.
VI. The Delight of the Divine
1.0 What we see of the divine and fix our effort on, that we can grow into and become.
1.1 The aim of this integral yoga "is union with the being, consciousness and delight of the Divine through every part of our human nature".
1.2 We aspire to meet him in all the ways of his being, impersonal and personal, through both unity and the play of love.
2.4 It experiences his oneness and completeness everywhere, without distinctions.
4.0 Beauty is the special power of love.
4.1 The sign of mutual possession is when the sadhak "has the vision of the All-Beautiful everywhere and can feel at all times the bliss of his embrace."
VII. The Ananda Brahman
4.0 Brahman reveals himself within, above, about.
4.1 Within, in the lotus of the heart or the lotus above the head.
4.2 When the heart opens, we feel a divine love, joy, and peace "which irradiates the whole being."
4.3 "When the other upper lotus opens, the whole mind ecomes full of a divine light, joy and power"
4.4 With both of these there are still alterations until the experience becomes natural.
6.0 When we "possess firmly" these three aspects, "then all the worlds become the body of this self." [the Ananda Brahman]
VIII. The Mystery of Love
2.0 Bhakti ordinarily begins from adoration of the Divine Personality, not the impersonal.
2.1 The integral devotion adores the Godhead in which "all things are the face of God": transcendent, universal, individual.
2.2 But in the beginning, the Divine meets the seeker "as an absolute of the things he can understand and to which his will and heart can respond."
2.3 This is the ishta-devata, "the name and form elected by our nature."
3.0 "The way of the Integral Yoga of Bhakti will be to universalise this conception of the deity."
3.1 Through constant thinking and seeing him everywhere: manana and darsana.
3.2 We must look on all things and see the divine.
3.3 A constant inner communion must become permanent.
3.4 Finally all our thoughts, actions, etc. change into a divine form.
3.5 Then there is no division between our lives and the Divine.
4.0 All relations become "intensely and blissfully personal."
4.1 The divine goes from teacher to master.
4.2 The highest stage of surrender is to become a living instrument.
5.0 There is possible a many-sided relation, with contradictions and changes.
5.1 He may pursue us in the guise of enemy and the relation may be one of struggle.
5.2 But "the essential relation will be that of love": passionate, complete.
6.0 For love, "complete union is Mukti"
6.1 The different kinds are not successive or exclusive.
6.2 They include union, presence, reflection: sayujya, salokya, sadrsya.
6.3 "Love and Ananda are the last word of being, the secret of secrets"
3.0 There must be no depreciation of any one of these three paths.
3.1 The limitations of any one path are in the practice, not the principle.
3.2 True love is not inferior and ignorant, but purifies and enlarges; love is an equal power to knowledge, though different.
3.3 Bhakti begins when inner adoration starts; this passes to divine love, then to union.
4.0 Mind finds the abstract and impersonal to be more true than the close and personal.
4.1 But to the spirit these are both aspects of a Reality.
5.0 Devotees see knowledge as dry and abstract.
5.1 But love is not complete without knowledge; the passion that says "I do not understand, I love" is love's first, not last expression.
6.0 As knowledge is the state of oneness and love its bliss, works are its living power.
II. The Motives of Devotion
5.0 Prerequisites for a yoga of devotion.
5.1 The divine must be a conscious being who meets us in the cosmos, and is capable of personal relations with us and responds to our emotions in kind.
5.4 The Divine, being universal, answers to all our emotions and relations; "as men approach him, so he accepts them."
6.1 The motives of devotion then must fall away, for love is the one emotion that is self-existent; it needs no motive.
7.0 All other questions about bhakti are subsidiary.
7.1 Such as the form of the divine, or the exact nature of the relation.
7.3 All that concerns the bhakta is the purity of the devotion and the final arrival in union.
III. The Godward Emotions
2.3 And the divine as the almighty spirit, which brings in the relation of father to child.
4.0 Love and service are the key to the relation of servant to the divine master, not fear.
5.0 Prayer is a part of this relation.
5.1 Prayer is a form of the human will, aspiration and faith.
5.2 Its power is to put these into touch with the divine Will as a conscious Being.
5.3 Prayer, even if deluded, prepares the soul.
5.4 The conscious interchange with the divine that takes place through prayer brings spiritual growth.
6.0 One can approach the divine looking for many objects.
6.1 The Gita speaks of those looking for help, for knowledge, or for release of suffering.
6.1 These bring the relation of fatherhood, friend, and mother.
6.2 But the highest is that of Lover and Beloved, which springs from the nature of Love itself.
IV. The Way of Devotion
1.0 Bhakti has no set method.
1.1 Yet resolves itself into four general movements: straining of emotion towards God, the pain of love, the delight of love, the Divine lover.
2.0 The first form of devotion is adoration, which takes the external form of ceremonial worship.
2.1 But when adoration becomes inner worship, yoga begins.
2.2 Adoration brings consecration, which brings katharsis.
3.2 Thought may use image or mantra, and may pass through stages.
3.3 But the one essential is the intense devotion of the thought.
3.4 This is an ecstatic contemplation, not the still contemplation of the yoga of knowledge.
V. The Divine Personality
1.1 But an integral devotion is only possible if there is a real Beloved for the Lover.
2.1 The intellect needs to recognize the intution of the heart and life as well as its own.
5.0 Our first view of the Divine Personality is as a spirit with fixed qualities, "an enlarged edition of our human character."
5.1 Or pantheism, closer to the truth, conceives of the existence of many divine personalities.
5.2 A total spiritual experience shows us that within is "an infinite being with the potentiality of all qualities, of infinite quality, anantaguna."
5.3 And even though this seems to disappear in pure existence, that very meeting is one aspect of ourselves, as is the meeting with the conscious Person in the universe.
VI. The Delight of the Divine
1.0 What we see of the divine and fix our effort on, that we can grow into and become.
1.1 The aim of this integral yoga "is union with the being, consciousness and delight of the Divine through every part of our human nature".
1.2 We aspire to meet him in all the ways of his being, impersonal and personal, through both unity and the play of love.
2.4 It experiences his oneness and completeness everywhere, without distinctions.
4.0 Beauty is the special power of love.
4.1 The sign of mutual possession is when the sadhak "has the vision of the All-Beautiful everywhere and can feel at all times the bliss of his embrace."
VII. The Ananda Brahman
4.0 Brahman reveals himself within, above, about.
4.1 Within, in the lotus of the heart or the lotus above the head.
4.2 When the heart opens, we feel a divine love, joy, and peace "which irradiates the whole being."
4.3 "When the other upper lotus opens, the whole mind ecomes full of a divine light, joy and power"
4.4 With both of these there are still alterations until the experience becomes natural.
6.0 When we "possess firmly" these three aspects, "then all the worlds become the body of this self." [the Ananda Brahman]
VIII. The Mystery of Love
2.0 Bhakti ordinarily begins from adoration of the Divine Personality, not the impersonal.
2.1 The integral devotion adores the Godhead in which "all things are the face of God": transcendent, universal, individual.
2.2 But in the beginning, the Divine meets the seeker "as an absolute of the things he can understand and to which his will and heart can respond."
2.3 This is the ishta-devata, "the name and form elected by our nature."
3.0 "The way of the Integral Yoga of Bhakti will be to universalise this conception of the deity."
3.1 Through constant thinking and seeing him everywhere: manana and darsana.
3.2 We must look on all things and see the divine.
3.3 A constant inner communion must become permanent.
3.4 Finally all our thoughts, actions, etc. change into a divine form.
3.5 Then there is no division between our lives and the Divine.
4.0 All relations become "intensely and blissfully personal."
4.1 The divine goes from teacher to master.
4.2 The highest stage of surrender is to become a living instrument.
5.0 There is possible a many-sided relation, with contradictions and changes.
5.1 He may pursue us in the guise of enemy and the relation may be one of struggle.
5.2 But "the essential relation will be that of love": passionate, complete.
6.0 For love, "complete union is Mukti"
6.1 The different kinds are not successive or exclusive.
6.2 They include union, presence, reflection: sayujya, salokya, sadrsya.
6.3 "Love and Ananda are the last word of being, the secret of secrets"