The Central Truth of the Synthesis of Yoga

 

How can Consecration begin?:
“Its (Supreme Self) absence left the greatest actions dull,
Its presence made the smallest seem divine.” Savitri-305
“This bright perfection of her inner state
Poured overflowing into her outward scene,
Made beautiful dull common natural things
And action wonderful and time divine.
Even the smallest meanest work became
A sweet or glad and glorious sacrament,
An offering to the self of the great world
Or a service to the One in each and all.” Savitri-532
            “The law of sacrifice travels in Nature towards its culmination in this complete and unreserved self-giving; it awakens the consciousness of one common self in the giver and the object of the sacrifice… Above all, the psychic being imposes on life the law of the sacrifice of all its works as an offering to the Divine and the Eternal. Life becomes a call to that which is beyond Life; its every smallest act enlarges with the sense of the Infinite.”⁶  Sri Aurobindo 
                                                                                                                   
            “All our actions, not less the smallest and most ordinary and trifling than the greatest and most uncommon and noble, must be performed  as consecrated acts. Our individualised nature must live in the single consciousness of an inner and outer movement dedicated  to Something that is beyond us and greater than our ego. No matter what the gift or to whom it is presented by us, there must  be a consciousness in the act that we are presenting it to the one divine Being in all beings. Our commonest or most grossly material actions must assume this sublimated character; when we eat, we should be conscious that we are giving our food to that Presence in us; it must be a sacred offering in a temple and the sense of a mere physical need or self-gratification must pass away from us. In any great labour, in any high discipline, in any difficult or noble enterprise, whether undertaken for ourselves, for others or for the race, it will no longer be possible to stop short at the idea of the race, of ourselves or of others. The thing we are doing must be consciously offered as a sacrifice of works, not to these, but either through them or directly to the One Godhead; the Divine Inhabitant who was hidden by these figures must be no longer hidden but ever present to our soul, our mind, our sense. The workings and results of our acts must be put in the hands of that One in the feeling that that Presence is the Infinite and Most High by whom alone our labour and our aspiration are possible. For in his being all takes place; for him all labour and aspiration are taken from us by Nature and offered on his altar. Even in those things in which Nature is herself very plainly the worker and we only the witnesses of her working and its containers and supporters, there should be the same constant memory and insistent consciousness of a work and of its divine Master. Our very inspiration and respiration, our very heart-beats can and must be made conscious in us as the living rhythm of the universal sacrifice.”²⁹              Sri Aurobindo                                                                                                                                                        
             “When the resolution has been taken, when you have decided that the whole of your life shall be given to the Divine, you have still at every moment to remember it and carry it out in all the details of your existence. You must feel at every step that you belong to the Divine; you must have the constant experience that, in whatever you think or do, it is always the Divine Consciousness that is acting through you. You have no longer anything that you can call your own; you feel everything as coming from the Divine, and you have to offer it back to its source. When you can realise that, then even the smallest thing to which you do not usually pay much attention or care, ceases to be trivial and insignificant; it becomes full of meaning and it opens up a vast horizon beyond.”³⁰ The Mother 

              “What is his (Sadhaka’s) method and his system? He has no method and every method. His system is a natural organisation of the highest processes and movements of which the nature is capable. Applying themselves even to the pettiest details and to the actions the most insignificant in their appearance with as much care and thoroughness as to the greatest, they in the end lift all into the Light and transform all. For in his Yoga there is nothing too small to be used and nothing too great to be attempted. As the servant and disciple of the Master has no business with pride or egoism because all is done for him from above, so also he has no right to despond because of his personal deficiencies or the stumblings of his nature. For the Force that works in him is impersonal—or superpersonal —and infinite.”³¹                                                                       Sri Aurobindo                                               
            “It is evident, to begin with, that, even if such a discipline is begun without devotion, it leads straight and inevitably towards the highest devotion possible; for it must deepen naturally into the completest adoration imaginable, the most profound God-love. There is bound up with it a growing sense of the Divine in all things, a deepening communion with the Divine in all our thought, will and action and at every moment of our lives, a more and more moved consecration to the Divine of the totality of our being.”³²                                                                                                                              Sri Aurobindo                                               
            “There has to be a preliminary stage of seeking and effort with a central offering or self-giving of the heart and soul and mind to the Highest and a later mediate stage of total conscious reliance on its greater Power aiding the personal endeavour; that integral reliance again must grow into a final complete abandonment of oneself in every part and every movement to the working of the higher Truth in the nature. The totality of this abandonment can only come if the psychic change has been complete or the spiritual transformation has reached a very high state of achievement. For it implies a giving up by the mind of all its moulds, ideas, mental formations, of all opinion, of all its habits of intellectual observation and judgment to be replaced first by an intuitive and then by an overmind or supramental functioning which inaugurates the action of a direct Truth-consciousness, Truth-sight, Truth-discernment, a new consciousness which is in all its ways quite foreign to our mind’s present nature.”³⁴                                                          Sri Aurobindo                                            
 
            Integral Yoga proposes that consecration can begin with the smallest and insignificant action; it can begin from little devotion and from a tiny wisdom and can be used as a means to call down the highest Supreme Energy. If we concentrate, contemplate and meditate on a tiny seed of wisdom for long years then it will emerge as a mighty banyan tree. The Bhagavad Gita proposes that in order to make the consecration true and sattwic, it must satisfy three conditions. Firstly, all consecrated action must be supported by ceaseless remembrance of the Divine either through concentration, contemplation and meditation on Mantra or through ceaseless Japa; secondly, all consecrated action for the Divine must be motiveless by renouncing the fruit of action and lastly all objective action must be elevated to subjective world action in trance, Krishnakarmakrit, and directed for the well being of the race, Jagat hitaya, and it must be ‘virginally creative’³³ every moment, superseding the limitation of mind of engaging in ‘constructive action.’   
 
Recapitulation:
            “A long, difficult stage of constant effort, energism, austerity of the personal will, tapasya, has ordinarily to be traversed before a more decisive stage can be reached in which a state of self-giving of all the being to the Supreme Being (Vedantic Sacrifice) and the Supreme Nature (Vedic Sacrifice) can become total and absolute.”⁴ Sri Aurobindo

           “Our sacrifice is not a giving without any return or any fruitful acceptance from the other side; it is an interchange between the embodied soul and conscious Nature in us and the eternal Spirit. For even though no return is demanded, yet there is the knowledge deep within us that a marvellous return is inevitable. 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.”²² Sri Aurobindo
         So the Vedantic sacrifice is identified as an indispensable exercise of awakening the Spiritual Being or ‘first the spirit’s ascent we must achieve’¹⁸ supported and subordinated by still more powerful dispensable Vedic sacrifice of awakening the Psychic being or ‘Repeating the marvel of first descent.’²⁰ What the Vedantic Sadhaka achieves that of transformation of nature through passive silence, trance, Samadhi, subtle physical dream and Superconscient sleep; the same state a Vedic Sadhaka arrives through active silence and waking trance. The true waking Consciousness is defined as withdrawal from subjective Consciousness, which consists of subtle physical, subtle vital and subtle mental Consciousness, objective consciousness, which consists of surface physical, surface vital and surface mental Consciousness and massed Causal Consciousness or Supramental Consciousness and entry into superconscience superior to all Consciousness, Sachchidananda Consciousness. The first Spiritual experience of waking union that the Vedic Sadhaka will experience is when the individual Purusha enlarges its active experience.  In order to bring down the highest Spiritual being into our waking life, there must be heightening, widening and integration of immense ranges of new Consciousness. When the surrender becomes complete, absolute and entire, either by complete dependence of creation on the Creator, the static Divine or by complete dependence of creation on the Creatrix Mother, the dynamic Divine, then the Divine cannot conceal Himself; the Unmanifest reflects His form and we could dare to clasp the body of the God and hold between our hands the World-Mother’s feet and rapt into eternity through descent of Her Timeless ray. Thus, for full transformation of life, permanent ascension of the Soul to the highest planes of Consciousness and permanent descent of the highest Shakti to lower Nature are indispensable.
 
           So, the double movement of ascent of Soul followed by descent of Shakti and descent of Shakti followed by ascent of Soul are the two complementary lessons that a Sadhaka of integral Yoga must learn, repeat and master throughout his life. And through this double movement, the reconciliation of Matter and Spirit is worked out and Matter shall gradually reveal the Spirit’s face. Thus, all life or our inner life that is linked with the triple time of past, present and future births and bodies becomes a conscious Yoga of consecration.    
 
Savitri and Consecration:
“Here with the suddenness divine advents have,
Repeating the marvel of the first descent,
Changing to rapture the dull earthly round,
Love came to her hiding the shadow, Death.
Well might he find in her his perfect shrine.
Since first the earth-being’s heavenward growth began,
Through all the long ordeal of the race,” (Vedic sacrifice of Savitri) Savitri-14
“But first the spirit’s ascent we must achieve
Out of the chasm from which our nature rose.” (Vedantic sacrifice) Savitri-171
“Here from a low and prone and listless ground
The passion of the first ascent began;” Savitri-503
“Even if he (Avatar) escapes the fiercest fires,
Even if the world breaks not in, a drowning sea,
Only by hard sacrifice is high heaven earned:
He must face the fight, the pang who would conquer Hell.” Savitri-447
“Thy (common man) fate is a long sacrifice to the gods
Till they have opened to thee thy secret self (Psychic Being)
And made thee one with the indwelling God." (Psychic Being) Savitri-458
“He (King Aswapati) stood fulfilled on the world’s highest line
Awaiting the ascent beyond the world,
Awaiting the descent the world to save.” (Vedantic sacrifice of the King where ascent of the Soul is followed by the descent of Shakti.) Savitri-319
“Thus in the silent chamber of her soul
Cloistering her love to live with secret grief
She dwelt like a dumb priest with hidden gods
Unappeased by the wordless offering of her days,
Lifting to them her sorrow like frankincense,
Her life the altar, herself the sacrifice.” Savitri-472-73
 
            These double movements of Consecration which are hinted¹⁰ in The Synthesis of Yoga are elaborately developed in King Aswapati’s Yoga and Savitri’s Yoga. These movements provide additional input for the opening of energy Centres linking the Supramental Self of overhead Brahma randhra with the nether planes of the Inconscient Self. The seven energy Centres of traditional Schools of Yoga are extended in integral Yoga into ‘twelve energy centres’³⁷ of which two nether centres below the feet or below the Muladhara chakra, (Inconscient Self and Subconscient Self) and three overhead centres above the mystic Brahma randhra (Bliss Self, Chit and Sat) are opened in addition to the opening of existing seven Chakras. And how through these Chakras, the Psychic, Spiritual and Supramental transformation are activated, are also revealed in Savitri. During Psychic and Spiritual transformation, the Consciousness does not move below the Muladhara Chakra and above the mystic Brahma randhra. It is only during the Supramental transformation, the Subconscient and Inconscient planes are ‘slowly transformed,’³⁶ and during this action, the importance of Vedic sacrifice³⁸ increases.              
 
            If the deathless flame of Divine Love can enter in the passage of our work consecrated to the Divine, then hardness of the way diminishes, sweetness and joy is felt even during the period of difficulty and struggle and this surrender can be perfectly effective when it is a surrender of love. All our life can be moulded into this cult, all action is done in the love of the Divine in the individual, in the universe and in the Transcendence.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          OM TAT SAT