The Main Frame of Integral Yoga

4) The Three Central Dynamic Processes⁹ of integral Yoga:

            The first central dynamic process is the emergence of true Psychic being as the leader of the sacrifice brings with it the full power of the Spirit in the action. At a certain stage in the Yoga when the mind is sufficiently quieted, clear, passive and pure by renunciation of mental activities, when the vital has been steadied and subdued and is no longer constantly insistent on its own rash will, demand and desire, when the physical has been sufficiently altered not to bury altogether the inner flame under the mass of its outwardness, obscurity or inertia, an inmost being, long hidden within and felt only in its rare influences, is able to come forward and illumine the rest and take up the lead of the Sadhana. Its character is a one-pointed orientation towards the Divine or the Highest, one-pointed and yet plastic in action and movement; it does not create a rigidity of direction like the one-pointed intellect or a bigotry of the regnant idea or impulse like the one-pointed vital force; it is at every moment and with a supple sureness that it points the way to the Truth, automatically distinguishes the right step from the false, extricates the Divine or Godward movement from the clinging mixture of the undivine. It alone can assure the perennial freshness and sincerity and beauty of the symbol, catches, exposes, repels the mind’s and the life’s falsehoods, seizes, hold on the truth of the Divine Love and Ananda and separates it from the excitement of the mind’s ardours and the blind enthusiasms of the misleading life force.

            The second central dynamic process is the sublimation of exclusive enjoyment of human love into an all-inclusive Divine Love. The widest love is fulfilled in knowledge that sees the world and all creatures as the being of the Beloved. And since love is the effective power and Soul-symbol of bliss-oneness, one will approach and enter into this oneness by the gate of universal Love, a heightening of human love at first, afterwards a Spirit of Divine Love can enter, the hardness of the way diminishes, the tension is lightened, there is a sweetness and joy even in the core of difficulty and struggle. It is this Divine Love, the most powerful of all redeeming and creative forces, poured out into acts that could alone create a harmony in the world and a true unity between all its creatures; all else strives in vain towards that end so long as Divine Love has not disclosed itself as the heart of the delivered manifestation in terrestrial Nature. He will be one in Bliss-consciousness with all the world-play and its powers and happenings and there will be banished forever the sorrow and fear, the hunger and pain of our poor and darkened mental and vital and physical existence. He will get the power of the Bliss-freedom in which all the conflicting principles of our being shall be unified in their absolute values. All evil shall perforce change itself into good; the universal beauty of the All-Beautiful will take possession of its fallen kingdoms; every darkness will be converted into a pregnant glory of Light and discords which the mind creates between Truth and Good and Beauty, Power and Love and Knowledge will disappear on the Eternal summit, in the Infinite extensions where they are always one. Human nature has been unable to bear the pressure of Divine Love in its purity for the very reason that it is the most powerful, pure, rare and intense of all the Divine energies that could rebuild the world with its tongues of sacrifice. A little of it seized in an impure vessel has been corrupted at once into a vital pietistic ardour, a defenceless religious or ethical sentimentalism, a sensuous or even sensual erotic mysticism. For this reason Divine Love has been the least frontally present in earthly life, the least successfully redemptive and the least creative.

           The third central dynamic process is to Spiritualise his being by the power of the Soul in mind opening itself directly to a Spiritual force and being above the head and to invert that higher force so possessed and brought into action the whole of his nature. All Psychic experience gets its stability through repetition of its corresponding experiences in the Spiritual plane and receives completeness and absoluteness by similar repetition of experience in the Supramental plane. We have to Spiritualise the Psychic being in its entirety by a descent of a Divine Light, Force, Purity, Knowledge, Freedom and Wideness. It is necessary to break down the limits of the personal mind, life and physicality, dissolve the ego, enter into the Cosmic Consciousness, realise the Self, and acquire a Spiritualised and Universalised mind and heart, life-force, physical consciousness. Then only the passage into Supramental Consciousness begins to become possible, and even then, there is a difficult ascent to make each stage of which is a separate arduous achievement.

5) The Three Central Methods⁸ of integral Yoga:

            The methods of integral Yoga are dynamised after the dynamisation of its processes. The first central method of higher Divine force working in the lower nature does not act according to a fixed routine system but a sort of free, scattered and gradually intensive, purposeful, scientific and synthetic Yoga with some broad lines of working common to all, determined by the temperament of the individual Sadhaka and the helpful materials his nature offers and the obstacle it presents to purification and perfection. Therefore each Sadhaka in this path has his own method of Yoga.

            The second central method is the integral process which accepts our nature as organised by our past evolution without rejecting any untransformed nature and compels all to undergo Divine transformation. In this ever-progressive experience the Sadhaka will know how this lower manifestation is constituted and how they are deformed or more or less distorted from the element of action in the harmony of the Divine Nature. He will understand how the Divine force will change individual human nature like a smith who forges the crude material in his smithy.

            The third central method is that the Divine power will use all life as means of world transformation in cosmic Consciousness. Every experience of outer contact with the world-environment, the most trifling and repellent suffering or most humiliating Spiritual fall are accepted as a step on the path of perfection. The God’s method in the world is the same in the lower and higher Nature; only it works tardily and obscurely in the former and works swiftly and consciously in the latter. All life is a Yoga of Nature capable of self-awareness, seeking to manifest God within and without.  

6) The Three Central Vedantic Principles of integral Yoga:

            Firstly, an individual is considered fit to pursue Integral Karma Yoga if he has no distinction of work in terms of high and low and loves all work equally. The success of Integral Karma Yoga can come when each karmi is able to discover in the smallest work, the God’s vast intention and is able to turn all work as means of God union and all work is initiated not by desire but by the Divine Will through intense experience of Divine union and he can arrive at the highest perfection, siddhi, of Karmayoga, which is Sadharmya mukti, complete and final liberation and transformation of whole nature.

             Secondly, an individual seeker can be considered fit to pursue Integral Jnana Yoga if he has developed the capacity to live in isolation or seclusion for an indefinite period without attachment to action and thought. The success of Integral Jnana Yoga can come when each Jnani, will be able to turn and transform all mundane knowledge into God Knowledge and discover his utter Oneness with the existence and he can arrive at the highest perfection, siddhi, of Jnanayoga, which is Sayujya Mukti, the identification of the individual being in all its parts with the Supreme.

             Thirdly, an individual seeker can be considered fit to pursue Integral Bhakti Yoga if his adoration of the Creator does not exclude His creation or if his love, adoration and seeking of the Divine becomes equal and all-embracing in all deities, creatures and objects. The success of Integral Bhakti Yoga can come when each Bhakta is able to turn all human emotions God-ward and is able to see, identify and realise the one Divine integrally in all godheads, men, creatures and objects and in all His names and forms and qualities. He can attain the highest perfection, siddhi, of Bhaktiyoga, which is Salokya-Mukti; the whole conscious existence dwells in the same status of being as the Divine.

7) The Three Central Vedic Principles of integral Yoga:

             The first Vedic principle is identified as Hathayoga. The aim of Hathayoga is ‘to give to the soul in the physical body (Annamaya Purusha) the power, the light, the purity, the freedom, the ascending scales of spiritual experience…’¹⁴ in order to develop subtle and causal body. Integral Yoga can partially utilise the Hathayoga for the initial perfection of the body through simple Asana and final perfection of body through simple Pranayama. ‘The ordinary method is the opening up of the cakras by the physical processes of Hathayoga  (of which something is also included in the Rajayoga) or by the methods of the Tantric discipline. But while these may be optionally used at certain stages by the integral Yoga, they are not indispensable; for here (in integral Yoga) the reliance is on the power of the higher being to change the lower existence, a working is chosen mainly from above downward and not the opposite way, and therefore the development of the superior power of the gnosis will be awaited as the instrumentative change in this part of the Yoga.’¹⁵ The disadvantage of Hathayoga is that it arrives at the Supreme by 'long, difficult and meticulous movement,'¹³ and the body demands a 'great and absorbing... attention.'¹³

             The Second Vedic principle is identified as Rajayoga. The Rajayoga ‘aims at the liberation and perfection not of the bodily, but of the mental being, the control of the emotional and sensational life, the mastery of the whole apparatus of thought and consciousness.”¹⁶ “The preliminary movement of Rajayoga is a careful self-discipline by which good habits of mind are substituted for the lawless movements that indulge the lower nervous being. By the practice of truth, by renunciation of all forms of egoistic seeking, by abstention from injury to others, by purity, by constant meditation and inclination to the divine Purusha who is the true lord of the mental kingdom, a pure, glad, clear state of mind and heart is established. This is the first step only. Afterwards, the ordinary activities of the mind and sense must be entirely quieted in order that the soul may be free to ascend to higher states of consciousness and acquire the foundation for a perfect freedom and self-mastery.’¹⁶ Thus a Rajayogi attains the state of Samadhi. ‘For the ancient system of Rajayoga aimed not only at Swarajya, self-rule or subjective empire, the entire control by the subjective consciousness of all the states and activities proper to its own domain, but included Samrajya as well, outward empire, the control by the subjective consciousness of its outer activities and environment.’¹⁶ The deficiency of Rajayoga is ‘its excessive reliance on abnormal states of trance,’¹⁶ whereas in integral Yoga spiritual life and its experiences are ‘fully active and fully utilisable in the waking state.’¹⁶  

             The third Vedic principle is identified as Tantra. The fourfold aim of Tantra is purification, Suddhi, liberation, Mukti, perfection, Siddhi, and enjoyment, Bhukti. ‘Instead of drawing back from manifested Nature and its difficulties, he (Tantric Sadhak) confronted them, seized and conquered. But in the end, as is the general tendency of Prakriti, Tantric Yoga largely lost its principle in its machinery and became a thing of formulae and occult mechanism still powerful when rightly used but fallen from the clarity of their original intention.’¹⁷ ‘There is yet another, the Tantric, which though less subtle and spiritually profound, is even more bold and forceful than the synthesis of the Gita, — for it seizes even upon the obstacles to the spiritual life and compels them to become the means for a richer spiritual conquest and enables us to embrace the whole of Life in our divine scope as the Lila of the Divine; and in some directions it is more immediately rich and fruitful, for it brings forward into the foreground along with divine knowledge, divine works and an enriched devotion of divine Love, the secrets also of the Hatha and Raja Yogas, the use of the body and of mental askesis for the opening up of the divine life on all its planes, to which the Gita gives only a passing and perfunctory attention.’¹⁸ Integral Yoga begins with methods of Vedanta in order to arrive at the aims of Tantra. For a Sadhak of integral Yoga, Soul is the static Lord and Nature is the dynamic executive Energy. ‘The relation of the two exists between the poles of rest and action. When the Energy is absorbed in the bliss of conscious self-existence, there is rest; when the Purusha pours itself out in the action of its Energy, there is action, creation and the enjoyment or Ananda of becoming.’¹⁹ The disadvantage of Tantra is that it 'has fallen into discredit with those who are not Tantrics; and especially owing to the developments of its left-hand path, the Vama Marga, which not content with exceeding the duality of virtue and sin and instead of replacing them by spontaneous rightness of action seemed, sometimes, to make a method of self-indulgence, a method of unrestrained social immorality.'²⁹

​

8) The Three Central Inner Revolutions⁷ of integral Yoga:

            The first central inner revolution is that annulment from life all movement of brief desire, which is an insecure limitation, an ambiguous fire, a dwarf lust, hunger for pleasure and satisfaction. It has built in us at its centre a desire-soul which refers to itself all the motions of life and puts in them its own lower note of troubled hue and pain of an ignorant, half-lit, baffled endeavour: for a divine living, desire must be abolished and replaced by a purer and firmer celestial joy, the tormented soul of desire dissolved and in its stead there must emerge the calm, strength, endless charm, seeking after Divine Delight in things and happiness of a true vital being now concealed within us.

            The second central inner revolution is that life as it is, is driven or led partly by the impulse of the life-force, partly by a mind which is mostly a servant and abettor of the ignorant life-impulse, but in part also its uneasy and not too luminous or competent guide and mentor; for a Divine Life the mind and life-impulse must cease to be anything but docile instruments and the inmost Psychic being must take their place as the leader on the path and the indicator of a Divine guidance. It is only when we open ourselves to the Divine Shakti transcending the lower untransformed Nature, then we will be a perfect instrument of her Will, Power and Knowledge.

            The third central inner revolution is that not the ego but ‘Truth of Being must govern truth of life.’² The life as it is, is turned towards the satisfaction of the separative ego; the small ego sense must be starved by renouncing the impulse to act, sarbarambha parityagi,³ or rooted away from our nature by rejecting all motive forces other than the Divine Will or to kill it by cutting away from us all movement of personality and be replaced by the true Spiritual person, the central Spiritual being; it must feel a Divine Force awakens within it and become an obedient instrumentation of its purpose. The extinction of egoism eliminates the very origin of desire followed by the establishment of the Soul’s nature of equality.

9) The Three Basic or Fundamental Realisations⁶ of integral Yoga:

            The first basic realisation, is the experience of fundamental impersonality awakening to an ineffable high transcendent Unknowable above the Self and above this world in which he seems to move, a timeless and spaceless condition or entity which is at once, in some way compelling and convincing to an essential Consciousness in him, the one thing that is to it overwhelmingly real and an immense liberating force. It releases his knowledge from the narrowness of personal mind, his will from the clutch of personal desire, his heart from the bondage of petty mutable emotions, his life from its petty personal groove, his soul from ego, and it allows them to embrace calm, equality, wideness, universality and infinity. There will still remain on this foundation of the first basic realisation of immeasurable silence and quietude, the infinitely proceeding self-fulfilment of the Brahman, its dynamic divine manifestation in the individual and its extension by his presence, example and action in others and in the universe at large.

            The second basic realisation is usually accompanied by an equally compelling sense either of the dreamlike or shadowy illusoriness of all things here or else of their temporary, derivative and only half-real character. For a time at least all around him may seem to be a movement of cinematographic shadow forms or surface figures and his own action may appear as a fluid formulation from some Source ungrasped as yet and perhaps unseizable above or outside him. To remain in this consciousness, to carry out this initiation or follow out this first suggestion of the character of things would be to proceed towards the goal of dissolution of the Self and the World in the Unknowable, this is the Laya, Moksha, and Nirvana. This may extend itself to the dissolution of mind, life and body itself into the silent Self or absolute Existence; but the essence of the liberation is that the individual has lost the sense of division in the boundlessness of an infinite Consciousness.

            The third basic realisation is that it is possible, on the contrary, for him to wait till through the silence of this timeless unfilled liberation he begins to enter into relations with that yet ungrasped Source of himself and his actions; then the void begins to fill, there emerges out of it or there rushes into it all the manifold Truth of the Divine, all the aspects and manifestations and many levels of a dynamic Infinite. At first this experience imposes on the mind and then on all his being an absolute, a fathomless, almost an abysmal peace and silence. If there were not that Source of all things, there could be no universe; all powers, all works and activities would be an illusion, all creation and manifestation would be impossible.

​