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Objective in Detail “Our object (object of Integral Yoga) is to make the spiritual life and its experiences fully active and fully utilizable in the waking state and even in the normal use of the functions. But in the Rajayoga it tends to withdraw into a subliminal plane at the back of our normal experiences instead of descending and possessing our whole existence.” Sri Aurobindo CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-37 “In a certain sense it may be an error to speak of a goal anywhere in a progression which may well be infinite. Still we can conceive of an immediate goal , an ulterior objective beyond our present achievement towards which the soul in man can aspire. There lies before him the possibility of (1) a new birth; (2) there can be an ascent into a higher and wider plane of being and its descent to transform his members. (3) An enlarged and illumined consciousness is possible that shall make of him a liberated spirit and a perfected force — and, if spread beyond the individual, it might even constitute a divine humanity or else a new, a supramental and therefore a superhuman race. It is this (1) new birth (dvija ) that we make our (immediate) aim: (2) a growth into a divine consciousness is the whole meaning of our Yoga, (3) an integral conversion to divinity not only of the soul but of all the parts of our nature.” Sri Aurobindo CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-90 The increasing impulse of all individual life is to know, realise and master its own world and that urge of endless potentialities concealed within everything is an essential feature of the growing self-manifestation of the Divine in cosmic existence. All can serve the Divine, but few can dare to pursue The (Divine) Mother’s unfinished Yoga or Nature’s conscious integral Evolution in its entirety. Among those few who are entirely aware of the whole course of Her Yoga and Evolution, fewer can hold Her Supreme Force or fix the Eternal in time-made things and it is still the fewest to whom She reveals Her Integral and absolute Shakti in its entirety, samagram-mam.⁶ Mother Nature attempts universal Divine Incarnation or progressively manifests God in the human body by the emergence of concealed Consciousness through the diffusion of all Her human vessel but succeeds with the few through concentrated dynamic movement. The success of the few through intensive and swift evolution is the final promise and completest sanction of Nature towards the success of all or the Divinisation extended to the whole of humanity. This is a task left to the last Avatar to realise. The first object of integral Yoga is the Divine union and joy in the heart and Psychic transformation of nature in Ignorance by Purusha’s suffusion into Prakriti and experiencing the first reversal of Consciousness¹¹ through Divine action, liberation, freedom, creation and Ananda ; the second object is the Divine union in many sided world action, free enjoyment of cosmic unity and the Spiritual change of nature; thus, the second reversal of Consciousness¹² of intense joy through union of Ishwara and Ishwari is realised; the third object is Divinisation of Nature through inrush of Para Shakti and third reversal of Consciousness¹³ through fusion of dual power of the Divine, Brahman and Maya , leading the creation towards Supramental transformation and the utilisation of transformed individuality as centre of world transformation; the last object is the movement of Consciousness towards the source of Ananda through fourth reversal of Consciousness¹⁴ of experiencing the Origin of Existence through intense oneness of Sat and Chit . Thus, the complete realisation of Sachchidananda is the highest ascending Spiritual experience of integral Yoga, where the utmost fundamental awareness of identity, mutual inclusion and interpenetration of Consciousness would be inherent and all would be a direct action of Consciousness in Being itself, identical, intimate, intrinsically self-aware and all-aware. To repose in this last and highest summit of Omniscient and Omnipotent Bliss world permanently is in the end the supreme self-perfection of our evolving human Consciousness. This highest Consciousness is dynamised and the descending Spiritual experience of integral Yoga is the transformation of Subconscient and Inconscient Sheaths and the movement of the world towards conscious emergence of full Sachchidananda in its own creation. An Integral Yogi or the Divine’s dearest Child is at once a child, not doing any sadhana , but it is done for him due to his entire reliance on The Mother and the sadhaka of integral Yoga pursuing sadhana through renunciation, effort, concentration, consecration and askesis and he can serve as a link in between the Supreme Mother Consciousness and the earth consciousness. He is outwardly a mere man, Nara , and inwardly Divine, Narayana, shall preoccupy himself in the entire effort to reveal God in humanity, Nara-Narayana . One Integral Yogi is discerned from another from the degree of opening towards the Divine Shakti and capacity to receive, canalise, hold and assimilate it in his ‘universalised subtle body’⁷ for earth and men. The Mother is at once the Supreme Mother, the Chit Shakti, the Creatrix of the universe, not doing any sadhana and the Sadhaka of integral Yoga pursuing Her Sadhana in the body and a Mediatrix in between Sri Aurobindo’s sadhana and the World, and She draws heaven seeking and world shunning liberated Souls earthward to reconcile Self and Nature, fills in them the equal Divine Presence and builds in the abysm of Hell a road to Heaven. Sri Aurobindo is at once the Supreme Purusha, the Purushottama, carrying within Him the immutable, the unmanifest Divine, the Akshara Purusha and the mutable, the manifest Divine, the Kshara Purusha , and an Intermediary, the Guru , linking the disciples with the three Purushas and fusing Himself with the Supreme Prakriti , The Mother , for the highest action and delight of the Divine Lila. The Mother is the living representative of Consciousness by whose movement one will arrive at Sri Aurobindo , the living representative of the Being, the Supreme Self. Their relation is the union between Sat and Chit, leading the creation to Supreme Ananda. Supramental Consciousness, Vijnana , the Real-Idea inherent in all cosmic force and existence, is the fourth name²⁴ of the Divine activated through Their supreme relation linking the Sachchidananda to lower triple creation of Mind, Life and Body; if dynamised sufficiently, then the lower creation retains its lost Divinity and the Divine Life becomes practicable. The Divine attracts all human beings with four lures that of (1) earthly enjoyments, (2) the attraction towards Heaven beyond and its joy, (3) attraction towards ineffable self-existent play of Ananda , here in this earth, ihaiva²⁶ and (4) attraction of His Supreme reality of Oneness for which He created four Centres though not strictly divided, are that of the World, the Ascetics’ Fortress, the Divine Centre or the Ashram and the Virgin Mother’s Fortress. They allow us to take into account the total nature of man and recognise the legitimate and right place of this quadruple attraction through which reconciliation of Life and Spirit are worked out from birth to birth and man stands here with his highest aspiration at these four critical turning points to discover an evolutionary synthesis with Spiritual insight, largeness of view, symmetry and completeness of human life. These are the four stairs of Soul’s great adventure through which The Mother’s Shapeless Infinite Consciousness lures the Eternal to descend into the arms of Time and dynamises four kinds of progressive movements that of (1) moderate Spirituality through path of purification of intellect and emotion with the assistance of Science and Religion, (2) exclusive Spirituality through the path of indifference and renunciation with the aid of traditional schools of Yoga or later Vedantic Saints, (3) comprehensive Spirituality through the path of consecration and loss of ego of the Ancient Vedantic Seers and (4) Spirituality of cellular change and physical Immortality through the path of annulment of Self and Nature to find the Supreme transforming Light of the Veda, virgin Mother’s Yoga or Savitri’s Yoga. The Fortress of Moderate Spirituality: A mere man can elevate himself to the status of God either by slow evolution through long succession of rebirths or swift and concentrated evolution in this life, though the former effort always precedes the latter. It is safe for man to begin his conscious God-ward journey through a moderate path which is neither too extreme, dangerous and strenuous effort of Titans, nor that of the Gods with their superhuman thought and power, nor that of animals and birds who are driven by unthinking will, nor the senseless whirl of the inanimate Matter. So, he can experience progress, change, expansion and enlargement by the developmental urge discovered by the Mother-nature, either through Religion which is an unconscious Yoga of Nature through devotion or through Science which is an unconscious Yoga of Nature through intellect or through entry into spiritual thought and preparation, which is identified as integral Yoga for beginners. All noble and high Religions aim at transfiguration of son of men into son of God and are having three fundamental ways or three essential affirmations of approaching life that can be adopted with regard to our existence: Firstly, the belief in the immortality, the eternal persistence of the individual human Spirit apart from the body, that is our Supra-terrestrial or other worldly existence or an occult link through which all things are ordered, governed and harmonised in their fundamental relations and process; secondly, it is in Heavens beyond that we must seek our entire Divine fulfilment, and their other assertion of the kingdom of God or the kingdom of the perfect upon Earth must be put aside as delusion, or in any case, the Absolute, the Parabrahman is the origin and goal of all existence, that is our Supracosmic view of things; thirdly, an emphasis on the development of the Ethical and Spiritual being as the means of ascension and therefore the one proper business of this brief life in this world of Matter; during this temporary stay from birth to death we have to study the laws of becoming and take the best advantage of them to realise the dynamism and potentiality in us, that is our cosmic and Terrestrial existence. It is practically impossible for man taken as a race to guide his life permanently or wholly by the leading motive of any of these three mental attitudes towards life to the exclusion of the other two claims on his nature. Thus, one of the above three does not harmonise with the other two and by this disharmony, humanity is thrown into great perplexities of contradiction and hence subjects itself to doubt and denial. Integral Yoga rejects the above three limiting conclusions or unsatisfactory solutions that, after liberating Mind, Life and Soul within one, must turn from the unconquerable Material principle and from the intractable and unregenerate Earth to find elsewhere his Divine substance. In integral Yoga, a fourth fundamental theory is developed which is integration, synthesis and reconciliation of the above three Religious factors, which recognise the other states of Matter or an ascending series of the Divine gradations of substance and through acceptance of this higher law, the luminous and puissant material transfiguration is possible. In this last category would fall the view of Integral Spiritual Evolution where Supracosmic is accepted as source and support, the Supra-terrestrial or otherworldly for a condition and connecting link and the cosmic and Terrestrial for its field and circumstance, and with human Life and Mind for its nodus, turning point and dynamic mould into which Divine existence can be poured in for a higher and even highest perfection. Infinite Being, Sat, loses itself in the appearance of non-being, Nihil and emerges in the appearance of a finite Soul, the Psychic Being in whom manifestation is felt as a necessity; Infinite Consciousness, Chit, loses itself in the appearance of a vast indeterminate Inconscience and emerges in the appearance of a superficial limited consciousness of Mind with inherent will, aim, endeavour and purpose; Infinite self-sustaining Force, Tapas, loses itself in the appearance of a chaos of atoms and emerges in the appearance of the insecure balance of a world of Vital with inherent life urge, tendency, desire and seeking; Infinite Delight, Ananda , loses itself in the appearance of an insensible Matter with inherent secret energy and emerges in the appearance of a discordant rhythm of varied pain, pleasure and neutral feeling of indifference in the Physical; Infinite Unity of Sachchidananda loses itself in the appearance of a chaos of multiplicity of Mind, Life and Body and emerges in a discord of forces and beings which seek to recover unity by possessing, dissolving and devouring each other. An integral Moderate Soul Seeker is made aware of transforming the apparent negations of Mind, Life and Body through the practice of Yoga. The three negations of Mind are identified as limitation of Consciousness (which gave birth to Pleasure, Pain and Indifference), Ignorance and Dualities are transformed in integral Yoga into Infinite Consciousness, Integral Knowledge and Oneness; of Life are identified as Death, Desire or Hunger and Incapacity are transformed in integral Yoga into Immortality, satisfied Delight and Omnipotence and of Physical are Ignorance, Inertia and Division, transformed in integral Yoga into Omniscience, Divine peace and tranquility and Unity. Every thought and impulse of an integral moderate is reminded in the language of the Kena Upanishad , “That is the Divine Brahman and not this which men here cherish and adore.”²⁰ He can enlarge his experience on Existence and its Source through entry into a practice followed by the experience of an all-inclusive Integral Divine and can ignite in him the spirit of Oneness through the triple Vedantic formula of atmani atmanam atmana of living for the Divine, by the Divine and in the Divine. His partial self-giving to the Divine shall culminate in integral self-giving through the method as proposed by the Mother, "Some give their soul to the Divine, some their life, some offer their work, some their money, a few consecrate all of themselves and all they have—soul, life, work, wealth; these are the true children of God. Others give nothing. These, whatever their position, power and riches are for the Divine purpose valueless cyphers.”²² The Ascetics’ Fortress: The Ascetics’ Fortress is born by following the later Vedantic doctrine of Illusionism and Asceticism, an impatience of heart and mind which seeks vehemently the One and denies the Many, receives the breath of the Spirit’s height and recoils from the secret of the Matter’s depth; it belittles the individual and the cosmos for the sole escape into Transcendence and neglects the building of the link principles that bridges the lower mental Maya with higher Supramental Maya . It is the revolt of Spirit against Matter and has dominated the Indian mind for last two thousand years and all have lived in the shadow of the three great Refusals, of the chain of Work, Karma , of bondage to the principle of rebirth, Punarjanma and of cosmic Illusion of life, Maya . Renunciation is identified as the sole path of Knowledge and the ultimate end of life for all is the garb of the Ascetic. A traditional Ascetic is an exclusive Spiritual seeker who returns by inaction and silence to the Spirit’s immobile liberty and ecstasy of Divine embrace, because of his revolt and disgust with the animal grossness and mud of Matter, impatient of the purposeless stir, trouble and self-imprisoned narrowness of Life and tired out by the goalless running and downward vision of the Mind. He enters into a trance through meditation, contemplation, and silencing of the mind and awakens in him the Presence of the One. But for him, the Matter still sleeps empty of its Lord. He saves his Spirit while the body is lost and mute; lives still with Death, ancient Ignorance and Inconscient base and he lives in a Void or devastating simplicity of nullification, that is his fate. But for an integral Ascetic, the opposition of Spiritual life and mundane ordinary life is reconciled by discovering a relation between dynamic Spirit and static Matter. A traditional Ascetic is exclusively attached to his own individual salvation and regards other Souls as figments of his mind and considers their salvation unimportant. He regards his personal escape from bondage as real and does not bother for other brother Souls who remain behind in bondage. He remains indifferent towards that cry that rises from the labouring humanity. The limitation of a divided ego builds his individualised personality. These limitations are corrected in integral Yoga, though personal salvation remains the primary necessity, pivot and keynote of definitive Divine action and human fulfilment. An individual salvation is not sufficient for an integral Ascetic; for he must break through all separative boundaries, the narrower intensity of a limited individual fulfilment, ‘selfishness that cares not what becomes of those left behind us’¹⁸ and opens to a cosmic Consciousness and spreads himself in the World-nature. ‘With weakness and selfishness, however spiritual in their guise or trend, he can have no dealings; a divine strength and courage and a divine compassion and helpfulness are the very stuff of that which he would be, they are that very nature of the Divine which he would take upon himself as a robe of spiritual light and beauty.’¹⁸ Integral Yoga transforms the three Ascetic Negations into three Integral Affirmations- that of chain of Karma is transformed into liberated worker and preservation of individual activities is no longer inconsistent with attainment of Cosmic and Transcendent consciousness; rebirth is not meant to encircle in the net of desire and ultimate escape into cessation of birth but it is accepted as means of Spiritual evolution and the emergence of the Divine in all creatures must be the high-uplifted goal and the later Vedantic mental Maya of Illusion which creates false mental forms and appearances of this apparent world-existence with its relation to pure, infinite, indivisible, immutable Existence, which is the God’s play with division, darkness, limitation, desire, strife and suffering has first to be embraced and accepted as an inverse creative movement of the Divine Consciousness, then to be overcome and transformed by ancient Vedantic Supramental Maya, a forward creative Consciousness of the Eternal, which is the God’s play of the infinities of existence, the splendours of Knowledge, the glories of force mastered and the ecstasies of Love illimitable of all comprehending and all containing Consciousness; thus, the undivine mental Maya of adverse formative power of a lower knowledge and deluding magic of the Rakshasa become the all-knowledge and the order truth of the dynamic Being and true magic of the Divine Magician or the Illusion-Power of the Divine Knowledge in the world which creates appearances, negations, denial, pessimism and incapacity, works out in lower nature the Truth Power of Knowledge leading the creation towards complete affirmation of Supramental Divine Maya of conscious Knowledge. A renunciation of life and release into the Spirit of the Ascetic creates an exaggeration of the impulse of liberation, more complete and more final, but more perilous in its effects on the individuals and collectivities, which destroyed the symmetry and disturbed the balance of ancient Indian Vedic culture and cut it into two irreconcilable movements of life, the normal life of interests and desires with ethical and religious colouring and supernormal inner life by rejection of surface living. An Integral Ascetic retains the old Aryan synthesis of reconciling human perfection through normal and natural mental development with his Spiritual evolution. The full liberation can come by liberation of all the parts of Soul and Nature, universal detachment from all things, universal awareness of Knowledge and aesthesis and yet opens him to the touch of Spiritual Sympathy, Compassion and Oneness. In integral Yoga, the Ascetic or the later Vedantic formula of attaining the Spirit’s height, “One without the second,” ekamevadvitiyam (The Chandogya Upanishad-6.2.1 ) is sufficiently linked with the other complementary ancient Vedantic formula of comprehensiveness and illumining the Matter’s depth, “all this is the Brahman ,” Sarvam Khalu Idam Brahman . (The Chandogya Upanishad-3.14.1) Thus, the ascent of Consciousness to explore the height of the Spirit is followed by the descent of Consciousness to penetrate the depth of Matter, which is realised. The Divine Centre: A Divine Centre grows by following the ancient Vedantic doctrine, of calm, wise and clear teachings of most ancient sages who relied for everything not on intellect and conscience but on Intuition, Vision and Spiritual experience and for them, this world is primarily a formation of Consciousness and secondarily a material formation of things and objects. They had ‘the knowledge of the three times, trikaladristi, — held of old to be a supreme sign of the seer and the Rishi ,’¹⁵ the patience and strength to find and know the secret of Existence and clarity and humility to admit the limitation of existing knowledge. The steady eye of the ancient wisdom promises to know God equally in the One and the Many, in the Spirit and the Matter, a patient search of Truth everywhere without distinction. A Divine Centre is born either by the intensification of the evolution of a liberated ascetic Soul or consecrated Mystic with Gnostic Consciousness decides to live in the group as collective Soul-power of the Truth–consciousness, to intensify double purpose of the liberation of Soul through Divine union or ascension of Consciousness and transformation of Nature through prolongation of Divine union or through the descent of Divine Shakti. The three stages through which the Divine Centre extends its influence on the surrounding are that firstly, the Centre would act initially as a Fortress, a secured atmosphere for a long period with minimising its contact and commerce with the outside world which takes up all life and action and offer them to the Divine till sufficient amount of Yoga Shakti is accumulated and self mastery over lower nature, swarat, individual perfection and an inner completeness of being followed by mastery over surrounding atmosphere, samrat , are realised by one or some of its central representatives; secondly it would go through the period to build a Spiritual wall and admits through its gates only such activities as consent to undergo the law of Spiritual transformation and thus, a door towards outside world is made open, the problems of a part of the surrounding world are accepted, pacified and nullified in the subtle body of its perfected vessels leading towards a complete universality and oneness with all life upon earth; during this intermediate divine change there can be a beginning of this fundamental ecstasy of being translated into a manifold beauty, love and delight; thirdly, the subtle and causal sheaths are more and more illumined, densified and perfected through the all embracing Divine contact, the Spirit within becomes powerful enough to receive and transform more and more world influence, admit within its borders as much of human life as is turned towards Spirituality and entire range of life’s more visible activities, resulting in a new world, a change in the total life of humanity or, at least, a new perfected collective life in the earth nature where none could escape the law of Ecstasy. This Divine Centre is not a religious association. Religious institutions do not insist on the whole change of human nature by entire self-giving and have no vision of curing the root problem and origin of human malady. They enter into ever-ambiguous compromises with the lower nature and short-lived enjoyments; establish an imperfect customary mental control over physical and vital desires and instincts; seek to net the human heart with pietistic emotionalism and sensationalism, annexing vital nature into the fanaticism, homicidal fury; draw the physical in man towards hollow ceremony and lifeless rituals. The Divine Centre is not a monastery, mattha,²⁵ or ascetic retreat of world shunning and heaven-seeking discipline of exclusive quest of the Divine by entire rejection of world existence and its mundane theory, hunger for personal salvation and freedom from rebirth; here this existence is fully embraced and welcomed as the body and rhythm of the Brahman and full of Presence of the Divine; isolated individual liberation is extended to others, “the sum-total of all souls”²¹ as our Divine self-interest and rebirth is not considered as the Soul’s circling in the net of desire, but an opportunity of Spiritual evolution and through it the mind, life and body repeat the lesson of manifesting their involved Divinity till the recovery of their complete and undivided Divine Life. It is not a democratic institution where change is enforced through external manipulation of phenomena, here nothing is decided by collective opinion by activating the highest ideology of mind, nor an autocratic institution with aggrandisement of individual ego, nor a political institution; here, all associations of political, religious, social, family, mental, vital and physical are abandoned. One must arrive at the conscious unity and truly succeed in living selflessly for others not by mere sympathetic love and knowledge of mental understanding but by an inner Spiritual force of Love and Compassion and our being does embrace the being of others as our own Self in universalised Consciousness. The individual Soul must exist in relation to the World, Nature and fellow Beings with an absolute and inalienable conscious Power, Freedom and Self-knowledge. The Consciousness of the Infinite creates all possible relations between the Many and the One and confirms all other personal relations to give them their fullness, significance and entire Delight. All his relation with the Divine is culminated by his comprehensive Self-knowledge which is the truth of the Infinite in Being, the Infinite in Consciousness, the Infinite in Delight repossessed as his own Self and Reality of which the finite is only a mask and an instrument for various expression; it insists on the emergence of Infinite Consciousness in the true individual Soul, a conscious power of the Eternal, who always recovers the truth of himself by self-realisation, always exists by the law of unity and always capable of mutuality and harmony. The individual conscious Soul would know the intention, scope and inevitable result of every action and would not crave or struggle but put forth an assured force self-limited to the immediate object in view. This Divine Centre is not a business institution where everything is centred around wealth and profit; here money or wealth is accepted as a subordinate, secondary, dispensable outer support of primary indispensable inner development; it is Nature’s vital force turned into one of the greatest powers of action and manifestation. Like air, water, fire and ether it cannot be under anybody’s personal possession, nor can there be any inheritor of it, nor can we put a ban on money power with the spirit of an ascetic shrinking, nor can it be misappropriated for enslaving self-indulgence in our gratification but utilised for the true, beautiful, harmonious Divinised vital and physical existence and must be put at the service of the Divine for the highest benefit of humanity. Here, everything is centred around the three Divine faculties of Will, Knowledge and Love represented by the Psychic Being in the heart and the Spiritual Being above the head. All actions, both of the inner and outer life, are done here as an offering to manifest the Divine’s Will through its Soul Centre or Central Representative, who is recognised as the purest vessel and fit channel to receive the Divine’s instruction, vision and command, adesh . The individual Soul Centre is only the upholder of His Shakti, recipient, channel, reflector of Her Power, trustee of Her thought, plan and action, executor of Her Will in eternal Time and luminously participates in Her Love, Light, Beauty, Joy and Force. The Virgin Mother’s Fortress: The Virgins’ Fortress is the ultimate dream of the Divine Mother who is symbolised in the Veda as the high-bred golden maiden, Savitri, present always in earth’s atmosphere since the beginning of the creation, intends to build Her extreme Spiritual and Supramental superstructure and fulfills the deficiencies of all the previous three institutions through virgin Influence ²³ which draws one irresistibly towards the Divine only. Thus, she endlessly unfolds the endless Truth and Timeless mystery. The first objective of a more concentrated Divine Centre or Virgin Mother’s Fortress is to safeguard the Time’s virginity ¹ from invasion of various world forces and universal Subconscient and wide open its door for marriage with Eternity, Spiritual Being or a captive life wedded her conqueror, the Supreme; thus, Time is divinised to become Eternity’s transparent robe and climbs back into undying Self through a golden ladder. A true virgin is she or he whose mind, life, body and soul are pure enough to be united with the Divine and guards Truth’s diamond throne. Its second objective is to bridge the gulf between the dream truth and earth fact through the annulment of manifold void and oblivion in Consciousness that can keep the passage open for the virgin Fire ² or Psychic being. Its third objective is to build a similar bridge between the subtle physical and the Superconscient Bliss sheath through movement of Consciousness that seems to recoil from reaching to its Source, the virgin Sun ³ or Supramental being. And the last objective is that Earth could have been made equal and the peer of Heaven and Heaven’s joy could have stabilized here, had Earth been made pure and virgin. If the dream of the Virgins’ Fortress can extend towards the realisation of a virgin Earth ,⁴ then through the earth’s virgin form the Formless will shine with all its resplendent glory and establish the empire of the Soul and lift Earth to the neighbourhood with the Heaven. Thus, a marriage between the virgin Earth and virgin Heaven annexes Divinity to a mortal scheme and all discords are healed that Time’s torn heart has made and Immortality captures Time and carries ahead the Life. Thus, earth life can be transformed into an ecstatic playfield of ‘virgin bridals of the dawn.’⁵ OM TAT SAT References: 1: "Creating in a young and virgin Time." Savitri-38, 2: "An ocean of untrembling virgin fire;" Savitri-16, 3: "And high dependencies of her virgin sun," Savitri-124, 4: "Heaven’s joys might have been earth’s if earth were pure." Savitri-123, 5: Savitri-401, 6: " The Blessed Lord said: Hear, O Partha, how by practising Yoga with a mind attached to me and with me as ashraya (the whole basis, lodgement, point of resort of the conscious being and action) thou shalt know me without any remainder of doubt, integrally. " The Gita-7.1, 7: “Among the thousands of men one here and there strives after perfection, siddhi, and of those who strive and attain to perfection one here and there knows Me Integrally, in all principles of my existence... Such integral Yogis with universalised subtle body, Vasudeva Sarvamiti, and the knowledge of the Purushottama or Supramental Consciousness are very rare.” The Gita-7.3, 19, 11: “Wisdom transcendent touched his (King’s) quivering heart:” Savitri-33, 12: “A mystic Form that could contain the worlds, Yet make one human breast its passionate shrine, Drew him (King Aswapati) out of his seeking loneliness Into the magnitudes of God's embrace.” Savitri-81, 13: “The One (Supreme Mother) keeps in his heart (of King Aswapati) and knows alone.” Savitri-52, 14: “The All-Blissful sat unknown within the heart (of King Aswapati)” Savitri-43, 15: CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-886, 16: “I would myself say that no man can be spiritually complete if he cannot live ascetically or follow a life as bare as the barest anchorites” Sri Aurobindo/SABCL-26/On Himself/130, 17: “The Vedanta is the God’s lamp to lead thee out of this night of bondage and egoism; but when the light of Veda has dawned in thy soul, then even that divine lamp thou needest not, for now thou canst walk freely and surely in a high and eternal sunlight.” CWSA-12/Essays Human and Divine-p-472, 18: CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-327, 19: “A mass of new material is flowing into us; we have not only to assimilate the influences of the great theistic religions of India and of the world and a recovered sense of the meaning of Buddhism , but to take full account of the potent though limited revelations of modern knowledge and seeking; and, beyond that, the remote and dateless past which seemed to be dead is returning upon us with an effulgence of many luminous secrets long lost to the consciousness of mankind but now breaking out again from behind the veil.” CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-10, 20: “That is the divine Brahman and not this which men here adore.” CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p- 72, "Know That for the Brahman and not this which men cherish here."CWSA-21/The Life Divine/p-403, 21: CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p- 270, 22: The Mother/ TMCW-1/Prayers and Meditations-1, 23: "The virgin forms through which the Formless shines," Savitri-327, 24: "In the ancient Indian system there is only one triune supernal, Sachchidananda . Or if you speak of the upper hemisphere as the supernal, there are three, Sat plane, Chit plane and Ananda plane. The Supermind could be added as a fourth , as it draws upon the other three and belongs to the upper hemisphere. The Indian systems did not distinguish between two quite different powers and levels of consciousness, one which we can call Over-mind and the other the true Supermind or Divine Gnosis. That is the reason why they got confused about Maya (Overmind- Force or Vidya-Avidya) and took it for the supreme creative power . In so stopping short at what was still a half-light they lost the secret of transformation — even though the Vaishnava and Tantra Yogas groped to find it again and were sometimes on the verge of success. For the rest, this, I think, has been the stumbling-block of all attempts at the discovery of the dynamic divine Truth; I know of none that has not imagined, as soon as it felt the Overmind lustres descending, that this was the true illumination, the gnosis, — with the result that they either stopped short there and could get no farther, or else concluded that this too was only Maya or Lila and that the one thing to do was to get beyond it into some immovable and inactive Silence of the Supreme." CWSA-28/Letters on Yoga-I/p-83 25: “The peculiarity of this (integral) Yoga is that until there is siddhi above, the foundation does not become perfect. Those who have been following my course (integral Yoga) had kept many of the old samskaras ; some of them have dropped away, but others still remain. There was the samskara of Sannyasa, even the wish to create an Arabinda Matha (Sri Aurobindo Monastery ). Now the intellect has recognised that Sannyasa is not what is wanted, but the stamp of the old idea has not yet been effaced from prana (breath, life energy). So there was next this talk of remaining in the midst of the world, as a man of worldly activities and yet a man of renunciation. The necessity of renouncing desire has been understood, but harmony of renunciation of desire with enjoyment of Ananda has not been rightly seized by the mind.” Sri Aurobindo/The Mother’s Agenda-3/271, "There is another point. You sent a message about an “Aurobindo Math ” which seemed to show you had caught the contagion which rages in Bengal. You must understand that my mission is not to create maths , ascetics and Sannyasis; but to call back the souls of the strong to the Lila of Krishna & Kali . That is my teaching, as you can see from the Review, and my name must never be connected with monastic forms or the monastic ideal. Every ascetic movement since the time of Buddha has left India weaker and for a very obvious reason. Renunciation of life is one thing, to make life itself, national, individual, world-life greater & more divine is another. You cannot enforce one ideal on the country without weakening the other. You cannot take away the best souls from life & yet leave life stronger & greater. Renunciation of ego, acceptance of God in life is the Yoga I teach, — no other renunciation. " CWSA-36/Autobiographical Notes/p-222, "When the Unity has been well founded, the static half of our work is done, but the active half remains. It is then that in the One we must see the Master and His Power, — Krishna and Kali as I name them using the terms of our Indian religions; the Power occupying the whole of myself and my nature which becomes Kali and ceases to be anything else , the Master using, directing, enjoying the Power to his ends, not mine, with that which I call myself only as a centre of his universal existence and responding to its workings as a soul to the Soul, taking upon itself his image until there is nothing left but Krishna and Kali. This is the stage I have reached in spite of all setbacks and recoils, imperfectly indeed in the secureness and intensity of the state, but well enough in the general type. When that has been done, then we may hope to found securely the play in us of his divine Knowledge governing the action of his divine Power. The rest is the full opening up of the different planes of his world-play and the subjection of Matter and the body and the material world to the law of the higher heavens of the Truth." CWSA-36/Autobiographical Notes/p-290, 26: "Even here on earth, iheiva , they have conquered the creation whose mind is established in equality; the equal Brahman is faultless, therefore they live in the Brahman."The Gita-5.19 Download this Web Page in PDF format: THE MUNDANE PERFECTION “Never forget that, as much outside as in the Ashram, if you want to lead a happy life, you must be the master of your lower nature and control your desires and vital impulses; otherwise there is no end to the miseries and the troubles.” The Mother The Mother’s Centenary Works/Vol-14/p-255 MODERATE SPIRITUALITY “The average human being even now is in his inward existence as crude and undeveloped as was the bygone primitive man in his outward life. But as soon as we go deep within ourselves, — and Yoga means a plunge into all the multiple profundities of the soul, —we find ourselves subjectively, as man in his growth has found himself objectively, surrounded by a whole complex world which we have to know and to conquer.” Sri Aurobindo CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-75 THE ASCETICS' FORTRESS "A sannyasi who makes demands is not sincere. To be sincere a sannyasi must be perfectly satisfied with what is given to him and ask for nothing more. In all that happens to him, he must see the Divine’s Grace and be at once happy and grateful for it... Moreover, he who wants to do “intensive sadhana” must be able to isolate himself from his surroundings and, if necessary, to sit in deep meditation even on a battlefield in the midst of the roaring guns." The Mother TMCW-14/Words of the Mother-II/p-47 "These three elements, (1) a union with the supreme Divine, (2) unity with the universal Self, and (3) a supramental life action from this transcendent origin and through this universality, but still with the individual as the soul-channel and natural instrument, constitute the essence of the integral divine perfection of the human being." Sri Aurobindo CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-622 “If you look at yourself carefully, you will see that one always carries in oneself the opposite of the virtue one has to realise (I use “virtue” in its widest and highest sense). You have a special aim, a special mission, a special realisation which is your very own, each one individually, and you carry in yourself all the obstacles necessary to make your realisation perfect. Always you will see that within you the shadow and the light are equal: you have an ability, you have also the negation of this ability. But if you discover a very black hole, a thick shadow, be sure there is somewhere in you a great light. It is up to you to know how to use the one to realise the other .” The Mother TMCW/Vol-4/Questions and Answers-1950-1951/p-118 All aim of Integral Yoga or the entire aim of this Yoga is the All Purification, sarva suddhi, All Perfection, sarva siddhi, All Liberation, sarva mukti and All Delight, sarva bhukti as envisaged and further univesalised, the highest object of synthetic teachings of Tantra followed by regarding the spirit in man as a universal being capable of Oneness with the Divine in all Souls and all Nature and this extended view is given its entire practical consequence in spiritualizing humanity; integral physical and mental perfection and experience of Samadhi , as highest envisaged result of Hatha and Raja Yoga ; full dynamisation of All Will, sarva iccha, All Knowledge, sarva Jnana, and All Love, sarva prema as envisaged in Integral Karma, Jnana and Bhakti Yoga . It accepts the Spiritual experience of oneness with the Brahman, Brahmanirvana, liberation of Nature, mukti , Cosmic Consciousness, Vasudevah sarvam iti of the immediate aim of the Gita by rejecting its ultimate aim of freedom from rebirth, punarjanma na vidyate . The aim of integral Yoga is something more complex and less exclusive – less exclusively positive of the highest condition of the soul, less exclusively negative of its Divine radiations. It has to make the Spiritual life and its experiences of Samadhi , fully active and fully utilizable in the waking state and even in the normal use of the functions. To possess Him and be possessed by Him, in ourselves and in all planes, states of Consciousness and things, to enjoy Him in all passivity and activity, of unity and of difference, of peace and of turmoil is the entire definition of the aim of Integral Yoga. (Ref: The Synthesis of Yoga/p-674, 54, 320, 37, 63 )

The Ashram in Brief “That is exactly what Sri Aurobindo wanted and attempted; he used to say, “If I can find a hundred people, it will be enough for my purpose.” The Mother The Mother's Agenda 16.09.1964 "If there is an opposition between the spiritual life and that of the world, it is that gulf which he (a Sadhaka of integral Yoga) is here to bridge, that opposition which he is here to change into a harmony. If the world is ruled by the flesh and the devil, all the more reason that the children of Immortality should be here to conquer it for God and the Spirit. If life is an insanity, then there are so many million souls to whom there must be brought the light of divine reason; if a dream, yet is it real within itself to so many dreamers who must be brought either to dream nobler dreams or to awaken; or if a lie, then the truth has to be given to the deluded." Sri Aurobindo CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-327-328, Sri Aurobindo’s requirements of one hundred perfect instruments are they who live in cosmic Consciousness, by whose pressure all objective life will become part of the subjective existence and they realise, perceive, feel, see and hear only the Divine in every way, in all forms and all happenings of the world are taking place within their vast universal Self. Their outer surface Nature is a concentration and radiation of silence, calm, stillness and peace. ‘To grow in the spirit is the greatest help one can give to others, for then something flows out naturally to those around that helps them.’¹²⁵ The ‘special work’¹²⁶ of integral Yoga is ‘of bringing down the higher consciousness with all its effect for the earth’¹²⁶ without ‘too eager to help others,’¹²⁵ without ‘accepting the nature of man and the world as it is’¹²⁶ and by standing ‘apart from the rest of the world.’¹²⁶ Integral Yoga proposes that Universalised Consciousness is the outcome of a long movement of Consciousness between Psychic and Spiritual planes replacing the earlier slow evolution of consciousness between three modes of Nature, Gunas and in this vast Consciousness (1) equality becomes perfect and consecration becomes complete and absolute, or this surrender of whole being ‘has to be accomplished slowly and with difficulty by the being itself before the supramental transformation can become at all possible;’¹⁴⁸ ‘A perfect equality not only of the self, but in the nature’¹⁴⁷ is also the sign of universalized consciousness; (2) exclusive concentration of Mind is replaced with the faculty of Multiple-concentrations; thus one can pursue triple Yoga of Karma, Jnana and Bhakti simultaneously and ceaselessly, (3) transformation of human Nature into Divine Nature is practicable, as in this Consciousness the World is inseparable from the individual; with the activation of cosmic Self, Savitri had this experience, 'all changed within her and without.'¹⁵⁰ (4) His time and space experience is completely different from ordinary man subjected to three gunas, the latter lives in the present succession of moments oblivious of his past and future and his little habitation of space is separated from the world and the former lives in the triple time of past, present and future and the whole world lives within his cosmic Self; his universalised Spirit can move backward towards the past of this birth and past births and illumine the obscure corners of his Subconscient and Inconscient sheaths and his Spirit can travel forward in time to call down all future possiblities to present moment; (5) outer wandering and movement reduces and is replaced by the more and more inner wandering of Soul which shows interest only in eternal things and 'In every shrine it cries for the clasp of God'¹⁴⁹; (6) in this Cosmic Consciousness, Matter is real to Spirit, Spirit is real to Matter and Matter is reconciled with Spirit in order to resolve all world problem; (7) in addition to his own individual suffering, he is ready to bear a part of earth's heavy burden and suffering and ‘only the self-ruler (swarat ) and master man (samrat ) can help, in leading the human race forward spiritually towards this consummation and towards some image of a greater divine truth in their personal and communal existence. He becomes a light and power of the Truth to which he has climbed and a means for others’ ascension’¹⁵¹ and thus, (8) a fitness has arrived for ascension into still higher Supramental Consciousness. The immediate preoccupation of these few instruments of Truth who are concerned with Integral Yoga will be the increase and accumulation of Soul Force through the fourfold Divine union that of Jivatma’s union with Paramatma, Jivatma’s union with Para-prakriti, Paramatma’s union with Para-prakriti and Para-prakriti’s union with Apara-prakriti . This accumulation or multiplication of Soul Power to transform the lower Nature is identified by Sri Aurobindo as 'the utmost importance in the Yoga of self-perfection.'¹⁵⁴ Their action on the world will be largely inner subjective action dictated by the power of triple-time of the Spirit and they will accumulate Spiritual energy to such an extent that the Transcendent Divine forces of oceanic proportion¹⁴⁵ will invade the earth’s dark Inconscient rock from above, within and below. The danger of the Inconscient Sheath swallowing the whole earth to its dark breast perpetually stands as an evolutionary threat and barrier. Earth is to be saved from life’s immense desire and destructive Forces from their ‘bleeding roots’¹²⁸ through the invasion of strong affirmative Spiritual forces from below the feet, within the Psychic being, around the universal Self and above the head, (“It (dynamic Spirit) is within, below, without, above.” Savitri-98 ) and to keep this action active and its growing intensity is the responsibility of few fit channels of human instruments. A Spiritual fence of protection is to be built, which at present is confined to a few privileged Souls, who will admit ‘through its gates only such activities as consent to undergo the law of the spiritual transformation.’¹³⁸ This protective Spiritual wall ("An inner wall of silence could be built," Savitri-187) will extend itself to cover the whole of humanity. Or a ‘golden tower’⁶⁵ of protection is built in the subtle world with the help of ‘flame child’⁶⁵ who are prepared Souls, ready to become channels of a vast inflow of Supreme Ananda . Integral Yoga aims at a comprehensive solution or all-time panacea of all the problems of existence through complete immunisation of disease, decay, sorrow, dissidence and strife and the process of inoculation begins at an individual and collective level, depending on the degree of restoration of harmony and opening towards a comprehensive Concentration. A safe passage in the subtle world is to be made in order to help living and dead Souls⁹⁸ so that they can easily travel different planes of Consciousness for their Souls' training and arrive at the Psychic plane and cosmic Self for their accumulation of Spiritual energy and rebirth, respectively. At the same time, the Yoga Shakti must drive out all tamasic forces to eliminate poverty, illiteracy, and malnutrition of the body from the whole of the race and drive out all rajasic forces to eliminate all discordant human action of violence, destructive aggression, tyranny of beast wrath, hatred, injurious brutality, corruption, bottomless ingratitude that disfigure earth nature and enjoyments of temporal nature. Those destined Souls for the Divine work will protect and guard the earth in three stages. First, they will have a ‘vision and knowledge of the triple time’¹²² or partial/complete foreknowledge of immediate future doom and holocaust of individual, state, national and universal proportion ‘by going back from the surface physical mind to the psychic and spiritual consciousness;’¹²² secondly, they keep the concentration alive to reduce and minimise the quantum of such catastrophe through the intervention of the overhead Divine Grace or vibration of Harmony of which they are conscious channel; thirdly, they will maintain the effort to completely annul the root of all such destruction and vibration of disorder through intervention and invasion of Supreme Harmony and Light to the yet untouched dark province of Subconscient and Inconscient Sheaths. A conscious movement of Consciousness between the Psychic and Spiritual planes can liberate¹⁴⁴ distant unknown living and dead Souls from the subjugation of their imperfection and untransformed Nature and, thus, the purpose of invisible self-expansion through self-concentration or the liberated Souls liberating others is accomplished. The steps through which they will immediately control the world event through the evolution of preliminary Psychic and Spiritual faculties are: - 1) The perception, thoughts, feelings and happenings of world events which are entirely guided by forces of Ignorance, are gathered directly through vision without the aid of any external means of communication like telephone, newspaper and internet, etc, or ‘of establishing a direct communication between mind and mind without the aid of the physical organs and the limitations they impose on our consciousness.’¹²³ ‘The psychical consciousness, as it develops, makes us aware of the great mass of thoughts, feelings, suggestions, will impacts, and influences of all kinds that we are receiving from others or sending to others or imbibing from and throwing into the general mind atmosphere around us.’¹²⁴ The outer aid is useful only to verify the degree of accuracy of the direct inner vision. 2) Harmonised vibrations of thoughts and feelings or Spiritual idea force formulating itself in the world are communicated to them (individual and group) by secret unspoken words, transmission of will-power, and Spiritual Influence which are already tuned with the Divine-Will. Or as the Psychic being ‘evolves in power, precision and clearness, we are able to trace these to their source or feel immediately their origin and transit to us and direct consciously and with an intelligent will our own messages.’¹²⁴ Or the ‘spiritual inner consciousness has then to deal with these (dark and obscure) influences in such a way that, as soon as they approach or enter (the Spiritual realm), they become either obliterated and without result or transformed by their very entry into its own mode and substance.’¹²⁹ 3) Silent compulsion on them to act according to these communicated ideas, power of the heart and dynamic life forces. ‘There is necessarily a commerce here between disparate influences: the inner spiritual influence is met by quite opposite influences strong in their control of the present world-order; the new spiritual consciousness has to bear the shock of the dominant and established unspiritualised powers of the Ignorance.’¹²⁹ As a result, the single and multiple results are experienced through the power of the Self and the development of essential and multiple Concentrations. The Nature of living of a Spiritual man will be ‘an accomplished inner existence whose light and power will take perfect body in the outer life.’¹³⁰ 4) They will be egoless transparent instruments to determine the events, actions and results of action of objective life throughout the world by the pure intervention of their subjective subtle-physical existence and silent Will-Power of multiple Concentrations. Their ‘environmental being must be so steeped in the spiritual light and spiritual substance that nothing (no world influence) can enter into it without undergoing this transformation…’¹²⁹ So, through frequent/constant increase of invasion of vibration of Order and permeation of a superior Harmony into the Inconscient, Subconscient and material life, the world would move towards the process of transformation. ‘Supreme Love eliminates all problems, even the problem of creation...But the world is not ready yet, it may take a few thousand years.’⁹⁵ If a Sadhak attains Cosmic Consciousness, then he must pursue sadhana in secrecy and silence . His presence will be intolerable for the common man because of undulation of his life between this particular double nature, ‘Universal he is all,--transcendent, none.’¹⁴¹ When he lives in universal Self, he becomes very intimate with all; when he lives in transcendent Consciousness, he goes beyond all these relations or ‘A distance severed her from those most close.’¹⁴¹ This double undulation is unbearable to the common man’s righteousness. His outward appearance will be marked with Truth-Power or the ‘sound of infinity’¹⁴² in his voice and his eyes will shine with the ‘light of things beyond.’¹⁴² To recapitulate, this highlights the difficulty for a person of common understanding to accept or tolerate someone living in the simultaneous reality of immanent universality and transcendent isolation after achieving Cosmic Consciousness. Thus, Sri Aurobindo’s vision of creating ‘a new world, a new humanity, a new society expressing and embodying the new consciousness’⁹⁴ is in the process of realisation by reconciliation of Spirit with Matter and by harmonisation of the body with the Soul. This is a task offered to the most conscious individual through realisation of the Soul as the centre of the World, an extension of his cosmic existence and its objective manifestation in the form of a Divine Centre or the emergence of a formative and affirmative Ashram living. OM TAT SAT References are available in the Manuscript ‘The Divine Bliss ’ (page 452). SUBCONSCIENT TRANSFORMATION “This (descent of Divine Force) has repeatedly been my experience lately, with a vision and a conviction, the conviction of an experience: the two vibrations (Truth vibration of Spirit and falsehood vibration of Matter) are like this (concomitant gesture indicating a superimposition and infiltration), all the time – all the time, all the time…May be the sense of wonder comes when the quantity that has infiltrated is large enough to be perceptible. ( “A golden fire came in and burned Night’s heart;" Savitri-601 ) But I have an impression – a very acute impression – that this phenomenon is going on all the time, all the time, everywhere, in a minuscule, infinitesimal way (gesture of a twinkling infiltration), and that in certain circumstances or conditions that are visible (visible to this vision: it's a sort of luminous swelling (of brain)– I can't explain), then, the mass of infiltration is sufficient to give the impression of a miracle. But otherwise, it's something going on all the time, all the time, all the time, continuously, ("A mystic slow transfiguration works.” Savitri-632, or "Its faint infiltration drilled the blind deaf mass;" Savitri-601) in the world (same twinkling gesture), like an infinitesimal amount of Falsehood replaced by Light ... Falsehood replaced by Light ... constantly…And this Vibration (which I feel and see) gives the feeling of a fire. ("Threatened (falsehood) with this faint beam of wandering Truth" Savitri-585, or "A conscious Vast fill the old dumb brute Space." Savitri-100 replacing the earlier experience "No wandering ray of Heaven can enter there." Savitri-226) That's probably what the Vedic Rishis translated as the "Flame" – in the human consciousness, in man, in Matter. They always spoke of a "Flame." It is indeed a vibration with the intensity of a higher fire… The body even felt several times, when the Work was very concentrated or condensed, that it is the equivalent of a fever.” The Mother The Mother’s Agenda-25th March-1964 The Mother’s Consciousness is that which rests on the One and acts in the All, transcends All and denies none, sees all but lives for its transcendent task, becomes All and yet transcends the mystic whole, All-ruler and is ruled by none, transcends the Light and the Darkness and yet one with the Absolute, Eternal and All-knowing it suffers mortal birth and death and in Subconscient and Inconscient wait Her largest unfinished task. The Mother's above ceaseless dynamic Divine union and Subconscient transformation experience are identified as the Supreme Word, Mahavakya , of The Mother's Agenda and to be a participant in this universal Yoga is identified as an exceptional privilege. The whole of humanity is now going through this Subconscient transformation unconsciously and a few prepared vessels are going through this large/slow, constant permeation consciously. Sri Aurobindo proposes that this "descent of the supramental which is not known to any religion are the sole things which will be the foundation of the work of the future.” (CWSA-35/Letters on Himself and the Ashram/p-701) When they (Savitri and Satyavan ) enter Spiritual union in the Inconscient Self and Subconscient Self, the Supramental Divine Force emerges from below the feet and rushes towards the physical, vital and mental sheaths. As the feet are the farthest domain from the complexity of the mind, whose centre is the head, and the head obstructs the free flow of higher Divine forces, so this passage is recognised as a more important means of transformation action and this hidden light is ‘a sea of the secret Superconscience.’ ⁶⁵ Thus “The bliss which sleeps in things” ³⁹ shall strive to wake and ‘A soul shall wake in the Inconscient’s house.’ ⁶⁶ Thus awakening of Supramentalised Inconscient Self is identified as the ‘last transcendent power’ ⁸² and a field of ‘last and mightiest transformation’ ⁸³ and thus a ‘grand solution’ ⁸⁴ is uncovered where ‘the heights of mortal effort end.’ ⁸⁴ The Mother recounts, “for the first time the Supramental light entered directly into my body, without passing through the inner beings. It entered through the feet and it climbed up and up. And as it climbed, the fever also climbed because the body was not accustomed to this intensity. As all this light neared the head, I thought I would burst and that the experience would have to be stopped…” ⁹⁵ Thus, one no longer depends on Supramntal intervention from above for the transformation action of surface mind, life and body ("A divine force shall flow through tissue and cell" Savitri-710) but it will also take place more vigorously from within the Supramentalised Psychic heart centre (His vast Truth wake within and know and see...Then mortal nature change to the divine.” Savitri-476) and most vigorously from below the feet by the opening of Subconscient Self ("Whose priceless value could have saved the world.” Savitri-42) and Inconscient Self ("A grand solution closed the long impasse" Savitri-89). In Savitri , Sri Aurobindo has hinted about 'single protection,' 'double protection' and 'multiple protection' of the Divine, about which we should be aware. Single protection is extended through the Psychic being: "Only were safe who kept God in their hearts" (Savitri-211). The Divine tells Savitri that most human beings live like brutes and do not discover the infinite Light above the head and immense Light below the feet or man, in general, is ‘A swimmer lost between two leaping seas.’⁶⁹ Or ‘like an infant spirit unaware…. of two consenting worlds.’⁷² The man of Ignorance does not enjoy the double protection of the Divine through non-opening of the above double doors or 'Protecting no more a dual eternity.' (Savitri-82) And those who realise Psychic Being in the heart, they feel in Savitri's language, ‘Our life is entrenched between two rivers of Light.’⁷⁰ If a Sadhak realises the universalisation of Psychic and Spiritual Beings, then ‘His gates to the world were swept with seas of light’⁷¹ from both ends or he is assured a vast security or multiple protection by the Spiritual experience, 'Heaven’s leaning down to embrace from all sides earth.' (Savitri-716) Through knowledge and awareness of the relation between static Matter and dynamic Spirit or the knowledge of the Wheel of Works , he will be able to reconcile Matter with Spirit. OM TAT SAT References are available in the Manuscript ‘The Divine Bliss ’ (page 291, 34-35). Download this WEB PAGE as a PDF file: ASHRAM IN DETAIL "The power to do nothing, which is quite different from indolence, incapacity or aversion to action and attachment to inaction, is a great power and a great mastery; the power to rest absolutely from action is as necessary for the Jnanayogin as the power to cease absolutely from thought, as the power to remain indefinitely in sheer solitude and silence and as the power of immovable calm. Whoever is not willing to embrace these states is not yet fit for the path that leads towards the highest knowledge; whoever is unable to draw towards them, is as yet unfit for its acquisition. " Sri Aurobindo CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-347 READ MORE >> THE HIERARCHIES OF ASHRAM LIVING "To open oneself to the supracosmic Divine is an essential condition of this integral perfection; to unite oneself with the universal Divine is another essential condition. Here the Yoga of self-perfection coincides with the Yogas of knowledge, works and devotion; for it is impossible to change the human nature into the divine or to make it an instrument of the divine knowledge, will and joy of existence, unless there is a union with the supreme Being, Consciousness and Bliss and a unity with its universal Self in all things and beings. A wholly separative possession of the divine nature by the human individual, as distinct from a self-withdrawn absorption in it, is not possible. " Sri Aurobindo CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-622 READ MORE >> THE WORLD HINDU WISDOM MEET-2014 “A perfect self-expression of the spirit is the object of our terrestrial existence. This cannot be achieved if we have not grown conscious of the supreme Reality; for it is only by the touch of the Absolute that we can arrive at our own absolute. But neither can it be done to the exclusion of the cosmic Reality: we must become universal , for without an opening into universality the individual remains incomplete.” Sri Aurobindo CWSA-22/The Life Divine/p-706 READ MORE >> If an individual is having direct contact with the Divine and if he utilises this Dynamic Divine union initially for individual transformation of Nature and finally for world transformation, then a Divine Centre or Ashram is born. Integral Yoga foresees a hierarchy of a collective body with one liberated Soul at its centre, known as the ‘Divine Centre ,’ or collective group with more than one liberated Gnostic Soul or ‘spread beyond the individual’ known as the ‘Gnostic Centre ’ or a Centre without Soul Centre/Central Representative, known as ‘priestless shrine’ where all are liberated souls, identified as ‘virgin bridals of the dawn’ symbolising the purity of collective living or ‘citizens of that mother State’ symbolising selfless Spiritual fosterers or ‘nude god-children’ who ‘steeped existence in their youth of soul.’ The action of the Divine Mother in a rare ‘priestless shrin e’ beyond the Divine Centre will be the pursuit of the Divine in isolation, alone, without the aid of collectivity, without the law of collective living, without the help of fixed Shastra and the flow of the Transcendent and Universal Divine Love will be further reinforced through realisation of ‘seven-fold Personal Divine Love.’ (Ref: The Synthesis of Yoga-58, 90, Savitri-368, 401, 262, 126, 127) Before meeting Paramatma Satyavan, Paraprakriti Savitri came across twelve types of liberated Souls, who were having Divine realisations in twelve specialised fields. They were satisfied with their partial Spiritual achievements and were considered unfit to hold Savitri’s comprehensive Divine Love, and hence Virgins’ Fortress could not be dreamed with these liberated Souls. These Master Souls were fit to build Ascetics’ Fortress, Divine Centre and Gnostic Centre. To hold Savitri’s comprehensive Divine Love or ‘hold God’s birth,’ a Soul is ‘made ready through a thousand years.’ Before discovering a Virgins’ Fortress without, one has to discover a Virgins’ fortress within, of meeting ground of Paramatma and Paraprakriti in the heart centre or ‘The incarnate dual Power shall open God’s door, Eternal supermind touch earthly Time. ' The Soul's Fortress can be invaded and conquered by the Supreme Lord from above who is symbolised here as 'unexpected king.' In a Virgins' Fortress, a Sadhak or Savitri within will live alone, unclaimed, untouched, king of itself within and possessed and invaded by the flood of Divine Force from above the head and below the feet or 'A captive Life wedded her conqueror.' (Refer Savitri-382, 398, 705, 87, 125) If an individual has a thorough knowledge of the movement of ascending and descending Consciousness, then 'even if he were shut up in a prison and saw nobody and never moved out, still would he do the work,' of bridging the gulf between this material world and future Supramental world. 'He does not need to be recognised, he need have no outward power in order to be able to establish this conscious connection.' His action can begin from his heart centre which is universalised as the Divine Centre of the world and can culminate with the perfection of the human race. This is a task offered to the last Avatar to accomplish. The task of successive Instruments and Emanations is to illumine partly the Subconscient and Inconscient Sheaths. (Refer: TMCW-3/Questions and Answers-1929 to 1931/p-179) "So people who want to lead a special life or have a special organization to have (Spiritual) experiences, that's quite silly – the greatest possible diversity of experiences is at your disposal every minute, every minute. Only you must learn not to have a mental ambition for "great" things." "...whatever the circumstances may be, even apparently the worst, if you are in the true attitude and have the true consciousness, it doesn’t matter in the least for your inner progress,..." (Ref: The Mother’s Agenda/20.11.1963, The Mother's Agenda/10.12.1969)

The Descent (This experience of S.A. Maa Krishna took place while conducting a group meditation in the school premises on 12.11.2000.) Q:- What happened during yesterday evening's meditation ? Yesterday, it was a rare experience in meditation. It took all the children to Brahman consciousness. You can ask what happened to them individually. When I started first meditation I saw that all were in a disturbed state. Exactly at 6.00 p.m. the meditation started (from 6.00 p.m. to 6.30 p.m.). I saw during meditation that nothing happened... So in a subtle manner, I tried to see with everybody where from disharmony was generating and saw three boys P, A & S were creating the disharmony. Yes, during the meditation, I didn’t undergo a deep state. Even though the meditation was not deep but there was also no irritation, because in the whole being a deep Peace was descending. It was peace, not the force, just after sitting in meditation, peace descended, peace entered into the entire body, leading the whole body to a calm state. Even though there was no deep meditation, it did not matter much due to the prevailing peace. Peace was descending, but force was not descending. Peace was different from force, as force will press you…. force is such a thing that those who have experienced it can only feel. As there was peace, there was Ananda also. Then, after meditation with my eyes closed, I was just concentrating on Sri Aurobindo, and in that time I saw immediately in front of my eye a Virata Rupa (a huge shape) of Sri Aurobindo . I saw Sri Aurobindo exactly in the shape of Viswa Rupa of the Gita , (Vision of the World-Spirit), only Sri Aurobindo , in a huge shape, he was sitting. He was sitting in a chair as he usually sits, but the sitting shape has turned huge. Huge, huge…. There was nothing except Him…. Nothing except Him. He was covering the whole world. He had covered the entire earth. His shape was so Virata that nothing was seen without Him. Q:- Did you see the vision with your eyes opened or closed ? Eyes were closed. Then I was seeing blue color, not blue color, but sky blue color light, along with Sri Aurobindo . Q:- Was the blue light in his body ? No, I was seeing Sri Aurobindo and that light. Then I wanted to recite a mantra .. After seeing this Virata Rupa, lip was dumb founded. After some time, I was able to utter O-o-o-m, while uttering this O-o-o-M, I saw a Virata OM (huge shape of OM) replacing Sri Aurobindo. And Sri Aurobindo’s shape had vanished. Sri Aurobindo’s shape turned into a huge OM. Q:- Which mantra were you chanting? Only OM , only OM , with the chanting OM, everything turned to OM . Q:- Were there multiple OM in every object ? No, only one OM, OM was covering everything, the earth. It was a rare and new experience. Only one OM covering everything, Virata OM . OM was radiating towards everywhere. Q:- Which color ? Golden and blue. Q:- Blue is in the background ? Yes, same as I saw Sri Aurobindo . Q:- It means OM was written in Golden color ? It was radiating in golden color, it was reddish gold, red color was also visible. It was radiating towards every side, which I can see even now! Then I tried to repeat a mantra, but it was not possible. This OM chanting persisted for some time. Then I was able to repeat this mantra: ‘Om Sri Aurobindam charanau saranam prapadye Sri Mata Sri Aurobindaya Namah. ’ It was difficult to come back to the rhythm of the mantra , but after uttering the word Om Sri Aurobindam Charanau ….torrents of Force rushed in a continuous manner, it was such a torrent that it was a rainfall. It was like a rain of Light and Force, I was feeling the force was entering each cell of the body. Not through the head, it was through the whole body force was entering, the whole body. While uttering this mantra three to four times, I observed P, who was reciting it without harmony, so I directed him to go out of the room. Then the chanting continued. Then I saw A was creating a disturbance, so I directed him to go out of the room. It felt as if I had gone completely to another world along with the boys. Nobody was having any existence there, only the Divine was there. That force and that cosmic….that transcendental force was felt completely. After the descent of force, I observed jnana (divine knowledge) was descending continuously. Then I saw near the head of each child the OM. Q:- You saw OM near everybody’s head? Yes. After the descent of the Divine force, Jnana (knowledge) descended. When Knowledge descended, I started speaking. What I spoke that time I don’t remember now. Then I saw that near everybody’s head, the OM has occupied a place. That big OM slowly entered into everybody in the shape of small OM in the form of jnana . Then I repeated this mantra . “Om Aham Brahmasmi ” (which means I am Brahman. ) It was a new experience. I told the children that you all are Brahman, we all have come from the Supreme and one day we will return again to the Supreme. Without him, we do not have any existence. So we all should merge in Him, without That there is no other way. That is why we are all Brahman. We are THAT only and nothing else. Q:- When you repeated ‘Om Aham Brahmasmi’ what happened ? At that time, another boy, S created a disturbance. So I directed S to go out of the room. Then, while merged in this mantra, I again saw another boy Sg. created a disturbance through chanting the mantra. But I saw force is entering the body of Sg., so I indicated him to keep quiet. Then I witnessed another rare experience. The OM residing over the forehead of each participant, and thereafter it started moving slowly to their heart centre. When the OM reached the heart centre, I saw it extinguished. Q:- Was the OM entering through head ? No, the Om was entering through the forehead with each individual and vanished near the heart centre. From the head the knowledge descended and it took everybody towards the realisation of the Brahman . Up to this, I observed that the force was still descending into the atmosphere. After sitting for ten minutes, I saw them one by one coming to me to do pranam. While receiving that pranam I felt my non-existence and only the Divine is there and I am that Brahman. Brahman is merging into the Brahman . So I witnessed the Brahman doing pranam to Brahman . It was 7.30 p.m. and it seemed one and half hours had passed very quickly. This experience gave me a lot of strength. I am surrendering this experience at the Feet of The Mother and Sri Aurobindo. OM TAT SAT The Descent OM SRI AUROBINDO MAA 2.11.2000 Dear Maa Krishna , Thank you very much for your loving letter of 27th October enclosing the first (and significant) issue of “The Descent” . The Mother says, “IT IS MOST USEFUL AND IMPRESSIVE AND WILL CONTINUALLY GROW IN STRENGTH.” PROFOUND GRACE AND BLESSINGS. Truly, every sincere effort is a Victory and every sustained effort is a magnificent Victory. A friend sent me a Diwali Card with a very nice message. It was: “SUCCESS IS A JOURNEY NOT A DESTINATION!” You know the way, you know the journey and your trust and love for The Mother & Sri Aurobindo is true and sustained. This is truly a victory. More and more devoted persons will benefit from ‘The Descent’ as the years go by. Time is really of little consequence as The Mother controls Time within Her power. All will be achieved for all is Her wonderful and delightful Dream. We fly in Her Sky of Supramental Light and swim with power & determination in Her Oceans of ecstasy. From within our hearts, She Transforms and in our silenced mind Sri Aurobindo vibrates the truth of Sat Chit Ananda . Please convey my love to Bikram (and to Prasant & other boys). My love to you. At Their Feet, Signed Anurakta. N.B. One may note that the Mother, our primary Source, had deputed Sri K. Anurakta as our Spiritual Fosterer and secondary Source. Regarding the secondary Source, Sri Aurobindo wrote, "This will be to him (a Sadhaka) his exceeding good fortune if he can meet one who has realised or is becoming That which he seeks for and can by opening to it in this vessel of its manifestation himself realise it." (CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-130) Sri K. Anurakta had insisted us, "Since The Mother has given you a special work directly for the Divine, so the Ashram should be sealed against all the disturbing human presence and adverse circumstances." He further advised to keep the Ashram atmosphere captive from world influence. When we informed Sri K. Anurakta that Sri Matriniketan Ashram aspires to become a Virgins' Fortress; hearing this, without any reply, he entered a deep trance. 1. First Issue of The Descent, October 2000 2. Ashram INAUGURAL ISSUE, February 2003 3. THE DESCENT, A Wearisome Book, Feb-2011 4. THE DESCENT APRIL- 2024 5. THE DESCENT AUGUST 2024 6. THE DESCENT-November-2024 7. THE DESCENT-FEB- 2025 8. THE DESCENT-APRIL- 2025 9. THE DESCENT-AUGUST- 2025 10. THE DESCENT SEPTEMBER 2025 11. THE DESCENT NOVEMBER 2025 12. THE DESCENT NEW YEAR 2026 Utility of The Descent Integral Yoga enlarges and modifies this feeling that untrained intellect is insufficient to understand the overhead truth and proposes²⁶ that the mystery of written truth can be easily understood if one’s Psychic being and Spiritual being are open or if buddhi , intelligent will, is sufficiently purified. If one will read or study Shastras or Their Teachings with the help of intellect or the three gunas, then that exercise followed by restlessness and fatigue, is identified as tamaso-sattwic action. Or if the written truths are not ‘constantly renewed, relived, their stuff of permanent truth constantly reshaped and developed in the inner thought and spiritual experience of a developing humanity,’³⁵ then they become ‘monuments of the past, but have no actual force or vital impulse for the future.’³⁵ If he will translate¹⁰ them into mother tongue or restate¹¹ them through formulation of trained mind and purified intellect, then that exercise ‘becomes a science and art of spiritual living’³⁶ and it is identified as sincere sattwic effort in order to understand²⁶ written truth and to trace a path of his own Sadhana ²⁸ respectively. Or a largescale entry into Their Teachings can give a brief Supramental touch and this touch can be prolonged by the development and densification of the subtle body. If he will receive overhead Spiritual support for above two actions after (prolonged) concentration, contemplation and meditation, then that exercise is identified as a Divine action from higher planes of Consciousness. In the passage of time, he waits till sattwic mind’s construction and its constant element of falsity, half-light, half-truth, twilight and limitations are replaced by the higher and wider creative knowledge from within and above. His persistent effort to reveal immortal Words,¹² arrive at their perfection, when all his wisdom is a dictation, command and adesh from the Supreme alone. Thus, he prevents the written truth from becoming a dead convention and customised Religion and by constant restatement of the written truth, he retraces a Spiritual path of his own. A Sadhaka of integral Yoga becomes accountable in his thought and action to his Self, World and the Divine by opening, holding and noting down the new overhead Wisdom, overhead Will and overhead Love, which will further assist in tracing a Spiritual path of his own. The Gita proposes that tapasya through body or physical education and tapasya through mental self-control or mental education must accompany tapasya through speech and restatement of the written truth.¹⁵⁰ It further clarifies that ‘As much use as there is in a well with water in flood on every side, so much is there in all the Vedas for the Brahmin who has the knowledge.’¹²⁷ ‘All Shastra is the outcome of past experience and a help to future experience. It is an aid and a partial guide.’¹²⁶ All the written Truths are ‘a means, not an end’¹⁴⁰ and an incomplete account¹³⁹ of an eternal unfolding of endless Truth. They are like seed¹⁴⁶ of the banyan tree and a temporary scaffold;¹⁰ ¹ if practiced through long years of concentration, contemplation and meditation, then this exercise can end in a mighty manifestation of a banyan tree and a permanent emergence of invisible ‘double ladder’¹⁰ ¹ linking the gulf between Sachchidananda plane and the Inconscient plane. In order to prevent the written truth from becoming old, obsolete, past untouched monument¹⁰ ⁰ and dead convention or from becoming customised Religion,¹⁰⁰ it must be constantly restated through the overhead descent of Supreme knowledge. OM TAT SAT References are taken from the book 'The Mother's Manifestation' whose manuscript can be downloaded here (References of first para: page-26, References of second para: page-266 ) “Night of April 12-13, 1962. Suddenly in the night I woke up with the full awareness of what we could call the Yoga of the world. The Supreme Love was manifesting through big pulsations, and each pulsation was bringing the world further in its manifestation. It was the formidable pulsations of the eternal, stupendous Love, only Love: each pulsation of the Love was carrying the universe further in its manifestation… All the results of the Falsehood had disappeared: Death was an illusion, Sickness was an illusion, Ignorance was an illusion--- something that had no reality, no existence… Only Love, and Love, and Love, and Love –immense, formidable, stupendous, carrying everything.” The Mother The Mother's Agenda/Vol-3/p-131 “At once, emerging, it (Psychic being) is ready and eager to break all the old ties and imperfect emotional activities and replace them by a greater spiritual Truth of love and oneness. It may still admit the human forms and movements, but on condition that they are turned towards the One alone. It accepts only the ties that are helpful, the heart’s and mind’s reverence for the Guru , the union of the God-seekers, a spiritual compassion for this ignorant human and animal world and its peoples, the joy and happiness and satisfaction of beauty that comes from the perception of the Divine everywhere. It plunges the nature inward towards its meeting with the immanent Divine in the heart’s secret centre and, while that call is there, no reproach of egoism, no mere outward summons of altruism or duty or philanthropy or service will deceive or divert it from its sacred longing and its obedience to the attraction of the Divinity within it. It (Psychic Being) lifts the being towards a transcendent Ecstasy and is ready to shed all the downward pull of the world from its wings in its uprising to reach the One Highest; but it calls down also this transcendent Love and Beatitude to deliver and transform this world of hatred and strife and division and darkness and jarring Ignorance. It opens to a universal Divine Love, a vast compassion, an intense and immense will for the good of all, for the embrace of the World-Mother enveloping or gathering to her her children, the divine Passion that has plunged into the night for the redemption of the world from the universal Inconscience. It is not attracted or misled by mental imitations or any vital misuse of these great deep-seated Truths of existence; it exposes them with its detecting search-ray and calls down the entire truth of divine Love to heal these malformations, to deliver mental, vital, physical love from their insufficiencies or their perversions and reveal to them their true abounding share of the intimacy and the oneness, the ascending ecstasy and the descending rapture.” Sri Aurobindo CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-156-157

The Research in Detail “The probability of error is no reason for refusing to attempt discovery, and subjective discovery must be pursued by a subjective method of inquiry, observation and verification ; research into the supraphysical must evolve, accept and test an appropriate means and methods other than those by which one examines the constituents of physical objects and the processes of Energy in material Nature.” Sri Aurobindo CWSA-22/ The Life Divine/p-676 "What Science does for our knowledge of the material world, replacing first appearances and uses by the hidden truths and as yet occult powers of its great natural forces and in our own minds beliefs and opinions by verified experience and a profounder understanding, Yoga does for the higher planes and worlds and possibilities of our being which are aimed at by the religions. Therefore all this mass of graded experience existing behind closed doors to which the consciousness of man may find, if it wills, the key, falls within the province of a comprehensive Yoga of knowledge, which need not be confined to the seeking after the Absolute alone or the knowledge of the Divine in itself or of the Divine only in its isolated relations with the individual human soul. It is true that the consciousness of the Absolute is the highest reach of the Yoga of knowledge and that the possession of the Divine is its first, greatest and most ardent object and that to neglect it for an inferior knowledge (inferior knowledge is the limited revelations of modern knowledge and seeking) is to afflict our Yoga with inferiority or even frivolity and to miss or fall away from its characteristic object; but, the Divine in itself being known, the Yoga of knowledge may well embrace also the knowledge of the Divine in its relations with ourselves and the world on the different planes of our existence. To rise to the pure Self being steadfastly held to as the summit of our subjective self-uplifting, we may from that height possess our lower selves even to the physical and the workings of Nature which belong to them ." Sri Aurobindo CWSA-23/ The Synthesis of Yoga/p-460-461 The Research in Detail Integral Yoga identifies that all Science and Modern Knowledge afflict life with inferiority. This inferiority is linked with the man's problem of lower Nature and unconscious of ceaseless sattwic sacrifice. In order to overcome this limitation, all the schools of modern Knowledge and utilitarian Science must be reconciled with the highest Spiritual experience through ceaseless sattwic sacrifice, nitya yajna and 'the possession of the Divine is its first, greatest and most ardent object and that to neglect it for an inferior knowledge is to afflict our' (CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-460-461) Life and Yoga with inferiority.. The healthiness of an individual is dependent on the full utilisation of his faculty of exclusive concentration, a developmental faculty of the mind to unravel the secret of Nature through its forward movement and secret of Self through its reverse movement, leading to the seeming fullness of his objective and subjective life. The present popular term of objective research of separative knowledge by indirect contact has to take a subjective turn of knowledge by direct contact and knowledge by identity through the development of higher faculties other than mind and in that sense the research is our best immediate evolutionary accelerator. The relations between the surface impulsion and the subliminal urge have not been properly studied and to know our inner being is the first step of subjective research towards the unfolding of real self-knowledge. The healthiness of all institution is dependent on its expansion of research activity and constant renovation of its existing system and set up. The same exercise can only make up the deficiencies of the Divine Centre, but for its fulfilment and completeness it asks endless unfolding of truth through greater and finer effort of fresh inflow of Spiritual experiences and Wisdom to all the realms of life which will lead towards a constantly increasing perfection or a growth towards an enduring felicity. So the surface mental activity of inquiry, investigation and experimental research of any institution can turn inward towards Subliminal and Spiritual end in a Spiritual institution and of this intellectual formulation and its seeking of truth for its own sake without any interference of illegitimate and preconceived ideas can be utilised as a difficult and rare passage to Spiritual experiences. The objective truth of existence and superficial knowledge of the world are fragmentarily studied which is the preoccupation of mental research. But there are truths beyond which can be developed by the cultivation of our subjective being and enlargement of its powers and we are irresistibly impelled to seek the knowledge of the higher states of Consciousness. The knowledge of our surface mentality brings us always to all that mysterious and hidden depth of subjective existence below and behind of which our surface consciousness is only the margin of immense continents which lie behind unexplored. To explore them must be the work of higher knowledge other than that of mental research. All Religions are forms and fragments descended from the one eternal Religion, Sanatana Dharma or all Religion would be true as developments that converge on one eternal Religion; all philosophies of divergent views would be valid each in its own field as different aspects of a single Reality; all Sciences with their diversified exclusive quests must be drawn irresistibly to realise their completeness by merging with Supraphysical Science. Integral Yoga proposes that the greatest unity of all Science, all Religion, all Philosophy, and all Tradition are possible through a most conscious individual when he is perfectly capable of every kind of Spiritual experience, embraces the whole universes in his cosmic Consciousness and possesses the highest Integral Knowledge. And he calls down the ultimate Divine Truth to elevate the things and creatures to their highest, profoundest and the widest Divine manifestation. So if we aim at the research of Supraphysical Science, like all other research its main objective will be to conquer the World, the Nature and the Self for the Divine and for His sake only. It will follow the norm of Integral Yoga that its basis of action will be all that are the best, profoundest and completest in the past and present and proceed ahead towards a large future accomplishment. The theory of complete Research is pursued through the synthesis of Research which is something other than the mental Research. It will take full account of the human developments in successive human births and bodies through evolution of faculties higher than mind and intellect. It has identified four stations of research that are (1) Psycho-physical Scienc e with main inspiration from the root knowledge of Hathayoga and Tantrayoga , (2) Psychic Science with main inspiration from Rajayoga and Bhakti Yoga , (3) Spiritual Science with main inspiration from Integral Karma, Jnana and Bhakti Yoga and (4) Supramental Science with main inspiration from Yoga of Self-perfection and Yoga of Cosmic Consciousness. These have been partly explored in the Veda and the Upanishad and the Gita. Our object is not to develop the results arrived at by these ancient Shastras , but to uncover some of their principal conclusions which are considered best previous foundation in resolving the problem of the Divine Life. And these old treasures are recognised as our initial capital that can most advantageously proceed to accumulate the largest gains in our new commerce with the ever-changeless and ever-changing Infinite. It is true that the methodical research to glimpse the exceptional, abnormal or supernormal faculties of Supraphysical realities in its preliminary state are still imperfect, crude and defective. To testify the Supraphysical facts beyond the domain of material organisation of consciousness their testimony has to be controlled, scrutinized and arranged and their fields, laws and processes are to be rightly translated, truly related and effectively determined. When we open the wall between the outer mind and inner consciousness, the laws and processes of Supraphysical Science are rightly studied, the means will be automatically found and directly seize the subtle faculties, energies and potentialities. Their universal rhythm, grand lines of formations, self-existent laws, mighty energies and luminous means of knowledge will open the enormous vistas of the future. A time has come where mind must discover and fully develop Intuition and all the great ranges of Consciousness which will liberate the free flow of Wisdom and Truth from beyond. Importance is given to depend and wait for intuitive action, which is activated by the passive silence of the Witness Spirit; it compels all things to travel in Ignorance and division towards a yet unrealised Divine goal of unity. Subsequently intuition enters the Supramental range which has the capacity to prevent all destruction, heals all disease, transform all opposition into mutual help, is supremely positive, harmonious and creative and provides the opportunity of largest development in the shortest path and heals the gulf between the World, Self and God and perfects the creation. All action, small or big is undertaken through imperative complete knowledge of Supramental vision and revelation to which nothing can stand against it. It is a knowledge of total consciousness fulfilling its own inherent power and substitutes the mind’s wisdom of research. Psycho-physical Science: Integral Yoga can be practiced on other lines than the organised method of Patanjali and it does not recommend highly specialised scientific techniques of psycho-physical science (except simple forms) invented by the old Hathayogins and later developed by Tantriks of India for the beginners because the subtle physical exercises that they had developed are related with opening of six nervous energy centres, which is now closed with most human beings and are having related with the danger of Spiritual fall and as a remedy asks purified vessel and the immediate attention of physical Guru . Integral Yoga gives secondary importance on any outer aid or external physical technique for higher Spiritual action and rather it leans on primary importance of inner aids or psychological means for subjective and objective developments; secondly, the process of psycho-physical Science is laborious, difficult, makes great demand on time and energy and it attains large result but at the cost of an exorbitant price and to very little purpose; thirdly the psycho-physical exercises are utilised for the sake of the individual selfish interest in his increased vitality, prolonged youth, health, longevity and utilisation of its results for the benefit of common life is highly restricted and not thrown into the common sum of the world’s activities; fourthly, its result of gaining an inner and higher life could have been acquired by less laborious methods of Rajayoga and Jnanayoga and lastly, it asks indispensable presence of physical guide to avoid and overcome any danger and disaster that may fall in the life of the beginners. The utility of Psycho-physical Science in integral Yoga is felt after the Spiritual foundation is established and it will organise and harmonise the surface physical and vital nature which are indispensable for higher workings of instruments of the Spirit. In initial importance integral Yoga leans on the Vedantic method of development of Soul and final importance of transformation of Nature through combination of the Vedantic and the Vedic method. The specialised technique of Psycho-physical science is highly desirable and acceptable during the difficult period of transformation of Nature of developed Souls because it removes obstructions created by physical mind (for example through Japa) and vital mind (for example through Pranayama ) towards the journey of higher Psychical and Spiritual experiences. Again, the many-sided perfection related with physical life forces can be pursued through the widely varied techniques of Psycho-physical Science whose highest objective is to merge in trance of various degree that of Dream Self, Sleep Self and final Turiya or absolute trance. The utility of cataleptic trance and absolute trance are the highest outcome of psycho-physical exercise to which an integral Yogi can lean in his ever-extending search of mysteries of existence. These experiences are hinted in Savitri as: “Absorbed in the trance from which no soul returns,” Savitri-384 “When life had stopped its beats, death broke not in; He dared to live when breath and thought were still.” Savitri-74 “There the heart beat no more at body’s touch,” Savitri-31 “And rigid golden statue of motionless trance.” Savitri-474 “The body’s stone stillness and the life’s hushed trance, The breathless might and calm of silent mind;” Savitri-34 OM TAT SAT For exploration of Psychic Science, Spiritual Science and Supramental Science, one can visit the link: https://www.srimatriniketanashram.com/education/the-task-of-integral-education "The gnostic perfection, spiritual in its nature, is to be accomplished here in the body and takes life in the physical world as one of its fields, even though the gnosis opens to us possession of planes and worlds beyond the material universe. The physical body is therefore a basis of action, pratistha, which cannot be despised, neglected or excluded from the spiritual evolution: a perfection of the body as the outer instrument of a complete divine living on earth will be necessarily a part of the gnostic conversion. The change will be effected by bringing in the law of the gnostic Purusha, vijnanamaya purusa, and of that into which it opens, the Anandamaya, into the physical consciousness and its members. Pushed to its highest conclusion this movement brings in a spiritualising and illumination of the whole physical consciousness and a divinising of the law of the body. For behind the gross physical sheath of this materially visible and sensible frame there is subliminally supporting it and discoverable by a finer subtle consciousness a subtle body of the mental being and a spiritual or causal body of the gnostic and bliss soul in which all the perfection of a spiritual embodiment is to be found, a yet unmanifested divine law of the body. Most of the physical siddhis acquired by certain Yogins are brought about by some opening up of the law of the subtle or a calling down of something of the law of the spiritual body. 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 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 ." Sri Aurobindo CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-695

32nd Yoga Sadhana Camp (From 28.07.2025 to 31.07.2025) (Camp begins on 28.07.2025 with an online Spiritual Discourse from 4.00.00 PM to 5.00 PM and Spiritual Flag Hoisting at 6.00 PM) " A mutual giving and receiving is the law of Life without which it cannot for one moment endure, and this fact is the stamp of the divine creative Will on the world it has manifested in its being, the proof that with sacrifice as their eternal companion the Lord of creatures has created all these existences. (The Gita-3.10) The universal law of sacrifice is the sign that the world is of God and belongs to God and that life is his dominion and house of worship and not a field for the self-satisfaction of the independent ego ; not the fulfilment of the ego, — that is only our crude and obscure beginning, — but the discovery of God, the worship and seeking of the Divine and the Infinite through a constantly enlarging sacrifice culminating in a perfect self-giving founded on a perfect self-knowledge, is that to which the experience of life is at last intended to lead .” Sri Aurobindo CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-125-126, Program 04.00 A.M. Rising Bell 05.00 A.M. to 06.00 A.M. Yogasana & Pranayama 06.00 A.M. to 06.15 A.M. Meditation 06.30 A.M. to 8.30 A.M Karma Yoga and Recitation of The Mother book from the Meditation hall 08.30 A.M. to 09.30 A.M. Breakfast 09.30 A.M. to 10.00 A.M. Meditation near Sri Matri Dhyana Mandir 10.30 A.M. to 12.45 P.M. Spiritual discourse on Essays of the Gita 1.00 P.M. to 02.00 P.M. Lunch Break 02.45 P.M. to 04.45 P.M. 29.07.2025 14th Chapter of the Bhagavad Gita (For School Student) 30.07.2025 The Mantra of the Gita and its reconciliation with Savitri and 12th chapter of the Bhagavad Gita 31.07.2025 4th Chapter of Bhagavad Gita 04.00 P.M. to 05.00 P.M. Online Spiritual class in English (a continuation of 28.07.2025 Online class 05.00 P.M. to 06.30 P.M. Plantation near Sri Matri Dhyana Mandir 06.30 P.M. to 07.00 P.M. Meditation near Sri Matri Dhyana Mandir 07.00 P.M. to 08.00 P.M. Dinner 08.15 P.M. to 09.45 P.M. Quiz and Cultural program 10.00 P.M. Silent Prayer near Spiritual Flag & Rest 6.00 AM to 6.PM Akhanda Nama Japa in the Meditation hall. 10.00 PM on 31.07.2025 Camp Fire OM TAT SAT N.B. Discourse Subject (Both off line from 10.30 to 12.10 PM in Odia and online from 4.00 PM to 5.00 PM in English): 28.07.2025: Recapitulation of the whole of the 18 chapter of the Bhagavad Gita and its reconciliation with integral Yoga, 29.07.2025: Brief restatement of the Gita from chapter 1 to 6, 30.07.2025: Brief restatement of the Gita from chapter 7 to 12, 31.07.2025: Brief restatement of the Gita from chapter 13 to 18. Its recording portion is initially available in the study circle link ( https://www.srimatriniketanashram.com/studycircle ) and finally available in the last part of this web page (https://www.srimatriniketanashram.com/education/french-section/the-bhagavad-gita-french ) The Manual for discussion is published below. This is an incomplete exercise intended to concentrate on Essays on the Gita from the original English and translate them into French, in order to learn and understand French and fulfil the Mother's requirement “…but those who want to read me, well, let them learn French, it won’t do them any harm!... French gives a precision to thought like no other language.” (The Mother's Agenda-15.09.1962) In this Yoga Sadhana camp effort has been made to enter the English and Odia versions of Sri Aurobindo's Essays on the Gita and its restatement in The Synthesis of Yoga . Thus, we partly satisfy The Mother's requirement that those who will collaborate in Her work must have thorough knowledge of Sri Aurobindo . Yoga Sadhana c amp is for us Prakriti Yajna, Vedic sacrifice, if rightly, faithfully and sincerely performed, then it will call down a vast quantum of Divine Force, Divine Wisdom and Divine Love. This is the Spirit with which we have started and continued this camp. Publisher's Note This web page is an annexure of the Book 'The Bhagavad Gita and Integral Yoga.' Apart from verifying the Mother’s exclamation related with Essays on the Gita , ‘Oh, what a treasure that is – a gold mine!’²⁶…this book partly fulfills three-tier accountability claimed from an integral Sadhaka ; firstly, in order to satisfy his own Self ‘he has to begin from the law of his present imperfection, to take full account of it and see how it can be converted to the law of a possible perfection;’²² secondly, he is answerable for his Sadhana to the world, which is his greater Self and with whom he is bound with mutual debt; thirdly, he is accountable to the Divine Source from whom he receives Grace and overhead support in abundance. Cette page Web est une annexe du livre «La Bhagavad Gita et le Yoga Intégral» . En plus de vérifier l’exclamation de la Mère dans les Essais sur la Gita : « Oh, quel trésor c’est – une mine d’or ! »²⁶… ce livre remplit en partie la responsabilité à trois niveaux réclamée d’une Sadhaka intégrale ; premièrement, pour satisfaire son propre Soi, « il doit partir de la loi de son imperfection actuelle, en prendre pleinement en compte et voir comment elle peut se convertir à la loi d'une perfection possible »² ² ; deuxièmement, il est responsable pour sa Sadhana envers le monde, qui est son plus grand Soi et avec lequel il est lié par une dette mutuelle ; troisièmement, il est responsable devant la Source Divine dont il reçoit en abondance la Grâce. This book partly fulfills Sri Aurobindo’s directives issued in The Synthesis of Yoga that before beginning integral Yoga (whose objective is to reconcile dynamic Spirit with static Matter) a Sadhaka can retain his ancient Aryan status by long practicing the Vedantic text of the Veda, the Upanishad and the Gita (whose objective is to strengthen Spiritual foundation by union of Jivatma with Paramatma or static Spirit.). In integral Yoga the static Divine union is dynamised. Ce livre répond en partie aux directives de Sri Aurobindo émises dans La Synthèse du Yoga selon lesquelles avant de commencer le Yoga intégral (dont l'objectif est de réconcilier l'Esprit dynamique avec la Matière statique), un Sadhaka peut conserver son statut aryen en pratiquant longtemps le texte védantique du Veda, de l'Upanishad et la Gita (dont l'objectif est de renforcer le fondement spirituel par l'union du Jivatma avec Paramatma ou Esprit statique.). Dans le Yoga intégral, l’union divine statique est dynamisée. Apart from the Gita's Moderate Spiritual Teachings, this book reconciles the Gita's strong Spiritual message with the stronger Spiritual message of Sri Aurobindo’s Essays on the Gita and the strongest Spiritual message of Savitri . Or it has partly reconciled 'Easy the heavens were to build for God' (Savitri-653) with "Earth was his difficult matter, earth the glory" (Savitri-653) and recognized the greatest action of the Divine Mother as "Earth saw my struggle, heaven my victory." (Savitri-639) Sri Aurobindo projected the aim of the Gita as "something absolute, unmitigated, uncompromising, a turn, an attitude that will change the whole poise of the soul." (Essays on the Gita-102-103) Outre les enseignements spirituels modérés de la Gita, ce livre réconcilie le message spirituel fort de la Gita avec le message spirituel plus fort des Essais sur la Gita de Sri Aurobindo et le message spirituel le plus fort de Savitri. Ou bien il a en partie réconcilié « Les cieux devaient construire facilement pour Dieu » (Savitri-653) avec « La terre était sa matière difficile, la terre la gloire » (Savitri-653) et a reconnu la plus grande action de la Mère Divine comme « La Terre a vu mon combat, le ciel ma victoire." (Savitri-639) Sri Aurobindo a défini le but de la Gîtâ comme « quelque chose d'absolu, de sans réserve, d'intransigeant, une orientation, une attitude qui transformera l'équilibre de l'âme. » (Essais sur la Gîtâ-102-103) Here, we have put our sincere effort into extracting gold from Essays on the Gita. Gold is the symbol of Supramental energy and The Mother confirmed categorically that Sri Aurobindo's Spiritual experience at Alipore jail (The Mother’s Agenda-September 26, 1962) and the descent of overhead Truth in the book Essays on the Gita (The Mother’s Agenda/Vol-3/p-355) are not Overmental, but direct experience from the Supramental plane. This also further confirms that an entry into Sri Aurobindo's writings opens the door towards a brief Supramental touch. All eighteen chapters of the Gita are restated here with the objective of extracting Gold from Sri Aurobindo's writings and to discover a passage to this new Consciousness. This ascent of our Consciousness to superior planes and calling down the immaculate treasure of 'supernature's gold' (Savitri-339) to our material life is identified as a special privilege. Savitri book proposes that all can visit 'the secret Supermind’s huge store' (Savitri-187) for a brief period, receive 'A little gift comes from the Immensitudes' (Savitri-237) and discover 'An immeasurable luminous secrecy.' (Savitri-309) This wealth is 'measureless to life its gain of joy.' (Savitri-237) The Gita also identifies that the possession of Supreme Bliss is the highest treasure of life and a seeker of Truth 'must practice this Yoga resolutely without yielding to any discouragement by difficulty or failure (until the release, until the bliss of Nirvana is secured as an eternal possession).” (The Gita-6.23) Nous avons consacré ici nos efforts sincères à extraire l'or des Essais sur la Gîtâ. L'or est le symbole de l'énergie supramentale et la Mère a confirmé catégoriquement que l'expérience spirituelle de Sri Aurobindo à la prison d'Alipore (L'Agenda de la Mère, 26 septembre 1962) et la descente de la Vérité céleste dans le livre Essais sur la Gîtâ (L'Agenda de la Mère, vol. 3, p. 355) ne sont pas surmentales, mais une expérience directe du plan supramental. Cela confirme également qu’une entrée dans les écrits de Sri Aurobindo ouvre la porte à un bref contact supramental. Les dix-huit chapitres de la Gîtâ sont ici réitérés dans le but d'extraire l'or des écrits de Sri Aurobindo et de découvrir un passage vers cette nouvelle Conscience. Cette ascension de notre Conscience vers les plans supérieurs et l'appel du trésor immaculé de « l'or de la surnature » (Savitri, 339) à notre vie matérielle sont considérés comme un privilège particulier. Le livre de Savitri propose que tous puissent visiter « l'immense réserve secrète du Supramental » (Savitri-187) pendant une brève période, recevoir «Un petit cadeau vient des Immensitudes » (Savitri-237) et découvrir « Un secret lumineux incommensurable ». (Savitri-309) Cette richesse est « sans mesure pour la vie, son gain de joie ». (Savitri-237) La Gita identifie également que la possession de la Félicité Suprême est le plus grand trésor de la vie et qu'un chercheur de Vérité « doit pratiquer ce Yoga résolument sans céder au découragement par la difficulté ou l'échec (jusqu'à la libération, jusqu'à ce que la félicité du Nirvana soit assurée comme une possession éternelle). » (La Gita-6.23), OM TAT SAT References are from the Book "The Bhagavad Gita and Integral Yoga ." The Mother “I met a man (I was perhaps 20 or 21 at the time), an Indian who had come to Europe and who told me of the Gita . There was a French translation of it (a rather poor one, I must say) which he advised me to read, and then he gave me the key (HIS key, it was his key). He said, ‘Read the Gita ...’ (this translation of the Gita which really wasn’t worth much but it was the only one available at the time – in those days I wouldn’t have understood anything in other languages; and besides, the English translations were just as bad and ... well, Sri Aurobindo hadn’t done his yet!). He said, ‘Read the Gita knowing that Krishna is the symbol of the immanent God, the God within.’ That was all. ‘Read it with THAT knowledge – with the knowledge that Krishna represents the immanent God, the God within you.’ Well, within a month, the whole thing was done!” The Mother The Mother's Agenda/August 25, 1954 "J’ai rencontré un homme (j’avais peut-être vingt-et-un ans, je crois, ou vingt ans) un homme qui était un Indien , qui venait d’ici et qui m’a parlé de la Guîtâ. Il y avait une traduction (qui était d’ailleurs assez mauvaise) et il m’a conseillé de la lire, et il m’a donné la clé – sa clé, c’était sa clé. Il m’a dit: «Lisez la Guîtâ» (cette traduction de la Guîtâ, qui ne vaut pas grand-chose, mais enfin c’était la seule en français; de ce temps-là je n’aurais rien pu comprendre en d’autres langues; d’ailleurs les traductions anglaises sont aussi mauvaises et je n’avais pas... Sri Aurobindo n’avait pas encore écrit la sienne!). Il a dit: «Lisez la Guîtâ et prenez Krishna pour le symbole du Dieu immanent, du Dieu intérieur.» C’était tout ce qu’il m’a dit. Il m’a dit: «Lisez-la avec cette connaissance-là, que Krishna représente, dans la Guîtâ, le Dieu immanent, le Dieu qui est au-dedans de vous.» Mais en un mois, tout le travail était fait!" La Mère L'agenda de la mère/25 août 1954 1 / Chapter 1. The Dejection of Arjuna Summary or A Brief Restatement: The first chapter of the Gita gives the message that if one will not accumulate Soul force from within and above, then during the period of extreme adversity, he will experience Spiritual fall of recoil into tamasic and rajasic states of Consciousness. Arjuna was given the task of slaying his own kith and kin (symbol of falsehood), whom the Lord had already slain in the subtle world. Any objective and outward action is considered as Divine action if the same work is already executed in the subtle world through intervention of a Transcendent Force. This world and life are accepted here as a field of inner and outer war waged over considerable countries. The original question raised by Arjuna throughout the Gita is identified as the experience of Divine perfection, vividly to works and life.’ The Lord promises Arjuna to raise humanity from the yoke of the lower Nature and transform this earthbound, ordinary action into Divine action. Here, Kurukshetra is the symbol of the outer war against falsehood, Dharmakshetra is the symbol of inner war against lower nature; Arjuna is the symbol of closest companion and instrument of the Divine, the Lord is revealed here as the Divine Teacher, who is also the friend of all creatures and the Lord of all the multiple subtle worlds. Here, Lower Nature is the symbol of Soul slaying truth and Higher Nature is the symbol of Soul saving Truth. The Yoga of the Dejection : "But what, then, is it that makes the difficulty for the man who has to take the world as it is and act in it and yet would live, within, the spiritual life? What is this aspect of existence which appals his awakened mind and brings about what the title of the first chapter of the Gita calls significantly the Yoga of the dejection of Arjuna , the dejection and discouragement felt by the human being when he is forced to face the spectacle of the universe as it really is with the veil of the ethical illusion, the illusion of self-righteousness torn from his eyes, before a higher reconciliation with himself is effected? It is that aspect which is figured outwardly in the carnage and massacre of Kurukshetra and spiritually by the vision of the Lord of all things as Time arising to devour and destroy the creatures whom it has made. This is the vision of the Lord of all existence as the universal Creator but also the universal Destroyer, of whom the ancient Scripture can say in a ruthless image, “The sages and the heroes are his food and death is the spice of his banquet.” It is one and the same truth seen first indirectly and obscurely in the facts of life and then directly and clearly in the soul’s vision of that which manifests itself in life. The outward aspect is that of world-existence and human existence proceeding by struggle and slaughter; the inward aspect is that of the universal Being fulfilling himself in a vast creation and a vast destruction. Life a battle and a field of death, this is Kurukshetra ; God the Terrible, this is the vision that Arjuna sees on that field of massacre." 39-40, "We must acknowledge Kurukshetra ; we must submit to the law of Life by Death before we can find our way to the life immortal ; we must open our eyes, with a less appalled gaze than Arjuna’s , to the vision of our Lord of Time and Death and cease to deny, hate or recoil from the universal Destroyer." CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-46 Arjuna , a pure sattwic man and his tamasic and rajasic recoil from the war field: Arjuna's recoil from the war field or Spiritual fall is observed in this first chapter. Whatever emotional feeling and attachment towards kith and kin he expressed to the Lord within the jurisdiction of three gunas is identified here as Soul-slaying truth, nasana atmanah . (The Gita-16.21) Whatever Knowledge the Lord has given Arjuna is identified here as soul-saving creative truth, atmanam srijami . (The Gita-4.7) Literally, Arjuna means "bright," "shining," or "white." It is derived from the Sanskrit word "अर्जुन" (arjuna) , which can also imply being clear, pure, or straightforward. "Arjuna is, in the language of the Gita , a man subject to the action of the three gunas or modes of the Nature-Force and habituated to move unquestioningly in that field, like the generality of men. He justifies his name only in being so far pure and sattwic as to be governed by high and clear principles and impulses and habitually control his lower nature by the noblest Law which he knows. He is not of a violent Asuric disposition, not the slave of his passions, but has been trained to a high calm and self-control , to an unswerving performance of his duties and firm obedience to the best principles of the time and society in which he has lived and the religion and ethics to which he has been brought up. He is egoistic like other men, but with the purer or sattwic egoism which regards the moral law and society and the claims of others and not only or predominantly his own interests, desires and passions. He has lived and guided himself by the Shastra , the moral and social code. The thought which preoccupies him, the standard which he obeys is the dharma , that collective Indian conception of the religious, social and moral rule of conduct, and especially the rule of the station and function to which he belongs, he the Kshatriya, the high- minded, self-governed, chivalrous prince and warrior and leader of Aryan men. Following always this rule, conscious of virtue and right dealing he has travelled so far and finds suddenly that it has led him to become the protagonist of a terrific and unparalleled slaughter, a monstrous civil war involving all the cultured Aryan nations which must lead to the complete destruction of the flower of their manhood and threatens their ordered civilisation with chaos and collapse." CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-22-23, "Whoever prematurely attempts to get rid of this law of battle and destruction, strives vainly against the greater will of the World-Spirit. Whoever turns from it in the weakness of his lower members, as did Arjuna in the beginning, — therefore was his shrinking condemned as a small and false pity, an inglorious, an un-Aryan and unheavenly feebleness of heart and impotence of spirit, klaibyam, ksudram hridaya-daurbalyam, (The Gita-2.3)— is showing not true virtue, but a want of spiritual courage to face the sterner truths of Nature and of action and existence. Man can only exceed the law of battle by discovering the greater law of his immortality. There are those who seek this where it always exists and must primarily be found, in the higher reaches of the pure spirit, and to find it turn away from a world governed by the law of Death." CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-385, “We see in the teaching of the Gita how subtle a thing is the freedom from egoism which is demanded. Arjuna is driven to fight by the egoism of strength, the egoism of the Kshatriya; he is turned from the battle by the contrary egoism of weakness, the shrinking, the spirit of disgust, the false pity that overcomes the mind, the nervous being and the senses, — not that divine compassion which strengthens the arm and clarifies the knowledge. But this weakness comes garbed as renunciation, as virtue: “Better the life of the beggar than to taste these blood-stained enjoyments; I desire not the rule of all the earth, no, nor the kingdom of the gods.” How foolish of the Teacher, we might say, not to confirm this mood, to lose this sublime chance of adding one more great soul to the army of Sannyasins, one more shining example before the world of a holy renunciation. But the Guide sees otherwise, the Guide who is not to be deceived by words; “This is weakness and delusion and egoism that speak in thee. Behold the Self, open thy eyes to the knowledge, purify thy soul of egoism.” And afterwards? “Fight, conquer, enjoy a wealthy kingdom.” (The Gita-11.33)” CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-331-332, “As a result he turns towards renunciation. Better the life of the mendicant living upon alms than this dharma of the Kshatriya , this battle and action culminating in undiscriminating massacre, this principle of mastery and glory and power which can only be won by destruction and bloodshed, this conquest of blood-stained enjoyments, this vindication of justice and right by a means which contradicts all righteousness and this affirmation of the social law by a war which destroys in its process and result all that constitutes society.” CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita-55, “Arjuna said: Better to live in this world even on alms than to slay these high-souled Gurus. Slaying these Gurus, I should taste of blood-stained enjoyments even in this world.” The Gita-2.5, Arjuna, the Instrument and Emanation of the Lord: "Arjuna himself is a Vibhuti ; he is a man high in the spiritual evolution, a figure marked out in the crowd of his contemporaries, a chosen instrument of the divine Narayana , the Godhead in humanity. In one place the Teacher speaking as the supreme and equal Self of all declares that there is none dear to him, none hated, but in others he says that Arjuna is dear to him and his bhakta and therefore guided and safe in his hands , chosen for the vision and the knowledge. There is here only an apparent inconsistency. The Power as the self of the cosmos is equal to all, therefore to each being he gives according to the workings of his nature; but there is also a personal relation of the Purushottama to the human being in which he is especially near to the man who has come near to him. All these heroes and men of might who have joined in battle on the plain of Kurukshetra are vessels of the divine Will and through each he works according to his nature but behind the veil of his ego. Arjuna has reached that point when the veil can be rent and the embodied Godhead can reveal the mystery of his workings to his Vibhuti. It is even essential that there should be the revelation. He is the instrument of a great work, a work terrible in appearance but necessary for a long step forward in the march of the race, a decisive movement in its struggle towards the kingdom of the Right and the Truth, dharmarajya . The history of the cycles of man is a progress towards the unveiling of the Godhead in the soul and life of humanity ; each high event and stage of it is a divine manifestation. Arjuna , the chief instrument of the hidden Will, the great protagonist, must become the divine man capable of doing the work consciously as the action of the Divine. So only can that action become psychically alive and receive its spiritual import and its light and power of secret significance. He is called to self-knowledge; he must see God as the Master of the universe and the origin of the world’s creatures and happenings, all as the Godhead’s self-expression in Nature, God in all, God in himself as man and as Vibhuti, God in the lownesses of being and on its heights, God on the topmost summits, man too upon heights as the Vibhuti and climbing to the last summits in the supreme liberation and union. Time in its creation and destruction must be seen by him as the figure of the Godhead in its steps, — steps that accomplish the cycles of the cosmos on whose spires of movement the divine spirit in the human body rises doing God’s work in the world as his Vibhuti to the supreme transcendences. This knowledge has been given; the Time-figure of the Godhead is now to be revealed and from the million mouths of that figure will issue the command for the appointed action to the liberated Vibhuti. " CWSA-19/Essays of the Gita/p-375-376, " The Gita’s injunction is to worship the Divine by our own work, sva-karmana ; (The Gita-18.46) our offering must be the works determined by our own law of being and nature. For from the Divine all movement of creation and impulse to act originates and by him all this universe is extended and for the holding together of the worlds he presides over and shapes all action through the Swabhava. To worship him with our inner and outer activities, to make our whole life a sacrifice of works to the Highest is to prepare ourselves to become one with him in all our will and substance and nature. Our work should be according to the truth within us, it should not be an accommodation with outward and artificial standards: it must be a living and sincere expression of the soul and its inborn powers. For to follow out the living inmost truth of this soul in our present nature will help us eventually to arrive at the immortal truth of the same soul in the now superconscious supreme nature. There we can live in oneness with God and our true self and all beings and, perfected, become a faultless instrument of divine action in the freedom of the immortal Dharma. " CWSA-19/Essays of the Gita/p-524-525, The Lord asks Arjuna , soul of the disciple to prepare all the time, the rest of his life, “Become my-minded, my lover and adorer, a sacrificer to me, bow thyself to me, to me thou shalt come, this is my pledge and promise to thee, for dear art thou to me. Abandon all dharmas and take refuge in me alone. I will deliver thee from all sin and evil, do not grieve." (The Gita-18.65-66) " CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita -556, Sri Krishna, the Avatar: “But still the Vibhuti is not the Avatar ; otherwise Arjuna, Vyasa, Ushanas would be Avatars as well as Krishna, even if in a less degree of the power of Avatarhood . The divine quality is not enough; there must be the inner consciousness of the Lord and Self governing the human nature by his divine presence. The heightening of the power of the qualities is part of the becoming, bhutagrama, (The Gita-8.19, 9.8) an ascent in the ordinary manifestation; in the Avatar there is the special manifestation, the divine birth from above, the eternal and universal Godhead descended into a form of individual humanity, atmanam srijami, (The Gita-4.7) and conscious not only behind the veil but in the outward nature. ” CWSA/19/Essays on the Gita/p-161, “The crisis in which the Avatar appears, though apparent to the outward eye only as a crisis of events and great material changes, is always in its source and real meaning a crisis in the consciousness of humanity when it has to undergo some grand modification and effect some new development. For this action of change a divine force is needed; but the force varies always according to the power of consciousness which it embodies; hence the necessity of a divine consciousness manifesting in the mind and soul of humanity. Where, indeed, the change is mainly intellectual and practical, the intervention of the Avatar is not needed; there is a great uplifting of consciousness, a great manifestation of power in which men are for the time being exalted above their normal selves, and this surge of consciousness and power finds its wave-crests in certain exceptional individuals, vibhutis , whose action leading the general action is sufficient for the change intended.” CWSA/19/Essays on the Gita-168, “The Avatar is not bound to do extraordinary actions, but he is bound to give his acts or his work or what he is — any of these or all — a significance and an effective power that are part of something essential to be done in the history of the earth and its races.” CWSA-28/Letters on Yoga-I-490, (This means Avatar has not descended to show any extraordinary miracle and satisfy our endless desire, but to elevate our ordinary action to Divine Action and transform our lower Nature into Divine Nature.) “The natural attitude of the psychic being is to feel itself as the child, the son of God, the Bhakta ; it is a portion of the Divine, one in essence, but in the dynamics of the manifestation there is always even in identity a difference. The Jivatman , on the contrary, lives in the essence and can merge itself in identity with the Divine; but it too, the moment it presides over the dynamics of the manifestation, knows itself as one centre of the multiple Divine, not as the Parameshwara . It is important to remember this distinction; for, otherwise, if there is the least vital egoism, one may begin to think of oneself as an Avatara … ” CWSA-28/Letters on Yoga-I/p-61, (This indicates that Avatars are special manifestations of Supreme Self whereas other liberated Souls are one Psychic centre of the multiple universal Self. This they must remember all the time.) "An Avatar, roughly speaking, is one who is conscious of the presence and power of the Divine born in him or descended into him and governing from within his will and life and action; he feels identified inwardly with this divine power and presence. A Vibhuti is supposed to embody some power of the Divine and is enabled by it to act with great force in the world but that is all that is necessary to make him a Vibhuti: the power may be very great but the consciousness is not that of an inborn or indwelling Divinity. (That means an Avatar is born free wheras all others are not free from the influence of three Gunas. (The Gita18.40)) This is the distinction we can gather from the Gita which is the main authority on this subject. If we follow this distinction, we can confidently say from what is related of them that Rama and Krishna can be accepted as Avatars; Buddha figures as such although with a more impersonal consciousness of the Power within him; Ramakrishna voiced the same consciousness when he spoke of him who was Rama and who was Krishna being within him. But Chaitanya’s case is peculiar; for according to the accounts he ordinarily felt and declared himself a bhakta of Krishna and nothing more, but in great moments he manifested Krishna, grew luminous in mind and body and was Krishna himself and spoke and acted as the Lord. His contemporaries saw in him an Avatar of Krishna, a manifestation of the divine love. Shankara and Vivekananda were certainly Vibhutis ; they cannot be reckoned as more, though as Vibhutis they were very great."CWSA-28/Letters on Yoga-I/p-485-486, “But you see, you see all the way I have come...And I was born with a consciously prepared body—Sri Aurobindo was aware of that, he said it immediately the first time he saw me: I was born free. That is, from the spiritual standpoint: without any desire. Without any desire and attachment. And mon petit, if there is the slightest desire and the slightest attachment, it is IMPOSSIBLE to do this work." The Mother, 28th March-1964, The Mother’s Agenda-5/100, Our real, proper and main business of acceptance of this life and action: "The ascent to the divine Life is the human journey, the Work of works, the acceptable Sacrifice. This alone is man’s real business in the world and the justification of his existence, without which he would be only an insect crawling among other ephemeral insects on a speck of surface mud and water which has managed to form itself amid the appalling immensities of the physical universe."CWSA-21/The Life Divine/p-48, "The growth of the god in man is man’s proper business ; the steadfast turning of this lower Asuric and Rakshasic into the divine nature is the carefully hidden meaning of human life. As this growth increases, the veil falls and the soul comes to see the greater significance of action and the real truth of existence. The eye opens to the Godhead in man, to the Godhead in the world; it sees inwardly and comes to know outwardly the infinite Spirit, the Imperishable from whom all existences originate and who exists in all and by him and in him all exist always. Therefore when this vision, this knowledge seizes on the soul, its whole life-aspiration becomes a surpassing love and fathomless adoration of the Divine and Infinite.” CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-327, "To discover the spiritual being in himself is the main business of the spiritual man and to help others towards the same evolution is his real service to the race; till that is done, an outward help can succour and alleviate, but nothing or very little more is possible." CWSA-22/The Life Divine/p-917-918, “This is what a true subjectivism teaches us, — first, that we are a higher self than our ego or our members, secondly, that we are in our life and being not only ourselves but all others; for there is a secret solidarity which our egoism may kick at and strive against, but from which we cannot escape. It is the old Indian discovery that our real “I” is a Supreme Being which is our true self and which it is our business to discover and consciously become and, secondly, that that Being is one in all, expressed in the individual and in the collectivity, and only by admitting and realising our unity with others can we entirely fulfil our true self-being.” CWSA-25/The Human Cycle/p-47-48 Our understanding of the Creator of the World: "We have to see that God the bountiful and prodigal creator, God the helpful, strong and benignant preserver is also God the devourer and destroyer. " CWSA-19/Essays of the Gita/p-382 In the Gita the Lord reveals His Cosmic Form in chapter 11, verses 25 to 32, as the Time Spirit, the ultimate Destroyer and Devourer. In King Aswapati's Yoga, we find that after establishing himself in the dynamic aspect of the Supreme Self, King met the destructive aspect of the Divine. “The soul’s ignorance is slain but not the soul:” Savitri-311, (Ignorance is here desire Soul) “Now other claims had hushed in him their cry:" Savitri-316, (Now other claims are of desire Soul) “The covering Nescience was unmasked and slain;” Savitri-313, “To err no more was natural to mind; Wrong could not come where all was light and love.” Savitri-313-14 “All that denies must be torn out and slain (All that denies of Supreme Love) And crushed the many longings for whose sake (many longings of desire) We lose the One (Divine) for whom our lives were made.” Savitri-316, “All seemed to have perished that was undivine:” Savitri-318, “The covering mind was seized and torn apart;” Savitri-319, Our understanding of the Creation: If we recognise the Subconscient transformation, we have to accept the discord of existence in the line as indicated in the Gita . "The discords of the worlds are God’s discords and it is only by accepting and proceeding through them that we can arrive at the greater concords of his supreme harmony, the summits and thrilled vastnesses of his transcendent and his cosmic Ananda. " CWSA-19/Essays of the Gita/p-382, "All existence is a manifestation of God because He is the only existence and nothing can be except as either a real figuring or else a figment of that one reality. Therefore every conscious being is in part or in some way a descent of the Infinite into the apparent finiteness of name and form." CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-13-14, "All existence is a manifestation of the divine Existence and that which is within us is spirit of the eternal Spirit. We have come indeed into the lower material nature and are under its influence, but we have come there from the supreme spiritual nature: this inferior imperfect status is our apparent, but that our real being." CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-424, "Surely you could not believe that sadhana could be done without facing some difficulties. As your aspiration is sincere, whatever was in the subconscient standing in the way of the Divine Realisation, has come to the surface in order to be transformed. There is nothing there to make you sad or depressed — on the contrary you ought to rejoice at these occasions to make progress and never forget to lean for support and help on my love, force and blessings." The Mother/TMCW-vol-14/p-227 The Three Gunas: "The gunas affect every part of our natural being. They have indeed their strongest relative hold in the three different members of it, mind, life and body. Tamas, the principle of inertia, is strongest in material nature and in our physical being. The action of this principle is of two kinds, inertia of force and inertia of knowledge. Whatever is predominantly governed by Tamas , tends in its force to a sluggish inaction and immobility or else to a mechanical action which it does not possess, but is possessed by obscure forces which drive it in a mechanical round of energy; equally in its consciousness it turns to an inconscience or enveloped subconscience or to a reluctant, sluggish or in some way mechanical conscious action which does not possess the idea of its own energy, but is guided by an idea which seems external to it or at least concealed from its active awareness. Thus the principle of our body is in its nature inert, subconscient, incapable of anything but a mechanical and habitual self-guidance and action: though it has like everything else a principle of kinesis and a principle of equilibrium of its state and action, an inherent principle of response and a secret consciousness, the greatest portion of its rajasic motions are contributed by the life-power and all the overt consciousness by the mental being. The principle of rajas has its strongest hold on the vital nature. It is the Life within us that is the strongest kinetic motor power, but the life-power in earthly beings is possessed by the force of desire, therefore rajas turns always to action and desire; desire is the strongest human and animal initiator of most kinesis and action, predominant to such an extent that many consider it the father of all action and even the originator of our being. Moreover, rajas finding itself in a world of matter which starts from the principle of inconscience and a mechanical driven inertia, has to work against an immense contrary force; therefore its whole action takes on the nature of an effort, a struggle, a besieged and an impeded conflict for possession which is distressed in its every step by a limiting incapacity, disappointment and suffering: even its gains are precarious and limited and marred by the reaction of the effort and an aftertaste of insufficiency and transience. The principle of sattwa has its strongest hold in the mind; not so much in the lower parts of the mind which are dominated by the rajasic life-power, but mostly in the intelligence and the will of the reason. Intelligence, reason, rational will are moved by the nature of their predominant principle towards a constant effort of assimilation, assimilation by knowledge, assimilation by a power of understanding will, a constant effort towards equilibrium, some stability, rule, harmony of the conflicting elements of natural happening and experience. This satisfaction it gets in various ways and in various degrees of acquisition. The attainment of assimilation, equilibrium and harmony brings with it always a relative but more or less intense and satisfying sense of ease, happiness, mastery, security, which is other than the troubled and vehement pleasures insecurely bestowed by the satisfaction of rajasic desire and passion. Light and happiness are the characteristics of the sattwic guna . The whole nature of the embodied living mental being is determined by these three gunas ." CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-684-685, "The passage through sattwa is the ordinary idea of Yoga, it is the preparation and purification by the yama-niyama of Patanjali or by other means in other Yogas, e.g., saintliness in the bhakti schools, the eightfold path in Buddhism etc., etc. In our Yoga (Integral Yoga) the evolution through sattwa i s replaced by the cultivation of equanimity, samata , and by the psychic transformation." CWSA-28/Letters on Yoga-I/p-424, “…for mind is a twilight preparing for light, an ignorance seeking after knowledge, a bondage to Nature groping after freedom and mastery over Nature. It is not on mind, on its self-modifying ignorance and bondage or even on its half-light, half-mastery, half-knowledge that the next step can base itself. It must base itself on soul consciousness, consciousness of the spirit and self for so only can there be the full light, the spontaneous mastery, the intimate and real knowledge.” CWSA-28/Letters on Yoga-I/p-427, Freedom from Lower Nature: " In the lower nature each being appears as the ego, in the higher he is the individual Purusha . In other words multiplicity is part of the spiritual nature of the One. This individual soul is myself, in the creation it is a partial manifestation of me, mamaivaamsah , (The Gita-15.7) and it possesses all my powers; it is witness, giver of the sanction, upholder, knower, lord. It descends into the lower nature and thinks itself bound by action, so to enjoy the lower being: it can draw back and know itself as the passive Purusha free from all action. It can rise above the three gunas and, liberated from the bondage of action, yet possess action, even as I do myself, and by adoration of the Purushottama and union with him it can enjoy wholly its divine Nature." CWSA-19/Essays of the Gita/p- 80, "Transcending the lower nature of the three gunas and seating the soul in the immobile Purusha beyond the three gunas , we can ascend finally into the higher nature of the infinite Godhead which is not bound by the three gunas even when it acts through Nature. Reaching the inner actionlessness of the silent Purusha, naiskarmya , and leaving Prakriti to do her works, we can attain supremely beyond to the status of the divine Mastery which is able to do all works and yet be bound by none. The idea of the Purushottama, seen here as the incarnate Narayana, Krishna , is therefore the key . Without it the withdrawal from the lower nature to the Brahmic condition leads necessarily to inaction of the liberated man, his indifference to the works of the world; with it the same withdrawal becomes a step by which the works of the world are taken up in the spirit, with the nature and in the freedom of the Divine. See the silent Brahman as the goal and the world with all its activities has to be forsaken; see God, the Divine, the Purushottama as the goal, superior to action yet its inner spiritual cause and object and original will, and the world with all its activities is conquered and possessed in a divine transcendence of the world . It can become instead of a prison-house an opulent kingdom, rajyam samruddham, which we have conquered for the spiritual life by slaying the limitation of the tyrant ego and overcoming the bondage of our gaoler desires and breaking the prison of our individualistic possession and enjoyment. The liberated universalised soul becomes svarat samrat , self-ruler and emperor." CWSA-19/Essays of the Gita/p- 134-135, "First, therefore, the Teacher points out that all these ideas and feelings which trouble, perplex and baffle Arjuna, joy and sorrow, desire and sin, the mind’s turn towards governing action by the outward results of action, the human shrinking from what seems terrible and formidable in the dealings of the universal Spirit with the world, are things born of the subjection of our consciousness to a natural ignorance, the way of working of a lower nature in which the soul is involved and sees itself as a separate ego returning to the action of things upon it dual reactions of pain and pleasure, virtue and vice, right and wrong, good happening and evil fortune. These reactions create a tangled web of perplexity in which the soul is lost and bewildered by its own ignorance; it has to guide itself by partial and imperfect solutions that serve ordinarily with a stumbling sufficiency in the normal life, but fail when brought to the test of a wider seeing and a profounder experience. To understand the real sense of action and existence one must retreat behind all these appearances into the truth of the spirit; one must found self-knowledge before one can have the basis of a right world-knowledge." CWSA-19/Essays of the Gita/p-452-453, Our understanding of the First Law of the Creator: “Thou shalt not conquer except by battle with thy fellows and thy surroundings; thou shalt not even live except by battle and struggle and by absorbing into thyself other life. The first law of this world that I have made is creation and preservation by destruction. ” CWSA-19/Essays of the Gita/p-40, "He appears to us too in the universe as the universal spirit of Destruction, who seems to create only to undo his creations in the end, — “I am all-snatching Death,” aham mrityuh sarva-harah . (the Gita-10.34) And yet his Power of becoming does not cease from its workings, for the force of rebirth and new creation ever keeps pace with the force of death and destruction, — “and I am too the birth of all that shall come into being .” (The Gita-10.34) The divine Self in things is the sustaining Spirit of the present, the withdrawing Spirit of the past, the creative Spirit of the future." CWSA-19/Essays of the Gita/p-363, “Outwardly also, the nation or community or race which shrinks too long from destroying and replacing its past forms of life, is itself destroyed, rots and perishes and out of its debris other nations, communities and races are formed. By destruction of the old giant occupants man made himself a place upon earth. By destruction of the Titans the gods maintain the continuity of the divine Law in the cosmos. Whoever prematurely attempts to get rid of this law of battle and destruction, strives vainly against the greater will of the World-Spirit. Whoever turns from it in the weakness of his lower members, as did Arjuna in the beginning, — therefore was his shrinking condemned as a small and false pity, an inglorious, an un-Aryan and unheavenly feebleness of heart and impotence of spirit, klaibyam, ksudram hridaya-daurbalyam, (The Gita-2.3)— is showing not true virtue, but a want of spiritual courage to face the sterner truths of Nature and of action and existence. Man can only exceed the law of battle by discovering the greater law of his immortality. ” CSWA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-384-85, "It means exactly this (I am going back to the preceding sentence): Who can protect the one whom God has already slain? He has already been slain by God. When God has decided that someone is to be slain, nothing can protect him or keep him from being slain. And Sri Aurobindo adds: the man who slays (because it is not God who slays directly, he uses a man), the man who slays is only a circumstance, the instrument through which the thing decided by God behind the veil is accomplished materially here... These are political texts from the revolutionary period, concerning bomb attacks against the English. And then he says that the man God has protected can never be touched. However hard you try, you will never be able to slay him. But who can protect the man God has already slain? He has already been slain by God. And man is simply the instrument used by God to do here what has been done there (it has ALREADY been done there). it’s very simple." The Mother/The Mother's Agenda/18.04.1961 1 / Chapter 1. The Dejection of Arjuna The Message of this First Chapter for a Sadhak of Integral Yoga: "He (the Lord) discourages the tamasic recoil and the tendency to renunciation and enjoins the continuance of action and even of the same fierce and terrible action, but he points the disciple towards another and inner renunciation which is the real issue from his crisis and the way towards the soul’s superiority to the world-Nature and yet its calm and self-possessed action in the world. Not a physical asceticism, but an inner askesis is the teaching of the Gita. " CWSA-19/Essays of the Gita/p-55-56 “But for the sadhaka of the integral Yoga this inner or this outer solitude can only be incidents or periods in his spiritual progress. Accepting life, he has to bear not only his own burden, but a great part of the world’s burden too along with it, as a continuation of his own sufficiently heavy load. Therefore his Yoga has much more of the nature of a battle than others; but this is not only an individual battle, it is a collective war waged over a considerable country. He has not only to conquer in himself the forces of egoistic falsehood and disorder, but to conquer them as representatives of the same adverse and inexhaustible forces in the world. Their representative character gives them a much more obstinate capacity of resistance, an almost endless right to recurrence. Often he finds that even after he has won persistently his own personal battle, he has still to win it over and over again in a seemingly interminable war, because his inner existence has already been so much enlarged that not only it contains his own being with its well-defined needs and experiences, but is in solidarity with the being of others, because in himself he contains the universe.” CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-77-78 First six chapters and succeeding chapters: "Thus in the first six chapters the knowledge necessary for the distinction between (1) the immutable self (Spiritul being) (2) and the soul veiled in nature (Psychic being) was accorded an entire prominence." CWSA-19/Essays of the Gita/p-409 "The whole object of the first six chapters of the Gita is to synthetise in a large frame of Vedantic truth the two methods, ordinarily supposed to be diverse and even opposite, of the Sankhyas and the Yogins . The Sankhya is taken as the starting-point and the basis ; but it is from the beginning and with a progressively increasing emphasis permeated with the ideas and methods of Yoga and remoulded in its spirit. The practical difference, as it seems to have presented itself to the religious minds of that day, lay first in this that Sankhya proceeded by knowledge and through the Yoga of the intelligence, while Yoga proceeded by works and the transformation of the active consciousness and, secondly, — a corollary of this first distinction, — that Sankhya led to entire passivity and the renunciation of works, sannyasa , while Yoga held to be quite sufficient the inner renunciation of desire, the purification of the subjective principle which leads to action and the turning of works Godwards, towards the divine existence and towards liberation. Yet both had the same aim, (1) the transcendence of birth and of this terrestrial existence and (2) the union of the human soul with the Highest. " CWSA-19/Essays of the Gita/p-81 "The First six chapters of the Gita have been treated as a single block of teachings, its primary basis of practice and knowledge; the remaining twelve may be similarly treated as two closely connected blocks which develop the rest of the doctrine from this primary basis. The seventh to the twelfth chapters lay down a large metaphysical statement of the (1) nature of the Divine Being and (2) on that foundation closely relate and synthetise knowledge and devotion, just as the first part of the Gita related and synthetised works and knowledge. The vision of the World-Purusha intervenes in the eleventh chapter, gives a dynamic turn to this stage of the synthesis and relates it vividly to works and life (This is original Question) . Thus again all is brought powerfully back to the original question of Arjuna round which the whole exposition revolves and completes its cycle. Afterwards (From chapter-13 to 18) the Gita proceeds (1) by the differentiation of the Purusha and Prakriti to work out its ideas of the action of the gunas , (Chapter-13) (2) of the ascension beyond the gunas (Chapter-14) and (3) of the culmination of desireless works with knowledge where that coalesces with Bhakti, — knowledge, works and love made one, (Chapter-15) — and (4) it rises thence to its great finale, the supreme secret of self-surrender to the Master of Existence. (Chapter-18)" CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita-263 2 / Chapter 2. Sankhya Yoga Summary or A Brief Restatement: A Sadhaka of the Gita and Integral Yoga must always remember this Mantra , jatasyahi dhrubo mrityu dhrubam janma mritasya cha, 'For certain is death for the born, and certain is birth for the dead.' (The Gita-2.27) Its complementary line in Savitri is 'This was the day when Satyavan must die.' (Savitri-10) This memory gives the next task to a Sadhak to utilise time as a bank of accumulating Spiritual energy. Those who accumulate Soul force are considered fit for immortality. (The Gita-2.15, 4.31, 10.18, 13.13, 13.26, 14.20, 14.27). Both the Gita and integral Yoga propose to begin Yoga with purified intellect, and practice of buddhi Yoga, Yoga of intellect and arrive at the state of waking Samadhi, Sthita-pranjya , which has three characteristics in the frontal Nature. They are equality, a silent mind and a desireless state. The practice of Self-control through buddhi Yoga increases the power of concentration and increased concentration helps to increase the power of consecration. Through consecration, one unites with the Divine and the Soul force increases. " Sankhya has been admitted for the separation of the soul from the lower nature, — a separation that must be effected by self-knowledge through (1) the discriminating reason and (2) by transcendence of our subjection to the three gunas constituent of that nature. It has been completed and its limitations exceeded by a large revelation of the unity of the supreme Soul and supreme Nature, para purusha , para-prakriti ." CWSA-19/Essays of the Gita/p-355 "But Sankhya explains what modern Science leaves in obscurity, the process by which the mechanical and inconscient takes on the appearance of consciousness. It is because of the reflection of Prakriti in Purusha ; the light of consciousness of the Soul is attributed to the workings of the mechanical energy and it is thus that the Purusha , observing Nature as the witness and forgetting himself, is deluded with the idea generated in her that it is he who thinks, feels, wills, acts, while all the time the operation of thinking, feeling, willing, acting is conducted really by her and her three modes and not by himself at all. To get rid of this delusion is the first step towards the liberation of the soul from Nature and her works." CWSA-19/Essays of the Gita/p-74 The First Necessity of the Gita's Yoga: "To see all existence steadily and see it whole and not be misled by its conflicting truths, is the first necessity for the calm and complete wisdom to which the Yogin is called upon to rise. A certain absolute freedom is one aspect of the soul’s relations with Nature at one pole of our complex being; a certain absolute determinism by Nature is the opposite aspect at its opposite pole;..." CWSA-19/Essays of the Gita/p-213, "But the direct way to union lies through the firm realisation of the immutable Self, and it is the Gita’s insistence on this as a first necessity, after which alone works and devotion can acquire their whole divine meaning, that makes it possible for us to mistake its drift." CWSA-19/Essays of the Gita/p-235, "We have already seen that for this end (doing good of all creatures by Karmayoga ) self-knowledge, equality, impersonality are the first necessities , and that that is the way of reconciliation between knowledge and works, between spirituality and activity in the world, between the ever immobile quietism of the timeless self and the eternal play of the pragmatic energy of Nature." CWSA-19/Essays of the Gita/p-281, "We have now set before us three interdependent movements of our release out of the normal nature and our growth into the divine and spiritual being. “By the delusion of the dualities which arises from wish and disliking, all existences in the creation are led into bewilderment,” (The Gita-7.27) says the Gita. That is the ignorance, the egoism which fails to see and lay hold on the Divine everywhere, because it sees only the dualities of Nature and is constantly occupied with its own separate personality and its seekings and shrinkings. For escape from this circle the first necessity in our works is to get clear of the sin of the vital ego, the fire of passion, the tumult of desire of the rajasic nature, and this has to be done by the steadying sattwic impulse of the ethical being. When that is done, yesam tvantagatam papam jananam punyakarmanam , (The Gita-7.28) or rather as it is being done, for after a certain point all growth in the sattwic nature brings an increasing capacity for a high quietude, equality and transcendence, — it is necessary to rise above the dualities and to become impersonal, equal, one self with the Immutable, one self with all existences." CWSA-19/Essays of the Gita/p-282, "Our first experience of what is beyond our normal status, concealed behind the egoistic being in which we live, is still for the Gita the calm of a vast impersonal immutable self in whose equality and oneness we lose our petty egoistic personality and cast off in its tranquil purity all our narrow motives of desire and passion." CWSA-19/Essays of the Gita/p-290, "To rise out of our lower personal egoism, to enter into the impersonal and equal calm of the immutable eternal all-pervading Akshara Purusha , to aspire from that calm by a perfect self-surrender of all one’s nature and existence (Purusha Yajna) to that which is other and higher than the Akshara , is the first necessity of this Yoga . In the strength of that aspiration one can rise to the immortal Dharma . There, made one in being, consciousness and divine bliss with the greatest Uttama Purusha , made one with his supreme dynamic nature-force, sva Prakritih , the liberated spirit can know infinitely, love illimitably, act unfalteringly in the authentic power of a highest immortality and a perfect freedom. The rest of the Gita (from chapters 13 to 18) is written to throw a fuller light on this immortal Dharma ." CWSA-19/Essays of the Gita/p-406, "The first requisite is to shake the wings of the soul free from desire and passion and troubling emotion and all this perturbed and distorting atmosphere of human mind and arrive into an ether of dispassionate equality, a heaven of impersonal calm, an egoless feeling and vision of things. For only in that lucid upper air, reaches free from all storm and cloud, can self-knowledge come and the law of the world and the truth of Nature be seen steadily and with an embracing eye and in an undisturbed and all-comprehending and all-penetrating light. Behind this little personality which is a helpless instrument, a passive or vainly resistant puppet of Nature and a form figured in her creations, there is an impersonal self one in all which sees and knows all things; there is an equal, impartial, universal presence and support of creation, a witnessing consciousness that suffers Nature to work out the becoming of things in their own type, svabhava, but does not involve and lose itself in the action she initiates. To draw back from the ego and the troubled personality into this calm, equal, eternal, universal, impersonal Self is the first step towards a seeing action in Yoga done in conscious union with the divine Being and the infallible Will that, however obscure now to us, manifests itself in the universe." CWSA-19/Essays of the Gita/p-453, “This is the solution, this the salvation, this the perfection that I offer to all those who can listen to a divine voice within them and are capable of this faith and knowledge. But to climb to this pre-eminent condition the first necessity , the original radical step is to turn away from all that belongs to your lower Nature and fix yourself by concentration of the will and intelligence on that which is higher than either will or intelligence, higher than mind and heart and sense and body. And first of all you must turn to your own eternal and immutable self, impersonal and the same in all creatures. So long as you live in ego and mental personality, you will always spin endlessly in the same rounds and there can be no real issue. Turn your will inward beyond the heart and its desires and the sense and its attractions; lift it upward beyond the mind and its associations and attachments and its bounded wish and thought and impulse. Arrive at something within you that is eternal, ever unchanged, calm, unperturbed, equal, impartial to all things and persons and happenings , not affected by any action, not altered by the figures of Nature. Be that, be the eternal self, be the Brahman. If you can become that by a permanent spiritual experience , you will have an assured basis on which you can stand delivered from the limitations of your mind-created personality, secure against any fall from peace and knowledge, free from ego." CWSA-19/Essays of the Gita/p-581-582, (This passage speaks about the security against Spiritual fall .) “ The first necessity is some fundamental poise of the soul both in its essential and its natural being regarding and meeting the things, impacts and workings of Nature. This poise we shall arrive at by growing into a perfect equality, samata . The self, spirit or Brahman is one in all and therefore one to all; it is, as is said in the Gita which has developed fully this idea of equality and indicated its experience on at least one side of equality, the equal Brahman , samam brahma; (The Gita-5.19) the Gita even goes so far in one passage as to identify equality and yoga, samatvam yoga ucyate. (The Gita-2.48) That is to say, equality is the sign of unity with the Brahman, of becoming Brahman , of growing into an undisturbed spiritual poise of being in the Infinite. Its importance can hardly be exaggerated; for it is the sign of our having passed beyond the egoistic determinations of our nature, of our having conquered our enslaved response to the dualities, of our having transcended the shifting turmoil of the gunas , of our having entered into the calm and peace of liberation. Equality is a term of consciousness which brings into the whole of our being and nature the eternal tranquillity of the Infinite. Moreover, it is the condition of a securely and perfectly divine action; the security and largeness of the cosmic action of the Infinite is based upon and never breaks down or forfeits its eternal tranquillity. That too must be the character of the perfect spiritual action; to be equal and one to all things in spirit, understanding, mind, heart and natural consciousness, — even in the most physical consciousness, — and to make all their workings, whatever their outward adaptation to the thing to be done, always and imminuably full of the divine equality and calm must be its inmost principle. That may be said to be the passive or basic, the fundamental and receptive side of equality, but there is also an active and possessive side , an equal bliss which can only come when the peace of equality is founded and which is the beatific flower of its fullness.” CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-692-693, Enlightened Man's Approach towards Fear: " On this path, no effort is lost, no obstacle prevails; even a little of this dharma delivers from the great fear, swalpamapyasya dharmasya trayate mahatobhayat. " (The Gita-2.40) “But even before we can attain or are firmly seated in that universal vision, we have by all the means in our power to insist on this receptive and active equality and calm . Even something of it, alpam api asya dharmasya, (The Gita-2.40) is a great step towards perfection; a first firmness in it is the beginning of liberated perfection; its completeness is the perfect assurance of a rapid progress in all the other members of perfection. For without it (equality) we can have no solid basis; and by the pronounced lack of it we shall be constantly falling back to the lower status of desire, ego, duality, ignorance.” CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-724, " I have declared to you the poise of a self-liberating intelligence in Sankhya , says the divine Teacher to Arjuna. I will now declare to you another poise in Yoga. You are shrinking from the results of your works, you desire other results and turn from your right path in life because it does not lead you to them. But this idea of works and their result, desire of result as the motive, the work as a means for the satisfaction of desire, is the bondage of the ignorant who know not what works are, nor their true source, nor their real operation, nor their high utility. My Yoga will free you from all bondage of the soul to its works, karma-bandham prahasyasi . (The Gita-2.39) You are afraid of many things, afraid of sin, afraid of suffering, afraid of hell and punishment, afraid of God, afraid of this world, afraid of the hereafter, afraid of yourself. What is it that you are not afraid of at this moment, you the Aryan fighter, the world’s chief hero? But this is the great fear which besieges humanity, its fear of sin and suffering now and hereafter, its fear in a world of whose true nature it is ignorant, of a God whose true being also it has not seen and whose cosmic purpose it does not understand. My Yoga will deliver you from the great fear and even a little of it will bring deliverance. (The Gita-2.40) When you have once set out on this path, you will find that no step is lost; every least movement will be a gain; you will find there no obstacle that can baulk (unwilling and reluctant) you of your advance. A bold and absolute promise and one to which the fearful and hesitating mind beset and stumbling in all its paths cannot easily lend an assured trust; nor is the large and full truth of it apparent unless with these first words of the message of the Gita we read also the last , “Abandon all laws of conduct and take refuge in Me alone; I will deliver you from all sin and evil; do not grieve.” (The Gita-18.66)" CWSA-19/Essays of the Gita/p- 94-95, "From the first words there comes the suggestion that the hidden truth behind these terrifying forms is a reassuring, a heartening and delightful truth. There is something that makes the heart of the world to rejoice and take pleasure in the name and nearness of the Divine. It is the profound sense of that which makes us see in the dark face of Kali the face of the Mother and to perceive even in the midst of destruction the protecting arms of the Friend of creatures , in the midst of evil the presence of a pure unalterable Benignity and in the midst of death the Master of Immortality. From the terror of the King of the divine action the Rakshasas, the fierce giant powers of darkness, flee destroyed, defeated and overpowered. But the Siddhas, but the complete and perfect who know and sing the names of the Immortal and live in the truth of his being, bow down before every form of Him and know what every form enshrines and signifies. Nothing has real need to fear except that which is to be destroyed, the evil, the ignorance, the veilers in Night, the Rakshasa powers. All the movement and action of Rudra the Terrible is towards perfection and divine light and completeness." CWSA-19/Essays of the Gita/p- 389-390, Enlightened man's approach towards death: "The enlightened man does not mourn either for the living or the dead, for he knows that suffering and death are merely incidents in the history of the soul. The soul, not the body, is the reality....The man who rises above the conception of himself as a life and a body, who does not accept the material and sensational touches of the world at their own value or at the value which the physical man attaches to them, who knows himself and all as souls, learns himself to live in his soul and not in his body and deals with others too as souls and not as mere physical beings. For by immortality is meant not the survival of death, — that is already given to every creature born with a mind, — but the transcendence of life and death . It means that ascension by which man ceases to live as a mind-informed body and lives at last as a spirit and in the Spirit. Whoever is subject to grief and sorrow, a slave to the sensations and emotions, occupied by the touches of things transient cannot become fit for immortality." CWSA-19/Essays of the Gita/p-61, "Our physical death is also a pralaya, — the Gita will presently use the word in the sense of this death, pralayam yati deha-bhrut , “the soul bearing the body comes to a pralaya ,” (The Gita-14.14) to a disintegration of that form of matter with which its ignorance identified its being and which now dissolves into the natural elements. But the soul itself persists and after an interval resumes in a new body formed from those elements its round of births in the cycle, just as after the interval of pause and cessation the universal Being resumes his endless round of the cyclic aeons. This immortality in the rounds of Time is common to all embodied spirits." CWSA-19/Essays of the Gita/p- 421-422, "Samadhi or Yogic trance retires to increasing depths according as it draws farther and farther away from the normal or waking state and enters into degrees of consciousness less and less communicable to the waking mind, less and less ready to receive a summons from the waking world. Beyond a certain point the trance becomes complete and it is then almost or quite impossible to awaken or call back the soul that has receded into them; it can only come back by its own will or at most by a violent shock of physical appeal dangerous to the system owing to the abrupt upheaval of return. There are said to be supreme states of trance in which the soul persisting for too long a time cannot return; for it loses its hold on the cord which binds it to the consciousness of life, and the body is left, maintained indeed in its set position, not dead by dissolution, but incapable of recovering the ensouled life which had inhabited it. Finally, the Yogin acquires at a certain stage of development the power of abandoning his body definitively without the ordinary phenomena of death, by an act of will, (Iccha Mrityu) or by a process of withdrawing the pranic life-force through the gate of the upward life-current (udana), opening for it a way through the mystic brahmarandhra in the head. By departure from life in the state of Samadhi he attains directly to that higher status of being to which he aspires." CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-520-521, The creed of Aryan Fighter: "It is the creed of the Aryan fighter. “Know God,” it says, “know thyself, help man; protect the Right, do without fear or weakness or faltering thy work of battle in the world. Thou art the eternal and imperishable Spirit, thy soul is here on its upward path to immortality; life and death are nothing, sorrow and wounds and suffering are nothing, for these things have to be conquered and overcome. Look not at thy own pleasure and gain and profit, but above and around, above at the shining summits to which thou climbest, around at this world of battle and trial in which good and evil, progress and retrogression are locked in stern conflict. Men call to thee, their strong man, their hero for help; help then, fight. Destroy when by destruction the world must advance, but hate not that which thou destroyest, neither grieve for all those who perish. Know everywhere the one self, know all to be immortal souls and the body to be but dust. Do thy work with a calm, strong and equal spirit; fight and fall nobly or conquer mightily. For this is the work that God and thy nature have given to thee to accomplish.” CWSA-19/Essays of the Gita/p- 66-67 Those who are not satisfied with life as it is: "But if you are not satisfied with your social duty and the virtue of your order, if you think that leads you to sorrow and sin, then I bid you rise to a higher and not sink to a lower ideal. Put away all egoism from you, disregard joy and sorrow, disregard gain and loss and all worldly results; look only at the cause you must serve and the work that you must achieve by divine command ; “so thou shalt not incur sin.” (The Gita-2.38).....Destroy when by destruction the world must advance, but hate not that which thou destroyest, neither grieve for all those who perish. Know everywhere the one self, know all to be immortal souls and the body to be but dust. Do thy work with a calm, strong and equal spirit; fight and fall nobly or conquer mightily. For this is the work that God and thy nature have given to thee to accomplish.” CWSA-19/Essays of the Gita/p-66-67, “That is all right in the ordinary karmayoga which aims at union with the cosmic Spirit and stops short at the Overmind — but here (in Integral Yoga) a special work has to be done and a new realisation achieved for the earth and not for ourselves alone. It is necessary to stand apart from the rest of the world so as to separate ourselves from the ordinary consciousness in order to bring down a new one… It is not that love for all is not part of the sadhana, but it has not to translate itself at once into a mixing with all — it can only express itself in a general and when need be dynamic universal goodwill, but for the rest it must find vent in this labour of bringing down the higher consciousness with all its effect for the earth. As for accepting the working of the Divine in all things that is necessary here too in the sense of seeing it even behind our struggles and difficulties, but not accepting the nature of man and the world as it is — our aim is to move towards a more divine working which will replace what now is by a greater and happier manifestation. That too is a labour of divine Love .” Sri Aurobindo/CWSA-35/Letters on Himself and the Ashram/p-812-813, "Moreover not only a faith in the fundamental principle, ideas, way of the Yoga is needed, but a day to day working faith in the power in us to achieve, in the steps we have taken on the way, in the spiritual experiences that come to us, in the intuitions, the guiding movements of will and impulsion, the moved intensities of the heart and aspirations and fulfilments of the life that are the aids, the circumstances and the stages of the enlarging of the nature and the stimuli or the steps of the soul’s evolution. At the same time it has always to be remembered that we are moving from imperfection and ignorance towards light and perfection, and the faith in us must be free from attachment to the forms of our endeavour and the successive stages of our realisation. There is not only much that will be strongly raised in us in order to be cast out and rejected, a battle between the powers of ignorance and the lower nature and the higher powers that have to replace them, but experiences, states of thought and feeling, forms of realisation that are helpful and have to be accepted on the way and may seem to us for the time to be spiritual finalities, are found afterwards to be steps of transition, have to be exceeded and the working faith that supported them withdrawn in favour of other and greater things or of more full and comprehensive realisations and experiences, which replace them or into which they are taken up in a completing transformation. There can be for the seeker of the integral Yoga no clinging to resting-places on the road or to half-way houses; he cannot be satisfied till he has laid down all the great enduring bases of his perfection and broken out into its large and free infinities, and even there he has to be constantly filling himself with more experiences of the Infinite. His progress is an ascent from level to level and each new height brings in other vistas and revelations of the much that has still to be done, bhuri kartvam , till the divine Shakti has at last taken up all his endeavour and he has only to assent and participate gladly by a consenting oneness in her luminous workings. That which will support him through these changes, struggles, transformations which might otherwise dishearten and baffle, — for the intellect and life and emotion always grasp too much at things, fasten on premature certitudes and are apt to be afflicted and unwilling when forced to abandon that on which they rested, — is a firm faith in the Shakti that is at work and reliance on the guidance of the Master of the Yoga whose wisdom is not in haste and whose steps through all the perplexities of the mind are assured and just and sound, because they are founded on a perfectly comprehending transaction with the necessities of our nature. " CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-775-776, "The Yoga of perfection necessary to this change has, so far as we have been considering it, consisted in a preparatory purification of the mental, vital and physical nature, a liberation from the knots of the lower Prakriti, a consequent replacement of the egoistic state always subject to the ignorant and troubled action of the desire soul by a large and luminous static equality which quiets the reason, the emotional mind, the life mind and the physical nature and brings into us the peace and freedom of the spirit, and a dynamical substitution of the action of the supreme and universal divine Shakti under the control of the Ishwara for that of the lower Prakriti, — an action whose complete operation must be preceded by the perfection of the natural instruments. And all these things together, though not as yet the whole Yoga, constitute already a much greater than the present normal consciousness, spiritual in its basis and moved by a greater light, power and bliss, and it might be easy to rest satisfied with so much accomplished and think that all has been done that was needed for the divine conversion. " CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-784, “There must come upon us in the change at once a reversal and rejection of our present way of existence and a fulfilment of its inner trend and tendency.” CWSA-22/The Life Divine/p-1012, "At first the mind takes all that comes from beyond it without distinction as the sufficient spiritual illumination and accepts even initial states and first enlightenments as a finality, but afterwards it finds that to rest here would be to rest in a partial realisation and that one has to go on heightening and enlarging till at least there is reached a certain completeness of divine breadth and stature." CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-813, “Moreover, the descent may be enough to liberate, but not to perfect, or it may be enough to make a great change in the inner being, while the outer remains an imperfect instrument, clumsy, sick or unexpressive. Finally, the transformation effected by the sadhana cannot be complete unless it is a supramentalisation of the being. Psychisation is not enough, it is only a beginning ; spiritualisation and the descent of the higher consciousness is not enough, it is only a middle term ; the ultimate achievement needs the action of the supramental Consciousness and Force. Something less than that may very well be considered enough by the individual, but it is not enough for the earth-consciousness to take the definitive stride forward it must take at one time or another.” CWSA-29//Letters on Yoga-II/p-399, “The vairagya of one who has tasted the world’s gifts or prizes but found them insufficient or, finally, tasteless and turns away towards a higher and more beautiful ideal or the vairagya of one who has done his part in life’s battles but seen that something greater is demanded of the soul, is perfectly helpful and a good gate to the Yoga. Also the sattwic vairagya which has learned what life is and turns to what is above and behind life. By the ascetic vairagya I mean that which denies life and world altogether and wants to disappear into the Indefinite and I object to it for those who come to this Yoga because it is incompatible with my aim which is to bring the Divine into life. But if one is satisfied with life as it is, then there is no reason to seek to bring the Divine into life, — so vairagya in the sense of dissatisfaction with life as it is is perfectly admissible and even in a certain sense indispensable for my Yoga. ” CWSA-29/Letters on Yoga-II-389, "I am continuing my reading of the Veda. I had to stop for some days because of a sore throat. But anyway, I’m starting again...The Vedas, after all, were written by people who remembered a radical experience , which must have taken place on earth at a given moment, as an example of what was to come. (This always happens in the yoga: a first radical experience comes like a herald of the future realization.) So in the terrestrial yoga – in the yoga of the earth, of the planet earth – there was a moment when it came; they who are called the forefathers must have created, through their effort and their yoga, at least an image of the supramental realization. And those who wrote the Vedas, who composed all these hymns, remembered or kept the tradition of that experience . And oh, mon petit, it had the same effect on me as when I read the ‘Yoga of Self-Perfection’ in The Synthesis of Yoga (Mother catches her breath): there is such a gulf between what we are, what life on earth and human consciousness now are, even among the most enlightened, the most advanced, and THAT! ..." The Mother's Agenda/April 7, 1961 (Here the Mother confirms that The Synthesis of Yoga is a book descended from the Supramental world, and by concentrating on this book one will be automatically dragged towards THAT plane.) Sign of waking trance of an integral Sadhak: "It is this calm, desireless, griefless fixity of the buddhi in self-poise and self-knowledge to which the Gita gives the name of Samadhi . The sign of the man in Samadhi is not that he loses consciousness of objects and surroundings and of his mental and physical self and cannot be recalled to it even by burning or torture of the body, — the ordinary idea of the matter; trance is a particular intensity, not the essential sign. The test is the expulsion of all desires , their inability to get at the mind, and it is the inner state from which this freedom arises, the delight of the soul gathered within itself with the mind equal and still and high-poised above the attractions and repulsions, the alternations of sunshine and storm and stress of the external life. It is drawn inward even when acting outwardly ; it is concentrated in self even when gazing out upon things; it is directed wholly to the Divine even when to the outward vision of others busy and preoccupied with the affairs of the world." CWSA-19/Essays of the Gita/p-101-102, "For the mind is really a reflector and a medium and none of its activities originate in themselves, none exist per se. Ordinarily, the mind reflects the status of mortal nature and the activities of the Force which works under the conditions of the material universe. But if it becomes clear, passive, pure by the renunciation of these activities and of the characteristic ideas and outlook of mental nature, then as in a clear mirror or like the sky in clear water which is without ripple and unruffled by winds, the divine is reflected. The mind still does not entirely possess the divine or become divine, but is possessed by it or by a luminous reflection of it so long as it remains in this pure passivity. If it becomes active, it falls back into the disturbance of the mortal nature and reflects that and no longer the divine. For this reason an absolute quietism and a cessation first of all outer action and then of all inner movement is the ideal ordinarily proposed; here too, for the follower of the path of knowledge, there must be a sort of waking Samadhi . Whatever action is unavoidable, must be a purely superficial working of the organs of perception and motor action in which the quiescent mind takes eventually no part and from which it seeks no result or profit....But this is insufficient for the integral Yoga . There must be a positive transformation and not merely a negative quiescence of the waking mentality. The transformation is possible because, although the divine planes are above the mental consciousness and to enter actually into them we have ordinarily to lose the mental in Samadhi , yet there are in the mental being divine planes superior to our normal mentality which reproduce the conditions of the divine plane proper , although modified by the conditions, dominant here, of mentality. All that belongs to the experience of the divine plane can there be seized, but in the mental way and in a mental form. To these planes of divine mentality it is possible for the developed human being to arise in the waking state; or it is possible for him to derive from them a stream of influences and experiences which shall eventually open to them and transform into their nature his whole waking existence. These higher mental states are the immediate sources, the large actual instruments, the inner stations of his perfection." CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-397-398, Winds carry away a ship: "For evidently there are two possibilities of the action of the intelligent will. It may take its downward and outward orientation towards a discursive action of the perceptions and the will in the triple play of Prakriti, or it may take its upward and inward orientation towards a settled peace and equality in the calm and immutable purity of the conscious silent soul no longer subject to the distractions of Nature. In the former alternative the subjective being is at the mercy of the objects of sense, it lives in the outward contact of things. That life is the life of desire. For the senses excited by their objects create a restless or often violent disturbance, a strong or even headlong outward movement towards the seizure of these objects and their enjoyment, and they carry away the sense-mind, “as the winds carry away a ship upon the sea”; (The Gita-2.67) the mind subjected to the emotions, passions, longings, impulsions awakened by this outward movement of the senses carries away similarly the intelligent will, which loses therefore its power of calm discrim- ination and mastery. Subjection of the soul to the confused play of the three gunas of Prakriti in their eternal entangled twining and wrestling, ignorance, a false, sensuous, objective life of the soul, enslavement to grief and wrath and attachment and pas- sion, are the results of the downward trend of the buddhi, — the troubled life of the ordinary, unenlightened, undisciplined man. Those who like the Vedavadins make sense-enjoyment the object of action and its fulfilment the highest aim of the soul, are misleading guides. The inner subjective self-delight independent of objects is our true aim and the high and wide poise of our peace and liberation." CWSA-19/Essays of the Gita/p-98-99, "The ego turn, the separative turn of the being, is the fulcrum of the whole embarrassed labour of the ignorance and the bondage. So long as one is not free from the ego sense, there can be no real freedom. The seat of the ego is said to be in the buddhi; it is an ignorance of the discriminating mind and reason which discriminate wrongly and take the individuation of mind, life and body for a truth of separative existence and are turned away from the greater reconciling truth of the oneness of all existence. At any rate in man it is the ego idea which chiefly supports the falsehood of a separative existence; to get rid of this idea, to dwell on the opposite idea of unity, of the one self, the one spirit, the one being of nature is therefore an effective remedy; but it is not by itself absolutely effective. For the ego, though it supports itself by this ego idea, aham- buddhi, finds its most powerful means for a certain obstinacy or passion of persistence in the normal action of the sense-mind, the prana and the body. To cast out of us the ego idea is not entirely possible or not entirely effective until these instruments have undergone purification; for, their action being persistently egoistic and separative, the buddhi is carried away by them, — as a boat by winds on the sea, says the Gita , (The Gita-2.67)— the knowledge in the intelligence is being constantly obscured or lost temporarily and has to be restored again, a very labour of Sisyphus. But if the lower instruments have been purified of egoistic desire, wish, will, egoistic passion, egoistic emotion and the buddhi itself of egoistic idea and preference, then the knowledge of the spiritual truth of oneness can find a firm foundation. Till then, the ego takes all sorts of subtle forms and we imagine ourselves to be free from it, when we are really acting as its instruments and all we have attained is a certain intellectual poise which is not the true spiritual liberation. Moreover, to throw away the active sense of ego is not enough; that may merely bring an inactive state of the mentality, a certain passive inert quietude of separate being may take the place of the kinetic egoism, which is also not the true liberation. The ego sense must be replaced by a oneness with the transcendental Divine and with universal being. " CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-676-677 Equality, samata : "Fixed in Yoga do thy actions, having abandoned attachment, having become equal in failure and success; for it is equality that is meant by Yoga, samatwam yoga uchyate. " The Gita-2.48, "The very first necessity for spiritual perfection is a perfect equality. Perfection in the sense in which we use it in Yoga, means a growth out of a lower undivine into a higher divine nature. In terms of knowledge it is a putting on the being of the higher self and a casting away of the darker broken lower self or a transforming of our imperfect state into the rounded luminous fullness of our real and spiritual personality. In terms of devotion and adoration it is a growing into a likeness of the nature or the law of the being of the Divine, to be united with whom we aspire, — for if there is not this likeness, this oneness of the law of the being, unity between that transcending and universal and this individual spirit is not possible. The supreme divine nature is founded on equality. This affirmation is true of it whether we look on the Supreme Being as a pure silent Self and Spirit or as the divine Master of cosmic existence. The pure Self is equal, unmoved, the witness in an impartial peace of all the happenings and relations of cosmic existence. While it is not averse to them, — aversion is not equality, nor, if that were the attitude of the Self to cosmic existence, could the universe come at all into being or proceed upon its cycles, — a detachment, the calm of an equal regard, a superiority to the reactions which trouble and are the disabling weakness of the soul involved in outward nature, are the very substance of the silent Infinite’s purity and the condition of its impartial assent and support to the many-sided movement of the universe. But in that power too of the Supreme which governs and develops these motions, the same equality is a basic condition." CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-698, "But even a human perfection cannot dispense with equality as one of its chief elements and even its essential atmosphere. The aim of a human perfection must include, if it is to deserve the name, two things, self-mastery and a mastery of the surroundings; it must seek for them in the greatest degree of these powers which is at all attainable by our human nature. Man’s urge of self-perfection is to be, in the ancient language, svarat and samrat , self-ruler and king. But to be self-ruler is not possible for him if he is subject to the attack of the lower nature, to the turbulence of grief and joy, to the violent touches of pleasure and pain, to the tumult of his emotions and passions, to the bondage of his personal likings and dislikings, to the strong chains of desire and attachment, to the narrowness of a personal and emotionally preferential judgment and opinion, to all the hundred touches of his egoism and its pursuing stamp on his thought, feeling and action. All these things are the slavery to the lower self which the greater “I” in man must put under his feet if he is to be king of his own nature. To surmount them is the condition of self-rule; but of that surmounting again equality is the condition and the essence of the movement. To be quite free from all these things, — if possible, or at least to be master of and superior to them, — is equality. Farther, one who is not self-ruler, cannot be master of his surroundings. The knowledge, the will, the harmony which is necessary for this outward mastery, can come only as a crown of the inward conquest. It belongs to the self-possessing soul and mind which follows with a disinterested equality the Truth, the Right, the universal Largeness to which alone this mastery is possible, — following always the great ideal they present to our imperfection while it understands and makes a full allowance too for all that seems to conflict with them and stand in the way of their manifestation. This rule is true even on the levels of our actual human mentality, where we can only get a limited perfection. But the ideal of Yoga takes up this aim of Swarajya and Samrajya and puts it on the larger spiritual basis. There it gets its full power, opens to the diviner degrees of the spirit; for it is by oneness with the Infinite, by a spiritual power acting upon finite things, that some highest integral perfection of our being and nature finds its own native foundation." CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-701-702 "A perfect equality not only of the self, but in the nature is a condition of the Yoga of self-perfection. The first obvious step to it will be the conquest of our emotional and vital being, for here are the sources of greatest trouble, the most rampant forces of inequality and subjection, the most insistent claim of our imperfection. The equality of these parts of our nature comes by purification and freedom. We might say that equality is the very sign of liberation. To be free from the domination of the urge of vital desire and the stormy mastery of the soul by the passions is to have a calm and equal heart and a life-principle governed by the large and even view of a universal spirit. Desire is the impurity of the Prana, the life-principle, and its chain of bondage. A free Prana means a content and satisfied life-soul which fronts the contact of outward things without desire and receives them with an equal response; delivered, uplifted above the servile duality of liking and disliking, indifferent to the urgings of pleasure and pain, not excited by the pleasant, not troubled and overpowered by the unpleasant, not clinging with attachment to the touches it prefers or violently repelling those for which it has an aversion, it will be opened to a greater system of values of experience. All that comes to it from the world with menace or with solicitation, it will refer to the higher principles, to a reason and heart in touch with or changed by the light and calm joy of the spirit. Thus quieted, mastered by the spirit and no longer trying to impose its own mastery on the deeper and finer soul in us, this life-soul will be itself spiritualised and work as a clear and noble instrument of the diviner dealings of the spirit with things. There is no question here of an ascetic killing of the life-impulse and its native utilities and functions; not its killing is demanded, but its transformation. The function of the Prana is enjoyment, but the real enjoyment of existence is an inward spiritual Ananda, not partial and troubled like that of our vital, emotional or mental pleasure, degraded as they are now by the predominance of the physical mind, but universal, profound, a massed concentration of spiritual bliss possessed in a calm ecstasy of self and all existence. Possession is its function, by possession comes the soul’s enjoyment of things, but this is the real possession, a thing large and inward, not dependent on the outward seizing which makes us subject to what we seize. All outward possession and enjoyment will be only an occasion of a satisfied and equal play of the spiritual Ananda with the forms and phenomena of its own world-being. The egoistic possession, the making things our own in the sense of the ego’s claim on God and beings and the world, parigraha, (The Gita-6.10) must be renounced in order that this greater thing, this large, universal and perfect life, may come. Tyaktena bhunjıthah, (Isha Upanishad-1) by renouncing the egoistic sense of desire and possession, the soul enjoys divinely its self and the universe." CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-702-703, "The first business of the sadhaka is to see whether he has the perfect equality, how far he has gone in this direction or else where is the flaw, and to exercise steadily his will on his nature or invite the will of the Purusha to get rid of the defect and its causes. There are four things that he must have; first, equality in the most concrete practical sense of the word, samata , freedom from mental, vital, physical preferences, an even acceptance of all God’s workings within and around him; secondly, a firm peace and absence of all disturbance and trouble, santi ; thirdly, a positive inner spiritual happiness and spiritual ease of the nat- ural being which nothing can lessen, sukham ; fourthly, a clear joy and laughter of the soul embracing life and existence. To be equal is to be infinite and universal, not to limit oneself, not to bind oneself down to this or that form of the mind and life and its partial preferences and desires. But since man in his present normal nature lives by his mental and vital formations, not in the freedom of his spirit, attachment to them and the desires and preferences they involve is also his normal condition. To accept them is at first inevitable, to get beyond them exceedingly difficult and not, perhaps, altogether possible so long as we are compelled to use the mind as the chief instrument of our action. The first necessity therefore is to take at least the sting out of them, to deprive them, even when they persist, of their greater insistence, their present egoism, their more violent claim on our nature." CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-721-722 The Highest Objective of a Sankhya Sadhak: "The status he reaches is the Brahmic condition; he gets to firm standing in the Brahman, brahmı sthiti. It is a reversal of the whole view, experience, knowledge, values, seeings of earth-bound creatures...he is an ocean of wide being and consciousness which is ever being filled, yet ever motionless in its large poise of his soul; all the desires of the world enter into him as waters into the sea, yet he has no desire nor is troubled . For while they are filled with the troubling sense of ego and mine and thine, he is one with the one Self in all and has no “I” or “mine”. He acts as others, but he has abandoned all desires and their longings. He attains to the great peace and is not bewildered by the shows of things; he has extinguished his individual ego in the One, lives in that unity and, fixed in that status at his end,...." CWSA-19/Essays of the Gita/p-103-104, "A new consciousness is at work upon earth to prepare the coming of the superhuman being...Open yourselves to this consciousness if you aspire to serve the Divine Work... To come into contact with this new consciousness, the essential condition is no longer to have any desires and to be wholly sincere.” The Mother/The Mother’s Agenda-9th April 1969, "All animal perceptions, sensibilities, activities are ruled by nervous and vital instincts, cravings, needs, satisfactions, of which the nexus is the life-impulse and vital desire. Man too is bound, but less bound, to this automatism of the vital nature. Man can bring an enlightened will, an enlightened thought and enlightened emotions to the difficult work of his self-development; he can more and more subject to these more conscious and reflecting guides the inferior function of desire . In proportion as he can thus master and enlighten his lower self, he is man and no longer an animal. When he can begin to replace desire altogether by a still greater enlightened thought and sight and will in touch with the Infinite, consciously subject to a diviner will than his own, linked to a more universal and transcendent knowledge, he has commenced the ascent towards the superman ; he is on his upward march towards the Divine." CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-80 2 / Chapter 2. Sankhya Yoga The First Necessity of an integral Sadhaka: "Our first step in this path of knowledge , having once determined in our intellect that what seems is not the Truth, that the self is not the body or life or mind, since these are only its forms, must be to set right our mind in its practical relation with the life and the body so that it may arrive at its own right relation with the Self. This it is easiest to do by a device with which we are already familiar, since it played a great part in our view of the Yoga of Works; it is to create a separation between the Prakriti and the Purusha. The Purusha , the soul that knows and commands has got himself involved in the workings of his executive conscious force, so that he mistakes this physical working of it which we call the body for himself; he forgets his own nature as the soul that knows and commands; he believes his mind and soul to be subject to the law and working of the body; he forgets that he is so much else besides that is greater than the physical form; he forgets that the mind is really greater than Matter and ought not to submit to its obscurations, reactions, habit of inertia, habit of incapacity; he forgets that he is more even than the mind, a Power which can raise the mental being above itself; that he is the Master, the Transcendent and it is not fit the Master should be enslaved to his own workings, the Transcendent imprisoned in a form which exists only as a trifle in its own being. All this forgetfulness has to be cured by the Purusha remembering his own true nature and first by his remembering that the body is only a working and only one working of Prakriti. " CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-343, " The first necessity of preparation is the purifying of all the members of our being; especially, for the path of knowledge, the purification of the understanding, the key that shall open the door of Truth ; and a purified understanding is hardly possible without the purification of the other members. An unpurified heart, an unpurified sense, an unpurified life confuse the understanding, disturb its data, distort its conclusions, darken its seeing, misapply its knowledge; an unpurified physical system clogs or chokes up its action. There must be an integral purity. Here also there is an interdependence; for the purification of each member of our being profits by the clarifying of every other, the progressive tranquillisation of the emotional heart helping for instance the purification of the understanding while equally a purified understanding imposes calm and light on the turbid and darkened workings of the yet impure emotions. It may even be said that while each member of our being has its own proper principles of purification, yet it is the purified understanding that in man is the most potent cleanser of his turbid and disordered being and most sovereignly imposes their right working on his other members. Knowledge, says the Gita, is the sovereign purity; light is the source of all clearness and harmony even as the darkness of ignorance is the cause of all our stumblings. Love, for example, is the purifier of the heart and by reducing all our emotions into terms of divine love the heart is perfected and fulfilled; yet love itself needs to be clarified by divine knowledge. The heart’s love of God may be blind, narrow and ignorant and lead to fanaticism and obscurantism; it may, even when otherwise pure, limit our perfection by refusing to see Him except in a limited personality and by recoiling from the true and infinite vision. The heart’s love of man may equally lead to distortions and exaggerations in feeling, action and knowledge which have to be corrected and prevented by the purification of the understanding.” CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-309 "What Science does for our knowledge of the material world, replacing first appearances and uses by the hidden truths and as yet occult powers of its great natural forces and in our own minds beliefs and opinions by verified experience and a profounder understanding, Yoga does for the higher planes and worlds and possibilities of our being which are aimed at by the religions. Therefore all this mass of graded experience existing behind closed doors to which the consciousness of man may find, if it wills, the key, falls within the province of a comprehensive Yoga of knowledge, which need not be confined to the seeking after the Absolute alone or the knowledge of the Divine in itself or of the Divine only in its isolated relations with the individual human soul. It is true that the consciousness of the Absolute is the highest reach of the Yoga of knowledge and that the possession of the Divine is its first, greatest and most ardent object and that to neglect it for an inferior knowledge is to afflict our Yoga with inferiority or even frivolity and to miss or fall away from its characteristic object; but, the Divine in itself being known, the Yoga of knowledge may well embrace also the knowledge of the Divine in its relations with ourselves and the world on the different planes of our existence. To rise to the pure Self being steadfastly held to as the summit of our subjective self-uplifting, we may from that height possess our lower selves even to the physical and the workings of Nature which belong to them." CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-4 60-461, Spiritualised Intelligence and Buddhi Yoga are passages for direct contact with Supermind: “But still this line of development too is necessary, because there must be a bridge between the spirit and the intellectual reason: the light of a spiritual or at least a spiritualised intelligence is necessary for the fullness of our total inner evolution, and without it, if another deeper guidance is lacking, the inner movement may be erratic and undisciplined, turbid and mixed with unspiritual elements or one-sided or incomplete in its catholicity. For the transformation of the Ignorance into the integral Knowledge the growth in us of a spiritual intelligence ready to receive a higher light and canalise it for all the parts of our nature is an intermediate necessity of great importance .” CWSA-22/The Life Divine-913, "The test that we have done this is the presence of an undisturbed calm in the mind and spirit. The sadhaka must be on the watch as the witnessing and willing Purusha behind or, better, as soon as he can manage it, above the mind, and repel even the least indices or incidence of trouble, anxiety, grief, revolt, disturbance in his mind. If these things come, he must at once detect their source, the defect which they indicate, the fault of egoistic claim, vital desire, emotion or idea from which they start and this he must discourage by his will, his spiritualised intelligence , his soul unity with the Master of his being. On no account must he admit any excuse for them, however natural, righteous in seeming or plausible, or any inner or outer justification. If it is the prana which is troubled and clamorous, he must separate himself from the troubled prana, keep seated his higher nature in the buddhi and by the buddhi school and reject the claim of the desire-soul in him; and so too if it is the heart of emotion that makes the clamour and the disturbance. If on the other hand it is the will and intelligence itself that is at fault, then the trouble is more difficult to command, because then his chief aid and instrument becomes an accomplice of the revolt against the divine Will and the old sins of the lower members take advantage of this sanction to raise their diminished heads. Therefore there must be a constant insistence on one main idea, the self-surrender to the Master of our being, God within us and in the world, the supreme Self, the universal Spirit. The buddhi dwelling always in this master idea (self-surrender) must discourage all its own lesser insistences and preferences and teach the whole being that the ego whether it puts forth its claim through the reason, the personal will, the heart or the desire-soul in the prana , has no just claim of any kind and all grief, revolt, impatience, trouble is a violence against the Master of the being .... This complete self-surrender must be the chief mainstay of the sadhaka because it is the only way, apart from complete quiescence and indifference to all action, — and that has to be avoided , — by which the absolute calm and peace can come . The persistence of trouble, asanti , the length of time taken for this purification and perfection, itself must not be allowed to become a reason for discouragement and impatience. It comes because there is still something in the nature which responds to it, and the recurrence of trouble serves to bring out the presence of the defect , put the sadhaka upon his guard and bring about a more enlightened and consistent action of the will to get rid of it. When the trouble is too strong to be kept out, it must be allowed to pass and its return discouraged by a greater vigilance and insistence of the spiritualised buddhi . Thus persisting, it will be found that these things lose their force more and more, become more and more external and brief in their recurrence, until finally calm becomes the law of the being . This rule persists so long as the mental buddhi is the chief instrument ; but when the supramental light takes possession of mind and heart, then there can be no trouble, grief or disturbance; for that brings with it a spiritual nature of illumined strength in which these things can have no place. There the only vibrations and emotions are those which belong to the anandamaya nature of divine unity.” CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-722-724, “Buddhiyoga is fulfilled by karmayoga ; the Yoga of the self-liberating intelligent will finds its full meaning by the Yoga of desireless works . Thus the Gita founds its teaching of the necessity of desireless works, niskama karma , and unites the subjective practice of the Sankhyas — rejecting their merely physical rule — with the practice of Yoga.” CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-109, "Works are far inferior to Yoga of the intelligence , Buddhiyoga, O Dhananjaya ; desire rather refuge in the intelligence; poor and wretched souls are they who make the fruit of their works the object of their thoughts and activities. One whose intelligence has attained to unity, casts away –even here in this world of dualities –both good doing and evil doing. Therefore strive to be in Yoga; Yoga is skill in works. The sages who have united their reason and will with the Divine renounce the fruit which action yields and, liberated from the bondage of birth, they reach the status beyond misery. When thy intelligence shall cross beyond the whirl of delusion, then shalt thou become indifferent to Scripture heard or that which thou hast yet to hear. When thy intelligence which is bewildered by the Sruti, shall stand unmoving and stable in Samadhi, then shalt thou attain to Yoga." The Gita-2.49-53, "I am the birth of everything and from Me all proceeds into development of action and movement; understanding thus, the wise adore Me in rapt emotion. Their consciousness full of Me, their life wholly given up to Me, illumining each other, mutually talking about Me, they are ever contented and joyful. To these who are thus in a constant union with Me, and adore Me with an intense delight of love, I give the Yoga of understanding, Buddhiyoga , by which they come to Me. Out of compassion for them, I, lodged in their self, lift the blazing lamp of knowledge and destroy the darkness which is born of the ignorance. (This destruction of darkness hinted in the Gita is identified as Supramental action through buddhi Yoga. )" The Gita-10.8-11, It appears from Sri Aurobindo’s following writings that those whose intellect is Spiritualised or those who have practiced Buddhi Yoga of the Gita can draw direct benefit from Supramental energy, that is now active in earth’s atmosphere, “All that [ideas such as “everything will soon be spiritualised”] is absurd. The descent of the supramental means only that the Power will be there in the earth consciousness as a living force just as the thinking mental and the higher mental are already there. But an animal cannot take advantage of the presence of the thinking mental Power or an undeveloped man of the presence of the higher mental Power — so too everybody will not be able to take advantage of the presence of the supramental Power. I have also often enough said that it will be at first for the few, not for the whole earth, — only there will be a growing influence of it on the earth life.” CWSA-28/Letters on Yoga/p-290, "As for the conquest of death, it is only one of the sequelae of supramentalisation — and I am not aware that I have forsworn my views about the supramental descent. But I never said or thought that the supramental descent would automatically make everybody immortal. The supramental descent can only make the best conditions for anybody who can open to it then or thereafter attaining to the supramental consciousness and its consequences. But it would not dispense with the necessity of sadhana . If it did, the logical consequence would be that the whole earth, men, dogs and worms, would suddenly wake up to find themselves supramental. There would be no need of an Asram or of Yoga. " CWSA-28/Letters on Yoga-I/p-312-313, “The supramental man on the contrary will think more with the universal mind or even may rise above it, and his individuality will rather be a vessel of radiation and communication to which the universal thought and knowledge of the Spirit will converge than a centre. The mental man thinks and acts in a radius determined by the smallness or largeness of his mentality and of its experience. The range of the supramental man will be all the earth and all that lies behind it on other planes of existence...Ordinarily the supramental knowledge will be organised (1) first and with the most ease in the processes of pure thought and knowledge, jnana , (Purified intellect) because here the human mind has already the upward tendency and is the most free. (2) Next and with less ease it (Supramental Knowledge) will be organised in the processes of applied thought and knowledge (tamasic, rajasic and sattwic mind ) because there the mind of man is at once most active and most bound and wedded to its inferior methods. (3) The last and most difficult conquest, because this is now to his mind a field of conjecture or a blank, will be the knowledge of the three times, trikaladristi .” Sri Aurobindo/CWSA/24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-837, 839, "And first it will be enough to take certain clues from the thinking mind; for it is there that some of the nearest keys to the supramental action are discoverable. The thought of the intuitive mind proceeds wholly by four powers that shape the form of the truth, (1) an intuition that suggests its idea, (2) an intuition that discriminates, (3) an inspiration that brings in its word and something of its greater substance and (4) a revelation that shapes to the sight its very face and body of reality." CWSA/24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-813, "Intuition has a fourfold power. (1) A power of revelatory truth-seeing, (2) a power of inspiration or truth-hearing, (3) a power of truth-touch or immediate seizing of significance, which is akin to the ordinary nature of its intervention in our mental intelligence, (4) a power of true and automatic discrimination of the orderly and exact relation of truth to truth, — these are the fourfold potencies of Intuition.... A certain integration can thus take place, but whether it is a total integration must depend on the extent to which the new light is able to take up the subconscient and penetrate the fundamental Inconscience. Here the intuitive light and power may be hampered in its task because it is the edge of a delegated and modified supermind, but does not bring in the whole mass or body of the identity knowledge. The basis of Inconscience in our nature is too vast, deep and solid to be altogether penetrated, turned into light, transformed by an inferior power of the Truth-nature." CWSA-22/The Life Divine/p-983-984, "A fourth method is one which suggests itself naturally to the developed intelligence and suits the thinking man. This is to develop our intellect instead of eliminating it, but with the will not to cherish its limitations, but to heighten its capacity, light, intensity, degree and force of activity until it borders on the thing that transcends it and can easily be taken up and transformed into that higher conscious action. This movement also is founded on the truth of our nature and enters into the course and movement of the complete Yoga of self-perfection. That course, as I have described it, included a heightening and greatening of the action of our natural instruments and powers till they constitute in their purity and essential completeness a preparatory perfection of the present normal movement of the Shakti that acts in us. The reason and intelligent will, the buddhi , is the greatest of these powers and instruments, the natural leader of the rest in the developed human being, the most capable of aiding the development of the others. The ordinary activities of our nature are all of them of use for the greater perfection we seek, are meant to be turned into material for them, and the greater their (mind, life and body) development, the richer the preparation for the supramental action. " CWSA/24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-806, "Even the purest reason, the most luminous rational intellectuality is not the gnosis. Reason or intellect is only the lower buddhi ; it is dependent for its action on the percepts of the sense-mind and on the concepts of the mental intelligence. It is not like the gnosis, self-luminous, authentic, making the subject one with the object. There is, indeed, a higher form of the buddhi that can be called the intuitive mind or intuitive reason, and this by its intuitions, its inspirations, its swift revelatory vision, its luminous insight and discrimination can do the work of the reason with a higher power, a swifter action, a greater and spontaneous certitude. It acts in a self-light of the truth which does not depend upon the torch-flares of the sense-mind and its limited uncertain percepts; it proceeds not by intelligent but by visional concepts : it is a kind of truth-vision, truth-hearing, truth-memory, direct truth-discernment. This true and authentic intuition must be distinguished from a power of the ordinary mental reason which is too easily confused with it, the power of involved reasoning that reaches its conclusion by a bound and does not need the ordinary steps of the logical mind. The logical reason proceeds pace after pace and tries the sureness of each step like a man who is walking over unsafe ground and has to test by the hesitating touch of his foot each span of soil that he perceives with his eye. But this other supralogical process of the reason is a motion of rapid insight or swift discernment; it proceeds by a stride or leap, like a man who springs from one sure spot to another point of sure footing, — or at least held by him to be sure. He sees the space he covers in one compact and flashing view, but he does not distinguish or measure either by eye or touch its successions, features and circumstances . This movement has something of the sense of power of the intuition, something of its velocity, some appearance of its light and certainty, and we always are apt to take it for the intuition. But our assumption is an error and, if we trust to it, may lead us into grievous blunders." CWSA/23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-477-478 The Message of this Second Chapter for a Sadhak of Integral Yoga: “There is a divine compassion which descends to us from on high and for the man whose nature does not possess it, is not cast in its mould, to pretend to be the superior man, the master-man or the superman is a folly and an insolence, for he alone is the superman who most manifests the highest nature of the Godhead in humanity. This compassion observes with an eye of love and wisdom and calm strength the battle and the struggle, the strength and weakness of man, his virtues and sins, his joy and suffering, his knowledge and his ignorance, his wisdom and his folly, his aspiration and his failure and it enters into it all to help and to heal...But it is also the divine compassion that smites down the strong tyrant and the confident oppressor, not in wrath and with hatred,...” CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-58-59 "Which instrument then by its purification and perfection will bring about most easily and effectively or can aid with a most powerful rapidity the perfection of the rest?. .. Since we are the spirit enveloped in mind, a soul evolved here as a mental being in a living physical body, it must naturally be in the mind, the antahkarana , that we must look for this desideratum. And in the mind it is evidently by the buddhi , the intelligence and the will of the intelligence that the human being is intended to do whatever work is not done for him by the physical or nervous nature as in the plant and the animal. Pending the evolution of any higher supramental power the intelligent will must be our main force for effectuation and to purify it becomes a very primary necessity. Once our intelligence and will are well purified of all that limits them and gives them a wrong action or wrong direction, they can easily be perfected, can be made to respond to the suggestions of Truth, understand themselves and the rest of the being, see clearly and with a fine and scrupulous accuracy what they are doing and follow out the right way to do it without any hesitating or eager error or stumbling deviation. Eventually their (Intelligence and Will) response can be opened up to the perfect discernings, intuitions, inspirations, revelations of the supermind and proceed by a more and more luminous and even infallible action. But this purification cannot be effected without a preliminary clearing of its natural obstacles in the other lower parts of the antahkarana , and the chief natural obstacle running through the whole action of the antahkarana, through the sense, the mental sensation, emotion, dynamic impulse, intelligence, will, is the intermiscence and the compelling claim of the psychic prana . (The deformation which enters in and prevents the purity, is a form of vital craving; the grand deformation which the psychic prana contributes to our being, is desire....The psychic prana invades the sensational mind and brings into it the unquiet thirst of sensations, invades the dynamic mind with the lust of control, having, domination, success, fulfilment of every impulse, fills the emotional mind with the desire for the satisfaction of liking and disliking, for the wreaking of love and hate, brings the shrinkings and panics of fear and the strainings and disappointments of hope, imposes the tortures of grief and the brief fevers and excitements of joy, makes the intelligence and intelligent will the accomplices of all these things and turns them in their own kind into deformed and lame instruments, the will into a will of craving and the intelligence into a partial, a stumbling and an eager pursuer of limited, impatient, militant prejudgment and opinion... The proper action of the psychic prana is pure possession and enjoyment, bhoga .)This then must be dealt with, its dominating intermiscence ruled out, its claim denied, itself quieted and prepared for purification." CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-654-655, "It is therefore an immense gain if we can acquire the capacity of always being able at will to command an absolute tranquillity and silence of the mind free from any necessity of mental thought or movement and disturbance and, based in that silence, allow thought and will and feeling to happen in us only when the Shakti wills it and when it is needful for the divine purpose. It becomes easier then to change the manner and character of the thought and will and feeling. Nevertheless it is not the fact that by this method the supramental light will immediately replace the lower mind and reflective reason. When the inner action proceeds after the silence, (Psychic action) even if it be then a more predominatingly intuitive thought and movement, (Spiritual action) the old powers will yet interfere, if not from within, then by a hundred suggestions from without, and an inferior mentality will mix in, will question or obstruct or will try to lay hold on the greater movement and to lower or darken or distort or minimise it in the process. Therefore the necessity of a process of elimination or transformation of the inferior mentality remains always imperative , — or perhaps both at once, (1) an elimination of all that is native to the lower being, its disfiguring accidents, its depreciations of value, its distortions of substance and all else that the greater truth cannot harbour, and (2) a transformation of the essential things our mind derives from the supermind and spirit but represents in the manner of the mental ignorance." CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-803 3 / Chapter 3. Karma Yoga Summary or A Brief Restatement: This chapter gives the message that desire is our greatest enemy, jahi kamam durasadam, ' this enemy in the form of desire, who is so hard to assail.' (The Gita-3.43) Desire has its root in the Inconscient sheath. Savitri book has identified that the key to the problem of existence is there in the Inconscient Sheath. "For the key is hid and by the Inconscient kept; The secret God beneath the threshold dwells." (Savitri-68) This problem of desire is resolved by discovery of the Inconscient Self, the secret God beneath the threshold. King Aswapati experienced the tearing of desire from its Inconscient root. 'He tore desire up from its bleeding roots And offered to the gods the vacant place.' (Savitri-318) This chapter also hints about the key of Karma Yoga which is identified as maye sarvani karmani sannyasya, (The Gita-3.30) surrendering the whole action into the Divine's hand by renouncing desire, ego, attachment and the three Gunas . The Knowledge of Wheel of Works as hinted in the Gita is identified as crucial in Integral Yoga in reconciling Matter and Spirit. “From Matter, anna , creatures come into being, from rain is the birth of Matter (food), from sacrifice comes into being the rain (Divine Grace), sacrifice is born of work; work know to be born of Brahman (Divine Will), Brahman (Divine Will) is born of Immutable (Chit Shakti ), therefore is the all-pervading Brahman Consciousness (Chit Shakti) is established in Matter by continuous sacrifice, nitya Yajna. He who follows not here this wheel of works, evam pravartitam chakram , thus set in movement, evil is his being, sensual is his delight, in vain, O Partha that man lives.” (The Gita-3.14, 15, 16,) In Integral Yoga, the wheel of Works is given much importance and its value has been much widened and developed. “This earth is not alone our teacher and nurse; The powers of all the worlds have entrance here. In their own fields they follow the wheel of law. (This wheel of Law is the same as the wheel of works.) And cherish the safety of a settled type; On earth out of their changeless orbit thrown Their law is kept, lost their fixed form of things.” Savitri-153 “This seeming driver of her wheel of works Missioned to motive and record her drift And fix its law on her inconstant powers, This master-spring of a delicate enginery, Aspired to enlighten its user and refine Lifting to a vision of the indwelling Power The absorbed mechanic’s crude initiative:” Savitri-158 “No silent peak is found where Time can rest. This was a magic stream that reached no sea. However far he went, wherever turned, The wheel of works ran with him and outstripped; Always a farther task was left to do.” Savitri-197 “He (Divine) dwells in me, (Savitri) the mover of my acts, Turning the great wheel of his cosmic work . I am the living body of his light, I am the thinking instrument of his power, I incarnate Wisdom in an earthly breast, I am his conquering and unslayable will. The formless Spirit drew in me its shape; In me are the Nameless and the secret Name.” Savitri-634 (Nameless is the Spiritual being and secret Name is the Psychic being.) “A vision shall compel thy coursing breath, Thy heart shall drive thee on the wheel of works, Thy mind shall urge thee through the flames of thought, To meet me in the abyss and on the heights, To feel me in the tempest and the calm, And love me in the noble and the vile, In beautiful things and terrible desire.” Savitri-700 "It is the old methods of yoga which demand silence and solitude...The yoga of tomorrow is to find the Divine in work and in relation with the world." The Mother/TMCW/Vol-14/Words of the Mother-II/p-49, "Equality, renunciation of all desire for the fruit of our works, action done as a sacrifice to the supreme Lord of our nature and of all nature, — these are the three first Godward approaches in the Gita’s way of Karmayoga." CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-105, "... what is meant by action done as Yoga, Karmayoga ? It is non-attachment, it is to do works without clinging with the mind to the objects of sense and the fruit of the works. Not complete inaction, which is an error, a confusion, a self-delusion, an impossibility, but action full and free done without subjection to sense and passion, desireless and unattached works, are the first secret of perfection." CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-108-109, "The first step on this long path is to consecrate all our works as a sacrifice to the Divine in us and in the world; this is an attitude of the mind and heart, not too difficult to initiate, but very difficult to make absolutely sincere and all-pervasive. The second step is to renounce attachment to the fruit of our works; for the only true, inevitable and utterly desirable fruit of sacrifice — the one thing needful — is the Divine Presence and the Divine Consciousness and Power in us, and if that is gained, all else will be added. This is a transformation of the egoistic will in our vital being, our desire-soul and desire-nature, and it is far more difficult than the other. The third step is to get rid of the central egoism and even the ego-sense of the worker. That is the most difficult transformation of all and it cannot be perfectly done if the first two steps have not been taken; but these first steps too cannot be completed unless the third comes in to crown the movement and, by the extinction of egoism, eradicates the very origin of desire. Only when the small ego-sense is rooted out from the nature can the seeker know his true person that stands above as a portion and power of the Divine and renounce all motive-force other than the will of the Divine Shakti. " CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p- 247-248, The Lord of Sacrifice: "“For with sacrifice as their companion,” says the Gita, “the All-Father created these peoples. ” (The Gita-3.10) The acceptance of the law of sacrifice is a practical recognition by the ego that it is neither alone in the world nor chief in the world. It is its admission that, even in this much fragmented existence, there is beyond itself and behind that which is not its own egoistic person, something greater and completer, a diviner All which demands from it subordination and service. Indeed, sacrifice is imposed and, where need be, compelled by the universal World-Force; it takes it even from those who do not consciously recognise the law, — inevitably, because this is the intrinsic nature of things. Our ignorance or our false egoistic view of life can make no difference to this eternal bedrock truth of Nature. For this is the truth in Nature, that this ego which thinks itself a separate independent being and claims to live for itself, is not and cannot be independent nor separate, nor can it live to itself even if it would, but rather all are linked together by a secret Oneness." CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-106, "Life is an altar to which she brings her workings and the fruits of her workings and lays them before whatever aspect of the Divinity the consciousness in her has reached for whatever result of the sacrifice the desire of the living soul can seize on as its immediate or its highest good.... A mutual giving and receiving is the law of Life without which it cannot for one moment endure, and this fact is the stamp of the divine creative Will on the world it has manifested in its being, the proof that with sacrifice as their eternal companion the Lord of creatures has created all these existences. (The Gita-3.10) The universal law of sacrifice is the sign that the world is of God and belongs to God and that life is his dominion and house of worship and not a field for the self-satisfaction of the independent ego ; not the fulfilment of the ego, — that is only our crude and obscure beginning, — but the discovery of God, the worship and seeking of the Divine and the Infinite through a constantly enlarging sacrifice culminating in a perfect self-giving founded on a perfect self-knowledge, is that to which the experience of life is at last intended to lead .” CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-125-126, “Sacrifice is the very condition of life; with sacrifice as their eternal companion the Father of creatures created the peoples. But the sacrifices of the Vedavadins are offerings of desire directed towards material rewards, desire eager for the result of works, desire looking to a larger enjoyment in Paradise as immortality and highest salvation. This the system of the Gita cannot admit; for that in its very inception starts with the renunciation of desire, with its rejection and destruction as the enemy of the soul. ” CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-89-90, “With sacrifice the Lord of creatures of old created creatures and said: By this shall you bring forth (fruits or offspring), let this be your milker of desires. Foster by this the gods and let the gods foster you; fostering each other, you shall attain to the supreme good. Fostered by sacrifice the gods shall give you desired enjoyments: who enjoys their given enjoyments and has not given to them, he is a thief. ” The Gita-3.10, 11, 12 "Only when the heart, the will and the mind of knowledge associate themselves with the law and gladly follow it, can there come the deep joy and the happy fruitfulness of divine sacrifice. The mind’s knowledge of the law and the heart’s gladness in it culminate in the perception that it is to our own Self and Spirit and the one Self and Spirit of all that we give. And this is true even when our self-offering is still to our fellow-creatures or to lesser Powers and Principles and not yet to the Supreme. “Not for the sake of the wife,” says Yajnavalkya in the (Brihadaranyaka) Upanishad, “but for the sake of the Self is the wife dear to us.” This in the lower sense of the individual self is the hard fact behind the coloured and passionate professions of egoistic love; but in a higher sense it is the inner significance of that love too which is not egoistic but divine. All true love and all sacrifice are in their essence Nature’s contradiction of the primary egoism and its separative error; it is her attempt to turn from a necessary first fragmentation towards a recovered oneness. All unity between creatures is in its essence a self-finding, a fusion with that from which we have separated, a discovery of one’s self in others." CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-107 Lokasangraha, Gathering together of people: "The works of sacrifice are thus vindicated as a means of liberation and absolute spiritual perfection, samsiddhi (The Gita-3.20). So Janaka and other great Karmayogins of the mighty ancient Yoga attained to perfection, by equal and desireless works done as a sacrifice, without the least egoistic aim or attachment — karmanaiva hi samsiddhim asthita janakadayah . (The Gita-3.20) So too and with the same desirelessness, after liberation and perfection, works can and have to be continued by us in a large divine spirit, with the calm high nature of a spiritual royalty. “Thou shouldst do works regarding also the holding together of the peoples, lokasangraham evapi sampasyan kartum arhasi . (The Gita-3.20) Whatsoever the Best doeth, that the lower kind of man puts into practice; the standard he creates, the people follows. O son of Pritha , I have no work that I need to do in all the three worlds, I have nothing that I have not gained and have yet to gain, and I abide verily in the paths of action ,” varta eva cha karmani , (The Gita-3.22) — eva implying, I abide in it and do not leave it as the Sannyasin thinks himself bound to abandon works. “For if I did not abide sleeplessly in the paths of action, men follow in every way my path, these peoples would sink to destruction if I did not works and I should be the creator of confusion and slay these creatures. As those who know not act with attachment to the action, he who knows should act without attachment , having for his motive to hold together the peoples . He should not create a division of their understanding in the ignorant who are attached to their works; he should set them to all actions, doing them himself with knowledge and in Yoga. ” (The Gita-3.23 to 26)" CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-135-136, "The motive cannot be personal desire on the intellectual, moral, emotional level, for that has been abandoned, — even the moral motive has been abandoned, since the liberated man has passed beyond the lower distinction of sin and virtue, lives in a glorified purity beyond good and evil. It cannot be the spiritual call to his perfect self-development by means of disinterested works, for the call has been answered, the development is perfect and fulfilled. His motive of action can only be the holding together of the peoples, chikırsur lokasangraham . (The Gita-3.25)" CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-138, "The whole world is moving towards this dharma , each man according to his capacity, — “it is my path that men follow in every way ,” (The Gita-3.23)— and the God-seeker, making himself one with all, making their joy and sorrow and all their life his own, the liberated made already one self with all beings, lives in the life of humanity, lives for the one Self in humanity, for God in all beings, acts for lokasangraha , for the maintaining of all in their dharma and the Dharma , for the maintenance of their growth in all its stages and in all its paths towards the Divine. " CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-174, "Therefore Arjuna is bidden to resist, to fight, to conquer; but, to fight without hatred or personal desire or personal enmity or antagonism, since to the liberated soul these feelings are impossible. To act for the lokasangraha , impersonally, for the keeping and leading of the peoples on the path to the divine goal, is a rule which rises necessarily from the oneness of the soul with the Divine, the universal Being, since that is the whole sense and drift of the universal action. Nor does it conflict with our oneness with all beings, even those who present themselves here as opponents and enemies." CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-210, "The highest way appointed for him is to carry out the will of God without egoism, as the human occasion and instrument of that which he sees to be decreed, with the constant supporting memory of the Godhead in himself and man, mam anusmaran , (The Gita-8.13) and in whatever ways are appointed for him by the Lord of his Nature. Nimittamatram bhava savyasachin . (The Gita-11.33) He will not cherish personal enmity, anger, hatred, egoistic desire and passion, will not hasten towards strife or lust after violence and destruction like the fierce Asura , but he will do his work, lokasangrahaya . " CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-386, "But it would seem that this can be attained very well, best even, pre-eminently, directly, by the quiescence of Sannyasa . Its appointed path would seem to be the way of the Akshara , a complete renunciation of works and life, an ascetic seclusion, an ascetic inaction. Where is the room here, or at least where is the call, the necessity, for the command to action, and what has all this to do with the maintenance of the cosmic existence, lokasangraha , the slaughter of Kurukshetra , the ways of the Spirit in Time, the vision of the million-bodied Lord and his high-voiced bidding, “Arise, slay the foe, enjoy a wealthy kingdom”? And what then is this soul in Nature? This spirit too, this Kshara , this enjoyer of our mutable existence, is the Purushottama ; it is he in his eternal multiplicity, that is the Gita’s answer. “It is an eternal portion of me that becomes the Jiva in a world of Jivas. ” (The Gita-15.7)" CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-444-445, "Mankind upon earth is one foremost self-expression of the universal Being in His cosmic self-unfolding; he expresses, under the conditions of the terrestrial world he inhabits, the mental power of the universal existence. All mankind is one in its nature, physical, vital, emotional, mental and ever has been in spite of all differences of intellectual development ranging from the poverty of the Bushman and negroid to the rich cultures of Asia and Europe , and the whole race has, as the human totality, one destiny which it seeks and increasingly approaches in the cycles of progression and retrogression it describes through the countless millenniums of its history. Nothing which any individual race or nation can triumphantly realise, no victory of their self-aggrandisement, illumination, intellectual achievement or mastery over the environment, has any permanent meaning or value except in so far as it adds something or recovers something or preserves something for this human march. The purpose which the ancient Indian scripture offers to us as the true object of all human action , lokasangraha, the holding together of the race in its cyclic evolution, is the constant sense, whether we know it or know it not, of the sum of our activities." CWSA-25/The Human Cycle/p-66-67, In The Life Divine , Sri Aurobindo has hinted that to generalise the highest Spiritual truth in humanity is a task of Religion and given to the Religious Leaders to accomplish. He pointed out that, “Another untoward result or peril of the diffusive movement (of self-expansion) and the consequent invasion has been the intellectual formalisation of spiritual knowledge into dogma and the materialisation of living practice into a dead mass of cult and ceremony and ritual, a mechanisation by which the spirit was bound to depart in course of time from the body of the religion. But this risk (of generalisation of Spirituality) had to be taken , for the expansive movement was an inherent necessity of the spiritual urge in evolutionary Nature.” CWSA-22/The Life Divine/p-903, "The Gita declares that the action of the liberated man must be directed not by desire, but towards the keeping together of the world, its government, guidance, impulsion, maintenance in the path appointed to it. This injunction has been interpreted in the sense that the world being an illusion in which most men must be kept, since they are unfit for liberation, he must so act outwardly as to cherish in them an attachment to their customary works laid down for them by the social law. If so, it would be a poor and petty rule and every noble heart would reject it to follow rather the divine vow of Amitabha Buddha, the sublime prayer of the Bhagavata, the passionate aspiration of Vivekananda. But if we accept rather the view that the world is a divinely guided movement of Nature emerging in man towards God and that this is the work in which the Lord of the Gita declares that he is ever occupied although he himself has nothing ungained that he has yet to win, then a deep and true sense will appear for this great injunction. To participate in that divine work, to live for God in the world will be the rule of the Karmayogin; to live for God in the world and therefore so to act that the Divine may more and more manifest himself and the world go forward by whatever way of its obscure pilgrimage and move nearer to the divine ideal. " CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-272, Lokasangraha , or the gathering together of people is discouraged through Integral Yoga: “It may be said generally that to be overanxious to pull people, especially very young people, into the sadhana is not wise. The sadhak who comes to this Yoga must have a real call, and even with the real call the way is often difficult enough. But when one pulls people in in a spirit of enthusiastic propagandism, the danger is of lighting an imitative and unreal fire, not the true Agni, or else a short-lived fire which cannot last and is submerged by the uprush of the vital waves. This is especially so with young people who are plastic and easily caught hold of by ideas and communicated feelings not their own — afterwards the vital rises with its unsatisfied demands and they are swung between two contrary forces or rapidly yield to the strong pull of the ordinary life and action and satisfaction of desire which is the natural bent of adolescence. Or else the unfit adhara tends to suffer under the stress of a call for which it was not ready, or at least not yet ready. When one has the real thing in oneself, one goes through and finally takes the full way of sadhana , but it is only a minority that does so. It is better to receive only people who come of themselves and of these only those in whom the call is genuinely their own and persistent.” CWSA-35/The Letters on Himself and the Ashram/p-691-692, "It is not intended to supramentalise humanity at large, but to establish the principle of the supramental consciousness in the earth-evolution. If that is done, all that is needed will be evolved by the supramental Power itself. It is not therefore important that the mission should be widespread. What is important is that the thing should be done at all in however small a number; that is the only difficulty…It would therefore be a waste of time and energy which should be devoted to the preliminary work psychicisation and spiritualisation of the being and nature without which no supramentalisation is possible.” CWSA-28/Letters on Yoga-I/p-288-290, “All that [ideas such as “everything will soon be spiritualised”] is absurd. The descent of the supramental means only that the Power will be there in the earth consciousness as a living force just as the thinking mental and the higher mental are already there. But an animal cannot take advantage of the presence of the thinking mental Power or an undeveloped man of the presence of the higher mental Power — so too everybody will not be able to take advantage of the presence of the supramental Power. I have also often enough said that it will be at first for the few, not for the whole earth, — only there will be a growing influence of it on the earth life.” CWSA-28/Letters on Yoga-I/p-290, “To concentrate most on one’s own spiritual growth and experience is the first necessity of the sadhak — to be too eager to help others draws away from the inner work. There is also likely to be an overzeal and haste which clouds the discrimination and makes what help is given less effective than it should be. To grow in the spirit is the greatest help one can give to others, for then something flows out naturally to those around that helps them.” CWSA-31/Letters on Yoga-IV/p-317, “The idea of helping others is a subtle form of the ego. It is only the Divine Force that can help. One can be its instrument, but you should first learn to be a fit and egoless instrument.” CWSA-31/Letters on Yoga-IV/p-318, “The best way to help the world is to transform oneself by an integral and intensive yoga .” The Mother/TMCW-14/Words of The Mother-II/p-277, "Certainly, a great step will be taken when it becomes natural for man to seek to perfect himself instead of expecting perfection in others …. That reversal is at the basis of all true progress. The first human instinct is, “It’s the fault of circumstances, it’s people’s fault, it’s … See how this fellow is, how that fellow is, how …” And it goes on indefinitely. The FIRST STEP, the very first step is to say, “If I were as I should be, or if the body were as it should be, all would be perfectly all right for it.” If, to make progress, you wait for others to do so, you can wait indefinitely...That’s the first thing that should be spread everywhere... Never lay the blame on others or on circumstances because whatever the circumstances may be, even apparently the worst, if you are in the true attitude and have the true consciousness, it doesn’t matter in the least for your inner progress, not in the least –and I’ll say, including death... That really seems to be the first lesson to be learned." The Mother's Agenda/December 10/1969, "The best way of helping others is to transform oneself. Be perfect and you will be in a position to bring perfection to the world." The Mother/TMCW-14/Words of The Mother-II/p-276, “That is all right in the ordinary karmayoga which aims at union with the cosmic Spirit and stops short at the Overmind — but here a special work has to be done and a new realisation achieved for the earth and not for ourselves alone. It is necessary to stand apart from the rest of the world so as to separate ourselves from the ordinary consciousness in order to bring down a new one… It is not that love for all is not part of the sadhana , but it has not to translate itself at once into a mixing with all — it can only express itself in a general and when need be dynamic universal goodwill, but for the rest it must find vent (outlet or finding a passage) in this labour of bringing down the higher consciousness with all its effect for the earth. As for accepting the working of the Divine in all things that is necessary here too in the sense of seeing it even behind our struggles and difficulties, but not accepting the nature of man and the world as it is — our aim is to move towards a more divine working which will replace what now is by a greater and happier manifestation. That too is a labour of divine Love.” Sri Aurobindo/CWSA-35/Letters on Himself and the Ashram- 812-813, “There must come upon us in the change at once a reversal and rejection of our present way of existence and a fulfilment of its inner trend and tendency.” CWSA-22/The Life Divine/p-1012, If a liberated Soul’s consciousness is universalised, then through the movement of his Consciousness, many unknown Souls in distant lands will be liberated. Thus, the task of the liberated Soul of liberating others is accomplished or earth “Knows that one high step might enfranchise all.” Savitri-371, “I suppose I myself am accused of rude and arrogant behaviour because I refuse to see people, do not answer letters, and a host of other misdemeanours. I have heard of a famous recluse who threw stones at anybody coming to his retreat because he did not want disciples and found no other way of warding off the flood of candidates. I at least would hesitate to pronounce that such people had no spiritual life or experience. Certainly, I prefer that sadhaks should be reasonably considerate towards each other, but that is for the sake of collective life and harmony, not as a siddhi of the Yoga or an indispensable sign of inner experience.” Sri Aurobindo/CWSA-31/Letters on Yoga-IV-656, “You must not hunger after any relations with anyone. The relations of the sadhaka with others must be created for him from within, when he has the true consciousness and lives in the Light. They will be determined within him by the power and will of the Divine Mother according to the supramental Truth for the divine life and the divine work; they must not be determined by his mind and his vital desires. This is the thing you have to remember. Your psychic being is capable of giving itself to the Mother and living and growing in the Truth; but your lower vital being has been full of attachments and sanskaras and an impure movement of desire and your external physical mind was not able to shake off its ignorant ideas and habits and open to the Truth. That was the reason why you were unable to progress, because you were keeping up an element and movements which could not be allowed to remain; for they were the exact opposite of what has to be established in a divine life.” CWSA-32/The Mother and Letters on the Mother-142, Lokasangraha is thoroughly discouraged in Savitri : "Whoever is too great must lonely live. Adored he walks in mighty solitude; Vain is his labour to create his kind, His only comrade is the Strength within." Savitri-368 "And Savitri mingling in that glorious crowd, Yearning to the spiritual light they bore, Longed once to hasten like them to save God’s world; But she reined back the high passion in her heart; She knew that first she must discover her soul. Only who save themselves can others save." Savitri-501 Death said to Para-prakriti Savitri: “If Satyavan had lived, love would have died; But Satyavan is dead and love shall live A little while in thy sad breast, until His face and body fade on memory’s wall Where other bodies, other faces come.” (Human admirers) Savitri-610, (Death said) “What knowst thou of earth’s rich and changing life Who thinkst that one man dead all joy must cease? Hope not to be unhappy till the end: For grief dies soon in the tired human heart; Soon other guests (human admirers) the empty chambers fill.” Savitri-637, Death said to Para-prakriti Savitri: “Return and try thy soul! Soon shalt thou find appeased that other men (human admirers) On lavish earth have beauty, strength and truth, And when thou hast half forgotten, one of these Shall wind himself around thy heart that needs Some human answering heart against thy breast; For who, being mortal, can dwell glad alone? Then Satyavan shall glide into the past, (Satyavan is the symbol of Paramatma) A gentle memory pushed away from thee By new love and thy children’s tender hands, Till thou shalt wonder if thou lov’dst at all. Such is the life earth’s travail has conceived, A constant stream that never is the same.” Savitri-637-638 “In moments when the inner lamps are lit And the life’s cherished guests are left outside, Our spirit sits alone and speaks to its gulfs.” Savitri-47 The Two Levels of Consciousness: "But the consciousness of man is of a double kind and corresponds to a double truth of existence; for there is a truth of the inner reality and a truth of the outer appearance. According as he lives in one or the other, he will be a mind dwelling in human ignorance or a soul founded in divine knowledge." CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-573, "The perception of the ignorance of our assumption of freedom while one is all the time in the meshes of this lower nature, is the view-point at which the Gita arrives and it is in contradiction to this ignorant claim that it affirms the complete subjection of the ego-soul on this plane to the gunas. “While the actions are being entirely done by the modes of Nature,” it says, “he whose self is bewildered by egoism thinks that it is his ‘I’ which is doing them. But one who knows the true principles of the divisions of the modes and of works, realises that it is the modes which are acting and reacting on each other and is not caught in them by attachment. Those who are bewildered by the modes, get attached to the modes and their works; dull minds, not knowers of the whole, let not the knower of the whole disturb them in their mental standpoint. Giving up thy works to Me, free from desire and egoism, fight delivered from the fever of thy soul.” Here there is the clear distinction between two levels of consciousness , two standpoints of action, that of the soul caught in the web of its egoistic nature and doing works with the idea, but not the reality of free will, under the impulsion of Nature, and that of the soul delivered from its identification with the ego, observing, sanctioning and governing the works of Nature from above her." CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-214-215, “This, no doubt, is the root of the injunction imposed in the Gita (The Gita-3.29) on the man who has the knowledge not to disturb the life basis and thought basis of the ignorant; for impelled by his example but unable to comprehend the principle of his action, they would lose their own system of values without arriving at a higher foundation.” Sri Aurobindo/CWSA-21/The Life Divine/p-58, “Then there were the few—the rare individuals —who are ready to make the necessary effort to prepare themselves for the transformation and to attract the new forces, try to adapt matter, seek the means of expression and so forth. Those are ready for Sri Aurobindo’s Yoga . They are very few . There are even those who have the sense of sacrifice and are ready have a hard and difficult life, as long as it leads them or helps them towards this future transformation. But they should not, they should in no way try to influence others and make them share their own effort: that would be quite unjust – not only unjust, but extremely clumsy because it would alter the universal – or at least terrestrial – rhythm and movement, and instead of helping, it would cause conflicts and result in chaos.” The Mother Agenda/27th November, 1965, “In fact, the creative Consciousness-Force in our earth existence has to lead forward, in an almost simultaneous process but with a considerable priority and greater stress of the inferior element, a double evolution . (1) There is an evolution of our outward nature, the nature of the mental being in the life and body, and (2) there is within it, pressing forward for self-revelation because with the emergence of mind that revelation is becoming possible, a preparation at least, even the beginning of an evolution of our inner being, our occult subliminal and spiritual nature... But if her intention is a comprehensive change of the being, this double evolution is intelligible and justifies itself; for it is for that purpose indispensable. ” CWSA-22/The Life Divine-890, “There is a state of being experienced in Yoga in which we become a double consciousness, (1) one on the surface, small, active, ignorant, swayed by thoughts and feelings, grief and joy and all kinds of reactions, (2) the other within calm, vast, equal, observing the surface being with an immovable detachment or indulgence or, it may be, acting upon its agitation to quiet, enlarge, transform it.” CWSA-21/The Life Divine/p-360, “Or, again, we can posit a double consciousness of Brahman the Reality, (1) one static and (2) one dynamic, (1) one essential and spiritual in which it is Self perfect and absolute, (2) another formative, pragmatic, in which it becomes not-self and with which its absoluteness and perfection have no concern of participation; for it is only a temporal formation in the timeless Reality.” CWSA-21/The Life Divine/p-415 The First Rule of Karma Yoga : "What then are the lines of Karmayoga laid down by the Gita? Its key principle, its spiritual method, can be summed up as the union of two largest and highest states or powers of consciousness, equality and oneness. The kernel of its method is an unreserved acceptance of the Divine in our life as in our inner self (Psychic being) and spirit (Spiritual being). An inner renunciation of personal desire leads to equality, accomplishes our total surrender to the Divine, supports a delivery from dividing ego which brings us oneness. But this must be a oneness in dynamic force and not only in static peace or inactive beatitude. The Gita promises us freedom for the spirit even in the midst of works and the full energies of Nature, if we accept subjection of our whole being to that which is higher than the separating and limiting ego. It proposes an integral dynamic activity founded on a still passivity; a largest possible action irrevocably based on an immobile calm is its secret, — free expression out of a supreme inward silence." CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p- 95, " 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 ... And to our partial self-discipline we give various names and forms; we habituate ourselves by practice to the sense of duty, to a firm fidelity to principle, a stoical fortitude or a religious resignation, a quiet or an ecstatic submission to God’s will. But it is not these things that the Gita intends, useful though they are in their place; it aims at something absolute, unmitigated, uncompromising, a turn, an attitude that will change the whole poise of the soul. Not the mind’s control of vital impulse is its rule, but the strong immobility of an immortal spirit." CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p- 102-103, " Whoever sincerely enters the path of works, must leave behind him the stage in which need and desire are the first law of our acts . For whatever desires still trouble his being, he must, if he accepts the high aim of Yoga, put them away from him into the hands of the Lord within us. The supreme Power will deal with them for the good of the sadhaka and for the good of all. In effect, we find that once this surrender is done, — always provided the rejection is sincere, — egoistic indulgence of desire may for some time recur under the continued impulse of past nature but only in order to exhaust its acquired momentum and to teach the embodied being in his most unteachable part, his nervous, vital, emotional nature, by the reactions of desire, by its grief and unrest bitterly contrasted with calm periods of the higher peace or marvellous movements of divine Ananda, that egoistic desire is not a law for the soul that seeks liberation or aspires to its own original god-nature. Afterwards the element of desire in those impulsions will be thrown away or persistently eliminated by a constant denying and transforming pressure. Only the pure force of action in them (pravritti) justified by an equal delight in all work and result that is inspired or imposed from above will be preserved in the happy harmony of a final perfection. To act, to enjoy is the normal law and right of the nervous being; but to choose by personal desire its action and enjoyment is only its ignorant will, not its right. Alone the supreme and universal Will must choose; action must change into a dynamic movement of that Will; enjoyment must be replaced by the play of a pure spiritual Ananda . All personal will is either a temporary delegation from on high or a usurpation by the ignorant Asura ." CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p- 209-210, “The first step on this free, this equal, this divine way of action is to put from you attachment to fruit and recompense and to labour only for the sake of the work itself that has to be done. For you must deeply feel that the fruits belong not to you but to the Master of the world. Consecrate your labour and leave its returns to the Spirit who manifests and fulfils himself in the universal movement. The outcome of your action is determined by his will alone and whatever it be, good or evil fortune, success or failure, it is turned by him to the accomplishment of his world purpose. An entirely desireless and disinterested working of the personal will and the whole instrumental nature is the first rule of Karmayoga . Demand no fruit, accept whatever result is given to you; accept it with equality and a calm gladness: successful or foiled, prosperous or afflicted, continue unafraid, untroubled and unwavering on the steep path of the divine action... This is no more than the first step on the path. For you must be not only unattached to results, but unattached also to your labour. Cease to regard your works as your own; as you have abandoned the fruits of your work, so you must surrender the work also to the Lord of action and sacrifice. Recognise that your nature determines your action; your nature rules the immediate motion of your Swabhava and decides the expressive turn and development of your spirit in the paths of the executive force of Prakriti . Bring in no longer any self-will to confuse the steps of your mind in following the Godward way. Accept the action proper to your nature. Make of all you do from the greatest and most unusual effort to the smallest daily act , make of each act of your mind, each act of your heart, each act of your body, of every inner and outer turn, of every thought and will and feeling, of every step and pause and movement, a sacrifice to the Master of all sacrifice and Tapasya ." CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-586-587, “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.” CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga-179, “In work too there is an austerity. It consists in not having any preferences and in doing everything one does with interest. For one who wants to grow in self-perfection, there are no great or small tasks, none that are important or unimportant; all are equally useful for one who aspires for progress and self-mastery. It is said that one only does well what one is interested in doing. This is true, but it is truer still that one can learn to find interest in everything one does, even in what appear to be the most insignificant chores. The secret of this attainment lies in the urge towards self-perfection. Whatever occupation or task falls to your lot, you must do it with a will to progress; whatever one does, one must not only do it as best one can but strive to do it better and better in a constant effort for perfection. In this way everything without exception becomes interesting, from the most material chore to the most artistic and intellectual work. The scope for progress is infinite and can be applied to the smallest thing .” TMCW/Vol-12/On Education/p-53 "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 " Its (Supreme Self) absence left the greatest actions dull, Its presence made the smallest seem divine. " Savitri-305 (Savitri promises us that through smallest action offered as a rightly regulated sacrifice can call down the highest Spiritual force from the Supreme Self.) The Highest realisation of exclusive Karma Yoga : “That is all right in the ordinary karmayoga which aims at union with the cosmic Spirit and stops short at the Overmind — but here a special work has to be done and a new realisation achieved for the earth and not for ourselves alone. It is necessary to stand apart from the rest of the world so as to separate ourselves from the ordinary consciousness in order to bring down a new one.” CWSA-35/Letters on Himself and the Ashram- 812-813, "The Gita at its cryptic close may seem by its silence to stop short of that solution for which we are seeking; it pauses at the borders of the highest spiritual mind and does not cross them into the splendours of the supramental Light . And yet its secret of dynamic, and not only static, identity with the inner Presence, its highest mystery of absolute surrender to the Divine Guide, Lord and Inhabitant of our nature, is the central secret. This surrender (sarva dharman paritejya) is the indispensable means of the supramental change and, again, it is through the supramental change that the dynamic identity becomes possible." CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-95-96, "Its initial object was not precisely to propose a way of liberation, moksa , but rather to show the compatibility of works with the soul’s effort towards liberation and of spiritual freedom itself when once attained with continued action in the world, muktasya karma . Incidentally, a synthetic Yoga or psychological method of arriving at spiritual liberation and perfection has been developed and certain metaphysical affirmations have been put forward, certain truths of our being and nature on which the validity of this Yoga reposes. But the original preoccupation remains throughout, the original difficulty and problem , how Arjuna, dislodged by a strong revulsion of thought and feeling from the established natural and rational foundations and standards of action, is to find a new and satisfying spiritual norm of works, or how he is to live in the truth of the Spirit — since he can no longer act according to the partial truths of the customary reason and nature of man — and yet to do his appointed work on the battle-field of Kurukshetra. To live inwardly calm, detached, silent in the silence of the impersonal and universal Self and yet do dynamically the works of dynamic Nature, and more largely, to be one with the Eternal within us and to do all the will of the Eternal in the world expressed through a sublimated force, a divine height of the personal nature uplifted, liberated, universalised, made one with God-nature , — this is the Gita’s solution (of problem of life) . " CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-450-451 Action is demanded from Impersonal and universal Consciousness: "For to withdraw from his work, to take refuge in a saintly inactivity and leave the imperfect world with its unsatisfying methods and motives to take care of itself is one possible solution easy to envisage, easy to execute, but this is the very cutting of the knot that has been insistently forbidden by the Teacher . Action is demanded of man by the Master of the world who is the master of all his works and whose world is a field of action, whether done through the ego and in the ignorance or partial light of the limited human reason or initiated from a higher and more largely seeing plane of vision and motive. Again, to abandon this particular action as evil would be another kind of solution, the ready resort of the shortsighted moralising mind, but to this evasion too the Teacher refuses his assent. Arjuna’s abstention would work a much greater sin and evil: it would mean, if it had any effect at all, the triumph of wrong and injustice and the rejection of his own mission as an instrument of the divine workings. A violent crisis in the destinies of the race has been brought about not by any blind motion of forces or solely by the confused clash of human ideas, interests, passions, egoisms, but by a Will which is behind these outward appearances. This truth Arjuna must be brought to see; he must learn to act impersonally, imperturbably as the instrument not of his little personal desires and weak human shrinkings, but of a vaster and more luminous Power, a greater all-wise divine and universal Will. He must act impersonally and universally in a high union of his soul with the inner and outer Godhead, yukta, in a calm Yoga with his own supreme Self and the informing Self of the universe." CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-451-452, "For I am the eternal Worker within you and I ask of you works. I demand of you not a passive consent to a mechanical movement of Nature from which in your self you are wholly separated, indifferent and aloof, but action complete and divine, done as the willing and understanding instrument of the Divine , done for God in you and others and for the good of the world. This action I propose to you, first no doubt as a means of perfection in the supreme spiritual Nature, but as a part too of that perfection . Action is a part of the integral knowledge of God, of his greater mysterious truth and of an entire living in the Divine; action can and should be continued even after perfection and freedom are won. I ask of you the action of the Jivanmukta , the works of the Siddha . Something has to be added to the Yoga already described, — for that was only a first Yoga of knowledge. There is also a Yoga of action in the illumination of God-experience; works can be made one spirit with knowledge. For works done in a total self-vision and God-vision, a vision of God in the world and of the world in God are themselves a movement of knowledge, a movement of light, an indispensable means and an intimate part of spiritual perfection. " CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-585, “The acceptance of the law of sacrifice is a practical recognition by the ego that it is neither alone in the world nor chief in the world. It is its admission that, even in this much fragmented existence, there is beyond itself and behind that which is not its own egoistic person, something greater and completer, a diviner All which demands from it subordination and service. ” CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga-106, “The Master of the worlds who in the Gita demands of his servant, the bhakta , to be nothing more in life than his instrument , makes this claim as the friend, the guide, the higher Self, and describes himself as the Lord of all the worlds who is the friend of all creatures, sarvalokamahesvaram suhrudam sarvabhutanam; (The Gita-5.29) the two relations in fact must go together and neither can be perfect without the other.” CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga-565, "Never forget that you are not alone. The Divine is with you helping and guiding you. He is the companion who never fails, the friend whose love comforts and strengthens. The more you feel lonely, the more you are ready to perceive His luminous Presence. Have faith and He will do everything for you.” The Mother/TMCW-14/Words of the Mother-II/p-9, 3 / Chapter 3. Karma Yoga The Keyword of Integral Yoga: "But the Gita accepts this Stoic discipline, this heroic philosophy, on the same condition that it accepts the tamasic recoil, it must have above it the sattwic vision of knowledge, at its root the aim at self-realisation and in its steps the ascent to the divine Nature. A Stoic discipline which merely crushed down the common affections of our human nature, — although less dangerous than a tamasic weariness of life, unfruitful pessimism and sterile inertia, because it would at least increase the power and self-mastery of the soul, — would still be no unmixed good, since it might lead to insensibility and an inhuman isolation without giving the true spiritual release. The Stoic equality is justified as an element in the discipline of the Gita because it can be associated with and can help to the realisation of the free immutable Self in the mobile human being, param dristva , (The Gita-2.59) and to status in that new self-consciousness, esa brahmı sthitih . (The Gita-2.72) “Awakening by the understanding to the Highest which is beyond even the discerning mind, put force on the self by the self to make it firm and still, and slay this enemy who is so hard to assail, Desire.” (The Gita-3.43) Both the tamasic recoil of escape and the rajasic movement of struggle and victory are only justified when they look beyond themselves through the sattwic principle to the self-knowledge which legitimises both the recoil and the struggle." CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-197 “This is a difficult lesson to learn (rejection of revolt and impatience), but you must learn it. I do not find fault with you for taking long over it, I myself took full twelve years to learn it thoroughly, (written in the year 1919) and even after I knew the principle well enough, it took me quite four years and more to master my lower nature in this respect. But you have the advantage of my experience and my help; you will be able to do it more rapidly, if you consciously and fully assist me, by not associating yourself with the enemy Desire; jahi kamam durasadam , (this enemy in the form of desire, who is so hard to assail. The Gita-3.43) remember that utterance of the Gita, it is a keyword of our Yoga .” CWSA-36/Autobiographical Notes/p-229, "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 taught 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." CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-83-84 "At this stage of the Yoga and even throughout the Yoga this form of desire, this figure of the ego is the enemy against whom we have to be always on our guard with an unsleeping vigilance. We need not be discouraged when we find him lurking within us and assuming all sorts of disguises, but we should be vigilant to detect him in all his masks and inexorable in expelling his influence. The illumining Word of this movement is the decisive line of the Gita, “To action thou hast a right but never under any circumstances to its fruit.” (The Gita-2.47) The fruit belongs solely to the Lord of all works; our only business with it is to prepare success by a true and careful action and to offer it, if it comes, to the divine Master. Afterwards even as we have renounced attachment to the fruit, we must renounce attachment to the work also; at any moment we must be prepared to change one work, one course or one field of action for another or abandon all works if that is the clear command of the Master. Otherwise we do the act not for his sake but for our satisfaction and pleasure in the work, from the kinetic nature’s need of action or for the fulfilment of our propensities; but these are all stations and refuges of the ego. However necessary for our ordinary motion of life, they have to be abandoned in the growth of the spiritual consciousness and replaced by divine counterparts: an Ananda , an impersonal and God-directed delight will cast out or supplant the unillumined vital satisfaction and pleasure, a joyful driving of the Divine Energy the kinetic need; the fulfilment of the propensities will no longer be an object or a necessity, there will be instead the fulfilment of the Divine Will through the natural dynamic truth in action of a free soul and a luminous nature. In the end, as the attachment to the fruit of the work and to the work itself has been excised from the heart, so also the last clinging attachment to the idea and sense of ourselves as the doer has to be relinquished; the Divine Shakti must be known and felt above and within us as the true and sole worker." CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-222-223, "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. " CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-101-102, "Desire, it is thought, is the real motive power of human living and to cast it out would be to stop the springs of life; satisfaction of desire is man’s only enjoyment and to eliminate it would be to extinguish the impulse of life by a quietistic asceticism. But the real motive power of the life of the soul is Will ; desire is only a deformation of will in the dominant bodily life and physical mind. The essential turn of the soul to possession and enjoyment of the world consists in a will to delight, and the enjoyment of the satisfaction of craving is only a vital and physical degradation of the will to delight. It is essential that we should distinguish between pure will and desire, between the inner will to delight and the outer lust and craving of the mind and body. If we are unable to make this distinction practically in the experience of our being, we can only make a choice between a life-killing asceticism and the gross will to live or else try to effect an awkward, uncertain and precarious compromise between them. This is in fact what the mass of men do; a small minority trample down the life instinct and strain after an ascetic perfection; most obey the gross will to live with such modifications and restraints as society imposes or the normal social man has been trained to impose on his own mind and actions; others set up a balance between ethical austerity and temperate indulgence of the desiring mental and vital self and see in this balance the golden mean of a sane mind and healthy human living. But none of these ways gives the perfection which we are seeking, the divine government of the will in life. To tread down altogether the prana, the vital being, is to kill the force of life by which the large action of the embodied soul in the human being must be supported; to indulge the gross will to live is to remain satisfied with imperfection; to compromise between them is to stop half way and possess neither earth nor heaven. But if we can get at the pure will undeformed by desire, — which we shall find to be a much more free, tranquil, steady and effective force than the leaping, smoke-stifled, soon fatigued and baffled flame of desire, — and at the calm inner will of delight not afflicted or limited by any trouble of craving, we can then transform the prana from a tyrant, enemy, assailant of the mind into an obedient instrument. We may call these greater things, too, by the name of desire, if we choose, but then we must suppose that there is a divine desire other than the vital craving, a God-desire of which this other and lower phenomenon is an obscure shadow and into which it has to be transfigured. It is better to keep distinct names for things which are entirely different in their character and inner action." CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-658-659 The Reconciliation of Matter and Spirit through the practice of integral Karma Yoga : "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 (of integral Yoga) 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." CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-39-40, “His spirit's stillness helped the toiling world. Inspired by silence and the closed eyes' sight (Supramental action of King Aswapati) His force could work with a new luminous art On the crude material from which all is made And the refusal of Inertia's mass And the grey front of the world's Ignorance And nescient Matter and the huge error of life.” Savitri-36, "A Power that lives upon the heights must act, Bring into life’s closed room the Immortal’s air And fill the finite with the Infinite.” Savitri-315-16 “His (Divine’s) will must be worked out in human breasts Against the Evil that rises from the gulfs, Against the world’s Ignorance and its obstinate strength, Against the stumblings of man’s pervert will, Against the deep folly of his human mind, Against the blind reluctance of his heart.” Savitri-444 “All was the violent ocean of a will Where lived captive to an immense caress, Possessed in a supreme identity, Her aim, joy, origin, Satyavan alone.” Savitri-579 Supramental Action: "The perfect supramental action will not follow any single principle or limited rule. It is not likely to satisfy the standard either of the individual egoist or of any organised group-mind. It will conform to the demand neither of the positive practical man of the world nor of the formal moralist nor of the patriot nor of the sentimental philanthropist nor of the idealising philosopher. It will proceed by a spontaneous outflowing from the summits in the totality of an illumined and uplifted being, will and knowledge and not by the selected, calculated and standardised action which is all that the intellectual reason or ethical will can achieve. Its sole aim will be the expression of the divine in us and the keeping together of the world and its progress towards the Manifestation that is to be. This even will not be so much an aim and purpose as a spontaneous law of the being and an intuitive determination of the action by the Light of the divine Truth and its automatic influence. It will proceed like the action of Nature from a total will and knowledge behind her, but a will and knowledge enlightened in a conscious supreme Nature and no longer obscure in this ignorant Prakriti . It will be an action not bound by the dualities but full and large in the spirit’s impartial joy of existence. The happy and inspired movement of a divine Power and Wisdom guiding and impelling us will replace the perplexities and stumblings of the suffering and ignorant ego." CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-206, " The will in us, because it is the most generally forceful power of our being, — there is a will of knowledge, a will of life, a will of emotion, a will acting in every part of our nature, takes many forms and returns various reactions to things, such as incapacity, limitation of power, mastery, or right will, wrong or perverted will, neutral volition, — in the ethical mind virtue, sin and non-ethical volition, — and others of the kind. These too the positive equality accepts as a tangle of provisional values from which it must start, but which it must transform into universal mastery, into the will of the Truth and universal Right, into the freedom of the divine Will in action. The equal will need not feel remorse, sorrow or discouragement over its stumblings; if these reactions occur in the habitual mentality, it will only see how far they indicate an imperfection and the thing to be corrected, — for they are not always just indicators, and so get beyond them to a calm and equal guidance. It will see that these stumblings themselves are necessary to experience and in the end steps towards the goal. Behind and within all that occurs in ourselves and in the world, it will look for the divine meaning and the divine guidance; it will look beyond imposed limitations to the voluntary self-limitation of the universal Power by which it regulates its steps and gradations, — imposed on our ignorance, self-imposed in the divine knowledge, — and go beyond to unity with the illimitable power of the Divine. All energies and actions it will see as forces proceeding from the one Existence and their perversions as imperfections, inevitable in the developing movement, of powers that were needed for that movement; it will therefore have charity for all imperfections, even while pressing steadily towards a universal perfection. This equality will open the nature to the guidance of the divine and universal Will and make it ready for that supramental action in which the power of the soul in us is luminously full of and one with the power of the supreme Spirit." CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-719, "There are four members of this second part of the sadhana or discipline of self-perfection and the first of them is right shakti, the right condition of the powers of the intelligence, heart, vital mind and body. It will only be possible at present to suggest a preliminary perfection of the last of these four, for the full siddhi will have to be dealt with after I have spoken of the supermind and its influence on the rest of the being. The body is not only the necessary outer instrument of the physical part of action, but for the purposes of this life a base or pedestal also for all inner action. All working of mind or spirit has its vibration in the physical consciousness, records itself there in a kind of subordinate corporeal notation and communicates itself to the material world partly at least through the physical machine. But the body of man has natural limitations in this capacity which it imposes on the play of the higher parts of his being. And, secondly, it has a subconscient consciousness of its own in which it keeps with an obstinate fidelity the past habits and past nature of the mental and vital being and which automatically opposes and obstructs any very great upward change or at least prevents it from becoming a radical transformation of the whole nature. It is evident that if we are to have a free divine or spiritual and supramental action conducted by the force and fulfilling the character of a diviner energy, some fairly complete transformation must be effected in this outward character of the bodily nature. The physical being of man has always been felt by the seekers of perfection to be a great impediment and it has been the habit to turn from it with contempt, denial or aversion and a desire to suppress altogether or as far as may be the body and the physical life. But this cannot be the right method for the integral Yoga. The body is given us as one instrument necessary to the totality of our works and it is to be used, not neglected, hurt, suppressed or abolished. If it is imperfect, recalcitrant, obstinate, so are also the other members, the vital being, heart and mind and reason. It has like them to be changed and perfected and to undergo a transforma- tion. As we must get ourselves a new life, new heart, new mind, so we have in a certain sense to build for ourselves a new body." CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-729-730, "If the spirit is everywhere, even in matter — in fact matter itself is only an obscure form of the spirit — and if the supermind is the universal power of the spirit’s omnipresent self-knowledge organising all the manifestation of the being, then in matter and everywhere there must be present a supramental action and, however concealed it may be by another, lower and obscurer kind of operation, yet when we look close we shall find that it is really the supermind which organises matter, life, mind and reason. And this actually is the knowledge towards which we are now moving. There is even a quite visible intimate action of the consciousness, persistent in life, matter and mind, which is clearly a supramental action subdued to the character and need of the lower medium and to which we now give the name of intuition from its most evident characteristics of direct vision and self-acting knowledge, really a vision born of some secret identity with the object of the knowledge. What we call the intuition is however only a partial indication of the presence of the supermind, and if we take this presence and power in its widest character, we shall see that it is a concealed supramental force with a self-conscient knowledge in it which informs the whole action of material energy. It is that which determines what we call law of nature, maintains the action of each thing according to its own nature and harmonises and evolves the whole, which would otherwise be a fortuitous creation apt at any moment to collapse into chaos. All the law of nature is a thing precise in its necessities of process, but is yet in the cause of that necessity and of its constancy of rule, measure, combination, adaptation, re- sult a thing inexplicable, meeting us at every step with a mystery and a miracle, and this must be either because it is irrational and accidental even in its regularities or because it is suprarational, because the truth of it belongs to a principle greater than that of our intelligence. That principle is the supramental; that is to say, the hidden secret of Nature is the organisation of something out of the infinite potentialities of the self-existent truth of the spirit the nature of which is wholly evident only to an original knowledge born of and proceeding by a fundamental identity, the spirit’s constant self-perception. All the action of life too is of this character and all the action of mind and reason, — reason which is the first to perceive everywhere the action of a greater reason and law of being and try to render it by its own conceptional structures, though it does not always perceive that it is something other than a mental Intelligence which is at work, other than an intellectual Logos. All these processes are actually spiritual and supramental in their secret government, but mental, vital and physical in their overt process." CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-793-794, "A second movement is one which comes naturally to those who commence the Yoga with the initiative that is proper to the way of Bhakti. It is natural to them to reject the intellect and its action and to listen for the voice, wait for the impulsion or the command, the adesa , obey only the idea and will and power of the Lord within them, the divine Self and Purusha in the heart of the creature, ısvarah sarvabhutanam hriddese . This is a movement which must tend more and more to intuitivise the whole nature, for the ideas, the will, the impulsions, the feelings which come from the secret Purusha in the heart are of the direct intuitive character. This method is consonant with a certain truth of our nature. The secret Self within us is an intuitive self and this intuitive self is seated in every centre of our being, the physical, the nervous, the emotional, the volitional, the conceptual or cognitive and the higher more directly spiritual centres. And in each part of our being it exercises a secret intuitive initiation of our activities which is received and represented imperfectly by our outer mind and converted into the movements of the ignorance in the external action of these parts of our nature. The heart or emotional centre of the thinking desire mind is the strongest in the ordinary man, gathers up or at least affects the presentation of things to the consciousness and is the capital of the system. It is from there that the Lord seated in the heart of all creatures turns them mounted on the machine of Nature by the Maya of the mental ignorance. It is possible then by referring back all the initiation of our action to this secret intuitive Self and Spirit, the ever-present Godhead within us, and replacing by its influences the initiations of our personal and mental nature to get back from the inferior external thought and action to another, internal and intuitive, of a highly spiritualised character. Nevertheless the result of this movement cannot be complete, because the heart is not the highest centre of our being, is not supramental nor directly moved from the supramental sources. An intuitive thought and action directed from it may be very luminous and intense but is likely to be limited, even narrow in its intensity, mixed with a lower emotional action and at the best excited and troubled, rendered unbalanced or exaggerated by a miraculous or abnormal character in its action or at least in many of its accompaniments which is injurious to the harmonised perfection of the being. The aim of our effort at perfection must be to make the spiritual and supramental action no longer a miracle, even if a frequent or constant miracle, or only a luminous intervention of a greater than our natural power, but normal to the being and the very nature and law of all its process." CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-803-805, "The highest organised centre of our embodied being and of its action in the body is the supreme mental centre figured by the yogic symbol of the thousand-petalled lotus, sahasradala, and it is at its top and summit that there is the direct communication with the supramental levels. It is then possible to adopt a different and a more direct method, not to refer all our thought and action to the Lord secret in the heart-lotus but to the veiled truth of the Divinity above the mind and to receive all by a sort of descent from above, a descent of which we become not only spiritually but physically conscious. The siddhi or full accomplishment of this movement can only come when we are able to lift the centre of thought and conscious action above the physical brain and feel it going on in the subtle body. If we can feel ourselves thinking no longer with the brain but from above and outside the head in the subtle body, that is a sure physical sign of a release from the limitations of the physical mind, and though this will not be complete at once nor of itself bring the supramental action, for the subtle body is mental and not supramental, still it is a subtle and pure mentality and makes an easier communication with the supramental centres. The lower movements must still come , but it is then found easier to arrive at a swift and subtle discrimination telling us at once the difference, distinguishing the intuitional thought from the lower intellectual mixture, separating it from its mental coatings, rejecting the mere rapidities of the mind which imitate the form of the intuition without being of its true substance. It will be easier to discern rapidly the higher planes of the true supramental being and call down their power to effect the desired transformation and to refer all the lower action to the superior power and light that it may reject and eliminate, purify and transform and select among them its right material for the Truth that has to be organised within us. This opening up of a higher level and of higher and higher planes of it and the consequent re-formation of our whole consciousness and its action into their mould and into the substance of their power and luminous capacity is found in practice to be the greater part of the natural method used by the divine Shakti.... A fourth method is one which suggests itself naturally to the developed intelligence and suits the thinking man. This is to develop our intellect instead of eliminating it, but with the will not to cherish its limitations, but to heighten its capacity, light, intensity, degree and force of activity until it borders on the thing that transcends it and can easily be taken up and transformed into that higher conscious action. This movement also is founded on the truth of our nature and enters into the course and movement of the complete Yoga of self-perfection. That course, as I have described it, included a heightening and greatening of the action of our natural instruments and powers till they constitute in their purity and essential completeness a preparatory perfection of the present normal movement of the Shakti that acts in us. The reason and intelligent will, the buddhi , is the greatest of these powers and instruments, (the four instruments are chitta, or basic mental consciousness, manas, or sense mind, buddhi, or the intelligence and ahankara, or ego idea) the natural leader of the rest in the developed human being, the most capable of aiding the development of the others. The ordinary activities of our nature are all of them of use for the greater perfection we seek, are meant to be turned into material for them, and the greater their development, the richer the preparation for the supramental action . " CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-805-806, "It is difficult for the intellect to grasp at all what is meant by these supramental distinctions: the mental terms in which they can be rendered are lacking or inadequate and they can only be understood after a certain sight or certain approximations in experience. A number of indications are all that at present it can be useful to give. And first it will be enough to take certain clues from the thinking mind; for it is there that some of the nearest keys to the supramental action are discoverable. The thought of the intuitive mind proceeds wholly by four powers that shape the form of the truth, (1) an intuition that suggests its idea, (2) an intuition that discriminates, (3) an inspiration that brings in its word and something of its greater substance and (4) a revelation that shapes to the sight its very face and body of reality. These things are not the same as certain movements of the ordinary mental intelligence that look analogous and are easily mistaken for the true intuition in our first inexperience. (1) The suggestive intuition is not the same thing as the intellectual insight of a quick intelligence or (2) the intuitive discrimination as the rapid judgment of the reasoning intellect; (3) the intuitive inspiration is not the same as the inspired action of the imaginative intelligence, (4) nor the intuitive revelation as the strong light of a purely mental close seizing and experience." CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-813-814, "The intuitive knowledge on the contrary, however limited it may be in its field or application, is within that scope sure with an immediate, a durable and especially a self-existent certitude. It may take for starting-point or rather for a thing to light up and disclose in its true sense the data of mind and sense or else fire a train of past thought and knowledge to new meanings and issues, but it is dependent on nothing but itself and may leap out of its own field of lustres, independent of previous suggestion or data, and this kind of action becomes progressively more common and adds itself to the other to initiate new depths and ranges of knowledge. In either case there is always an element of self-existent truth and a sense of absoluteness of origination suggestive of its proceeding from the spirit’s knowledge by iden- tity. It is the disclosing of a knowledge that is secret but already existent in the being: it is not an acquisition, but something that was always there and revealable. It sees the truth from within and illumines with that inner vision the outsides and it harmonises, too, readily — provided we keep intuitively awake with whatever fresh truth has yet to arrive. These character- istics become more pronounced and intense in the higher, the proper supramental ranges: in the intuitive mind they may not be always recognisable in their purity and completeness, because of the mixture of mental stuff and its accretion, but in the divine reason and greater supramental action they become free and absolute. " CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-814-815, "The Transition from mind to supermind is not only the substitution of a greater instrument of thought and knowledge, but a change and conversion of the whole consciousness. There is evolved not only a supramental thought, but a supramental will, sense, feeling, a supramental substitute for all the activities that are now accomplished by the mind. All these higher activities are first manifested in the mind itself as descents, irruptions, messages or revelations of a superior power. Mostly they are mixed up with the more ordinary action of the mind and not easily distinguishable from them in our first inexperience except by their superior light and force and joy, the more so as the mind greatened or excited by their frequent coming quickens its own action and imitates the external characteristics of the supramental activity : its own operation is made more swift, luminous, strong and positive and it arrives even at a kind of imitative and often false intuition that strives to be but is not really the luminous, direct and self-existent truth. The next step is the formation of a luminous mind of intuitive experience, thought, will, feeling, sense from which the intermixture of the lesser mind and the imitative intuition are progressively eliminated: this is a process of purification, suddhi, necessary to the new formation and perfection, siddhi. At the same time there is the disclosure above the mind of the source of the intuitive action and a more and more organised functioning of a true supramental consciousness acting not in the mind but on its own higher plane. This draws up into itself in the end the intuitive mentality it has created as its representative and assumes the charge of the whole activity of the consciousness. The process is progressive and for a long time chequered by admixture and the necessity of a return upon the lower movements in order to correct and transform them. The higher and the lower power act sometimes alternately, — the consciousness descending back from the heights it had attained to its former level but always with some change, — but sometimes together and with a sort of mutual reference. The mind eventually becomes wholly intuitivised and exists only as a passive channel for the supramental action; but this condition too is not ideal and presents, besides, still a certain obstacle, because the higher action has still to pass through a retarding and diminishing conscious substance, — that of the physical consciousness. The final stage of the change will come when the supermind occupies and supramentalises the whole being and turns even the vital and physical sheaths into moulds of itself, responsive, subtle and instinct with its powers. Man then becomes wholly the superman. This is at least the natural and integral process." CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-825-826, "The ordinary language of the intellect is not sufficient to describe this action, for the same words have to be used, indicating a certain correspondence, but actually to connote inadequately a different thing. Thus the supermind uses a certain sense action, employing but not limited by the physical organs, a thing which is in its nature a form consciousness and a contact consciousness, but the mental idea and experience of sense can give no conception of the essential and characteristic action of this supramentalised sense consciousness. Thought too in the supramental action is a different thing from the thought of the mental intelligence. The supramental thinking is felt at its basis as a conscious contact or union or identity of the substance of being of the knower with the substance of being of the thing known and its figure of thought as the power of awareness of the self revealing through the meeting or the oneness, because carrying in itself, a certain knowledge form of the object’s content, action, significance. Therefore observation, memory, judgment too mean each a different thing in the supermind from what it is in the process of the mental intelligence." CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-856, "The issue out of this dilemma is to a greater perfection towards which the formation of the intuitive, inspired and revelatory mind is only a preparatory stage, and that comes by a constant instreaming and descent of more and more of the " CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-903-904 Supramental transformation: "The action of the supramental jnana so constituted evidently surpasses the action of the mental reason and we have to see what replaces the reason in the supramental transformation. The thinking mind of man finds its most clear and characteristic satisfaction and its most precise and effective principle of organ- isation in the reasoning and logical intelligence. It is true that man is not and cannot be wholly governed either in his thought or his action by the reason alone. His mentality is inextricably subjected to a joint, mixed and intricate action of the reasoning intelligence with two other powers, an intuition, actually only half luminous in the human mentality, operating behind the more visible action of the reason or veiled and altered in the action of the normal intelligence, and the life-mind of sensation, instinct, impulse, which is in its own nature a sort of obscure in- volved intuition and which supplies the intelligence from below with its first materials and data. And each of these other powers is in its own kind an intimate action of the spirit operating in mind and life and has a more direct and spontaneous character and immediate power for perception and action than the rea- soning intelligence. But yet neither of these powers is capable of organising for man his mental existence." CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-849, "As the physical and vital, the psychical consciousness and sense also are capable of a supramental transformation and receive by it their own integral fullness and significance. The supermind lays hold on the psychical being, descends into it, changes it into the mould of its own nature and uplifts it to be a part of the supramental action and state, the supra-psychic being of the Vijnana Purusha. The first result of this change is to base the phenomena of the psychical consciousness on their true foundation by bringing into it the permanent sense, the complete realisation, the secure possession of the oneness of our mind and soul with the minds and souls of others and the mind and soul of universal Nature. For always the effect of the supramental growth is to universalise the individual consciousness. As it makes us live, even in our individual vital movement and its relations with all around us, with the universal life, so it makes us think and feel and sense, although through an individual centre or instrument, with the universal mind and psychical being. This has two results of great importance." CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-880, " The complete transformation comes on us by a certain change, not merely of the poise or level of our regarding conscious self or even of its law and character, but also of the whole substance of our conscious being. Till that is done, the supramental consciousness manifests above the mental and psy- chical atmosphere of being — in which the physical has already become a subordinate and to a large extent a dependent method of our self’s expression, — and it sends down its power, light, and influence into it to illumine it and transfigure. But only when the substance of the lower consciousness has been changed, filled potently, wonderfully transformed, swallowed up as it were into the greater energy and sense of being, mahan, brihat, of which it is a derivation and projection, do we have the perfected, entire and constant supramental consciousness. The substance, the conscious ether of being in which the mental or psychic consciousness and sense live and see and feel and experience is something subtler, freer, more plastic than that of the physical mind and sense. As long as we are dominated by the latter, psychical phenomena may seem to us less real, hallucinatory even, but the more we acclimatise ourselves to the psychical and to the ether of being which it inhabits, the more we begin to see the greater truth and to sense the more spiritually concrete substance of all to which its larger and freer mode of experience bears witness. Even, the physical may come to seem to itself unreal and hallucinatory — but this is an exaggeration and new misleading exclusiveness due to a shifting of the centre and a change of action of the mind and sense — or else may seem at any rate less powerfully real. When, however, the psychical and physical experiences are well combined in their true balance, we live at once in two complementary worlds of our being each with its own reality, but the psychical revealing all that is behind the physical, the soul view and experience taking precedence and enlightening and explaining the physical view and experience. The supramental transformation again changes the whole substance of our consciousness; it brings in an ether of greater being, consciousness, sense, life, which convicts the psychical also of insufficiency and makes it appear by itself an incomplete reality and only a partial truth of all that we are and become and witness." CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-881-882, “For the gulf between mind and supermind has to be bridged, the closed passages opened and roads of ascent and descent created where there is now a void and a silence. This can be done only by the triple transformation to which we have already made a passing reference: there must first be the psychic change, the conversion of our whole present nature into a soul-instrumentation; on that or along with that there must be the spiritual change, the descent of a higher Light, Knowledge, Power, Force, Bliss, Purity into the whole being, even into the lowest recesses of the life and body, even into the darkness of our subconscience; last, there must supervene the supramental transmutation , — there must take place as the crowning movement the ascent into the supermind and the transforming descent of the supramental Consciousness into our entire being and nature.” CWSA-22/The Life Divine/p-924, "The supramental transformation , the supramental evolution must carry with it a lifting of mind, life and body out of them- selves into a greater way of being in which yet their own ways and powers would be, not suppressed or abolished, but perfected and fulfilled by the self-exceeding. For in the Ignorance all paths are the paths of the spirit seeking for itself blindly or with a growing light; the gnostic being and life would be the spirit’s self-discovery and its seeing and reaching of the aims of all these paths but in the greater way of its own revealed and con- scious truth of being. Mind seeks for light, for knowledge, — for knowledge of the one truth basing all, an essential truth of self and things, but also of all truth of diversity of that oneness, all its detail, circumstance, manifold way of action, form, law of movement and happening, various manifestation and creation; for thinking mind the joy of existence is discovery and the pen- etration of the mystery of creation that comes with knowledge. This the gnostic change will fulfil in an ample measure; but it will give it a new character. It will act not by the discovery of the unknown, but by the bringing out of the known; all will be the finding “of the self by the self in the self”. For the self of the gnostic being will not be the mental ego but the Spirit that is one in all; he will see the world as a universe of the Spirit. The finding of the one truth underlying all things will be the Identical discovering identity and identical truth everywhere and discovering too the power and workings and relations of that identity. The revelation of the detail, the circumstance, the abun- dant ways and forms of the manifestation will be the unveiling of the endless opulence of the truths of that identity, its forms and powers of self, its curious manifoldness and multiplicity of form bringing out infinitely its oneness. This knowledge will proceed by identification with all, by entering into all, by a contact bringing with it a leap of self-discovery and a flame of recognition, a greater and surer intuition of truth than the mind can reach; there will be an intuition too of the means of embodying and utilising the truth seen, an operative intuition of its dynamic processes, a direct intimate awareness guiding the life and the physical senses in every step of their action and service to the Spirit when they have to be called in as instruments for the effectuation of process in life and matter." CWSA-22/The Life Divine/p-1017-1018 The task for a Sadhaka of Integral Karma Yoga: "The method we have to pursue, then, is to put our whole conscious being into relation and contact with the Divine and to call Him in to transform our entire being into His. Thus in a sense God Himself, the real Person in us, becomes the sadhaka of the sadhana1 as well as the Master of the Yoga by whom the lower personality is used as the centre of a divine transfiguration and the instrument of its own perfection. In effect, the pressure of the Tapas, the force of consciousness in us dwelling in the Idea of the divine Nature upon that which we are in our entirety, produces its own realisation. The divine and all-knowing and all-effecting descends upon the limited and obscure, progressively illumines and energises the whole lower nature and substitutes its own action for all the terms of the inferior human light and mortal activity." CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-45-46, "The personal will of the sadhaka has first to seize on the egoistic energies and turn them towards the light and the right; once turned, he has still to train them to recognise that always, always to accept, always to follow that. Progressing, he learns, still using the personal will, personal effort, personal energies, to employ them as representatives of the higher Power and in conscious obedience to the higher Influence. Progressing yet farther, his will, effort, energy become no longer personal and separate, but activities of that higher Power and Influence at work in the individual. But there is still a sort of gulf or distance which necessitates an obscure process of transit, not always accurate, sometimes even very distorting, between the divine Origin and the emerging human current. At the end of the process, with the progressive disappearance of egoism and impurity and ig- ignorance, this last separation is removed; all in the individual becomes the divine working." CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-60-61, "But this is not always the manner of the commencement. The sadhaka is often led gradually and there is a long space between the first turning of the mind and the full assent of the nature to the thing towards which it turns. There may at first be only a vivid intellectual interest, a forcible attraction towards the idea and some imperfect form of practice. Or perhaps there is an effort not favoured by the whole nature, a decision or a turn imposed by an intellectual influence or dictated by personal affection and admiration for someone who is himself consecrated and devoted to the Highest. In such cases, a long period of preparation may be necessary before there comes the irrevocable consecration; and in some instances it may not come. There may be some advance, there may be a strong effort, even much purification and many experiences other than those that are central or supreme; but the life will either be spent in preparation or, a certain stage having been reached, the mind pushed by an insufficient driving-force may rest content at the limit of the effort possible to it. Or there may even be a recoil to the lower life, — what is called in the ordinary parlance of Yoga a fall from the path . This lapse happens because there is a defect at the very centre. The intellect has been interested, the heart attracted, the will has strung itself to the effort, but the whole nature has not been taken captive by the Divine. It has only acquiesced in the interest, the attraction or the endeavour. There has been an experiment, perhaps even an eager experiment, but not a total self-giving to an imperative need of the soul or to an unforsakable ideal. Even such imperfect Yoga has not been wasted; for no upward effort is made in vain. Even if it fails in the present or arrives only at some preparatory stage or preliminary realisation, it has yet determined the soul’s future." CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-70-71, "But for the sadhaka of the integral Yoga this inner or this outer solitude can only be incidents or periods in his spiritual progress. Accepting life, he has to bear not only his own burden, but a great part of the world’s burden too along with it, as a con- tinuation of his own sufficiently heavy load. Therefore his Yoga has much more of the nature of a battle than others; but this is not only an individual battle, it is a collective war waged over a considerable country. He has not only to conquer in himself the forces of egoistic falsehood and disorder, but to conquer them as representatives of the same adverse and inexhaustible forces in the world. Their representative character gives them a much more obstinate capacity of resistance, an almost endless right to recurrence. Often he finds that even after he has won persistently his own personal battle, he has still to win it over and over again in a seemingly interminable war, because his inner existence has already been so much enlarged that not only it contains his own being with its well-defined needs and experiences, but is in solidarity with the being of others, because in himself he contains the universe." CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-77-78, "Every kind of solution has been offered from the entire abandonment of works and life, so far as that is physically possible, to the acceptance of life as it is but with a new spirit animating and uplifting its movements, in appearance the same as they were but changed in the spirit behind them and therefore in their inner significance. The extreme solution insisted on by the world-shunning ascetic or the inward-turned ecstatical and self-oblivious mystic is evidently foreign to the purpose of an integral Yoga, — for if we are to realise the Divine in the world, it cannot be done by leaving aside the world-action and action itself altogether. At a less high pitch it was laid down by the religious mind in ancient times that one should keep only such actions as are in their nature part of the seeking, service or cult of the Divine and such others as are attached to these or, in addition, those that are indispensable to the ordinary setting of life but done in a religious spirit and according to the injunctions of traditional religion and Scripture. But this is too formalist a rule for the fulfilment of the free spirit in works, and it is besides professedly no more than a provisional solution for tiding over the transition from life in the world to a life in the Beyond which still remains the sole ultimate purpose. An integral Yoga must lean rather to the catholic injunction of the Gita that even the liberated soul, living in the Truth, should still do all the works of life so that the plan of the universal evolution under a secret divine leading may not languish or suffer. But if all works are to be done with the same forms and on the same lines as they are now done in the Ignorance, our gain is only inward and our life is in danger of becoming the dubious and ambiguous formula of an inner Light doing the works of an outer Twilight, the perfect Spirit expressing itself in a mould of imperfection foreign to its own divine nature. If no better can be done for a time, — and during a long period of transition something like this does inevitably happen, — then so it must remain till things are ready and the spirit within is powerful enough to impose its own forms on the life of the body and the world outside; but this can be accepted only as a transitional stage and not as our soul’s ideal or the ultimate goal of the passage." CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-135-136, "" "Whoever sincerely enters the path of works, must leave behind him the stage in which need and desire are the first law of our acts. For whatever desires still trouble his being, he must, if he accepts the high aim of Yoga, put them away from him into the hands of the Lord within us. The supreme Power will deal with them for the good of the sadhaka and for the good of all. In effect, we find that once this surrender is done, — always provided the rejection is sincere, — egoistic indulgence of desire may for some time recur under the continued impulse of past nature but only in order to exhaust its acquired momentum and to teach the embodied being in his most unteachable part, his nervous, vital, emotional nature, by the reactions of desire, by its grief and unrest bitterly contrasted with calm periods of the higher peace or marvellous movements of divine Ananda, that egoistic desire is not a law for the soul that seeks liberation or aspires to its own original god-nature. Afterwards the element of desire in those impulsions will be thrown away or persistently eliminated by a constant denying and transforming pressure. Only the pure force of action in them (pravritti) justified by an equal delight in all work and result that is inspired or imposed from above will be preserved in the happy harmony of a final perfection. To act, to enjoy is the normal law and right of the nervous being; but to choose by personal desire its action and enjoyment is only its ignorant will, not its right. Alone the supreme and universal Will must choose; action must change into a dynamic movement of that Will; enjoyment must be replaced by the play of a pure spiritual Ananda. All personal will is either a temporary delegation from on high or a usurpation by the ignorant Asura. The social law, that second term of our progress, is a means to which the ego is subjected in order that it may learn discipline by subordination to a wider collective ego. This law may be quite empty of any moral content and may express only the needs or the practical good of the society as each society conceives it. Or it may express those needs and that good, but modified and coloured and supplemented by a higher moral or ideal law. It is binding on the developing but not yet perfectly developed individual in the shape of social duty, family obligation, communal or national demand, so long as it is not in conflict with his growing sense of the higher Right. But the sadhaka of the Karmayoga will abandon this also to the Lord of works. After he has made this surrender, his social impulses and judgments will, like his desires, only be used for their exhaustion or, it may be, so far as they are still necessary for a time to enable him to identify his lower mental nature with mankind in general or with any grouping of mankind in its works and hopes and aspirations. But after that brief time is over, they will be withdrawn and a divine government will alone abide. He will be identified with the Divine and with others only through the divine consciousness and not through the mental nature." CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-209-211, "For, even after he is free, the sadhaka will be in the world and to be in the world is to remain in works. But to remain in works without desire is to act for the good of the world in general or for the kind or the race or for some new creation to be evolved on the earth or some work imposed by the Divine Will within him. And this must be done either in the framework provided by the environment or the grouping in which he is born or placed or else in one which is chosen or created for him by a divine direction. Therefore in our perfection there must be nothing left in the mental being which conflicts with or prevents our sympathy and free self-identification with the kind, the group or whatever collective expression of the Divine he is meant to lead, help or serve. But in the end it must become a free self- identification through identity with the Divine and not a mental bond or moral tie of union or a vital association dominated by any kind of personal, social, national, communal or credal egoism. If any social law is obeyed, it will not be from physical necessity or from the sense of personal or general interest or for expediency or because of the pressure of the environment or from any sense of duty, but solely for the sake of the Lord of works and because it is felt or known to be the Divine Will that the social law or rule or relation as it stands can still be kept as a figure of the inner life and the minds of men must not be disturbed by its infringement. If, on the other hand, the social law, rule or relation is disregarded, that too will not be for the indulgence of desire, personal will or personal opinion, but because a greater rule is felt that expresses the law of the Spirit or because it is known that there must be in the march of the divine All-Will a movement towards the changing, exceeding orabolition of existing laws and forms for the sake of a freer larger life necessary to the world’s progress. " CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-211-212, " There is still left the moral law or the ideal and these, even to many who think themselves free, appear for ever sacred and in- tangible. But the sadhaka, his gaze turned always to the heights, will abandon them to Him whom all ideals seek imperfectly and fragmentarily to express; all moral qualities are only a poor and rigid travesty of his spontaneous and illimitable perfection. The bondage to sin and evil passes away with the passing of nervous desire; for it belongs to the quality of vital passion, impulsion or drive of propensity in us (rajoguna ) and is extinguished with the transformation of that mode of Nature. But neither must the aspirant remain subject to the gilded or golden chain of a conventional or a habitual or a mentally ordered or even a high or clear sattwic virtue. That will be replaced by something profounder and more essential than the minor inadequate thing that men call virtue. The original sense of the word was manhood and this is a much larger and deeper thing than the moral mind and its structures. The culmination of Karmayoga is a yet higher and deeper state that may perhaps be called “soulhood”, — for the soul is greater than the man; a free soulhood spontaneously welling out in works of a supreme Truth and Love will replace human virtue. But this supreme Truth cannot be forced to inhabit the petty edifices of the practical reason or even confined in the more dignified constructions of the larger ideative reason that imposes its representations as if they were pure truth on the lim- ited human intelligence. This supreme Love will not necessarily be consistent, much less will it be synonymous, with the partial and feeble, ignorant and emotion-ridden movements of human attraction, sympathy and pity. The petty law cannot bind the vaster movement; the mind’s partial attainment cannot dictate its terms to the soul’s supreme fulfilment... At first, the higher Love and Truth will fulfil its movement in the sadhaka according to the essential law or way of his own nature. For that is the special aspect of the divine Nature, the particular power of the supreme Shakti, out of which his soul has emerged into the Play, not limited indeed by the forms of this law or way, for the soul is infinite. But still its stuff of nature bears that stamp, evolves fluently along those lines or turns around the spiral curves of that dominating influence. He will manifest the divine Truth-movement according to the temperament of the sage or the lion-like fighter or the lover and enjoyer or the worker and servant or in any combination of essential attributes (gunas) that may constitute the form given to his being by its own inner urge. It is this self-nature playing freely in his acts which men will see in him and not a conduct cut, chalked out, artificially regulated, by any lesser rule or by any law from outside." CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-212-213 4 / Chapter 4. Towards the Yoga of Knowledge , Jnana Yoga Summary or A Brief Restatement: This chapter gives a hint about the highest secret knowledge, rahasyam uttamam, the purpose of birth of Avatara , the twice-born Soul, the necessity of the Guru, the knowledge of all life, the fourfold Soul forces, universal Divine action, the difference between action and inaction, attainment of Knowledge through faith. The Gita hints about the highest secret knowledge but ' leaves that for the seeker to discover by his own spiritual experience.' An Avatar accepts life and action and by His divine Influence, the problem of Lower Nature is transformed into a higher Divine Nature and ordinary earth-bound action is transformed into Divine action of the liberated Soul. The necessity of Guru as Spiritual fosterer is indispensable in traditional Yoga and by his Influence Psychic and Spiritual being open of a twice-born Soul, and he first realises Psychic being and Spiritual being and then afterwards Supramental being, atmani atho mayi . (The Gita-4.35) "The first step is Karmayoga , the selfless sacrifice of works, and here the Gita’s insistence is on action. The second is Jnanayoga , the self-realisation and knowledge of the true nature of the self and the world; and here the insistence is on knowledge; but the sacrifice of works continues and the path of Works becomes one with but does not disappear into the path of Knowledge. The last step is Bhaktiyoga, adoration and seeking of the supreme Self as the Divine Being, and here the insistence is on devotion; but the knowledge is not subordinated, only raised, vitalised and fulfilled, and still the sacrifice of works continues; the double path becomes the triune way of knowledge, works and devotion. And the fruit of the sacrifice, the one fruit still placed before the seeker , is attained, union with the divine Being and oneness with the supreme divine nature ." CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-38 Rahasyam Uttamam , The Supreme Secret of the Gita: " He becomes capable of that dwelling in God and giving up of his whole consciousness into the Divine which the Gita upholds as the best or highest secret of things, uttamam rahasyam ." CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-14, " Such is the analysis, not confining itself to the apparent cosmic process but penetrating into the occult secrets of super-conscious Nature, uttamam rahasyam , by which the Gita founds its synthesis of Vedanta, Sankhya and Yoga , its synthesis of knowledge, works and devotion. By the pure Sankhya alone the combining of works and liberation is contradictory and impossible. By pure Monism alone the permanent continuation of works as a part of Yoga and the indulgence of devotion after perfect knowledge and liberation and union are attained, become impossible or at least irrational and otiose. The Sankhya knowledge of the Gita dissipates and the Yoga system of the Gita triumphs over all these obstacles." CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p- 80, "But the highest secret of all, uttamam rahasyam , is the Purushottama . This is the supreme Divine, God, who possesses both the infinite and the finite and in whom the personal and the impersonal, the one Self and the many existences, being and becoming, the world-action and the supracosmic peace, pravritti and nivritti , meet, are united, are possessed together and in each other. In God all things find their secret truth and their absolute reconciliation." CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-125, " It is the nature of the Purushottama who holds both these together and by his supreme divinity reconciles them in a divine reconciliation which is the highest secret of his being, rahasyam hyetad uttamam ." CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p- 140, "This double aspect in the Gita’s doctrine of Avatarhood is apt to be missed by the cursory reader satisfied, as most are, with catching a superficial view of its profound teachings, and it is missed too by the formal commentator petrified in the rigidity of the schools. Yet it is necessary, surely, to the whole meaning of the doctrine. Otherwise the Avatar idea would be only a dogma, a popular superstition, or an imaginative or mystic deification of historical or legendary supermen, not what the Gita makes all its teaching, a deep philosophical and religious truth and an essential part of or step to the supreme mystery of all, rahasyam uttamam .“ CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-148, "For he has unified his whole being in the Purushottama, has assumed the divine being and the higher divine nature of becoming, madbhava , has unified even his mind and natural consciousness with the Divine, manmana maccittah . (The Gita-9.34, 18.58) This change is the final evolution of the nature and the consummation of the divine birth, rahasyam uttamam. When it is accomplished, the soul is aware of itself as the master of its nature and, grown a light of the divine Light and will of the divine Will, is able to change its natural workings into a divine action." CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-232-233, "“Of all Yogins he who with all his inner self given up to Me, for Me has love and faith, sraddhavan bhajate, him I hold to be the most united with Me in Yoga.” It is this that is the closing word of these first six chapters and contains in itself the seed of the rest, (This is the seed of Chapter-7 to 18) of that which still remains unspoken and is nowhere entirely spoken ; for it is always and remains something of a mystery and a secret, rahasyam, the highest spiritual mystery and the divine secret." CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-246, " The passion of love in our self-giving carries us up to him and opens the mystery of his deepest heart of being. Love completes the triple cord of the sacrifice, perfects the triune key of the highest secret, uttamam˙ rahasyam." CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-290, " That will and power is now not separately, egoistically his own, but a force of the suprapersonal Divine who acts in this becoming of his own self, this one of his myriad personalities by means of the characteristic form of the natural being, the swabhava. This is the high secret and mystery, uttamam rahasyam , of the action of the liberated man. It is the result of a growing of the human soul into a divine Light and of the union of its nature with a highest universal nature." CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-459, "The account given here of the supreme spiritual and supramental forms of highest Nature action corresponding to the gunas is not derived from the Gita, but introduced from spiritual experience. The Gita does not describe in any detail the action of the highest Nature, rahasyam uttamam ; it leaves that for the seeker to discover by his own spiritual experience. It only points out the nature of the high sattwic temperament and action through which this supreme mystery has to be reached and insists at the same time on the overpassing of Sattwa and transcendence of the three gunas .” CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-467, "This mystery of our being implies necessarily a similar supreme mystery of the being of the Purushottama, rahasyam uttamam . It is not an exclusive impersonality of the Absolute that is the highest secret. This highest secret is the miracle of a supreme Person and apparent vast Impersonal that are one, an immutable transcendent Self of all things and a Spirit that manifests itself here at the very foundation of cosmos as an infinite and multiple personality acting everywhere, — a Self and Spirit revealed to our last, closest, profoundest experience as an illimitable Being who accepts us and takes us to him, not into a blank of featureless existence, but most positively, deeply, wonderfully into all Himself and in all the ways of his and our conscious existence." 550, “A featureless extinction may be a rigorous demand of the mind’s logic of self-annulment; it is not the last word of the supreme mystery, rahasyam uttamam .” CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita-551, The Purpose of Divine Birth and Divine Action of Avatar (Janma Karma cha Me Divyam ): “For there are two aspects of the divine birth ; (1) one is a descent, the birth of God in humanity, the Godhead manifesting itself in the human form and nature, the eternal Avatar (Janma karma cha me divyam, My birth and action are both Divine) ; (2) the other is an ascent, the birth of man into the Godhead, man rising into the divine nature and consciousness, madbhavam agatah ; (The Gita-4.10/10.6/13.18/14.19) it is the being born anew in a second birth of the soul. (sa yogi maye vartate, that Yogi lives and acts in Me) It is that (1) new birth which Avatarhood and (2) the upholding of the Dharma are intended to serve.” CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-148, "We have to remember and take together its doctrine of the one Self in all, of the Godhead seated in the heart of every creature, its teaching about the relations between the Creator and his creation, its strongly emphasised idea of the vibhuti, — noting too the language in which the Teacher gives his own divine example of selfless works which applies equally to the human Krishna and the divine Lord of the worlds, and giving their due weight to such passages as that in the ninth chapter, “Deluded minds despise Me lodged in the human body because they know not my supreme nature of being, Lord of all existences”; (The Gita-9.11) and we have to read in the light of these ideas this passage we find before us and its declaration that by the knowledge of his divine birth and divine works men come to the Divine and by becoming full of him and even as he and taking refuge in him they arrive at his nature and status of being, madbhavam ." (The Gita-4.10/10.6/13.18/14.19) CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-149, "This is the double condition of the divine birth of the soul , of its release from the mortality of the ego and the body into the spiritual and eternal, — (1) knowledge first of one’s timeless immutable self and union through it with the timeless Godhead, (2) but knowledge too of that which lives behind the riddle of cosmos, the Godhead in all existences and their workings." CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-307, "The divinised man entering into his divine nature will act even as he acts; he will not give himself up to inaction. The Divine is at work in man in the ignorance and at work in man in the knowledge. To know Him is our soul’s highest welfare and the condition of its perfection, but to know and realise Him as a transcendent peace and silence is not all; the secret that has to be learned is at once (1) the secret of the eternal and unborn Divine and (2) the secret of the divine birth and works, janma karma cha me divyam . (The Gita-4.9) The action which proceeds from that knowledge, will be free from all bondage; “he who so knoweth me,” says the Teacher, “is not bound by works .” (The Gita-4.14)" CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-144, "For the reason why the practice of this Yoga becomes possible and easy is that in doing it we give up the whole working of all that we naturally are into the hands of that inner divine Purusha . The Godhead works out the divine birth in us progressively, simply, infallibly, by (1) taking up our being into his and (2) by filling it with his own knowledge and power, jnanadıpena bhasvata ; (The Gita-10.11) he lays hands on our obscure ignorant nature and transforms it into his own light and wideness. What with entire faith and without egoism we believe in and impelled by him will to be, the God within will surely accomplish. But the egoistic mind and life we now and apparently are, must first surrender itself for transmutation into the hands of that inmost secret Divinity within us." CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-310 "In a high state where ignorance is no more, Each movement is a wave of peace and bliss, Repose God’s motionless creative force, Action a ripple in the Infinite And birth a gesture of Eternity. " Savitri-200 "The mystery of God’s birth and acts remains Leaving unbroken the last chapter’s seal, Unsolved the riddle of the unfinished Play; The cosmic Player laughs within his mask, And still the last inviolate secret hides Behind the human glory of a Form, Behind the gold eidolon of a Name." Savitri-311, The Divine Birth of Human Being, Dvija: “The ordinary man who wishes to reach God through knowledge, must undergo an elaborate training. He must begin by becoming absolutely pure, he must cleanse thoroughly his body, his heart and his intellect, he must get himself a new heart and be born again; for only the twice born can understand or teach the Vedas . When he has done this he needs yet four things before he can succeed, (1) the Sruti or recorded revelation, (2) the Sacred Teacher, (3) the practice of Yoga and (4) the Grace of God. ” CWSA-18/Kena and other Upanishads/p-169, "The language of the Gita shows therefore that the divine birth is that of the conscious Godhead in our humanity and essentially the opposite of the ordinary birth even though the same means are used, because it is not the birth into the Ignorance, but the birth of the knowledge, not a physical phenomenon, but a soul-birth. It is the Soul’s coming into birth as the self-existent Being controlling consciously its becoming and not lost to self-knowledge in the cloud of the ignorance. It is the Soul born into the body as Lord of Nature, standing above and operating in her freely by its will , not entangled and helplessly driven round and round in the mechanism; for it works in the knowledge and not, as most do, in the ignorance. It is the secret Soul in all coming forward from its governing secrecy behind the veil to possess wholly in a human type, but as the Divine, the birth which ordinarily it possesses only from behind the veil as the Ishwara while the outward consciousness in front of the veil is rather possessed than in possession because there it is a partially conscious being, the Jiva lost to self-knowledge and bound in its works through a phenomenal subjection to Nature. The Avatar therefore is a direct manifestation in humanity by Krishna the divine Soul of that divine condition of being to which Arjuna , the human soul, the type of a highest human being, a Vibhuti , is called upon by the Teacher to arise, and to which he can only arise by climbing out of the ignorance and limitation of his ordinary humanity. It is the manifestation from above of that which we have to develop from below ; it is the descent of God into that divine birth of the human being into which we mortal creatures must climb; it is the attracting divine example given by God to man in the very type and form and perfected model of our human existence." CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-156-157, "The inner fruit of the Avatar’s coming is gained by those who learn from it the true nature of the divine birth and the divine works and who, growing full of him in their consciousness and taking refuge in him with their whole being, manmaya mam upasritah , purified by the realising force of their knowledge and delivered from the lower nature, attain to the divine being and divine nature, madbhavam. (The Gita-4.10/10.6/13.18/14.19) The Avatar comes to reveal the divine nature in man above this lower nature and to show what are the divine works, free, unegoistic, disinterested, impersonal, universal, full of the divine light, the divine power and the divine love. He comes as the divine personality which shall fill the consciousness of the human being and replace the limited egoistic personality, so that it shall be liberated out of ego into infinity and universality, out of birth into immortality."CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-175, "Change your being, be reborn into the spirit and by that new birth proceed with the action to which the Spirit within has appointed you, may be said to be the heart of its message. Or again, put otherwise, with a deeper and more spiritual import, make the work you have to do here your means of inner spiritual rebirth , the divine birth, and, having become divine, do still divine works as an instrument of the Divine for the leading of the peoples. Therefore there are here two things which have to be clearly laid down and clearly grasped, the way to the change, to this upward transference, this new divine birth, and the nature of the work or rather the spirit in which it has to be done, since the outward form of it need not at all change, although really its scope and aim become quite different. But these two things are practically the same, for the elucidation of one elucidates the other. The spirit of our action arises from the nature of our being and the inner foundation it has taken, but also this nature is itself affected by the trend and spiritual effect of our action; a very great change in the spirit of our works changes the nature of our being and alters the foundation it has taken; it shifts the centre of conscious force from which we act. If life and action were entirely illusory, as some would have it, if the Spirit had nothing to do with works or life, this would not be so; but the soul in us develops itself by life and works and, not indeed so much the action itself, but the way of our soul’s inner force of working determines its relations to the Spirit. This is, indeed, the justification of Karmayoga as a practical means of the higher self-realisation ." CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-251 “Some near approached, were touched, caught fire, then failed, Too great was her demand, too pure her force. Thus lighting earth around her like a sun, Yet in her inmost sky an orb aloof, A distance severed her from those most close.” Savitri-366 The four orders of old Indian social culture, chaturvarnya : "This swadharma is of four general kinds formulated outwardly in the action of the four orders of the old Indian social culture, chaturvarnya . (The Gita-4.13) That system corresponds, says the Gita, to a divine law, it “was created by me according to the divisions of the gunas and works,” — created from the beginning by the Master of existence. In other words, there are four distinct orders of the active nature, or four fundamental types of the soul in nature, svabhava , and the work and proper function of each human being corresponds to his type of nature. This is now finally explained in preciser detail. The works of Brahmins, Kshatriyas, Vaishyas and Shudras , says the Gita, are divided according to the qualities (gunas) born of their own inner nature, spiritual temperament, essential character (svabhava ). Calm, self-control, askesis, purity, long-suffering, candour, knowledge, acceptance of spiritual truth are the work of the Brahmin , born of his swabhava . Heroism, high spirit, resolution, ability, not fleeing in the battle, giving, lordship ( ısvara-bhava , the temperament of the ruler and leader) are the natural work of the Kshatriya. Agriculture, cattle-keeping, trade inclusive of the labour of the craftsman and the artisan are the natural work of the Vaishya. All work of the character of service falls within the natural function of the Shudra . A man, it goes on to say, who devotes himself to his own natural work in life acquires spiritual perfection, not indeed by the mere act itself, but if he does it with right knowledge and the right motive, if he can make it a worship of the Spirit of this creation and dedicate it sincerely to the Master of the universe from whom is all impulse to action. All labour, all action and function, whatever it be, can be consecrated by this dedication of works, can convert the life into a self-offering to the Godhead within and without us and is itself converted into a means of spiritual perfection. But a work not naturally one’s own, even though it may be well performed, even though it may look better from the outside when judged by an external and mechanical standard or may lead to more success in life, is still inferior as a means of subjective growth precisely because it has an external motive and a mechanical impulsion. One’s own natural work is better, even if it looks from some other point of view defective. One does not incur sin or stain when one acts in the true spirit of the work and in agreement with the law of one’s own nature. All action in the three gunas is imperfect, all human work is subject to fault, defect or limitation; but that should not make us abandon our own proper work and natural function. Action should be rightly regulated action, niyatam karma , (The Gita-3.8, 18.47) but intrinsically one’s own, evolved from within, in harmony with the truth of one’s being, regulated by the Swabhava , svabhava-niyatam karma ." (The Gita-18.47) CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-509-510, "The ancient Chaturvarnya must not be judged by its later disintegrated degeneration and gross meaningless parody, the caste system. But neither was it precisely the system of the classes which we find in other civilisations, priesthood, nobility, merchant class and serfs or labourers. It may have had outwardly the same starting-point, but it was given a very different revealing significance. The ancient Indian idea was that man falls by his nature into four types. There are, first and highest, the man of learning and thought and knowledge; next, the man of power and action, ruler, warrior, leader, administrator; third in the scale, the economic man, producer and wealth-getter, the merchant, artisan, cultivator: these were the twice-born, who received the initiation, Brahmin, Kshatriya, Vaishya . Last came the more undeveloped human type, not yet fit for these steps of the scale, unintellectual, without force, incapable of creation or intelligent production, the man fit only for unskilled labour and menial service, the Shudra . The economic order of society was cast in the form and gradation of these four types. The Brahmin class was called upon to give the community its priests, thinkers, men of letters, legists, scholars, religious leaders and guides. The Kshatriya class gave it its kings, warriors, governors and administrators. The Vaishya order supplied it with its producers, agriculturists, craftsmen, artisans, merchants and traders. The Shudra class ministered to its need of menials and servants. As far as this went, there was nothing peculiar in the system except its extraordinary durability and, perhaps, the supreme position given to religion, thought and learning, not only at the top of the scale, — for that can be paralleled from one or two other civilisations, — but as the dominant power. The Indian idea in its purity fixed the status of a man in this order not by his birth, but by his capacities and his inner nature, and, if this rule had been strictly observed, that would have been a very clear mark of distinctness, a superiority of a unique kind. But even the best society is always something of a machine and gravitates towards the material sign and standard, and to found truly the social order upon this finer psychological basis would have been in those times a difficult and vain endeavour. In practice we find that birth became the basis of the Varna . It is elsewhere that we must look for the strong distinguishing mark which has made of this social structure a thing apart and sole in its type." CWSA-20/The Renaissance in India/p-170-171 Nitya Yajna , ceaseless sacrifice is the Central truth of the Gita and Integral Yoga: " Sacrifice is the law of the world and nothing can be gained without it, neither mastery here, nor the possession of heavens beyond, nor the supreme possession of all; “this world is not for him who doeth not sacrifice, how then any other world?” (The Gita-4.31) Therefore all these and many other forms of sacrifice have been “extended in the mouth of the Brahman ,” (The Gita-4.32) the mouth of that Fire which receives all offerings; they are all means and forms of the one great Existence in activity, means by which the action of the human being can be offered up to That of which his outward existence is a part and with which his inmost self is one. They are “all born of work” (The Gita-3.14-15); all proceed from and are ordained by the one vast energy of the Divine which manifests itself in the universal karma and makes all the cosmic activity a progressive offering to the one Self and Lord and of which the last stage for the human being is self-knowledge and the possession of the divine or Brahmic consciousness. “So knowing thou shalt become free.” (The Gita-9.28)" CWSA-19/Essays of the Gita/p-122, "But the integral Yoga pushed towards a complete union of the Divine with the earth-life cannot stop short in this narrow province or limit this union within the lesser dimensions of an ethical rule of philanthropy and beneficence. All action must be made in it part of the God-life, (1) our acts of knowledge, (2) our acts of power and production and creation, (3) our acts of joy and beauty and the soul’s pleasure, (4) our acts of will and endeavour and struggle and not our acts only of love and beneficent service. Its way to do these things will be not outward and mental, but inward and spiritual, and to that end it will bring into all activities, whatever they are, the spirit of divine love, the spirit of adoration and worship, the spirit of happiness in the Divine and in the beauty of the Divine so as to make all life a sacrifice of the works of the soul’s love to the Divine, its cult of the Master of its existence." CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-162 Significance of Sacrifice: "But in Yoga works had a much wider significance. The Gita insists on this wider significance; in our conception of spiritual activity all works have to be included, sarva-karmani . (The Gita-3.26, 5.13) At the same time it does not, like Buddhism , reject the idea of the sacrifice, it prefers to uplift and enlarge it. Yes, it says in effect, not only is sacrifice, yajna , the most important part of life, but all life, all works should be regarded as sacrifice , are yajna , though by the ignorant they are performed without the higher knowledge and by the most ignorant not in the true order, avidhi-purvakam . (The Gita-9.23) Sacrifice is the very condition of life; with sacrifice as their eternal companion the Father of creatures created the peoples. (The Gita-3.10)" CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-89 "Even the material interchange between gods and men proceeds upon this principle, as typified in the dependence of rain and its product food on this working and on them the physical birth of creatures. (The Gita-3.14, 15) For all the working of Prakriti is in its true nature a sacrifice, yajna , with the Divine Being as the enjoyer of all energisms and works and sacrifice and the great Lord of all existences, bhoktaram yajnatapasam sarvaloka-mahesvaram , (The Gita-5.29) and to know this Divine all-pervading and established in sacrifice, sarvagatam yajne pratisthitam, (The Gita-3.15) is the true, the Vedic knowledge." CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-117 The Sacrifice of Knowledge is the Highest Sacrifice: "In answer Krishna affirms that the Sankhya goes by knowledge and renunciation, the Yoga by works; but the real renunciation is impossible without Yoga, without works done as a sacrifice, done with equality and without desire of the fruit, with the perception that it is Nature which does the actions and not the soul; but immediately afterwards he declares that the sacrifice of knowledge is the highest, all work finds its consummation in knowledge, (The Gita-4.33) by the fire of knowledge all works are burnt up; therefore by Yoga works are renounced and their bondage overcome for the man who is in possession of his Self." CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-82, "But there are gradations in the range of these various forms of sacrifice, the physical offering the lowest , the sacrifice of knowledge the highest . Knowledge is that in which all this action culminates, (The Gita-4.33) not any lower knowledge, but the highest, self- knowledge and God-knowledge, that which we can learn from those who know the true principles of existence, (The Gita-4.34) that by possessing which we shall not fall again into the bewilderment of the mind’s ignorance and into its bondage to mere sense-knowledge and to the inferior activity of the desires and passions. The knowledge in which all culminates is that by which “thou shalt see all existences (becomings, bhutani ) without exception in the Self, then in Me.” (The Gita-4.35) For the Self is that one, immutable, all-pervading, all-containing, self-existent reality or Brahman hidden behind our mental being into which our consciousness widens out when it is liberated from the ego; we come to see all beings as becomings, bhutani, within that one self-existence." CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-122, "The sacrifice of knowledge, says the Gita therefore, is greater than any material sacrifice . “Even if thou art the greatest doer of sin beyond all sinners, thou shalt cross over all the crookedness of evil in the ship of knowledge . . . . (The Gita-4.36) There is nothing in the world equal in purity to knowledge.” (The Gita-4.38) By knowledge desire and its first-born child, sin, are destroyed. The liberated man is able to do works as a sacrifice because he is freed from attachment through his mind, heart and spirit being firmly founded in self- knowledge, gata-sangasya jnana vasthita-cetasah . (The Gita-4.23) All his work disappears completely as soon as done, suffers laya, as one might say, in the being of the Brahman , pravilıyate ; (The Gita-4.23) it has no reactionary consequence on the soul of the apparent doer. The work is done by the Lord through his Nature, it is no longer personal to the human instrument. The work itself becomes but power of the nature and substance of the being of the Brahman ." CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-200, "Those who lay a predominant stress on knowledge, arrive to the same point by an always increasing, engrossing, enforcing power of the vision of the Divine on the soul and the nature. Theirs is the sacrifice of knowledge and by an ineffable ecstasy of knowledge they come to the adoration of the Purushottama , jnana-yajnena yajanto mam upasate . (The Gita-9.15) This is a comprehension filled with Bhakti, because it is integral in its instruments, integral in its objective. It is not a pursuit of the Supreme merely as an abstract unity or an indeterminable Absolute. It is a heart-felt seeking and seizing of the Supreme and the Universal, a pursuit of the Infinite in his infinity and of the Infinite in all that is finite, a vision and embracing of the One in his oneness and of the One in all his several principles, his innumerable visages, forces, forms, here, there, everywhere, timelessly and in time, multiply, multitudinously, in endless aspects of his Godhead, in beings without number, all his million universal faces fronting us in the world and its creatures, ekatvena prithaktvena bahudha visvatomukham. (The Gita-9.15) This knowledge becomes easily an adoration, a large devotion, a vast self-giving, an integral self-offering because it is the knowledge of a Spirit, the contact of a Being, the embrace of a supreme and universal Soul which claims all that we are even as it lavishes on us when we approach it all the treasures of its endless delight of existence." CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-327-328, "All true Truth of love and of the works of love the psychic being accepts in their place: but its flame mounts always upward and it is eager to push the ascent from lesser to higher degrees of Truth, since it knows that only by the ascent to a highest Truth and the descent of that highest Truth can Love be delivered from the cross and placed upon the throne; for the cross is the sign of the Divine Descent barred and marred by the transversal line of a cosmic deformation which turns it into a stake of suffering and misfortune. Only by the ascent to the original Truth can the deformation be healed and all the works of love, as too all the works of knowledge and of life, be restored to a divine significance and become part of an integral spiritual existence.” CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-157, “It is therefore through the sacrifice of love, works and knowledge with the psychic being as the leader and priest of the sacrifice that life itself can be transformed into its own true spiritual figure. If the sacrifice of knowledge rightly done is easily the largest and purest offering we can bring to the Highest, the sacrifice of love is not less demanded of us for our spiritual perfection; it is even more intense and rich in its singleness and can be made not less vast and pure. This pure wideness is brought into the intensity of the sacrifice of love when into all our activities there is poured the spirit and power of a divine infinite joy and the whole atmosphere of our life is suffused with an engrossing adoration of the One who is the All and the Highest. For then does the sacrifice of love attain its utter perfection when, offered to the divine All, it becomes integral, catholic and boundless, and when, uplifted to the Supreme, it ceases to be the weak, superficial and transient movement men call love and becomes a pure and grand and deep uniting Ananda .” CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-158 4 / Chapter 4. Towards the Yoga of Knowledge , Jnana Yoga The Reconciliation of Matter and Spirit through the practice of integral Jnana Yoga : “But this exclusive consummation (realisation of Supreme Self) is not the sole or inevitable result of the Path of Knowledge. For, followed more largely and with less individual aim, the method of Knowledge may lead to an active conquest of the cosmic existence for the Divine no less than to a transcendence. The point of this departure is the realization of the supreme Self not only in one’s own being but in all beings and, finally, the realization of even the phenomenal aspects of the world as a play of the divine consciousness and not something entirely alien to its true nature. And on the basis of this realization a yet further enlargement is possible, the conversion of all forms of knowledge, however mundane, into activities of the divine consciousness utilizable for the projection 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 spiritualization and to the justification of the cosmic travail of knowledge in humanity.” CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-38-39 "Or a revealing Force sweeps blazing in; Out of some vast superior continent Knowledge breaks through trailing its radiant seas, And Nature trembles with the power, the flame.” Savitri-47 “Of wisdom looked from light on transient things. A scout of victory in a vigil tower, Her aspiration called high destiny down; A silent warrior paced in her city of strength Inviolate, guarding Truth’s diamond throne.” Savitri-358 “Our greater self of knowledge waits for us, A supreme light in the truth-conscious Vast: It sees from summits beyond thinking mind, It moves in a splendid air transcending life. It shall descend and make earth’s life divine.” Savitri-484 “For knowledge shall pour down in radiant streams And even darkened mind quiver with new life And kindle and burn with the Ideal’s fire And turn to escape from mortal ignorance.” Savitri-710 The Gita's Message of Material Sacrifice for Cellular Transformation: “In the light of a larger knowledge Matter also can be seen to be the Brahman , a self-energy put forth by the Brahman, a form and substance of Brahman ; aware of the secret consciousness within material substance, secure in this larger knowledge, the gnostic light and power can unite itself with Matter, so seen, and accept it as an instrument of a spiritual manifestation. A certain reverence, even, for Matter and a sacramental attitude in all dealings with it is possible. As in the Gita the act of the taking of food is spoken of as a material sacrament, a sacrifice, an offering of Brahman to Brahman by Brahman, so also the gnostic consciousness and sense can view all the operations of Spirit with Matter.” CWSA-22/The Life Divine-1022-1023, " Brahman is the giving, Brahman is the food-offering, by Brahman it is offered into the Brahman fire, Brahman is that which is to be attained by samadhi in Brahman- action." The Gita-4.24 5/ Chapter 5. The Yoga of Renunciation (Karma Sannyasa Yoga) Summary or A Brief Restatement: This chapter identifies that true sannyasa is within and not without; Karma Yoga is greater than Jnana Yoga though the objective of both are the same " That equality, impersonality, peace, joy, freedom do not depend on so outward a thing as doing or not doing works. The Gita insists repeatedly on the difference between the inward and the outward renunciation, tyaga and sannyasa . The latter, it says, is valueless without the former, hardly possible even to attain without it, and unnecessary when there is the inward freedom. In fact tyaga itself is the real and sufficient Sannyasa . “He should be known as the eternal Sannyasin who neither hates nor desires; free from the dualities he is happily and easily released from all bondage.” (The Gita-5.3) The painful process of outward Sannyasa, duhkham aptum, (The Gita-5.6) is an unnecessary process. It is perfectly true that all actions, as well as the fruit of action, have to be given up, to be renounced, but inwardly, not outwardly, not into the inertia of Nature, but to the Lord in sacrifice, into the calm and joy of the Impersonal from whom all action proceeds without disturbing his peace ." CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-184-185 Karma Yoga is superior to Jnana Yoga : " Arjuna is perplexed; here are desireless works, the principle of Yoga, and renunciation of works , the principle of Sankhya, put together side by side as if part of one method, yet there is no evident reconciliation between them. For the kind of reconciliation which the Teacher has already given, — in outward inaction to see action still persisting and in apparent action to see a real inaction since the soul has renounced its illusion of the worker and given up works into the hands of the Master of sacrifice, — is for the practical mind of Arjuna too slight, too subtle and expressed almost in riddling words; he has not caught their sense or at least not penetrated into their spirit and reality. Therefore he asks again, “Thou declarest to me the renunciation of works, O Krishna, and again thou declarest to me Yoga; which one of these is the better way, that tell me with a clear decisiveness.” (The Gita-5.1) ....The answer is important, for it puts the whole distinction very clearly and indicates though it does not develop entirely the line of reconciliation . “Renunciation and Yoga of works both bring about the soul’s salvation, but of the two the Yoga of works is distinguished above the renunciation of works. He should be known as always a Sannyasin (even when he is doing action) who neither dislikes nor desires; for free from the dualities he is released easily and happily from the bondage. Children speak of Sankhya and Yoga apart from each other, not the wise; if a man applies himself integrally to one, he gets the fruit of both,” because in their integrality each contains the other. “The status which is attained by the Sankhya , to that the men of the Yoga also arrive; who sees Sankhya and Yoga as one, he sees. But renunciation is difficult to attain without Yoga ; the sage who has Yoga attains soon to the Brahman ; his self becomes the self of all existences (of all things that have become), and even though he does works, he is not involved in them.” He knows that the actions are not his, but Nature’s and by that very knowledge he is free; he has renounced works, does no actions, though actions are done through him; he becomes the Self, the Brahman, brahmabhuta, (The Gita-5.24) he sees all existences as becomings ( bhutani) of that self-existent Being, his own only one of them, all their actions as only the development of cosmic Nature working through their individual nature and his own actions also as a part of the same cosmic activity. This is not the whole teaching of the Gita ; for as yet there is only the idea of the immutable self or Purusha, the Akshara Brahman , and of Nature, Prakriti , as that which is responsible for the cosmos and not yet the idea, clearly expressed, of the Ishwara, the Purushottama ; as yet only the synthesis of works and knowledge and not yet , in spite of certain hints, the introduction of the supreme element of devotion which becomes so important afterwards; as yet only the one inactive Purusha and the lower Prakriti and not yet the distinction of the triple Purusha and the double Prakriti. It is true the Ishwara is spoken of, but his relation to the self and nature is not yet made definite . The first six chapters only carry the synthesis so far as it can be carried without the clear expression and decisive entrance of these (Ishwara's relation with Self and Nature) all-important truths which, when they come in, must necessarily enlarge and modify, though without abolishing, these first reconciliations. " CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-82-84 True Renunciation: "The true Sannyasa of action is the reposing of all works on the Brahman . “He who, having abandoned attachment, acts reposing (or founding) his works on the Brahman, brahmanya dhaya karmani , (The Gita-5.10) is not stained by sin even as water clings not to the lotus-leaf.” (The Gita-5.10) Therefore the Yogins first “do works with the body, mind, understanding, or even merely with the organs of action, abandoning attachment, for self-purification, sangam tyaktvatmasuddhaye . (The Gita-5.11) By abandoning attachment to the fruits of works the soul in union with Brahman attains to peace of rapt foundation in Brahman, but the soul not in union is attached to the fruit and bound by the action of desire.” (The Gita-5.12) The foundation, the purity, the peace once attained, the embodied soul perfectly controlling its nature, having renounced all its actions by the mind, inwardly, not outwardly, “sits in its nine- gated city neither doing nor causing to be done.” (The Gita-5.13) For this soul is the one impersonal Soul in all, the all-pervading Lord, prabhu, vibhu, who, as the impersonal, neither creates the works of the world, nor the mind’s idea of being the doer, na kartrutvam na karmani , (The Gita-5.14) nor the coupling of works to their fruits, the chain of cause and effect." CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-185, "There is nothing that is not ancient and familiar in the first of these three transforming inner movements; for it has always been one of the principal objects of spiritual discipline. It has been best formulated in the already expressed doctrine of the Gita by which a complete renouncement of desire for the fruits as the motive of action, a complete annulment of desire itself, the complete achievement of a perfect equality are put forward as the normal status of a spiritual being. A perfect spiritual equality is the one true and infallible sign of the cessation of desire , — to be equal-souled to all things, unmoved by joy and sorrow, the pleasant and the unpleasant, success or failure, to look with an equal eye on high and low, friend and enemy, the virtuous and the sinner, to see in all beings the manifold manifestation of the One and in all things the multitudinous play or the slow masked evolution of the embodied Spirit. It is not a mental quiet, aloofness, indifference, not an inert vital quiescence, not a passivity of the physical consciousness consenting to no movement or to any movement that is the condition aimed at, though these things are sometimes mistaken for this spiritual condition, but a wide comprehensive unmoved universality such as that of the Witness Spirit behind Nature. For all here seems to be a mobile half-ordered half-confused organisation of forces, but behind them one can feel a supporting peace, silence, wideness, not inert but calm, not impotent but potentially omnipotent with a concentrated, stable, immobile energy in it capable of bearing all the motions of the universe. This Presence behind is equal-souled to all things: the energy it holds in it can be unloosed for any action, but no action will be chosen by any desire in the Witness Spirit; a Truth acts which is beyond and greater than the action itself or its apparent forms and impulses, beyond and greater than mind or life-force or body, although it may take for the immediate purpose a mental, a vital or a physical appearance. It is when there is this death of desire and this calm equal wideness in the consciousness everywhere, that the true vital being within us comes out from the veil and reveals its own calm, intense and potent presence. For such is the true nature of the vital being, pranamaya purusa ; it is a projection of the Divine Purusha into life, — tranquil, strong, luminous, many-energied, obedient to the Divine Will, egoless, yet or rather therefore capable of all action, achievement, highest or largest enterprise. The true Life-Force too reveals itself as no longer this troubled harassed divided striving surface energy, but a great and radiant Divine Power, full of peace and strength and bliss, a wide-wayed Angel of Life with its wings of Might enfolding the universe." CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-177-178 Self-Purification: "Therefore the Yogins do works with the body, mind, understanding, or even merely with the organs of action, abandoning attachment, for self-purification, atmasuddhaye. " The Gita-5.11, "Acts of sacrifice, giving and askesis ought not to be renounced at all, but should be performed, for they purify the wise." The Gita-18.5, "If there is to be an active perfection of our being, the first necessity is a purification of the working of the instruments which it now uses for a music of discords . The being itself, the spirit, the divine Reality in man stands in no need of purification; it is for ever pure, not affected by the faults of its instrumentation or the stumblings of mind and heart and body in their work, as the sun, says the Upanishad, is not touched or stained by the faults of the eye of vision. Mind, heart, the soul of vital desire, the life in the body are the seats of impurity; it is they that must be set right if the working of the spirit is to be a perfect working and not marked by its present greater or less concession to the devious pleasure of the lower nature. What is ordinarily called purity of the being, is either a negative whiteness , a freedom from sin gained by a constant inhibition of whatever action, feeling, idea or will we think to be wrong, or else, the highest negative or passive purity, the entire God-content, inaction, the complete stilling of the vibrant mind and the soul of desire, which in quietistic disciplines leads to a supreme peace; for then the spirit appears in all the eternal purity of its immaculate essence. That gained, there would be nothing farther to be enjoyed or done. But here we have the more difficult problem of a total, unabated, even an increased and more powerful action founded on perfect bliss of the being, the purity of the soul’s instrumental as well as the spirit’s essential nature. Mind, heart, life, body are to do the works of the Divine, all the works which they do now and yet more, but to do them divinely, as now they do not do them. This is the first appearance of the problem before him on which the seeker of perfection has to lay hold, that it is not a negative, prohibitory, passive or quietistic, but a positive, affirmative, active purity which is his object. A divine quietism discovers the immaculate eternity of the Spirit, a divine kinetism adds to it the right pure undeviating action of the soul, mind and body." CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-643-644, "Moreover, it is a total purification of all the complex instrumentality in all the parts of each instrument that is demanded of us by the integral perfection. It is not, ultimately, the narrower moral purification of the ethical nature. Ethics deals only with the desire-soul and the active outward dynamical part of our being; its field is confined to character and action. It prohibits and inhibits certain actions, certain desires, impulses, propensities, it inculcates certain qualities in the act, such as truthfulness, love, charity, compassion, chastity. When it has got this done and assured a base of virtue, the possession of a purified will and blameless habit of action, its work is finished. But the Siddha of the integral perfection has to dwell in a larger plane of the Spirit’s eternal purity beyond good and evil. By this phrase it is not meant, as the rash hastily concluding intellect would be prone to imagine, that he will do good and evil indifferently and declare that to the spirit there is no difference between them, which would be in the plane of individual action an obvious untruth and might serve to cover a reckless self-indulgence of the imperfect human nature. Neither is it meant that since good and evil are in this world inextricably entangled together, like pain and pleasure, — a proposition which, however true at the moment and plausible as a generalisation, need not be true of the human being’s greater spiritual evolution, — the liberated man will live in the spirit and stand back from the mechanical continued workings of a necessarily imperfect nature. This, however possible as a stage towards a final cessation of all activity, is evidently not a counsel of active perfection. But it is meant that the Siddha of the active integral perfection will live dynamically in the working of the transcendent power of the divine Spirit as a universal will through the supermind individualised in him for action. His works will therefore be the works of an eternal Knowledge, an eternal Truth, an eternal Might, an eternal Love, an eternal Ananda; but the truth, knowledge, force, love, delight will be the whole essential spirit of whatever work he will do and will not depend on its form; they will determine his action from the spirit within and the action will not determine the spirit or subject it to a fixed standard or rigid mould of working. He will have no dominant mere habit of character, but only a spiritual being and will with at the most a free and flexible temperamental mould for the action. His life will be a direct stream from the eternal fountains, not a form cut to some temporary human pattern. His perfection will not be a sattwic purity, but a thing uplifted beyond the gunas of Nature, a perfection of spiritual knowledge, spiritual power, spiritual delight, unity and harmony of unity; the outward perfection of his works will be freely shaped as the self-expression of this inner spiritual transcendence and universality. For this change he must make conscient in him that power of spirit and supermind which is now superconscient to our mentality. But that (Supramental) cannot work in him so long as his present mental, vital, physical being is not liberated from its actual inferior working (of the three Gunas). This purification is the first necessity." CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-644-645, "The Purification of the mental being and the psychic prana — we will leave aside for the time the question of the physical purification, that of the body and physical prana, though that too is necessary to an integral perfection, prepares the ground for a spiritual liberation. Suddhi is the condition for mukti. All purification is a release, a delivery; for it is a throwing away of limiting, binding, obscuring imperfections and confusions: (1) purification from desire brings the freedom of the psychic prana , (2) purification from wrong emotions and troubling reactions the freedom of the heart , (3) purification from the obscuring limited thought of the sense mind the freedom of the intelligence, (4) purification from mere intellectuality the freedom of the gnosis . But all this is an instrumental liberation. The freedom of the soul, mukti, is of a larger and more essential character; it is an opening out of mortal limitation into the illimitable immortality of the Spirit." CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-674, "But we have on the other hand this advantage that one important instrument sufficiently purified can be used as a means for the purification of the others, one step firmly taken makes easier all the others and gets rid of a host of difficulties. Which instrument then by its purification and perfection will bring about most easily and effectively or can aid with a most powerful rapidity the perfection of the rest?... Since we are the spirit enveloped in mind, a soul evolved here as a mental being in a living physical body, it must naturally be in the mind , the antahkarana , that we must look for this desideratum. And in the mind it is evidently by the buddhi, the intelligence and the will of the intelligence that the human being is intended to do whatever work is not done for him by the physical or nervous nature as in the plant and the animal. Pending the evolution of any higher supramental power the intelligent will must be our main force for effectuation and to purify it becomes a very primary necessity. Once our intelligence and will are well purified of all that limits them and gives them a wrong action or wrong direction, they can easily be perfected, can be made to respond to the suggestions of Truth, understand themselves and the rest of the being, see clearly and with a fine and scrupulous accuracy what they are doing and follow out the right way to do it without any hesitating or eager error or stumbling deviation. Eventually their (purified intelligence and will, buddhya visuddhaya, The Gita-18.51) response can be opened up to the perfect discernings, intuitions, inspirations, revelations of the supermind and proceed by a more and more luminous and even infallible action. But this purification cannot be effected without a preliminary clearing of its natural obstacles in the other lower parts of the antah karana , and the chief natural obstacle running through the whole action of the antah karana , through the sense, the mental sensation, emotion, dynamic impulse, intelligence, will, is the intermiscence and the compelling claim of the psychic prana . This then must be dealt with, its dominating intermiscence ruled out, its claim denied, itself quieted and prepared for purification." CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-654-655 Knowledge followed by Equality: "But knowledge comes to its persistent seeker and removes the natural self-ignorance; it shines out like a long-hidden sun and lights up to our vision that self-being supreme beyond the dualities of this lower existence, adityavat (jnanam) prakasayati tat param . (The Gita-5.16) By a long whole-hearted endeavour, by directing our whole conscious being to that, by making that our whole aim, by turning it into the whole object of our discerning mind and so seeing it not only in ourselves but everywhere, we become one thought and self with that, tad-buddhayas tad-atmanah , (The Gita-5.17) we are washed clean of all the darkness and suffering of the lower man by the waters of knowledge, jnana-nirdhuta-kalmasah (The Gita-5.17)... The result (of this awakening of Knowledge) is, says the Git a, a perfect equality to all things and all persons; and then only can we repose our works completely in the Brahman . For the Brahman is equal, samam brahma , (The Gita-5.19) and it is only when we have this perfect equality, samye sthitam manah , (The Gita-5.19) “seeing with an equal eye the learned and cultured Brahmin , the cow, the elephant, the dog, the outcaste” (The Gita-5.18) and knowing all as one Brahman , that we can, living in that oneness , see like the Brahman our works proceeding from the nature freely without any fear of attachment, sin or bondage. Sin and stain then cannot be; for we have overcome that creation full of desire and its works and reactions which belongs to the ignorance, tair jitah. sargah , (The Gita-5.19) and living in the supreme and divine Nature there is no longer fault or defect in our works; for these are created by the inequalities of the ignorance. The equal Brahman i s faultless, nirdosam hi samam brahma , (The Gita-5.19) beyond the confusion of good and evil, and living in the Brahman we too rise beyond good and evil; we act in that purity, stainlessly, with an equal and single purpose of fulfilling the welfare of all existences, ksına-kalmasah sarvabhuta-hite ratah . (The Gita-5.25)" CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-202-203, “The test it (The Gita) 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. The tiniest reaction is a proof that the discipline is imperfect and that some part of us accepts ignorance and bondage as its law and clings still to the old nature. Our self-conquest is only partially accomplished; it is still imperfect or unreal in some stretch or part or smallest spot of the ground of our nature. And that little pebble of imperfection may throw down the whole achievement of the Yoga!... There are certain semblances of an equal spirit which must not be mistaken for the profound and vast spiritual equality which the Gita teaches. There is an equality of disappointed resignation, an equality of pride, an equality of hardness and indifference: all these are egoistic in their nature. Inevitably they come in the course of the sadhana, but they must be rejected or transformed into the true quietude. There is too, on a higher level, the equality of the stoic, the equality of a devout resignation or a sage detachment, the equality of a soul aloof from the world and indifferent to its doings. These too are insufficient; first approaches they can be, but they are at most early soul-phases only or imperfect mental preparations for our entry into the true and absolute self-existent wide evenness of the spirit.” CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-103 Nirvana is perfectly compatible with Action in the World: "But the direct way to union lies through the firm realisation of the immutable Self, and it is the Gita’s insistence on this as a first necessity, after which alone works and devotion can acquire their whole divine meaning, that makes it possible for us to mistake its drift. For if we take the passages in which it insists most rigorously upon this necessity and neglect to observe the whole sequence of thought in which they stand, we may easily come to the conclusion (deceptive conclusion) that it does really teach actionless absorption as the final state of the soul and action only as a preliminary means towards stillness in the motionless Immutable. It is in the close of the fifth and throughout the sixth chapter that this insistence is strongest and most comprehensive. There we get the description of a Yoga which would seem at first sight to be incompatible with works and we get the repeated use of the word Nirvana to describe the status to which the Yogin arrives." CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-235, "Thus Nirvana is clearly compatible with world-consciousness and with action in the world. For the sages who possess it are conscious of and in intimate relation by works with the Divine in the mutable universe; they are occupied with the good of all creatures, sarvabhuta-hite . (The Gita-5.25) They have not renounced the experiences of the Kshara Purusha, they have divinised them; for the Kshara , the Gita tells us, is all existences, sarvabhutani , (The Gita-6.29) and the doing universal good to all is a divine action in the mutability of Nature. This action in the world is not inconsistent with living in Brahman , it is rather its inevitable condition and outward result because the Brahman in whom we find Nirvana, the spiritual consciousness in which we lose the separative ego-consciousness, is not only within us but within all these existences, exists not only above and apart from all these universal happenings, but pervades them, contains them and is extended in them. Therefore by Nirvana in the Brahman must be meant a destruction or extinction of the limited separative consciousness, falsifying and dividing, which is brought into being on the surface of existence by the lower Maya of the three gunas, and entry into Nirvana is a passage into this other true unifying consciousness which is the heart of existence and its continent and its whole containing and supporting, its whole original and eternal and final truth. Nirvana when we gain it, enter into it, is not only within us, but all around, abhito vartate , (The Gita-5.26) because this is not only the Brahman- consciousness which lives secret within us, but the Brahman- consciousness in which we live. It is the Self which we are within, the supreme Self of our individual being but also the Self which we are without, the supreme Self of the universe, the self of all existences. By living in that self we live in all, and no longer in our egoistic being alone; by oneness with that self a steadfast oneness with all in the universe becomes the very nature of our being and the root status of our active consciousness and root motive of all our action ." CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-237-238 Sarvabhuta hite ratah : "And the philosopher’s equality is like the Stoic’s, like the world-fleeing ascetic’s, inwardly a lonely freedom, remote and aloof from men; but the man born to the divine birth has found the Divine not only in himself, but in all beings. He has realised his unity with all and his equality is therefore full of sympathy and oneness. He sees all as himself and is not intent on his lonely salvation; he even takes upon himself the burden of their happiness and sorrow by which he is not himself affected or subjected. The perfect sage, the Gita more than once repeats, is ever engaged with a large equality in doing good to all creatures and makes that his occupation and delight , sarvabhutahite ratah. (The Gita-5.25, 12.4) The perfect Yogin is no solitary musing on the Self in his ivory tower of spiritual isolation, but yuktah kritsna-karma-krit , (The Gita-4.18) a many-sided universal worker for the good of the world, for God in the world. For he is a bhakta , a lover and devotee of the Divine, as well as a sage and a Yogin, a lover who loves God wherever he finds Him and who finds Him everywhere; and what he loves, he does not disdain to serve, nor does action carry him away from the bliss of union, since all his acts proceed from the One in him and to the One in all they are directed. The equality of the Gita is a large synthetic equality in which all is lifted up into the integrality of the divine being and the divine nature. " CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-199, "The result is, says the Gita, a perfect equality to all things and all persons; and then only can we repose our works completely in the Brahman. For the Brahman is equal, samam brahma , and it is only when we have this perfect equality, samye sthitam manah, “seeing with an equal eye the learned and cultured Brahmin , the cow, the elephant, the dog, the outcaste” (The Gita-5.18) and knowing all as one Brahman , that we can, living in that oneness, see like the Brahman our works proceeding from the nature freely without any fear of attachment, sin or bondage. Sin and stain then cannot be; for we have overcome that creation full of desire and its works and reactions which belongs to the ignorance, tair jitah sargah , (The Gita-5.19) and living in the supreme and divine Nature there is no longer fault or defect in our works; for these are created by the inequalities of the ignorance. The equal Brahman is faultless, nirdosam hi samam brahma , (The Gita-5.19) beyond the confusion of good and evil, and living in the Brahman we too rise beyond good and evil; we act in that purity, stainlessly, with an equal and single purpose of fulfilling the welfare of all existences, ksına-kalmasah sarvabhuta-hite ratah . (The Gita-5.25) The Lord in our hearts is in the ignorance also the cause of our actions, but through his Maya, through the egoism of our lower nature which creates the tangled web of our actions and brings back upon our egoism the recoil of their tangled reactions affecting us inwardly as sin and virtue, affecting us outwardly as suffering and pleasure, evil fortune and good fortune, the great chain of Karma . When we are freed by knowledge, the Lord, no longer hidden in our hearts, but manifest as our supreme self, (supreme Self descends to our Psychic heart centre) takes up our works and uses us as faultless instruments, nimitta-matram , (The Gita-11.33) for the helping of the world. ("Wrong could not come where all was light and love." Savitri-314) Such is the intimate union between knowledge and equality; knowledge here in the buddhi reflected as equality in the temperament; above, on a higher plane of consciousness, knowledge as the light of the Being, equality as the stuff of the Nature." CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-102-103, "“Sages win Nirvana in the Brahman, they in whom the stains of sin are effaced and the knot of doubt is cut asunder, masters of their selves, who are occupied in doing good to all creatures, sarvabhuta-hite ratah .” (The Gita-5.25) That would almost seem to mean that to be thus is to be in Nirvana . But the next verse is quite clear and decisive, “Yatis (those who practise self-mastery by Yoga and austerity) who are delivered from desire and wrath and have gained self-mastery, for them Nirvana in the Brahman exists all about them, encompasses them, they already live in it because they have knowledge of the Self.” (The Gita-5.26) That is to say, to have knowledge and possession of the self is to exist in Nirvana . This is clearly a large extension of the idea of Nirvana . Freedom from all stain of the passions, the self-mastery of the equal mind on which that freedom is founded, equality to all beings, sarvabhutesu , (The Gita-3.18) and beneficial love for all, final destruction of that doubt and obscurity of the ignorance which keeps us divided from the all-unifying Divine and the knowledge of the One Self within us and in all are evidently the conditions of Nirvana which are laid down in these verses of the Gita, go to constitute it and are its spiritual substance." CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-236-237 5/ Chapter 5. The Yoga of Renunciation (Karma Sannyasa Yoga) Na Kinchit api chintayet: "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 Gita in 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." CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-316 Bridging the gulf between active and passive Brahman : "This status of an inner passivity and an outer action independent of each other is a state of entire spiritual freedom. The Yogin, as the Gita says, even in acting does no actions, for it is not he, but universal Nature directed by the Lord of Nature which is at work. He is not bound by his works, nor do they leave any after effects or consequences in his mind, nor cling to or leave any mark on his soul; (na karme lipyate nare ) (The Gita-5.10) they vanish and are dissolved (Praviliyante karmani) (The Gita-4.3) by their very execution and leave the immutable self unaffected and the soul unmodified. Therefore this would seem to be the poise the uplifted soul ought to take, if it has still to preserve any relations with human action in the world-existence, an unalterable silence, tranquillity, passivity within, an action without regulated by the universal Will and Wisdom which works, as the Gita says, without being involved in, bound by or ignorantly attached to its works. And certainly this poise of a perfect activity founded upon a perfect inner passivity is that which the Yogin has to possess, as we have seen in the Yoga of Works. But here in this status of self-knowledge at which we have arrived, there is an evident absence of integrality; for there is still a gulf, an unrealised unity or a cleft of consciousness between the passive and the active Brahman. We have still to possess consciously the active Brahman without losing the possession of the silent Self. We have to preserve the inner silence, tranquillity, passivity as a foundation; but in place of an aloof indifference to the works of the active Brahman we have to arrive at an equal and impartial delight in them; in place of a refusal to participate lest our freedom and peace be lost we have to arrive at a conscious possession of the active Brahman whose joy of existence does not abrogate His peace, nor His lordship of all workings impair His calm freedom in the midst of His works." CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-405-406, 6/ Chapter 6. The Yoga of the Supreme Spirit Summary or A Brief Restatement: “This Yoga of self-control by intelligent will must be rigorously, resolutely and continually practised without yielding to any discouragement by difficulty or failure until the bliss of Nirvana is securely possessed.” The Gita-6.23, "This peace of Nirvana is reached when all the mental consciousness is perfectly controlled and liberated from desire and remains still in the Self, when, motionless like the light of a lamp in a windless place, it ceases from its restless action, shut in from its outward motion, and by the silence and stillness of the mind the Self is seen within , not disfigured as in the mind, but in the Self, seen, not as it is mistranslated falsely or partially by the mind and represented to us through the ego, but self-perceived by the Self, svaprakasa . Then the soul is satisfied and knows its own true and exceeding bliss, not that untranquil happiness which is the portion of the mind and the senses, but an inner and serene felicity in which it is safe from the mind’s perturbations and can no longer fall away from the spiritual truth of its being. Not even the fieriest assault of mental grief can disturb it ; for mental grief comes to us from outside, is a reaction to external touches, and this is the inner, the self-existent happiness of those who no longer accept the slavery of the unstable mental reactions to external touches. It is the putting away of the contact with pain, the divorce of the mind’s marriage with grief, duhkha-samyoga-viyogam . (The Gita-6.23) The firm winning of this inalienable spiritual bliss is Yoga, it is the divine union; it is the greatest of all gains and the treasure beside which all others lose their value. Therefore is this Yoga to be resolutely practised without yielding to any discouragement by difficulty or failure until the release, until the bliss of Nirvana is secured as an eternal possession." CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-242, Sri Aurobindo quoted this line of the Gita (The Gita-6.23) at five places of The Synthesis of Yoga , (pages 61, 220, 245, 723-724, 773, ) confirming it as a very important message for the beginners of Yoga. “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.” CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-61-61,““Practise unfalteringly,” says the Gita, “with a heart free from despondency,” the Yoga; for even though in the earlier stage of the path we drink deep of the bitter poison of internal discord and suffering, the last taste of this cup is the sweetness of the nectar of immortality and the honey-wine of an eternal Ananda.” CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-220, “If one has walked long and steadily in the path, the faith of the heart will remain under the fiercest adverse pressure; even if it is concealed or apparently overborne, it will take the first opportunity to re-emerge. For something higher than either heart or intellect upholds it in spite of the worst stumblings and through the most prolonged failure. But even to the experienced sadhaka such falterings or overcloudings bring a retardation of his progress and they are exceedingly dangerous to the novice. It is therefore necessary from the beginning to understand and accept the arduous difficulty of the path and to feel the need of a faith which to the intellect may seem blind, but yet is wiser than our reasoning intelligence. For this faith is a support from above; it is the brilliant shadow thrown by a secret light that exceeds the intellect and its data; it is the heart of a hidden knowledge that is not at the mercy of immediate appearances. Our faith, persevering, will be justified in its works and will be lifted and transfigured at last into the self-revelation of a divine knowledge. Always we must adhere to the injunction of the Gita, “Yoga must be continually applied with a heart free from despondent sinking.” (Th Gita-6.23) Always we must repeat to the doubting intellect the promise of the Master, “I will surely deliver thee from all sin and evil; do not grieve.” (The Gita-18.66) At the end, the flickerings of faith will cease; for we shall see his face and feel always the Divine Presence. ” CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-245, "The persistence of trouble, asanti , the length of time taken for this purification and perfection, itself must not be allowed to become a reason for discouragement and impatience. It comes because there is still something in the nature which responds to it, and the recurrence of trouble serves to bring out the presence of the defect , put the sadhaka upon his guard and bring about a more enlightened and consistent action of the will to get rid of it. When the trouble is too strong to be kept out, it must be allowed to pass and its return discouraged by a greater vigilance and insistence of the spiritualised buddhi . Thus persisting, it will be found that these things lose their force more and more, become more and more external and brief in their recurrence, until finally calm becomes the law of the being. This rule persists so long as the mental buddhi is the chief instrument ; but when the supramental light takes possession of mind and heart, then there can be no trouble, grief or disturbance; for that brings with it a spiritual nature of illumined strength in which these things can have no place. There the only vibrations and emotions are those which belong to the anandamaya nature of divine unity .” CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-723-724, “And yet faith is necessary throughout and at every step because it is a needed assent of the soul and without this assent there can be no progress. Our faith must first be abiding in the essential truth and principles of the Yoga, and even if this is clouded in the intellect, despondent in the heart, outwearied and exhausted by constant denial and failure in the desire of the vital mind, there must be something in the innermost soul which clings and returns to it, otherwise we may fall on the path or abandon it from weakness and inability to bear temporary defeat, disappointment, difficulty and peril. In the Yoga as in life it is the man who persists unwearied to the last in the face of every defeat and disillusionment and of all confronting, hostile and contradicting events and powers who conquers in the end and finds his faith justified because to the soul and Shakti in man nothing is impossible.” CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-773, “The description of Yoga as “bitter like poison in the beginning” because of the difficulty and struggle “but in the end sweet as nectar” because of the joy of realisation, the peace of liberation or the divine Ananda and the frequent description by sadhaks and bhaktas of the periods of dryness shows sufficiently that it is no unique peculiarity of this Yoga. All the old disciplines recognised this and it is why the Gita says that Yoga should be practised patiently and steadily with a heart that refuses to be overcome by despondency. It is a recommendation applicable to this path but also to the way of the Gita and to the hard “razor” path of the Vedanta , and to every other. It is quite natural that the higher the Ananda to come down, the more difficult may be the beginning, the drier the deserts that have to be crossed on the way.” CWSA-31/Letters on Yoga-IV/p-628, “If mankind only caught a glimpse of what infinite enjoyments, what perfect forces, what luminous reaches of spontaneous knowledge, what wide calms of our being lie waiting for us in the tracts which our animal evolution has not yet conquered, they would leave all and never rest till they had gained these treasures. But the way is narrow, the doors are hard to force, and fear, distrust and scepticism are there, sentinels of Nature, to forbid the turning away of our feet from her ordinary pastures.” Sri Aurobindo/TMCW-10/On Thoughts and Aphorisms/p-10-11, "The soul that aspires to perfection, draws back and upward, says the Upanishad, from the physical into the vital and from the vital into the mental Purusha , from the mental into the knowledge-soul and from that self of knowledge into the bliss Purusha . This self of bliss is the conscious foundation of perfect Sachchidananda and to pass into it completes the soul’s ascension. The mind therefore must try to give to itself some account of this decisive transformation of the embodied consciousness, this radiant transfiguration and self-exceeding of our ever aspiring nature. The description mind can arrive at, can never be adequate to the thing itself, but it may point at least to some indicative shadow of it or perhaps some half-luminous image." CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-474, “Meanwhile, we should acknowledge that we don’t have the key, it is not yet in our hands. Or rather, we know quite well where it is, and there is only one thing to do: the perfect ‘surrender’ Sri Aurobindo speaks of, the total surrender to the divine Will whatever happens, even in the dark of night…There is night and sun, night and sun, and night again, many nights, but one must cling to this will for ‘surrender,’ cling as through a storm, and put everything into the hands of the Supreme Lord. Until the day when the Sun shall shine forever, the day of total Victory.” The Mother's Agenda/15.11.1958 When one has got to the top of Yoga?: But when one has got to the top? Then works are no longer the cause; the calm of self-mastery and self-possession gained by works becomes the cause. Again, the cause of what? Of fixity in the Self, in the Brahman -consciousness and of the perfect equality in which the divine works of the liberated man are done. “For when one does not get attached to the objects of sense or to works and has renounced all will of desire in the mind , then is he said to have ascended to the top of Yoga.” (The Gita-6.4) That, as we know already, is the spirit in which the liberated man does works; he does them without desire and attachment, without the egoistic personal will and the mental seeking which is the parent of desire. He has conquered his lower self, reached the perfect calm in which his highest self is manifest to him, that highest self always concentrated in its own being, samahita , (The Gita-6.7) in Samadhi , not only in the trance of the inward-drawn consciousness, but always, in the waking state of the mind as well, in exposure to the causes of desire and of the disturbance of calm, to grief and pleasure, heat and cold, honour and disgrace, all the dualities, sıtosna-sukhaduhkhesu tathamanapamanayoh . (The Gita-6.7) This higher self is the Akshara, kutastha , which stands above the changes and the perturbations of the natural being; and the Yogin is said to be in Yoga with it when he also is like it, kutastha , (The Gita-6.8) when he is superior to all appearances and mutations, when he is satisfied with self-knowledge, when he is equal-minded to all things and happenings and persons." CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-240-241 What is Self-control, samyama?: " There is a distinction implied too between coercion and suppression, nigraha , and control with right use and right guidance, samyama . The former is a violence done to the nature by the will, which in the end depresses the natural powers of the being, atmanam avasadayet ; (The Gita-6.5) the latter is the control of the lower by the higher self, which successfully gives to those powers their right action and their maximum efficiency, — yogah karmasu kausalam . (The Gita-2.50) This nature of samyama is made very clear by the Gita in the opening of its sixth chapter, “By the self thou shouldst deliver the self, thou shouldst not depress and cast down the self (whether by self-indulgence or suppression); for the self is the friend of the self and the self is the enemy. To the man is his self a friend in whom the (lower) self has been conquered by the (higher) self, but to him who is not in possession of his (higher) self, the (lower) self is as if an enemy and it acts as an enemy.” (The Gita-6.5-6) When one has conquered one’s self and attained to the calm of a perfect self-mastery and self-possession, then is the supreme self in a man founded and poised even in his outwardly conscious human being, samahita . (The Gita-6.7) In other words, to master the lower self by the higher, the natural self by the spiritual is the way of man’s perfection and liberation." CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-218-219 Why Rajayogic Meditation is indispensable?: "But this Yoga is after all no easy thing to acquire, as Arjuna indeed shortly afterwards suggests, for the restless mind is always liable to be pulled down from these heights by the attacks of outward things and to fall back into the strong control of grief and passion and inequality. Therefore, it would seem, the Gita proceeds to give us in addition to its general method of knowledge and works a special process of Rajayogic meditation also, a powerful method of practice, abhyasa , a strong way to the complete control of the mind and all its workings. In this process the Yogin is directed to practise continually union with the Self so that that may become his normal consciousness. He is to sit apart and alone, with all desire and idea of possession banished from his mind, self-controlled in his whole being and consciousness. “He should set in a pure spot his firm seat, neither too high, nor yet too low, covered with a cloth, with a deer-skin, with sacred grass, and there seated with a concentrated mind and with the workings of the mental consciousness and the senses under control he should practise Yoga for self-purification, atma-visuddhaye. ” (The Gita-6.11-12) The posture he takes must be the motionless erect posture proper to the practice of Rajayoga ; the vision should be drawn in and fixed between the eye-brows, “not regarding the regions.” (The Gita-6.13) The mind is to be kept calm and free from fear and the vow of Brahmacharya observed; the whole controlled mentality must be devoted and turned to the Divine so that the lower action of the consciousness shall be merged in the higher peace. For the object to be attained is the still peace of Nirvana . “Thus always putting himself in Yoga by control of his mind the Yogin attains to the supreme peace of Nirvana which has its foundation in Me, santim nirvana-paramam matsamstham. ” (The Gita-6.15)" CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-241, "This is the Karmayoga as it is laid down in the Gita as I have developed it for the integral spiritual life. It is founded not on speculation and reasoning but on experience. It does not exclude meditation and it certainly does not exclude bhakti, for the self-offering to the Divine, the consecration of all oneself to the Divine which is the essence of this Karmayoga are essentially a movement of bhakti. Only it does exclude a life-fleeing exclusive meditation or an emotional bhakti shut up in its own inner dream taken as the whole movement of the Yoga. One may have hours of pure absorbed meditation or of the inner motionless adoration and ecstasy, but they are not the whole of the integral Yoga." CWSA-29/Letters on Yoga-II/p-218, "I don’t think you understood very well what Mother was trying to tell you. First of all she did not say that prayers or meditation either were no good — how could she when both count for so much in Yoga? What she said was that the prayer must well up from the heart on a crest of emotion or aspiration, the Japa or meditation come in a live push carrying the joy or the light of the thing in it. If done mechanically and merely as a thing that ought to be done (stern grim duty!), it must tend towards want of interest and dryness and so be ineffective. It was what I meant when I said I thought you were doing Japa too much as a means for bringing about a result — I meant too much as a device, a process laid down for getting the thing done. That again was why I wanted the psychological conditions in you to develop, the psychic, the mental — for when the psychic is forward, there is no lack of life and joy in the prayer, the aspiration, the seeking, no difficulty in having the constant stream of bhakti and when the mind is quiet and inturned and upturned there is no difficulty or want of interest in meditation. Meditation by the way is a process leading towards knowledge and through knowledge, it is a thing of the head and not of the heart; so if you want dhyana , you can’t have an aversion to knowledge. Concentration in the heart is not meditation, it is a call on the Divine, on the Beloved. This Yoga too is not a Yoga of knowledge alone — knowledge is one of its means, but its base being self-offering, surrender, bhakti , it is based on the heart and nothing can be eventually done without this base. There are plenty of people here who do or have done Japa and base themselves on bhakti , very few comparatively who have done the “head” meditation; love and bhakti and works are usually the base — how many can proceed by knowledge? Only the few." CWSA-29/Letters on Yoga-II/p-226-227 What is moderate approach towards Spiritual life?: "And yet the result is not, while one yet lives, a Nirvana which puts away every possibility of action in the world, every relation with beings in the world. It would seem at first that it ought to be so. When all the desires and passions have ceased, when the mind is no longer permitted to throw itself out in thought, when the practice of this silent and solitary Yoga has become the rule, what farther action or relation with the world of outward touches and mutable appearances is any longer possible? No doubt, the Yogin for a time still remains in the body, but the cave, the forest, the mountain-top seem now the fittest, the only possible scene of his continued living and constant trance of Samadhi his sole joy and occupation. But, first, while this solitary Yoga is being pursued, the renunciation of all other action is not recommended by the Gita . This Yoga , it says, is not for the man who gives up sleep and food and play and action, even as it is not for those who indulge too much in these things of the life and the body; but the sleep and waking, the food, the play, the putting forth of effort in works should all be yukta. (The Gita-6.16, 17) This is generally interpreted as meaning that all should be moderate, regulated, done in fit measure, and that may indeed be the significance. But at any rate when the Yoga is attained, all this has to be yukta in another sense, the ordinary sense of the word everywhere else in the Gita . In all states, in waking and in sleeping, in food and play and action, the Yogin will then be in Yoga with the Divine , and all will be done by him in the consciousness of the Divine as the self and as the All and as that which supports and contains his own life and his action." CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-243, "At the same time it must be added that the power is enough; the abstention from all physical action is not indispensable, the aversion to action mental or corporeal is not desirable. The seeker of the integral state of knowledge must be free from attachment to action and equally free from attachment to inaction. Especially must any tendency to mere inertia of mind or vitality or body be surmounted, and if that habit is found growing on the nature, the will of the Purusha must be used to dismiss it. Eventually, a state arrives when the life and the body perform as mere instruments the will of the Purusha in the mind without any strain or attachment, without their putting themselves into the action with that inferior, eager and often feverish energy which is the nature of their ordinary working; they come to work as forces of Nature work without the fret and toil and reaction characteristic of life in the body when it is not yet master of the physical. When we attain to this perfection, then action and inaction become immaterial, since neither interferes with the freedom of the soul or draws it away from its urge towards the Self or its poise in the Self. But this state of perfection arrives later in the Yoga and till then the law of moderation laid down by the Gita is the best for us ; too much mental or physical action then is not good since excess draws away too much energy and reacts unfavourably upon the spiritual condition; too little also is not good since defect leads to a habit of inaction and even to an incapacity which has afterwards to be surmounted with difficulty. Still, periods of absolute calm, solitude and cessation from works are highly desirable and should be secured as often as possible for that recession of the soul into itself which is indispensable to knowledge. " CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-347-348, What is the Cosmic Consciousness of the Gita ?: "For when the Gita describes the nature of this self-realisation and the result of the Yoga which comes by Nirvana of the separative ego-mind and its motives of thought and feeling and action into the Brahman -consciousness, it includes the cosmic sense, though lifted into a new kind of vision . “The man whose self is in Yoga , sees the self in all beings and all beings in the self, he sees all with an equal vision.” (The Gita-6.29) All that he sees is to him the Self, all is his self, all is the Divine. But is there no danger, if he dwells at all in the mutability of the Kshara , of his losing all the results of this difficult Yoga, losing the Self and falling back into the mind, of the Divine losing him and the world getting him, of his losing the Divine and getting back in its place the ego and the lower nature? No, says the Gita ; “he who sees Me everywhere and sees all in Me, to him I do not get lost, nor does he get lost to Me.” (The Gita-6.30) For this peace of Nirvana , though it is gained through the Akshara , is founded upon the being of the Purushottama , matsamstham , (The Gita-6.15) and that is extended, the Divine, the Brahman is extended too in the world of beings and, though transcendent of it, not imprisoned in its own transcendence. One has to see all things as He and live and act wholly in that vision; that is the perfect fruit of the Yoga. " CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-244 Why Action is indispensable in the Gita's Yoga?: "But why act? Is it not safer to sit in one’s solitude looking out upon the world, if you will, seeing it in Brahman , in the Divine, but not taking part in it, not moving in it, not living in it, not acting in it, living rather ordinarily in the inner Samadhi ? Should not that be the law, the rule, the dharma of this highest spiritual condition? No, again; for the liberated Yogin there is no other law, rule, dharma than simply this, to live in the Divine and love the Divine and be one with all beings; his freedom is an absolute and not a contingent freedom, self-existent and not dependent any longer on any rule of conduct, law of life or limitation of any kind. He has no longer any need of a process of Yoga , because he is now perpetually in Yoga . “The Yogin who has taken his stand upon oneness and loves Me in all beings, however and in all ways he lives and acts, lives and acts in Me. ” (The Gita-6.31) The love of the world spiritualised, changed from a sense-experience to a soul-experience, is founded on the love of God and in that love there is no peril and no shortcoming. ('Wrong could not come where all was light and love.' Savitri-314) Fear and disgust of the world may often be necessary for the recoil from the lower nature, for it is really the fear and disgust of our own ego which reflects itself in the world. But to see God in the world is to fear nothing, it is to embrace all in the being of God; to see all as the Divine is to hate and loathe nothing, but love God in the world and the world in God." CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-244-245 Reconciliation of Karma and Jnana Yoga : "Man, therefore, has first of all to become ethical, sukrutı , (The Gita-7.16) and then to rise to heights beyond any mere ethical rule of living, to the light, largeness and power of the spiritual nature, where he gets beyond the grasp of the dualities and its delusion, dvandva-moha . (The Gita-7.27, 28) There he no longer seeks his personal good or pleasure or shuns his personal suffering or pain, for by these things he is no longer affected, nor says any longer, “I am virtuous,” “I am sinful,” but acts in his own high spiritual nature by the will of the Divine for the universal good . We have already seen that for this end self-knowledge, equality, impersonality are the first necessities , and that that is the way of reconciliation between knowledge and works, between spirituality and activity in the world, between the ever immobile quietism of the timeless self and the eternal play of the pragmatic energy of Nature. But the Gita now lays down another and greater necessity for the Karmayogin who has unified his Yoga of works with the Yoga of knowledge. Not knowledge and works alone are demanded of him now, but bhakti also, devotion to the Divine, love and adoration and the soul’s desire of the Highest. This demand, not expressly made until now, had yet been prepared when the Teacher laid down as the necessary turn of his Yoga the conversion of all works into a sacrifice to the Lord of our being and fixed as its culmination the giving up of all works, not only into our impersonal Self, but through impersonality into the Being from whom all our will and power originate. What was there implied is now brought out and we begin to see more fully the Gita’s purpose." CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-281-282, “Ultimately, nothing but omnipotence could convert the world, convince the world. The world isn't ready to experience supreme Love. Supreme Love eliminates all problems, even the problem of creation: there are no more problems, I know it since that experience [of April 13, 1962]. But the world isn't ready yet, it may take a few thousand years. Although it is beginning to be ready for the manifestation of supreme Power (which seems to indicate that this will manifest first). And this supreme Power would result from a CONSTANT identification…But this "constancy" isn't yet established: one is identified and then one isn't, is and then isn't, so things get delayed indefinitely. You wind up doing exactly what you tell others not to do – one foot here and one foot there! It just won't do.” The Mother/The Mother’s Agenda-04.07.1962 A Yogi lives and acts in Me, maye vartate : " The wisdom of the liberated man is not then, in the view of the Gita, a consciousness of abstracted and unrelated impersonality, a do-nothing quietude. For the mind and soul of the liberated man are firmly settled in a constant sense, an integral feeling of the pervasion of the world by the actuating and directing presence of the divine Master of the universe, etam vibhutim mama yo vetti. He is aware of his spirit’s transcendence of the cosmic order, but he is aware also of his oneness with it by the divine Yoga, yogam ca mama . And he sees each aspect of the transcendent, the cosmic and the individual existence in its right relation to the supreme Truth and puts all in their right place in the unity of the divine Yoga. He no longer sees each thing in its separateness, — the separate seeing that leaves all either unexplained or one-sided to the experiencing consciousness. Nor does he see all confusedly together, — the confused seeing that gives a wrong light and a chaotic action. Secure in the transcendence, he is not affected by the cosmic stress and the turmoil of Time and circumstance. Untroubled in the midst of all this creation and destruction of things, his spirit adheres to an unshaken and untrembling, an unvacillating Yoga of union with the eternal and spiritual in the universe. He watches through it all the divine persistence of the Master of the Yoga and acts out of a tranquil universality and oneness with all things and creatures. And this close contact with all things implies no involution of soul and mind in the separative lower nature, because his basis of spiritual experience is not the inferior phenomenal form and movement but the inner All and the supreme Transcendence. He becomes of like nature and law of being with the Divine, sa dharmyam agatah , (The Gita-14.2) transcendent even in universality of spirit, universal even in the individuality of mind, life and body. By this Yoga once perfected, undeviating and fixed, avikampena yogena yujyate, (The Gita-10.7) he is able to take up whatever poise of nature, assume whatever human condition, do whatever world-action without any fall from his oneness with the divine Self, without any loss of his constant communion with the Master of existence ('sarvatha vartamanopi sa yogı mayi vartate. ' The Gita-6.31) ." CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-352-353, "Spirit sees spirit, the divinised consciousness sees God as directly and more directly, as intimately and more intimately than bodily consciousness sees matter. It sees, feels, thinks, senses the Divine. For to the spiritual consciousness all manifest existence appears as a world of spirit and not a world of matter, not a world of life, not a world even of mind; these other things are to its view only God-thought, God-force, God-form. That is what the Gita means by living and acting in Vasudeva, mayi vartate . The spiritual consciousness is aware of the Godhead with that close knowledge by identity which is so much more tremendously real than any mental perception of the thinkable or any sensuous experience of the sensible. It is so aware even of the Absolute who is behind and beyond all world-existence and who originates and surpasses it and is for ever outside its vicissitudes. And of the immutable self of this Godhead that pervades and supports the world’s mutations with his unchanging eternity, this consciousness is similarly aware, by identity, by the oneness of this self with our own timeless unchanging immortal spirit. It is aware again in the same manner of the divine Person who knows himself in all these things and persons and becomes all things and persons in his consciousness and shapes their thoughts and forms and governs their actions by his immanent will. It is intimately conscious of God absolute, God as self, God as spirit, soul and nature. Even this external Nature it knows by identity and self-experience, but an identity freely admitting variation, admitting relations, admitting greater and lesser degrees of the action of the one power of existence. For Nature is God’s power of various self-becoming, atma-vibhuti ." CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-369, "The practical difficulty of the change from the ignorant and shackled normal nature of man to the dynamic freedom of a divine and spiritual being will be apparent if we ask ourselves, more narrowly, how the transition can be effected from the fettered embarrassed functioning of the three qualities to the infinite action of the liberated man who is no longer subject to the gunas. The transition is indispensable; for it is clearly laid down that he must be above or else without the three gunas , trigunatıta, nistraigunya . On the other hand it is no less clearly, no less emphatically laid down that in every natural existence here on earth the three gunas are there in their inextricable working and it is even said that all action of man or creature or force is merely the action of these three modes upon each other, a functioning in which one or other predominates and the rest modify its operation and results, gunagunesu vartante . (The Gita-3.28) How then can there be another dynamic and kinetic nature or any other kind of works? To act is to be subject to the three qualities of Nature; to be beyond these conditions of her working is to be silent in the Spirit. The Ishwara, the Supreme who is master of all her works and functions and guides and determines them by his divine will, is indeed above this mechanism of quality, not touched or limited by her modes, but still it would seem that he acts always through them , always shapes by the power of the swabhava and through the psychological machinery of the gunas . These three are fundamental properties of Prakriti , necessary operations of the executive Nature-force which takes shape here in us, and the Jiva himself is only a portion of the Divine in this Prakriti . If then the liberated man still does works, still moves in the kinetic movement, it must be so that he moves and acts, in Nature and by the limitation of her qualities, subject to their reactions, not, in so far as the natural part of him persists, in the freedom of the Divine. But the Gita has said exactly the opposite, that the liberated Yogin is delivered from the guna reactions and whatever he does, however he lives, moves and acts in God, i n the power of his freedom and immortality, in the law of the supreme eternal Infinite, sarvatha vartamanopi sa yogı mayi vartate . (The Gita-6.31) There seems here to be a contradiction, an impasse." CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-463-464, “That work cannot be fixed by any mind-made rule or human standard; for his consciousness has moved away from human law and limits and passed into the divine liberty, away from government by the external and transient into the self-rule of the inner and eternal, away from the binding forms of the finite into the free self-determination of the Infinite. “Howsoever he lives and acts,” says the Gita, “he lives and acts in Me.” The rules which the intellect of men lays down cannot apply to the liberated soul, — by the external criteria and tests which their mental associations and prejudgments prescribe, such a one cannot be judged; he is outside the narrow jurisdiction of these fallible tribunals. It is immaterial whether he wears the garb of the ascetic or lives the full life of the householder; whether he spends his days in what men call holy works or in the many-sided activities of the world; whether he devotes himself to the direct leading of men to the Light like Buddha, Christ or Shankara or governs kingdoms like Janaka or stands before men like Sri Krishna as a politician or a leader of armies; what he eats or drinks; what are his habits or his pursuits; whether he fails or succeeds; whether his work be one of construction or of destruction; whether he supports or restores an old order or labours to replace it by a new; whether his associates are those whom men delight to honour or those whom their sense of superior righteousness out- castes and reprobates; whether his life and deeds are approved by his contemporaries or he is condemned as a misleader of men and a fomenter of religious, moral or social heresies. He is not governed by the judgments of men or the laws laid down by the ignorant; he obeys an inner voice and is moved by an unseen Power. His real life is within and this is its description that he lives, moves and acts in God, in the Divine, in the Infinite.” CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-271 Why Bhakti is the greatest Yajna? : "The Gita brings in here as always bhakti as the climax of the Yoga, sarvabhutasthitam yo mam bhajati ekatvam asthitah ; (The Gita-6.31) that may almost be said to sum up the whole final result of the Gita’s teaching — whoever loves God in all and his soul is founded upon the divine oneness, however he lives and acts, lives and acts in God. And to emphasise it still more, after an intervention of Arjuna and a reply to his doubt as to how so difficult a Yoga can be at all possible for the restless mind of man, the divine Teacher returns to this idea and makes it his culminating utterance. “The Yogin is greater than the doers of askesis, greater than the men of knowledge, greater than the men of works; become then the Yogin, O Arjuna ,” (The Gita-6.46) the Yogin, one who seeks for and attains, by works and knowledge and askesis or by whatever other means, not even spiritual knowledge or power or anything else for their own sake, but the union with God alone; for in that all else is contained and in that lifted beyond itself to a divinest significance. But even among Yogins the greatest is the Bhakta . “Of all Yogins he who with all his inner self given up to Me, for Me has love and faith, sraddhavan bhajate , him I hold to be the most united with Me in Yoga .” (The Gita-6.47) It is this that is the closing word of these first six chapters and contains in itself the seed of the rest, of that which still remains unspoken and is nowhere entirely spoken ; for it is always and remains something of a mystery and a secret, rahasyam , the highest spiritual mystery and the divine secret." CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-246, 6/ Chapter 6. The Yoga of the Supreme Spirit Method of Self-discipline for a Sadhak of Integral Yoga: "The integral Yoga will make use of both the passive and the active methods according to the need of the nature and the guidance of the inner spirit, the Antaryamin. It will not limit itself by the passive way, for that would lead only to some individual quietistic salvation or negation of an active and universal spiritual being which would be inconsistent with the totality of its aim. It will use the method of endurance, but not stop short with a detached strength and serenity, but move rather to a positive strength and mastery, in which endurance will no longer be needed, since the self will then be in a calm and powerful spontaneous possession of the universal energy and capable of determining easily and happily all its reactions in the oneness and the Ananda . It will use the method of impartial indifference, but not end in an aloof indifference to all things, but rather move towards a high-seated impartial acceptance of life strong to transform all experience into the greater values of the equal spirit. It will use too temporarily resignation and submission, but by the full surrender of its personal being to the Divine it will attain to the all-possessing Ananda in which there is no need of resignation, to the perfect harmony with the universal which is not merely an acquiescence, but an embracing oneness, to the perfect instrumentality and subjection of the natural self to the Divine by which the Divine also is possessed by the individual spirit. It will use fully the positive method, but will go beyond any individual acceptance of things which would have the effect of turning existence into a field only of the perfected individual knowledge, power and Ananda. That it will have, but also it will have the oneness by which it can live in the existence of others for their sake and not only for its own and for their assistance and as one of their means, an associated and helping force in the movement towards the same perfection. It will live for the Divine, not shunning world-existence, not attached to the earth or the heavens, not attached either to a supracosmic liberation, but equally one with the Divine in all his planes and able to live in him equally in the Self and in the manifestation." CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-719-720 7/ Chapter 7. The Yoga of Knowledge Summary or A Brief Restatement: This seventh chapter deals with Para and Apara-Prakriti (The Gita-7.1 to 14) and The Synthesis of Devotion and Knowledge. (The Gita-7.15 to 28) This chapter also hints at knowing the Divine in totality, samagram mam, through intermediate Spiritual experience of cosmic Consciousness, Vasudevah sarvam iti . The action of three Gunas and the Divine Will: "There is first the distinction between the Self and the individual being in Nature. The distinction has been used to point out that this individual being in Nature is necessarily subject, so long as he lives shut up within the action of the ego, to the workings of the three gunas which make up by their unstable movements the whole scope and method of the reason, the mind and the life and senses in the body. And within this circle there is no solution. Therefore the solution has to be found by an ascent out of the circle, above this nature of the gunas , to the one immutable Self and silent Spirit, because then one gets beyond that action of the ego and desire which is the whole root of the difficulty. But since this by itself seems to lead straight towards inaction, as beyond Nature there is no instrumentality of action and no cause or determinant of action, — for the immutable self is inactive, impartial and equal to all things, all workings and all happenings, — the Yoga idea is brought in of the Ishwara, the Divine as master of works and sacrifice, and it is hinted (The Gita-5.2) but not yet expressly stated that this Divine exceeds even the immutable self and that in him lies the key to cosmic existence. Therefore by rising to him through the Self it is possible to have spiritual freedom from our works and yet to continue in the works of Nature. But it has not yet been stated who is this Supreme, incarnate here in the divine teacher and charioteer of works, or what are his relations to the Self and to the individual being in Nature. Nor is it clear how the Will to works coming from him can be other than the will in the nature of the three gunas . And if it is only that, then the soul obeying it can hardly fail to be in subjection to the gunas in its action, if not in its spirit, and if so, at once the freedom promised becomes either illusory or incomplete. Will seems to be an aspect of the executive part of being, to be power and active force of nature, Shakti, Prakriti . Is there then a higher Nature than that of the three gunas ? Is there a power of pragmatic creation, will, action other than that of ego, desire, mind, sense, reason and the vital impulse?" CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-264-265, "This lower nature of the three gunas which creates so false a view of things and imparts to them an inferior character is a Maya, a power of illusion, by which it is not meant that it is all non-existent or deals with unrealities, but that it bewilders our knowledge, creates false values, envelops us in ego, mentality, sense, physicality, limited intelligence and there conceals from us the supreme truth of our existence. This illusive Maya hides from us the Divine that we are, the infinite and imperishable spirit. “By these three kinds of becoming which are of the nature of the gunas , this whole world is bewildered and does not recognise Me supreme beyond them and imperishable.” (The Gita-7.13) If we could see that that Divine is the real truth of our existence, all else also would change to our vision, assume its true character and our life and action acquire the divine values and move in the law of the divine nature." CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-276, "The first door of escape we see out of this limitation of our possibilities, out of this confused mixture of dharmas is in a certain high trend towards impersonality, a movement inwards towards something large and universal and calm and free and right and pure hidden now by the limiting mind of ego. The difficulty is that while we can feel a positive release into this impersonality in moments of the quiet and silence of our being, an impersonal activity is by no means so easy to realise. The pursuit of an impersonal truth or an impersonal will in our conduct is vitiated so long as we live at all in our normal mind by that which is natural and inevitable to that mind, the law of our personality, the subtle urge of our vital nature, the colour of ego. The pursuit of impersonal truth is turned by these influences into an unsuspected cloak for a system of intellectual preferences supported by our mind’s limiting insistence; the pursuit of a disinterested impersonal action is converted into a greater authority and apparent high sanction for our personal will’s interested selections and blind arbitrary persistences. On the other hand an absolute impersonality would seem to impose an equally absolute quietism, and this would mean that all action is bound to the machinery of the ego and the three gunas and to recede from life and its works the only way out of the circle. This impersonal silence however is not the last word of wisdom in the matter , because it is not the only way and crown or not all the way and the last crown of self-realisation (The last perfection of integral Yoga is identified as Truth supreme.) open to our endeavour. There is a mightier fuller more positive spiritual experience in which the circle of our egoistic personality and the round of the mind’s limitations vanish in the unwalled infinity of a greatest self and spirit and yet life and its works not only remain still acceptable and possible but reach up and out to their widest spiritual completeness and assume a grand ascending significance." CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-545-546 "And there is this coincidence because that is always man’s highest and freest possible experience of a quietistic inner largeness and silence reconciled with an outer dynamic active living, the two coexistent or fused together in the impersonal infinite reality and illimitable action of the one immortal Power and sole eternal Existence. But the Gita adds a phrase of immense import that alters everything, atmani atho mayi. (The Gita-4.35) The demand is to see all things in the self and then in “Me” the Ishwara , to renounce all action into the Self, Spirit, Brahman and thence into the supreme Person, the Purushottama . There is here a still greater and profounder complex of spiritual experience, a larger transmutation of the significance of human life, a more mystic and heart-felt sweep of the return of the stream to the ocean , the restoration of personal works and the cosmic action to the Eternal Worker. The stress on pure impersonality has this difficulty and incompleteness for us that it reduces the inner person, the spiritual individual, that persistent miracle of our inmost being, to a temporary, illusive and mutable formation in the Infinite. The Infinite alone exists and except in a passing play has no true regard on the soul of the living creature. There can be no real and permanent relation between the soul in man and the Eternal , if that soul is even as the always renewable body no more than a transient phenomenon in the Infinite. " CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-548, "There is a secret divine Will, eternal and infinite, omniscient and omnipotent, that expresses itself in the universality and in each particular of all these apparently temporal and finite inconscient or half-conscient things. This is the Power or Presence meant by the Gita when it speaks of the Lord within the heart of all existences who turns all creatures as if mounted on a machine by the illusion of Nature. (The Gita-18.61) This divine Will is not an alien Power or Presence; it is intimate to us and we ourselves are part of it: for it is our own highest Self that possesses and supports it. Only, it is not our conscious mental will; it rejects often enough what our con- scious will accepts and accepts what our conscious will rejects. For while this secret One knows all and every whole and each detail, our surface mind knows only a little part of things. Our will is conscious in the mind, and what it knows, it knows by the thought only; the divine Will is superconscious to us because it is in its essence supra-mental, and it knows all because it is all. Our highest Self which possesses and supports this universal Power is not our ego-self, not our personal nature; it is something transcendent and universal of which these smaller things are only foam and flowing surface. If we surrender our conscious will and allow it to be made one with the will of the Eternal, then, and then only, shall we attain to a true freedom; living in the divine liberty, we shall no longer cling to this shackled so-called free- will, a puppet freedom ignorant, illusory, relative, bound to the error of its own inadequate vital motives and mental figures." CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-97-98, "But how then shall we continue to act at all? For ordinarily the human being acts because he has a desire or feels a mental, vital or physical want or need; he is driven by the necessities of the body, by the lust of riches, honours or fame, or by a craving for the personal satisfactions of the mind or the heart or a craving for power or pleasure. Or he is seized and pushed about by a moral need or, at least, the need or the desire of making his ideas or his ideals or his will or his party or his country or his gods prevail in the world. If none of these desires nor any other must be the spring of our action, it would seem as if all incentive or motive power had been removed and action itself must necessarily cease. The Gita replies with its third great secret of the divine life. All action must be done in a more and more Godward and finally a God-possessed consciousness; our works must be a sacrifice to the Divine and in the end a surrender of all our being, mind, will, heart, sense, life and body to the One must make God-love and God-service our only motive. This transformation of the motive force and very character of works is indeed its master idea; it is the foundation of its unique synthesis of works, love and knowledge. In the end not desire, but the consciously felt will of the Eternal remains as the sole driver of our action and the sole originator of its initiative." CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-104, Comprehensive Knowledge of the Supreme Lord: "This (The first six chapters of the Gita closes with this knowledge that the Divine is the source of all works and with this knowledge the Divine worker becomes free.) is what the Teacher proposes to give in the opening verses of the seventh chapter which initiate the development that occupies all the rest of the book. “Hear,” he says, “how by practising Yoga with a mind attached to me and with me as asraya (the whole basis, lodgment, point of resort of the conscious being and action) thou shalt know me without any remainder of doubt, integrally, samagram mam . I will speak to thee without omission or remainder, asesatah ,” (for otherwise a ground of doubt may remain), “the essential knowledge, attended with all the comprehensive knowledge, by knowing which there shall be no other thing here left to be known.” (The Gita-7.1-2) The implication of the phrase is that the Divine Being is all, vasudevah sarvam , and therefore if he is known integrally in all his powers and principles, then all is known, not only the pure Self, but the world and action and Nature. There is then nothing else here left to be known, because all is that Divine Existence. It is only because our view here is not thus integral, because it rests on the dividing mind and reason and the separative idea of the ego, that our mental perception of things is an ignorance. We have to get away from this mental and egoistic view to the true unifying knowledge, and that has two aspects, the essential, jnana , and the comprehensive, vijnana, (The Gita-7.2) the direct spiritual awareness of the supreme Being and the right intimate knowledge of the principles of his existence, Prakriti, Purusha and the rest, by which all that is can be known in its divine origin and in the supreme truth of its nature. That integral knowledge, says the Gita , is a rare and difficult thing ; “among thousands of men one here and there strives after perfection, and of those who strive and attain to perfection one here and there knows me in all the principles of my existence, tattvatah . (The Gita-7.3)” CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita-265-266, "The Inconscient is a sleep or a prison, the conscient a round of strivings without ultimate issue or the wanderings of a dream: we must wake into the superconscious where all darkness of night and half-lights cease in the self-luminous bliss of the Eternal. The Eternal is our refuge; all the rest are false values, the Ignorance and its mazes, a self-bewilderment of the soul in phenomenal Nature." CWSA-21-22/The Life Divine/p-666, "It may be asked how is that devotion high and noble, udara , which seeks God only for the worldly boons he can give or as a refuge in sorrow and suffering, and not the Divine for its own sake? Do not egoism, weakness, desire reign in such an adoration and does it not belong to the lower nature ? Moreover, where there is not knowledge, the devotee does not approach the Divine in his integral all-embracing truth, vasudevah sarvam iti , (The Gita-7.19) but constructs imperfect names and images of the Godhead which are only reflections of his own need, temperament and nature, and he worships them to help or appease his natural longings. He constructs for the Godhead the name and form of Indra or Agni, of Vishnu or Shiva, of a divinised Christ or Buddha , or else some composite of natural qualities, an indulgent God of love and mercy, or a severe God of righteousness and justice, or an awe-inspiring God of wrath and terror and flaming punishments, or some amalgam of any of these, and to that he raises his altars without and in his heart and mind and falls down before it to demand from it worldly good and joy or healing of his wounds or a sectarian sanction for an erring, dogmatic, intellectual, intolerent knowledge. All this up to a certain point is true enough. Very rare is the great soul who knows that Vasudeva the omnipresent Being is all that is, vasudevah sarvam iti sa mahatma sudurlabhah . (The Gita-7.19) Men are led away by various outer desires which take from them the working of the inner knowledge, kamais tais tair hritajnanah . (The Gita-7.20) Ignorant, they resort to other godheads, imperfect forms of the deity which correspond to their desire, prapadyante ’nyadevatah (The Gita-7.20). Limited, they set up this or that rule and cult, tam tam niyamam asthaya , (The Gita-7.20) which satisfies the need of their nature. And in all this it is a compelling personal determination, it is this narrow need of their own nature that they follow and take for the highest truth, incapable yet of the infinite and its largeness. The Godhead in these forms gives them their desires if their faith is whole; but these fruits and gratifications are temporary and it is a petty intelligence and unformed reason which makes the pursuit of them its principle of religion and life. And so far as there is a spiritual attainment by this way, it is only to the gods; it is only the Divine in formations of mutable nature and as the giver of her results that they realise. But those who adore the transcendent and integral Godhead embrace all this and transform it all, exalt the gods to their highest, Nature to her summits, and go beyond them to the very Godhead, realise and attain to the Transcendent. Devan deva-yajo yanti mad-bhakta api . (The Gita-7.23)" CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita-285-286, "In other words, the supreme Purusha is not an entirely relationless Absolute aloof from our illusions, but he is the Seer, Creator and Ruler of the worlds, kavim anusasitaram, dhataram , (The Gita-8.9) and it is by knowing and by loving Him as the One and the All, vasudevah sarvam iti, that we ought by a union with him of our whole conscious being in all things, all energies, all actions to seek the supreme consummation, the perfect perfection, the absolute release." CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita-299, "This is what is intended by the phrase, vasudevah sarvam iti ; the Godhead is all that is universe and all that is in the universe and all that is more than the universe. (1)The Gita lays stress first on his supracosmic existence. For otherwise the mind would miss its highest goal and remain turned towards the cosmic only or else attached to some partial experience of the Divine in the cosmos. (2) It lays stress next on his universal existence in which all moves and acts. For that is the justification of the cosmic effort and that is the vast spiritual self-awareness in which the Godhead self-seen as the Time-Spirit does his universal works. (3) Next it insists with a certain austere emphasis on the acceptance of the Godhead as the divine inhabitant in the human body . For he is the Immanent in all existences, and if the indwelling divinity is not recognised, not only will the divine meaning of individual existence be missed, the urge to our supreme spiritual possibilities deprived of its greatest force, but the relations of soul with soul in humanity will be left petty, limited and egoistic. (4) Finally , it insists at great length on the divine manifestation in all things in the universe and affirms the derivation of all that is from the nature, power and light of the one Godhead. For that seeing too is essential to the God-knowledge; on it is founded the integral turn of the whole being and the whole nature God-wards, the acceptance by man of the works of the divine Power in the world and the possibility of remoulding his mentality and will into the type of the God-action, transcendent in initiation, cosmic in motive, transmitted through the individual, the Jiva ." CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita-316 "This Godhead is the origin of all that is here or elsewhere and by his Nature he has become all these innumerable existences, abhut sarvani bhutani ; (Isha Upanishad-7) therefore man has to see and adore the One in all things animate and inanimate, to worship the manifestation in sun and star and flower, in man and every living creature, in the forms and forces, qualities and powers of Nature, vasudevah sarvam iti ." CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita-344, "He is the Being, all are his becomings. He does not create out of a void, out of a Nihil or out of an unsubstantial matrix of dream. Out of himself he creates, in himself he becomes; all are in his being and all is of his being. This truth admits and exceeds the pantheistic seeing of things. Vasudeva is all, vasudevah sarvam ; but Vasudeva is all that appears in the cosmos because he is too all that does not appear in it, all that is never manifested. His being is in no way limited by his becoming; he is in no degree bound by this world of relations. Even in becoming all he is still a Transcendence; even in assuming finite forms he is always the Infinite." CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita-348, "We have to arrive at the hidden truth behind its manifest appearances; we have to discover the Spirit behind these veils and to see all as the One, vasudevah sarvam iti , individual, universal, transcendent. But this is a thing impossible to achieve with any completeness of inner reality, so long as we live concentrated in the inferior Nature. For in this lesser movement Nature is an ignorance, a Maya ; she shelters the Divine within its folds and conceals him from herself and her creatures. The Godhead is hidden by the Maya of his own all-creating Yoga, the Eternal figured in transience, Being absorbed and covered up by its own manifesting phenomena. In the Kshara taken alone as a thing in itself, the mutable universal apart from the undivided Immutable and the Transcendent, there is no completeness of knowledge, no completeness of our being and therefore no liberation." CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-436, Para and Apara Prakriti : “Earth, water, fire, air, ether, mind, reason and ego is My eightfold divided Nature, apara-prakriti. Know too My other Divine Nature, Para-prakriti, different from this Apara Prakriti ; this Supreme Nature or the Supreme Mother which becomes the Jiva in the heart and by which this world is upheld. This ‘upholding of the world,’ jagat dharayate, means Para-Prakriti also penetrates into Apara Prakriti by which this world can be purified, transformed and perfected.” The Gita-7.4, 5, "The infinite divine Shakti is present everywhere and secretly supports the lower formulation, para prakritir meyaya dharyate jagat , (The Gita-7.5) but it holds itself back, hidden in the heart of each natural existence, sarvabhutanam hriddese , (The Gita-18.61) until the veil of Yogamaya is rent by the light of knowledge. The spiritual being of man, the Jiva , possesses the divine Nature. He is a manifestation of God in that Nature, para prakritir jıva-bhuta , (The Gita-7.5) and he has latent in him all the divine energies and qualities, the light, the force, the power of being of the Godhead. But in this inferior Prakriti in which we live, the Jiva follows the principle of selection and finite determination, and there whatever nexus of energy, whatever quality or spiritual principle he brings into birth with him or brings forward as the seed of his self-expression, becomes an operative portion of his swabhava , his law of self-becoming, and determines his swadharma, his law of action." CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-371-372, "The perfecting of the normal mind, heart, prana and body gives us only the perfection of the psycho-physical machine we have to use and creates certain right instrumental conditions for a divine life and works lived and done with a purer, greater, clearer power and knowledge. The next question is that of the Force which is poured into the instruments, karana , and the One who works it for his universal ends. The force at work in us must be the manifest divine Shakti, the supreme or the universal Force unveiled in the liberated individual being, para prakritir jıvabhuta , (The Gita-7.5) who will be the doer of all the action and the power of this divine life, karta . The One behind this force will be the Ishwara, the Master of all being, with whom all our existence will be in our perfection a Yoga at once of oneness in being and of union in various relations of the soul and its nature with the Godhead who is seated within us and in whom too we live, move and have our being. It is this Shakti with the Ishwara in her or behind her whose divine presence and way we have to call into all our being and life. For without this divine presence and this greater working there can be no siddhi of the power of the nature." CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-740, "But the perfection sought in the integral Yoga i s not only to be one with her in her highest spiritual power and one with her in her universal action, but to realise and possess the fullness of this Shakti in our individual being and nature. (1) For the supreme Spirit is one as Purusha or as Prakriti, conscious being or power of conscious being, and as the Jiva in essence of self and spirit is one with the supreme Purusha , (mamaivansa jivabhuta, The Gita-15.7 ) (2) so on the side of Nature, in power of self and spirit it is one with Shakti, para prakritir jıvabhuta. (The Gita-7.5 ) To realise this double oneness is the condition of the integral self-perfection. The Jiva is then the meeting-place of the play of oneness of the supreme Soul and Nature... To reach this perfection we have to become aware of the divine Shakti, draw her to us and call her in to fill the whole system and take up the charge of all our activities. There will then be no separate personal will or individual energy trying to conduct our actions, no sense of a little personal self as the doer, nor will it be the lower energy of the three gunas , the mental, vital and physical nature. The divine Shakti will fill us and preside over and take up all our inner activities, our outer life, our Yoga. She will take up the mental energy, her own lower formation, and raise it to its highest and purest and fullest powers of intelligence and will and psychic action. She will change the mechanical energies of the mind, life and body which now govern us into delight-filled manifestations of her own living and conscious power and presence. She will manifest in us and relate to each other all the various spiritual experiences of which the mind is capable. And as the crown of this process she will bring down the supramental light into the mental levels, change the stuff of mind into the stuff of supermind, transform all the lower energies into energies of her supramental nature and raise us into our being of gnosis. The Shakti will reveal herself as the power of the Purushottama , and it is the Ishwara who will manifest himself in his force of supermind and spirit and be the master of our being, action, life and Yoga. " CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-760-761, "In the second stage the individual doer disappears , but there is not necessarily any quietistic passivity; there may be a full kinetic action, only all is done by the Shakti. It is her power of knowledge which takes shape as thought in the mind; the sadhaka has no sense of himself thinking, but of the Shakti thinking in him. The will and the feelings and action are also in the same way nothing but a formation, operation, activity of the Shakti in her immediate presence and full possession of all the system. The sadhaka does not think, will, act, feel, but thought, will, feeling, action happen in his system. The individual on the side of action has disappeared into oneness with universal Prakriti, has become an individualised form and action of the divine Shakti. He is still aware of his personal existence, but it is as the Purusha supporting and observing the whole action, conscious of it in his self-knowledge and enabling by his participation the divine Shakti to do in him the works and the will of the Ishwara . The Master of the power is then sometimes hidden by the action of the power, sometimes appears governing it and compelling its workings. Here too there are three things present to the consciousness , (1) the Shakti carrying on all the knowledge, thought, will, feeling, action for the Ishwara in an instrumental human form, (2) the Ishwara , the Master of existence governing and compelling all her action, and (3) ourself as the soul, the Purusha of her individual action enjoying all the relations with him which are created by her workings. There is another form of this realisation in which the Jiva disappears into and becomes one with the Shakti and there is then only the play of the Shakti with the Ishwara, Mahadeva and Kali, Krishna and Radha, the Deva and the Devi . This is the intensest possible form of the Jiva’s realisation of himself as a manifestation of Nature, a power of the being of the Divine, para prakritir jıva-bhuta ." CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-769 Link between Para and Apara Prakriti : "The supreme nature of spiritual being gives us then both an original truth and power of existence beyond cosmos and a first basis of spiritual truth for the manifestation in the cosmos. But where is the link between this supreme nature and the lower phenomenal nature? On me, says Krishna, all this, all that is here — sarvam idam , (The Gita-7.7) the common phrase in the Upanishads for the totality of phenomena in the mobility of the universe — is strung like pearls upon a thread. But this is only an image which we cannot press very far; for the pearls are only kept in relation to each other by the thread and have no other oneness or relation with the pearl-string except their dependence on it for this mutual connection....The workings of the gunas are only the superficial unstable becomings of reason, mind, sense, ego, life and matter, sattvika bhava rajasas tamasas ca ; (The Gita-7.12) but this (Para-prakriti) is rather the essential stable original intimate power of the becoming, svabhava. It is that which determines the primary law of all becoming and of each Jiva ; it constitutes the essence and develops the movement of the nature. It is a principle in each creature that derives from and is immediately related to a transcendent divine Becoming , that of the Ishwara, madbhavah . (The Gita-8.5, 10.6, 13.19) In this relation of the divine bhava to the svabhava and of the svabhava to the superficial bhavah , of the divine Nature to the individual self-nature and of the self-nature in its pure and original quality to the phenomenal nature in all its mixed and confused play of qualities, we find the link between that supreme and this lower existence . The degraded powers and values of the inferior Prakriti derive from the absolute powers and values of the supreme Shakti and must go back to them to find their own source and truth and the essential law of their operation and movement. So too the soul or Jiva involved here in the shackled, poor and inferior play of the phenomenal qualities, if he would escape from it and be divine and perfect, must by resort to the pure action of his essential quality of Swabhava go back to that higher law of his own being in which he can discover the will, the power, the dynamic principle, the highest working of his divine nature. " CWSA-19/Essays of the Gita/p-270-272 How do we go beyond the three modes of Nature, Gunas ?: "The Gita has laid it down from the beginning that the very first precondition of the divine birth , the higher existence is the slaying of rajasic desire and its children, and that means the exclusion of sin. Sin is the working of the lower nature for the crude satisfaction of its own ignorant, dull or violent rajasic and tamasic propensities in revolt against any high self-control and self-mastery of the nature by the spirit. And in order to get rid of this crude compulsion of the being by the lower Prakriti in its inferior modes we must have recourse to the highest mode of that Prakriti, the sattwic , which is seeking always for a harmonious light of knowledge and for a right rule of action. The Purusha , the soul within us which assents in Nature to the varying impulse of the gunas, has to give its sanction to that sattwic impulse and that sattwic will and temperament in our being which seeks after such a rule. The sattwic will in our nature has to govern us and not the rajasic and tamasic will. This is the meaning of all high reason in action as of all true ethical culture; it is the law of Nature in us striving to evolve from her lower and disorderly to her higher and orderly action, to act not in passion and ignorance with the result of grief and unquiet, but in knowledge and enlightened will with the result of inner happiness, poise and peace. We cannot get beyond the three gunas , if we do not first develop within ourselves the rule of the highest guna, sattwa . “The evil-doers attain not to me,” says the Purushottama , “souls bewildered, low in the human scale; for their knowledge is reft away from them by Maya and they resort to the nature of being of the Asura . ” (The Gita-7.15) This bewilderment is a befooling of the soul in Nature by the deceptive ego. The evil-doer cannot attain to the Supreme because he is for ever trying to satisfy the idol ego on the lowest scale of human nature ; his real God is this ego. His mind and will, hurried away in the activities of the Maya of the three gunas , are not instruments of the spirit, but willing slaves or self-deceived tools of his desires. He sees this lower nature only and not his supreme self and highest being or the Godhead within himself and in the world: he explains all existence to his will in the terms of ego and desire and serves only ego and desire. ("A swimmer lost between two leaping seas" Savitri-700 (sea of Light of Supreme Self and Inconscient Self)) To serve ego and desire without aspiration to a higher nature and a higher law is to have the mind and the temperament of the Asura . A first necessary step upward is to aspire to a higher nature and a higher law, to obey a better rule than the rule of desire, to perceive and worship a nobler godhead than the ego or than any magnified image of the ego, to become a right thinker and a right doer. This too is not in itself enough; for even the sattwic man is subject to the bewilderment of the gunas , because he is still governed by wish and disliking, iccha-dvesa. (The Gita-7.27) He moves within the circle of the forms of Nature and has not the highest, not the transcendental and integral knowledge. Still by the constant upward aspiration in his ethical aim he in the end gets rid of the obscuration of sin which is the obscuration of rajasic desire and passion and acquires a purified nature capable of deliverance from the rule of the triple Maya . By virtue alone man cannot attain to the highest, but by virtue (Obviously, by the true inner punya , a sattwic clarity in thought, feeling, temperament, motive and conduct, not a merely conventional or social virtue.) he can develop a first capacity for attaining to it, adhikara . (The Gita-2.47) For the crude rajasic or the dull tamasic ego is difficult to shake off and put below us; the sattwic ego is less difficult and at last, when it sufficiently subtilises and enlightens itself, becomes even easy to transcend, transmute or annihilate." CWSA-19/Essays of the Gita/p-280-281 Reconciliation of Jnana and Bhakti Yoga : "We have now set before us three interdependent movements of our release out of the normal nature and our growth into the divine and spiritual being. “By the delusion of the dualities which arises from wish and disliking, all existences in the creation are led into bewilderment,” says the Gita . That is the ignorance, the egoism which fails to see and lay hold on the Divine everywhere, because it sees only the dualities of Nature and is constantly occupied with its own separate personality and its seekings and shrinkings. For escape from this circle the first necessity in our works is to get clear of the sin of the vital ego, the fire of passion, the tumult of desire of the rajasic nature, and this has to be done by the steadying sattwic impulse of the ethical being. When that is done, yesam tvantagatam papam jananam punyakarmanam , (The Gita-7.28) or rather as it is being done, for after a certain point all growth in the sattwic nature brings an increasing capacity for a high quietude, equality and transcendence, — it is necessary to rise above the dualities and to become impersonal, equal, one self with the Immutable, one self with all existences. This process of growing into the spirit completes our purification. But while this is being done, while the soul is enlarging into self-knowledge, it has also to increase in devotion. For it has not only to act in a large spirit of equality, but to do also sacrifice to the Lord, to that Godhead in all beings which it does not yet know perfectly, but which it will be able so to know, integrally, samagram mam , (The Gita-7.1) when it has firmly the vision of the one self everywhere and in all existences. Equality and vision of unity once perfectly gained, te dvandva-moha-nirmuktah , (The Gita-7.28) a supreme bhakti, an all-embracing devotion to the Divine, becomes the whole and the sole law of the being. All other law of conduct merges into that surrender, sarva-dharman parityajya . (The Gita-18.66) The soul then becomes firm in this bhakti and in the vow of self-consecration of all its being, knowledge, works; for it has now for its sure base, its absolute foundation of existence and action the perfect, the integral, the unifying knowledge of the all-originating Godhead, te bhajante mam drudha-vratah . (The Gita-7.28)" CWSA-19/Essays of the Gita/p-82-83 Integral Knowledge is the condition of realising Transcendent Divine Love: "For note that it is bhakti with knowledge which the Gita demands from the disciple and it regards all other forms of devotion as good in themselves but still inferior; they may do well by the way, but they are not the thing at which it aims in the soul’s culmination. Among those who have put away the sin of the rajasic egoism and are moving towards the Divine, the Gita distinguishes between four kinds of bhaktas . There are those who turn to him as a refuge from sorrow and suffering in the world, arta . There are those who seek him as the giver of good in the world, artharthı. There are those who come to him in the desire for knowledge, jijnasu . And lastly there are those who adore him with knowledge, jnanı . All are approved by the Gita , but only on the last does it lay the seal of its complete sanction. All these movements without exception are high and good, udarah sarva evaite , (The Gita-7.18) but the bhakti with knowledge excels them all, visisyate . (The Gita-7.17) We may say that these forms are successively the bhakti o f the vital-emotional and affective nature, that of the practical and dynamic nature, that of the reasoning intellectual nature, and that of the highest intuitive being which takes up all the rest of the nature into unity with the Divine. Practically, however, the others may be regarded as preparatory movements. For the Gita itself here says that it is only at the end of many existences that one can, after possession of the integral knowledge and after working that out in oneself through many lives, attain at the long last to the Transcendent. For the knowledge of the Divine as all things that are is difficult to attain and rare on earth is the great soul, mahatma , (The Gita-7.19) who is capable of fully so seeing him and of entering into him with his whole being, in every way of his nature, by the wide power of this all-embracing knowledge, sarvavit sarvabhavena . (The Gita-15.19)" CWSA-19/Essays of the Gita/p-284-285, ““There is the immutable and impersonal spiritual being (Purusha),” says Krishna later on, “and there is the mutable and personal spiritual being. But there is too another Highest (uttama purusa ) called the supreme self, Paramatman , he who has entered into this whole world and upbears it, the Lord, the imperishable. I am this Purushottama who am beyond the mutable and am greater and higher even than the immutable. He who has knowledge of me as the Purushottama , adores me (has bhakti for me, bhajati) , with all-knowledge and in every way of his natural being.” (The Gita-15.19) And it is this bhakti of an integral knowledge and integral self-giving which the Gita now begins to develop.” CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-284, “This Yoga of love will give you a highest potential force for spiritual largeness and unity and freedom. But it must be a love which is one with God-knowledge. There is a devotion which seeks God in suffering for consolation and succour and deliverance; there is a devotion which seeks him for his gifts, for divine aid and protection and as a fountain of the satisfaction of desire; there is a devotion that, still ignorant, turns to him for light and knowledge. And so long as one is limited to these forms, there may persist even in their highest and noblest Godward turn a working of the three gunas. But when the God- lover is also the God-knower, the lover becomes one self with the Beloved; for he is the chosen of the Most High and the elect of the Spirit. Develop in yourself this God-engrossed love; the heart spiritualised and lifted beyond the limitations of its lower nature will reveal to you most intimately the secrets of God’s immeasurable being, bring into you the whole touch and influx and glory of his divine Power and open to you the mysteries of an eternal rapture. It is perfect love that is the key to a perfect knowledge ." CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-589, " The devotee on the other hand tends to look down on the sawdust dryness of mere knowledge. And it is true that philosophy by itself without the rapture of spiritual experience is something as dry as it is clear and cannot give all the satisfaction we seek, that its spiritual experience even, when it has not left its supports of thought and shot up beyond the mind, lives too much in an abstract delight and that what it reaches, is not indeed the void it seems to the passion of the heart, but still has the limitations of the peaks. On the other hand, love itself is not complete without knowledge. The Gita distinguishes between three initial kinds of Bhakti, that which seeks refuge in the Divine from the sorrows of the world, arta , that which, desiring, approaches the Divine as the giver of its good, artharthı , and that which attracted by what it already loves, but does not yet know, yearns to know this divine Unknown, jijnasu ; but it gives the palm to the Bhakti that knows. Evidently the intensity of passion which says, “I do not understand, I love,” and, loving, cares not to understand, is not love’s last self-expression, but its first, nor is it its highest intensity. Rather as knowledge of the Divine grows, delight in the Divine and love of it must increase. Nor can mere rapture be secure without the foundation of knowledge; to live in what we love, gives that security, and to live in it means to be one with it in consciousness, and oneness of consciousness is the perfect condition of knowledge. Knowledge of the Divine gives to love of the Divine its firmest security, opens to it its own widest joy of experience, raises it to its highest pinnacles of outlook." CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-550-551 7/ Chapter 7. The Yoga of Knowledge How Traditional and Integral Yoga are reconciled?: The Gita confirms that a seeker of truth, jijnasu , after many births of preparation, purification of impurity and sin, endeavouring with sincerity becomes a traditional Yogi and attains the highest goal of liberation of Soul or a Soul who fell from Yoga, yogabhrasta , from the past birth, in this birth strives with sincerity to overcome the samskara of many births in a brief period of this life and attains the highest goal...' (The Gita-6.45) ' "After many births of preparation, a traditional Yogi, Jnani, attains My Purushottama or Supramental state of Consciousness. Before realisation of this highest Consciousness, he also realises the intermediate stair that all this existence is Divine, the Cosmic Consciousness, Vasudevah sarvamiti. Such great Soul with realisation of Vasudevah sarvamiti or integral Yogi is very rare, samahatma sudurlava ." (The Gita-7.19) An integral Yogi, after many births of preparation, attains integral Transformation, integral Perfection and integral Knowledge. "Among thousands of seekers of truth, jijnasu, one here and there strives after perfection and becomes a Yogi. And of those few siddha Yogi who strive and attain the perfection of Yoga one here and there attains integral perfection and knows the Divine with all the principles of His existence, betti tattvatah ." (The Gita-7.3) "It must also be kept in mind that the supramental change is difficult, distant and ultimate stage; it must be regarded as the end of a far-off vista; it cannot be and must not be turned into a first aim, a constantly envisaged goal or an immediate objective. For it can only come into the view of possibility after much arduous self-conquest and self-exceeding, at the end of many long and trying stages of difficult self-evolution of the nature. (1) One must first acquire an inner Yogic consciousness and replace by it our ordinary view of things, natural movements, motives of life; one must revolutionise the whole present build of our being. (2) Next, we have to go still deeper, discover our veiled psychic entity and in its light and under its government psychicise our inner and outer parts, turn mind-nature, life-nature, body-nature and all our mental, vital, physical action and states and movements into a conscious instrumentation of the soul. (3) Afterwards or concurrently we have to spiritualise the being in its entirety by a descent of a divine Light, Force, Purity, Knowledge, freedom and wideness. (4) 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. (5) 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. ” (CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/281-282) Dynamic Divine Union for a Sadhaka of Integral Yoga: “There is however a possibility of arriving at this result without the passage through the passivity of the mental Purusha , by a more persistently and predominantly kinetic Yoga. Or there may be a combination of both the methods, alternations between them and an ultimate fusion. And here the problem of spiritual action assumes a more simple form. In this kinetic movement there are three stages. (1) In the first the Jiva is aware of the supreme Shakti, receives the power into himself and uses it under her direction, with a certain sense of being the subordinate doer, a sense of minor responsibility in the action, — even at first, it may be, a responsibility for the result; but that disappears, for the result is seen to be determined by the higher Power, and only the action is felt to be partly his own. (2) The sadhaka then feels that it is he who is thinking, willing, doing, but feels too the divine Shakti or Prakriti behind driving and shaping all his thought, will, feeling and action: the individual energy belongs in a way to him, but is still only a form and an instrument of the universal divine Energy. (3) The Master of the Power may be hidden from him for a time by the action of the Shakti, or he may be aware of the Ishwara sometimes or continually manifest to him. In the latter case there are three things present to his consciousness, (1) himself as the servant of the Ishwara, the Shakti behind as a great Power supplying the energy, shaping the action, formulating the results, the Ishwara above determining by his will the whole action. (2) In the second stage the individual doer disappears, but there is not necessarily any quietistic passivity; there may be a full kinetic action, only all is done by the Shakti . It is her power of knowledge which takes shape as thought in the mind; the sadhaka has no sense of himself thinking, but of the Shakti thinking in him. The will and the feelings and action are also in the same way nothing but a formation, operation, activity of the Shakti in her immediate presence and full possession of all the system. (3) The sadhaka does not think, will, act, feel, but thought, will, feeling, action happen in his system. The individual on the side of action has disappeared into oneness with universal Prakriti, has become an individualised form and action of the divine Shakti. He is still aware of his personal existence, but it is as the Purusha supporting and observing the whole action, conscious of it in his self-knowledge and enabling by his participation the divine Shakti to do in him the works and the will of the Ishwara. The Master of the power is then sometimes hidden by the action of the power, sometimes appears governing it and compelling its workings. Here too there are three things present to the consciousness, (1) the Shakti carrying on all the knowledge, thought, will, feeling, action for the Ishwara in an instrumental human form, the Ishwara, the Master of existence governing and compelling all her action, and ourself as the soul, the Purusha of her individual action enjoying all the relations with him which are created by her workings. (2) There is another form of this realisation in which the Jiva disappears into and becomes one with the Shakti and there is then only the play of the Shakti with the Ishwara, Mahadeva and Kali, Krishna and Radha, the Deva and the Devi. (3) This is the intensest possible form of the Jiva’s realisation of himself as a manifestation of Nature, a power of the being of the Divine, para prakritir jıva-bhuta. ” CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-768-769 8/ Chapter 8 - The Immutable Brahman Summary or A Brief Restatement: Integral Yoga's Maha mantra 'All life is Yoga' is derived from this chapter, where Arjuna was asked by the Lord, "tasmat sarvesu kalesu Yoga Yukto Bhavarjuna , therefore all Time of All Life be in Yoga, O Arjuna." (The Gita-8.27) The other complementary Mantra is "tasmat sarvesu kalesu mam anusmara yudhya cha, therefore, at all Times of All Life remember Me and fight." (The Gita-8.7) In Integral Education and Integral Yoga, birth to death and death to rebirth are recognised as a long training ground of the Soul, in ascending and descending multiple planes of Consciousness. Life and Death are both opportunities for the evolution of Consciousness and not a cessation of growth. Seven Questions raised by Arjuna : (1) What is tad brahma , (2) what is adhyatma and (3) what is karma , O Purushottama ? (4) What is declared to be adhibhuta, (5) what is called adhidaiva ? (6) What is adhiyajna in this body? O Madhusudana ? (7) And how in the critical moment of departure from physical existence, art Thou to be known by the self-controlled?” The Gita-8.1, 2 Answer attempted: "The Blessed Lord said: (1) The Akshara or the Immutable is the supreme Brahman; (2) svabhava is called adhyatma , (3) Karma is the name given to the creative movement, visargah which brings into existence all beings and their subjective and objective states. (4) Adhibhuta is ksharo bhavah or mutable state, (5) adhidaiva is Purusha or Soul within Nature; (6) I myself am the lord of sacrifice, adhiyajna here in the body. (7) Whoever leaves his body and departs remembering Me at the time of his death, comes to My status of being, madbhava ; there is no doubt about that." The Gita-8.3, 4, 5 The last transformation of its phenomenal nature and existence: "Man, born into the world, revolves between world and world in the action of Prakriti and Karma . Purusha in Prakriti is his formula: what the soul in him thinks, contemplates and acts, that always he becomes. All that he had been, determined his present birth; and all that he is, thinks, does in this life up to the moment of his death, determines what he will become in the worlds beyond and in lives yet to be. If birth is a becoming, death also is a becoming, not by any means a cessation. The body is abandoned, but the soul goes on its way, tyaktva kalevaram (The Gita-8.5). Much then depends on what he is at the critical moment of his departure. For whatever form of becoming his consciousness is fixed on at the time of death and has been full of that always in his mind and thought before death, to that form he must attain, since the Prakriti by Karma works out the soul’s thoughts and energies and that is in real fact her whole business. Therefore, if the soul in the human being desires to attain to the status of the Purushottama , there are two necessities , two conditions which must be satisfied before that can be possible. (1) He must have moulded towards that ideal his whole inner life in his earthly living; and (2) he must be faithful to his aspiration and will in his departing. “Whoever leaves his body and departs” says Krishna “remembering Me at his time of end, comes to my bhava ,” (The Gita-8.5) that of the Purushottama , my status of being. He is united with the original being of the Divine and that is the ultimate becoming of the soul, paro bhavah , (The Gita-9.11) the last result of Karma in its return upon itself and towards its source. The soul which has followed the play of cosmic evolution that veils here its essential spiritual nature, its original form of becoming, svabhava, and has passed through all these other ways of becoming of its consciousness which are only its phenomena, tamtambhavam , (The Gita-8.6) returns to that essential nature and, finding through this return its true self and spirit, comes to the original status of being which is from the point of view of the return a highest becoming, mad-bhavam (The Gita-8.5). In a certain sense we may say that it becomes God , since it unites itself with nature of the Divine in a last transformation of its own phenomenal nature and existence." 294-295 The Popular Religion: "The Gita here lays a great stress on the thought and state of mind at the time of death, a stress which will with difficulty be understood if we do not recognise what may be called the self-creative power of the consciousness. What the thought, the inner regard, the faith, sraddha , settles itself upon with a complete and definite insistence, into that our inner being tends to change. This tendency becomes a decisive force when we go to those higher spiritual and self-evolved experiences which are less dependent on external things than is our ordinary psychology, enslaved as that is to outward Nature . There we can see ourselves steadily becoming that on which we keep our minds fixed and to which we constantly aspire. Therefore there any lapse of the thought, any infidelity of the memory means always a retardation of the change or some fall in its process and a going back towards what we were before , — at least so long as we have not substantially and irrevocably fixed our new becoming. When we have done that, when we have made it normal to our experience, the memory of it remains self-existently because that now is the natural form of our consciousness. In the critical moment of passing from the mortal plane of living, the importance of our then state of consciousness becomes evident. But it is not a death-bed remembrance at variance with or insufficiently prepared by the whole tenor of our life and our past subjectivity that can have this saving power. The thought of the Gita here is not on a par with the indulgences and facilities of popular religion ; it has nothing in common with the crude fancies that make the absolution and last unction of the priest, an edifying “Christian” death after an unedifying profane life or the precaution or accident of a death in sacred Benares or holy Ganges a sufficient machinery of salvation. The divine subjective becoming on which the mind has to be fixed firmly in the moment of the physical death, yam smaran bhavam tyajati ante kalevaram , (The Gita-8.6) must have been one into which the soul was at each moment growing inwardly during the physical life, sada tad-bhava-bhavitah . (The Gita-8.6) “Therefore,” says the divine Teacher, “at all times remember me and fight; for if thy mind and thy understanding are always fixed on and given up to Me, mayi arpita-mano-buddhih , to Me thou shalt surely come. (The Gita-8.7) For it is by thinking always of him with a consciousness united with him in an undeviating Yoga of constant practice that one comes to the divine and supreme Purusha .” CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-295-296 “Yoga is not a matter of theory or dogma, like philosophy or popular religion, but a matter of experience. Its experience is that of a conscient universal and supracosmic Being with whom it brings us into union, and this conscious experience of union with the Invisible, always renewable and verifiable, is as valid as our conscious experience of a physical world and of visible bodies with whose invisible minds we daily communicate.” CWSA/24/The Synthesis of Yoga-555, “In the transformation of ordinary religious worship into the Yoga of pure Bhakti we see this development from the motived and interested worship of popular religion into a principle of motiveless and self-existent love. This last is in fact the touch-stone of the real Bhakti and shows whether we are really in the central way or are only upon one of the bypaths leading to it. We have to throw away the props of our weakness, the motives of the ego, the lures of our lower nature before we can deserve the divine union.” CWSA/24/The Synthesis of Yoga-553, "Buddhism only became a popular religion when Buddha had taken the place of the supreme Deity as an object of worship." CWSA/24/The Synthesis of Yoga-556, "Even popular religion is a sort of ignorant Yoga of devotion." CWSA/24/The Synthesis of Yoga-559, "The origin of this divine fear was crude enough in some of the primitive popular religions." CWSA/24/The Synthesis of Yoga-562, “All that is popular Yoga . (The correspondent wrote, “It is said that if a disciple receives his Guru’s touch or grace, his main difficulties very often disappear.”) The Guru’s touch or grace may open something, but the difficulties have always to be worked out still. What is true is that if there is complete surrender which implies the prominence of the psychic, these difficulties are no longer felt as a burden or obstacle but only as superficial imperfections which the working of the grace will remove.” CWSA-29/Letters on Yoga-II/p-197, “You see, the faith of people is a superstition – it’s not faith, it’s superstition. Now there are more and more people who think they have faith, and they ask me ridiculous things! They have superstitions like. Someone brings me a child born with a deformed arm, and the superstition is that if I put my hand on the arm of the child, he’ll be healed.... Things like that. It’s completely stupid. That’s not Power! They need a little miracle, you know, at their level.” The Mother’s Agenda-8.05.1971, "Sri Ramakrishna’s saying, “With the Guru’s grace all difficulties can disappear in a flash, even as agelong darkness does the moment you strike a match.” This is possible after long tapasya , “This “state of grace” is often prepared by a long tapasya or purification in which nothing decisive seems to happen, only touches or glimpses or passing experiences at the most, and it (decisive change) comes suddenly without warning.” CWSA-29/Letters on Yoga-II/p-195, "But it has given me a very precise picture of what would happen if for some reason or other I were no longer here.... Everyone would use my name to ... (Mother laughs) It would be frightening!" The Mother's Agenda-April 23, 1968, "The surest way towards this integral fulfilment is to find the Master of the secret who dwells within us, open ourselves constantly to the divine Power which is also the divine Wisdom and Love and trust to it to effect the conversion. But it is difficult for the egoistic consciousness to do this at all at the beginning. And, if done at all, it is still difficult to do it perfectly and in every strand of our nature. It is difficult at first because our egoistic habits of thought, of sensation, of feeling block up the avenues by which we can arrive at the perception that is needed. It is difficult afterwards because the faith, the surrender, the courage requisite in this path are not easy to the ego-clouded soul. The divine working is not the working which the egoistic mind desires or approves; for it uses error in order to arrive at truth, suffering in order to arrive at bliss, imperfection in order to arrive at perfection. The ego cannot see where it is being led; it revolts against the leading, loses confidence, loses courage. These failings would not matter; for the divine Guide within is not offended by our revolt, not discouraged by our want of faith or repelled by our weakness; he has the entire love of the mother and the entire patience of the teacher. But by withdrawing our assent from the guidance we lose the consciousness, though not all the actuality — not, in any case, the eventuality of its benefit. And we withdraw our assent because we fail to distinguish our higher Self from the lower through which he is preparing his self-revelation. As in the world, so in ourselves, we cannot see God because of his workings and, especially, because he works in us through our nature and not by a succession of arbitrary miracles. Man demands miracles that he may have faith; he wishes to be dazzled in order that he may see. And this impatience, this ignorance may turn into a great danger and disaster if, in our revolt against the divine leading, we call in another distorting Force more satisfying to our impulses and desires and ask it to guide us and give it the Divine Name." CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-63-64 The Last state of a Yogi before Death and How will one easily get the Divine in life? : "The Gita describes the last state of the mind of the Yogin in which he passes from life through death to this supreme divine existence. A motionless mind, a soul armed with the strength of Yoga, a union with God in bhakti , — the union by love is not here superseded by the featureless unification through knowledge, it remains to the end a part of the supreme force of the Yoga, — and the life-force entirely drawn up and set between the brows in the seat of mystic vision . All the doors of the sense are closed, the mind is shut in into the heart, the life-force taken up out of its diffused movement into the head, the intelligence concentrated in the utterance of the sacred syllable OM and its conceptive thought in the remembrance of the supreme Godhead, mam anusmaran ( The Gita-8.13). That is the established Yogic way of going , a last offering up of the whole being to the Eternal, the Transcendent. But still that is only a process; the essential condition is the constant undeviating memory of the Divine in life , even in action and battle — mam anusmara yudhya cha (The Gita-8.7)— and the turning of the whole act of living into an uninterrupted Yoga, nitya-yoga (The Gita-8.14). Whoever does that, finds Me easy to attain , says the Godhead; he is the great soul who reaches the supreme perfection." (CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-297) All our life is a Yoga: "For that is after all the essential, to make the whole being one with the Divine, so entirely and in all ways one as to be naturally and constantly fixed in union, and thus to make all living, not only thought and meditation, but action, labour, battle, a remembering of God. “Remember me and fight,” (The Gita-8.7) means not to lose the ever-present thought of the Eternal for one single moment in the clash of the temporal which normally absorbs our minds, and that seems sufficiently difficult, almost impossible. It is entirely possible indeed only if the other conditions are satisfied. If we have become in our consciousness one self with all, one self which is always to our thought the Divine, and even our eyes and our other senses see and sense the Divine Being everywhere so that it is impossible for us at any time at all to feel or think of anything as that merely which the unenlightened sense perceives, but only as the Godhead at once concealed and manifested in that form, and if our will is one in consciousness with a supreme will and every act of will, of mind, of body is felt to come from it, to be its movement, instinct with it or identical, then what the Gita demands can be integrally done. The remembrance of the Divine Being becomes no longer an intermittent act of the mind, but the natural condition of our activities and in a way the very substance of the consciousness. The Jiva has become possessed of its right and natural, its spiritual relation to the Purushottama and all our life is a Yoga , (The Gita-8.27) an accomplished and yet an eternally self-accomplishing oneness." CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-300, “In the beginning of the Yoga you are apt to forget the Divine very often. But by constant aspiration you increase your remembrance and you diminish the forgetfulness. But this should not be done as a severe discipline or a duty; it must be a movement of love and joy. Then very soon a stage will come when, if you do not feel the presence of the Divine at every moment and whatever you are doing, you feel at once lonely and sad and miserable…Whenever you find that you can do something without feeling the presence of the Divine and yet be perfectly comfortable, you must understand that you are not consecrated in that part of your being. That is the way of the ordinary humanity which does not feel any need of the Divine. But for a seeker of the Divine Life it is very different. And when you have entirely realised unity with the Divine, then, if the Divine were only for a second to withdraw from you, you would simply drop dead; for the Divine is now the Life of your life, your whole existence, your single and complete support. If the Divine is not there, nothing is left.” The Mother/TMCW-3/Questions and Answers-1929-1931/p-26–27, 8/ Chapter 8 - The Immutable Brahman The Attitude towards Death for a Sadhaka of Integral Yoga: “The last two sentences (In whom there is neither going and coming) contain indeed the whole gist of the matter. The true salvation or the true freedom from the chain of rebirth is not the rejection of terrestrial life or the individual’s escape by a spiritual self-annihilation, even as the true renunciation is not the mere physical abandonment of family and society; it is the inner identification with the Divine in whom there is no limitation of past life and future birth but instead the eternal existence of the unborn Soul. He who is free inwardly, even doing actions, does nothing at all, says the Gita ; for it is Nature that works in him under the control of the Lord of Nature. Equally, even if he assumes a hundred times the body, he is free from any chain of birth or mechanical wheel of existence since he lives in the unborn and undying spirit and not in the life of the body. Therefore attachment to the escape from rebirth is one of the idols which, whoever keeps, the sadhaka of the integral Yoga must break and cast away from him. For his Yoga is not limited to the realisation of the Transcendent beyond all world by the individual soul; it embraces also the realisation of the Universal, “the sum-total of all souls”, and cannot therefore be confined to the movement of personal salvation and escape. Even in his transcendence of cosmic limitations he is still one with all in God; a divine work remains for him in the universe. ” CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-270-271, “Two things are needed. First, nothing in your being, no part of your being, should wish to die. That doesn’t often happen. You always have, somewhere in you, a defeatist: something tired or disgusted, which has had enough, something lazy or which doesn’t want to fight and says, ‘Ah, well, let it be over, so much the better.’ That’s enough – you’re dead. But it’s a fact: if nothing, absolutely nothing in you consents to die, you will not die. For someone to die, there is always a second, if a hundredth part of a second, when he consents. If there isn’t that second of consent, he will not die. But who is certain he doesn’t have within himself, somewhere, a tiny bit of a defeatist which just yields and says, ‘Oh well’? ... Hence the need to unify oneself. Whatever the path we may follow, the subject we may study, we always reach the same result. The most important thing for an individual is to unify himself around his divine center; that way he becomes a real individual, master of himself and of his destiny. Otherwise, he is a plaything of the forces, which toss him about like a cork in a stream. He goes where he doesn’t want to, is made to do what he doesn’t want to, and finally he gets lost in a hole without any way to stop himself doing so. But if you are consciously organised, unified around the divine center, governed and led by it, you are the master of your destiny. It’s worth trying.... At any rate, I find it’s better to be the master rather than the slave.” The Mother/ The Mother’s Agenda/September 7, 1968, “God knows, never, not one minute in my life, even when things were the darkest, the blackest, the most negative, the most painful, not once did the thought come, ‘I would like to die.’” The Mother/ The Mother’s Agenda-5/288, The Mother confirms that the death of a Spiritual man must be willed death, iccha mrityu , and it must be in complete harmony, "It is difficult to say for sure, but Ramakrishna died of cancer, and now that I have had the experience, I know in an ABSOLUTE way that this is impossible. If he had decided to go because the Divine wanted him to go, it would have been an orderly departure, in total harmony and with a total will, whereas this illness is a means of disorder." The Mother's Agenda/June 6, 1958, 9/ Chapter 9. The King-Knowledge, The King-Secret Summary or A Brief Restatement: "This truth is the secret of being which the Gita is now going to apply in its amplitude of result for our inner life and our outer works. What it is going to say is the most secret thing of all. (The Gita-9.1-3) It is the knowledge of the whole Godhead, samagram mam , (The Gita-7.1) which the Master of his being has promised to Arjuna, that essential knowledge attended with the complete knowledge of it in all its principles which will leave nothing yet to be known. The whole knot of the ignorance which has bewildered his human mind and has made his will recoil from his divinely appointed work, will have been cut entirely asunder. This is the wisdom of all wisdoms, the secret of all secrets, the king-knowledge, the king-secret. It is a pure and supreme light which one can verify by direct spiritual experience and see in oneself as the truth : it is the right and just knowledge, the very law of being. It is easy to practise when one gets hold of it, sees it, tries faithfully to live in it." CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-309 The Mystery of Transcendent Godhead: "The Gita then proceeds to unveil the supreme and integral secret, the one thought and truth in which the seeker of perfection and liberation must learn to live and the one law of perfection of his spiritual members and of all their movements. This supreme secret is the mystery of the transcendent Godhead who is all and everywhere, yet so much greater and other than the universe and all its forms that nothing here contains him, nothing expresses him really, and no language which is borrowed from the appearances of things in space and time and their relations can suggest the truth of his unimaginable being. The consequent law of our perfection is an adoration by our whole nature and its self-surrender to its divine source and possessor. Our one ultimate way is the turning of our entire existence in the world, and not merely of this or that in it, into a single movement towards the Eternal. By the power and mystery of a divine Yoga we have come out of his inexpressible secrecies into this bounded nature of phenomenal things. By a reverse movement of the same Yoga we must transcend the limits of phenomenal nature and recover the greater consciousness by which we can live in the Divine and the Eternal." CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-311 Manusim Tanum Asritam: "Mortal mind is bewildered by its ignorant reliance upon veils and appearances; it sees only the outward human body, human mind, human way of living and catches no liberating glimpse of the Divinity who is lodged in the creature. It ignores the divinity within itself and cannot see it in other men, and even though the Divine manifest himself in humanity as Avatar and Vibhuti , it is still blind and ignores or despises the veiled Godhead, avajananti mam mudha manusım tanum asritam. (The Gita-9.11) And if it ignores him in the living creature, still less can it see him in the objective world on which it looks out from its prison of separative ego through the barred windows of the finite mind. It does not see God in the universe; it knows nothing of the supreme Divinity who is master of these planes full of various existences and dwells within them; it is blind to the vision by which all in the world grows divine and the soul itself awakens to its own inherent divinity and becomes of the Godhead, godlike. What it does see readily, and to that it attaches itself with passion, is only the life of the ego hunting after finite things for their own sake and for the satisfaction of the earthly hunger of the intellect, body, senses. Those who have given themselves up too entirely to this outward drive of the mentality, fall into the hands of the lower nature, cling to it and make it their foundation. They become a prey to the nature of the Rakshasa in man who sacrifices everything to a violent and inordinate satisfaction of his separate vital ego and makes that the dark godhead of his will and thought and action and enjoyment. Or they are hurried onward in a fruitless cycle by the arrogant self-will, self-sufficient thought, self-regarding act, self-satisfied and yet ever unsatisfied intellectualised appetite of enjoyment of the Asuric nature. But to live persistently in this separative ego-consciousness and make that the centre of all our activities is to miss altogether the true self-awareness. The charm it throws upon the misled instruments of the spirit is an enchantment that chains life to a profitless circling. All its hope, action, knowledge are vain things when judged by the divine and eternal standard, for it shuts out the great hope, excludes the liberating action, banishes the illuminating knowledge. It is a false knowledge that sees the phenomenon but misses the truth of the phenomenon, a blind hope that chases after the transient but misses the eternal, a sterile action whose every profit is annulled by loss and amounts to a perennial labour of Sisyphus." CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-325-327, "But the identity of the Lord and the soul in mutable Nature is hidden from us by outward appearance and lost in the crowding mobile deceptions of that Nature. And those who allow themselves to be governed by the figures of Nature, the figure of humanity or any other form, will never see it, but will ignore and despise the Divine lodged in the human body . Their ignorance cannot perceive him in his coming in and his going forth or in his staying and enjoying and assumption of quality, but sees only what is there visible to the mind and senses, not the greater truth which can only be glimpsed by the eye of knowledge. Never can they have sight of him, even if they strive to do so, until they learn to put away the limitations of the outward consciousness and build in themselves their spiritual being, create for it, as it were, a form in their nature. Man, to know himself, must be kritatma , (He who is perfected in Self) formed and complete in the spiritual mould, enlightened in the spiritual vision. The Yogins who have this eye of knowledge, see the Divine Being we are in their own endless reality, their own eternity of spirit. Illumined, they see the Lord in themselves and are delivered from the crude material limitation, from the form of mental personality, from the transient life formulation: they dwell immortal in the truth of the self and spirit. But they see him too not only in themselves, but in all the cosmos. In the light of the sun that illumines all this world they witness the light of the Godhead which is in us; the light in the moon and in fire is the light of the Divine. It is the Divine who has entered into this form of earth and is the spirit of its material force and sustains by his might these multitudes. The Divine is the godhead of Soma who by the rasa, the sap in the Earth-mother, nourishes the plants and trees that clothe her surface. The Divine and no other is the flame of life that sustains the physical body of living creatures and turns its food into sustenance of their vital force. He is lodged in the heart of every breathing thing; from him are memory and knowledge and the debates of the reason. He is that which is known by all the Vedas and by all forms of knowing; he is the knower of Veda and the maker of Vedanta . In other words, the Divine is at once the Soul of matter and the Soul of life and the Soul of mind as well as the Soul of the supramental light that is beyond mind and its limited reasoning intelligence." CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-446-447, " That is why each Incarnation holds before men his own example and declares of himself that he is the way and the gate; he declares too the oneness of his humanity with the divine being, declares that the Son of Man and the Father above from whom he has descended are one, that Krishna in the human body, manusım tanum asritam , (The Gita-9.11) and the supreme Lord and Friend of all creatures are but two revelations of the same divine Purushottama , revealed there in his own being, revealed here in the type of humanity." CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-149 Lord is the Giver of outer an inner oppulence : "The God-lover advances constantly towards this ultimate necessity of our birth in cosmos through a concentrated love and adoration by which he makes the supreme and universal Divine the whole object of his living — not either egoistic terrestrial satisfaction or the celestial worlds — and the whole object of his thought and his seeing. To see nothing but the Divine, to be at every moment in union with him, to love him in all creatures and have the delight of him in all things is the whole condition of his spiritual existence. His God- vision does not divorce him from life, nor does he miss anything of the fullness of life; for God himself becomes the spontaneous bringer to him of every good and of all his inner and outer getting and having, yoga-ksemam vahamyaham . (The Gita-9.22) The joy of heaven and the joy of earth are only a small shadow of his possessions; for as he grows into the Divine, the Divine too flows out upon him with all the light, power and joy of an infinite existence." CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-331-332, "This relation of the divine fatherhood and the closer rela- tion with the Divine as the Mother-Soul of the universe have their springs in another early religious motive. One type of the Bhakta, says the Gita , is the devotee who comes to the Divine as the giver of his wants, the giver of his good, the satisfier of the needs of his inner and his outer being. “I bring to my bhakta” says the Lord “his getting and his having of good, yogaksemam vahamyaham . ” (The Gita-9.22) The life of man is a life of wants and needs and therefore of desires, not only in his physical and vital, but in his mental and spiritual being. When he becomes conscious of a greater Power governing the world, he approaches it through prayer for the fulfilment of his needs, for help in his rough journey, for protection and aid in his struggle. Whatever cru- dities there may be in the ordinary religious approach to God by prayer, and there are many, especially that attitude which imagines the Divine as if capable of being propitiated, bribed, flattered into acquiescence or indulgence by praise, entreaty and gifts and has often little regard to the spirit in which he is approached, still this way of turning to the Divine is an essential movement of our religious being and reposes on a universal truth." CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-566 Integral Devotion: "The great-souled who open themselves to the light and largeness of the diviner nature of which man is capable, are alone on the path narrow in the beginning, inexpressibly wide in the end that leads to liberation and perfection. The growth of the god in man is man’s proper business ; the steadfast turning of this lower Asuric a nd Rakshasic into the divine nature is the carefully hidden meaning of human life. As this growth increases, the veil falls and the soul comes to see the greater significance of action and the real truth of existence. The eye opens to the Godhead in man, to the Godhead in the world; it sees inwardly and comes to know outwardly the infinite Spirit, the Imperishable from whom all existences originate and who exists in all and by him and in him all exist always. Therefore when this vision, this knowledge seizes on the soul, its whole life-aspiration becomes a surpassing love and fathomless adoration of the Divine and Infinite. The mind attaches itself singly to the eternal, the spiritual, the living, the universal, the Real; it values nothing but for its sake, it delights only in the all-blissful Purusha. All the word and all the thought become one hymning of the universal greatness, Light, Beauty, Power and Truth that has revealed itself in its glory to the human spirit and a worship of the one supreme Soul and infinite Person. All the long stress of the inner self to break outward becomes a form now of spiritual endeavour and aspiration to possess the Divine in the soul and realise the Divine in the nature. All life becomes a constant Yoga and unification of that Divine and this human spirit. This is the manner of the integral devotion; it creates a single uplifting of our whole being and nature through sacrifice by the dedicated heart to the eternal Purushottama . (The Gita-9.13-14)" CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-327, "It is possible so to turn life into an act of adoration to the Supreme by the spirit in one’s works; for, says the Gita , “He who gives to me with a heart of adoration a leaf, a flower, a fruit or a cup of water, I take and enjoy that offering of his devotion”; (The Gita-9.26) and it is not only any dedicated external gift that can be so offered with love and devotion, but all our thoughts, all our feelings and sensations, all our outward activities and their forms and objects can be such gifts to the Eternal. It is true that the special act or form of action has its importance, even a great importance, but it is the spirit in the act that is the essential factor; the spirit of which it is the symbol or materialised expression gives it its whole value and justifying significance. Or it may be said that a complete act of divine love and worship has in it three parts that are the expressions of a single whole, (1) — a practical worship of the Divine in the act, (2) a symbol of worship in the form of the act expressing some vision and seeking or some relation with the Divine, (3) an inner adoration and longing for oneness or feeling of oneness in the heart and soul and spirit. It is so that life can be changed into worship, — by putting behind it the spirit of a transcendent and universal love, the seeking of oneness, the sense of oneness; by making each act a symbol, an expression of Godward emotion or a relation with the Divine; by turning all we do into an act of worship, an act of the soul’s communion, the mind’s understanding, the life’s obedience, the heart’s surrender." CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-162-163 All are equally entitled to the Supreme Liberation: "The equal Divine Presence in all of us makes no other preliminary condition, if once this integral self-giving has been made in faith and in sincerity and with a fundamental completeness. All have access to this gate, all can enter into this temple: our mundane distinctions disappear in the mansion of the All-lover. There the virtuous man is not preferred, nor the sinner shut out from the Presence; together by this road the Brahmin pure of life and exact in observance of the law and the outcaste born from a womb of sin and sorrow and rejected of men can travel and find an equal and open access to the supreme liberation and the highest dwelling in the Eternal. Man and woman find their equal right before God; for the divine Spirit is no respecter of persons or of social distinctions and restrictions: all can go straight to him without intermediary or shackling condition. “If” says the divine Teacher “even a man of very evil conduct turns to me with a sole and entire love, he must be regarded as a saint, for the settled will of endeavour in him is a right and complete will. Swiftly he becomes a soul of righteousness and obtains eternal peace.” (The Gita-9.30-31) In other words a will of entire self-giving opens wide all the gates of the spirit and brings in response an entire descent and self-giving of the Godhead to the human being, and that at once reshapes and assimilates everything in us to the law of the divine existence by a rapid transformation of the lower into the spiritual nature . The will of self-giving forces away by its power the veil between God and man; it annuls every error and annihilates every obstacle. Those who aspire in their human strength by effort of knowledge or effort of virtue or effort of laborious self-discipline, grow with much anxious difficulty towards the Eternal; but when the soul gives up its ego and its works to the Divine, God himself comes to us and takes up our burden . To the ignorant he brings the light of the divine knowledge, to the feeble the power of the divine will, to the sinner the liberation of the divine purity, to the suffering the infinite spiritual joy and Ananda . Their weakness and the stumblings of their human strength make no difference. “This is my word of promise,” cries the voice of the Godhead to Arjuna , “that he who loves me shall not perish. ” (The Gita-9.31) Previous effort and preparation, the purity and the holiness of the Brahmin , the enlightened strength of the king-sage great in works and knowledge have their value, because they make it easier for the imperfect human creature to arrive at this wide vision and self-surrender; but even without this preparation all who take refuge in the divine Lover of man, the Vaishya once preoccupied with the narrowness of wealth-getting and the labour of production, the Shudra hampered by a thousand hard restrictions, woman shut in and stunted in her growth by the narrow circle society has drawn around her self-expansion, those too, papa-yonayah , on whom their past Karma has imposed even the very worst of births, the outcaste, the Pariah, the Chandala , find at once the gates of God opening before them . In the spiritual life all the external distinctions of which men make so much because they appeal with an oppressive force to the outward mind, cease before the equality of the divine Light and the wide omnipotence of an impartial Power." CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-334-335, "For from all, from the thief and the harlot and the outcaste as from the saint and the sage, the Beloved looks forth and cries to us, “This is I.” “He who loves Me in all beings,” — what greater word of power for the utmost intensities and profundities of divine and universal love, has been uttered by any philosophy or any religion?" CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-208, "If Narayana is without difficulty visible in the sage and the saint, how shall he be easily visible to us in the sinner, the criminal, the harlot and the outcaste?" CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-359 Love of the world, the mask, must change into the love of God, the Truth: " The earthly world preoccupied with the dualities and bound to the immediate transient relations of the hour and the moment is for man, so long as he dwells here attached to these things and while he accepts the law they impose on him for the law of his life, a world of struggle, suffering and sorrow. The way to liberation is to turn from the outward to the inward, from the appearance created by the material life which lays its burden on the mind and imprisons it in the grooves of the life and the body to the divine Reality which waits to manifest itself through the freedom of the spirit. Love of the world, the mask, must change into the love of God, the Truth . Once this secret and inner Godhead is known and is embraced, the whole being and the whole life will undergo a sovereign uplifting and a marvellous transmutation. In place of the ignorance of the lower Nature absorbed in its outward works and appearances the eye will open to the vision of God everywhere, to the unity and universality of the spirit. The world’s sorrow and pain will disappear in the bliss of the All-blissful; our weakness and error and sin will be changed into the all-embracing and all-transforming strength, truth and purity of the Eternal. To make the mind one with the divine consciousness, to make the whole of our emotional nature one love of God everywhere, to make all our works one sacrifice to the Lord of the worlds and all our worship and aspiration one adoration of him and self-surrender, to direct the whole self Godwards in an entire union is the way to rise out of a mundane into a divine existence. This is the Gita’s teaching of divine love and devotion, in which knowledge, works and the heart’s longing become one in a supreme unification, a merging of all their divergences, an intertwining of all their threads, a high fusion, a wide identifying movement." CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-335-336, "There is a love in which the emotion is turned towards the Divine in an increasing receptivity and growing union. What it receives from the Divine it pours out on others, but truly without demanding a return. If you are capable of that, then that is the highest and most satisfying way to love." TMCW/Vol-14/Words of the Mother-II/p-122 Reconciliation of Karma, Jnana and Bhakti Yoga: “Devotion is all-important, but works with devotion are also important; by the union of knowledge, devotion and works the soul is taken up into the highest status of the Ishwara to dwell there in the Purushottama who is master at once of the eternal spiritual calm and the eternal cosmic activity. This is the synthesis of the Gita .” CWSA/19/Essays on the Gita-86, "There will be needed a will that shall make this new knowledge, vision, consciousness a motive of action and the sole motive. And it must be the motive not of an action grudging, limited, confined to a few necessary operations of Nature or to the few things that seem helpful to a formal perfection, apposite to a religious turn or to an individual salvation, but rather all action of human life taken up by the equal spirit and done for the sake of God and the good of all creatures. There will be needed an uplifting of the heart in a single aspiration to the Highest, a single love of the Divine Being, a single God-adoration. And there must be a widening too of the calmed and enlightened heart to embrace God in all beings. There will be needed a change of the habitual and normal nature of man as he is now to a supreme and divine spiritual nature. There will be needed in a word a Yoga which shall be at once a Yoga of integral knowledge, a Yoga of the integral will and its works, a Yoga of integral love, adoration and devotion and a Yoga of an integral spiritual perfection of the whole being and of all its parts and states and powers and motions." CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-575-576, " This integral God-love demands too an integral work for the sake of the Divine in yourself and in all creatures. The ordinary man does works in obedience to some desire sinful or virtuous, some vital impulse low or high, some mental choice common or exalted or from some mixed mind and life motive. But the work done by you must be free and desireless; work done without desire creates no reaction and imposes no bondage. Done in a perfect equality and an unmoved calm and peace, but without any divine passion, it is at first the fine yoke of a spiritual obligation, kartavyam karma , (The Gita-3.22) then the uplifting of a divine sacrifice; at its highest it can be the expression of a calm and glad acquiescence in active oneness. The oneness in love will do much more: it will replace the first impassive calm by a strong and deep rapture, not the petty ardour of egoistic desire but the ocean of an infinite Ananda. It will bring the moving sense and the pure and divine passion of the presence of the Beloved into your works; there will be an insistent joy of labour for God in yourself and for God in all beings. Love is the crown of works and the crown of knowledge." CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-590-591 9/ Chapter 9. The King-Knowledge, The King-Secret Reconciliation of Karma, Jnana and Bhakti in Integral Yoga: "In the ordinary human existence an outgoing action is obviously three-fourths or even more of our life. It is only the exceptions, the saint and the seer, the rare thinker, poet and artist who can live more within themselves; these indeed, at least in the most intimate parts of their nature, shape themselves more in inner thought and feeling than in the surface act. But it is not either of these sides separated from the other, but rather a harmony of the inner and the outer life made one in fullness and transfigured into a play of something that is beyond them which will create the form of a perfect living. A Yoga of works, a union with the Divine in our will and acts — and not only in knowledge and feeling — is then an indispensable, an inexpressibly important element of an integral Yoga. The conversion of our thought and feeling without a corresponding conversion of the spirit and body of our works would be a maimed achievement.” CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-91-92, “It (Divine Will) has all the power of a way of works integral and absolute, but because of its law of sacrifice and self-giving to the Divine Self and Master, it is accompanied on its one side by the whole power of the path of Love and on the other by the whole power of the path of Knowledge. At its end all these three divine Powers work together, fused, united, completed, perfected by each other.” CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-114, “In the integral Yoga these three lines of approach ( Karma, Bhakti and Jnana ) give up their exclusions, meet and coalesce or spring out of each other; (1) liberated from the mind’s veil over the self, we live in the Transcendence, (2) enter by the adoration of the heart into the oneness of a supreme love and bliss, and (3) all our forces of being uplifted into the one Force, our will and works surrendered into the one Will and Power, assume the dynamic perfection of the divine Nature.” CWSA/23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p- 276, "Action is the first power of life. Nature begins with force and its works which, once conscious in man, become will and its achievements; therefore it is that by turning his action God- wards the life of man best and most surely begins to become divine. It is the door of first access , the starting-point of the initiation. When the will in him is made one with the divine will and the whole action of the being proceeds from the Divine and is directed towards the Divine, the union in works is perfectly accomplished. But works fulfil themselves in knowledge; all the totality of works, says the Gita , finds its rounded culmination in knowledge, sarvam karma khilam jnane parisamapyate. (The Gita-4.33) By union in will and works we become one in the omnipresent conscious being from whom all our will and works have their rise and draw their power and in whom they fulfil the round of their energies. And the crown of this union is love; for love is the delight of conscious union with the Being in whom we live, act and move, by whom we exist, for whom alone we learn in the end to act and to be. That is the trinity of our powers, the union of all three in God to which we arrive when we start from works as our way of access and our line of contact." CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-545, “Since then the union of these three powers lies our base of perfection, the seeker of an integral self-fulfilment in the Divine must avoid or throw away, if he has them at all, the misunderstanding and mutual depreciation which we often find existent between the followers of the three paths .” CWSA/24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-548, " There is an intensity of love, as there is an intensity of knowledge, to which works seem something outward and distracting. But works are only thus outward and distracting when we have not found oneness of will and consciousness with the Supreme. When once that is found, works become the very power of knowledge and the very outpouring of love. If knowledge is the very state of oneness and love its bliss, divine works are the living power of its light and sweetness. There is a movement of love, as in the aspiration of human love, to separate the lover and the loved in the enjoyment of their exclusive oneness away from the world and from all others, shut up in the nuptial chambers of the heart. That is perhaps an inevitable movement of this path. But still the widest love fulfilled in knowledge sees the world not as something other and hostile to this joy, but as the being of the Beloved and all creatures as his being, and in that vision divine works find their joy and their justification... This is the knowledge in which an integral Yoga must live. We have to start Godward from the powers of the mind, the intellect , the will, the heart, and in the mind all is limited. Limitations, exclusiveness there can hardly fail to be at the beginning and for a long time on the way. But an integral Yoga will wear these more loosely than more exclusive ways of seeking, and it will sooner emerge from the mental necessity. It may commence with the way of love, as with the way of knowledge or of works; but where they meet, is the beginning of its joy of fulfilment. Love it cannot miss, even if it does not start from it; for love is the crown of works and the flowering of knowledge ." CWSA/24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-551 “As in the other Yogas, so in this (Integral Yoga), one comes to see divine everywhere and in all and to pour out the realisation of the Divine in all one’s inner activities and outward actions. But all is supported by the primary force of emotional union: for it is by love that the entire self-consecration and the entire possession is accomplished, and thought and action become shapes and figures of the divine love which possesses the spirit and its members.” CWSA/24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-575, “Man, too, becomes perfect only when he has found within himself that absolute calm and passivity of the Brahman and supports by it with the same divine tolerance and the same divine bliss a free and inexhaustible activity. Those who have thus possessed the Calm within can perceive always welling out from its silence the perennial supply of the energies that work in the universe.” CWSA-21/The Life Divine-31, "By constant reference of all one’s will and works to the Divine, love and adoration grow, the psychic being comes forward. By the reference to the Power above we can come to feel it above and its descent and the opening to an increasing consciousness and knowledge. Finally works, bhakti and knowledge join together and self-perfection becomes possible — what we call the transformation of the nature ." CWSA-29/Letters on Yoga-II/p-217 10/ Chapter 10. God in Power of Becoming Summary or A Brief Restatement: In this tenth Chapter, The Mother book's four mediatrix Spiritual Mother Powers are hinted as chatwaro manabastatha, (The Gita-10.6) and seven-fold Ignorance and seven-fold Integral Knowledge of The Life Divine book are hinted as Mahasaya Sapta-purbe. (The Gita-10.6) This chapter hints that Lord Himself is Consciousness, whose movement is identified as crucial in Integral Yoga. Those who learn the lesson of the movement of Consciousness, after the Psychic and Spiritual opening, are able to bridge the gulf between multiple (ten) planes of Consciousness and by bridging this gap; thus a passage is made between the highest Supreme Ananda and the lowest Inconscient sheath. E manations or the Vibhutis are having cosmic Consciousness and whoever will pursue Integral Yoga must travel for a long period in Universal Consciousness before arriving at the gate of Supramental Consciousness. Questions raised by Arjuna: " Arjuna , though he accepts the revelation of Vasudeva as all and though his heart is full of the delight of it, — for already he finds that it is delivering him from the perplexity and stumbling differentiations of his mind which was crying for a clue, a guiding truth amid the bewildering problems of a world of oppositions, and it is to his hearing the nectar of immortality, amritam , yet feels the need of such supports and indices. He feels that they are indispensable to overcome the difficulty of a complete and firm realisation; for how else can this knowledge be made a thing of the heart and life? He requires guiding indications, asks Krishna even for a complete and detailed enumeration of the sovereign powers of his becoming and desires that nothing shall be left out of the vision, nothing remain to baffle him. “Thou shouldst tell me” he says “of thy divine self-manifestations in thy sovereign power of becoming, divya atma-vibhu tayah , (The Gita-10.19) all without exception, — asesena, (without exception, The Gita-4.35) nothing omitted, — thy Vibhutis by which thou pervadest these worlds and peoples. How shall I know thee, O Yogin , by thinking of thee everywhere at all moments and in what pre-eminent becomings should I think of thee ?” This Yoga by which thou art one with all and one in all and all are becomings of thy being, all are pervading or pre-eminent or disguised powers of thy nature, tell me of it, he cries, in its detail and extent, and tell me ever more of it; it is nectar of immortality to me, and however much of it I hear, I am not satiated." CWSA-19/Essays of the Gita/p- 359-360 Special Power of Becoming of the Godhead: "Then among all these living beings, cosmic godheads, superhuman and human and subhuman creatures, and amid all these qualities, powers and objects, the chief, the head, the greatest in quality of each class is a special power of the becoming of the Godhead. I am, says the Godhead, Vishnu among the Adityas, Shiva among the Rudras, Indra among the gods, Prahlada among the Titans, Brihaspati the chief of the high priests of the world, Skanda the war-god, leader of the leaders of battle, Marichi among the Maruts , the lord of wealth among the Yakshas and Rakshasas, the serpent Ananta among the Nagas, Agni among the Vasus, Chitraratha among the Gandharvas, Kandarpa the love-God among the progenitors, Varuna among the peoples of the sea, Aryaman among the Fathers, Narada among the divine sages, Yama lord of the Law among those who maintain rule and law, among the powers of storm the Wind-God. At the other end of the scale I am the radiant sun among lights and splendours, the moon among the stars of night, the ocean among the flowing waters, Meru among the peaks of the world, Himalaya among the mountain-ranges, Ganges among the rivers, the divine thunderbolt among weapons. Among all plants and trees I am the Aswattha , among horses Indra’s horse Uchchaihsravas , Airavata among the elephants, among the birds Garuda, Vasuki the snake-god among the serpents, Kamadhuk the cow of plenty among cattle, the alligator among fishes, the lion among the beasts of the forest. I am Margasirsha , first of the months; I am spring, the fairest of the seasons.... In living beings, the Godhead tells Arjuna , I am consciousness by which they are aware of themselves and their surroundings. I am mind among the senses, mind by which they receive the impressions of objects and react upon them. I am man’s qualities of mind and character and body and action; I am glory and speech and memory and intelligence and steadfastness and forgiveness, the energy of the energetic and the strength of the mighty. I am resolution and perseverance and victory, I am the sattwic quality of the good, I am the gambling of the cunning; I am the mastery and power of all who rule and tame and vanquish and the policy of all who succeed and conquer; I am the silence of things secret, the knowledge of the knower, the logic of those who debate. I am the letter A among letters, the dual among compounds, the sacred syllable OM among words, the Gayatri among metres, the Sama-veda among the Vedas and the great Sama among the mantras . I am Time the head of all reckoning to those who reckon and measure. I am spiritual knowledge among the many philosophies, arts and sciences. I am all the powers of the human being and all the energies of the universe and its creatures....Those in whom my powers rise to the utmost heights of human attainment are myself always, my special Vibhutis . I am among men the king of men, the leader, the mighty man, the hero. I am Rama among warriors, Krishna among the Vrishnis, Arjuna among the Pandavas. The illumined Rishi is my Vibhuti; I am Bhrigu among the great Rishis . The great seer, the inspired poet who sees and reveals the truth by the light of the idea and sound of the word, is myself luminous in the mortal; I am Ushanas among the seer-poets. The great sage, thinker, philosopher is my power among men, my own vast intelligence; I am Vyasa among the sages. But, with whatever variety of degree in manifestation, all beings are in their own way and nature... powers of the Godhead; nothing moving or unmoving, animate or inanimate in the world can be without me. I am the divine seed of all existences and of that seed they are the branches and flowers; what is in the seed of self, that only they can develop in Nature. There is no numbering or limit to my divine Vibhutis; what I have spoken is nothing more than a summary development and I have given only the light of a few leading indications and a strong opening to endless verities. Whatever beautiful and glorious creature thou seest in the world, whatever being is mighty and forceful among men and above man and below him, know to be a very splendour, light and energy of Me and born of a potent portion and intense power of my existence. But what need is there of a multitude of details for this knowledge? Take it thus, that I am here in this world and everywhere, I am in all and I constitute all: there is nothing else than I, nothing without Me. I support this entire universe with a single degree of my illimitable power and an infinitesimal portion of my fathomless spirit ; all these worlds are only sparks, hints, glintings of the I Am eternal and immeasurable." CWSA-19/Essays of the Gita/p-363-365 Liberated man's view of the world around him: "But when this new self-vision and consciousness have been acquired in place of the original ignorance, what will be the liberated man’s view of the world around him, his attitude towards the cosmic manifestation of which he has now the central secret ? (1) He will have first the knowledge of the unity of existence and the regarding eye of that knowledge. He will see all around him as souls and forms and powers of the one divine Being. Henceforward that vision will be the starting-point of all the inward and outward operations of his consciousness; it will be the fundamental seeing, the spiritual basis of all his actions. He will see all things and every creature living, moving and acting in the One, contained in the divine and eternal Existence. (2) But he will also see that One as the Inhabitant in all, their Self, the essential Spirit within them without whose secret presence in their conscious nature they could not at all live, move or act and without whose will, power, sanction or sufferance not one of their movements at any moment would be in the least degree possible. Themselves too, their soul, mind, life and physical mould he will see only as a result of the power, will and force of this one Self and Spirit. (3) All will be to him a becoming of this one universal Being. Their consciousness he will see to be derived entirely from its consciousness, their power and will to be drawn from and dependent on its power and will, their partial phenomenon of nature to be a resultant from its greater divine Nature, whether in the immediate actuality of things it strikes the mind as a manifestation or a disguise, a figure or a disfigurement of the Godhead. No untoward or bewildering appearance of things will in any smallest degree diminish or conflict with the completeness of this vision. It is the essential foundation of the greater consciousness into which he has arisen, it is the indispensable light that has opened around him and the one perfect way of seeing, the one Truth that makes all others possible." CWSA-19/Essays of the Gita/p-367-368, "The liberated eye of knowledge in the spiritual consciousness does not in its outlook on the world see this struggling lower Nature alone . If we perceive only the apparent outward fact of our nature and others’ nature, we are looking with the eye of the ignorance and cannot know God equally in all, in the sattwic, the rajasic, the tamasic creature, in God and Titan, in saint and sinner, in the wise man and the ignorant, in the great and in the little, in man, animal, plant and inanimate existence. The liberated vision sees three things at once as the whole occult truth of the natural being. (1) First and foremost it sees the divine Prakriti in all, secret, present, waiting for evolution; it sees her as the real power in all things, that which gives its value to all this apparent action of diverse quality and force, and it reads the significance of these latter phenomena not in their own language of ego and ignorance, but in the light of the divine Nature. (2) Therefore it sees too, secondly, the differences of the apparent action in Deva and Rakshasa , man and beast and bird and reptile, good and wicked, ignorant and learned, but as action of divine quality and energy under these conditions, under these masks. It is not deluded by the mask, but detects behind every mask the Godhead. It observes the perversion or the imperfection, but it pierces to the truth of the spirit behind, it discovers it even in the perversion and imperfection self-blinded, struggling to find itself, groping through various forms of self-expression and experience towards complete self-knowledge, towards its own infinite and absolute. The liberated eye does not lay undue stress on the perversion and imperfection, but is able to see all with a complete love and charity in the heart, a complete understanding in the intelligence, a complete equality in the spirit. (3) Finally, it sees the upward urge of the striving powers of the Will to be towards Godhead; it respects, welcomes, encourages all high manifestations of energy and quality, the flaming tongues of the Divinity, the mounting greatnesses of soul and mind and life in their intensities uplifted from the levels of the lower nature towards heights of luminous wisdom and knowledge, mighty power, strength, capacity, courage, heroism, benignant sweetness and ardour and grandeur of love and self-giving, pre-eminent virtue, noble action, captivating beauty and harmony, fine and godlike creation. The eye of the spirit sees and marks out the rising godhead of man in the great Vibhuti ." CWSA-19/Essays of the Gita/p-373-374 The Manifestation of Godhead: "This is a recognition of the Godhead as Power, but power in its widest sense, power not only of might, but of knowledge, will, love, work, purity, sweetness, beauty. The Divine is being, consciousness and delight, and in the world all throws itself out and finds itself again by energy of being, energy of consciousness and energy of delight; this is a world of the works of the divine Shakti. That Shakti shapes herself here in innumerable kinds of beings and each of them has its own characteristic powers of her force. Each power is the Divine himself in that form, in the lion as in the hind, in the Titan as in the God, in the inconscient sun that flames through ether as in man who thinks upon earth. The deformation given by the gunas is the minor, not really the major aspect; the essential thing is the divine power that is finding self-expression. It is the Godhead who manifests himself in the great thinker, the hero, the leader of men, the great teacher, sage, prophet, religious founder, saint, lover of man, the great poet, the great artist, the great scientist, the ascetic self-tamer, the tamer of things and events and forces. The work itself, the high poem, the perfect form of beauty, the deep love, the noble act, the divine achievement is a movement of godhead; it is the Divine in manifestation....The Gita puts it in that right place and perspective. It must be based on the recognition of the divine self in all men and all creatures; it must be consistent with an equal heart to the great and the small, the eminent and the obscure manifestation. God must be seen and loved in the ignorant, the humble, the weak, the vile, the outcaste. In the Vibhuti himself it is not, except as a symbol, the outward individual that is to be thus recognised and set high, but the one Godhead who displays himself in the power. But this does not abrogate the fact that there is an ascending scale in manifestation and that Nature mounts upward in her degrees of self-expression from her groping, dark or suppressed symbols to the first visible expressions of the Godhead. Each great being, each great achievement is a sign of her power of self-exceeding and a promise of the final, the supreme exceeding. Man himself is a superior degree of natural manifestation to the beast and reptile, though in both there is the one equal Brahman. But man has not reached his own highest heights of self-exceeding and meanwhile every hint of a greater power of the Will to be in him must be recognised as a promise and an indication. Respect for the divinity in man, in all men, is not diminished, but heightened and given a richer significance by lifting our eyes to the trail of the great Pioneers who lead or point him by whatever step of attainment towards supermanhood. " CWSA-19/Essays of the Gita/p-374-375 10/ Chapter 10. God in Power of Becoming Vibhuti Yoga is considered Indispensable to pursue Integral Yoga: " The divine Teacher accedes to the request of the disciple, but with an initial reminder that a full reply is not possible. For God is infinite and his manifestation is infinite. The forms of his manifestation too are innumerable. Each form is a symbol of some divine power, vibhuti, concealed in it and to the seeing eye each finite carries in it its own revelation of the infinite. Yes, he says, I will tell thee of my divine Vibhutis, but only in some of my principal pre-eminences and as an indication and by the example of things in which thou canst most readily see the power of the Godhead, pradhanyatah, uddesatah . (The Gita-10.19, 40) For there is no end to the innumerable detail of the Godhead’s self-extension in the universe, nasti anto vistarasya me . (The Gita-10.19) This reminder begins the passage and is repeated at the end in order to give it a greater and unmistakable emphasis. And then throughout the rest of the chapter (The Gita-10.19 to 42) we get a summary description of these principal indications, these pre-eminent signs of the divine force present in the things and persons of the universe. It seems at first as if they were given pell-mell, without any order, but still there is a certain principle in the enumeration, which, if it is once disengaged, can lead by a helpful guidance to the inner sense of the idea and its consequences. The chapter has been called the Vibhuti-Yoga, — an indispensable yoga. For while we must identify ourselves impartially with the universal divine Becoming in all its extension , its good and evil, perfection and imperfection, light and darkness, we must at the same time realise that there is an ascending evolutionary power in it, an increasing intensity of its revelation in things, a hierarchic secret something that carries us upward from the first concealing appearances through higher and higher forms towards the large ideal nature of the universal Godhead." CWSA-19/Essays of the Gita/p-360-361 Triple state of Cosmic Consciousness: "It may even seem as if it were the greatest oneness, since it accepts all that we can be sensible of in the mind-created world as our own. Sometimes one sees it spoken of as the highest achievement. Certainly, it is a great realisation and the path to a greater. It is that which the Gita speaks of as the accepting of all existences as if oneself whether in grief or in joy; it is the way of sympathetic oneness and infinite compassion which helps the Buddhist to arrive at his Nirvana . Still there are gradations and degrees. In the first stage the soul is still subject to the reactions of the duality, still subject therefore to the lower Prakriti; it is depressed or hurt by the cosmic suffering, elated by the cosmic joy. We suffer the joys of others, suffer their griefs; and this oneness can be carried even into the body, as in the story of the Indian saint who, seeing a bullock tortured in the field by its cruel owner, cried out with the creature’s pain and the weal of the lash was found reproduced on his own flesh. (The second stage of Soul) But there must be a oneness with Sachchidananda in his freedom as well as with the subjection of the lower being to the reactions of Prakriti. This is achieved when the soul is free and superior to the cosmic reactions which are then felt only in the life, mind and body and as an inferior movement; the soul understands, accepts the experience, sympathises, but is not overpowered or affected, so that at last even the mind and body learn also to accept without being overpowered or even affected except on their surface. (The third state of the Soul) And the consummation of this movement is when the two spheres of existence are no longer divided and the mind, life and body obeying utterly the higher law grow into the spirit’s freedom; free from the lower or ignorant response to the cosmic touches, their struggle and their subjection to the duality ceases. This does not mean insensibility to the subjection and struggles and sufferings of others, but it does mean a spiritual supremacy and freedom which enables one to understand perfectly, put the right values on things and heal from above instead of struggling from below. It does not inhibit the divine compassion and helpfulness, but it does inhibit the human and animal sorrow and suffering." CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-416-417 11/ Chapter 11. The Vision of The World-Spirit Summary or A Brief Restatement: The Third Eye given to Arjuna : "What thou hast to see, replies the Avatar , the human eye cannot grasp, — for the human eye can see only the outward appearances of things or make out of them separate symbol forms, each of them significant of only a few aspects of the eternal Mystery. But there is a divine eye , an inmost seeing, by which the supreme Godhead in his Yoga can be beheld and that eye I now give to thee. Thou shalt see, he says, my hundreds and thousands of divine forms, various in kind, various in shape and hue; thou shalt see the Adityas and the Rudras and the Maruts and the Aswins; thou shalt see many wonders that none has beheld; thou shalt see today the whole world related and unified in my body and whatever else thou willest to behold. This then is the keynote, the central significance. It is the vision of the One in the many, the Many in the One, — and all are the One. It is this vision that to the eye of the divine Yoga liberates, justifies, explains all that is and was and shall be. Once seen and held, it lays the shining axe of God at the root of all doubts and perplexities and annihilates all denials and oppositions. It is the vision that reconciles and unifies. If the soul can arrive at unity with the Godhead in this vision, — Arjuna has not yet done that, therefore we find that he has fear when he sees , — all even that is terrible in the world loses its terror. We see that it too is an aspect of the Godhead and once we have found his meaning in it, not looking at it by itself alone, we can accept the whole of existence with an all-embracing joy and a mighty courage, go forward with sure steps to the appointed work and envisage beyond it the supreme consummation. The soul admitted to the divine knowledge which beholds all things in one view, not with a divided, partial and therefore bewildered seeing, can make a new discovery of the world and all else that it wills to see, yacca nyad drastum icchasi ; (The Gita-11.7) it can move on the basis of this all- relating and all-unifying vision from revelation to completing revelation.... The supreme Form is then made visible. It is that of the infinite Godhead whose faces are everywhere and in whom are all the wonders of existence, who multiplies unendingly all the many marvellous revelations of his being, a world-wide Divinity seeing with innumerable eyes, speaking from innumerable mouths, armed for battle with numberless divine uplifted weapons, glorious with divine ornaments of beauty, robed in heavenly raiment of deity, lovely with garlands of divine flowers, fragrant with divine perfumes. Such is the light of this body of God as if a thousand suns had risen at once in heaven. The whole world multitudinously divided and yet unified is visible in the body of the God of Gods. Arjuna sees him, God magnificent and beautiful and terrible, the Lord of souls who has manifested in the glory and greatness of his spirit this wild and monstrous and orderly and wonderful and sweet and terrible world, and overcome with marvel and joy and fear he bows down and adores with words of awe and with clasped hands the tremendous vision. “I see” he cries “all the gods in thy body, O God, and different companies of beings, Brahma the creating lord seated in the Lotus, and the Rishis and the race of the divine Serpents. I see numberless arms and bellies and eyes and faces, I see thy infinite forms on every side, but I see not thy end nor thy middle nor thy beginning, O Lord of the universe, O Form universal. I see thee crowned and with thy mace and thy discus, hard to discern because thou art a luminous mass of energy on all sides of me, an encompassing blaze, a sun-bright fire-bright Immeasurable. Thou art the supreme Immutable whom we have to know, thou art the high foundation and abode of the universe, thou art the imperishable guardian of the eternal laws, thou art the sempiternal soul of existence.” 378-379 Before Becoming a Brahmin Soul Force, one must be a Kshatriya Soul Force: "No real peace can be till the heart of man deserves peace; the law of Vishnu cannot prevail till the debt to Rudra is paid. To turn aside then and preach to a still unevolved mankind the law of love and oneness? Teachers of the law of love and oneness there must be, for by that way must come the ultimate salvation. But not till the Time-Spirit in man is ready, can the inner and ultimate prevail over the outer and immediate reality. Christ and Buddha have come and gone, but it is Rudra who still holds the world in the hollow of his hand. And meanwhile the fierce forward labour of mankind tormented and oppressed by the Powers that are profiteers of egoistic force and their servants cries for the sword of the Hero of the struggle and the word of its prophet." CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-386, “Satyakama must have known perfectly well that he was the illegitimate son of a serving woman, but he wished to know his father’s name and gotra because he would have to tell it to his guru . Even after knowing the worst, he persisted in his intention of taking up spiritual studies, so that he can have had no fear of being rejected on account of his base origin. His guru , impressed by his truthfulness, says, “None but a Brahmin would have the moral strength to make such an avowal.” It can hardly be meant by this that Satyakama’s father must have been a Brahmin , but that since he had the Brahmin qualities, he must be accepted as a Brahmin. Even the Kshatriya would have hesitated to speak so truthfully, because the Kshatriya is by nature a lover of honour and shuns dishonour, he has the sense of mana and apamana; but the true Brahmin is samo manapamanayoh , he accepts indifferently worldly honour and dishonour and cares only for the truth and the right . In short the Gautama concludes that, whatever may be Satyakama’s physical birth, spiritually he is of the highest order and especially fitted for a sadhaka; na satyad agat , he did not depart from the truth.” CWSA-18/Kena and other Upanishads/p-267, Every breath of life is a breath too of death: "This last cry of Arjuna (The Gita-11.36 to 11.46) indicates the double intention in the vision. This is the figure of the supreme and universal Being, the Ancient of Days who is for ever, sanatanam purusam puranam , (The Gita-18.38) this is (1) he who for ever creates, for Brahma the Creator is one of the Godheads seen in his body, he who keeps the world always in existence, for he is the guardian of the eternal laws, but (2) who is always too destroying in order that he may new-create, who is Time, who is Death, who is Rudra the Dancer of the calm and awful dance, who is Kali with her garland of skulls trampling naked in battle and flecked with the blood of the slaughtered Titans, who is the cyclone and the fire and the earthquake and pain and famine and revolution and ruin and the swallowing ocean. And it is this last aspect of him which he puts forward at the moment. It is an aspect from which the mind in men willingly turns away and ostrich-like hides its head so that perchance, not seeing, it may not be seen by the Terrible. The weakness of the human heart wants only fair and comforting truths or in their absence pleasant fables; it will not have the truth in its entirety because there there is much that is not clear and pleasant and comfortable, but hard to understand and harder to bear . The raw religionist, the superficial optimistic thinker, the sentimental idealist, the man at the mercy of his sensations and emotions agree in twisting away from the sterner conclusions, the harsher and fiercer aspects of universal existence. Indian religion has been ignorantly reproached for not sharing in this general game of hiding, because on the contrary it has built and placed before it the terrible as well as the sweet and beautiful symbols of the Godhead. But it is the depth and largeness of its long thought and spiritual experience that prevent it from feeling or from giving countenance to these feeble shrinkings....Indian spirituality knows that God is Love and Peace and calm Eternity, — the Gita which presents us with these terrible images, speaks of the Godhead who embodies himself in them as the lover and friend of all creatures. But there is too the sterner aspect of his divine government of the world which meets us from the beginning, the aspect of destruction, and to ignore it is to miss the full reality of the divine Love and Peace and Calm and Eternity and even to throw on it an aspect of partiality and illusion, because the comforting exclusive form in which it is put is not borne out by the nature of the world in which we live. This world of our battle and labour is a fierce dangerous destructive devouring world in which life exists precariously and the soul and body of man move among enormous perils, a world in which by every step forward, whether we will it or no, something is crushed and broken , in which every breath of life is a breath too of death. To put away the responsibility for all that seems to us evil or terrible on the shoulders of a semi-omnipotent Devil, or to put it aside as part of Nature, making an unbridgeable opposition between world-nature and God-Nature, as if Nature were independent of God, or to throw the responsibility on man and his sins, as if he had a preponderant voice in the making of this world or could create anything against the will of God, are clumsily comfortable devices in which the religious thought of India has never taken refuge. We have to look courageously in the face of the reality and see that it is God and none else who has made this world in his being and that so he has made it. We have to see that Nature devouring her children, Time eating up the lives of creatures, Death universal and ineluctable and the violence of the Rudra forces in man and Nature are also the supreme Godhead in one of his cosmic figures. We have to see that God the bountiful and prodigal creator, God the helpful, strong and benignant preserver is also God the devourer and destroyer. The torment of the couch of pain and evil on which we are racked is his touch as much as happiness and sweetness and pleasure. It is only when we see with the eye of the complete union and feel this truth in the depths of our being that we can entirely discover behind that mask too the calm and beautiful face of the all-blissful Godhead and in this touch that tests our imperfection the touch of the friend and builder of the spirit in man. The discords of the worlds are God’s discords and it is only by accepting and proceeding through them that we can arrive at the greater concords of his supreme harmony, the summits and thrilled vastnesses of his transcendent and his cosmic Ananda ." CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-380-382 The utility of Destruction by Time Spirit: "The highest way appointed for him is to carry out the will of God without egoism, as the human occasion and instrument of that which he sees to be decreed, with the constant supporting memory of the Godhead in himself and man, mam anusmaran , (The Gita-8.07) and in whatever ways are appointed for him by the Lord of his Nature. Nimittamatram bhava savyasacin . (The Gita-11.33) He will not cherish personal enmity, anger, hatred, egoistic desire and passion, will not hasten towards strife or lust after violence and destruction like the fierce Asura , but he will do his work, lokasangrahaya . (The Gita-3.20) Beyond the action he will look towards that to which it leads, that for which he is warring. For God the Time-Spirit does not destroy for the sake of destruction , but to make the ways clear in the cyclic process for a greater rule and a progressing manifestation, rajyam samruddham . (The Gita-11.33) He will accept in its deeper sense, which the superficial mind does not see, the greatness of the struggle , the glory of the victory, — if need be, the glory of the victory which comes masked as defeat, — and lead man too in the enjoyment of his opulent kingdom . Not appalled by the face of the Destroyer, he will see within it the eternal Spirit imperishable in all these perishing bodies and behind it the face of the Charioteer, the Leader of man, the Friend of all creatures, suhrudam sarvabhutanam . (The Gita-5.29) This formidable World-Form once seen and acknowledged, it is to that reassuring truth that the rest of the chapter is directed; it discloses in the end a more intimate face and body of the Eternal ." CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-386-387, The Way to that unimaginable Transformation: "But what then is the uniqueness of this Form by which it is lifted so far beyond cognizance that all the ordinary endeavour of human knowledge and even the inmost austerity of its spiritual effort are insufficient, unaided, to reach the vision? It is this that man can know by other means this or that exclusive aspect of the one existence, its individual, cosmic or world- excluding figures, but not this greatest reconciling Oneness of all the aspects of the Divinity in which at one and the same time and in one and the same vision all is manifested, all is exceeded and all is consummated. For here transcendent, universal and individual Godhead, Spirit and Nature, Infinite and finite, space and time and timelessness, Being and Becoming, all that we can strive to think and know of the Godhead, whether of the absolute or the manifested existence, are wonderfully revealed in an ineffable oneness. This vision can be reached only by the absolute adoration, the love, the intimate unity that crowns at their summit the fullness of works and knowledge . To know, to see, to enter into it, to be one with this supreme form of the Supreme becomes then possible, and it is that end which the Gita proposes for its Yoga. There is a supreme consciousness through which it is possible to enter into the glory of the Transcendent and contain in him the immutable Self and all mutable Becoming, —it is possible to be one with all, yet above all, to exceed world and yet embrace the whole nature at once of the cosmic and the supracosmic Godhead. This is difficult indeed for limited man imprisoned in his mind and body: but, says the Godhead, “be a doer of my works, accept me as the supreme being and object, become my bhakta , be free from attachment and without enmity to all existences; for such a man comes to me.” In other words superiority to the lower nature, unity with all creatures, oneness with the cosmic Godhead and the Transcendence, oneness of will with the Divine in works, absolute love for the One and for God in all, — this is the way to that absolute spiritual self-exceeding and that unimaginable transformation ." CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-394-395 11/ Chapter 11. The Vision of The World-Spirit Svarat and Samrat status of an integral Sadhak: " The idea of the Purushottama , seen here as the incarnate Narayana, Krishna, is therefore the key . Without it the withdrawal from the lower nature to the Brahmic condition leads necessarily to inaction of the liberated man, his indifference to the works of the world; with it the same withdrawal becomes a step by which the works of the world are taken up in the spirit, with the nature and in the freedom of the Divine. See the silent Brahman as the goal and the world with all its activities has to be forsaken; see God, the Divine, the Purushottama as the goal, superior to action yet its inner spiritual cause and object and original will, and the world with all its activities is conquered and possessed in a divine transcendence of the world. It can become instead of a prison-house an opulent kingdom, rajyam samriddham, (The Gita-11.33) which we have conquered for the spiritual life by slaying the limitation of the tyrant ego and overcoming the bondage of our gaoler desires and breaking the prison of our individualistic possession and enjoyment. The liberated universalised soul becomes svarat samrat, self-ruler and emperor. " CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-135, "The Gita , making its call on the warrior nature of Arjuna, starts with this heroic movement. It calls on him to turn on the great enemy desire and slay it. Its first description of equality is that of the Stoic philosopher. “He whose mind is undisturbed in the midst of sorrows and amid pleasures is free from desire, from whom liking and fear and wrath have passed away, is the sage of settled understanding . Who in all things is without affection though visited by this good or that evil and neither hates nor rejoices, his intelligence sits firmly founded in wisdom.” (The Gita-2.56-57) If one abstains from food, it says, giving a physical example, the object of sense ceases to affect, but the affection itself of the sense, the rasa, remains; it is only when, even in the exercise of the sense, it can keep back from seeking its sensuous aim in the object, artha , and abandon the affection, the desire for the pleasure of taste, that the highest level of the soul is reached. It is by using the mental organs on the objects, “ranging over them with the senses,” visayan indriyais caran , but with senses subject to the self, freed from liking and disliking, that one gets into a large and sweet clearness of soul and temperament in which passion and grief find no place. All desires have to enter into the soul, as waters into the sea, and yet it has to remain immovable, filled but not disturbed: so in the end all desires can be abandoned. To be freed from wrath and passion and fear and attraction is repeatedly stressed as a necessary condition of the liberated status, and for this we must learn to bear their shocks, which cannot be done without exposing ourselves to their causes. “He who can bear here in the body the velocity of wrath and desire, is the Yogin, the happy man.” (The Gita-5.23) Titiksa , the will and power to endure, is the means. “The material touches which cause heat and cold, happiness and pain, things transient which come and go, these learn to endure. For the man whom these do not trouble nor pain, the firm and wise who is equal in pleasure and suffering, makes himself apt for immortality.” (The Gita-2.15) The equal-souled has to bear suffering and not hate, to receive pleasure and not rejoice. Even the physical affections are to be mastered by endurance and this too is part of the Stoic discipline. Age, death, suffering, pain are not fled from, but accepted and vanquished by a high indifference. Not to flee appalled from Nature in her lower masks, but to meet and conquer her is the true instinct of the strong nature, purusarsabha , (The Gita-2.15) the leonine soul among men. Thus compelled, she throws aside her mask and reveals to him his true nature as the free soul, not her subject but her king and lord, svarat, samrat ." CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-195-197, " The Gita accepts the endurance and fortitude of our struggle with the lower nature as a preliminary movement ; but if a certain mastery comes by our individual strength, the freedom of mastery only comes by our union with God, by a merging or dwelling of the personality in the one divine Person and the loss of the personal will in the divine Will. There is a divine Master of Nature and her works, above her though inhabiting her, who is our highest being and our universal self; to be one with him is to make ourselves divine. By union with God we enter into a supreme freedom and a supreme mastery. The ideal of the Stoic, the sage who is king because by self-rule he becomes master also of outward conditions, resembles superficially the Vedantic idea of the self-ruler and all-ruler, svarat samrat ; but it is on a lower plane. The Stoic kingship is maintained by a force put upon self and environment; the entirely liberated kingship of the Yogin exists naturally by the eternal royalty of the divine nature, a union with its unfettered universality, a finally unforced dwelling in its superiority to the instrumental nature through which it acts. His mastery over things is because he has become one soul with all things. To take an image from Roman institutions, the Stoic freedom is that of the libertus, the freedman, who is still really a dependent on the power that once held him enslaved; his is a freedom allowed by Nature because he has merited it. The freedom of the Gita is that of the freeman, the true freedom of the birth into the higher nature, self-existent in its divinity. Whatever he does and however he lives, the free soul lives in the Divine; he is the privileged child of the mansion, balavat , who cannot err or fall because all he is and does is full of the Perfect, the All-blissful, the All-loving, the All-beautiful. The kingdom which he enjoys, rajyam samriddham , (The Gita-11.33) is a sweet and happy dominion of which it may be said, in the pregnant phrase of the Greek thinker, “The kingdom is of the child.”" CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-207, " The witness Purusha in the mind observes that the inadequacy of his effort, all the inadequacy in fact of man’s life and nature arises from the separation and the consequent struggle, want of knowledge, want of harmony, want of oneness. It is essential for him to grow out of separative individuality , to universalise himself, to make himself one with the universe. This unification can be done only through the soul by making our soul of mind one with the universal Mind, our soul of life one with the universal Life-soul, our soul of body one with the universal soul of physical Nature. When this can be done, in proportion to the power, intensity, depth, completeness, permanence with which it can be done, great effects are produced upon the natural action. Especially there grows an immediate and profound sympathy and immixture of mind with mind, life with life, a lessening of the body’s insistence on separateness, a power of direct mental and other intercommunication and effective mutual action which helps out now the inadequate indirect communication and action that was till now the greater part of the conscious means used by embodied mind. But still the Purusha sees that in mental, vital, physical nature, taken by itself, there is always a defect, inadequacy, confused action, due to the mechanically unequal interplay of the three modes or gunas of Nature. To transcend it he has in the universality too to rise to the supramental and spiritual, to be one with the supramental soul of cosmos, the universal spirit. He arrives at the larger light and order of a higher principle in himself and the universe which is the characteristic action of the divine Sachchidananda . Even, he is able to impose the influence of that light and order, not only on his own natural being, but, within the radius and to the extent of the Spirit’s action in him, on the world he lives in, on that which is around him. He is svarat, self-knower, self-ruler, but he begins to be also through this spiritual oneness and transcendence samrat, a knower and master of his environing world of being. " CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-641, " But even a human perfection cannot dispense with equality as one of its chief elements and even its essential atmosphere. The aim of a human perfection must include, if it is to deserve the name, two things, self-mastery and a mastery of the surroundings; it must seek for them in the greatest degree of these powers which is at all attainable by our human nature. Man’s urge of self-perfection is to be, in the ancient language, svarat and samrat , self-ruler and king. But to be self-ruler is not possible for him if he is subject to the attack of the lower nature, to the turbulence of grief and joy, to the violent touches of pleasure and pain, to the tumult of his emotions and passions, to the bondage of his personal likings and dislikings, to the strong chains of desire and attachment, to the narrowness of a personal and emotionally preferential judgment and opinion, to all the hundred touches of his egoism and its pursuing stamp on his thought, feeling and action. All these things are the slavery to the lower self which the greater “I” in man must put under his feet if he is to be king of his own nature. To surmount them is the condition of self-rule; but of that surmounting again equality is the condition and the essence of the movement. To be quite free from all these things, — if possible, or at least to be master of and superior to them, — is equality. Farther, one who is not self-ruler, cannot be master of his surroundings. The knowledge, the will, the harmony which is necessary for this outward mastery, can come only as a crown of the inward conquest. It belongs to the self-possessing soul and mind which follows with a disinterested equality the Truth, the Right, the universal Largeness to which alone this mastery is possible, — following always the great ideal they present to our imperfection while it understands and makes a full allowance too for all that seems to conflict with them and stand in the way of their manifestation. This rule is true even on the levels of our actual human mentality, where we can only get a limited perfection. But the ideal of Yoga takes up this aim of Swarajya and Samrajya and puts it on the larger spiritual basis. There it gets its full power, opens to the diviner degrees of the spirit; for it is by oneness with the Infinite, by a spiritual power acting upon finite things, that some highest integral perfection of our being and nature finds its own native foundation. " CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-701-702 "Let me tell you about a recent occurrence. E. had sent a telegram saying that she had a perforated intestine (but it must have been something else because they operated on her only after several days, and when you are not operated on immediately in such cases, you die). Anyway, it was very serious and she was on the threshold of death – that much is certain. She wrote me a letter the day before the operation (what is interesting is that now she doesn’t even remember what she wrote). It was a magnificent letter saying that she was conscious of the Divine Presence and of the Divine Plan. ‘Tomorrow they will operate on me,’ she said. ‘And I am entirely aware that this operation has ALREADY been done, that it is a fact accomplished by the Divine Will; otherwise it could be a fatal ordeal.’ And she said she was conscious of the supreme Will’s action, in a perfect peace. It was a magnificent letter. And the whole thing went off almost miraculously; she recovered in such a miraculous way that the surgeon himself said, I must congratulate you, to which she replied, ‘How surprising! You did the operation!’ ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘we did the operation, but it is your body that willed to be healed, and I congratulate you for your body’s willpower.’ Of course she wrote to me that she knew who had been there to see that all went well. And this feeling of the thing being already accomplished is a beginning of the consciousness Sri Aurobindo speaks of in the ‘Yoga of Self-Perfection,’ where one is simultaneously both here and there. Because, as Sri Aurobindo says, some people have managed to be entirely ‘there,’ but what he has called the ‘realization’ is to be both there and here simultaneously." The Mother's Agenda-April 18, 1961, The Mother's Experience: "But this was merely the beginning of my vision. Only after a series of experiences – a ten months’ sojourn in Pondicherry , five years of separation, then the return to Pondicherry and the meeting in the same house and in the same way – did the END of the vision occur.... I was standing just beside him. My head wasn’t exactly on his shoulder, but where his shoulder was (I don’t know how to explain it – physically there was hardly any contact). We were standing side by side like that, gazing out through the open window, and then TOGETHER, at exactly the same moment, we felt, ‘Now the Realization will be accomplished.’ That the seal was set and the Realization would be accomplished. I felt the Thing descending massively within me, with the same certainty I had felt in my vision. From that moment on there was nothing to say – no words, nothing. We knew it was THAT... But between these two meetings he participated in a whole series of experiences, experiences of gradually growing awareness. This is partly noted in Prayers and Meditations (I have cut out all the personal segments). But there was one experience I didn’t speak of there (that is, I didn’t describe it, I put only the conclusion) – the experience where I say ‘Since the man refused I was offering participation in the universal work and the new creation and the man didn’t want it, he refused, and so I now offer it to God ....I don’t know, I’m putting it poorly, but this experience was concrete to the point of being physical. It happened in a Japanese country-house where we were living, near a lake. There was a whole series of circumstances, events, all kinds of things – a long, long story, like a novel. But one day I was alone in meditation (I have never had very profound meditations, only concentrations of consciousness – Mother makes an abrupt gesture showing a sudden ingathering of the entire being); and I was seeing.... You know that I had taken on the conversion of the Lord of Falsehood: I tried to do it through an emanation incarnated in a physical being, and the greatest effort was made during those four years in Japan. The four years were coming to an end with an absolute inner certainty that there was nothing to be done – that it was impossible, impossible to do it this way. There was nothing to be done. And I was intensely concentrated, asking the Lord, ‘Well, I made You a vow to do this, I had said, “Even if it’s necessary to descend into hell, I will descend into hell to do it....” Now tell me, what must I do?...’The Power was plainly there: suddenly everything in me became still; the whole external being was completely immobilized and I had a vision of the Supreme ... more beautiful than that of the Gita. A vision of the Supreme. And this vision literally gathered me into its arms; it turned towards the West, towards India, and offered me – and there at the other end I saw Sri Aurobindo. It was ... I felt it physically. I saw, saw – my eyes were closed but I saw (twice I have had this vision of the Supreme – once here, much later – but this was the first time) ... ineffable. It was as if this Immensity had reduced itself to a rather gigantic Being who lifted me up like a wisp of straw and offered me. Not a word, nothing else, only that... Then everything vanished... The next day we began preparing to return to India... It was after this vision, when I returned from Japan, that this meeting with Sri Aurobindo took place, along with the certainty that the Mission would be accomplished." The Mother's Agenda/December 20, 1961, Viswarupa of Divine Mother Revealed to Death God: (Death God said to Savitri) " Or if she (Divine Mother) dwells within thy (Savitri's) mortal heart, Show me the body of the living Truth Or draw for me the outline of her face That I too may obey and worship her. Then will I give thee back thy Satyavan." Savitri-655 "Or if the Mighty Mother is with thee, Show me her face that I may worship her; Let deathless eyes look into the eyes of Death, An imperishable Force touching brute things Transform earth’s death into immortal life." Savitri-664 Savitri's revelation of Viswa Rupa, Universal Vision to Death God: "A pressure of intolerable force Weighed on his (Death's) unbowed head and stubborn breast; Light like a burning tongue licked up his thoughts, Light was a luminous torture in his heart, Light coursed, a splendid agony, through his nerves; His darkness muttered perishing in her blaze. Her mastering Word commanded every limb And left no room for his enormous will That seemed pushed out into some helpless space And could no more re-enter but left him void. He called to Night but she fell shuddering back, He called to Hell but sullenly it retired: He turned to the Inconscient for support, From which he was born, his vast sustaining self; It drew him back towards boundless vacancy As if by himself to swallow up himself: He called to his strength, but it refused his call. His body was eaten by light, his spirit devoured." Savitri-667 12/ Chapter 12. Bhakti Yoga Summary or A Brief Restatement: The Gita categorically speaks of two kinds of Bhakti one that (1) of the devotion born out of many branching desires100 and (2) other that of the concentrated single pointed devotion, ekabhakti, (The Gita-7.17) after one is thoroughly established in mutable and personal Saguna Brahman consciousness and in the impersonal and immutable Nirguna Brahman consciousness. It is through the latter passage one will discover the Cosmic Consciousness, Vasudevah Sarvamiti , the vision of universal Godhead, Viswa Rupa Darshana , and the Supramental Consciousness, Purushottama. The Divine Love of this latter type of Bhakti is extensively developed in Sri Aurobindo’s epic Savitri. The traditional Sadhak Soul who is established in Bhakti, through practice of Bhakti Yoga is dear to the Divine. (1) He is having ill will to none, and having compassion and friendship to all beings, free from ego, even minded in pain and pleasure, forgives all, he is ever content, self-controlled and firm willed; his emotional mind and intellect are given up to the Divine; (2) he neither agitates the world, udbega, nor feels agitated by the world; he is free from the agitation of joy, resentment and fear; (3) he does not expect favour from anybody, is pure, skilful, indifferent, given up all initiation of work; (4) he who neither rejoices nor hates, neither grieves nor desires, has abolished the distinction between fortunate and unfortunate happenings and is full of devotion to the Divine; (5) he is equal to friend and enemy, honour and dishonour, cold and heat, pleasure and pain, praise and blame is free from attachment, silent, content with whatever comes, without attachment to home, family, clan, religion and nation, firm in emotional mind fully turned towards the Divine through devotion. "This Yoga (Integral Yoga) too is not a Yoga of knowledge alone — knowledge is one of its means, but its base being self-offering, surrender, bhakti , it is based on the heart and nothing can be eventually done without this base. There are plenty of people here who do or have done Japa and base themselves on bhakti, very few comparatively who have done the “head” meditation; love and bhakti and works are usually the base — how many can proceed by knowledge? Only the few." CWSA-29/Letters on Yoga-II/p-226-227 A Sadhaka is considered fit to pursue Yoga of self-perfection of integral Yoga and will succeed if he satisfies the condition as indicated in the Gita , “the exceedingly dear, atiba priya devotee is he who makes Purushottama his one and only supreme aim of life and with full of faith, follows the written truth of reconciling karma, jnana and bhakti Yoga in every detail or obeys the immortalising Dharma uttered by the Lord entirely;” (The Gita-12.20) or as indicated in Savitri : "Her (Savitri's) consciousness grew aware of him (Paramatma Satyavan ) alone. And all her separate self was lost in his." Savitri-410 Dwells in Me, mayi nivasisyasi : "The real goal of the Yoga is then a living and self-completing union with the divine Purushottama and is not merely a self- extinguishing immergence in the impersonal Being. To raise our whole existence to the Divine Being, to dwell in him (mayyeva nivasisyasi ), to be at one with him, unify our consciousness with his, to make our fragmentary nature a reflection of his perfect nature, to be inspired in our thought and sense wholly by the divine knowledge, to be moved in will and action utterly and faultlessly by the divine will, to lose desire in his love and delight, i s man’s perfection; it is that which the Gita describes as the highest secret. It is the true goal and the last sense of human living and the highest step in our progressive sacrifice of works. For he remains to the end the master of works and the soul of sacrifice." CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-132-133, "The liberation of the Gita is not a self-oblivious abolition of the soul’s personal being in the absorption of the One, sayujya mukti; it is all kinds of union at once. There is an entire unification with the supreme Godhead in essence of being and intimacy of consciousness and identity of bliss, sayujya , — for one object of this Yoga is to become Brahman, brahmabhuta. There is an eternal ecstatic dwelling in the highest existence of the Supreme, salokya , — for it is said, “Thou shalt dwell in me,” nivasisyasi mayyeva . (The Gita-12.8) There is an eternal love and adoration in a uniting nearness, there is an embrace of the liberated spirit by its divine Lover and the enveloping Self of its infinitudes, samıpya . There is an identity of the soul’s liberated nature with the divine nature, sadrisya mukti, — for the perfection of the free spirit is to become even as the Divine, madbhavam agatah , (The Gita-4.10) and to be one with him in the law of its being and the law of its works and nature, sadharmyam agatah . (The gita-14.2) The orthodox Yoga of knowledge aims at a fathomless immergence in the one infinite existence, sayujya ; it looks upon that alone as the entire liberation. The Yoga of adoration envisages an eternal habitation or nearness as the greater release, salokya, samıpya . The Yoga of works leads to oneness in power of being and nature, sadrisya . But the Gita envelops them all in its catholic integrality and fuses them all into one greatest and richest divine freedom and perfection." CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-398, "Mark that nowhere in the Gita is there any indication that dissolution of the individual spiritual being into the unmanifest, indefinable or absolute Brahman , avyaktam anirdesyam , is the true meaning or condition of immortality or the true aim of Yoga . On the contrary it describes immortality later on as an indwelling in the Ishwara in his supreme status, mayi nivasisyasi, param dhama , (The Gita-12.8, 10.12) and here as sadharmya, param siddhim, (The Gita-14.2, 1) a supreme perfection, a becoming of one law of being and nature with the Supreme, persistent still in existence and conscious of the universal movement but above it, as all the sages still exist, munayah sarve , (The Gita-14.1) not bound to birth in the creation, not troubled by the dissolution of the cycles. (The Gita-14.2) " CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-422, “The individual spirit exists and ever existed beyond in the Eternal, for it is itself everlasting, sanatana . It is evidently this idea of the eternal individual which leads the Gita to avoid any expression at all suggestive of a complete dissolution, laya , and to speak rather of the highest state of the soul as a dwelling in the Purushottama, nivasisyasi mayyeva. If when speaking of the one Self of all it seems to use the language of Adwaita, yet this enduring truth of the eternal individual, mamam sah sanatanah , (The Gita-15.7) adds something which brings in a qualification and appears almost to accept the seeing of the Visishtadwaita , — though we must not therefore leap at once to the conclusion that that alone is the Gita’s philosophy or that its doctrine is identical with the later doctrine of Ramanuja. Still this much is clear that there is an eternal, a real and not only an illusive principle of multiplicity in the spiritual being of the one divine Existence. ” CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-445-446, "And yet or rather therefore, because it is the truth of our self and spirit, the truth of its oneness with that Spirit from which all comes and by it and as its derivations and suggestions all exists and travails, it is not a negation but a fulfilment of all that mind and life point to and bear in them as their secret and unaccomplished significance. Thus it is not by a nirvana, an exclusion and negating extinction of all that we are here, but by a nirvana, an exclusion and negating extinction of ignorance and ego and a consequent ineffable fulfilment of our knowledge and will and heart’s aspiration, an uplifted and limitless living of them in the Divine, in the Eternal, nivasisyasi mayyeva , a transfigurement and transference of all our consciousness to a greater inner status that there comes this supreme perfection and release in the spirit." CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-543, "This mystery of our existence signifies that what we are is not only a temporary name and form of the One, but as we may say, a soul and spirit of the Divine Oneness. Our spiritual individuality of which the ego is only a misleading shadow and projection in the ignorance has or is a truth that persists beyond the ignorance; there is something of us that dwells for ever in the supreme nature of the Purushottama, nivasisyasi mayi . This is the profound comprehensiveness of the teaching of the Gita that while it recognises the truth of the universalised impersonality into which we enter by the extinction of ego, brahma-nirvana , (The Gita-5.24, 25, 26) -- for indeed without it there can be no liberation or at least no absolute release, — it recognises too the persistent spiritual truth of our personality (Psychic being) as a factor of the highest experience. Not this natural but that divine and central being in us is the eternal Jiva. It is the Ishwara, Vasudeva who is all things, that takes up our mind and life and body for the enjoyment of the lower Prakriti; it is the supreme Prakriti , the original spiritual nature of the supreme Purusha that holds together the universe and appears in it as the Jiva . This Jiva then is a portion of the Purushottama’s original divine spiritual being, a living power of the living Eternal. He is not merely a temporary form of lower Nature , but an eternal portion of the Highest in his supreme Prakriti, an eternal conscious ray of the divine existence and as everlasting as that supernal Prakriti. One side of the highest perfection and status of our liberated consciousness must then be to assume the true place of the Jiva in a supreme spiritual Nature, there to dwell in the glory of the supreme Purusha and there to have the joy of the eternal spiritual oneness." CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-549-550, Fitness to become an instrument of the descent of overhead Divine Love: “To bring the Divine Love and Beauty and Ananda into the world is, indeed, the whole crown and essence of our Yoga. But it has always seemed to me impossible unless there comes as its support and foundation and guard the Divine Truth — what I call the Supramental — and its Divine Power. Otherwise Love itself blinded by the confusions of this present consciousness may stumble in its human receptacles and, even otherwise, may find itself unrecognised, rejected or rapidly degenerating and lost in the frailty of man’s inferior nature. But when it comes in the Divine Truth and Power, Divine Love descends first as something transcendent and universal and out of that transcendence and universality it applies itself to persons according to the Divine Truth and Will, creating a vaster, greater, purer personal love than any the human mind or heart can now imagine. It is when one has felt this descent that one can be really an instrument for the birth and action of the Divine Love in the world.” CWSA-29/Letters on Yoga-II/p-333" “All true Truth of love and of the works of love the psychic being accepts in their place: but its flame mounts always upward and it is eager to push the ascent from lesser to higher degrees of Truth, since it knows that only by the ascent to a highest Truth and the descent of that highest Truth can Love be delivered from the cross and placed upon the throne; for the cross is the sign of the Divine Descent barred and marred by the transversal line of a cosmic deformation which turns it into a stake of suffering and misfortune. Only by the ascent to the original Truth can the deformation be healed and all the works of love, as too all the works of knowledge and of life, be restored to a divine significance and become part of an integral spiritual existence.” CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-157, “It is therefore through the sacrifice of love, works and knowledge with the psychic being as the leader and priest of the sacrifice that life itself can be transformed into its own true spiritual figure. If the sacrifice of knowledge rightly done is easily the largest and purest offering we can bring to the Highest, the sacrifice of love is not less demanded of us for our spiritual perfection; it is even more intense and rich in its singleness and can be made not less vast and pure. This pure wideness is brought into the intensity of the sacrifice of love when into all our activities there is poured the spirit and power of a divine infinite joy and the whole atmosphere of our life is suffused with an engrossing adoration of the One who is the All and the Highest. For then does the sacrifice of love attain its utter perfection when, offered to the divine All, it becomes integral, catholic and boundless, and when, uplifted to the Supreme, it ceases to be the weak, superficial and transient movement men call love and becomes a pure and grand and deep uniting Ananda .” CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-158, “Ultimately, nothing but omnipotence could convert the world, convince the world. The world isn't ready to experience supreme Love. Supreme Love eliminates all problems, even the problem of creation: there are no more problems, I know it since that experience [of April 13, 1962]. But the world isn't ready yet, it may take a few thousand years. Although it is beginning to be ready for the manifestation of supreme Power (which seems to indicate that this will manifest first). And this supreme Power would result from a CONSTANT identification…(The Gita proposes that the constant union, nitya yoga, with the Divine is made possible by the reconciliation of Karma and Jnana Yoga .) But this "constancy" isn't yet established: one is identified and then one isn't, is and then isn't, so things get delayed indefinitely. You wind up doing exactly what you tell others not to do – one foot here and one foot there! It just won't do.” The Mother’s Agenda-04.07.1962, "Annulled were the tables of the law of Pain, And in their place grew luminous characters." Savitri-232 "There meet and clasp the eternal opposites, T here pain becomes a violent fiery joy; Evil turns back to its original good, And sorrow lies upon the breasts of Bliss: She has learned to weep glad tears of happiness; Her gaze is charged with a wistful ecstasy. Then shall be ended here the Law of Pain." Savitri-451 The Divine Love, the most powerful of all redeeming and creative forces: "Afterwards too, even when the seeker has opened to the Divine Love transcendental, universal or immanent, yet if he tries to pour it into life, he meets the power of obscuration and perversion of these lower Nature- forces. Always they draw away towards pitfalls, pour into that higher intensity their diminishing elements, seek to capture the descending Power for themselves and their interests and degrade it into an aggrandised mental, vital or physical instrumentation for desire and ego. Instead of a Divine Love creator of a new heaven and a new earth of Truth and Light, they would hold it here prisoner as a tremendous sanction and glorifying force of sublimation to gild the mud of the old earth and colour with its rose and sapphire the old turbid unreal skies of sentimentalising vital imagination and mental idealised chimera. If that falsification is permitted, the higher Light and Power and Bliss withdraw, there is a fall back to a lower status; or else the realisation remains tied to an insecure half-way and mixture or is covered and even submerged by an inferior exaltation that is not the true Ananda. It is for this reason that Divine Love which is at the heart of all creation and the most powerful of all redeeming and creative forces has yet been the least frontally present in earthly life, the least successfully redemptive, the least creative. Human nature has been unable to bear it in its purity for the very reason that it is the most powerful, pure, rare and intense of all the divine energies; what little could be seized has been corrupted at once into a vital pietistic ardour, a defenceless religious or ethical sentimentalism, a sensuous or even sensual erotic mysticism of the roseate coloured mind or passionately turbid life-impulse and with these simulations compensated its inability to house the Mystic Flame that could rebuild the world with its tongues of sacrifice. It is only the inmost psychic being unveiled and emerging in its full power that can lead the pilgrim sacrifice unscathed through these ambushes and pitfalls; at each moment it 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. But all things that are true at their core in mind and life and the physical being it extricates and takes with it in the journey till they stand on the heights, new in spirit and sublime in figure." CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-166-167 Supramental Love: "There in the supramental Gnosis is the fulfilment, the culminating height, the all-embracing extent of the inner adoration, the profound and integral union, the flaming wings of Love upbearing the power and joy of a supreme Knowledge. For supramental Love brings an active ecstasy that surpasses the void passive peace and stillness which is the heaven of the liberated Mind and does not betray the deeper greater calm which is the beginning of the supramental silence. The unity of a love which is able to include in itself all differences without being dimin- ished or abrogated by their present limitations and apparent dissonances is raised to its full potentiality on the supramental level. For there an intense oneness with all creatures founded on a profound oneness of the soul with the Divine can harmonise with a play of relations that only makes the oneness more perfect and absolute. The power of Love supramentalised can take hold of all living relations without hesitation or danger and turn them Godwards delivered from their crude, mixed and petty human settings and sublimated into the happy material of a divine life. For it is the very nature of the supramental experience that it can perpetuate the play of difference without forfeiting or in the least diminishing either the divine union or the infinite oneness. For a supramentalised consciousness it would be utterly possible to embrace all contacts with men and the world in a purified flame-force and with a transfigured significance, because the soul would then perceive always as the object of all emotion and all seeking for love or beauty the One Eternal and could spiritually use a wide and liberated life-urge to meet and join with that One Divine in all things and all creatures." CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-168-169, “All other Yogas regard this life as an illusion or a passing phase; the supramental Yoga alone regards it as a thing created by the Divine for a progressive manifestation and takes the fulfilment of the life and the body for its object. The supramental is simply the Truth-Consciousness and what it brings in its descent is the full truth of life, the full truth of consciousness in Matter. One has indeed to rise to high summits to reach it, but the more one rises, the more one can bring down below. No doubt, life and body have not to remain the ignorant, imperfect, impotent things they are now; but why should a change to fuller life- power, fuller body-power be considered something aloof, cold and undesirable? The utmost Ananda the body and life are now capable of is a brief excitement of the vital mind or the nerves or the cells which is limited, imperfect and soon passes; with the supramental change all the cells, nerves, vital forces, embodied mental forces can become filled with a thousandfold Ananda, capable of an intensity of bliss which passes description and which need not fade away. How aloof, repellent and undesirable! The supramental love means an intense unity of soul with soul, mind with mind, life with life, and an entire flooding of the body consciousness with the physical experience of oneness, the presence of the Beloved in every part, in every cell of the body. Is that too something aloof and grand but undesirable? With the supramental change, the very thing on which you insist, the possibility of the free physical meeting of the embodied Divine with the sadhak without conflict of forces and without undesirable reactions becomes possible, assured and free. That too is, I suppose, something aloof and undesirable? I could go on — for pages, but this is enough for the moment.” CWSA-29/Letters on Yoga-II/p-482-483 12/ Chapter 12. Bhakti Yoga The Objective of Divine Love in Integral Yoga: "The way of Bhakti is supposed often to be necessarily infe- rior because it proceeds by worship which belongs to that stage of spiritual experience where there is a difference, an insufficient unity between the human soul and the Divine, because its very principle is love and love means always two, the lover and the beloved, a dualism therefore, while oneness is the highest spir- itual experience, and because it seeks after the personal God while the Impersonal is the highest and the eternal truth, if not even the sole Reality. But worship is only the first step on the path of devotion. Where external worship changes into the inner adoration, real Bhakti begins; that deepens into the intensity of divine love; that love leads to the joy of closeness in our relations with the Divine; the joy of closeness passes into the bliss of union. Love too as well as knowledge brings us to a highest oneness and it gives to that oneness its greatest possible depth and intensity. It is true that love returns gladly upon a difference in oneness, by which the oneness itself becomes richer and sweeter. But here we may say that the heart is wiser than the thought, at least than that thought which fixes upon opposite ideas of the Divine and concentrates on one to the exclusion of the other which seems its contrary, but is really its complement and a means of its greatest fulfilment. This is the weakness of the mind that it limits itself by its thoughts, its positive and negative ideas, the aspects of the Divine Reality that it sees, and tends too much to pit one against the other." CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-548-549, The Reconciliation of Matter and Spirit through the practice of integral Bhakti Yoga : "The Path of Devotion (traditional Bhakti Yoga) aims at the enjoyment of the supreme Love and Bliss and utilises 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 play of the Lord, with our human life as its final stage, pursued through the different phases of self-concealment and self-revelation. 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 of 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. This path, too, as ordinarily practised, (in traditional Bhakti Yoga ) leads away from world-existence to an absorption, of another kind than the Monist’s, in the Transcendent and Supra-cosmic...But, here (in Integral Yoga ) too, the exclusive result is not inevitable. The Yoga itself provides a first corrective by not confining the play of divine love to the relation between the supreme Soul and the individual, but extending it to a common feeling and mutual worship between the devotees themselves united in the same realisation of the supreme Love and Bliss. It provides a yet more general corrective in the realisation of the divine object of Love in all beings not only human but animal, easily extended to all forms whatsoever. We can see how this larger application of the Yoga of Devotion may be so 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 our humanity.” CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-39 "To live, to love are signs of infinite things, Love is a glory from eternity’s spheres. Abased, disfigured, mocked by baser mights That steal his name and shape and ecstasy, He is still the godhead by which all can change." Savitri-397 “Love’s golden wings have power to fan thy void: The eyes of love gaze starlike through death’s night, The feet of love tread naked hardest worlds. He (Divine Love) labours in the depths, exults on the heights; He shall remake thy universe, O Death.” Savitri-592, By Devotion one knows Me: "Love fulfilled does not exclude knowledge, but itself brings knowledge; and the completer the knowledge, the richer the possibility of love. “By Bhakti” says the Lord in the Gita “shall a man know Me in all my extent and greatness and as I am in the principles of my being, and when he has known Me in the principles of my being, then he enters into Me.” (The Gita-18.55) Love without knowledge is a passionate and intense, but blind, crude, often dangerous thing, a great power, but also a stumbling-block; love, limited in knowledge, condemns itself in its fervour and often by its very fervour to narrowness; but love leading to perfect knowledge brings the infinite and absolute union. Such love is not inconsistent with, but rather throws itself with joy into divine works; for it loves God and is one with him in all his being, and therefore in all beings, and to work for the world is then to feel and fulfil multitudinously one’s love for God. This is the trinity of our powers, the union of all three in God to which we arrive when we start on our journey by the path of devotion with Love for the Angel of the Way to find in the ecstasy of the divine delight of the All-Lover’s being the fulfilment of ours, its secure home and blissful abiding-place and the centre of its universal radiation." CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-547, "If to thought the Impersonal seems the wider and higher truth, the Personal a narrower experience, the spirit finds both of them to be aspects of a Reality which figures itself in both, and if there is a knowledge of that Reality to which thought arrives by insistence on the infinite Impersonality, there is also a knowledge of it to which love arrives by insistence on the infinite Personality. The spiritual experience of each leads, if followed to the end, to the same ultimate Truth. By Bhakti as by knowledge, as the Gita tells us, we arrive at unity with the Purushottama, the Supreme who contains in himself the impersonal and numberless personalities, the qualitiless and infinite qualities, pure being, consciousness and delight and the endless play of their relations." CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-550 13/ Chapter 13. The Field and Its Knower Summary or A Brief Restatement: “The Gita in its last six chapters, in order to found on a clear and complete knowledge the way of the soul’s rising out of the lower into the divine nature , restates in another form the enlightenment the Teacher has already imparted to Arjuna. Essentially it is the same knowledge, but details and relations are now made prominent and assigned their entire significance, thoughts and truths brought out in their full value that were alluded to only in passing or generally stated in the light of another purpose.” CWSA-19/Essays of the Gita/p-409 In this thirteenth chapter, the relationship between Matter and Spirit is worked out and for maintaining the Spiritual pursuit Arjuna raised the Question which can be divided into six parts. He wanted to know these six elements in order to strengthen his Spiritual pursuit. “Six Questions raised by Arjuna : (1) The Field, Kshetra , and (2) the Knower of the Field, Kshetrajna , (3) Knowledge, Jnana , and (4) the object of Knowledge, Jneya , (5) Nature, Prakriti and (6) Self, Purusha, these I would like to learn, O Keshava .” The Gita-13.1 The Field, Kshetra : The Upanishad speaks of a fivefold body or sheath of Nature, a physical (Annamaya Kosha ), vital (Pranamaya Kosha ), mental (Manomaya Kosha ), ideal (Vijnanamaya Kosha ) and divine body (Anandamaya Kosha ); this may be regarded as the totality of the field, kshetram . Twenty-four Principles of Field: "The Gita contents itself to restate the whole working of lower Prakriti , f ield, kshetra , in line with Sankhya thinkers. This kshetra is the product of twenty-four cosmic principles where except abyakta Prakriti, all the other twenty-three elements are of lower Nature . They are five bhutas , that of ether, fire, air, water and earth, or ‘the ethereal, the radiant, electric and gaseous, the liquid, and the other elemental conditions of matter are the physical medium.’ (CWSA-19/Essays of the Gita/p-272), five tanmatras, that of sound, touch, sight, taste and smell, five karmendriyas of speech, locomotion, the seizing of things, ejection and generation, (or hands, feet, mouth, excretion, and reproduction) five jnanendriya , ear, srotram , eye, chakhuh, tongue, rasanam , sense of touch, sparsanam and nose, ghranam , unmanifest Nature, abyakta Prakriti , mind, manas , intelligent will, buddhi and ego, ahamkara . This lower nature, also known as apara prakriti , is constituted of three inconscient energy or three gunas or essential modes; sattwa, the seed of intelligence, conserves the working of energy; rajas , the seed of force and action, creates the working of energy; tamas , the seed of inertia and non-intelligence, dissolves what sattwa conserves and rajas creates. When the three gunas are in equilibrium, the Soul, Kshara Purusha is liberated and contact with Akshara Purusha is established but when the equilibrium is disturbed then there is the ceaseless creation, conservation and dissolution begins, unrolling the phenomena of cosmos." (Ref: CWSA-19/Essays of the Gita/p-71) "Pleasure and pain, liking and disliking are the principal deformations of the kshetra . From the Vedantic point of view we may say that pleasure and pain are the vital or sensational deformations given by the lower energy to the spontaneous Ananda or delight of the spirit when brought into contact with her workings. And we may say from the same view-point that liking and disliking are the corresponding mental deformations given by her to the reactive Will of the spirit that determines its response to her contacts. These dualities are the positive and negative terms in which the ego soul of the lower nature enjoys the universe. The negative terms, pain, dislike, sorrow, repulsion and the rest, are perverse or at the best ignorantly reverse responses: the positive terms, liking, pleasure, joy, attraction, are ill-guided responses or at the best insufficient and in character inferior to those of the true spiritual experience." CWSA-19/Essays of the Gita/p-413-414, "“(1) Hatred and (2) disliking and (3) scorn and (4) repulsion, (5) clinging and (6) attachment and (7) preference (The above seven deformations foreseen in integral Yoga can be compared with seven vicaras of the Gita , that of liking and disliking, iccha, dwesa , pleasure and pain, sukham, dukham , consciousness, chetana, collocation, samghata, persistence, dhriti) are natural, necessary, inevitable at a certain stage: they attend upon or they help to make and maintain Nature’s choice in us. But to the Karmayogin they are a survival, a stumbling block, a process of the Ignorance and, as he progresses, they fall away from his nature. The child-soul needs them for its growth; but they drop from an adult (-soul) in the divine culture. (1) In the God-nature to which we have to rise there can be an adamantine, even a destructive severity but not hatred, (3) a divine irony but not scorn, (4, 2) a calm, clear-seeing and forceful rejection but not repulsion and dislike. (1) Even what we have to destroy, we must not abhor or fail to recognise as a disguised or temporary movement of the Eternal.” CWSA/23/The Synthesis of Yoga-223, (5) “There can be for the seeker of the integral Yoga no clinging to resting-places on the road or to half-way houses; he cannot be satisfied till he has laid down all the great enduring bases of his perfection and broken out into its large and free infinities, and even there he has to be constantly filling himself with more experiences of the Infinite.” CWSA/24/The Synthesis of Yoga-776, (6) “Therefore attachment and desire must be utterly cast out; there is nothing in the world to which we must be attached, not wealth nor poverty, nor joy nor suffering, nor life nor death, nor greatness nor littleness, nor vice nor virtue, nor friend, nor wife, nor children, nor country, nor our work and mission, nor heaven nor earth, nor all that is within them or beyond them. And this does not mean that there is nothing at all that we shall love, nothing in which we shall take delight; for attachment is egoism in love and not love itself, desire is limitation and insecurity in a hunger for pleasure and satisfaction and not the seeking after the divine delight in things.” CWSA/23/The Synthesis of Yoga-329, (7) “For the perfect action and experience is not to be determined by any kind of mental or vital preference, but by the revealing and inspiring spiritual will which is the Shakti in her direct and real initiation. When I say that as I am appointed, I work, I still bring in a limiting personal element and mental reaction. But it is the Master who will do his own work through myself as his instrument, and there must be no mental or other preference in me to limit, to interfere, to be a source of imperfect working.” CWSA/24/The Synthesis of Yoga-725, The Knower of the Field, Kshetrajna : "He is knowledge and the object of knowledge. The spiritual supramental knowledge that floods the illumined mind and transfigures it is this spirit manifesting himself in light to the force-obscured soul which he has put forth into the action of Nature. This eternal Light is in the heart of every being; it is he who is the secret knower of the field, ksetrajna, and presides as the Lord in the heart of things over this province and over all these kingdoms of his manifested becoming and action. When man sees this eternal and universal Godhead within himself, when he becomes aware of the soul in all things and discovers the spirit in Nature, when he feels all the universe as a wave mounting in this Eternity and all that is as the one existence, he puts on the light of Godhead and stands free in the midst of the worlds of Nature. A divine knowledge and a perfect turning with adoration to this Divine is the secret of the great spiritual liberation. Freedom, love and spiritual knowledge raise us from mortal nature to immortal being." CWSA-19/Essays of the Gita/p-417 Knowledge, Jnana : "The Gita then tells us what is the spiritual knowledge or rather it tells us what are the conditions of knowledge, the marks, the signs of the man whose soul is turned towards the inner wisdom. These signs are the recognised and traditional characteristics of the sage, — his strong turning away of the heart from attachment to outward and worldly things, his inward and brooding spirit, his steady mind and calm equality, the settled fixity of his thought and will upon the greatest inmost truths, upon the things that are real and eternal. First, there comes a certain moral condition, a sattwic government of the natural being. There is fixed in him a total absence of worldly pride and arrogance, a candid soul, a tolerant, long-suffering and benignant heart, purity of mind and body, tranquil firmness and steadfastness, self-control and a masterful government of the lower nature and the heart’s worship given to the Teacher, whether to the divine Teacher within or to the human Master in whom the divine Wisdom is embodied, — for that is the sense of the reverence given to the Guru. Then there is a nobler and freer attitude towards the outward world, an attitude of perfect detachment and equality, a firm removal of the natural being’s attraction to the objects of the senses and a radical freedom from the claims of that constant clamorous ego-sense, ego-idea, ego-motive which tyrannises over the normal man. There is no longer any clinging to the attachment and absorption of family and home. There is instead of these vital and animal movements an unattached will and sense and intelligence, a keen perception of the defective nature of the ordinary life of physical man with its aimless and painful subjection to birth and death and disease and age, a constant equalness to all pleasant or unpleasant happenings, — for the soul is seated within and impervious to the shocks of external events, — and a meditative mind turned towards solitude and away from the vain noise of crowds and the assemblies of men. Finally, there is a strong turn within towards the things that really matter, a philosophic perception of the true sense and large principles of existence, a tranquil continuity of inner spiritual knowledge and light, the Yoga of an unswerving devotion, love of God, the heart’s deep and constant adoration of the universal and eternal Presence." CWSA-19/Essays of the Gita/p-414-415 The object of Knowledge, Jneya : "All these things taken together constitute the fundamental character of our first transactions with the world of Nature, but it is evidently not the whole description of our being; it is our actuality but not the limit of our possibilities. There is something beyond to be known, jneyam, and it is when the knower of the field turns from the field itself to learn of himself within it and of all that is behind its appearances that real knowledge begins, jnanam , — the true knowledge of the field no less than of the knower. That turning inward alone delivers from ignorance. For the farther we go inward, the more we seize on greater and fuller realities of things and grasp the complete truth both of God and the soul and of the world and its movements. Therefore, says the divine Teacher, it is the knowledge at once of the field and its knower, ksetra-ksetrajnayor jnanam, (The Gita-13.3) a united and even unified self-knowledge and world-knowledge, which is the real illumination and the only wisdom. For both soul and nature are the Brahman, but the true truth of the world of Nature can only be discovered by the liberated sage who possesses also the truth of the spirit. One Brahman , one reality in Self and Nature is the object of all knowledge. " CWSA-19/Essays of the Gita/p-414 Nature, Prakriti and Self, Purusha : "The Soul and Nature are only two aspects of the eternal Brahman , an apparent duality which founds the operations of his universal existence. The Soul is without origin and eternal, Nature too is without origin and eternal; but the modes of Nature and the lower forms she assumes to our conscious experience have an origin in the transactions of these two entities. They (modes of Nature) come from her, wear by her the outward chain of cause and effect, doing and the results of doing, force and its workings, all that is here transient and mutable. Constantly they change and the soul and Nature seem to change with them, but in themselves these two powers are eternal and always the same. Nature creates and acts, the Soul enjoys her creation and action; but in this inferior form of her action she turns this enjoyment into the obscure and petty figures of pain and pleasure. Forcibly the soul, the individual Purusha, is attracted by her qualitative workings and this attraction of her qualities draws him constantly to births of all kinds in which he enjoys the variations and vicissitudes, the good and evil of birth in Nature. But this is only the outward experience of the soul mutable in conception by identification with mutable Nature. Seated in this body is her and our Divinity, the supreme Self, Paramatman, the supreme Soul, the mighty Lord of Nature, who watches her action, sanctions her operations, upholds all she does, commands her manifold creation, enjoys with his universal delight this play of her figures of his own being. That is the self-knowledge to which we have to accustom our mentality before we can truly know ourselves as an eternal portion of the Eternal. Once that is fixed, no matter how the soul in us may comport itself outwardly in its transactions with Nature, whatever it may seem to do or however it may seem to assume this or that figure of personality and active force and embodied ego, it is in itself free, no longer bound to birth because one through impersonality of self with the inner unborn spirit of existence. That impersonality is our union with the supreme egoless I of all that is in cosmos." CWSA-19/Essays of the Gita/p-417-418 13/ Chapter 13. The Field and Its Knower The Most important verse of this chapter which acts as Source of Supramental action in Integral Yoga: “The Blessed Lord said: The triple realisation of Brahman, atmani atmanam atmana or “of the self by the self in the self” reconciles the relation between Purusha (Spirit) and Prakriti (Matter); it comes by an inner meditation through which the eternal Self becomes visible, pasyanti, to us in our self-existence. 'Or it comes by the Yoga of the Sankhyas , the separation of the soul from nature. Or it comes by the Yoga of works in which the personal will is dissolved through the opening up of our mind and heart and all our active forces to the Lord who assumes to himself the whole of our works in nature.’ (CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-418) "Others, who are unfit for these Dhyana, Jnana and Karma Yoga , may hear of the written Truth of Shastra from men of Spiritual attainment and mould the mind into the sense of THAT to which it listens with utter faith and concentration. But, however arrived at, it carries us beyond the limitation of death to a vast immortality of Spirit.” (The Gita-13.25, 26), " The supermind knows most completely and securely not by thought but by identity, by a pure awareness of the self-truth of things in the self and by the self , atmani atmanam atmana . I get the supramental knowledge best by becoming one with the truth, one with the object of knowledge; the supramental satisfaction and integral light is most there when there is no further division between the knower, knowledge and the known, jnata, jnanam, jneyam. I see the thing known not as an object outside myself, but as myself or a part of my universal self contained in my most direct consciousness. This leads to the highest and completest knowledge; thought and speech being representations and not this direct possession in the consciousness are to the supermind a lesser form and, if not filled with the spiritual awareness, thought becomes in fact a diminution of knowledge. For it would be, supposing it to be a supramental thought, only a partial manifestation of a greater knowledge existing in the self but not at the time present to the immediately active consciousness. In the highest ranges of the infinite there need be no thought at all because all would be experienced spiritually, in continuity, in eternal possession and with an absolute directness and completeness. Thought is only one means of partially manifesting and presenting what is hidden in this greater self-existent knowledge. This supreme kind of knowing will not indeed be possible to us in its full extent and degree until we can rise through many grades of the supermind to that infinite. But still as the supramental power emerges and enlarges its action, something of this highest way of knowledge appears and grows and even the members of the mental being, as they are intuitivised and supramentalised, develop more and more a corresponding action upon their own level. There is an increasing power of a luminous vital, psychic, emotional, dynamic and other identification with all the things and beings that are the objects of our consciousness and these transcendings of the separative consciousness bring with them many forms and means of a direct knowledge. " CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-831-832, " The supramental transformation, the supramental evolution must carry with it a lifting of mind, life and body out of themselves into a greater way of being in which yet their own ways and powers would be, not suppressed or abolished, but perfected and fulfilled by the self-exceeding. For in the Ignorance all paths are the paths of the spirit seeking for itself blindly or with a growing light; the gnostic being and life would be the spirit’s self-discovery and its seeing and reaching of the aims of all these paths but in the greater way of its own revealed and conscious truth of being. Mind seeks for light, for knowledge, — for knowledge of the one truth basing all, an essential truth of self and things, but also of all truth of diversity of that oneness, all its detail, circumstance, manifold way of action, form, law of movement and happening, various manifestation and creation; for thinking mind the joy of existence is discovery and the penetration of the mystery of creation that comes with knowledge. This the gnostic change will fulfil in an ample measure; but it will give it a new character. It will act not by the discovery of the unknown, but by the bringing out of the known; all will be the finding “of the self by the self in the self” . For the self of the gnostic being will not be the mental ego but the Spirit that is one in all; he will see the world as a universe of the Spirit. The finding of the one truth underlying all things will be the Identical discovering identity and identical truth everywhere and discovering too the power and workings and relations of that identity. The revelation of the detail, the circumstance, the abundant ways and forms of the manifestation will be the unveiling of the endless opulence of the truths of that identity, its forms and powers of self, its curious manifoldness and multiplicity of form bringing out infinitely its oneness. This knowledge will proceed by identification with all, by entering into all, by a contact bringing with it a leap of self-discovery and a flame of recognition, a greater and surer intuition of truth than the mind can reach; there will be an intuition too of the means of embodying and utilising the truth seen, an operative intuition of its dynamic processes, a direct intimate awareness guiding the life and the physical senses in every step of their action and service to the Spirit when they have to be called in as instruments for the effectuation of process in life and matter. " CWSA-22/The Life Divine-22/p-1017-1018 Relation between Purusha and Prakriti: "The distinction made in the Gita between the Purusha and the Prakriti gives us the clue to the various attitudes which the soul can adopt towards Nature in its movement towards perfect freedom and rule. The Purusha is, says the Gita , witness, upholder, source of the sanction, knower, lord, enjoyer; Prakriti executes, it is the active principle and must have an operation corresponding to the attitude of the Purusha . The soul may assume, if it wishes, the poise of the pure witness, saksı ; it may look on at the action of Nature as a thing from which it stands apart; it watches, but does not itself participate. We have seen the importance of this quietistic capacity; it is the basis of the movement of withdrawal by which we can say of everything, — body, life, mental action, thought, sensation, emotion, — “This is Prakriti working in the life, mind and body, it is not myself, it is not even mine,” and thus come to the soul’s separation from these things and to their quiescence. This may, therefore, be an attitude of renunciation or at least of non-participation, tamasic, with a resigned and inert endurance of the natural action so long as it lasts, rajasic , with a disgust, aversion and recoil from it, sattwic, with a luminous intelligence of the soul’s separateness and the peace and joy of aloofness and repose; but also it may be attended by an equal and impersonal delight as of a spectator at a show, joyous but unattached and ready to rise up at any moment and as joyfully depart. The attitude of the Witness at its highest is the absolute of unattachment and freedom from affection by the phenomena of the cosmic existence." CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-431-432, "There is no loss of freedom, no descent into an ignorant attachment. The man free in his soul is aware that the Divine is the lord of the action of Nature, that Maya is His Knowledge-Will determining and effecting all, that Force is the Will side of this double divine Power in which knowledge is always present and effectual. He is aware of himself also, even individually, as a centre of the divine existence, — a portion of the Lord, the Gita expresses it, — controlling so far the action of Nature which he views, upholds, sanctions, enjoys, knows and by the determinative power of knowledge controls. And when he universalises himself, his knowledge still reflects only the divine knowledge, his will effectuates only the divine will, he enjoys only the divine delight and not an ignorant personal satisfaction. Thus the Purusha preserves its freedom in its possession, renunciation of limited personality even in its representative enjoyment and delight of cosmic being. It has taken up fully in the higher poise the true relations of the soul and Nature." CWSA-23/The Synhesis of Yoga/p-434-435 The Transformation of Nature: "But all this change means a total passing from the lower human to the higher divine nature. It is a lifting of our whole being or at least of the whole mental being that wills, knows and feels beyond what we are into some highest spiritual consciousness, some satisfying fullest power of existence, some deepest widest delight of the spirit. And this may well be possible by a transcendence of our present natural life, it may well be possible in some celestial state beyond the earthly existence or still beyond in a supracosmic superconscience; it may happen by transition to an absolute and infinite power and status of the Spirit. But while we are here in the body, here in life, here in action, what in this change becomes of the lower nature ? For at present all our activities are determined in their trend and shape by the nature, and this Nature here is the nature of the three gunas, and in all natural being and in all natural activities there is the triple guna, tamas with its ignorance and inertia, rajas with its kinesis and action, its passion and grief and perversion, sattwa with its light and happiness, and the bondage of these things. And granted that the soul becomes superior in the self to the three gunas , how does it escape in its instrumental nature from their working and result and bondage? For even the man of knowledge, says the Gita, must act according to his nature . (The Gita-18.40) To feel and bear the reactions of the gunas in the outer manifestation, but to be free from them and superior in the observing conscious self behind is not sufficient ; for it leaves still a dualism of freedom and subjection, a contradiction between what we are within and what we are without, between our self and our power, what we know ourselves to be and what we will and do. Where is the release here, where the full elevation and transformation to the higher spiritual nature, the immortal Dharma , the law proper to the infinite purity and power of a divine being? If this change cannot be effected while in the body, then so it must be said, that the whole nature cannot be transformed and there must remain an unreconciled duality until the mortal type of existence drops off like a discarded shell from the spirit." CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-461-462, "This is the difficulty which the Gita has still to meet in order to justify works to the seeker after the Spirit. Otherwise it must say to Arjuna , “Act temporarily in this fashion, but afterwards seek the higher way of renunciation of works.” But on the contrary it has said that not the cessation of works, but renunciation of desire is the better way; it has spoken of the action of the liberated man, muktasya karma . (The Gita-4.23) It has even insisted on doing all actions, sarvani karmani, (The Gita-3.30, 12.6) kritsna-karma- krit ; (The Gita-4.18) it has said that in whatever way the perfected Yogin lives and acts, he lives and acts in God. (The Gita-6.31, 13.24) This can only be, if the nature also in its dynamics and workings becomes divine, a power imperturbable, intangible, inviolate, pure and untroubled by the reactions of the inferior Prakriti . How and by what steps is this most difficult transformation to be effected ? What is this last secret of the soul’s perfection? what the principle or the process of this transmutation of our human and earthly nature?" CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-462, "Every vital fibre has to be persuaded to accept an entire renunciation of all that hitherto represented to it its own existence. Mind has to cease to be mind and become brilliant with something beyond it. Life has to change into a thing vast and calm and intense and powerful that can no longer recognise its old blind eager narrow self of petty impulse and desire. Even the body has to submit to a mutation and be no longer the clamorous animal or the impeding clod it now is, but become instead a conscious servant and radiant instrument and living form of the spirit." CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-72-73, "The static freedom of the soul, no longer witness only and knower, is crowned by a dynamic transformation of the nature. The constant mixture, the uneven operation of the three modes acting upon each other in our three instruments ceases from its normal confused, troubled and improper action and movement. Another action becomes possible, commences, grows, culminates, a working more truly right, more luminous, natural and normal to the deepest divine interplay of Purusha and Prakriti although supernatural and supernormal to our present imperfect nature. The body conditioning the physical mind insists no longer on its tamasic inertia that repeats always the same ignorant movement: it becomes a passive field and instrument of a greater force and light, it responds to every demand of the spirit’s force, holds and supports every variety and intensity of new divine experience. Our kinetic and dynamic vital parts , our nervous and emotional and sensational and volitional being, expand in power and admit a tireless action and a blissful enjoyment of experience, but learn at the same time to stand on a foundation of wide self-possessed and self-poised calm, sublime in force, divine in rest, neither exulting and excited nor tortured by sorrow and pain, neither harried by desire and importunate impulses nor dulled by incapacity and indolence. The intelligence, the thinking, understanding and reflective mind, renounces its sattwic limitations and opens to an essential light and peace. An infinite knowledge offers to us its splendid ranges, a knowledge not made up of mental constructions, not bound by opinion and idea or dependent on a stumbling uncertain logic and the petty support of the senses, but self-sure, authentic, all-penetrating, all-comprehending; a boundless bliss and peace, not dependent on deliverance from the hampered strenuousness of creative energy and dynamic action, not constituted by a few limited felicities but self-existent and all-including, pour into ever-enlarging fields and through ever-widening and always more numerous channels to possess the nature. A higher force, bliss and knowledge from a source beyond mind and life and body seize on them to remould in a diviner image." CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-240-241, "All must be taken to a spiritual height and placed upon a spiritual basis; t he presence of an inner spiritual change and an outer transformation must be enforced upon the whole of life and not merely on a part of life; all must be accepted that is helpful towards this change or admits it, all must be rejected that is incapable or inapt or refuses to submit itself to the transforming movement. There must be no attachment to any form of things or of life, any object, any activity; all must be renounced if need be, all must be admitted that the Divine chooses as its material for the divine life. But what accepts or rejects must be neither mind nor open or camouflaged vital will of desire nor ethical sense, but the insistence of the psychic being, the command of the Divine Guide of the Yoga, the vision of the higher Self or Spirit, the illumined guidance of the Master. The way of the spirit is not a mental way; a mental rule or mental consciousness cannot be its determinant or its leader." CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-186, “This however is a stage and not the whole perfection. The existence, however comparatively large and free, is still subject to the inferior nature. The sattwic, rajasic and tamasic ego is diminished but not eliminated; or if it seems to disappear, it has only sunk in our parts of action into the universal operation of the gunas, remains involved in them and is still working in a covert, subconscient fashion and may force itself to the front at any time. The sadhaka has therefore first to keep the idea and get the realisation of a one self or spirit in all behind all these workings (universalization of Consciousness). He must be aware behind Prakriti of the one supreme and universal Purusha . He must see and feel not only that all is the self-shaping of the one Force, Prakriti or Nature, but that all her actions are those of the Divine in all, the one Godhead in all, however veiled, altered and as it were perverted — for perversion comes by a conversion into lower forms — by transmission through the ego and the gunas . This will farther diminish the open or covert insistence of the ego and, if thoroughly realised, it will make it difficult or impossible for it to assert itself in such a way as to disturb or hamper the farther progress. The ego-sense will become, so far as it interferes at all, a foreign intrusive element and only a fringe of the mist of the old ignorance hanging on to the outskirts of the consciousness and its action. And, secondly, the universal Shakti must be realised, must be seen and felt and borne in the potent purity of its higher action, its supramental and spiritual workings. This greater vision of the Shakti will enable us to escape from the control of the gunas, to convert them into their divine equivalents and dwell in a consciousness in which the Purusha and Prakriti are one and not separated or hidden in or behind each other. There the Shakti will be in its every movement evident to us and naturally, spontaneously, irresistibly felt as nothing else but the active presence of the Divine, the shape of power of the supreme Self and Spirit.” CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-763, "But at first while we still live in the mind, there is a gulf of division or else a double action. The mental, vital and physical energy in us and the universe is felt to be a derivation from the supreme Shakt i, but at the same time an inferior, separated and in some sense another working. The real spiritual force may send down its messages or the light and power of its presence above us to the lower levels or may descend occasionally and even for a time possess, but it is then mixed with the inferior workings and partially transforms and spiritualises them, but is itself diminished and altered in the process. There is an intermittent higher action or a dual working of the nature . Or we find that the Shakti for a time raises the being to a higher spiritual plane and then lowers it back into the inferior levels. These alternations must be regarded as the natural vicissitudes of a process of transformation from the normal to the spiritual being. The transformation, the perfection cannot for the integral Yoga be complete until the link between the mental and the spiritual action is formed and a higher knowledge applied to all the activities of our existence. That link is the supramental or gnostic energy in which the incalculable infinite power of the supreme being, consciousness, delight formulates itself as an ordering divine will and wisdom, a light and power in the being which shapes all the thought, will, feeling, action and replaces the corresponding individual movements. " CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-764, “Therefore, when the Mother has put her force upon you or when you yourself have pulled the force upon you, this in you has always prevented it from doing its work in its own way. It has begun itself building according to the ideas of the mind or some demand of the ego, trying to make its own creation in its “own way”, by its own strength, its own sadhana, its own tapasya. There has never been here any real surrender, any giving up of yourself freely and simply into the hands of the Divine Mother. And yet that is the only way to succeed in the supramental Yoga. To be a Yogi, a Sannyasi, a Tapaswi is not the object here. The object is transformation, and the transformation can only be done by a force infinitely greater than your own; it can only be done by being truly like a child in the hands of the Divine Mother. ” CWSA-32/The Mother with Letters on the Mother/p-143, "There are two signs of the transformation of the seeker’s mind of knowledge and works of knowledge from the process of the Ignorance to the process of a liberated consciousness working partly, then wholly in the light of the Spirit. (1) There is first a central change of the consciousness and a growing direct experience, vision, feeling of the Supreme and the cosmic existence, the Divine in itself and the Divine in all things; the mind will be taken up into a growing preoccupation with this first and foremost and will feel itself heightening, widening into a more and more illumined means of expression of the one fundamental knowledge. (2) But also the central Consciousness in its turn will take up more and more the outer mental activities of knowledge and turn them into a parcel of itself or an annexed province; it will infuse into them its more authentic movement and make a more and more spiritualised and illumined mind its instrument in these surface fields, its new conquests, as well as in its own deeper spiritual empire. And this will be the second sign, the sign of a certain completion and perfection, that the Divine himself has become the Knower and all the inner movements, including the activities of what was once a purely human mental action, have become his field of knowledge. There will be less and less individual choice, opinion, preference, less and less of intellectualisation, mental weaving, cerebral galley-slave labour; a Light within will see all that has to be seen, know all that has to be known, develop, create, organise. It will be the Inner Knower who will do in the liberated and universalised mind of the individual the works of an all-comprehending knowledge... These two changes are the signs of a first effectuation in which the activities of the mental nature are lifted up, spiritualised, widened, universalised, liberated, led to a consciousness of their true purpose as an instrumentation of the Divine creating and developing its manifestation in the temporal universe. But this cannot be the whole scope of the transformation ; for it is not in these limits that the integral seeker can cease from his ascension or confine the widening of his nature. For, if it were so, knowledge would still remain a working of the mind, liberated, universalised, spiritualised, but still, as all mind must be, comparatively restricted, relative, imperfect in the very essence of its dynamism; it would reflect luminously great constructions of Truth, but not move in the domain where Truth is authentic, direct, sovereign and native. There is an ascension still to be made from this height, by which the spiritualised mind will exceed itself and transmute into a supramental power of knowledge. Already in the process of spiritualisation it will have begun to pass out of the brilliant poverty of the human intellect; it will mount successively into the pure broad reaches of a higher mind, and next into the gleaming belts of a still greater free Intelligence illumined with a Light from above. At this point it will begin to feel more freely, admit with a less mixed response the radiant beginnings of an Intuition, not illumined, but luminous in itself, true in itself, no longer entirely mental and therefore subjected to the abundant intrusion of error. Here too is not an end, for it must rise beyond into the very domain of that untruncated Intuition, the first direct light from the self-awareness of essential Being and, beyond it, attain that from which this light comes. For there is an Overmind behind Mind, a Power more original and dynamic which supports Mind, sees it as a diminished radiation from itself, uses it as a transmitting belt of passage downward or an instrument for the creations of the Ignorance. The last step of the ascension would be the surpassing of Overmind itself or its return into its own still greater origin, its conversion into the supramental light of the Divine Gnosis. For there in the supramental Light is the seat of a divine Truth-consciousness that has native in it, as no other consciousness below it can have, the power to organise the works of a Truth which is no longer tarnished by the shadow of the cosmic Inconscience and Ignorance. There to reach and thence to bring down a supramental dynamism that can transform the Ignorance is the distant but imperative supreme goal of the integral Yoga." CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-147-148 14/ Chapter 14. The Three Gunas Summary or A Brief Restatement: In this 14th chapter and succeeding chapters, the Lord gave an elaborate description of three gunas . In Savitri, book-2, Canto-10, we find an elaborate description of the three gunas. Here also, the Lord hinted about the higher Nature beyond the three gunas . What are the hierarchies beyond the three gunas that are vividly described in integral Yoga. In The Synthesis Yoga book, we notice four hierarchies the of mind of Ignorance, the self-forgetful mind, mind of knowledge and the Supermind. In The Life Divine, they are hinted as purified Intellect, higher mind, illumined mind, Intuitive mind, overmind and Supermind. "The distinctions between the Soul and Nature rapidly drawn in the verses of the thirteenth chapter by a few decisive epithets, a few brief but packed characterisations of their separate power and functioning, and especially the distinction between the embodied soul subjected to the action of Nature by its enjoyment of her gunas, qualities or modes and the Supreme Soul which dwells enjoying the gunas , but not subject because it is itself beyond them, are the basis on which the Gita rests its whole idea of the liberated being made one in the conscious law of its existence with the Divine. That liberation, that oneness, that putting on of the divine nature, sadharmya , it declares to be the very essence of spiritual freedom and the whole significance of immortality. This supreme importance assigned to sadharmya is a capital point in the teaching of the Gita. " CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p- 421 Perfection of Karma Yoga, Sadharmya: " And this great thing, (grow into the likeness of the Divine) to rise from the human into the divine nature, we can only do by an effort of Godward knowledge, will and adoration. For the soul sent forth by the Supreme as his eternal portion, his immortal representative into the workings of universal Nature is yet obliged by the character of those workings, avasam prakriter vasat , (The Gita-9.8) to identify itself in its external consciousness with her limiting conditions, to identify itself with a life, mind and body that are oblivious of their inner spiritual reality and of the innate Godhead. To get back to self-knowledge and to the knowledge of the real as distinct from the apparent relations of the soul with Nature, to know God and ourselves and the world with a spiritual and no longer with a physical or externalised experience, through the deepest truth of the inner soul-consciousness and not through the misleading phenomenal significances of the sense-mind and the outward understanding, is an indispensable means of this perfection. Perfection cannot come without self-knowledge and God-knowledge and a spiritual attitude towards our natural existence, and that is why the ancient wisdom laid so much stress on salvation by knowledge , not an intellectual cognizance of things, but a growing of man the mental being into a greater spiritual consciousness. The soul’s salvation cannot come without the soul’s perfection , without its growing into the divine nature; the impartial Godhead will not effect it for us by an act of caprice or an arbitrary sanad of his favour. Divine works are effective for salvation because they lead us towards this perfection and to a knowledge of self and nature and God by a growing unity with the inner Master of our existence. Divine love is effective because by it we grow into the likeness of the sole and supreme object of our adoration and call down the answering love of the Highest to flood us with the light of his knowledge and the uplifting power and purity of his eternal spirit. Therefore, says the Gita , this is the supreme knowledge and the highest of all knowings because it leads to the highest perfection and spiritual status, param siddhim , (The Gita-14.1) and brings the soul to likeness with the Divine, sadharmya . It is the eternal wisdom, the great spiritual experience by which all the sages attained to that highest perfection, grew into one law of being with the Supreme and live for ever in his eternity, not born in the creation, not troubled by the anguish of the universal dissolution. This perfection, then, this sadharmya is the way of immortality and the indispensable condition without which the soul cannot consciously live in the Eternal." CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-423-424, "Essentially then, this divine self-perfection is a conversion of the human into a likeness of and a fundamental oneness with the divine nature , a rapid shaping of the image of God in man and filling in of its ideal outlines. It is what is ordinarily termed sadrisya-mukti , a liberation into the divine resemblance out of the bondage of the human seeming, or, to use the expression of the Gita , sadharmya-gati, (The Gita-14.2) a coming to be one in law of being with the supreme, universal and indwelling Divine. To perceive and have a right view of our way to such a transformation we must form some sufficient working idea of the complex thing that this human nature at present is in the confused interminglings of its various principles, so that we may see the precise nature of the conversion each part of it must undergo and the most effective means for the conversion. How to disengage from this knot of thinking mortal matter the Immortal it contains, from this mentalised vital animal man the happy fullness of his submerged hints of Godhead, is the real problem of a human being and living. Life develops many first hints of the divinity without completely disengaging them; Yoga is the unravelling of the knot of Life’s difficulty." CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-623 Mahad Brahman: "The soul of man could not grow into the likeness of the Divine, if it were not in its secret essence imperishably one with the Divine and part and parcel of his divinity: it could not be or become immortal if it were merely a creature of mental, vital and physical Nature. All existence is a manifestation of the divine Existence and that which is within us is spirit of the eternal Spirit. We have come indeed into the lower material nature and are under its influence, but we have come there from the supreme spiritual nature: this inferior imperfect status is our apparent, but that our real being. The Eternal puts all this movement forth as his self-creation. He is at once the Father and Mother of the universe; the substance of the infinite Idea, vijnana, the Mahad Brahman , (The Gita-14.3) is the womb into which he casts the seed of his self-conception. As the Over-Soul he casts the seed; as the Mother, the Nature-Soul, the Energy filled with his conscious power, he receives it into this infinite substance of being made pregnant with his illimitable, yet self-limiting Idea. He receives into this Vast of self-conception and develops there the divine embryo into mental and physical form of existence born from the original act of conceptive creation. All we see springs from that act of creation; but that which is born here is only finite idea and form of the unborn and infinite. The Spirit is eternal and superior to all its manifestation : Nature, eternal without beginning in the Spirit, proceeds for ever with the rhythm of the cycles by unending act of creation and unconcluding act of cessation; the Soul too which takes on this or that form in Nature, is no less eternal than she, anadı ubhav api . (The Gita-13.20) Even while in Nature it follows the unceasing round of the cycles, it is, in the Eternal from which it proceeds into them, for ever raised above the terms of birth and death, and even in its apparent consciousness here it can become aware of that innate and constant transcendence." CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-424-425 The Three Gunas : "But, again, the whole qualitative action of Nature, so infinitely intricate in its detail and variety, is figured as cast into the mould of three general modes of quality everywhere present, intertwined, almost inextricable, sattva, rajas, tamas . These modes are described in the Gita only by their psychological action in man, or incidentally in things such as food according as they produce a psychological or vital effect on human beings. If we look for a more general definition, we shall perhaps catch a glimpse of it in the symbolic idea of Indian religion which attributes each of these qualities respectively to one member of the cosmic Trinity, sattwa to the preserver Vishnu , rajas to the creator Brahma, tamas to the destroyer Rudra . Looking behind this idea for the rationale of the triple ascription, we might define the three modes or qualities in terms of the motion of the universal Energy as Nature’s three concomitant and inseparable powers of equilibrium, kinesis and inertia. But that is only their appearance in terms of the external action of Force. It is otherwise if we regard consciousness and force as twin terms of the one Existence, always coexistent in the reality of being, however in the primal outward phenomenon of material Nature light of consciousness may seem to disappear in a vast action of nescient unillumined energy, while at an opposite pole of spiritual quiescence action of force may seem to disappear in the stillness of the observing or witness consciousness. These two conditions are the two extremes of an apparently separated Purusha and Prakriti, but each at its extreme point does not abolish but at the most only conceals its eternal mate in the depths of its own characteristic way of being. Therefore, since consciousness is always there even in an apparently inconscient Force, we must find a corresponding psychological power of these three modes which informs their more outward executive action. On their psychological side the three qualities may be defined, tamas as Nature’s power of nescience, rajas as her power of active seeking ignorance enlightened by desire and impulsion, sattwa as her power of possessing and harmonising knowledge... The three qualitative modes of Nature are inextricably intertwined in all cosmic existence. Tamas, the principle of inertia, is a passive and inert nescience which suffers all shocks and contacts without any effort of mastering response and by itself would lead to a disintegration of the whole action of the energy and a radical dispersion of substance. But it is driven by the kinetic power of rajas and even in the nescience of Matter is met and embraced by an innate though unpossessed preserving principle of harmony and balance and knowledge. Material energy appears to be tamasic in its basic action, jada, nescient, mechanic and in movement disintegrative. But it is dominated by a huge force and impulsion of mute rajasic kinesis which drives it, even in and even by its dispersion and disintegration, to build and create and again by a sattwic ideative element in its apparently inconscient force which is always imposing a harmony and preservative order on the two opposite tendencies. Rajas , the principle of creative endeavour and motion and impulsion in Prakriti, kinesis, pravritti, so seen in Matter, appears more evidently as a conscious or half-conscious passion of seeking and desire and action in the dominant character of Life, — for that passion is the nature of all vital existence. And it would lead by itself in its own nature to a persistent but always mutable and unstable life and activity and creation without any settled result. But met on one side by the disintegrating power of tamas with death and decay and inertia, its ignorant action is on the other side of its functioning settled and harmonised and sustained by the power of sattwa , subconscient in the lower forms of life, more and more conscient in the emergence of mentality, most conscious in the effort of the evolved intelligence figuring as will and reason in the fully developed mental being. Sattwa , the principle of understanding knowledge and of according assimilation, measure and equilibrium, which by itself would lead only to some lasting concord of fixed and luminous harmonies, is in the motions of this world impelled to follow the mutable strife and action of the eternal kinesis and constantly overpowered or hedged in by the forces of inertia and nescience. This is the appearance of a world governed by the interlocked and mutually limited play of the three qualitative modes of Nature." CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-426-428, "For Purusha veils himself in this round, veils his divine and immortal being in ignorance and is subject to the law of an insistent limiting Prakriti. That law is the compelling rule of the three gunas . It is a triple stair that stumbles upward towards the divine light but cannot reach it. At its base is the law or dharma of inertia : the tamasic man inertly obeys in a customary mechanical action the suggestions and impulses, the round of will of his material and his half-intellectualised vital and sensational nature. In the middle intervenes the kinetic law or dharma; the rajasic man, vital, dynamic, active, attempts to impose himself on his world and environment, but only increases the wounding weight and tyrant yoke of his turbulent passions, desires and egoisms, the burden of his restless self-will, the yoke of his rajasic nature. At the top presses down upon life the harmonic regulative law or dharma; the sattwic man attempts to erect and follow his limited personal standards of reasoning knowledge, enlightened utility or mechanised virtue, his religions and philosophies and ethical formulas, mental systems and constructions, fixed channels of idea and conduct which do not agree with the totality of the meaning of life and are constantly being broken in the movement of the wider universal purpose. The dharma of the sattwic man is the highest in the circle of the gunas; but that too is a limited view and a dwarfed standard. Its imperfect indications lead to a petty and relative perfection; temporarily satisfying to the enlightened personal ego, it is not founded either on the whole truth of the self or on the whole truth of Nature. (Soul slaying truth)" CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-544 Freedom from Lower Nature: "The spirit within, when we turn to it, illumines the entire field of Nature with its own truth in all the splendour of its rays. In the light of that sun of knowledge the eye of knowledge opens in us and we live in that truth and no longer in this ignorance. Then we perceive that our limitation to our present mental and physical nature was an error of the darkness, then we are liberated from the law of the lower Prakriti, the law of the mind and body, then we attain to the supreme nature of the spirit. That splendid and lofty change is the last, the divine and infinite becoming, the putting off of mortal nature, the putting on of an immortal existence." CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-420, "But to arrive here at this greater spiritual immortality the embodied soul must cease to live according to the law of the lower nature ; it must put on the law of the Divine’s supreme way of existence which is in fact the real law of its own eternal essence. In the spiritual evolution of its becoming, no less than in its secret original being, it must grow into the likeness of the Divine." 422-423 "To see that the modes of Nature are the whole agency and cause of our works and to know and turn to that which is supreme above the gunas , is the way to rise above the lower nature . Only so can we attain to the movement and status of the Divine, madbhava , by which free from subjection to birth and death and their concomitants, decay, old age and suffering, the liberated soul shall enjoy in the end immortality and all that is eternal." CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-432, "The world for the Gita is real, a creation of the Lord, a power of the Eternal, a manifestation from the Parabrahman, and even this lower nature of the triple Maya is a derivation from the supreme divine Nature." CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-440, " It is by knowing him at once in the Akshara and the Kshara , it is by knowing him as the Unborn who partially manifests himself in all birth and even himself descends as the constant Avatar, it is by knowing him in his entirety, samagram mam , that the soul is easily released from the appearances of the lower Nature and returns by a vast sudden growth and broad immeasurable ascension into the divine being and supreme Nature." CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-441, "To ascend into the divine nature, we have been told, one must first fix oneself in a perfect spiritual equality and rise above the lower nature of the three gunas . Thus transcending the lower Prakriti we fix ourselves in the impersonality, the imperturbable superiority to all action, the purity from all definition and limitation by quality which is one side of the manifested nature of the Purushottama , his manifestation as the eternity and unity of the self, the Akshara ." CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-442 Sattwa: "The Gita applies this generalised analysis of the universal Energy to the psychological nature of man in relation to his bondage to Prakriti and the realisation of spiritual freedom. Sattwa , it tells us, is by the purity of its quality a cause of light and illumination and by virtue of that purity it produces no disease or morbidity or suffering in the nature. When into all the doors in the body there comes a flooding of light, as if the doors and windows of a closed house were opened to sunshine, a light of understanding, perception and knowledge, when the intelligence is alert and illumined, the senses quickened, the whole mentality satisfied and full of brightness and the nervous being calmed and filled with an illumined ease and clarity, prasada , one should understand that there has been a great increase and uprising of the sattwic guna in the nature. For knowledge and a harmonious ease and pleasure and happiness are the characteristic results of sattwa . The pleasure that is sattwic is not only that contentment which an inner clarity of satisfied will and intelligence brings with it, but all delight and content produced by the soul’s possession of itself in light or by an accord or an adequate and truthful adjustment between the regarding soul and the surrounding Nature and her offered objects of desire and perception." CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-428-429 Rajas: " Rajas , again, the Gita tells us, has for its essence attraction of liking and longing. Rajas is a child of the attachment of the soul to the desire of objects ; it is born from the nature’s thirst for an unpossessed satisfaction. It is therefore full of unrest and fever and lust and greed and excitement, a thing of seeking impulsions, and all this mounts in us when the middle guna increases. It is the force of desire which motives all ordinary personal initiative of action and all that movement of stir and seeking and propulsion in our nature which is the impetus towards action and works, pravritti. Rajas , then, is evidently the kinetic force in the modes of Nature. Its fruit is the lust of action, but also grief, pain, all kinds of suffering; for it has no right possession of its object — desire in fact implies non-possession — and even its pleasure of acquired possession is troubled and unstable because it has not clear knowledge and does not know how to possess nor can it find the secret of accord and right enjoyment. All the ignorant and passionate seeking of life belongs to the rajasic mode of Nature." CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-429 Tamas: "Tamas , finally, is born of inertia and ignorance and its fruit too is inertia and ignorance. It is the darkness of tamas which obscures knowledge and causes all confusion and delusion. Therefore it is the opposite of sattwa , for the essence of sattwa is enlightenment, prakasa, and the essence of tamas is absence of light, nescience, aprakasa . But tamas brings incapacity and negligence of action as well as the incapacity and negligence of error, inattention and misunderstanding or non-understanding; indolence, languor and sleep belong to this guna . Therefore it is the opposite too of rajas ; for the essence of rajas is movement and impulsion and kinesis, pravritti , but the essence of tamas is inertia, apravrtti. Tamas is inertia of nescience and inertia of inaction, a double negative." CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-429-430 Above the three Gunas : "But what, asks Arjuna , are the signs of such a man, what his action and how is he said even in action to be above the three gunas? The sign, says Krishna , is that equality of which I have so constantly spoken; the sign is that inwardly he regards happiness and suffering alike, gold and mud and stone as of equal value and that to him the pleasant and the unpleasant, praise and blame, honour and insult, the faction of his friends and the faction of his enemies are equal things. He is steadfast in a wise imperturbable and immutable inner calm and quietude. He initiates no action, but leaves all works to be done by the gunas of Nature. Sattwa, rajas or tamas may rise or cease in his outer mentality and his physical movements with their results of enlightenment, of impulsion to works or of inaction and the clouding over of the mental and nervous being, but he does not rejoice when this comes or that ceases, nor on the other hand does he abhor or shrink from the operation or the cessation of these things. He has seated himself in the conscious light of another principle than the nature of the gunas and that greater consciousness remains steadfast in him, above these powers and unshaken by their motions like the sun above clouds to one who has risen into a higher atmosphere. He from that height sees that it is the gunas that are in process of action and that their storm and calm are not himself but only a movement of Prakriti; his self is immovable above and his spirit does not participate in that shifting mutability of things unstable. This is the impersonality of the Brahmic status; for that higher principle, that greater wide high-seated consciousness, kutastha , is the immutable Brahman ." CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-432-433, "A radically different movement has to draw us back from the gunas and lift us above them. The error that accepts the action of the modes of Nature must cease; for as long as it is accepted, the soul is involved in their operations and subjected to their law. Sattwa must be transcended as well as rajas and tamas; the golden chain must be broken no less than the leaden fetters and the bond-ornaments of a mixed alloy . The Gita prescribes to this end a new method of self-discipline. It is to stand back in oneself from the action of the modes and observe this unsteady flux as the Witness seated above the surge of the forces of Nature. He is one who watches but is impartial and indifferent, aloof from them on their own level and in his native posture high above them. As they rise and fall in their waves, the Witness looks, observes, but neither accepts nor for the moment interferes with their course. First there must be the freedom of the impersonal Witness; afterwards there can be the control of the Master, the Ishwara ." CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-238, The Synthesis of Yoga book proposes another method in addition to the Gita’s method by which one can go beyond three gunas . “There is nothing to be done with this fickle, restless, violent and disturbing factor but to get rid of it (physical mind) whether (1) by detaching it and then reducing it to stillness or (2) by giving a concentration and singleness to the thought by which it will of itself reject this alien and confusing element.’ CWSA/23/The Synthesis of Yoga-314, “Tamas in the spiritual being becomes a divine calm, which is not an inertia and incapacity of action, but a perfect power, sakti, holding in itself all its capacity and capable of controlling and subjecting to the law of calm even the most stupendous and enormous activity: rajas becomes a self-effecting initiating sheer Will of the spirit, which is not desire, endeavour, striving passion, but the same perfect power of being, sakti , capable of an infinite, imperturbable and blissful action. Sattwa becomes not the modified mental light, prakasa , but the self-existent light of the divine being, jyotih , which is the soul of the perfect power of being and illumines in their unity the divine quietude and the divine will of action.” CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-689, “This process (of Spiritual transformation) may be rapid or tardy according to the amount of obscurity and resistance still left in the nature, but it goes on unfalteringly so long as it is not complete. As a final result the whole conscious being is made perfectly apt for spiritual experience of every kind, turned towards spiritual truth of thought, feeling, sense, action, tuned to the right responses, delivered from the darkness and stubbornness of the tamasic inertia, the turbidities and turbulences and impurities of the rajasic passion and restless unharmonised kinetism, the enlightened rigidities and sattwic limitations or poised balancements of constructed equilibrium which are the character of the Ignorance.” CWSA-22/The Life Divine/p-941, Sattwa , the Mediator: "We see then that action is possible without the subjection of the soul to the normal degraded functioning of the modes of Nature. That functioning depends on the mental, vital and physical limitation into which we are cast; it is a deformation, an incapacity, a wrong or depressed value imposed on us by the mind and life in matter. When we grow into the spirit, this dharma or inferior law of Nature is replaced by the immortal dharma of the spirit; there is the experience of a free immortal action, a divine illimitable knowledge, a transcendent power, an unfathomable repose. But still there remains the question of the transition; for there must be a transition, a proceeding by steps, since nothing in God’s workings in this world is done by an abrupt action without procedure or basis. We have the thing we seek in us, but we have in practice to evolve it out of the inferior forms of our nature.4 Therefore in the action of the modes itself there must be some means, some leverage, some point d’appui, by which we can effect this transformation. The Gita finds it in the full development of the sattwic guna till that in its potent expansion reaches a point at which it can go beyond itself and disappear into its source. The reason is evident, because sattwa is a power of light and happiness, a force that makes for calm and knowledge, and at its highest point it can arrive at a certain reflection, almost a mental identity with the spiritual light and bliss from which it derives. The other two gunas cannot get this transformation, rajas into the divine kinetic will or tamas into the divine repose and calm, without the intervention of the sattwic power in Nature. The principle of inertia will always remain an inert inaction of power or an incapacity of knowledge until its ignorance disappears in illumination and its torpid incapacity is lost in the light and force of the omnipotent divine will of repose. Then only can we have the supreme calm. Therefore tamas must be dominated by sattwa . The principle of rajas for the same reason must remain always a restless, troubled, feverish or unhappy working because it has not right knowledge; its native movement is a wrong and perverse action, perverse through ignorance. Our will must purify itself by knowledge; it must get more and more to a right and luminously informed action before it can be converted into the divine kinetic will. That again means the necessity of the intervention of sattwa . The sattwic quality is a first mediator between the higher and the lower nature. It must indeed at a certain point transform or escape from itself and break up and dissolve into its source; its conditioned derivative seeking light and carefully constructed action must change into the free direct dynamics and spontaneous light of the spirit. But meanwhile a high increase of sattwic power delivers us largely from the tamasic and the rajasic disqualification; and its own disqualification, once we are not pulled too much downward by rajas and tamas , can be surmounted with a greater ease. To develop sattwa till it becomes full of spiritual light and calm and happiness is the first condition of this preparatory discipline of the nature." CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-467-469, " Buddhi is really an intermediary between a much higher Truth-mind not now in our active possession, which is the direct instrument of Spirit, and the physical life of the human mind evolved in body. Its powers of intelligence and will are drawn from this greater direct Truth-mind or supermind. Buddhi centres its mental action round the ego-idea, the idea that I am this mind, life and body or am a mental being determined by their action. It serves this ego-idea whether limited by what we call egoism or extended by sympathy with the life around us. An ego-sense is created which reposes on the separative action of the body, of the individualised life, of the mind-responses, and the ego-idea in the buddhi centralises the whole action of this ego’s thought, character, personality. The lower understanding and the intermediary reason are instruments of its desire of experience and self-enlargement. But when the highest reason and will develop, we can turn towards that which these outward things mean to the higher spiritual consciousness. The “I” can then be seen as a mental reflection of the Self, the Spirit, the Divine, the one existence transcendent, universal, individual in its multiplicity; the consciousness in which these things meet, become aspects of one being and assume their right relations, can then be unveiled out of all these physical and mental coverings. When the transition to supermind takes place, the powers of the Buddhi do not perish, but have all to be converted to their supramental values. But the consideration of the supermind and the conversion of the buddhi belongs to the question of the higher siddhi or divine perfection. At present we have to consider the purification of the normal being of man, preparatory to any such conversion, which leads to the liberation from the bonds of our lower nature." CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-652-653, Bhakti , a passage to Purushottama Consciousness: " But still there is evidently here a double status , there is a scission of the being between two opposites; (1) a liberated spirit in the immutable Self or (2) Brahman watches the action of an unliberated mutable Nature, — (1) Akshara and (2) Kshara. Is there no greater status, no principle of more absolute perfection, or is this division the highest consciousness possible in the body, and is the end of Yoga to drop the mutable nature and the gunas born of the embodiment in Nature and disappear into the impersonality and everlasting peace of the Brahman ? Is that laya or dissolution of the individual Purusha the greatest liberation? There is, it would seem, something else; for the Gita says at the close, always returning to this one final note, “He also who loves and strives after Me with an undeviating love and adoration, passes beyond the three gunas and he too is prepared for becoming the Brahman .” (The Gita-14.26) This “I” is the Purushottama who is the foundation of the silent Brahman and of immortality and imperishable spiritual existence and of the eternal dharma and of an utter bliss of happiness. There is a status then which is greater than the peace of the Akshara as it watches unmoved the strife of the gunas . There is a highest spiritual experience and foundation above the immutability of the Brahman , there is an eternal dharma greater than the rajasic impulsion to works, pravritti , there is an absolute delight which is untouched by rajasic suffering and beyond the sattwic happiness, and these things are found and possessed by dwelling in the being and power of the Purushottama . But since it is acquired by bhakti, its status must be that divine delight, Ananda , in which is experienced (1) the union of utter love (niratisayapremaspadatvam anandatattvam ) and (2) possessing oneness, the crown of bhakti . And (3) to rise into that Ananda , into that imperishable oneness must be the completion of spiritual perfection and the fulfilment of the eternal immortalising dharma ." CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-433-434 Supramental Action on Three Gunas : "And so too beyond the inferior light and happiness of that purest quality of Nature, Sattwa, the power that makes for assimilation and equivalence, right knowledge and right dealing, fine harmony, firm balance, right law of action, right possession and brings so full a satisfaction to the mind, beyond this highest thing in the normal nature, admirable in itself so far as it goes and while it can be maintained, but precarious, secured by limitation, dependent on rule and condition, there is at its high and distant source a greater light and bliss free in the free spirit. That is not limited nor dependent on limitation or rule or condition but self-existent and unalterable, not the result of this or that harmony amid the discords of our nature but the fount of harmony and able to create whatever harmony it will. That is a luminous spiritual and in its native action a direct supramental force of knowledge , jyotih , not our modified and derivative mental light, prakasa . That is the light and bliss of widest self-existence, spontaneous self-knowledge, intimate universal identity, deepest self-interchange, not of acquisition, assimilation, adjustment and laboured equivalence. That light is full of a luminous spiritual will and there is no gulf or disparateness between its knowledge and its action. That delight is not our paler mental happiness, sukham , but a profound concentrated intense self-existent bliss extended to all that our being does, envisages, creates, a fixed divine rapture, Ananda . The liberated soul participates more and more profoundly in this light and bliss and grows the more perfectly into it, the more integrally it unites itself with the Divine. And while among the gunas of the lower Nature there is a necessary disequilibrium, a shifting inconstancy of measures and a perpetual struggle for domination, the greater light and bliss, calm, will of kinesis of the Spirit do not exclude each other , are not at war, are not even merely in equilibrium, but each an aspect of the two others and in their fullness all are inseparable and one . Our mind when it approaches the Divine may seem to enter into one to the exclusion of another, may appear for instance to achieve calm to the exclusion of kinesis of action, but that is because we approach him first through the selecting spirit in the mind. Afterwards when we are able to rise above even the spiritual mind, we can see that each divine power contains all the rest and can get rid of this initial error ." CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p- 466-467 14/ Chapter 14. The Three Gunas Intermediate Self-forgetful Knowledge beyond the three Gunas : "The movement of the Ignorance is egoistic at its core and nothing is more difficult for us than to get rid of egoism while yet we admit personality and adhere to action in the half-light and half-force of our unfinished nature. It is easier to starve the ego by renouncing the impulse to act or to kill it by cutting away from us all movement of personality. It is easier to exalt it into self-forgetfulness immersed in a trance of peace or an ecstasy of divine Love. But our more difficult problem is to liberate the true Person and attain to a divine manhood which shall be the pure vessel of a divine force and the perfect instrument of a divine action. Step after step has to be firmly taken; difficulty after difficulty has to be entirely experienced and entirely mastered. Only the Divine Wisdom and Power can do this for us and it will do all if we yield to it in an entire faith and follow and assent to its workings with a constant courage and patience." CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-247, "Matter or body itself is a limiting form of substance of spirit in which life and mind and spirit are involved, self-hidden, self-forgetful by absorption in their own externalising action, but bound to emerge from it by a self-compelling evolution. But matter too is capable of refining to subtler forms of substance in which it becomes more apparently a formal density of life, of mind, of spirit. Man himself has, besides this gross material body, an encasing vital sheath, a mental body, a body of bliss and gnosis. But all matter, all body contains within it the secret powers of these higher principles; matter is a formation of life that has no real existence apart from the informing universal spirit which gives it its energy and substance." CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-626-627, "But in the ascent of the human consciousness through the uplifting and transmuting evolutionary — that is to say, (1) self-unveiling, (2) self-developing, (3) progressively self-perfecting — process of Yoga, we have to take account of three successive conditions all of which have to be overpassed before we are able to move on (4 ) the highest levels. The first condition of our consciousness, that in which we now move, is this mind of ignorance that has arisen out of the inconscience and nescience of material Nature, — ignorant but capable of seeking for knowledge and finding it at least in a series of mental representations which may be made clues to the true truth and, more and more refined and illuminated and rendered transparent by the influence, the infiltration and the descent of the light from above, prepare the intelligence for opening to the capacity of true knowledge. All truth is to this mind a thing it originally had not and has had to acquire or has still to acquire, a thing external to it and to be gathered by experience or by following certain ascertained methods and rules of enquiry, calculation, application of discovered law, interpretation of signs and indices. Its very knowledge implies an antecedent nescience; it is the instrument of Avidya." CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-887, " The second condition of consciousness is potential only to the human being and gained by an inner enlightening and transformation of the mind of ignorance; it is that in which the mind seeks for its source of knowledge rather within than without and becomes to its own feeling and self-experience, by whatever means, a mind, not of original ignorance, but of self-forgetful knowledge. This mind is conscious that the knowledge of all things is hidden within it or at least somewhere in the being, but as if veiled and forgotten, and the knowledge comes to it not as a thing acquired from outside, but always secretly there and now remembered and known at once to be true, — each thing in its own place, degree, manner and measure. This is its attitude to knowledge even when the occasion of knowing is some external experience, sign or indication, because that is to it only the occasion and its reliance for the truth of the knowledge is not on the external indication or evidence but on the inner confirming witness. The true mind is the universal within us and the individual is only a projection on the surface, and therefore this second state of consciousness we have either when the individual mind goes more and more inward and is always consciously or subconsciously near and sensitive to the touches of the universal mentality in which all is contained, received, capable of being made manifest, or, still more powerfully, when we live in the consciousness of universal mind with the personal mentality only as a projection, a marking board or a communicating switch on the surface." CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-887-888, " The third state of consciousness is that of the mind of knowledge in which all things and all truths are perceived and experienced as already present and known and immediately available by merely turning the inner light upon it, as when one turns the eye upon things in a room already known and familiar, — though not always present to the vision because that is not attentive, — and notes them as objects of a pre-existent knowledge. The difference from the second self-forgetful state of consciousness is that there is here no effort or seeking needed but simply a turning or opening of the inner light on whatever field of knowledge, and therefore it is not a recalling of things forgotten and self-hidden from the mind, but a luminous presentation of things already present, ready and available. This last condition (the fourth state of Consciousness) is only possible by a partial supramentalising of the intuitive mentality and its full openness to any and every communication from the supramental ranges. This mind of knowledge is in its essentiality a power of potential omnipotence, but in its actual working on the level of mind it is limited in its range and province. The character of limitation applies to the supermind itself when it descends into the mental level and works in the lesser substance of mentality, though in its own manner and body of power and light, and it persists even in the action of the supramental reason. It is only the higher supramental Shakti acting on its own ranges whose will and knowledge work always in a boundless light or with a free capacity of illimitable extension of knowledge subject only to such limitations as are self-imposed for its own purposes and at its own will by the spirit." CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p- 888-889, "The coming of the intimations of the subliminal self to the surface and the activity of the psychical consciousness tend to turn the mind of ignorance, with which we begin, increasingly though not perfectly into a mind of self-forgetful knowledge constantly illuminated with intimations and upsurgings from the inner being, antaratman , rays from the still concealed awareness of its whole self and infinite contents and from the awareness — representing itself here as a sort of memory, a recalling or a bringing out — of an inherent and permanent but hidden knowledge of past, present and future that is always carried within itself by the eternal spirit. But embodied as we are and founded on the physical consciousness, the mind of ignorance still persists as a conditioning environment, an intervening power and limiting habitual force obstructing and mixing with the new formation or, even in moments of large illumination, at once a boundary wall and a strong substratum, and it imposes its incapacities and errors. And to remedy this persistence the first necessity would seem to be the development of the power of a luminous intuitive intelligence seeing the truth of time and its happenings as well as all other truth by intuitive thought and sense and vision and detecting and extruding by its native light of discernment the intrusions of misprision and error... All intuitive knowledge comes more or less directly from the light of the self-aware spirit entering into the mind, the spirit concealed behind mind and conscious of all in itself and in all its selves, omniscient and capable of illumining the ignorant or the self-forgetful mind whether by rare or constant flashes or by a steady instreaming light, out of its omniscience. This all includes all that was, is or will be in time and this omniscience is not limited, impeded or baffled by our mental division of the three times (present, past and future) and the idea and experience of a dead and no longer existent and ill-remembered or forgotten past and a not yet existent and therefore unknowable future which is so imperative for the mind in the ignorance. Accordingly the growth of the intuitive mind can bring with it the capacity of a time knowledge which comes to it not from outside indices, but from within the universal soul of things, its eternal memory of the past, its unlimited holding of things present and its prevision or, as it has been paradoxically but suggestively called, its memory of the future. But this capacity works at first sporadically and uncertainly and not in an organised manner. As the force of intuitive knowledge grows, it becomes more possible to command the use of the capacity and to regularise to a certain degree its functioning and various movements. An acquired power can be established of commanding the materials and the main or the detailed knowledge of things in the triple time, but this usually forms itself as a special or abnormal power and the normal action of the mentality or a large part of it remains still that of the mind of ignorance. This is obviously an imperfection and limitation and it is only when the power takes its place as a normal and natural action of the wholly intuitivised mind that there can be said to be a perfection of the capacity of the triple time knowledge so far as that is possible in the mental being." CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-896-897, "At the same time it will be found that it (Intuitive mind) is still a limited instrument. In the first place it (Intuitive mind) will represent a superior knowledge working in the stuff of mind, cast into mental forms and still subject to mental conditions and limitations. It will always lean chiefly on the succession of present moments as a foundation for its steps and successions of knowledge, however far it may range backward or forward, — it will move in the stream of Time even in its higher revelatory action and not see the movement from above or in the stabilities of eternal time with their large ranges of vision, and therefore it will always be bound to a secondary and limited action and to a certain dilution, qualification and relativity in its activities. Moreover, its knowing will be not a possession in itself but a reception of knowledge. It will at most create in place of the mind of ignorance a mind of self-forgetful knowledge constantly reminded and illumined from a latent self- awareness and all-awareness. The range, the extent, the normal lines of action of the knowledge will vary according to the development, but it can never be free from very strong limitations. And this limitation will give a tendency to the still environing or subconsciously subsisting mind of ignorance to reassert itself, to rush in or up, acting where the intuitive knowledge refuses or is unable to act and bringing in with it again its confusion and mixture and error. The only security will be a refusal to attempt to know or at least a suspension of the effort of knowledge until or unless the higher light descends and extends its action. This self-restraint is difficult to mind and, too contentedly exercised, may limit the growth of the seeker. If on the other hand the mind of ignorance is allowed again to emerge and seek in its own stumbling imperfect force, there may be a constant oscillation between the two states or a mixed action of the two powers in place of a definite though relative perfection...The issue out of this dilemma is to a greater perfection towards which the formation of the intuitive, inspired and revelatory mind is only a preparatory stage, and that (greater perfection of intuitive mind) comes by a constant instreaming and descent of more and more of the supramental light and energy into the whole mental being and a constant raising of the intuition and its powers towards their source in the open glories of the supramental nature. There is then a double action of the intuitive mind aware of, (1) open to and referring its knowledge constantly to the light above it for support and confirmation and (2) of that light itself creating a highest mind of knowledge, — really the supramental action itself in a more and more transformed stuff of mind and a less and less insistent subjection to mental conditions. There is thus formed a lesser supramental action, a mind of knowledge tending always to change into the true supermind of knowledge. (1) The mind of ignorance is more and more definitely excluded, its place taken by the (2) mind of self-forgetful knowledge illumined by the intuition, and the intuition itself more perfectly organised becomes capable of answering to a larger and larger call upon it. The increasing (3) mind of knowledge acts as an intermediary power and, as it forms itself, it works upon the other, transforms or replaces it and compels the farther change which effects the transition from (4) mind to supermind. It is here that a change begins to take place in the time consciousness and time knowledge which finds its base and complete reality and significance only on the supramental levels. It is therefore in relation to the truth of supermind that its workings can be more effectively elucidated: for (3) the mind of knowledge is only a projection and a last step in the ascent towards (4) the supramental nature." CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-903-904, 15/ Chapter 15. The Supreme Divine Summary or A Brief Restatement: First, by the practice of Self-control, a Sadhak's Psychic Being and Spiritual Being open. A traditional Sadhak utilises the opening of these Selves for the discovery of Purushottama Consciousness and "with their experiences and consequences can lead away from life or to a Nirvana." ( CWSA-22/The Life Divine/p-943) An integral Sadhak utilises the opening of these two Selves, "solely as steps in a transformation of the nature" (CWSA-22/The Life Divine/p-943) and after long movement of Consciousness, he discovers the Supramental being, and utilises the same for the transformation of the Subconscient and Inconscient Sheaths. "First there comes a description of cosmic existence in the Vedantic image of the aswattha tree. This tree of cosmic existence has no beginning and no end, nanto na cadih ( The Gita-15.3), in space or in time; for it is eternal and imperishable, avyaya . The real form of it cannot be perceived by us in this material world of man’s embodiment, nor has it any apparent lasting foundation here; it is an infinite movement and its foundation is above in the supreme of the Infinite. Its principle is the ancient sempiternal urge to action, pravritti, which for ever proceeds without beginning or end from the original Soul of all existence, adyam purusam yatah pravrittih prasruta puranı. Therefore its original source is above, beyond Time in the Eternal, but its branches stretch down below and it extends and plunges its other roots, well-fixed and clinging roots of attachment and desire with their consequences of more and more desire and an endlessly developing action, plunges them downward here into the world of men. The hymns of the Veda are compared to its leaves and the man who knows this tree of the cosmos is the Veda -knower. And here we see the sense of that rather disparaging view of the Veda or at least of the Vedavada, which we had to notice at the beginning. For the knowledge the Veda gives us is a knowledge of the gods, of the principles and powers of the cosmos, and its fruits are the fruits of a sacrifice which is offered with desire, fruits of enjoyment and lordship in the nature of the three worlds, in earth and heaven and the world between earth and heaven. The branches of this cosmic tree extend both below and above, below in the material, above in the supraphysical planes; they grow by the gunas of Nature, for the triple guna is all the subject of the Vedas, traigunya-visaya vedah. The Vedic rhythms, chandamsi, are the leaves and the sensible objects of desire supremely gained by a right doing of sacrifice are the constant budding of the foliage. Man, therefore, so long as he enjoys the play of the gunas and is attached to desire, is held in the coils of Pravritti, in the movement of birth and action, turns about constantly between the earth and the middle planes and the heavens and is unable to get back to his supreme spiritual infinitudes. This was perceived by the sages. To achieve liberation they followed the path of Nivritti or cessation from the original urge to action , and the consummation of this way is the cessation of birth itself and a transcendent status in the highest supracosmic reach of the Eternal. But for this purpose it is necessary to cut these long-fixed roots of desire by the strong sword of detachment and then to seek for that highest goal whence, once having reached it, there is no compulsion of return to mortal life. To be free from the bewilderment of this lower Maya , without egoism, the great fault of attachment conquered, all desires stilled, the duality of joy and grief cast away, always to be fixed in wide equality, always to be firm in a pure spiritual consciousness, these are the steps of the way to that supreme Infinite. There we find the timeless being which is not illumined by sun or moon or fire, but is itself the light of the presence of the eternal Purusha. I turn away, says the Vedantic verse, to seek that original Soul alone and to reach him in the great passage. That is the highest status of the Purushottama , his supracosmic existence." CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-443-444 The Vision of the Million-bodied Lord: "But it would seem that this can be attained very well, best even, pre-eminently, directly, by the quiescence of Sannyasa . Its appointed path would seem to be the way of the Akshara , a complete renunciation of works and life, an ascetic seclusion, an ascetic inaction. Where is the room here, or at least where is the call, the necessity, for the command to action, and what has all this to do with the maintenance of the cosmic existence, lokasangraha, the slaughter of Kurukshetra, the ways of the Spirit in Time, the vision of the million-bodied Lord and his high- voiced bidding, “Arise, slay the foe, enjoy a wealthy kingdom”? (The Gita-11.33) And what then is this soul in Nature? This spirit too, this Kshara, this enjoyer of our mutable existence, is the Purushottama ; (Supramentalised Psychic being) it is he in his eternal multiplicity, that is the Gita’s answer. “It is an eternal portion of me that becomes the Jiva in a world of Jivas .” (The Gita-15.7) This is an epithet, a statement of immense bearing and consequence. For it means that each soul, each being in its spiritual reality is the very Divine, however partial its actual manifestation of him in Nature. And it means too, if words have any sense, that each manifesting spirit, each of the many, is an eternal individual, an eternal unborn and undying power of the one Existence. We call this manifesting spirit the Jiva , because it appears here as if a living creature in a world of living creatures, and we speak of this spirit in man as the human soul and think of it in the terms of humanity only. But in truth it is something greater than its present appearance and not bound to its humanity: it was a lesser manifestation than the human in its past, it can become something much greater than mental man in its future. And when this soul rises above all ignorant limitation, then it puts on its divine nature of which its humanity is only a temporary veil, a thing of partial and incomplete significance. The individual spirit exists and ever existed beyond in the Eternal, for it is itself everlasting, sanatana . It is evidently this idea of the eternal individual which leads the Gita to avoid any expression at all suggestive of a complete dissolution, laya , and to speak rather of the highest state of the soul as a dwelling in the Purushottama, nivasisyasi mayyeva . (The Gita-12.08) If when speaking of the one Self of all it seems to use the language of Adwaita , yet this enduring truth of the eternal individual, mamamsah sanatanah , (The Gita-15.7) adds something which brings in a qualification and appears almost to accept the seeing of the Visishtadwaita , — though we must not therefore leap at once to the conclusion that that alone is the Gita’s philosophy or that its doctrine is identical with the later doctrine of Ramanuja . Still this much is clear that there is an eternal, a real and not only an illusive principle of multiplicity in the spiritual being of the one divine Existence." CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-444-446, "The mind of knowledge and the will of action are not all; there is within you a heart whose demand is for delight. Here too in the heart’s power and illumination, in its demand for delight, for the soul’s satisfaction your nature must be turned, transformed and lifted to one conscious ecstasy with the Divine. The knowledge of the impersonal self brings its own Ananda ; there is a joy of impersonality, a singleness of joy of the pure spirit. But an integral knowledge brings a greater triple delight. (1) It opens the gates of the Transcendent’s bliss; (2) it releases into the limitless delight of a universal impersonality; (3) it discovers the rapture of all this multitudinous manifestation: for there is a joy of the Eternal in Nature (Eternal in Nature is the Psychic Being) . This Ananda in the Jiva, a portion here of the Divine, takes the form of an ecstasy founded in the Godhead who is his source, in his supreme self, in the Master of his existence. An entire God-love and adoration extends to a love of the world and all its forms and powers and creatures; in all the Divine is seen, is found, is adored, is served or is felt in oneness. Add to knowledge and works this crown of the eternal triune delight; admit this love, learn this worship; make it one spirit with works and knowledge. That is the apex of the perfect perfection. " CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-588-589, "As with individual, so with universal Love; all that widening of the self through sympathy, goodwill, universal benevolence and beneficence, love of mankind, love of creatures, the attraction of all the myriad forms and presences that surround us, by which mentally and emotionally man escapes from the first limits of his ego, has to be taken up into a unifying divine love for the universal Divine. Adoration fulfilled in love, love in Ananda, the surpassing love, the self-wrapped ecstasy of transcendent delight in the Transcendent which awaits us at the end of the path of Devotion, — has for its wider result a universal love for all beings, the Ananda of all that is; we perceive behind every veil the Divine, spiritually embrace in all forms the All-Beautiful. A universal delight in his endless manifestation flows through us, taking in its surge every form and movement, but not bound or stationary in any and always reaching out to a greater and more perfect expression. This universal love is liberative and dynamic for transformation; for the discord of forms and appearances ceases to affect the heart that has felt the one Truth behind them all and understood their perfect significance. The impartial equality of soul of the selfless worker and knower is transformed by the magic touch of divine Love into an all-embracing ecstasy and million-bodied beatitude. All things become bodies and all movements the playings of the divine Beloved in his infinite house of pleasure. Even pain is changed and in their reaction and even in their essence things painful alter ; the forms of pain fall away, there are created in their place the forms of Ananda ." CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-160-161, Kshara Purusha: "There is a spirit here at work in the world that is one in innumerable appearances. It is the developer of birth and action, the moving power of life, the inhabiting and associating consciousness in the myriad mutabilities of Nature; it is the constituting reality of all this stir in Time and Space; it is itself Time and Space and Circumstance. It is this multitude of souls in the worlds; it is the gods and men and creatures and things and forces and qualities and quantities and powers and presences. It is Nature, which is power of the Spirit, and objects, which are its phenomena of name and idea and form, and existences, who are portions and births and becomings of this single self-existent spiritual entity, the One, the Eternal. But what we see obviously at work before us is not this Eternal and his conscious Shakti, but a Nature which in the blind stress of her operations is ignorant of the spirit within her action. Her work is a confused, ignorant and limiting play of certain fundamental modes, qualities, principles of force in mechanical operation and the fixity or the flux of their consequences. And whatever soul comes to the surface in her action, is itself in appearance ignorant, suffering, bound to the incomplete and unsatisfying play of this inferior Nature. The inherent Power in her is yet other than what it thus seems to be; for, hidden in its truth, manifest in its appearances, it is the Kshara , the universal Soul, the spirit in the mutability of cosmic phenomenon and becoming, one with the Immutable and the Supreme . We have to arrive at the hidden truth behind its manifest appearances; we have to discover the Spirit behind these veils and to see all as the One, vasudevah sarvam iti , individual, universal, transcendent. But this is a thing impossible to achieve with any completeness of inner reality, so long as we live concentrated in the inferior Nature. For in this lesser movement Nature is an ignorance, a Maya; she shelters the Divine within its folds and conceals him from herself and her creatures. The Godhead is hidden by the Maya of his own all-creating Yoga, the Eternal figured in transience, Being absorbed and covered up by its own manifesting phenomena. In the Kshara taken alone as a thing in itself, the mutable universal apart from the undivided Immutable and the Transcendent, there is no completeness of knowledge, no completeness of our being and therefore no liberation ." CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-435-436, "There is however no invariable rule as to the order of the opening. By concentration on the heart centre that can open first liberating the psychic action, which is veiled by the emotional, into free play. In many there is first some opening of the vital centre and for a long time there is an abundant but unpurified play of experiences on the vital plane. In the Tantric discipline there is a process of opening all the centres from the Muladhara upward. In our Yoga (Integral Yoga) very often the Power descends from above and opens the Ajnachakra first, then the others in order. But it is perhaps the safest to open by concentration the heart-lotus first so as to have the psychic influence from the beginning. .. The psychic cannot lose its consciousness in the enjoyment of experiences; when it is in free action, it has the unfailing discrimination of which you speak. It has besides no push to outward enjoyment, though it has Ananda . It is the vital that is carried away by enjoyment and carries away with it the mind and other lower parts — and it can also cover up the psychic; but then what happens is not that the psychic loses its own” CWSA-30/Letters on Yoga-III/350-351, “If desire is rejected and no longer governs the thought, feeling or action and there is the steady aspiration of an entirely sincere self-giving, the psychic usually after a time opens of itself. ” CWSA-30/Letters on Yoga-III/p-349, “Then only can the psychic being fully open when the sadhaka has got rid of the mixture of vital motives with his sadhana and is capable of a simple and sincere self-offering to the Mother . If there is any kind of egoistic turn or insincerity of motive, if the Yoga is done under a pressure of vital demands, or partly or wholly to satisfy some spiritual or other ambition, pride, vanity or seeking after power, position or influence over others or with any push towards satisfying any vital desire with the help of the Yogic force, then the psychic cannot open, or opens only partially or only at times and shuts again because it is veiled by the vital activities; the psychic fire fails in the strangling vital smoke. Also, if the mind takes the leading part in the Yoga and puts the inner soul into the background, or, if the bhakti or other movements of the sadhana take more of a vital than of a psychic form, there is the same inability. Purity, simple sincerity and the capacity of an unegoistic unmixed self-offering without pretension or demand are the conditions of an entire opening of the psychic being. ” CWSA-30/Letters on Yoga-III/p-349 Akshara Purusha: "But then there is another spirit of whom we become aware and who is none of these things, but self and self only. This Spirit is eternal, always the same, never changed or affected by manifestation, the one, the stable, a self-existence undivided and not even seemingly divided by the division of things and powers in Nature, inactive in her action, immobile in her motion. It is the Self of all and yet unmoved, indifferent, intangible, as if all these things which depend upon it were not-self, not its own results and powers and consequences, but a drama of action developed before the eye of an unmoved unparticipating spectator. For the mind that stages and shares in the drama is other than the Self which indifferently contains the action. This spirit is timeless, though we see it in Time; it is unextended in space, though we see it as if pervading space. We become aware of it in proportion as we draw back from out inward, or look behind the action and motion for something that is eternal and stable, or get away from time and its creation to the uncreated, away from phenomenon to being, from the personal to impersonality, from becoming to unalterable self-existence. This is the Akshara , the immutable in the mutable, the immobile in the mobile, the imperishable in things perishable. Or rather, since there is only an appearance of pervasion, it is the immutable, immobile and imperishable in which proceeds all the mobility of mutable and perishable things." CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-436-437 Reconciliation of Kshara and Akshara Purusha : "There are two Purushas (Spiritual and Psychic beings) in this world, the immutable (and impersonal) and the mutable (and personal); the mutable is all these existences, the Kutastha (the high-seated consciousness of the Brahmic status) is called the immutable. But other than these two is that highest spirit called the supreme Self, who enters the three worlds and upbears them, the imperishable Lord. Since I am beyond the mutable and am greater and higher even than the immutable, in the world and the Veda I am proclaimed as the Purushottama (the supreme Self). He who undeluded thus has knowledge of Me as the Purushottama , adores Me (has bhakti for Me) with all-knowledge and in every way of his natural being." The Gita-15.16 to 19, "The Kshara spirit visible to us as all natural existence and the totality of all existences moves and acts pervadingly in the immobile and eternal Akshara . This mobile Power of Self acts in that fundamental stability of Self, as the second principle of material Nature, Vayu, with its contactual force of aggregation and separation, attraction and repulsion, supporting the formative force of the fiery (radiant, gaseous and electric) and other elemental movements, ranges pervadingly in the subtly massive stability of ether. This Akshara is the self higher than the buddhi it exceeds even that highest subjective principle of Nature in our being, the liberating intelligence, through which man returning beyond his restless mobile mental to his calm eternal spiritual self is at last free from the persistence of birth and the long chain of action, of Karma . This self in its highest status, param dhama , is an unmanifest beyond even the unmanifest principle of the original cosmic Prakriti, Avyakta , and, if the soul turns to this Immutable, the hold of cosmos and Nature falls away from it and it passes beyond birth to an unchanging eternal existence. These two then are the two spirits we see in the world; (1) one emerges in front in its action, (2) the other remains behind it steadfast in that perpetual silence from which the action comes and in which all actions cease and disappear into timeless being, Nirvana . Dvavimau purusau loke ksaras caksara eva ca . (The Gita-15.16)" CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-437, Brhama Satya Jagat Mithya: "But this greater knowledge and experience, however true and however powerful in its appeal to our highest seeing, has still to get rid of a very real and pressing difficulty, a practical as well as a logical contradiction which seems at first sight to persist up to the highest heights of spiritual experience. The Eternal is other than this mobile subjective and objective experience, there is a greater consciousness, na idam yad upasate : (Kena Upanishad-1.4-8) and yet at the same time all this is the Eternal, all this is the perennial self-seeing of the Self, sarvam˙khalu idam brahma, (Chandogya Upanishad-3.14.1) ayam atma brahma. (Manduka Upanishad-2) The Eternal has become all existences, atma abhut sarvani bhutan i; (Isha Upanishad-7) as the Swetaswatara puts it, “Thou art this boy and yonder girl and that old man walking supported on his staff,” — even as in the Gita the Divine says that he is Krishna and Arjuna and Vyasa and Ushanas , and the lion and the aswattha tree, and consciousness and intelligence and all qualities and the self of all creatures. But how are these two the same, when they seem not only so opposite in nature, but so difficult to unify in experience? For when we live in the mobility of the becoming, we may be aware of but hardly live in the immortality of timeless self-existence. And when we fix ourselves in timeless being, Time and Space and circumstance fall away from us and begin to appear as a troubled dream in the Infinite. The most persuasive conclusion would be, at first sight, that the mobility of the spirit in Nature (Kshara Purusha) is an illusion, a thing real only when we live in it, but not real in essence, and that is why, when we go back into self, it falls away from our incorruptible essence. That is the familiar cutting of the knot of the riddle, brahma satyam jagan mithya. " CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-438-439 "Mais si vraies qu'elles soient, et si puissamment qu'elles attirent notre vision la plus haute, cette connaissance et cette expérience plus grandes doivent encore se débarrasser d'une très réelle et pressante difficulté, d'une contradiction tout à la fois pratique et logique qui semble au premier abord persister jusqu'aux suprêmes hauteurs de l'expérience spirituelle, Éternel est autre que cette expérience mobile subjective et objective, il existe une conscience plus grande, na idam yad oupâsaté¹; et pourtant, tout ceci est en même temps Éternel, tout ceci est en même temps l'éternelle vision de soi de l'Être, sarvam khalou idam brahma², ayam âtmâ brahma³. Éternel est devenu toutes les existences, âtmâ abhoût sarva-bhoûtâni4; comme le dit la Shwétâshwatara Oupanishad : "Tu es ce garçon et, là-bas, cette jeune fille et ce vieillard qui, pour marcher, s'appuie sur son bâton." De même, dans la Guîtâ, le Divin dit-Il qu'il est Krishna et Ardjouna et Vyâsa et Oushanas, et le lion et l'arbre ashwattha, et la conscience et l'intelligence et toutes les qualités et le moi de toutes les créatures. Mais comment les deux sont-ils le même, lorsqu'ils semblent non seulement si opposés en nature, mais encore si difficiles à unifier en expérience? En effet, lorsque nous vivons en la mobilité du devenir, si nous pouvons prendre conscience de l'immortalité de l'intemporelle existence en soi, il ne nous est guère possible d'y vivre. Et lorsque nous nous établissons en l'être intemporel, le Temps, l'Espace et la circonstance se détachent de nous et commencent d'apparaître comme un rêve agité dans l'Infini. À première vue, la conclusion la plus convaincante serait que la mobilité de l'esprit dans la Nature est une illusion, une chose qui n'a de réalité que quand nous y vivons, mais qui n'est pas réelle en essence : c'est pourquoi, lorsque nous retournons dans le moi, elle se détache de notre essence incorruptible. C'est ainsi que, d'habitude, on tranche le nœud de l'énigme, brahma satyam djagan mithyâ ." Essais sur la Guîtâ-482-483 Uttama Purusha and the Key Word of the Gita in reconciling Kshara and Akshara Purusha : "The Gita finds it in its supreme vision of the Purushottama ; for that is the type, according to its doctrine, of the complete and the highest experience, it is the knowledge of the whole-knowers, kritsnavidah . The Akshara is para , supreme in relation to the elements and action of cosmic Nature. It is the immutable Self of all, and the immutable Self of all is the Purushottama . The Akshara is he in the freedom of his self-existence unaffected by the action of his own power in Nature, not impinged on by the urge of his own becoming, undisturbed by the play of his own qualities. But this is only one aspect though a great aspect of the integral knowledge. The Purushottama is at the same time greater than the Akshara , because he is more than this immutability and he is not limited even by the highest eternal status of his being, param dhama. Still, it is through whatever is immutable and eternal in us that we arrive at that highest status from which there is no returning to birth, and that was the liberation which was sought by the wise of old, the ancient sages. But when pursued through the Akshara alone, this attempt at liberation becomes the seeking of the Indefinable, a thing hard for our nature embodied as we are here in Matter. The Indefinable, to which the Akshara , the pure intangible self here in us rises in its separative urge, is some supreme Unmanifest, paro avyaktah , and that highest unmanifest Akshara is still the Purushottama . Therefore, the Gita has said, those also who follow after the Indefinable, come to me, the eternal Godhead. But yet is he more even than a highest unmanifest Akshara, more than any negative Absolute, neti neti , because he is to be known also as the supreme Purusha who extends this whole universe in his own existence. He is a supreme mysterious All, an ineffable positive Absolute of all things here. He is the Lord in the Kshara, Purushottama not only there, but here in the heart of every creature, Ishwara . And there too even in his highest eternal status, paro avyaktah , (The Gita-8.21) he is the supreme Lord, Parameshwara , no aloof and unrelated Indefinable, but the origin and father and mother and first foundation and eternal abode of self and cosmos and Master of all existences and enjoyer of askesis and sacrifice. It is by knowing him at once in the Akshara and the Kshara , it is by knowing him as the Unborn who partially manifests himself in all birth and even himself descends as the constant Avatar, it is by knowing him in his entirety, samagram mam , (The Gita-7.1) that the soul is easily released from the appearances of the lower Nature and returns by a vast sudden growth and broad immeasurable ascension into the divine being and supreme Nature. For the truth of the Kshara too is a truth of the Purushottama . The Purushottama is in the heart of every creature and is manifested in his countless Vibhutis; the Purushottama is the cosmic spirit in Time and it is he that gives the command to the divine action of the liberated human spirit. He is both Akshara and Kshara , and yet he is other because he is more and greater than either of these opposites. Uttamah purusastvanyah paramatmetyudahritah, yo lokatrayamavisya bibhartyavyaya ısvarah, (The Gita-15.17) “But other than these two is that highest spirit called the supreme Self, who enters the three worlds and upbears them, the imperishable Lord.” (The Gita-15.17) This verse is the keyword of the Gita’s reconciliation of these two apparently opposite aspects of our existence." CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-440-442 The Vision of the Lord: "This eternal individual is not other than or in any way really separate from the Divine Purusha. It is the Lord himself, the Ishwara who by virtue of the eternal multiplicity of his oneness is not all existence a rendering of that truth of the Infinite? — exists for ever as the immortal soul within us and has taken up this body and goes forth from the transient framework when it is cast away to disappear into the elements of Nature. He brings in with him and cultivates for the enjoyment of the objects of mind and sense the subjective powers of Prakriti, mind and the five senses, and in his going forth too he goes taking them as the wind takes the perfumes from a vase. But the identity of the Lord and the soul in mutable Nature is hidden from us by outward appearance and lost in the crowding mobile deceptions of that Nature. And those who allow themselves to be governed by the figures of Nature, the figure of humanity or any other form, will never see it, but will ignore and despise the Divine lodged in the human body. Their ignorance cannot perceive him in his coming in and his going forth or in his staying and enjoying and assumption of quality, but sees only what is there visible to the mind and senses, not the greater truth which can only be glimpsed by the eye of knowledge. Never can they have sight of him, even if they strive to do so, until they learn to put away the limitations of the outward consciousness and build in themselves their spiritual being, create for it, as it were, a form in their nature. Man, to know himself, must be kritatma , formed and complete in the spiritual mould, enlightened in the spiritual vision. The Yogins who have this eye of knowledge, see the Divine Being we are in their own endless reality, their own eternity of spirit. Illumined, they see the Lord in themselves and are delivered from the crude material limitation, from the form of mental personality, from the transient life formulation: they dwell immortal in the truth of the self and spirit. But they see him too not only in themselves, but in all the cosmos. In the light of the sun that illumines all this world they witness the light of the Godhead which is in us; the light in the moon and in fire is the light of the Divine. It is the Divine who has entered into this form of earth and is the spirit of its material force and sustains by his might these multitudes. The Divine is the godhead of Soma who by the rasa , the sap in the Earth-mother, nourishes the plants and trees that clothe her surface. The Divine and no other is the flame of life that sustains the physical body of living creatures and turns its food into sustenance of their vital force. He is lodged in the heart of every breathing thing; from him are memory and knowledge and the debates of the reason. He is that which is known by all the Vedas and by all forms of knowing; he is the knower of Veda and the maker of Vedanta. In other words, the Divine is at once the Soul of matter and the Soul of life and the Soul of mind as well as the Soul of the supramental light that is beyond mind and its limited reasoning intelligence." 446-447 15/ Chapter 15. The Supreme Divine Reconciliation of three Purushas: "The Self, even the individual self, is different from our personality as it is different from our mental ego-sense. Our personality is never the same; it is a constant mutation and various combination. It is not a basic consciousness, but a development of forms of consciousness, — not a power of being, but a various play of partial powers of being, — not the enjoyer of the self- delight of our existence, but a seeking after various notes and tones of experience which shall more or less render that delight in the mutability of relations. This also is Purusha and Brahman , but it is the mutable Purusha, the phenomenon of the Eternal, not its stable reality. The Gita makes a distinction between three Purushas who constitute the whole state and action of the divine Being, the Mutable, the Immutable and the Highest which is beyond and embraces the other two. That Highest is the Lord in whom we have to live, the supreme Self in us and in all. The Immutable is the silent, actionless, equal, unchanging self which we reach when we draw back from activity to passivity, from the play of consciousness and force and the seeking of delight to the pure and constant basis of consciousness and force and delight through which the Highest, free, secure and unattached, possesses and enjoys the play. The Mutable is the substance and immediate motive of that changing flux of personality through which the relations of our cosmic life are made possible. The mental being fixed in the Mutable moves in its flux and has not possession of an eternal peace and power and self-delight; the soul fixed in the Immutable holds all these in itself but cannot act in the world; but the soul that can live in the Highest enjoys the eternal peace and power and delight and wideness of being, is not bound in its self-knowledge and self-power by character and personality or by forms of its force and habits of its consciousness and yet uses them all with a large freedom and power for the self-expression of the Divine in the world. Here again the change is not any alteration of the essential modes of the Self, but consists in our emergence into the freedom of the Highest and the right use of the divine law of our being." CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-378-379, "Without knowledge we live blindly in him with the blindness of the power of Nature intent on its works, but forgetful of its source and possessor, undivinely therefore, deprived of the real, the full delight of our being. By knowledge arriving at conscious oneness with that which we know, — for by identity alone can complete and real knowledge exist, — the division is healed and the cause of all our limitation and discord and weakness and discontent is abolished. But knowledge is not complete without works; for the Will in being also is God and not the being or its self-aware silent existence alone, and if works find their culmination in knowledge, knowledge also finds its fulfilment in works. And, here too, love is the crown of knowledge; for love is the delight of union, and unity must be conscious of joy of union to find all the riches of its own delight. Perfect knowledge indeed leads to perfect love, integral knowledge to a rounded and multitudinous richness of love. “He who knows me” says the Gita “as the supreme Purusha,” — not only as the immutable oneness, but in the many-souled movement of the divine and as that, superior to both, in which both are divinely held, — “he, because he has the integral knowledge, seeks me by love in every way of his being.” (The Gita-15.19) This is the trinity of our powers, the union of all three in God to which we arrive when we start from knowledge. " CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-546 16/ Chapter 16. Deva and Asura Summary or A Brief Restatement: “There are two worlds adjacent to this material world, Superconscient and Subconscient; Superconscient world has already been described at length: hear from Me, O Partha, the Subconscient, asuric world.” The Gita-16.6 The whole of humanity is now going through this Subconscient transformation unconsciously and few prepared vessels are going through this transformation consciously. Those who are open towards Subconscient transformation, they will feel all the time a Divine Force is entering the mind, vital, body, and Subconscient sheaths in a very minuscule manner. When this descent of Divine force is strong enough to be felt as a higher body temperature of fever, then its outcome is a miracle in the Subconscient sheath resulting in some Divine manifestation. (1) We get the information from Savitri that if our Psychic and Spiritual beings are open, then beings of those higher planes will accompany us and assist us in our sadhana, involve in many creative actions, and call down divine energies. Integral Yoga identifies ten Selves and their opening activates affirmative Beings belonging to higher planes. (2) Similarly, through our untransformed nature, asuric beings or dark energies enter our system and do their destructive and pessimistic action both in waking and dream states. (3) We also get this information from Savitri that like our parents, some invisible beings pursue us in this birth and take care of us. Similarly, some beings accompany us from our previous births. So, we have to remember that neither this world, nor any creative action, nor any destructive action, nor any powers and personalities that are acting through us are our own. The Mother’s experience of 24-25 July, 1959, gave clearer details about Supramental action in the Subconscient and Inconscient Sheath, “for the first time the Supramental light entered directly into my body, without passing through the inner beings. It entered through the feet and it climbed up and up. And as it climbed, the fever also climbed because the body was not accustomed to this intensity. As all this light neared the head, I thought I would burst and that the experience would have to be stopped…” (The Mother's Agenda-, October 6, 1959) The descending Supramental force through complete surrender, maye sarvani karmani sannyasya , ("Giving up thy works to Me, with thy consciousness founded in the Self, free from desire and egoism" The Gita-3.30) as hinted in the Gita (Which is also identified as a key word of Karma Yoga ) also generates fever , bigatajwarah , (The Gita-3.30) that delivers the Soul. Divine Nature: "The Deva nature is distinguished by an acme of the sattwic habits and qualities; self-control, sacrifice, the religious habit, cleanness and purity, candour and straightforwardness, truth, calm and self-denial, compassion to all beings, modesty, gentleness, forgivingness, patience, steadfastness, a deep sweet and serious freedom from all restlessness, levity and inconstancy are its native attributes. The Asuric qualities, wrath, greed, cunning, treachery, wilful doing of injury to others, pride and arrogance and excessive self-esteem have no place in its composition. But its gentleness and self-denial and self-control are free too from all weakness: it has energy and soul force, strong resolution, the fearlessness of the soul that lives in the right and according to the truth as well as its harmlessness, tejah , abhayam, dhritih, ahimsa, satyam . The whole being, the whole temperament is integrally pure; there is a seeking for knowledge and a calm and fixed abiding in knowledge. This is the wealth, the plenitude of the man born into the Deva nature." CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-471-472 Asuric Nature: "Harshness and hardness and fierceness and a satisfaction in slaying enemies and amassing wealth and unjust enjoyments are Asuric qualities; they come from the violent Titanic nature which denies the Divine in the world and the Divine in man and worships Desire only as its deity ." 58 "The Asuric nature has too its wealth, its plenitude of force, but it is of a very different, a powerful and evil kind. Asuric men have no true knowledge of the way of action or the way of abstention, the fulfilling or the holding in of the nature. Truth is not in them, nor clean doing, nor faithful observance. They see naturally in the world nothing but a huge play of the satisfaction of self; theirs is a world with Desire for its cause and seed and governing force and law, a world of Chance, a world devoid of just relation and linked Karma, a world without God, not true, not founded in Truth. Whatever better intellectual or higher religious dogma they may possess, this alone is the true creed of their mind and will in action; they follow always the cult of Desire and Ego. On that way of seeing life they lean in reality and by its falsehood they ruin their souls and their reason. The Asuric man becomes the centre or instrument of a fierce, Titanic, violent action, a power of destruction in the world, a fount of injury and evil. Arrogant, full of self-esteem and the drunkenness of their pride, these misguided souls delude themselves, persist in false and obstinate aims and pursue the fixed impure resolution of their longings. They imagine that desire and enjoyment are all the aim of life and in their inordinate and insatiable pursuit of it they are the prey of a devouring, a measurelessly unceasing care and thought and endeavour and anxiety till the moment of their death. Bound by a hundred bonds, devoured by wrath and lust, unweariedly occupied in amassing unjust gains which may serve their enjoyment and the satisfaction of their craving, always they think, “Today I have gained this object of desire, tomorrow I shall have that other; today I have so much wealth, more I will get tomorrow. I have killed this my enemy, the rest too I will kill. I am a lord and king of men, I am perfect, accomplished, strong, happy, fortunate, a privileged enjoyer of the world; I am wealthy, I am of high birth; who is there like unto me? I will sacrifice, I will give, I will enjoy.” Thus occupied by many egoistic ideas, deluded, doing works, but doing them wrongly, acting mightily, but for themselves, for desire, for enjoyment, not for God in themselves and God in man, they fall into the unclean hell of their own evil. They sacrifice and give, but from a self-regarding ostentation, from vanity and with a stiff and foolish pride. In the egoism of their strength and power, in the violence of their wrath and arrogance they hate, despise and belittle the God hidden in themselves and the God in man. And because they have this proud hatred and contempt of good and of God, because they are cruel and evil, the Divine casts them down continually into more and more Asuric births. Not seeking him, they find him not, and at last, losing the way to him altogether, sink down into the lowest status of soul-nature, adhamam gatim . (The Gita-16.20)" CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-472-473 The passage from Asura to Deva : "This graphic description, even giving its entire value to the distinction it implies, must not be pressed to carry more in it than it means. When it is said that there are two creations of beings in this material world, Deva and Asura, it is not meant that human souls are so created by God from the beginning each with its own inevitable career in Nature, nor is it meant that there is a rigid spiritual predestination and those rejected from the beginning by the Divine are blinded by him so that they may be thrust down to eternal perdition and the impurity of Hell. All souls are eternal portions of the Divine, the Asura as well as the Deva , all can come to salvation: even the greatest sinner can turn to the Divine. But the evolution of the soul in Nature is an adventure of which Swabhava and the Karma governed by the swabhava are ever the chief powers; and if an excess in the manifestation of the swabhava , the self-becoming of the soul, a disorder in its play turns the law of being to the perverse side, if the rajasic qualities are given the upper hand, cultured to the diminution of sattwa, then the trend of Karma and its results necessarily culminate not in the sattwic height which is capable of the movement of liberation, but in the highest exaggeration of the perversities of the lower nature. The man, if he does not stop short and abandon his way of error, has eventually the Asura full-born in him, and once he has taken that enormous turn away from the Light and Truth, he can no more reverse the fatal speed of his course because of the very immensity of the misused divine power in him until he has plumbed the depths to which it falls, found bottom and seen where the way has led him, the power exhausted and misspent, himself down in the lowest state of the soul nature, which is Hell. Only when he understands and turns to the Light, does that other truth of the Gita come in, that even the greatest sinner, the most impure and violent evil-doer is saved the moment he turns to adore and follow after the Godhead within him. Then, simply by that turn, he gets very soon into the sattwic way which leads to perfection and freedom." CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-473-474 Threefold Doors of Hell: "The Asuric Prakriti is the rajasic at its height; it leads to the slavery of the soul in Nature, to desire, wrath and greed, the three powers of the rajasic ego, and these are the three- fold doors of Hell, the Hell into which the natural being falls when it indulges the impurity and evil and error of its lower or perverted instincts. These three are again the doors of a great darkness, they fold back into tamas, the characteristic power of the original Ignorance; for the unbridled force of the rajasic nature, when exhausted, falls back into the weakness, collapse, darkness, incapacity of the worst tamasic soul-status. To escape from this downfall one must get rid of these three evil forces and turn to the light of the sattwic quality, live by the right, in the true relations, according to the Truth and the Law; then one follows one’s own higher good and arrives at the highest soul-status. To follow the law of desire is not the true rule of our nature; there is a higher and juster standard of its works. But where is it embodied or how is it to be found? In the first place, the human race has always been seeking for this just and high Law and whatever it has discovered is embodied in its Shastra, its rule of science and knowledge, rule of ethics, rule of religion, rule of best social living, rule of one’s right relations with man and God and Nature." CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-474-475 Shastra , the Law of Right Living for Developing Souls: "Shastra does not mean a mass of customs, some good, some bad, unintelligently followed by the customary routine mind of the tamasic man. Shastra is the knowledge and teaching laid down by intuition, experience and wisdom, the science and art and ethic of life, the best standards available to the race . The half-awakened man who leaves the observance of its rule to follow the guidance of his instincts and desires, can get pleasure but not happiness; for the inner happiness can only come by right living. He cannot move to perfection, cannot acquire the highest spiritual status. The law of instinct and desire seems to come first in the animal world, but the manhood of man grows by the pursuit of truth and religion and knowledge and a right life. The Shastra , the recognised Right that he has set up to govern his lower members by his reason and intelligent will, must therefore first be observed and made the authority for conduct and works and for what should or should not be done, till the instinctive desire nature is schooled and abated and put down by the habit of self-control and man is ready first for a freer intelligent self-guidance and then for the highest supreme law and supreme liberty of the spiritual nature... For the Shastra in its ordinary aspect is not that spiritual law, although at its loftiest point, when it becomes a science and art of spiritual living, Adhyatma-shastra , — the Gita itself describes its own teaching as the highest and most secret Shastra, — it formulates a rule of the self-transcendence of the sattwic nature and develops the discipline which leads to spiritual transmutation. Yet all Shastra is built on a number of preparatory conditions, dharmas ; it is a means, not an end. The supreme end is the freedom of the spirit when abandoning all dharmas the soul turns to God for its sole law of action, acts straight from the divine will and lives in the freedom of the divine nature, not in the Law, but in the Spirit. This is the development of the teaching which is prepared by the next question of Arjuna." CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-475-476, "The Gita has made a distinction between action according to the licence of personal desire and action done according to the Shastra . We must understand by the latter the recognised science and art of life which is the outcome of mankind’s collective living, its culture, religion, science, its progressive discovery of the best rule of life, — but mankind still walking in the ignorance and proceeding in a half light towards knowledge. The action of personal desire belongs to the unregenerated state of our nature and is dictated by ignorance or false knowledge and an unregulated or ill-regulated kinetic or rajasic egoism. The action controlled by Shastra is an outcome of intellectual, ethical, aesthetic, social and religious culture; it embodies an attempt at a certain right living, harmony and right order and is evidently an effort, more or less advanced according to circumstances, of the sattwic element in man to overtop, regulate and control or guide, where it must be admitted, his rajasic and tamasic egoism. It is the means to a step in advance, and therefore mankind must first proceed through it and make this Shastra its law of action rather than obey the impulsion of its personal desires. This is a general rule which humanity has always recognised wherever it has arrived at any kind of established and developed society; it has an idea of an order, a law, a standard of its perfection, something other than the guidance of its desires or the crude direction of its raw impulses. This greater rule the individual finds usually outside himself in some more or less fixed outcome of the experience and wisdom of the race, which he accepts, to which his mind and the leading parts of his being give their assent or sanction and which he tries to make his own by living it in his mind, will and action." CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-477, "The Shastra is something impersonal to the individual, and that gives it its authority over the narrow personal law of his members; but at the same time it is personal to the collectivity and is the outcome of its experience, its culture or its nature. It is not in all its form and spirit the ideal rule of fulfilment of the Self or the eternal law of the Master of our nature, although it may contain in itself in small or larger measure indications, preparations, illuminating glimpses of that far greater thing. And the individual may have gone beyond the collectivity and be ready for a greater truth, a wider walk, a deeper intention of the Life-Spirit. The leading in him that departs from the Shastra may not indeed be always a higher movement; it may take the form of a revolt of the egoistic or rajasic nature seeking freedom from the yoke of something which it feels to be cramping to its liberty of self-fulfilment and self-finding. But even then it is often justified by some narrowness or imperfection of the Shastra or by the degradation of the current rule of living into a merely restricting or lifeless convention. And so far it is legitimate, it appeals to a truth, it has a good and just reason for existence: for though it misses the right path, yet the free action of the rajasic ego, because it has more in it of liberty and life, is better than the dead and hidebound tamasic following of a convention. The rajasic is always stronger, always more forcefully inspired and has more possibilities in it than the tamasic nature. But also this leading may be sattwic at its heart; it may be a turn to a larger and greater ideal which will carry us nearer to a more complete and ample truth of our self and universal existence than has yet been seen and nearer therefore to that highest law which is one with the divine freedom. And in effect this movement is usually an attempt to lay hold on some forgotten truth or to move on to a yet undiscovered or unlived truth of our being. It is not a mere licentious movement of the unregulated nature; it has its spiritual justification and is a necessity of our spiritual progress. And even if the Shastra is still a living thing and the best rule for the human average, the exceptional man, spiritual, inwardly developed, is not bound by that standard. He is called upon to go beyond the fixed line of the Shastra . For this is a rule for the guidance, control and relative perfection of the normal imperfect man and he has to go on to a more absolute perfection: this is a system of fixed dharmas and he has to learn to live in the liberty of the Spirit." CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-479-480 "“Man in his natural being is a sattwic, rajasic and tamasic creature of Nature. According as one or other of her qualities predominates in him, he makes and follows this or that law of his life and action. His tamasic, material, sensational mind subject to inertia and fear and ignorance either obeys partly the compulsion of its environment and partly the spasmodic impulses of its desires or finds a protection in the routine following of a dull customary intelligence. The rajasic mind of desire struggles with the world in which it lives and tries to possess always new things, to command, battle, conquer, create, destroy, accumulate. Always it goes forward tossed between success and failure, joy and sorrow, exultation or despair. But in all, whatever law it may seem to admit, it follows really only the law of the lower self and ego, the restless, untired, self-devouring and all-devouring mind of the Asuric and Rakshasic nature. The sattwic intelligence surmounts partly this state, sees that a better law than that of desire and ego must be followed and erects and imposes on itself a social, an ethical, a religious rule, a Dharma, a Shastra . This is as high as the ordinary mind of man can go, to erect an ideal or practical rule for the guidance of the mind and will and as faithfully as possible observe it in life and conduct. This sattwic mind must be developed to its highest point where it succeeds in putting away the mixture of ego motive altogether and observes the Dharma for its own sake as an impersonal social, ethical or religious ideal, the thing disinterestedly to be done solely because it is right, kartavyam karma . (The Gita-3.22)" CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-591-592, Shastra , the Law of Right Living for Developed Souls: "But what then shall be the secure base of an action which departs both from the guidance of desire and from the normal law? For the rule of desire has an authority of its own, no longer safe or satisfactory to us as it is to the animal or as it might have been to a primitive humanity, but still, so far as it goes, founded on a very living part of our nature and fortified by its strong indications; and the law, the Shastra has behind it all the authority of long established rule, old successful sanctions and a secure past experience. But this new movement is of the nature of a powerful adventure into the unknown or partly known, a daring development and a new conquest, and what then is the clue to be followed, the guiding light on which it can depend or its strong basis in our being? The answer is that the clue and support is to be found in man’s sraddha , his faith, his will to believe, to live what he sees or thinks to be the truth of himself and of existence. In other words this movement is man’s appeal to himself or to something potent and compelling in himself or in universal existence for the discovery of his truth, his law of living, his way to fullness and perfection. And everything depends on the nature of his faith, the thing in himself or in the universal soul — of which he is a portion or manifestation — to which he directs it and on how near he gets by it to his real self and the Self or true being of the universe. If he is tamasic, obscure, clouded, if he has an ignorant faith, an inept will, he will reach nothing true and will fall away to his lower nature. If he is lured by false rajasic lights, he can be carried away by self-will into bypaths that may lead to morass or precipice. In either case his only chance of salvation lies in a return of sattwa upon him to impose a new enlightened order and rule upon his members which will liberate him from the violent error of his self-will or the dull error of his clouded ignorance. If on the other hand he has the sattwic nature and a sattwic faith and direction for his steps, he will arrive in sight of a higher yet unachieved ideal rule which may lead him even in rare instances beyond the sattwic light some way at least towards a highest divine illumination and divine way of being and living. For if the sattwic light is so strong in him as to bring him to its own culminating point, then he will be able advancing from that point to make out his gate of entrance into some first ray of that which is divine, transcendent and absolute . In all effort at self-finding these possibilities are there; they are the conditions of this spiritual adventure. " CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-480-481 16/ Chapter 16. Deva and Asura Knowledge of Subconcient and Inconscient world: “A complete and radical change can only be brought about by bringing in persistently the spiritual light and intimate experience of the spiritual truth, power, bliss into the recalcitrant elements until they too recognise that their own way of fulfilment lies there, that they are themselves a diminished power of the spirit and can recover by this new way of being their own truth and integral nature. This illumination is constantly opposed by the Forces of the lower nature and still more by the adverse Forces that live and reign by the world’s imperfections and have laid down their formidable foundation on the black rock of the Inconscience.” CWSA-22/The Life Divine/p-970, "This profounder idea of the world-wide law is at the heart of the teaching about works given in the Gita; a spiritual union with the Highest by sacrifice, an unreserved self-giving to the Eternal is the core of its doctrine. 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 endeavour 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 , it is 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 altar 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 throw by reflection on the consciousness of the seeker." CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-108-109 17/ Chapter 17. Faith and The Three Gunas Summary or A Brief Restatement: The true nature of static faith as defined in the Gita is of four kind; first is the ‘faith of each man takes the shape, hue, quality given to it by his stuff of being, his constituting temperament, his innate power of existence, sattvanurupa sarvasya sraddha ;’ (The Gita-17.3) secondly , Sraddha is that it is an aspect of the Self, sraddhamayayo Purusha ; (The Gita-17.3) thirdly , whatever is man’s faith that he becomes ultimately, yo yachhadra sa evasah . (The Gita-17.3) This faith is Divinely fulfilled and culminated lastly in an eternal flame of knowledge, sraddhavan labhate jnanam. (The Gita-4.39) " There is one kind of faith demanded as indispensable by the integral Yoga and that may be described as (1) faith in God and the Shakti, (2) faith in the presence and power of the Divine in us and the world, (3) a faith that all in the world is the working of one divine Shakti , that all the steps of the Yoga, its strivings and sufferings and failures as well as its successes and satisfactions and victories are utilities and necessities of her workings and (4) that by a firm and strong dependence on and a total self-surrender to the Divine and to his Shakti in us we can attain to oneness and freedom and victory and perfection." CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-771, "Now we have to see how the Gita deals with this question on its own line of spiritual teaching and self-discipline. For Arjuna puts immediately a suggestive query from which the problem or one aspect of it arises. When men, he says, sacrifice to God or the gods with faith, sraddha , but abandon the rule of the Shastra, what is that concentrated will of devotion in them, nistha, which gives them this faith and moves them to this kind of action? Is it sattwa, rajas or tamas? to which strand of our nature does it belong? The answer of the Gita first states the principle that the faith in us is of a triple kind like all things in Nature and varies according to the dominating quality of our nature. The faith of each man takes the shape, hue, quality given to it by his stuff of being, his constituting temperament, his innate power of existence, sattvanurupa sarvasya sraddha . (The Gita-17.3) And then there comes a remarkable line in which the Gita tells us that this Purusha, this soul in man, is, as it were, made of sraddha, a faith, a will to be, a belief in itself and existence, and whatever is that will, faith or constituting belief in him, he is that and that is he. Sraddha mayoyam puruso yo yac-chraddhah sa eva sah . (The Gita-17.3) If we look into this pregnant saying a little closely, we shall find that this single line contains implied in its few forceful words almost the whole theory of the modern gospel of pragmatism. For if a man or the soul in a man consists of the faith which is in him, taken in this deeper sense, then it follows that the truth which he sees and wills to live is for him the truth of his being, the truth of himself that he has created or is creating and there can be for him no other real truth. This truth is a thing of his inner and outer action, a thing of his becoming, of the soul’s dynamics, not of that in him which never changes. He is what he is today by some past will of his nature sustained and continued by a present will to know, to believe and to be in his intelligence and vital force, and whatever new turn is taken by this will and faith active in his very substance, that he will tend to become in the future . We create our own truth of existence in our own action of mind and life, which is another way of saying that we create our own selves, are our own makers." CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-481-482, "We have in this central Tantric conception one side of the truth, the worship of the Energy, the Shakti, as the sole effective force for all attainment. We get the other extreme in the Vedantic conception of the Shakti as a power of Illusion and in the search after the silent inactive Purusha as the means of liberation from the deceptions created by the active Energy. But in the integral conception the Conscious Soul is the Lord, the Nature-Soul is his executive Energy. Purusha is of the nature of Sat, the being of conscious self-existence pure and infinite; Shakti or Prakriti is of the nature of Chit, — it is power of the Purusha’s self-conscious existence, pure and infinite. 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. But if Ananda is the creator and begetter of all becoming, its method is Tapas or force of the Purusha’s consciousness dwelling upon its own infinite potentiality in existence and producing from it truths of conception or real Ideas, vijnana , which, proceeding from an omniscient and omnipotent Self-existence, have the surety of their own fulfilment and contain in themselves the nature and law of their own becoming in the terms of mind, life and matter. The eventual omnipotence of Tapas and the infallible fulfilment of the Idea are the very foundation of all Yoga. In man we render these terms by Will and Faith, — a will that is eventually self-effective because it is of the substance of Knowledge and a faith that is the reflex in the lower consciousness of a Truth or real Idea yet unrealised in the manifestation. It is this self-certainty of the Idea which is meant by the Gita when it says, yo yac-chraddhah sa eva sah. , “whatever is a man’s faith or the sure Idea in him, that he becomes.”" CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-43-44, "The three parts of the perfection of our instrumental nature of which we have till now been reviewing the general features, (1) the perfection of the intelligence, heart, vital consciousness and body, (2) the perfection of the fundamental soul powers, (3) the perfection of the surrender of our instruments and action to the divine Shakti , depend at every moment of their progression on a fourth power that is covertly and overtly the pivot of all endeavour and action, faith, sraddha . The perfect faith is an assent of the whole being to the truth seen by it or offered to its acceptance, and its central working is a faith of the soul in its own will to be and attain and become and its idea of self and things and its knowledge, of which the belief of the intellect, the heart’s consent and the desire of the life mind to possess and realise are the outward figures. This soul faith, in some form of itself, is indispensable to the action of the being and without it man cannot move a single pace in life, much less take any step forward to a yet unrealised perfection. It is so central and essential a thing that the Gita can justly say of it that whatever is a man’s sraddha , that he is, yo yacchraddhah sa eva sah, and, it may be added, whatever he has the faith to see as possible in himself and strive for, that he can create and become." CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-771 Sraddha of traditional Yoga : "But faith is necessary ; if faith is absent, if one trusts to the critical intelligence which goes by outward facts and jealously questions the revelatory knowledge because that does not square with the divisions and imperfections of the apparent nature and seems to exceed it and state something which carries us beyond the first practical facts of our present existence, its grief, its pain, evil, defect, undivine error and stumbling, asubham , then there is no possibility of living out that greater knowledge. The soul that fails to get faith in the higher truth and law, must return into the path of ordinary mortal living subject to death and error and evil: it cannot grow into the Godhead which it denies. For this is a truth which has to be lived, — and lived in the soul’s growing light, not argued out in the mind’s darkness. One has to grow into it, one has to become it, — that is the only way to verify it. It is only by an exceeding of the lower self that one can become the real divine self and live the truth of our spiritual existence. All the apparent truths one can oppose to it are appearances of the lower Nature . The release from the evil and the defect of the lower Nature , asubham , can only come by accepting a higher knowledge in which all this apparent evil becomes convinced of ultimate unreality, is shown to be a creation of our darkness. But to grow thus into the freedom of the divine Nature one must accept and believe in the Godhead secret within our present limited nature. For the reason why the practice of this Yoga becomes possible and easy is that in doing it we give up the whole working of all that we naturally are into the hands of that inner divine Purusha . The Godhead works out the divine birth in us progressively, simply, infallibly, by taking up our being into his and by filling it with his own knowledge and power, jnanadıpena bhasvata ; (The Gita-10.11) he lays hands on our obscure ignorant nature and transforms it into his own light and wideness. What with entire faith and without egoism we believe in and impelled by him will to be, the God within will surely accomplish. But the egoistic mind and life we now and apparently are, must first surrender itself for transmutation into the hands of that inmost secret Divinity within us." CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-309-310, "And this assent of the being, its conscious acceptance and will to believe and realise (the law of Shastra), may be called by the name which the Gita gives to it, his faith, sraddha . The religion, the philosophy, the ethical law, the social idea, the cultural idea in which I put my faith, gives me a law for my nature and its works, an idea of relative right or an idea of relative or absolute perfection and in proportion as I have a sincerity and completeness of faith in it and an intensity of will to live according to that faith, I can become what it proposes to me , I can shape myself into an image of that right or an exemplar of that perfection." CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-478 Tamasic Sacrifice : "The tamasic sacrifice is work which is done without faith, without, that is to say, any full conscious idea and acceptance and will towards the thing Nature yet compels us to execute. It is done mechanically, because the act of living demands it, because it comes in our way, because others do it, to avoid some other greater difficulty which may arise from not doing it, or from any other tamasic motive. And it is apt to be done, if we have in the full this kind of temperament, carelessly, perfunctorily, in the wrong way. It will not be performed by the vidhi or right rule of the Shastra , will not be led in its steps according to the right method laid down by the art and science of life and the true science of the thing to be done. There will be no giving of food in the sacrifice, — and that act in the Indian ritual is symbolic of the element of helpful giving inherent in every action that is real sacrifice, the indispensable giving to others, the fruitful help to others, to the world, without which our action becomes a wholly self-regarding thing and a violation of the true universal law of solidarity and interchange. The work will be done without the dakshina , the much-needed giving or self-giving to the leaders of the sacrificial action, whether to the outward guide and helper of our work or to the veiled or manifest godhead within us. It will be done without the mantra , without the dedicating thought which is the sacred body of our will and knowledge lifted upwards to the godheads we serve by our sacrifice. The tamasic man does not offer his sacrifice to the gods, but to inferior elemental powers or to those grosser spirits behind the veil who feed upon his works and dominate his life with their darkness." CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-485-486 Rajasic Sacrifice: "The rajasic man offers his sacrifice to lower godheads or to perverse powers, the Yakshas , the keepers of wealth, or to the Asuric and the Rakshasic forces. His sacrifice may be performed outwardly according to the Shastra , but its motive is ostentation, pride or a strong lust after the fruit of his action, a vehement demand for the reward of his works. All work therefore that proceeds from violent or egoistic personal desire or from an arrogant will intent to impose itself on the world for personal objects is of the rajasic nature, even if it mask itself with the insignia of the light, even if it be done outwardly as a sacrifice. Although it is ostensibly given to God or to the gods, it remains essentially an Asuric action. It is the inner state, motive and direction which give their value to our works, and not merely the apparent outer direction, the divine names we may call to sanction them or even the sincere intellectual belief which seems to justify us in the performance. Wherever there is a dominating egoism in our acts, there our work becomes a rajasic sacrifice. The true sattwic sacrifice on the other hand is distinguished by three signs that are the quiet seal of its character. First , it is dictated by the effective truth, executed according to the vidhi, the right principle, the exact method and rule, the just rhythm and law of our works, their true functioning, their dharma ; that means that the reason and enlightened will are the guides and determinants of their steps and their purpose. Secondly , it is executed with a mind concentrated and fixed on the idea of the thing to be done as a true sacrifice imposed on us by the divine law that governs our life and therefore performed out of a high inner obligation or imperative truth and without desire for the personal fruit , — the more impersonal the motive of the action and the temperament of the force put out in it, the more sattwic is its nature. And finally i t is offered to the gods without any reservation; it is acceptable to the divine powers by whom — for they are his masks and personalities — the Master of existence governs the universe." CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-486-487 Sattwic Sacrifice: "This sattwic sacrifice comes then very near to the ideal and leads directly towards the kind of action demanded by the Gita ; but it is not the last and highest ideal, it is not yet the action of the perfected man who lives in the divine nature. For it is carried out as a fixed dharma , and it is offered as a sacrifice or service to the gods, to some partial power or aspect of the Divine manifested in ourselves or in the universe. Work done with a disinterested religious faith or selflessly for humanity or impersonally from devotion to the Right or the Truth is of this nature, and action of that kind is necessary for our perfection; for it purifies our thought and will and our natural substance. The culmination of the sattwic action at which we have to arrive is of a still larger and freer kind; it is the high last sacrifice offered by us to the supreme Divine in his integral being and with a seeking for the Purushottama or with the vision of Vasudeva in all that is, the action done impersonally, universally, for the good of the world, for the fulfilment of the divine will in the universe. That culmination leads to its own transcending, to the immortal Dharma . For then comes a freedom in which there is no personal action at all, no sattwic rule of dharma , no limitation of Shastra; the inferior reason and will are themselves overpassed and it is not they but a higher wisdom that dictates and guides the work and commands its objective. There is no question of personal fruit; for the will that works is not our own but a supreme Will of which the soul is the instrument. There is no self-regarding and no selflessness; for the Jiva, the eternal portion of the Divine, is united with the highest Self of his existence and he and all are one in that Self and Spirit. There is no personal action, for all actions are given up to the Master of our works and it is he that does the action through the divinised Prakriti. There is no sacrifice, — unless we can say that the Master of sacrifice is offering the works of his energy in the Jiva to himself in his own cosmic form. This is the supreme self-surpassing state arrived at by the action that is sacrifice, this the perfection of the soul that has come to its full consciousness in the divine nature." CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-487-488 Tamasic and Rajasic Tapasya : "Tamasic tapasya is that which is pursued under a clouded and deluded idea hard and obstinate in its delusion, maintained by an ignorant faith in some cherished falsehood, performed with effort and suffering imposed on oneself in pursuit of some narrow and vulgar egoistic object empty of relation to any true or great aim or else with a concentration of the energy in a will to do hurt to others. That which makes this kind of energism tamasic is not any principle of inertia, for inertia is foreign to tapasya , but a darkness in the mind and nature, a vulgar narrowness and ugliness in the doing or a brutish instinct or desire in the aim or in the motive feeling. Rajasic energisms of askesis are those which are undertaken to get honour and worship from men, for the sake of personal distinction and outward glory and greatness or from some other of the many motives of egoistic will and pride. This kind of askesis is devoted to fleeting particular objects which add nothing to the heavenward growth and perfection of the soul; it is a thing without fixed and helpful principle, an energy bound up with changeful and passing occasion and itself of that nature. Or even if there is ostensibly a more inward and noble object and the faith and will are of a higher kind, yet if any kind of arrogance or pride or any great strength of violent self-will or desire enters into the askesis or if it drives some violent, lawless or terrible action contrary to the Shastra , opposed to the right rule of life and works and afflicting to oneself and to others, or if it is of the nature of self-torture and hurts the mental, vital and physical elements or violates the God within us who is seated in the inner subtle body, then too it is an unwise, an Asuric , a rajasic or rajaso-tamasic tapasya. " CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-488-489 Sattwic Tapasya: "Sattwic tapasya is that which is done with a highest enlightened faith, as a duty deeply accepted or for some ethical or spiritual or other higher reason and with no desire for any external or narrowly personal fruit in the action. It is of the character of self-discipline and asks for self-control and a harmonising of one’s nature. The Gita describes three kinds of sattwic askesis. First comes the physical, the askesis of the outward act; under this head are especially mentioned worship and reverence of those deserving reverence, cleanness of the person, the action and the life, candid dealing, sexual purity and avoidance of killing and injury to others. Next is askesis of speech, and that consists in the study of Scripture, kind, true and beneficent speech and a careful avoidance of words that may cause fear, sorrow and trouble to others. Finally t here is the askesis of mental and moral perfection, and that means the purifying of the whole temperament, gentleness and a clear and calm gladness of mind, self-control and silence. Here comes in all that quiets or disciplines the rajasic and egoistic nature and all that replaces it by the happy and tranquil principle of good and virtue. This is the askesis of the sattwic dharma so highly prized in the system of the ancient Indian culture. Its greater culmination will be a high purity of the reason and will, an equal soul, a deep peace and calm, a wide sympathy and preparation of oneness, a reflection of the inner soul’s divine gladness in the mind, life and body. There at that lofty point the ethical is already passing away into the spiritual type and character. And this culmination too can be made to transcend itself, can be raised into a higher and freer light, can pass away into the settled godlike energy of the supreme nature. And what will remain then will be the spirit’s immaculate Tapas , a highest will and luminous force in all the members acting in a wide and solid calm and a deep and pure spiritual delight, Ananda . There will then be no farther need of askesis, no tapasya, because all is naturally and easily divine, all is that Tapas . There will be no separate labour of the lower energism, because the energy of Prakriti will have found its true source and base in the transcendent will of the Purushottama. Then, because of this high initiation, the acts of this energy on the lower planes also will proceed naturally and spontaneously from an innate perfect will and by an inherent perfect guidance. There will be no limitation by any of the present dharmas; for there will be a free action far above the rajasic and tamasic nature, but also far beyond the too careful and narrow limits of the sattwic rule of action." CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-489-490 Tamasic, Rajasic and Sattwic Dana: "As with tapasya , all giving also is of an ignorant tamasic , an ostentatious rajasic or a disinterested and enlightened sattwic character. The tamasic gift is offered ignorantly with no consideration of the right conditions of time, place and object; it is a foolish, inconsiderate and in reality a self-regarding movement, an ungenerous and ignoble generosity, the gift offered without sympathy or true liberality, without regard for the feelings of the recipient and despised by him even in the acceptance. The rajasic kind of giving is that which is done with regret, unwillingness or violence to oneself or with a personal and egoistic object or in the hope of a return of some kind from whatever quarter or a corresponding or greater benefit to oneself from the receiver. The sattwic way of giving is to bestow with right reason and goodwill and sympathy in the right conditions of time and place and on the right recipient who is worthy or to whom the gift can be really helpful. Its act is performed for the sake of the giving and the beneficence, without any view to a benefit already done or yet to be done to oneself by the receiver of the benefit and without any personal object in the action. The culmination of the sattwic way of dana will bring into the action an increasing element of that wide self-giving to others and to the world and to God, atma-dana, atma-samarpana , which is the high consecration of the sacrifice of works enjoined by the Gita . And the transcendence in the divine nature will be a greatest completeness of self-offering founded on the largest meaning of existence. All this manifold universe comes into birth and is constantly maintained by God’s giving of himself and his powers and the lavish outflow of his self and spirit into all these existences; universal being, says the Veda , is the sacrifice of the Purusha. All the action of the perfected soul will be even such a constant divine giving of itself and its powers, an outflowing of the knowledge, light, strength, love, joy, helpful shakti which it possesses in the Divine and by his influence and effluence on all around it according to their capacity of reception or on all this world and its creatures. That will be the complete result of the complete self-giving of the soul to the Master of our existence." CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-490-491 OM TAT SAT: "The Gita closes this chapter with what seems at first sight a recondite utterance. The formula OM, Tat, Sat , is, it says, the triple definition of the Brahman, by whom the Brahmanas, the Vedas and sacrifices were created of old and in it resides all their significance. Tat, That, indicates the Absolute. Sat indicates the supreme and universal existence in its principle. OM is the symbol of the triple Brahman, the outward-looking, the inward or subtle and the superconscient causal Purusha. Each letter A, U, M indicates one of these three in ascending order and the syllable as a whole brings out the fourth state, Turiya , which rises to the Absolute. OM is the initiating syllable pronounced at the outset as a benedictory prelude and sanction to all act of sacrifice, all act of giving and all act of askesis; it is a reminder that our work should be made an expression of the triple Divine in our inner being and turned towards him in the idea and motive. The seekers of liberation indeed do these actions without desire of fruit and only with the idea, feeling, Ananda of the absolute Divine behind their nature. It is that which they seek by this purity and impersonality in their works, this high desirelessness, this vast emptiness of ego and plenitude of Spirit. Sat means good and it means existence. Both these things, the principle of good and the principle of reality, must be there behind all the three kinds of action. All good works are Sat , for they prepare the soul for the higher reality of our being; all firm abiding in sacrifice, giving and askesis and all works done with that central view, as sacrifice, as giving, as askesis, are Sat, for they build the basis for the highest truth of our spirit. And because sraddha is the central principle of our existence , any of these things done without sraddha is a falsity and has no true meaning or true substance on earth or beyond, no reality, no power to endure or create in life here or after the mortal life in greater regions of our conscious spirit. The soul’s faith, not a mere intellectual belief, but its concordant will to know, to see, to believe and to do and be according to its vision and knowledge, is that which determines by its power the measure of our possibilities of becoming, and it is this faith and will turned in all our inner and outer self, nature and action towards all that is highest, most divine, most real and eternal that will enable us to reach the supreme perfection." CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-491-492 17/ Chapter 17. Faith and The Three Gunas Sraddha , the faith of Integral Yoga: "The faith demanded of us both in its general principle and its constant particular application amounts to a large and ever increasing and a constantly purer, fuller and stronger assent of the whole being and all its parts to the presence and guidance of God and the Shakti. The faith in the Shakti, as long as we are not aware of and filled with her presence, must necessarily be preceded or at least accompanied by a firm and virile faith in our own spiritual will and energy and our power to move successfully towards unity and freedom and perfection. Man is given faith in himself, his ideas and his powers that he may work and create and rise to greater things and in the end bring his strength as a worthy offering to the altar of the Spirit. This spirit, says the Scripture, is not to be won by the weak, nayam atma balahınena labhyah . All paralysing self-distrust has to be discouraged, all doubt of our strength to accomplish, for that is a false assent to impotence, an imagination of weakness and a denial of the omnipotence of the spirit. A present incapacity, however heavy may seem its pressure, is only a trial of faith and a temporary difficulty and to yield to the sense of inability is for the seeker of the integral Yoga a non-sense, for his object is a development of a perfection that is there already, latent in the being, because man carries the seed of the divine life in himself, in his own spirit, the possibility of success is involved and implied in the effort and victory is assured because behind is the call and guidance of an omnipotent power. At the same time this faith in oneself must be purified from all touch of rajasic egoism and spiritual pride. The sadhaka should keep as much as possible in his mind the idea that his strength is not his own in the egoistic sense but that of the divine universal Shakti and whatever is egoistic in his use of it must be a cause of limitation and in the end an obstacle. The power of the divine universal Shakti which is behind our aspiration is illimitable, and when it is rightly called upon it cannot fail to pour itself into us and to remove whatever incapacity and obstacle, now or later; for the times and durations of our struggle while they depend at first, instrumentally and in part, on the strength of our faith and our endeavour, are yet eventually in the hands of the wisely determining secret Spirit, alone the Master of the Yoga, the Ishwara. " CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-779-780, "And behind her is the Ishwara and faith in him is the most central thing in the sraddha of the integral Yoga . This faith we must have and develop to perfection that all things are the workings under the universal conditions of a supreme self-knowledge and wisdom, that nothing done in us or around us is in vain or without its appointed place and just significance, that all things are possible when the Ishwara as our supreme Self and Spirit takes up the action and that all that has been done before and all that he will do hereafter was and will be part of his infallible and foreseeing guidance and intended towards the fruition of our Yoga and our perfection and our life work. This faith will be more and more justified as the higher knowledge opens, we shall begin to see the great and small significances that escaped our limited mentality and faith will pass into knowledge. Then we shall see beyond the possibility of doubt that all happens within the working of the one Will and that that will was also wisdom because it develops always the true workings in life of the self and nature. The highest state of the assent, the sraddha of the being will be when we feel the presence of the Ishwara and feel all our existence and consciousness and thought and will and action in his hand and consent in all things and with every part of our self and nature to the direct and immanent and occupying will of the Spirit. And that highest perfection of the sraddha will also be the opportunity and perfect foundation of a divine strength: it will base, when complete, the development and manifestation and the works of the luminous supramental Shakti. " CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-781-782 18/ Chapter 18. Renunciation and Moksha Summary or A Brief Restatement: "This part of the subject is introduced by a last question of Arjuna regarding the principle of Sannyasa and the principle of Tyaga and their difference. The frequent harping, the reiterated emphasis of the Gita on this crucial distinction has been amply justified by the subsequent history of the later Indian mind, its constant confusion of these two very different things and its strong bent towards belittling any activity of the kind taught by the Gita as at best only a preliminary to the supreme inaction of Sannyasa . As a matter of fact, when people talk of Tyaga , of renunciation, it is always the physical renunciation of the world which they understand by the word or at least on which they lay emphasis, while the Gita takes absolutely the opposite view that the real Tyaga has action and living in the world as its basis and not a flight to the monastery, the cave or the hill-top. The real Tyaga is action with a renunciation of desire and that too is the real Sannyasa . ” CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-493-494 Tyaga: "The liberating activity of the sattwic self-discipline must no doubt be pervaded by a spirit of renunciation, — that is an essential element: but what renunciation and in what manner of the spirit? Not the renunciation of work in the world, not any outward asceticism or any ostentation of a visible giving up of enjoyment, but a renunciation, a leaving, tyaga, of vital desire and ego, a total laying aside, sannyasa, of the separate personal life of the desire soul and ego-governed mind and rajasic vital nature. That is the true condition for entering into the heights of Yoga whether through the impersonal self and Brahmic oneness or through universal Vasudeva or inwardly into the supreme Purushottama . More conventionally taken, Sannyasa in the standing terminology of the sages means the physical depositing or laying aside of desirable actions: Tyaga this is the Gita’s distinction — is the name given by the wise to a mental and spiritual renunciation, an entire abandonment of all attached clinging to the fruit of our works, to the action itself or to its personal initiation or rajasic impulse. In that sense Tyaga, not Sannyasa , is the better way. It is not the desirable actions that must be laid aside, but the desire which gives them that character has to be put away from us. The fruit of the action may come in the dispensation of the Master of works, but there is to be no egoistic demand for that as a reward and condition of doing works. Or the fruit may not at all come and still the work has to be performed as the thing to be done, kartavyam karma , the thing which the Master within demands of us. The success, the failure are in his hands and he will regulate them according to his omniscient will and inscrutable purpose. Action, all action has indeed to be given up in the end, not physically by abstention, by immobility, by inertia, but spiritually to the Master of our being by whose power alone can any action be accomplished. There has to be a renunciation of the false idea of ourselves as the doer; for in reality it is the universal Shakti that works through our personality and our ego. The spiritual transference of all our works to the Master and his Shakti is the real Sannyasa in the teaching of the Gita." CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-494-495 What works are to be done?: "The question still arises, what works are to be done? Those even who stand for a final physical renunciation are not at one in this difficult matter. Some would have it that all works must be excised from our life, as if that were possible. But it is not possible so long as we are in the body and alive; nor can salvation consist in reducing our active selves by trance to the lifeless immobility of the clod and the pebble. The silence of Samadhi does not abrogate the difficulty, for as soon as the breath comes again into the body, we are once more in action and have toppled down from the heights of this salvation by spiritual slumber. But the true salvation, the release by an inner renunciation of the ego and union with the Purushottama remains steady in whatever state, persists in this world or out of it or in whatever world or out of all world, is self-existent, sarvatha vartamanopi, (The Gita-6.31) and does not depend upon inaction or action. What then are the actions to be done? The thoroughgoing ascetic answer, not noted by the Gita — it was perhaps not altogether current at the time — might be that solely begging, eating and meditation are to be permitted among voluntary activities and otherwise only the necessary actions of the body. But the more liberal and comprehensive solution was evidently to continue the three most sattwic activities, sacrifice, giving and askesis. And these certainly are to be done, says the Gita, for they purify the wise. But more generally, and understanding these three things in their widest sense, it is the rightly regulated action, niyatam karma, that has to be done, (1) action regulated by the Shastra , the science and art of right knowledge, right works, right living, or (2) regulated by the essential nature, svabhava-niyatam karma, or, (3) finally and best of all, regulated by the will of the Divine within and above us. The last is the true and only action of the liberated man, muktasya karma ." CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-495-496 Tamasic, rajasic and Sattwic principle of Renunciation: "To renounce these works is not a right movement — the Gita lays that down plainly and trenchantly in the end, niyatasya tu sannyasah karmano nopapadyate. (The Gita-18.7) To renounce them from an ignorant confidence in the sufficiency of that withdrawal for the true liberation is a tamasic renunciation . The gunas follow us, we see, into the renunciation of works as well as into works. A renunciation with attachment to inaction, sango akarmani, would be equally a tamasic withdrawal. And to give them up because they bring sorrow or are a trouble to the flesh and a weariness to the mind or in the feeling that all is vanity and vexation of spirit, is a rajasic renunciation and does not bring the high spiritual fruit; that too is not the true Tyaga . It is a result of intellectual pessimism or vital weariness, it has its roots in ego. No freedom can come from a renunciation governed by this self-regarding principle...The sattwic principle of renunciation is to withdraw not from action, but from the personal demand, the ego factor behind it. It is to do works not dictated by desire but by the law of right living or by the essential nature, its knowledge, its ideal, its faith in itself and the Truth it sees, its sraddha. Or else, on a higher spiritual plane, they are dictated by the will of the Master and done with the mind in Yoga, without any personal attachment either to the action or to the fruit of the action. There must be a complete renunciation of all desire and of all self-regarding egoistic choice and impulse and finally of that much subtler egoism of the will which either says, “The work is mine, I am the doer”, or even “The work is God’s, but I am the doer.” There must be no attachment to pleasant, desirable, lucrative or successful work and no doing of it because it has that nature; but that kind of work too has to be done, — done totally, selflessly, with the assent of the spirit, — when it is the action demanded from above and from within us, kartavyam karma . There must be no aversion to unpleasant, undesirable or ungratifying action or work that brings or is likely to bring with it suffering, danger, harsh conditions, inauspicious consequences; for that too has to be accepted, totally, selflessly, with a deep understanding of its need and meaning, when it is the work that should be done, kartavyam karma . The wise man puts away the shrinkings and hesitations of the desire-soul and the doubts of the ordinary human intelligence, that measure by little personal, conventional or otherwise limited standards. He follows in the light of the full sattwic mind and with the power of an inner renunciation lifting the soul to impersonality, towards God, towards the universal and eternal the highest ideal law of his nature or the will of the Master of works in his secret spirit. He will not do action for the sake of any personal result or for any reward in this life or with any attachment to success, profit or consequence: neither will his works be undertaken for the sake of a fruit in the invisible hereafter or ask for a reward in other births or in worlds beyond us, the prizes for which the half-baked religious mind hungers. The three kinds of result, pleasant, unpleasant and mixed, in this or other worlds, in this or another life are for the slaves of desire and ego; these things do not cling to the free spirit. The liberated worker who has given up his works by the inner sannyasa to a greater Power is free from Karma . Action he will do, for some kind of action, less or more, small or great, is inevitable, natural, right for the embodied soul, — action is part of the divine law of living, it is the high dynamics of the spirit. The essence of renunciation, the true Tyaga, the true Sannyasa is not any rule of thumb of inaction but a disinterested soul, a selfless mind, the transition from ego to the free impersonal and spiritual nature. The spirit of this inner renunciation is the first mental condition of the highest culminating sattwic discipline. " CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-496-497 Five indispensable requisites for the accomplishment of all work: "The Gita then speaks of the five causes or indispensable requisites for the accomplishment of works as laid down by the Sankhya . These five are, first, the frame of body, life and mind which are the basis or standing-ground of the soul in Nature, adhisthana , next, the doer, karta , third, the various instrumentation of Nature, karana , fourth, the many kinds of effort which make up the force of action, chestah , and last, Fate, daivam , that is to say, the influence of the Power or powers other than the human factors, other than the visible mechanism of Nature, that stand behind these and modify the work and dispose its fruits in the steps of act and consequence. These five elements make up among them all the efficient causes, karana, that determine the shaping and outcome of whatever work man undertakes with mind and speech and body." CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-497-498 Universal Spirit universal Nature as the doer of the work: "The doer is ordinarily supposed to be our surface personal ego, but that is the false idea of the understanding that has not arrived at knowledge. The ego is the ostensible doer, but the ego and its will are creations and instruments of Nature with which the ignorant understanding wrongly identifies our self and they are not the only determinants even of human action, much less of its turn and consequence. When we are liberated from ego, our real self behind comes forward, impersonal and universal, and it sees in its self-vision of unity with the universal Spirit universal Nature as the doer of the work and the Divine Will behind as the master of universal Nature. Only so long as we have not this knowledge, are we bound by the character of the ego and its will as the doer and do good and evil and have the satisfaction of our tamasic, rajasic or sattwic nature. But once we live in this greater knowledge, the character and consequences of the work can make no difference to the freedom of the spirit. The work may be outwardly a terrible action like this great battle and slaughter of Kurukshetra ; but although the liberated man takes his part in the struggle and though he slay all these peoples, he slays no man and he is not bound by his work, because the work is that of the Master of the Worlds and it is he who has already slain in his hidden omnipotent will all these armies. This work of destruction was needed that humanity might move forward to another creation and a new purpose, might get rid as in a fire of its past karma of unrighteousness and oppression and injustice and move towards a kingdom of the Dharma. The liberated man does all his appointed work as the living instrument one in spirit with the universal Spirit. And knowing that all this must be and looking beyond the outward appearance he acts not for self but for God and man and the human and cosmic order, (The cosmic order comes into question, because the triumph of the Asura in humanity means to that extent the triumph of the Asura in the balance of the world-forces.) not in fact himself acting, but conscious of the presence and power of the divine Force in his deeds and their issue. He knows that the supreme Shakti i s doing in his mental, vital and physical body, adhisthana , as the sole doer the thing appointed by a Fate which is in truth not Fate, not a mechanical dispensation, but the wise and all-seeing Will that is at work behind human Karma. This “terrible work” on which the whole teaching of the Gita turns, is an extreme example of action inauspicious in appearance, akusalam, though a great good lies beyond the appearance. Impersonally has it to be done by the divinely appointed man for the holding together of the world purpose, loka-sangrahartham , without personal aim or desire, because it is the appointed service." CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-498-499 Tamasic, Rajasic and Sattwic Knowledge: "It is clear then that the work is not the sole thing that mat- ters; the knowledge in which we do works makes an immense spiritual difference. There are three things, says the Gita, which go to constitute the mental impulsion to works, and they are the knowledge in our will, the object of knowledge and the knower; and into the knowledge there comes always the working of the three gunas. It is this element of the gunas that makes all the dif- ference to our view of the thing known and to the spirit in which the knower does his work. The tamasic ignorant knowledge is a small and narrow, a lazy or dully obstinate way of looking at things which has no eye for the real nature of the world or of the thing done or its field or the act or its conditions. The tamasic mind does not look for real cause and effect, but absorbs itself in one movement or one routine with an obstinate attachment to it, can see nothing but the little section of personal activity before its eyes and does not know in fact what it is doing but blindly lets natural impulsion work out through its deed results of which it has no conception, foresight or comprehending intelligence. The rajasic knowledge is that which sees the multiplicity of things only in their separateness and variety of operation in all these existences and is unable to discover a true principle of unity or rightly coordinate its will and action, but follows the bent of ego and desire, the activity of its many-branching egoistic will and various and mixed motive in response to the solicitation of internal and environing impulsions and forces. This knowing is a jumble of sections of knowledge, often inconsistent knowledge, put forcefully together by the mind in order to make some kind of pathway through the confusion of our half-knowledge and half-ignorance. Or else it is a restless kinetic multiple action with no firm governing higher ideal and self-possessed law of true light and power within it. The sattwic knowledge on the contrary sees existence as one indivisible whole in all these divisions, one imperishable being in all becomings; it masters the principle of its action and the relation of the particular action to the total purpose of existence; it puts in the right place each step of the complete process. At the highest top of knowledge this seeing becomes the knowledge of the one spirit in the world, one in all these many existences, of the one Master of all works, of the forces of cosmos as expressions of the Godhead and of the work itself as the operation of his supreme will and wisdom in man and his life and essential nature. The personal will has come to be entirely conscious, illumined, spiritually awake, and it lives and works in the One, obeys more and more perfectly his supreme mandate and grows more and more a faultless instru- ment of his light and power in the human person. The supreme liberated action arrives through this culmination of the sattwic knowledge ." CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-499-500 The Doer, Instrument and work done: "There are again three things, the doer, the instrument and the work done, that hold the action together and make it possible. And here again it is the difference of the gunas that determines the character of each of these elements. The sattwic mind that seeks always for a right harmony and right knowledge is the governing instrument of the sattwic man and moves all the rest of the machine. An egoistic will of desire supported by the desire-soul is the dominant instrument of the rajasic worker. An ignorant instinct or the unenlightened impulsion of the physical mind and the crude vital nature is the chief instrumental force of the tamasic doer of action. The instrument of the liberated man is a greater spiritual light and power, far higher than the highest sattwic intelligence, and it works in him by an enveloping descent from a supraphysical centre and uses as a clear channel of its force a purified and receptive mind, life and body." CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-500-501 Tamasic, Rajasic and Sattwic Action: "Tamasic action is that done with a confused, deluded and ignorant mind, in mechanical obedience to the instincts, im- pulsions and unseeing ideas, without regarding the strength or capacity or the waste and loss of blind misapplied effort or the antecedent and consequence and right conditions of the impulse, effort or labour. Rajasic action is that which a man undertakes under the dominion of desire, with his eyes fixed on the work and its hoped-for fruit and nothing else, or with an egoistic sense of his own personality in the action, and it is done with inordinate effort, with a passionate labour, with a great heaving and straining of the personal will to get at the object of its desire. Sattwic action is that which a man does calmly in the clear light of reason and knowledge and with an impersonal sense of right or duty or the demand of an ideal, as the thing that ought to be done whatever may be the result to himself in this world or another, a work performed without attachment, without liking or disliking for its spur or its drag, for the sole satisfaction of his reason and sense of right, of the lucid intelligence and the enlightened will and the pure disinterested mind and the high contented spirit. At the line of culmination of sattwa it will be transformed and become a highest impersonal action dictated by the spirit within us and no longer by the intelligence, an action moved by the highest law of the nature, free from the lower ego and its light or heavy baggage and from limitation even by best opinion, noblest desire, purest personal will or loftiest mental ideal. There will be none of these impedimenta; in their place there will stand a clear spiritual self-knowledge and illumination and an imperative intimate sense of an infallible power that acts and of the work to be done for the world and for the world’s Master." CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-501 Tamasic, Rajasic and Sattwic Doer of Action: "The tamasic doer of action is one who does not put himself really into the work, but acts with a mechanical mind, or obeys the most vulgar thought of the herd, follows the common routine or is wedded to a blind error and prejudice. He is obstinate in stupidity, stubborn in error and takes a foolish pride in his ignorant doing; a narrow and evasive cunning replaces true intelligence; he has a stupid and insolent contempt for those with whom he has to deal, especially for wiser men and his betters. A dull laziness, slowness, procrastination, looseness, want of vigour or of sincerity mark his action. The tamasic man is ordinarily slow to act, dilatory in his steps, easily depressed, ready soon to give up his task if it taxes his strength, his diligence or his patience. The rajasic doer of action on the contrary is one eagerly attached to the work, bent on its rapid completion, passionately desirous of fruit and reward and consequence, greedy of heart, impure of mind, often violent and cruel and brutal in the means he uses; he cares little whom he injures or how much he injures others so long as he gets what he wants, satisfies his passions and will, vindicates the claims of his ego. He is full of an incontinent joy in success and bitterly grieved and stricken by failure. The sattwic doer is free from all this attachment, this egoism, this violent strength or passionate weakness; his is a mind and will unelated by success, undepressed by failure, full of a fixed impersonal resolution, a calm rectitude of zeal or a high and pure and selfless enthusiasm in the work that has to be done. At and beyond the culmination of sattwa this resolution, zeal, enthusiasm become the spontaneous working of the spiritual Tapas and at last a highest soul-force, the direct God-Power, the mighty and steadfast movement of a divine energy in the human instrument, the self-assured steps of the Seer-will, the gnostic intelligence and with it the wide delight of the free spirit in the works of the liberated nature." CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-502 Tamasic, Rajasic and Sattwic Understanding: "The reason armed with the intelligent will works in man in whatever manner or measure he may possess these human gifts and it is accordingly right or perverted, clouded or luminous, narrow and small or large and wide like the mind of its possessor. It is the understanding power of his nature, buddhi, that chooses the work for him or, more often, approves and sets its sanction on one or other among the many suggestions of his complex instincts, impulsions, ideas and desires. It is that which determines for him what is right or wrong, to be done or not to be done, Dharma or Adharma . And the persistence of the will is that continuous force of mental Nature which sustains the work and gives it consistence and persistence. Here again there is the incidence of the gunas. The tamasic reason is a false, ignorant and darkened instrument which chains us to see all things in a dull and wrong light, a cloud of misconceptions, a stupid ignoring of the values of things and people. This reason calls light darkness and darkness light, takes what is not the true law and upholds it as the law, persists in the thing which ought not to be done and holds it up to us as the one right thing to be done. Its ignorance is invincible and its persistence of will is a persistence in the satisfaction and dull pride of its ignorance. That is on its side of blind action; but it is pursued also by a heavy stress of inertia and impotence, a persistence in dullness and sleep, an aversion to mental change and progress, a dwelling on the fears and pains and depressions of mind which deter us in our path or keep us to base, weak and cowardly ways. Timidity, shirking, evasion, indolence, the justification by the mind of its fears and false doubts and cautions and refusals of duty and its lapses and turnings from the call of our higher nature, a safe following of the line of least resistance so that there may be the least trouble and effort and peril in the winning of the fruit of our labour, — rather no fruit or poor result, it says, than a great and noble toil or a perilous and exacting endeavour and adventure, — these are characteristics of the tamasic will and intelligence.... The rajasic understanding, when it does not knowingly choose error and evil for the sake of the error and evil, can make distinctions between right and wrong, between what should or should not be done, but not rightly, rather with a pulling awry of their true measures and a constant distortion of values. And this is because its reason and will are a reason of the ego and a will of desire, and these powers misrepresent and distort the truth and the right to serve their own egoistic purpose. It is only when we are free from ego and desire and look steadily with a calm, pure, disinterested mind concerned only with the truth and its sequences that we can hope to see things rightly and in their just values. But the rajasic will fixes its persistent attention on the satisfaction of its own attached clingings and desires in its pursuit of interest and pleasure and of what it thinks or chooses to think right and justice, Dharma. Always it is apt to put on these things the construction which will most flatter and justify its desires and to uphold as right or legitimate the means which will best help it to get the coveted fruits of its work and endeavour. That is the cause of three fourths of the falsehood and misconduct of the human reason and will. Rajas with its vehement hold on the vital ego is the great sinner and positive misleader... The sattwic understanding sees in its right place, right form, right measure the movement of the world, the law of action and the law of abstention from action, the thing that is to be done and the thing that is not to be done, what is safe for the soul and what is dangerous, what is to be feared and shunned and what is to be embraced by the will, what binds the spirit of man and what sets it free. These are the things that it follows or avoids by the persistence of its conscious will according to the degree of its light and the stage of evolution it has reached in its upward ascent to the highest self and Spirit. The culmination of this sattwic i ntelligence is found by a high persistence of the aspiring buddhi when it is settled on what is beyond the ordinary reason and mental will, pointed to the summits, turned to a steady control of the senses and the life and a union by Yoga with man’s highest Self, the universal Divine, the transcendent Spirit. It is there that arriving through the sattwic guna one can pass beyond the gunas , can climb beyond the limitations of the mind and its will and intelligence and sattwa itself disappear into that which is above the gunas and beyond this instrumental nature. There the soul is enshrined in light and enthroned in firm union with the Self and Spirit and Godhead. Arrived upon that summit we can leave the Highest to guide Nature in our members in the free spontaneity of a divine action: for there there is no wrong or confused working, no element of error or impotence to obscure or distort the luminous perfection and power of the Spirit. All these lower conditions, laws, dharmas cease to have any hold on us; the Infinite acts in the liberated man and there is no law but the immortal truth and right of the free spirit, no Karma , no kind of bondage." CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-502-505 Tamasic, Rajasic and Sattwic Happiness: "Harmony and order are the characteristic qualities of the sattwic mind and temperament, quiet happiness, a clear and calm content and an inner ease and peace. Happiness is indeed the one thing which is openly or indirectly the universal pursuit of our human nature, — happiness or its suggestion or some counterfeit of it, some pleasure, some enjoyment, some satisfaction of the mind, the will, the passions or the body. Pain is an experience our nature has to accept when it must, involuntarily as a necessity, an unavoidable incident of universal Nature, or voluntarily as a means to what we seek after, but not a thing de- sired for its own sake, — except when it is so sought in perversity or with an ardour of enthusiasm in suffering for some touch of fierce pleasure it brings or the intense strength it engenders. But there are various kinds of happiness or pleasure according to the guna which dominates in our nature. Thus the tamasic mind can remain well-pleased in its indolence and inertia, its stupor and sleep, its blindness and its error. Nature has armed it with the privilege of a smug satisfaction in its stupidity and ignorance, its dim lights of the cave, its inert contentment, its petty or base joys and its vulgar pleasures. Delusion is the beginning of this satisfaction and delusion is its consequence; but still there is given a dull, a by no means admirable but a sufficient pleasure in his delusions to the dweller in the cave. There is a tamasic happiness founded in inertia and ignorance... The mind of the rajasic man drinks of a more fiery and intoxicating cup; the keen, mobile, active pleasure of the senses and the body and the sense-entangled or fierily kinetic will and intelligence are to him all the joy of life and the very significance of living. This joy is nectar to the lips at the first touch, but there is a secret poison in the bottom of the cup and after it the bitterness of disappointment, satiety, fatigue, revolt, disgust, sin, suffering, loss, transience. And it must be so because these pleasures in their external figure are not the things which the spirit in us truly demands from life; there is something behind and beyond the transience of the form, something that is lasting, satisfying, self-sufficient. What the sattwic nature seeks, therefore, is the satisfaction of the higher mind and the spirit and when it once gets this large object of its quest, there comes in a clear, pure happiness of the soul, a state of fullness, an abiding ease and peace. This happiness does not depend on outward things, but on ourselves alone and on the flowering of what is best and most inward within us. But it is not at first our normal possession; it has to be conquered by self-discipline, a labour of the soul, a high and arduous endeavour. At first this means much loss of habitual pleasure, much suffering and struggle, a poison born of the churning of our nature, a painful conflict of forces, much revolt and opposition to the change due to the ill-will of the members or the insistence of vital movements, but in the end the nectar of immortality rises in the place of this bitterness and as we climb to the higher spiritual nature we come to the end of sorrow, the euthanasia of grief and pain. That is the surpassing happiness which descends upon us at the point or line of culmination of the sattwic discipline." CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-505-506, The Central Truth of the Gita: "The Teacher has completed all else that he needed to say, he has worked out all the central principles and the supporting suggestions and implications of his message and elucidated the principal doubts and questions that might rise around it, and now all that rests for him to do is to put into decisive phrase and penetrating formula the one last word, the heart itself of the message, the very core of his gospel. And we find that this decisive, last and crowning word is not merely the essence of what has been already said on the matter, not merely a concentrated description of the needed self-discipline, the Sadhana , and of that greater spiritual consciousness which is to be the result of all its effort and askesis; it sweeps out, as it were, yet farther, breaks down every limit and rule, canon and formula and opens into a wide and illimitable spiritual truth with an infinite potentiality of significance. And that is a sign of the profundity, the wide reach, the greatness of spirit of the Gita’s teaching. An ordinary religious teaching or philosophical doctrine is well enough satisfied to seize on certain great and vital aspects of truth and turn them into utilisable dogma and instruction, method and practice for the guidance of man in his inner life and the law and form of his action; it does not go farther, it does not open doors out of the circle of its own system , does not lead us out into some widest freedom and unimprisoned largeness. This limitation is useful and indeed for a time indispensable. Man bounded by his mind and will has need of a law and rule, a fixed system, a definite practice selective of his thought and action; he asks for the single unmistakable hewn path hedged, fixed and secure to the tread, for the limited horizons, for the enclosed resting-places. It is only the strong and few who can move through freedom to freedom. And yet in the end the free soul ought to have an issue out of the forms and systems in which the mind finds its account and takes its limited pleasure. To exceed our ladder of ascent, not to stop short even on the topmost stair but move untrammelled and at large in the wideness of the spirit is a release important for our perfection; the spirit’s absolute liberty is our perfect status. And this is how the Gita leads us: it lays down a firm and sure but very large way of ascent, a great Dharma , and then it takes us out beyond all that is laid down, beyond all dharmas, into infinitely open spaces, divulges to us the hope, lets us into the secret of an absolute perfection founded in an absolute spiritual liberty, and that secret, guhyatamam , (The Gita-18.64) is the substance of what it calls its supreme word, that the hidden thing, the inmost knowledge." CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-526-527, “In other words a will of entire self-giving opens wide all the gates of the spirit and brings in response an entire descent and self-giving of the Godhead to the human being, and that at once reshapes and assimilates everything in us to the law of the divine existence by a rapid transformation of the lower into the spiritual nature . The will of self-giving forces away by its power the veil between God and man; it annuls every error and annihilates every obstacle. ” CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-335, "It is nothing less that is meant in the end when we speak of the absolute consecration of the individual to the Divine. But this total fullness of consecration can only come by a constant progression when the long and difficult process of transforming desire out of existence is completed in an ungrudging measure. Perfect self-consecration implies perfect self-surrender." CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-86, “In the first movement of self-preparation, the period of personal effort, the method we have to use is this concentration of the whole being on the Divine that it seeks and, as its corollary, this constant rejection, throwing out, katharsis, of all that is not the true Truth of the Divine. An entire consecration of all that we are, think, feel and do will be the result of this persistence. This consecration in its turn must culminate in an integral self- giving to the Highest; for its crown and sign of completion is the whole nature’s all-comprehending absolute surrender. In the second stage of the Yoga, transitional between the human and the divine working, there will supervene an increasing purified and vigilant passivity, a more and more luminous divine response to the Divine Force, but not to any other; and there will be as a result the growing inrush of a great and conscious miraculous working from above. In the last period there is no effort at all, no set method, no fixed sadhana; the place of endeavour and tapasya will be taken by a natural, simple, powerful and happy disclosing of the flower of the Divine out of the bud of a purified and perfected terrestrial nature. These are the natural successions of the action of the Yoga.” CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga-87, “Surrender is giving oneself to the Divine — to give everything one is or has to the Divine and regard nothing as one’s own, to obey only the Divine will and no other, to live for the Divine and not for the ego.” CWSA-29/Letters on Yoga-II-67, SABCL-23/Letters on Yoga-585, Mahavakya or the Supreme Word of the Gita : "The last, the closing supreme word of the Gita expressing the highest mystery is spoken in two brief, direct and simple slokas and these are left without farther comment or enlargement to sink into the mind and reveal their own fullness of meaning in the soul’s experience. For it is alone this inner incessantly extending experience that can make evident the infinite deal of meaning with which are for ever pregnant these words in themselves apparently so slight and simple. And we feel, as they are being uttered, that it was this for which the soul of the disciple was being prepared all the time and the rest was only an enlightening and enabling discipline and doctrine. Thus runs this secret of secrets, the highest most direct message of the Ishwara. “Become my-minded, my lover and adorer, a sacrificer to me, bow thyself to me, to me thou shalt come, this is my pledge and promise to thee, for dear art thou to me. Abandon all dharmas and take refuge in me alone. I will deliver thee from all sin and evil, do not grieve." (The Gita-18.65-66)" CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-555-556, "The Gita throughout has been insisting on a great and well-built discipline of Yoga, a large and clearly traced philosophical system, on the Swabhava and the Swadharma , on the sattwic law of life as leading out of itself by a self-exceeding exaltation to a free spiritual dharma of immortal existence utterly wide in its spaces and high-lifted beyond the limitation of even this highest guna, on many rules and means and injunctions and conditions of perfection, and now suddenly it seems to break out of its own structure and says to the human soul, “Abandon all dharmas, give thyself to the Divine alone, to the supreme Godhead above and around and within thee: that is all that thou needest, that is the truest and greatest way, that is the real deliverance.” (The Gita-18.66) The Master of the worlds in the form of the divine Charioteer and Teacher of Kurukshetra has revealed to man the magnificent realities of God and Self and Spirit and the nature of the complex world and the relation of man’s mind and life and heart and senses to the Spirit and the victorious means by which through his own spiritual self-discipline and effort he can rise out of mortality into immortality and out of his limited mental into his infinite spiritual existence. And now speaking as the Spirit and Godhead in man and in all things he says to him, “All this personal effort and self-discipline will not in the end be needed, all following and limitation of rule and dharma can at last be thrown away as hampering encumbrances if thou canst make a complete surrender to Me, depend alone on the Spirit and Godhead within thee and all things and trust to his sole guidance. Turn all thy mind to me and fill it with the thought of me and my presence. Turn all thy heart to me, make thy every action, whatever it be, a sacrifice and offering to me. That done, leave me to do my will with thy life and soul and action; do not be grieved or perplexed by my dealings with thy mind and heart and life and works or troubled because they do not seem to follow the laws and dharmas man imposes on himself to guide his limited will and intelligence. My ways are the ways of a perfect wisdom and power and love that knows all things and combines all its movements in view of a perfect eventual result; for it is refining and weaving together the many threads of an integral perfection. I am here with thee in thy chariot of battle revealed as the Master of Existence within and without thee and I repeat the absolute assurance, the infallible promise that I will lead thee to myself through and beyond all sorrow and evil. Whatever difficulties and perplexities arise, be sure of this that I am leading thee to a complete divine life in the universal and an immortal existence in the transcendent Spirit. ”" CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-556-557, “Strength, if it is spiritual, is a power for spiritual realisation; a greater power is sincerity; the greatest power of all is Grace. I have said times without number that if a man is sincere, he will go through in spite of long delay and overwhelming difficulties. I have repeatedly spoken of the Divine Grace. I have referred any number of times to the line of the Gita: Aham tvam sarvapapebhyo moksayisyami ma sucah.. .. “I will deliver thee from all sin and evil, do not grieve.”" CWSA-29/Letters on Yoga-II/p-172, "In the light of this progressive manifestation of the Spirit, first apparently bound in the Ignorance, then free in the power and wisdom of the Infinite, we can better understand the great and crowning injunction of the Gita to the Karma-yogin, “Abandoning all dharmas, all principles and laws and rules of conduct, take refuge in me alone.” All standards and rules are temporary constructions founded upon the needs of the ego in its transition from Matter to Spirit. These makeshifts have a relative imperativeness so long as we rest satisfied in the stages of transition, content with the physical and vital life, attached to the mental movement, or even fixed in the ranges of the mental plane that are touched by the spiritual lustres. But beyond is the unwalled wideness of a supramental infinite consciousness and there all temporary structures cease. It is not possible to enter utterly into the spiritual truth of the Eternal and Infinite if we have not the faith and courage to trust ourselves into the hands of the Lord of all things and the Friend of all creatures and leave utterly behind us our mental limits and measures. At one moment we must plunge without hesitation, reserve, fear or scruple into the ocean of the free, the infinite, the Absolute. After the Law, Liberty; after the personal, after the general, after the universal standards there is something greater, the impersonal plasticity, the divine freedom, the transcendent force and the supernal impulse. After the strait path of the ascent the wide plateaus on the summit." CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-208, "A perfect equality of the will is the power which dissolves these knots of the lower impulsion to works. This equality will not respond to the lower impulses, but watch for a greater seeing impulsion from the Light above the mind, and will not judge and govern with the intellectual judgment, but wait for enlightenment and direction from a superior plane of vision. As it mounts upward to the supramental being and widens inward to the spiritual largeness, the dynamic nature will be transformed, spiritualised like the emotional and pranic, and grow into a power of the divine nature. There will be plenty of stumblings and errors and imperfections of adjustment of the instruments to their new working, but the increasingly equal soul will not be troubled overmuch or grieve at these things, since, delivered to the guidance of the Light and Power within self and above mind, it will proceed on its way with a firm assurance and await with growing calm the vicissitudes and completion of the process of transformation. The promise of the Divine Being in the Gita will be the anchor of its resolution, “Abandon all dharmas and take refuge in Me alone; I will deliver thee from all sin and evil; do not grieve.”" CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-706 The Most Difficult Part of the Spiritual Problem: "The crux of the spiritual problem, the character of this transition of which it is so difficult for the normal mind of man to get a true apprehension, turns altogether upon the capital distinction between the ignorant life of the ego in the lower nature and the large and luminous existence of the liberated Jiva in his own true spiritual nature. The renunciation of the first must be complete, the transition to the second absolute. This is the distinction on which the Gita dwells here with all possible emphasis. On the one side is this poor, trepidant, braggart egoistic condition of consciousness, ahankrta bhava , the crippling narrowness of this little helpless separative personality according to whose view-point we ordinarily think and act, feel and respond to the touches of existence. On the other are the vast spiritual reaches of immortal fullness, bliss and knowledge into which we are admitted through union with the divine Being, of whom we are then a manifestation and expression in the eternal light and no longer a disguise in the darkness of the ego-nature. It is the completeness of this union which is indicated by the Gita’s satatam maccittah (Always one in heart and consciousness with Me. The Gita-18.57). The life of the ego is founded on a construction of the apparent mental, vital and physical truth of existence, on a nexus of pragmatic relations between the individual soul and Nature, on an intellectual, emotional and sensational interpretation of things used by the little limited I in us to maintain and satisfy the ideas and desires of its bounded separate personality amid the vast action of the universe. All our dharmas , all the ordinary standards by which we determine our view of things and our knowledge and our action, proceed upon this narrow and limiting basis, and to follow them even in the widest wheelings round our ego centre does not carry us out of this petty circle. It is a circle in which the soul is a contented or struggling prisoner, for ever subject to the mixed compulsions of Nature." CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-543-544, 18/ Chapter 18. Renunciation and Moksha Moksha of the Gita and Liberation (Moksha) of Integral Yoga: " For certain ways of thinking liberation is a throwing off of all nature, a silent state of pure being, a nirvana or extinction, a dissolution of the natural existence into some indefinable Abso- lute, moks.a. But an absorbed and immersed bliss, a wideness of actionless peace, a release of self-extinction or a self-drowning in the Absolute is not our aim. We shall give to the idea of liberation, mukti, only the connotation of that inner change which is common to all experience of this kind, essential to perfection and indispensable to spiritual freedom. We shall find that it then implies always two things, a rejection and an assumption, a negative and a positive side; the negative movement of freedom is a liberation from the principal bonds, the master-knots of the lower soul-nature, the positive side an opening or growth into the higher spiritual existence. But what are these master-knots other and deeper twistings than the instrumental knots of the mind, heart, psychic life-force? We find them pointed out for us and insisted on with great force and a constant emphatic repetition in the Gita ; they are four, desire, ego, the dualities and the three gunas of Nature; for to be desireless, ego-less, equal of mind and soul and spirit and nistraigunya, is in the idea of the Gita to be free, mukta . We may accept this description; for everything essential is covered by its amplitude. On the other hand, the positive sense of freedom is to be universal in soul, transcendently one in spirit with God, possessed of the highest divine nature, — as we may say, like to God, or one with him in the law of our being. This is the whole and full sense of liberation and this is the integral freedom of the spirit." CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-674-675, "The ordinary idea is that it is not possible because all action is of the lower gunas, necessarily defective, sadosam , (The Gita-18.48) caused by the motion, inequality, want of balance, unstable strife of the gunas ; but when these unequal gunas fall into perfect equilibrium, all action of Nature ceases and the soul rests in its quietude. The divine Being, we may say, may either exist in his silence or act in Nature through her instrumentation, but in that case must put on the appearance of her strife and imperfection. That may be true of the ordinary deputed action of the Divine in the human spirit with its present relations of soul to nature in an embodied imperfect mental being, but it is not true of the divine nature of perfection. The strife of the gunas is only a representation in the imperfection of the lower nature; what the three gunas stand for are three essential powers of the Divine which are not merely existent in a perfect equilibrium of quietude, but unified in a perfect consensus of divine action. Tamas in the spiritual being becomes a divine calm, which is not an inertia and incapacity of action, but a perfect power, sakti, holding in itself all its capacity and capable of controlling and subjecting to the law of calm even the most stupendous and enormous activity: rajas becomes a self-effecting initiating sheer Will of the spirit, which is not desire, endeavour, striving passion, but the same perfect power of being, sakti, capable of an infinite, imperturbable and blissful action. Sattwa becomes not the modified mental light, prakasa , but the self-existent light of the divine being, jyotih , which is the soul of the perfect power of being and illumines in their unity the divine quietude and the divine will of action. The ordinary liberation gets the still divine light in the divine quietude, but the integral perfection will aim at this greater triune unity .... When this liberation of the nature comes, there is a liberation also of all the spiritual sense of the dualities of Nature. In the lower nature the dualities are the inevitable effect of the play of the gunas on the soul affected by the formations of the sattwic, rajasic and tamasic ego. The knot of this duality is an ignorance which is unable to seize on the spiritual truth of things and concentrates on the imperfect appearances, but meets them not with a mastery of their inner truth, but with a strife and a shifting balance of attraction and repulsion, capacity and incapacity, liking and disliking, pleasure and pain, joy and sorrow, acceptance and repugnance; all life is represented to us as a tangle of these things, of the pleasant and the unpleasant, the beautiful and the unbeautiful, truth and falsehood, fortune and misfortune, success and failure, good and evil, the inextricable double web of Nature. Attachment to its likings and repugnances keeps the soul bound in this web of good and evil, joys and sorrows. The seeker of liberation gets rid of attachment, throws away from his soul the dualities, but as the dualities appear to be the whole act, stuff and frame of life, this release would seem to be most easily compassed by a withdrawal from life, whether a physical withdrawal, so far as that is possible while in the body, or an inner retirement, a refusal of sanction, a liberating distaste, vairagya, for the whole action of Nature. There is a separation of the soul from Nature. Then the soul watches seated above and unmoved, udasına, the strife of the gunas in the natural being and regards as an impassive witness the pleasure and pain of the mind and body. Or it is able to impose its indifference even on the outer mind and watches with the impartial calm or the impartial joy of the detached spectator the universal action in which it has no longer an active inner participation. The end of this movement is the rejection of birth and a departure into the silent self, moksa. .. But this rejection (This rejection is the liberation of the Gita) is not the last possible word of liberation. The integral liberation comes when this passion for release, mumuksutva , founded on distaste or vairagya , is itself transcended; the soul is then liberated both from attachment to the lower action of nature and from all repugnance to the cosmic action of the Divine. (In integral Yoga the double escape, (1) escape from problem of life and (2) escape from universal Divine action are renounced and in the Gita one Soul takes refuge in the supreme abode of param dham through these double escape, which is known as Moksha .) This liberation gets its completeness when the spiritual gnosis can act with a supramental knowledge and reception of the action of Nature and a supramental luminous will in initiation. The gnosis discovers the spiritual sense in Nature, God in things, the soul of good in all things that have the contrary appearance; that soul is delivered in them and out of them, the perversions of the imperfect or contrary forms fall away or are transformed into their higher divine truth, — even as the gunas go back to their divine principles, — and the spirit lives in a universal, infinite and absolute Truth, Good, Beauty, Bliss which is the supramental or ideal divine Nature. The liberation of the Nature becomes one with the liberation of the spirit, and there is founded in the integral freedom the integral perfection." CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-688-690 Fourfold Soul Force: "Through four soul-stages a man must pass before he can be perfect; first, as a Sudra, by service and obedience to tame the brute in his being; then, as a Vaishya to satisfy within the law of morality the lower man in him and evolve the higher man by getting the first taste of delight in well-doing to others than himself and his; then, as the Kshatriya, to be trained in those first qualities without which the pursuit of the Eternal is impossible, courage, strength, unconquerable tenacity and self-devotion to a great task; last, as the Brahmin , so to purify body & mind and nature that he may see the Eternal reflected in himself as in an unsoiled mirror. Having once seen God, man can have no further object in life than to reach and possess Him." CWSA-17/Isha Upanishad/p-195, "The fundamental truth is not this outward thing, but a force of our inner being in movement, the truth of the fourfold active power of the spiritual nature . Each Jiva possesses in his spiritual nature these four sides, is a soul of knowledge, a soul of strength and of power, a soul of mutuality and interchange, a soul of works and service, but one side or other predominates in the action and expressive spirit and tinges the dealings of the soul with its embodied nature; it leads and gives its stamp to the other powers and uses them for the principal strain of action, tendency, experience. The Swabhava then follows, not crudely and rigidly as put in the social demarcation, but subtly and flexibly the law of this strain and develops in developing it the other three powers. Thus the pursuit of the impulse of works and service rightly done develops knowledge, increases power, trains closeness or balance of mutuality and skill and order of relation. Each front of the fourfold godhead moves through the enlargement of its own dominant principle of nature and enrichment by the other three towards a total perfection. This development undergoes the law of the three gunas. There is possible a tamasic and rajasic way of following even the dharma of the soul of knowledge, a brute tamasic and a high sattwic way of following the dharma of power, a forceful rajasic or a beautiful and noble sattwic way of following the dharma of works and service. To arrive at the sattwic way of the inner individual Swadharma and of the works to which it moves us on the ways of life is a preliminary condition of perfection. And it may be noted that the inner Swadharma is not bound to any outward social or other form of action, occupation or function. The soul of works or that element in us that is satisfied to serve, can, for example, make the life of the pursuit of knowledge, the life of struggle and power or the life of mutuality, production and interchange a means of satisfying its divine impulse to labour and to service... And in the end to arrive at the divinest figure and most dynamic soul-power of this fourfold activity is a wide doorway to a swiftest and largest reality of the most high spiritual perfection. This we can do if we turn the action of the Swadharma into a worship of the inner Godhead, the universal Spirit, the transcendent Purushottama and, eventually, surrender the whole action into his hands, mayi sannyasya karmani. (The Gita-3.30) (This verse is often interpreted as a key teaching (of Karma Yoga) on how to perform actions without being bound by attachment to the fruit of work, leading to liberation.) Then as (1) we get beyond the limitation of the three gunas , so also do (2) we get beyond the division of the fourfold law and (3) beyond the limitation of all distinctive dharmas , sarvadharman parityajya . (The Gita-18.66) (1) The Spirit takes up the individual into the universal Swabhava , (2) perfects and unifies the fourfold soul of nature in us and (3) does its self-determined works according to the divine will and the accomplished power of the godhead in the creature." CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-523-524, "The Godhead, the spirit manifested in Nature appears in a sea of infinite quality, Ananta-guna . But the executive or mechanical Prakriti is of the threefold guna, sattwa, rajas, tamas, and the Ananta-guna , the spiritual play of infinite quality, modifies itself in this mechanical nature into the type of these three gunas . And in the soul-force in man this Godhead in Nature represents itself as a fourfold effective Power, catur-vyuha, a Power for knowledge, a Power for strength, a Power for mutuality and active and productive relation and interchange, a Power for works and labour and service, and its presence casts all human life into a nexus and inner and outer operation of these four things. The ancient thought of India conscious of this fourfold type of active human personality and nature built out of it the four types of the Brahmana, Kshatriya, Vaishya and Shudra, each with its spiritual turn, ethical ideal, suitable upbringing, fixed function in society and place in the evolutionary scale of the spirit. As always tends to be the case when we too much externalise and mechanise the more subtle truths of our nature, this became a hard and fast system inconsistent with the freedom and variability and complexity of the finer developing spirit in man. Nevertheless the truth behind it exists and is one of some considerable importance in the perfection of our power of nature; but we have to take it in its inner aspects, first, personality, character, temperament, soul-type, then the soul-force which lies behind them and wears these forms, and lastly the play of the free spiritual Shakti in which they find their culmination and unity beyond all modes . For the crude external idea that a man is born as a Brahmana, Kshatriya, Vaishya or Shudra and that alone, is not a psychological truth of our being. The psychological fact is that there are these four active powers and tendencies of the Spirit and its executive Shakti within us and the predominance of one or the other in the more well-formed part of our personality gives us our main tendencies, dominant qualities and capacities, effective turn in action and life. But they are more or less present in all men, here manifest, there latent, here developed, there subdued and depressed or subordinate, and in the perfect man will be raised up to a fullness and harmony which in the spiritual freedom will burst out into the free play of the infinite quality of the spirit in the inner and outer life and in the self-enjoying creative play of the Purusha with his and the world’s Nature-Power." CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-742-743, "None of these four types of personality can be complete even in its own field if it does not bring into it something of the other qualities. The man of knowledge cannot serve Truth with freedom and perfection, if he has not intellectual and moral courage, will, audacity, the strength to open and conquer new kingdoms, otherwise he becomes a slave of the limited intellect or a servant or at most a ritual priest of only an established knowledge, (That perhaps is why it was the Kshatriya bringing his courage, audacity, spirit of conquest into the fields of intuitive knowledge and spiritual experience who first discovered the great truths of Vedanta .) — cannot use his knowledge to the best advantage unless he has the adaptive skill to work out its truths for the practice of life, otherwise he lives only in the idea, — cannot make the entire consecration of his knowledge unless he has the spirit of service to humanity, to the Godhead in man and the Master of his being. The man of power must illumine and uplift and govern his force and strength by knowledge, light of reason or religion or the spirit, otherwise he becomes the mere forceful Asura, — must have the skill which will help him best to use and administer and regulate his strength and make it creative and fruitful and adapted to his relations with others, otherwise it becomes a mere drive of force across the field of life, a storm that passes and devastates more than it constructs, — must be capable too of obedience and make the use of his strength a service to God and the world, otherwise he becomes a selfish dominator, tyrant, brutal compeller of men’s souls and bodies. The man of productive mind and work must have an open inquiring mind and ideas and knowledge, otherwise he moves in the routine of his functions without expansive growth, must have courage and enterprise, must bring a spirit of service into his getting and production, in order that he may not only get but give, not only amass and enjoy his own life, but consciously help the fruitfulness and fullness of the surrounding life by which he profits. The man of labour and service becomes a helpless drudge and slave of society if he does not bring knowledge and honour and aspiration and skill into his work, since only so can he rise by an opening mind and will and understanding usefulness to the higher dharmas. But the greater perfection of man comes when he enlarges himself to include all these powers, even though one of them may lead the others, and opens his nature more and more into the rounded fullness and universal capacity of the fourfold spirit. Man is not cut out into an exclusive type of one of these dharmas , but all these powers are in him at work at first in an ill- formed confusion, but he gives shape to one or another in birth after birth, progresses from one to the other even in the same life and goes on towards the total development of his inner existence. Our life itself is at once an inquiry after truth and knowledge, a struggle and battle of our will with ourselves and surrounding forces, a constant production, adaptation, application of skill to the material of life and a sacrifice and service. " CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-748-749, " The Yoga of self-perfection brings out this soul-force and gives it its largest scope, takes up all the fourfold powers and throws them into the free circle of an integral and harmonious spiritual dynamis. The godhead, the soul-power of knowledge rises to the highest degree of which the individual nature can be the supporting basis. A free mind of light develops which is open to every kind of revelation, inspiration, intuition, idea, discrimination, thinking synthesis; an enlightened life of the mind grasps at all knowledge with a delight of finding and reception and holding, a spiritual enthusiasm, passion, or ecstasy; a power of light full of spiritual force, illumination and purity of working manifests its empire, brahma-tejas, brahma-varcas; a bottomless steadiness and illimitable calm upholds all the illumination, movement, action as on some rock of ages, equal, unperturbed, unmoved, acyuta ... The godhead, the soul-power of will and strength rises to a like largeness and altitude. An absolute calm fearlessness of the free spirit, an infinite dynamic courage which no peril, limitation of possibility, wall of opposing force can deter from pursuing the work or aspiration imposed by the spirit, a high nobility of soul and will untouched by any littleness or baseness and moving with a certain greatness of step to spiritual victory or the success of the God-given work through whatever temporary defeat or obstacle, a spirit never depressed or cast down from faith and confidence in the power that works in the being, are the signs of this perfection. There comes too to fulfilment a large godhead, a soul-power of mutuality , a free self-spending and spending of gift and possession in the work to be done, lavished for the production, the creation, the achievement, the possession, gain, utilisable return, a skill that observes the law and adapts the relation and keeps the measure, a great taking into oneself from all beings and a free giving out of oneself to all, a divine commerce, a large enjoyment of the mutual delight of life. And finally there comes to perfection the godhead, the soul-power of service, the universal love that lavishes itself without demand of return, the embrace that takes to itself the body of God in man and works for help and service, the abnegation that is ready to bear the yoke of the Master and make the life a free servitude to Him and under his direction to the claim and need of his creatures, the self-surrender of the whole being to the Master of our being and his work in the world. These things unite, assist and enter into each other, become one. The full consummation comes in the greatest souls most capable of perfection, but some large manifestation of this fourfold soul-power must be sought and can be attained by all who practise the integral Yoga. " CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-750-751 An integral Sadhak will learn four lessons from the Gita . (1) He learns to know extensively the nature and imperfection of the three Gunas and how to go beyond them by increasing Sattwic Nature. In integral Yoga, the sattwic nature is replaced with Equality and Psychic Consciousness. (2) Perfection of fourfold Soul-forces, chaturvarna , and fourfold Spiritual forces, chatwaro manabostatha and their integration and reconciliation. (3) The power of consecration has to be intensified through self-control. Self-control has to be practiced through a purified intellect. With the opening of the Psychic and Spiritual being, this self-control becomes rigorous and with the opening of the Supramental Self, self-control becomes absolute. Thus, one goes beyond the limitation of all distinctive dharmas, sarvadharman parityajya (The Gita-18.66) and surrender becomes comprehensive and he experiences comprehensive Divine union, samagram mam. ( The Gita-7.1) (4) In integral Yoga, the double escape, (1) escape from the problem of life and (2) escape from universal Divine action are renounced and in the Gita one Soul takes refuge in the supreme abode of param dham through these double escapes, which is known as Moksha . The Gita's negative sense of liberation, Mukti , is to become desireless, egoless, beyond the dualities, dwandatita , and beyond the three Gunas , nistreigunya. This is complemented in integral Yoga with a positive sense of freedom which is to be '(1) universal in Soul, (2) transcendentally one in spirit with God and (3) possession of the highest Divine Nature.' (CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-674-675) This is Integral Yoga's Mokshya or Integral Liberation. Download this WEB PAGE as a PDF file: “My yoga begun in 1904 had always been personal and apart; those around me knew I was a sadhak but they knew little more as I kept all that went on in me to myself. It was only after my release that for the first time I spoke at Uttarpara publicly about my spiritual experiences. Until I went to Pondicherry I took no disciples; with those who accompanied me or joined me in Pondicherry I had at first the relation of friends and companions rather than of a guru and disciples; it was on the ground of politics that I had come to know them and not on the spiritual ground. Afterwards only there was a gradual development of spiritual relations until the Mother came back from Japan and the Ashram was founded or rather founded itself in 1926. I began my yoga in 1904 without a guru ; in 1908 I received important help from a Mahratta yogi and discovered the foundations of my sadhana; but from that time till the Mother came to India I received no spiritual help from anyone else. My sadhana before and afterwards was not founded upon books but upon personal experiences that crowded on me from within. But in the jail I had the Gita and the Upanishads with me, practised the yoga of the Gita and meditated with the help of the Upanishads ; these were the only books from which I found guidance; the Veda which I first began to read long afterwards in Pondicherry rather confirmed what experiences I already had than was any guide to my sadhana. I sometimes turned to the Gita for light when there was a question or a difficulty and usually received help or an answer from it, but there were no such happenings in connection with the Gita as are narrated in the book. It is a fact that I was hearing constantly the voice of Vivekananda speaking to me for a fortnight in the jail in my solitary meditation and felt his presence, but this had nothing to do with the alleged circumstances narrated in the book, circumstances that never took place, nor had it anything to do with the Gita . The voice spoke only on a special and limited but very important field of spiritual experience and it ceased as soon as it had finished saying all that it had to say on that subject.” Sri Aurobindo CWSA-36/Autobiographical Notes-98-99

Earth's Spiritual History “You know, mon petit, I said one day that in the history of earth , wherever there was a possibility for the Consciousness to manifest, I was there; this is a fact. It's like the story of Savitri : always there, always there, always there, in this one, that one – at certain times there were four emanations simultaneously! At the time of the Italian and French Renaissance. And again at the time of Christ, then too.... Oh, you know, I have remembered so many, many things! It would take volumes to tell it all. And then, more often than not (not always, but more often than not), what took part in this or that life was a particular yogic formation of the vital being – in other words something immortal. And when I came this time, as soon as I took up the yoga, they came back again from all sides, they were waiting. Some were simply waiting, others were working (they led their own independent lives) and they all gathered together again. That's how I got those memories. One after the other, those vital beings came – a deluge! I had barely enough time to assimilate one, to see, situate and integrate it, and another would come. They are quite independent, of course, they do their own work, but they are very centralized all the same. And there are all kinds – all kinds, anything you can imagine! Some of them have even been in men: they are not exclusively feminine. At first, I used to think they were fantasies....Before I met Sri Aurobindo they would come and come and come to me, night after night and sometimes during the day – a mass of things! Afterwards I told Sri Aurobindo about it, and he explained to me that it was quite natural. And indeed, it is quite natural: with the present incarnation of the Mahashakti (as he described it in Savitri) , whatever is more or less bound up with Her wants to take part, that's quite natural. And it's particularly true for the vital: there has always been a preoccupation with organizing, centralizing, developing and unifying the vital forces, and controlling them. So there's a considerable number of vital beings, each with its own particular ability, who have played their role in history and now return." The Mother The Mother's Agenda/June 27, 1962 A Thorough Knowledge of Earth's Spiritual History “We do not belong to the past dawns, but to the noons of the future. A mass of new material is flowing into us; we have not only to assimilate the influences of the great theistic religions of India and of the world and a recovered sense of the meaning of Buddhism, but to take full account of the potent though limited revelations of modern knowledge and seeking; and, beyond that, the remote and dateless past which seemed to be dead is returning upon us with an effulgence of many luminous secrets long lost to the consciousness of mankind but now breaking out again from behind the veil. All this points to a new, a very rich, a very vast synthesis; a fresh and widely embracing harmonisation of our gains is both an intellectual and a spiritual necessity of the future. But just as the past syntheses have taken those which preceded them for their starting-point, so also must that of the future, to be on firm ground, proceed from what the great bodies of realised spiritual thought and experience in the past have given.”²² Sri Aurobindo Integral Yoga proposes a Sadhaka ¹ to have a full account of the Spiritual history of the earth which is ‘a constant development of a divine purpose, not a book that is closed, the lines of which have to be constantly repeated.’²³ This account also includes knowledge on the limited vision of modern Science,²² long practice of self-disciplines of traditional Shastra of the Veda, the Upanishad and the Gita ²⁰ subordinated by the long practice of the methods of Raja Yoga, Hatha Yoga and Tantra . This study of full account also includes Spiritual rise and Spiritual fall of human consciousness, the conquest of difficulties,³⁵ and the study of the limitations and immense possibilities of traditional and integral Sadhakas . Those who are fit for the Supramental world, for them, the knowledge of the Spiritual history of the earth will knock at their door. King Aswapati was able to receive such knowledge and by this experience, his position in existence became greater than God. (Refer this line of Savitri, “All that the Gods have learned are there self-known.” Savitri-74) A complete knowledge on traditional schools of Yoga preconditions total knowledge from within and without on the Spiritual history of Earth. The full knowledge of history of earth can be traced from within by ascending to a higher state of Consciousness⁴⁰ and it can be traced from without by detailed study and practice of ancient Shastras. An in-depth knowledge on Sri Aurobindo’s Teachings is developed by rigorous practice of traditional schools of Yoga and restatement of the Spiritual history of the earth. So, a thorough knowledge of Sri Aurobindo preconditions a thorough knowledge on traditional schools of Yoga. The Mother’s Teachings is identified as a restatement of Sri Aurobindo’s Teachings. So a thorough knowledge on The Mother’s Teachings preconditions thorough knowledge of Sri Aurobindo’s Teachings. The Mother’s Work rests on the thorough knowledge on Her Teachings or detailed knowledge²¹ on the movement of Her comprehensive Consciousness. The Mother observed, “But the difficulty is to find the “some one” who knows Sri Aurobindo thoroughly…(and subsequently) who is capable of receiving His inspirations directly…capable of understanding Sri Aurobindo’s inspiration and transmitting it…and has at the same time very strong character… (and if possible) to have His genius… For years I have been looking for that man, without finding him.”¹⁹ Evolution is a global process. Each species reproduces itself endlessly to rediscover in itself the missing link²⁴ and men are the first sons of nature, who aspire to reach the highest through the organised faculty of purified mind³² and intellect. The individual’s sense of responsibility to the requirement of his evolutionary need can be visualised by dissecting his present faculties and their collaboration in the destined journey from the suffocation of ignorance, falsehood, suffering and death to the ascending stairs of Knowledge, Truth, Ananda and Immortality. If man’s sole objective is to generate more and more wealth, procreation of a family and maintenance of it through out the life and enjoy life with the existing faculty of instincts, then we have to be rest satisfied with the arrested development of the species. Or else we have to evolve another formula of self-development, which our ancient Seers and subsequent Spiritual disciplines have proposed, that can truly liberate us to its extreme end of integral satisfaction. Fulfillment of life does not ask to possess more and more of what we have and of what we enjoy but to rediscover in ourselves the all-inclusive totality and possession of all that is eternal, infinite and true. The Importance of Shastras, Gurus, Avataras and the Divine Mother: - “One must first find one’s soul, this is absolutely indispensable, and identify oneself with it. Later one can come to the transformation. Sri Aurobindo has written somewhere: “Our Yoga begins where the others end.” Usually yoga leads precisely to this identification, this union with the Divine — that is why it is called “yoga”. And when people reach this, well, they are at the end of their path and are satisfied. But Sri Aurobindo has written: we begin when they finish; you have found the Divine but instead of sitting down in contemplation and waiting for the Divine to take you out of your body which has become useless, on the contrary, with this consciousness you turn to the body and to life and begin the work of transformation — which is very hard labour. It’s here that he compares it with cutting one’s way through a virgin forest; because as nobody has done it before, one must make one’s path where there was none. But to try to do this without having the indispensable directive of the union with the Divine within, within one’s soul, is childishness.”³³ The Mother Shastra : Scriptures are generally secret knowledge descended from above. They are vast records of Spiritual experiences that our ancient Rishis and later Seers have witnessed. Our ancient Scriptures are great in their wisdom. Great pasts always help mankind to arrive at a greater future and dawn succeeds dawn. Mankind shall arrive at its greatest wisdom when it will be able to recover from its lost totality fulfilling all the past promises. Our ancient Seers had foreseen the ultimate future of mankind in the culmination and possession of God, Light, Freedom, Bliss and Immortality. The importance of reference to the Scriptures were felt because the secret formula of Soul’s ascent were recorded there and these Seers were masters in discovering new heights in Soul’s ascent and arrived at corresponding new siddhis . Each proposed a new path and they are quite essential while tracing one’s own path and each siddhi is a step required in the integral development. So the perfection is to be sought through ascent of thousands of manifold paths leading to the one Divine and the corresponding return of the same Divinity in to multiplicities of the material life. The popular tendency of human mind to attain the Divine through the path of the shortest of the shortcuts is henceforward not considered from our subject of scrutiny. Guru : “The Teacher of the integral Yoga will follow as far as he may the method of the Teacher within us. He will lead the disciple through the nature of the disciple. Teaching, example, influence,—these are the three instruments of the Guru. But the wise Teacher will not seek to impose himself or his opinions on the passive acceptance of the receptive mind; he will throw in only what is productive and sure as a seed which will grow under the divine fostering within. He will seek to awaken much more than to instruct; he will aim at the growth of the faculties and the experiences by a natural process and free expansion. He will give a method as an aid, as a utilisable device, not as an imperative formula or a fixed routine. And he will be on his guard against any turning of the means into a limitation, against the mechanising of process. His whole business is to awaken the divine light and set working the divine force of which he himself is only a means and an aid, a body or a channel.”⁴⁴ Sri Aurobindo Guru is an intermediary destined to lead aspirant Souls towards the Supreme and his physical presence is a rare opportunity in the life of disciples. ‘The divine soul reproduces itself in similar liberated souls as the animal reproduces itself in similar bodies. Therefore, whenever even a single soul is liberated, there is a tendency to an extension and even to an outburst of the same divine self-consciousness in other individual souls of our terrestrial humanity…’² In this integral Yoga, The Mother and Sri Aurobindo are identified as physical embodiment of the Divine, symbol of comprehensive movement of Consciousness, the Primary Source of our Spiritual and Material Life, dual Avatar and a special manifestation of the Supreme Guru, Parameswar . Integral Teacher is a symbol of movement of Psychic and Spiritual Consciousness, leading it to still higher planes of Consciousness, one Soul centre of the multiple or universal Divine, the secondary Source, Spiritual fosterer of twice-born Souls and his task is to strengthen the contact of twice-born Souls with the primary Source, who is at once Transcendent, Universal and Individual Psychic Being. Avatara: Avataras descend on earth equipped with the delegated power from the Supreme, when humanity suffers a crisis in Consciousness and lead humanity to the next step of the ladder in the evolutionary ascent. Avatara’s main work is to reveal in man His Divine nature, madbhava and show Divine work, which becomes a means of rebirth of divinities in man. His other mission is restoration of good, dharma by the destruction of evil as did Sri Rama and Sri Krishna or He may represent Himself as divine messenger preaching the gospel of love and peace, as did Buddha, Christ and Sri Chaitanya. Avatara’s birth brings an opportunity in each individual formation of the human species to repeat His Spiritual experiences and elevate to His Spiritual status. ‘Islam was a return towards sensation, beauty, and harmony in the form, and legitimization of sensations and joy in beauty.’³ ‘Mahomed, as we know, only developed the existing social, religious and administrative customs of the Arab people in to a new system dictated to him often in trance, in which he passed from his conscient into superconscient self, by the Divinity to his secret intuitive mind.’³ Christ came to show the earth that how sorrow and suffering⁴ can be means of redemption. The purpose behind Sri Rama’s Avatarahood was to establish on earth Rama Rajya , the kingdom of sattwic man by the destruction of asuric forces, Ravana; whereas His predecessors, the Dwarf, Bamana and Parsuram were Avataras representing tamasic and rajasic aspects of man respectively in the manifestation. The successive Avataras after Sri Rama were from the trigunatita planes of consciousness representing different hierarchies; Buddha was from the illumined mind, Sri Chaitanya ⁴¹ was from the spiritual-psychic plane, Sri Ramakrishna was from the intuitive mind and Sri Krishna was from the Overmind plane of consciousness. They came to lead the human souls to Divine height, trigunatita chetana and established the passage to the kingdom of God in heaven and a dynasty of self-ruling kings on earth, Dharma-rajya . Buddhistic Nirvana is the disintegration of samskara and Vedantic Nirvana is the abolition of samskara and one can do all action while remaining in this state of absolute peace and freedom. Samskara is here the accumulated past Karma of this life as well as that of past lives stored in our chitta or in the Subconscient Sheath and this samskara clouds the Soul which we mistake for our Self. Buddha’s Nirvana is the supreme liberation but that liberation is negative, as that Divine state does not return upon earth positively to complete the evolution. He was horrified by the suffering, impermanence, and decay of all things and concluded that the disappearance of creation is the true remedy. Sri Krishna represents complete divine manhood leading the race towards Divine Love and Divine Ananda culminating in Jivanmukta State. To grow in Krishna Consciousness is to feel His presence, enter Spiritual relation with Him by union in Soul and know Him as a Friend, Lover, Father, Mother, Play-mate, Guide and Teacher. ‘And in the Gita he speaks of this human world as a transient and sorrowful affair and, in spite of his gospel of divine action, seems almost to admit that to leave it is after all the best solution.’⁵ The Gita remained silent about the total solution of all problems of existence. Kalki (His coming is symbolic and His action has already begun), the last Avatara will complete the work that Sri Krishna began and correct what Buddha and Sri Krishna left, by bringing the Divine upon earth and destroying the opposing asuric forces. The Kingdom of God on earth, Deva-rajya is the last promise of future Avataras and Vibhutis in order to complete the work of evolution. After Buddha those who dominated Indian spirituality were Shankara, Sri Chaitanya and Sri Ramakrishna. Shankara’s main realisation was Brahma satyam Jagat mithya, the Divine alone is truth and all the rest are illusion, Maya. He, like Buddha further confirmed that work has to be renounced in order to attain the Brahman and all the ascetic movements after Buddha and its theory of inaction have left India weaker, added to it the lure of Sannyasa isolated the best souls of the then time from the main streams of life and society; whereas Shankara’s predecessor Sri Krishna confirmed that all work, sarva karmani is an indispensable means for continuation of earth life and attaining Brahma Nirvana. India failed to pursue the spirit of The Gita and its method of integral development through Jnana, Bhakti, the gospel of Divine action, surrender and equality in the subsequent period of human history, resulting in a tamasic decline of a race. ‘The main work of Sri Chaitanya was to establish the type of a Spiritual and Psychic bhakti and love in the emotional vital part of man, preparing the vital in us in that way to turn towards the Divine—at any rate, to fix that possibility in the earth-nature.’⁶ His mission was to show the secret principle of Bhakta becoming Bhagavan by possession of the Godhead into a human vessel. ‘Ramakrishna’s Yoga was also turned only to an inner realisation of the inner Divine, --nothing less, but also nothing more.’⁷ Sri Ramakrishna, like Shankara succeeded in generating thousands of perfect Sannyasis, because sannayasa has been widely preached and numerously practised. Earth shall move forward in order to create thousands of perfect Janaka , who symbolize a dynasty of self-ruling universalised Kings and Karma Yogis. These strong and liberated Souls will not wear the garb and outer token of world shunning Sannyasis who are preoccupied with individual liberation in heaven; for these Janakas wear the garb of the world and they will liberate earth through the movement of universal Consciousness. If humanity fails to reach a favourable atmosphere for substantial change in the present discord and disharmony, then ‘Kalki’s sword alone can purify the earth of the burden of an obstinately asuric humanity. Or the Mother revealed in the Kali’s laughter and death dance shall capture an unquiet earth and mankind will be deprived of Krishna’s Ananda . The choice depends on the species itself; for as it sows, so shall it reap the fruit of its Karma .’⁸ Kalki’s destruction can be avoided if Earth consents to become pure, liberating itself from the clutch of Adam and Eve , who symbolise bondage through physical passion. A pure earth can become a play field of Krishna and Kali where God is revealed as “happiest boy and strongest girl of the crowd”⁹ bringing down the Supreme’s Love and the Kingdom of God on earth. The earliest school of Indian seers, the Vedic Rishis sought after physical immortality. They proposed a double movement of ascent of the Soul into the Divine height and descent of Divine Shakti into the triple world of mind, life and body in order to reestablish in these domains the lost Divinity. They failed to achieve their goal as the quest was exclusive, which may be analyzed in the following manner; (1) humanity in its collectivity was not ready for such transformation as human evolution in that period was in a formative stage and was far from being matured; (2) their quest for Immortality was individualistic in nature oblivious of a certain amount of collective universal evolution, (3) immortality has to be sought in the transcendence after the universalisation of individual Consciousness, as Sri Aurobindo proposes.³⁷ But the Vedic seers escaped into Transcendent Consciousness from individual Consciousness by bypassing the process of Universalisation; (4) they made little attempt to accelerate the universal evolution and the common humanity of the then time was left in deep darkness, tamas and ignorance. In the subsequent Spiritual quests, in the post Vedic era, the ascent of Soul into Divine height found its predominance and the importance was confined in the merger of Soul in the Divine state by exclusive samadhi in this life and return of the Soul into Divine state in the after life; and the corresponding descent of these Divinities in to the material life was left into oblivion. Hence, material life was left neglected and the gap between Matter and the Spirit grew, resulting in an irreconcilable gulf and bankruptcy of material opulence. The Divine Mother: In Indian spiritual history, the Ishwari aspect of the Divine found its predominance in Tantra. The Divine Mother’s role in our total development has been identified by the saying, ‘How shall he attain to Krishna who has never worshipped Kali ?’²⁹ Violent action, roudra , calls down and establishes the peaceful and tranquil state, Soumya . Intimacy with the Divine Mother is felt indispensable in the life of Her children as Her supreme touch protects and nourishes the pure and virgin stuff of our mind, life and body. She is concerned with the total care of Her children and She pursues in each successive life the leading of the children towards their supreme Goal. The supreme task of the Divine Mother is to liberate our nature from the bondage of fixed destiny, narrow creeds, established habits and indispensable Laws, leading us to a higher Spiritual destiny, absolute freedom from habits, transformation of Nature and a Deathless state. She is the author of Earth’s High Change and Her single perfection can save the earth from intimidating doom. Her ultimate mission is ‘to stay the wheels of doom’¹⁰ so that the ‘doom may be left to sleep…for all time.’¹¹ Earth’s Spiritual history saw Her long and endless struggle and suffering, and Earth shall wait to see with intense gratitude Her final victory. Superseding the Spiritual Predecessors: - Sri Aurobindo was asked by one of His disciples whether He and the Mothe r were Avataras on earth. Sri Aurobindo’s reply was clear that they came to earth not as exclusive Avataras.¹² But a study of Them reveals that the above reply was His greatness and humbleness, and They were constantly present in Earth's atmosphere through out the history either as Emanation or as Avatara and also They had far exceeded the limits of the Avataras . After landing on Indian soil Sri Aurobindo’s first major Spiritual realisation was Immutable Brahman, which gave a strong feeling that the Divine alone is truth and all the rest were illusion, Brahma Satyam Jagat Mithya. He superseded Shankara with the arrival of His second major realisation at Alipore Jail of Basudev Sarvamiti, which gave a strong sense that this world as well as the Brahman were real and true and this world is as real as the Brahman . Before His arrival at Pondicherry He had already realised the Inner Divine, which was the main objective of Sri Ramakrishna’s Yoga, He went beyond Buddha in the sense that His realisation of Supreme had the capacity of return positively to complete the evolution. He had already realised the Psychic Bhakti as Sri Chaitanya had and was in the process of bringing the Divine Love to the triple world of mind, life and body. At Pondicherry, He concentrated for first sixteen years from 1910 to 1926 on difficult side of sadhana related with thirty-five (28+7) siddhis and a number of sub-siddhis covering a whole range of Yoga of self-perfection. On 24th November, 1926, He attained, along with The Mother, the Overmental siddhi, the highest Divine realisation descended to earth through Sri Krishna. Sri Krishna supports evolution through multiple concentrations or Overmind leading it towards Ananda. None of the past attempts to unite with the Divine satisfied Sri Aurobindo ; He wanted something more, something more comprehensive. He observed, "I may say that it is far from my purpose to propagate any religion new or old for humanity in the future. A way to be opened that is still blocked, not a religion to be founded, is my conception of the matter.”²³ After 1926, He concentrated for about twenty-four years for bringing down the Supramental, the integral concentration that will complete earth’s evolution. Before this, the evolutionary urges that were active for accelerating the earth’s evolution were (1) exclusive concentration, (2) essential concentration and (3) multiple concentration. The above three concentrations will not be able to resolve the fundamental problems of existence. Supramental concentration puts a big pressure on humanity (and also on the animal and plant kingdoms) in order to transcend its limitations. But the present humanity will fail to understand its all-inclusive benefits due to their confinement within the boundaries of exclusive concentration. This last century had witnessed the burst of genius under the pressure of this new concentration, which had never been witnessed throughout the millennium. But man’s possibility of uniting with Him is open through ever-exceeding hierarchies of Consciousness and he has to decide whether he has to remain satisfied with the existing faculties or to explore deeper realms of Consciousness. Sri Aurobindo confirmed that a comprehensive solution of all problems of existence is possible, including the quest of the Vedic Rishis connected with the physical Immortality. Immortality is the final victory and perfection of Spirit over material substance. Here, this quest for immortality is not exclusive in nature but a part of the all-inclusive totality and it can continue in three steps:- (1) accessibility, (2) purification and (3) perfection of all the intermediate planes (Inconscient sheath, Subconscient Sheath, subtle physical, subtle vital, subtle mental, Psychic, Spiritual, Universal sheaths) of Consciousness. Accessibility to these intermediate planes of Consciousness is possible by partial opening of Psychic and Spiritual being which is again possible by quieting the surface mind, surface vital and surface physical instincts and habits. The purification and perfection of these planes of Consciousness are possible by Psychic influence and descent of divinities from the Spiritual plane of consciousness. A similar account of The Mother’s Spiritual experiences can be recorded. Truckloads of Spiritual experiences dumped over Her head right from the age of four.³⁸ Later on She said that She was forced to refer to Scriptures only to confirm and understand Her own Spiritual experiences. When Sri Aurobindo left His body in 1950, a major part of His accumulated Spiritual force was transferred to The Mother’s body and the rest dispersed into the subtle physical. The Mother continued the work that Sri Aurobindo left for the next twenty-three years. On 29th February, 1956 another major siddhi in Sri Aurobindo’s Yoga came when the much awaited Supramental force entered the Earth’s domain through the Mother’s intervention in the subtle physical and was swallowed by the hunger of the Inconscient world. Previously the action of this force on earth was routed through the universalized Consciousness of The Mother and Sri Aurobindo. From this day onwards The Mother entered into a new domain of Cellular transformation, most rare in earth’s Spiritual history (some southern saints like Thirumoolar and Ramalingam ⁴⁷ were aware of Cellular transformation but their quest was individualistic or not universalized.). The Cellular transformation is the behavior of cells of the body, which began to undulate in between the old existing mechanical concentration and a new immortal principle. The cells underwent a training of constitutional change in order to hold the higher intensities of Supramental force. The transition between attachment to the old way of cells living and adopting a new principle is the most difficult issue before mankind that humanity has to face and pursue. Since the Mother left at this transition, the further future exploration shall wait the arrival (or they may be present in earth’s atmosphere) of strong and capable souls. The Mother confirmed that Her Yoga of cellular transformation can be followed by every body¹³ unconsciously and it is not the privilege of a few exceptional Souls, since the constitution of the cells of Her body is as inert and unconscious as that of others and from a positive point of view this new Consciousness is highly contagious in its nature and one can hardly escape from its Influence. The next difficult task of Mother Nature related to the multiplication of individual Cellular transformation may be understood in The Mother’s language, “If, for any reason this body (The Mother’s body) becomes unusable, the universal Mother will again start manifesting in hundreds of individualities according to their capacity and receptivity, each one being a partial manifestation of the Universal Consciousness.”³⁹ The Mother probably kept a tremendous hope that Her future generation will be born with substantial Spiritual force or born with new material substance or the new Consciousness will contagiously spread over the material substance and it will be easy for them to trace the path and they will cover and spread over the whole of humanity. Sri Aurobindo was absolutely against any propaganda and advertisement³⁴ of His Teachings as that is foreign to the free and dominant functioning of the new Consciousness and He knew that those strong Souls who will pursue His Yoga are destined for it and they are very few in numbers in the present scenario and in future they will spread to cover the whole of humanity. He was also against the generation of thousands of disciples and devotees; for He knew that they will not be sincere enough to universalise and transcendentalise their Consciousness, rather they will ruin and corrupt His action by institutionalization and secterianization.¹⁴ His Teachings may dilute through religious movements of ambitious Devotees. Transforming the human destiny is the subject of concentration and perfection of a single individual or few individuals or it is the responsibility of Supramental Concentration and this inner movement is inconsistent with the organised mass movement. Mass association is effective only in religious, political and national movements because their objective is narrow and localised. Or those Spiritual masters or Religious Teachers who are destined for Divine work through essential and multiple concentration may rely on organized mass movement, lokasangraha. The Mother was equally not interested in any action that will lead to name and fame³⁶ and from study we have understood that the name and fame arrest the consciousness in rajasic plane. Sri Aurobindo was not interested to become a Guru and in His earlier Spiritual life He was even against the doctrine of guruhood, guruvad . Later He became Guru as it was destined for Him and He accepted people to live with Him out of His compassion and compulsion of the surrounding world. Gradually, the number grew and His house expanded into an Ashram . Those who are ready to become the Mother’s children, which means those who are simple, truthful, not ambitious, there is substantial thirst to grow, ready to serve and surrender before the Divine by giving up ego, are accepted as His disciples. The Mother defined that those who offer their soul, life, work and wealth entirely to the Divine are Her true children. For Sri Aurobindo, the Guru is an aid and helper and not an indispensable means for self-development and in His Yoga, the Supreme Divine above or the inner Divine Guru in the heart will replace a necessity and subordination of physical Guru . In integral Yoga, if a Sadhaka is having Spiritual fosterer within as a Psychic being and without as a living Spiritual Teacher, then that is identified as exceptional privilege.³⁰ Those who ‘follow the true Guide within and without will discover the spiritual law and reach the goal of the Yoga’³⁰ Sri Aurobindo confirms in The Synthesis of Yoga that a 'strong (man) but crude vital natures'⁴² cannot become the true leader of men. Those who are in a preliminary stage not open to the Divine directly, as Sri Aurobindo proposes, can turn towards The Mother’s subtle-physical help through consecrated action and consecrated Bhakti;⁴³ for She had the exceptional privilege of direct contact with the Divine from Her birth. Through Avatar’s Influence one can transcend his lower Nature and transform his ordinary action to Divine action. In His Ashram, the relationship between Bhakta and Bhagaban , Guru and Shishya , Lover and Beloved has transformed into an ecstatic play field of the Mother and Child. The main contribution of Sri Aurobindo to earth’s Spiritual history is the bringing down the Divine to the material plane or bringing down the Supramental concentration, the comprehensive and strong Spiritual force through which humanity will be able to eliminate four fundamental problems of existence: Ignorance, Suffering, Falsehood and Death. The pressure of this Integral concentration is all-pervasive and it leaves no corner of the earth untouched from the domain of its self-growth. His mission was ‘not to create mathas, ascetics and Sannyasis; but to call back the souls of the strong to the Lila of Krishna and Kali. ’¹⁸ This means the Psychic heart Centre will be a playfield of Paramatma Satyavan and Para-prakriti Savitri and thus the God’s Supramental door opens. The Mother’s main contribution was to lead a step ahead in commencing a Cellular transformation in an individual vessel. Bearing earth’s pain in a single body and bearing the weight of the Eternal and Infinite in a death bound finite body is the secret behind Her earthly life. Other Avataras never suffered a physical pain to such an extent because Their objectives were not in bringing down the Divine into a mortal vessel. She created a new history in the management of the Ashram and Auroville, where all the aspects of life were included for a Divine purpose, inspiring millions to restructure and strengthen their social infrastructure and transform them into a Divine community. The task before the next evolutionary pioneers is to understand and catch the threads of the Cellular transformation and Subconscient transformation. The All-inclusive Totality:- “Among thousands of men one here and there strives after perfection, and of those who strive and attain to perfection one here and there knows Me integrally in all the principles of my existence, samagram-mam.” Gita-7.3 “A radical and total change of consciousness is not only the whole meaning but, in an increasing force and by progressive stages, the whole method of the integral Yoga.”⁴⁶ Sri Aurobindo The Mother said, “for Sri Aurobindo, the goal was perfection. Perfection not in the sense of a summit but of an all-inclusive totality in which everything is represented, has a place. And I saw that this Perfection would come—must come-in stages. He announced something the realisation of which will stretch over thousands of years. So it must come in stages.”¹⁵ Clarifying more on it the Mother said, “We thirst for perfection, not this human perfection which is the perfection of the ego and bars the way to the Divine Perfection, but the ONE perfection which has the power to manifest upon Earth the eternal Truth.”16 Sri Aurobindo declared that it is difficult for Him (also for The Mother) to pursue the Yoga that He has evolved; for ‘The only real difficulty which took decades of spiritual effort to work out towards completeness was to apply spiritual knowledge utterly to the world…’17 More reasons behind the difficulties are:- Firstly, the extent of transformation required in the mind, vital, body, inconscient self, subliminal self and universal self is so colossal in nature, the extent of revolt and opposition from the dark domain towards any change is so great that one life span is now too small for completion of such exercise. Secondly, He saw that the progress in Yoga during the last twelve years of the forty years concentrated sadhana at Pondicherry, was not as intended by Him and He felt the work has to be accelerated in the subtle physical and that is possible by leaving the existing body. Thirdly, He saw that the surrounding world was not ready to bear the massive descent of the Supramental force and the revolt and opposition of the surrounding people was disturbing and as a remedy the exercise of accelerating the universal evolution in the individual body must continue. Fourthly, the Yogi-disciples trained by Him were far behind in Yogic perfection of His demand and were not ready to share the Spiritual burden of the Master or as described in Savitri, ‘A distance severed her from those most close.’²⁶ Fifthly, He saw the constitution of the cells of His physical substance are not plastic enough to bear this higher intensities of Supramental force. He felt the constitution of cells of the Mother’s body were supple and plastic enough to continue this exercise and He decided to accelerate this work from subtle physical by leaving the body and helping The Mother from beyond. The Mother observed, “He (Sri Aurobindo ) himself has a greater action, a greater power of action now than when he was in his body. Besides, that’s why he left-because it had to be done that way... It’s very tangible, you know. His action has become very tangible. Of course, it isn’t something mental at all. It is from another region. But it isn’t ethereal or-it’s tangible. I could almost say material."²⁷ The Last twelve years in the life of both Sri Aurobindo and The Mother which passed in extreme suffering, remind us of Their bearing the Earth’s burden that has to be exhausted in an individual (or dual) body for the purpose of acceleration of universal evolution. They never came to achieve the goal but to help humanity to enter another domain of growth. They never searched individual immortality in the Himalayan gorge , as with that achievement humanity would not have been benefited; for in this transformation action even the most deprived one will also have to grow and participate to the extent of his capacity and he too is a part and beneficiary of total growth. They never came to confine Their action within the boundaries of Their Ashram and disciples, rather they accepted each member of the Ashram as a specimen for resolving the world problems. An innumerable account of Their Spiritual experiences are left lying before the next generation for further exploration. This will be useful for them those who are sincere, those who believe that the possession of constantly growing Divine is the object of life and before Its Presence all the separtive identity is meaningless. Yoga through Fourfold Concentration and Fourfold Cognition: - “By energism of consciousness (or Tapas or Concentration) Brahman is massed; from that Matter is born and from Matter Life and Mind and the worlds.” Mundaka Upanishad-I.1.8 “We are each of us a dynamo into which waves of that energy have been generated and stored, and are being perpetually conserved, used up and replenished. The same force which moves in the star and the planet, moves in us, and all our thought and action are merely its play and born of the complexity of its functionings. There are processes by which man can increase his capacity as an adhara. There are other processes by which he can clear of obstructions the channel of communication between himself and the universal energy and bring greater and greater stores of it pouring into his soul and brain and body. This continual improvement of the adhara and increase in quantity and complexity of action of the informing energy, is the whole aim of evolution.”³¹ Sri Aurobindo The Upanishad said that out of tremendous concentration of will heat is generated, which sets the whole being into fire. This concentration is Tapas, which is always present in the manifestation as the inherent power of consciousness and from the pressure of this Tapas Matter has evolved and from Matter, mind, life, and other intermediary worlds:- subliminal Self, inconscient Self and universal Self have evolved. In the progressive evolution this concentration works in four distinct manners in order to evolve four cognitive aspect, which is the subject of our study. The supreme integrality of the Absolute constitutes all these four states of concentration and cognition. Through development of these faculties we can know directly the past, present and future of earth which lies hidden in our Subconscient, Subliminal and Superconscient Sheaths. This knowledge of three times was earlier identified by Seers as trikaladristi . Through development of this triple time faculty, earth’s Spiritual history can be traced directly. Through development of Essential, Multiple and Integral concentration, earth’s Spiritual history can be traced from within and through development of exclusive concentration it can be traced from without. Both are needed for complete understanding and cognition. 1: Exclusive Concentration and Separative Knowledge by indirect contact:- “The student life was framed to lay the groundwork of what the man had to know, do and be. It gave a thorough training in the necessary arts, sciences, branches of knowledge, but it was still more insistent on the discipline of the ethical nature and in earlier days contained as an indispensable factor a grounding in the Vedic formula of spiritual knowledge. In these earlier days this training was given in suitable surroundings far away from the life of cities and the teacher was one who had himself passed through the round of this circle of living and, very usually, even, one who had arrived at some remarkable realisation of spiritual knowledge. But subsequently education became more intellectual and mundane; it was imparted in cities and universities and aimed less at an inner preparation of character and knowledge and more at instruction and the training of the intelligence.”²⁵ Sri Aurobindo The scope of exclusive concentration is confined within the boundaries of ignorance. We understand ignorance as part knowledge or limited knowledge in which mind is separated from the source of knowledge, is oblivious of totality and is narrow and rigid and opposes all harmonious working of the Supreme force. Our forgetfulness of the totality of existence and concentration on an exclusive object is the cause of Ignorance. For clarity we have defined here briefly our totality of existence: - (1) Surface physical self or sthula sharira: - this constitute our surface mind, life, body and desire soul regarding which we remain aware and delude it as our whole of identity; (2) Subliminal self or Sukhma sharira :- we are ignorant of a vast domain of our inner mind, inner life, subtle body and inner Psychic being. This sukhma sharira holds the sthula sharira and it survives after dissolution of sthula sarira; all transformation action of higher possibility takes shape in this domain. Subliminal Self is the meeting ground of all other Selves and all our past, present and future coexist here; (3) Inconscient Sheath (ancient scriptures divide this self into fourteen hells):- we are ignorant of a vast dark and nether domain from which Matter has evolved and this is also the home of all unconsciousness, disharmony and discord like death, disease, accident and past samskara; Subconscient is a world of double twilight, which exists above the Inconscient sheath, (4) Universal Sheath:- we are ignorant of our universal Self through which we enter relation with the universe and become identified with it; (5) Superconscient Self or karana sharira :- we are ignorant of our causal body which holds both our sukhma sharira and our sthula sharira. This is the world of all higher Divine hierarchies from which all the Divine possibilities descend to the material domain. These divine hierarchies are:- higher Mind, illumined Mind, intuitive Mind, Overmind and the mind of Light; (6) Supreme self or Paramatma :- we are ignorant of our Sachchidananda consciousness, which is the source of all other Selves including the Supramental. Yoga through exclusive concentration means quieting the surface physical self and entry in to subliminal self, leading one to a state of self-realisation. This may be practiced by the methods proposed by different Yogic schools and instructions issued by the scriptures. All our scientific research and their inventions, literary creations, work that brings name and fame and success, work related with philanthropy come under the purview of exclusive concentration. With the evolution of mind man has been bestowed with this faculty of exclusive concentration for solution of all problems. We get the knowledge of ourselves and the surrounding world with the help of our sense organs, mind and intellect. This cognition is Separative Knowledge by Indirect Contact. All diagnostic instruments invented by science fall within this range of cognition. Since this concentration and cognition lie within the boundaries of ignorance, so it fails to give a true and real picture of the world and fails to face and solve the whole problem of existence. The attempt of medical science to eliminate disease and death from earth can not succeed unless they go beyond this gross world and the range of exclusive concentration. 2) Essential Concentration and Separative Knowledge by Direct Contact:- “As much use as there is in a well with water in flood on every side, so much is there in all the Vedas (Scriptures) for the Brahmin who has Knowledge.” The Gita-2.46 Essential Concentration resumes action with the opening of the passage to Psychic Self. Psychic Being has the capacity to travel in all the worlds and planes of Consciousness. A vast domain of inner mind, inner life, subtle physical and inner Psychic being is made accessible. Then a conscious movement begins to undulate in between the Inconscient self and Superconscient self and the Divine Force, Knowledge and Light etc. from Superconscient self will invade the inconscient self, universal self, subliminal self and surface physical self for the purpose of purification and transformation of these domains. When our sense organs, mind and intellect receive their inspiration from the vast reservoir of the Psychic self, then that cognition is Separative Knowledge by Direct Contact. All scientific discoveries and all success stories in the life of individuals find their source of knowledge from this domain, while at the same time they, by their limitation of ignorance live in the boundaries of exclusive concentration. When our centre of living is changed from surface physical self to the Subliminal and Psychic self, which is a world of truth, knowledge and new creation, which is also a world of meeting place of all other Selves for the purpose of transformation, then the Essential Concentration finds its predominance in life. This concentration is a sole indwelling or an entire absorption in the essence of its own being and undulates in between the discord of inconscient self and the silence and harmony of Superconscient self. Essential concentration culminates in the universalization of individual consciousness. 3) Multiple Concentration and Knowledge by Direct contact:- “After many births of preparation, a Jnana Yogi with strong foundation of Karma and Bhakti Yoga, attains My Purushottama or Supramental state of Consciousness. He also realises the intermediate stair that all this existence is Divine, the Cosmic Consciousness, Vasudevah sarvamiti. Such great Soul or integral Yogi is very rare.” The Gita-7.19 Multiple concentration resumes action after the universalization of the individual consciousness. The subliminal self or the sukhma sharira that surrounds the gross body grows by loss of ego and descent of Superconscient divine forces. When this sukhma sharira grows to the proportion of earth, then a Yogi attains universalization. After this realisation of universal Self, one feels the universe within and there is free flow of universal energy into the individual vessel. Sri Aurobindo had this realisation of universal self at Alipore jail and He took around eighteen years, from 1908 to 1926 to exhaust all the siddhis in this domain and reached the final Overmental siddhi. A Guru can protect and guide all his disciples through the intervention of this concentration. Sri Aurobindo’s help was not confined to His disciples alone, His action was global; for instance during world war-II, He sent thousands of His emanations at a time, who materialized in the war field and extended His physical help to those who were in danger. He even applied His Overmental Spiritual force against the Nazis in order to change the course of world event. The Godhead of The Gita presided over the whole war of Kurukshetra through intervention of this concentration. Multiple world problems are resolved at a time by intervention of this concentration. Knowledge by direct contact is the whole range of knowledge covering the past, present and future, which is available in the subliminal Self. In the subliminal Self there is a whole range of inner sight, inner hearing, inner taste, inner touch and smell which far exceed the limit of outer sense organs and the contact with truth of things is more intense, real and profound. But this knowledge has its source in the superconscient Self and it suffers some error due to presence of some impurity in the surface part of subliminal Self, that is close to gross physical. The foreknowledge of the war at Kurukshetra to the Divine Teacher is an example of this knowledge and He saw through His Divine eye all the happenings of the Kurukshetra before the war and the same capacity of vision was also offered to Arjuna and Sanjaya in the war field. After universalization of individual consciousness, acceleration of universal evolution in an individual body is possible by invasion of Superconscient divinities in to the universal Self and the most difficult task in the Integral Yoga is to clean the world debris of impurities in the form of Subconscient ignorance, falsehood, suffering and death in an individual body. 4) Integral Concentration and Knowledge by Identity:- Integral concentration resumes action after the universalization and Overmentalization of the individual consciousness. Overmind is the world of great Gods and the divine Creators. It is also the world of Universal Divine Mother and Her four-fold Spiritual Mother Powers, who as creatrix Mother of the gross world, transforms the divided and many-sided play of the Truth. This power is not sufficient to overcome the Ignorance at its root, as it is itself under the law of Ignorance. Integral Concentration is the total Consciousness of Sachchidananda, the Supramental Concentration. This concentration is comprehensive, aware of the totality, total being and total becoming of the manifestation. When this Concentration intervenes it leaves no problem untouched and unsolved; it resolves all problem of existence. This Concentration establishes the Law of Immortality, Harmony, Knowledge, Ananda and Truth in the mortal vessel. This Concentration or Tapas has ability to penetrate into the innermost domain of the universal physical and universal inconscient Sheaths. Its movement is not from Inconscience to some imperfect light of Superconscient self, which is the essence behind essential concentration, but movement which begins from Truth to greater Truth, from illumination to boundless luminousness. Sri Aurobindo took eighteen years to transcend the boundaries of multiple concentration, though He was in touch with Supramental right from the beginning of Pondicherry life.²⁸ When the Supramental began to descend, He observed that this force is not stabilizing in the mind center and transformation of mind was not possible. With the arrival of The Mother , She asked Sri Aurobindo to bring the Supramental down to the vital and physical centres because mind is penetrated in the vital and physical substance in the form of vital mind and physical mind, and without the transformation of vital mind and physical mind the stabilisation of Supramental in the mind is not possible. But during those eighteen years of sadhana from 1908 to 1926 covering a whole range of Yoga of Self-perfection, He felt the concreteness of this new Consciousness in earth’s atmosphere, whose intervention is felt essential and He knew that He was destined for this work. After 1926, He devoted a period of twenty-four years of exploring the different hierarchies of Supramental Kingdom and bringing down these divinities into mind, vital, body, subliminal self, universal self, Subconscient self and Inconscient self. Transforming the universal Inconscient is a long difficult and painful task; for the roots of all problems are ingrained here. The major difficulty is that mind, life and body are finite substance and are having their respective limitations in bearing the weight of the Infinite, which is the nature of Supramental force, becomes a real practical problem. In order to bring down the higher intensities of Supramental force, the mind, vital and body must be prepared enough to hold them or else it will cause imbalance in the normal functioning of the system. The normal biological functioning of the body and the Supramental invasion cannot go together because of the disparity and the crushing of the finite substance by the infinite force; this interpenetration will continue until the material life will attain a new state of Divine equilibrium. The task of bringing down infinite God into a limited death bound vessel is a real, painful and radical adventure never witnessed by human history. Knowledge by identity is the comprehensive knowledge and is revealed during complete union with the Supreme Sachchidananda. This cognition is absolutely free from all error, all ignorance and is fully aware of the totality of existence. The past, present and future coexists in its vast domain of Integral Knowledge. All problems of existence can be resolved with the intervention of this Concentration and Cognition but mankind may have to wait and strive for a few hundred years in order to work out the world riddle. The Task of the next Evolutionary Pioneers: - “The lack of the earth’s receptivity and the behavior of Sri Aurobindo’s disciples are largely responsible for what happened to his body. But one thing is certain: the great misfortune that has just beset us in no way affects the truth of his teaching. All he said is perfectly true and remains so. Time and the course of events will make this abundantly clear.” ⁴⁵ The Mother The first task of the pioneers of evolution will be to assimilate the contribution of their predecessors and draw Spiritual help from them in their evolutionary ascent. The next task is that they must be pure and virgin enough to establish the Soul’s supremacy, followed by Divine’s supremacy over mind, life, body and the surrounding world and must be capable to transcendentalize, universalize and overmentalize their individual consciousness. These strong men are not the emotional children of the Divine Mother and they dare to prepare themselves to share the Spiritual burden of the Guru , which is of the nature of purification of universal Subconscient and Inconscient. They or the New consciousness will capture the whole gamut of human institutions like Politics, Economics, Science, Technology, Sociology, Religion, Literature, Schools, Colleges, Industries, Farmlands and Hospitals in order to generate a pressure and compel them in their extreme self-development. Sri Aurobindo’s Yoga on earth will succeed if few³⁴ young aspirants universalize their individual separative identity through a long movement of Consciousness between the Psychic and Spiritual planes. OM TAT SAT References: - ¹²³⁴⁵⁶⁷⁸⁹¹⁰ 1: “What is aimed at by us is a spiritual truth as the basis of life, the first words of which are (1) surrender and (2) union with the Divine and (3) transcendence of ego. So long as that basis is not established, a Sadhaka is only an ignorant and imperfect human being struggling with the evils of the lower Nature.” Sri Aurobindo/The Mother’s Agenda-4/p-422, “There are three main possibilities for the sadhak — (1) To wait on the Grace and rely on the Divine. (2) To do everything himself like the full Adwaitin and the Buddhist. (3) To take the middle path, go forward by aspiration and rejection etc. helped by the Force.” CWSA-29/Letters on Yoga-II/p-171, "The Sadhaka has not only to think and know but to see and feel concretely and intensely even in the moment of the working and in its initiation and whole process that his works are not his at all, but are coming through him from the Supreme Existence. He must be always aware of a Force, a Presence, a Will that acts through his individual nature." SABCL-20/217, CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-229, “Especially, in proportion as the partial lights of the mind become transformed into lights of gnosis, in whatever slighter or greater degree that may happen, we feel it as a transformation of our mentality into his and more and more he (Divine) becomes the thinker and seer in us. We cease to think and see for ourselves, but think only what he wills to think for us and see only what he sees for us. And then the teacher is fulfilled in the lover; he lays hands on all our mental being to embrace and possess, to enjoy and use it.” CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-603, 2. Life Divine-40, 3. The Mother’s Agenda/Vol8/260, SABCL/Vol-15/p-425, 4: “A Church is an organised religious community and religion, if anything in the world, ought to be subjective; for its very reason for existence — where it is not merely an ethical creed with a supernatural authority — is to find and realise the soul. Yet religious history has been almost entirely, except in the time of the founders and their immediate successors, an insistence on things objective, rites, ceremonies, authority, church governments, dogmas, forms of belief. Witness the whole external religious history of Europe, that strange sacrilegious tragi-comedy of discords, sanguinary disputations, “religious” wars, persecutions, State churches and all else that is the very negation of the spiritual life. It is only recently that men have begun seriously to consider what Christianity, Catholicism, Islam really mean and are in their soul, that is to say, in their very reality and essence.” CWSA-25/Human Cycle/p-38, 5. SABCL/Vol-26/119, 6. SABCL/ Vol-22/420, "It is not I only who have done what the Vedic Rishis did not do. Chaitanya and others developed an intensity of Bhakti which is absent in the Veda and many other instances can be given. Why should the past be the limit of spiritual experience?" CWSA-29/Letters on Yoga-II/p-417, 7. SABCL/Vol-26/119, 8. The Mother’s Agenda/Vol-13, 9. “When will the world change into the model of heaven? When all mankind becomes boys and girls together with God revealed as Krishna and Kali, the happiest boy and strongest girl of the crowd, playing together in the gardens of Paradise. The Semitic Eden was well enough, but Adam and Eve were too grown up and its God Himself too old and stern and solemn for the offer of the Serpent to be resisted.” Sri Aurobindo/TMCW-10/On Thoughts and Aphorisms/p-344, SABCL/Vol-17/p-137, 10. Savitri-19, 11. Savitri-420, 12. SABCL/Vol-24/p-448, “(Q) Since you and the Mother were on earth constantly from the beginning what was the need for Avataras coming down here one after another? (Ans.)We were not on earth as Avataras. 15 December 1935 (Q) You say that you both were not on earth as Avatars and yet you were carrying on the evolution. Since the Divine Himself was on the earth carrying on the evolution, what was the necessity for the coming down of the Avatars who are portions of Himself? (Ans.) The Avatar is necessary when a special work is to be done and in crises of the evolution. The Avatar is a special manifestation, while for the rest of the time it is the Divine working within the ordinary human limits as a Vibhuti. 18 December 1935” CWSA-32/The Mother with Letters on the Mother/p-91, "When first man’s heart dared death and suffered life." Savitri-59, [The Godhead promised the grant of physical immortality through all life when the first man or first Avatara Satyavan suffered death. Psychic being is the conscious Immortal being in us reminds us of the necessity of physical immortality.] “He named himself for me, grew Satyavan. For we were man and woman from the first,” Savitri-614 (They were first man and woman of the creation.) "You know, mon petit, I said one day that in the history of earth, wherever there was a possibility for the Consciousness to manifest, I was there; this is a fact. It's like the story of Savitri: always there, always there, always there, in this one, that one – at certain times there were four emanations simultaneously! At the time of the Italian and French Renaissance. And again at the time of Christ, then too.... Oh, you know, I have remembered so many, many things! It would take volumes to tell it all. And then, more often than not (not always, but more often than not), what took part in this or that life was a particular yogic formation of the vital being – in other words something immortal.111 And when I came this time, as soon as I took up the yoga, they came back again from all sides, they were waiting. Some were simply waiting, others were working (they led their own independent lives) and they all gathered together again. That's how I got those memories. One after the other, those vital beings came – a deluge! I had barely enough time to assimilate one, to see, situate and integrate it, and another would come. They are quite independent, of course, they do their own work, but they are very centralized all the same. And there are all kinds – all kinds, anything you can imagine! Some of them have even been in men: they are not exclusively feminine." The Mother's Agenda/June 27, 1962, 13. “No, no, no. If it has been done in one body, it can be done in all bodies… But since it's taking place in one body, it can take place in all bodies! I am not made of anything different from others. The difference is the consciousness, that's all. It's made of exactly the same thing, with the same elements, I eat the same things, and it was made in just the same way.” The Mother’s Agenda/Vol-8/p-377-378, “The feeling is rather one of vibrations gathered together and coagulated somewhere – and even at that, there's a very supple inner play, for it spreads out like this (Mother makes a gesture of diffusion or expansion all around her) through a sort of subtilization or etherization. And it's limitless – how could it have any limits! It goes like this (same radiating gesture) – these same vibrations are everywhere, in all bodies and all things. What people call this body is merely the result of a willed concentration organized in a specific way; that's how it spontaneously feels, all the time (not that it's observing itself, but if something forces it to observe itself, that's what it spontaneously feels). And the delimitation that exists in all beings, and which WAS in this body (was it this body?... Haven't the cells changed?... I don't know), which once existed in what people call this body, has completely disappeared. Before (thirty years or so ago), it used to feel like something separate moving among other separate things – that's all gone.” The Mother’s Agenda- August 14, 1962, 14. “Sri Aurobindo was very, very conscious of this general confusion, and so he didn’t much like … he wanted absolutely no propaganda, but he also didn’t much like attempts to “explain things” to people and make them “understand,” because he very well knew how useless it is. He very, very often said it to me: no propaganda whatsoever, of course, and above all, above all, no attempt to make people understand: the maximum effect one can obtain is the effect of the Consciousness at work in the world (universal gesture), because in everyone it produces the utmost the person can do – the utmost of what he can understand, he understands through the influence of the pressure of the Consciousness. As soon as words intervene, the whole mind makes a mess of it.”The Mother’s Agenda/Vol-10/p-60, 15. The Mother’s Agenda/Vol-4/p-101, 16. The Mother’s Agenda/Vol-2/p-394, 17. SABCL/Vol-26/86, 18: "There is another point. You sent a message about an “Aurobindo Math” which seemed to show you had caught the contagion which rages in Bengal. You must understand that my mission is not to create maths, ascetics and Sannyasis; but to call back the souls of the strong to the Lila of Krishna & Kali . That is my teaching, as you can see from the Review, and my name must never be connected with monastic forms or the monastic ideal. Every ascetic movement since the time of Buddha has left India weaker and for a very obvious reason. Renunciation of life is one thing, to make life itself, national, individual, world-life greater & more divine is another. You cannot enforce one ideal on the country without weakening the other. You cannot take away the best souls from life & yet leave life stronger & greater. Renunciation of ego, acceptance of God in life is the Yoga I teach, — no other renunciation." SABCL/Vol-17/157, CWSA-36/ Autobiographical Note/p-222, “When will the world change into the model of heaven? When all mankind becomes boys and girls together with God revealed as Krishna and Kali, the happiest boy and strongest girl of the crowd, playing together in the gardens of Paradise. The Semitic Eden was well enough, but Adam and Eve were too grown up and its God Himself too old and stern and solemn for the offer of the Serpent to be resisted.” Sri Aurobindo/TMCW-10/On Thoughts and Aphorisms/p-344, 19: “But the difficulty is to find the “some one” who knows Sri Aurobindo thoroughly…(and subsequently) who is capable of receiving His inspirations directly…capable of understanding Sri Aurobindo’s inspiration and transmitting it…and has at the same time very strong character… (and if possible) to have His genius… For years I have been looking for that man, without finding him.” The Mother/The Mother’s Agenda-8/175, The Mother’s Agenda-2/206, 20: “His Yoga may be governed for a long time by one Scripture or by several successively, — if it is in the line of the great Hindu tradition, by the Gita, for example, the Upanishads, the Veda. Or it may be a good part of his development to include in its material a richly varied experience of the truths of many Scriptures and make the future opulent with all that is best in the past.” CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga-p-55, “I may say that the way of the Gita is itself a part of the Yoga here and those who have followed it, to begin with or as a first stage, have a stronger basis than others for this Yoga. To look down on it therefore as something separate and inferior is not a right standpoint… I suggested the Gita method for you because the opening which is necessary for the Yoga here seems to be too difficult for you. If you made a less strenuous demand upon yourself, there might be a greater chance.” CWSA-29/Letters on Yoga-II/p-445-446, 21: “To be a Yogi, a Sannyasi, a Tapaswi is not the object here. The object is transformation, and the transformation can only be done by a force infinitely greater than your own; it can only be done by being truly like a child in the hands of the Divine Mother.” 7 June 1928/ CWSA-32/The Mother and Letters on the Mother/p-142-143, “Everyone who is turned to the Mother is doing my Yoga. It is a great mistake to suppose that one can “do” the Purna Yoga i.e. carry out and fulfil all the sides of the Yoga by one’s own effort. No human being can do that. What one has to do is to put oneself in the Mother’s hands and open oneself to her by service, by bhakti, by aspiration; then the Mother by her light and force works in him so that the sadhana is done. It is a mistake also to have the ambition to be a big Purna Yogi or a supramental being and ask oneself how far have I got towards that. The right attitude is to be devoted and given to the Mother and to wish to be whatever she wants you to be. The rest is for the Mother to decide and do in you.” April 1929/CWSA-32/The Mother and Letters on the Mother/p-151-152, 22: CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-10-11, “As in Science, so in metaphysical thought, that general and ultimate solution is likely to be the best which includes and accounts for all so that each truth of experience takes its place in the whole: that knowledge is likely to be the highest knowledge which illumines, integralises, harmonises the significance of all knowledge and accounts for, finds the basic and, one might almost say, the justifying reason of our ignorance and illusion while it cures them; this is the supreme experience which gathers together all experience in the truth of a supreme and all-reconciling oneness. Illusionism unifies by elimination; it deprives all knowledge and experience, except the one supreme merger, of reality and significance.” CWSA-21/The Life Divine-485, “Therefore the age of intuitive knowledge, represented by early Vedantic thinking of the Upanishads, had to give place to the age of rational knowledge, inspired Scriptures made room for metaphysical philosophy, even as afterwards metaphysical philosophy had to give place to experimental Science.” CWSA/21/The Life Divine-74, 23: “I regard the spiritual history of mankind and especially of India as a constant development of a divine purpose, not a book that is closed, the lines of which have to be constantly repeated. Even the Upanishads and the Gita were not final though everything may be there in seed. In this development the recent spiritual history of India is a very important stage and the names I mentioned [Ramakrishna and Vivekananda] had a special prominence in my thought at the time — they seemed to me to indicate the lines from which the future spiritual development had most directly to proceed, not staying but passing on. I do not know that I would put my meaning exactly in the language you suggest. I may say that it is far from my purpose to propagate any religion new or old for humanity in the future. A way to be opened that is still blocked, not a religion to be founded, is my conception of the matter. ” CWSA-28/Letters on Yoga-I/p-411, 24: ‘As it is, the physical body is really only a very disfigured shadow of the eternal life of the Self, but this physical body is capable of a progressive development; the physical substance evolves through each individual formation, and one day, it will be capable of bridging the gap between the physical life as we know it and the Supramental life that will manifest.’ The Mother/The Mother’s Agenda/Vol-1/page-251, 25: “The Indian system did not entirely leave this difficult growth to the individual’s unaided inner initiative. It supplied him with a framework; it gave him a scale and gradation for his life which could be made into a kind of ladder rising in that sense. This high convenience was the object of the four Asramas. Life was divided into four natural periods and each of them marked out a stage in the working out of this cultural idea of living. There was the period of the (1) student, (2) the period of the householder, (3) the period of the recluse or forest-dweller, (4) the period of the free supersocial man, parivrajaka. (1) The student life was framed to lay the groundwork of what the man had to know, do and be. It gave a thorough training in the necessary arts, sciences, branches of knowledge, but it was still more insistent on the discipline of the ethical nature and in earlier days contained as an indispensable factor a grounding in the Vedic formula of spiritual knowledge. In these earlier days this training was given in suitable surroundings far away from the life of cities and the teacher was one who had himself passed through the round of this circle of living and, very usually, even, one who had arrived at some remarkable realisation of spiritual knowledge. But subsequently education became more intellectual and mundane; it was imparted in cities and universities and aimed less at an inner preparation of character and knowledge and more at instruction and the training of the intelligence. But in the beginning the Aryan man was really prepared in some degree for the four great objects of his life, artha, kama, dharma, moksa. (2) Entering into the householder stage to live out his knowledge, he was able to serve there the three first human objects; he satisfied his natural being and its interests and desire to take the joy of life, he paid his debt to the society and its demands and by the way he discharged his life functions he prepared himself for the last greatest purpose of his existence. (3) In the third stage he retired to the forest and worked out in a certain seclusion the truth of his spirit. He lived in a broad freedom from the stricter social bonds; but if he so willed, gathering the young around him or receiving the inquirer and seeker, he could leave his knowledge to the new rising generation as an educator or a spiritual teacher. (4) In the last stage of life he was free to throw off every remaining tie and to wander over the world in an extreme spiritual detachment from all the forms of social life, satisfying only the barest necessities, communing with the universal spirit, making his soul ready for eternity. This circle was not obligatory on all. The great majority never went beyond the two first stages; many passed away in the vanaprastha or forest stage. Only the rare few made the last extreme venture and took the life of the wandering recluse. But this profoundly conceived cycle gave a scheme which kept the full course of the human spirit in its view; it could be taken advantage of by all according to their actual growth and in its fullness by those who were sufficiently developed in their present birth to complete the circle. ” CWSA-20/The Renaissance in India/p-174 to 176, 26: Savitri-366, 27: Dec-20/1972/The Mother’s Agenda/Vol-13/P-326-328, 28: “(Satprem) What about Sri Aurobindo's experience at Alipore, then? You know, that well-known experience when he saw Narayana in the prisoners, Narayana in the guards, Narayana everywhere?... (The Mother replied) That is the Supreme. Oneness. (Satprem) Is it a supramental experience or.... (The Mother replied) It is supramental. (Satprem)Supramental? (The Mother replied) Yes, the supramental experience. He called it Narayana because he was Indian. (Satprem) It's supramental, not overmental? (The Mother replied) No, no… (Satprem) Anyway, the important thing is what you told me: the experience at Alipore is supramental. (The Mother replied) Oh, yes! He used the word Narayana because he hadn't yet developed his own terminology; but he isn't referring to the gods: it's the supramental experience.” The Mother’s Agenda-September 26, 1962, 29: SABCL/Vol-17/146, 30: “This will be to him his exceeding good fortune if he can meet one who has realised or is becoming That which he seeks for and can by opening to it in this vessel of its manifestation himself realise it.” CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-130, "Two rules alone there are that will diminish the difficulty and obviate the danger. One must reject all that comes from the ego, from vital desire, from the mere mind and its presumptuous reasoning incompetence, all that ministers to these agents of the Ignorance. One must learn to hear and follow the voice of the inmost soul, the direction of the Guru, the command of the Master, the working of the Divine Mother. Whoever clings to the desires and weaknesses of the flesh, the cravings and passions of the vital in its turbulent ignorance, the dictates of his personal mind unsilenced and unillumined by a greater knowledge, cannot find the true inner law and is heaping obstacles in the way of the divine fulfilment. Whoever is able to detect and renounce those obscuring agencies and to discern and follow the true Guide within and without will discover the spiritual law and reach the goal of the Yoga... A radical and total change of consciousness is not only the whole meaning but, in an increasing force and by progressive stages, the whole method of the integral Yoga." CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-187, 31: “The ancient Aryans knew that man was not separate from the universe, but only a homogeneous part of it, as a wave is part of the ocean. An infinite energy, Prakriti, Maya or Shakti, pervades the world, pours itself into every name and form, and the clod, the plant, the insect, the animal, the man are, in their phenomenal existence, merely more or less efficient adharas of this Energy. We are each of us a dynamo into which waves of that energy have been generated and stored, and are being perpetually conserved, used up and replenished. The same force which moves in the star and the planet, moves in us, and all our thought and action are merely its play and born of the complexity of its functionings. There are processes by which man can increase his capacity as an adhara. There are other processes by which he can clear of obstructions the channel of communication between himself and the universal energy and bring greater and greater stores of it pouring into his soul and brain and body. This continual improvement of the adhara and increase in quantity and complexity of action of the informing energy, is the whole aim of evolution. When that energy is the highest in kind and the fullest in amount of which the human adhara is capable, and the adhara itself is trained utterly to bear the inrush and play of the energy, then is a man siddha, the fulfilled or perfect man, his evolution is over and he has completed in the individual that utmost development which the mass of humanity is labouring towards through the ages.” CWSA-1/Early Cultural Writings/p-370, 32: “We may say that here in India the reign of Intuition came first, intellectual Mind developing afterwards in the later philosophy and science. But in fact the mass of men at the time, it is quite evident, lived entirely on the material plane, worshipped the Godheads of material nature, sought from them entirely material objects. The effort of the Vedic mystics revealed to them the things behind through a power of inner sight and hearing and experience which was confined to a limited number of seers and sages and kept carefully secret from the mass of humanity secrecy was always insisted on by the mystics. We may very well attribute this flowering of intuition on the spiritual plane to a rapid reemergence of the essential gains brought down from a previous cycle. If we analyse the spiritual history of India we shall find that after reaching this height there was a descent which attempted to take up each lower degree of the already evolved consciousness and link it to the spiritual at the summit. The Vedic age was followed by a great outburst of intellectual philosophy which yet took spiritual truth as its basis and tried to reach it anew, not through a direct intuitive or occult process as did the Vedic seers, but by the power of the mind’s reflective, speculative, logical thought; at the same time processes of Yoga were developed which used the thinking mind as a means of arriving at spiritual realisation, spiritualising this mind itself at the same time. Then followed an era of the development of philosophies and Yoga processes which more and more used the emotional and aesthetic being as the means of spiritual realisation and spiritualised the emotional level in man through the heart and feeling. This was accompanied by Tantric and other processes which took up the mental will, the life-will, the life of sensations and made them at once the instruments and the field of spiritualisation. In Hathayoga and in the various attempts at divinisation of the body there is also a line of endeavour which attempted to arrive at the same achievement with regard to living matter; but this still awaits the discovery of the true characteristic method and power of spirit in the body. We may say therefore that the universal Consciousness after its descent into Matter has conducted the evolution there along two lines, one of ascent to the discovery of the self and spirit, the other of descent through the already evolved levels of mind, life and body so as to bring down the spiritual consciousness into these also and to fulfil thereby some secret intention in the creation of the material universe. Our Yoga is in its principle a taking up and summarising and completing of this process, an endeavour to rise to the highest possible supramental level and bring down its consciousness and powers into mind, life and body. ” CWSA-28/Letters on Yoga-I/p-267-268, 33: TMCW-7/Questions and Answers-1955/p-350-351, 34: “Otherwise what will be ultimately accomplished is an achievement by the few initiating a new order of beings, while humanity will have passed sentence of unfitness on itself and may fall back into an evolutionary decline or a stationary immobility; for it is the constants up ward effort (of the few) that has kept humanity alive and maintained for it, Its plays in the front of creation.” CWSA-22/The Life Divine/p-752, “I do not want hundreds of thousands of disciples. It will be enough if I can get a hundred complete men, purified of petty egoism, who will be the instruments of God.” Sri Aurobindo/Champaklal Speaks-191-192, “That is exactly what Sri Aurobindo wanted and attempted; he used to say, “If I can find a hundred people, it will be enough for my purpose.” The Mother’s Agenda-5/p-195, “Even if one person could put himself faithfully at the disposal of the Truth, he could change the country and the world.” The Mother’s Agenda-10/p-148/19th April-1969, “The Psychic transformation and the first stages of the spiritual transformation are well within our conception; their perfection would be the perfection, wholeness, consummated unity of a knowledge and experience which is already part of things realised, though only by a small number of human beings. But the supramental change in its process carries us into less explored regions; it initiates a vision of heights of consciousness which have indeed been glimpsed and visited, but have yet to be discovered and mapped in their completeness.” CWSA-22/The Life Divine/p-953, “But the real soul, the real psychic entity which for the most part we see little of and only a small minority in mankind has developed, is an instrument of pure love, joy and the luminous reaching out to fusion and unity with God and our fellow-creatures. This psychic entity is covered up by the play of the mentalised Prana or desire-mind which we mistake for the soul; the emotional mind is unable to mirror the real soul in us, the Divine in our hearts, and is obliged instead to mirror the desire-mind.” CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-351, “I don’t believe in advertisement except for books etc., and in propaganda except for politics and patent medicines. But for serious work it is a poison. It means either a stunt or a boom—and stunts and booms exhaust the thing they carry on their crest and leave it lifeless and broken high and dry on shores of nowhere or it means a movement. A movement in the case of work like mine means the founding of a school or a sect or some damned nonsense. It means that hundreds and thousands of useless people join in and corrupt the work or reduce it to pompous farce from which the Truth that was coming down recedes into secrecy and silence. It is what has happened to the ‘religions’ and the reason of their failure.” 02.10.1934, SABCL/26/p-375, 35: “…but the healing by faith in the cells is an actual fact and a law of Nature and has been demonstrated often enough even apart from Yoga. The way to get faith and everything else is to insist on having them and refuse to flag or despair or give up until one has them — it is the way by which everything has been got since this difficult world began to have thinking and aspiring creatures upon it. It is to open always, always to the Light and turn one’s back on the darkness. It is to refuse the voices that cry persistently, “You cannot, you shall not, you are incapable, you are the puppet of a dream” — for these are the enemy voices, they cut one off from the result that was coming by their strident clamour and then triumphantly point to the barrenness of result as a proof of their thesis. The difficulty of the endeavour is a known thing, but the difficult is not the impossible — it is the difficult that has always been accomplished and the conquest of difficulties makes up all that is valuable in the earth’s history. In the spiritual endeavour also it shall be so.” CWSA-29/Letters on Yoga-II/p-100, 36: “They had wanted to give the Nobel prize to Sri Aurobindo, but he left the year before the decision was to be made. And as they don't give the prize to "dead" people, he never got it. Then they wanted to transfer it to me, and I wrote this note, because the last thing I want is name and fame. That's all there was to it. They didn't give a peace prize that year… I believe the whole affair is now buried and forgotten.” The Mother’s Agenda- May 15, 1962, 37: “Here the Yoga of self-perfection coincides with the Yogas of knowledge, works and devotion; for it is impossible to change the human nature into the divine or to make it an instrument of the divine knowledge, will and joy of existence, unless there is a union with the supreme Being, Consciousness and Bliss and a unity with its universal Self in all things and beings. A wholly separative possession of the divine nature by the human individual, as distinct from a self-withdrawn absorption in it, is not possible.” CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga-622, “The individual must be the instrument and first field of the transformation; but an isolated individual transformation is not enough and may not be wholly feasible. Even when achieved, the individual change will have a permanent and cosmic significance only if the individual becomes a centre and a sign for the establishment of the supramental Consciousness-Force as an overtly operative power in the terrestrial workings of Nature, — in the same way in which thinking Mind has been established through the human evolution as an overtly operative power in Life and Matter. This would mean the appearance in the evolution of a gnostic being or Purusha and a gnostic Prakriti, a gnostic Nature. There must be an emergent supramental Consciousness- Force liberated and active within the terrestrial whole and an organised supramental instrumentation of the Spirit in the life and the body, — for the body consciousness also must become sufficiently awake to be a fit instrument of the workings of the new supramental Force and its new order. Till then any intermediate change could be only partial or insecure; an overmind or intuitive instrumentation of Nature could be developed, but it would be a luminous formation imposed on a fundamental and environmental Inconscience. A supramental principle and its cosmic operation once established permanently on its own basis, the intervening powers of Overmind and spiritual Mind could found themselves securely upon it and reach their own perfection; they would become in the earth-existence a hierarchy of states of consciousness rising out of Mind and physical life to the supreme spiritual level.” CWSA-22/The Life Divine/p-997-998, "A perfect self- expression of the spirit is the object of our terrestrial existence. This cannot be achieved if we have not grown conscious of the supreme Reality; for it is only by the touch of the Absolute that we can arrive at our own absolute. But neither can it be done to the exclusion of the cosmic Reality: we must become universal, for without an opening into universality the individual remains incomplete. The individual separating himself from the All to reach the Highest, loses himself in the supreme heights; including in himself the cosmic consciousness, he recovers his wholeness of self and still keeps his supreme gain of transcendence; he fulfils it and himself in the cosmic completeness. A realised unity of the transcendent, the universal and the individual is an indispensable condition for the fullness of the self-expressing spirit: for the universe is the field of its totality of self-expression, while it is through the individual that its evolutionary self-unfolding here comes to its acme." CWSA-22/The Life Divine/p-706, "But this experience with X was really interesting. I learned many things that day, many things ... If you concentrate long enough on any one point, you discover the Infinite (and in his own experience he found the infinite), what could be called your own Infinite. But this is not what WE want, not this; what we want is the direct and integral contact between the manifested universe and the Infinite out of which this universe has emerged. So then it is no longer an individual or personal contact with the Infinite, it’s a total contact. And Sri Aurobindo insists on this, he says that it’s absolutely impossible to have the transformation (not the contact, but the supramental transformation) without becoming universalized – that is the first condition. You cannot become supramental before being universal. And to be universal means to accept everything, be everything, become everything – really to accept everything. And as for all those who are shut up in a system, even if it belongs to the highest regions of thought, it is not THAT." The Mother's Agenda/20.09.1960, "He must accept everything, but cling to nothing, be repelled by nothing however imperfect or however subversive of fixed notions, but also allow nothing to lay hold on him to the detriment of the free working of the Truth-Spirit. This equality of the intelligence is an essential condition for rising to the higher supramental and spiritual knowledge." CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-718, 38: “I began my sadhana at birth, without knowing that I was doing it. I have continued it throughout my whole life, which means for almost eighty years (even though for perhaps the first three or four years of my life it was only something stirring about in unconsciousness). But I began a deliberate, conscious sadhana at about the age of twenty-two or twenty-three, upon prepared ground. I am now more than eighty years old: I have thought of nothing but That, I have wanted nothing but That, I had no other interest in life, and not for a single minute have I ever forgotten that it was THAT that I wanted. There were not periods of remembering and forgetting: it was continuous, unceasing, day and night, from the age of twenty-four – and I had this experience for the first time about a week ago! So, I say that people who are in a hurry, people who are impatient, are arrogant fools.” The Mother's Agenda/01.05.1958, "Since my earliest childhood, experiences have come like that: something massive takes hold of you and you don’t need to believe or disbelieve, know or not know—bam! There’s nothing to say; you are facing a fact... Once, during those last difficult years, Sri Aurobindo told me that this was precisely what gave me my advantage and why (how to put it?) there were greater possibilities that I would go right to the end ." The Mother's Agenda/01.05.1958, “When I was five years old...well I began with a consciousness. Of course I had no idea what it was. But my first experience was of the consciousness here (gesture above the head), which I felt like a Light and a Force; and I felt it there at the age of five. It was very pleasant sensation. I would sit in a little armchair made especially for me, all alone in my room, and I had a very pleasant feeling of something very strong, very luminous, and it was here (above the head) .... Then I would pull it down, for it was...it was truly my raison d’être.” The Mother’s Agenda, July 25, 1962, 39: The Mother’s Agenda-11/p-346, “And if you do not want your body to fail you, avoid wasting your energies in useless agitation. Whatever you do, do it in a quiet and composed poise. In peace and silence is the greatest strength.” The Mother’s Agenda-8/p-365, 40: "In one chapter of The Synthesis of Yoga, Sri Aurobindo says that there is a state of consciousness in which all is from all eternity –everything, without exception, that is to be manifested here… Q:- In detail? In a certain state of consciousness (I no longer remember what he calls it—I think it’s in the ‘Yoga of Self-Perfection’), one is perfectly identified with the Supreme, not in his static but in his dynamic aspect, the state of becoming. In this state, everything is already there from all eternity, even though here it gives us the impression of a becoming. And Sri Aurobindo says that if you are capable of maintaining this state, then you know everything: all that has been, all that is and all that will be –in an absolutely simultaneous way… But you must have a firm head on your shoulders! Reading some of these chapters in ‘Self-Perfection,’ I thought it would be better if it didn’t fall into just anyone’s hands…Anyway, in this state the feeling of uncertainty completely disappears (he explains it very well)." The Mother/The Mother’s Agenda/Vol.-2/p-170 “Admitted through a curtain of bright mind That hangs between our thoughts and absolute sight, He found the occult cave, the mystic door Near to the well of vision in the soul, And entered where the Wings of Glory brood In the silent space where all is for ever known.” Savitri-74 “There in a hidden chamber closed and mute Are kept the record graphs of the cosmic scribe, And there the tables of the sacred Law, There is the Book of Being’s index page; The text and glossary of the Vedic truth Are there; the rhythms and metres of the stars Significant of the movements of our fate: The symbol powers of number and of form, And the secret code of the history of the world And Nature’s correspondence with the soul Are written in the mystic heart of Life.” Savitri-74 “Out of the depths the world’s buried secret rose; He read the original ukase kept back In the locked archives of the spirit’s crypt, And saw the signature and fiery seal Of Wisdom on the dim Power’s hooded work Who builds in Ignorance the steps of Light.” Savitri-75-76, "Objects are his letters, forces are his words, Events are the crowded history of his life, And sea and land are the pages for his tale." Savitri-680 41: “When I said, “Why not an unconscious Avatar?” I was taking your statement (not mine) that Rama was unconscious and how could there be an unconscious Avatar. My own view is that Rama was not blind, not unconscious of his Avatarhood, only uncommunicative about it. But I said that even taking your statement to be correct, the objection was not insuperable. I instanced the case of Chaitanya and the others, because there the facts are hardly disputable. Chaitanya for the first part of his life was simply Nimai Pandit and had no consciousness of being anything else. Then he had his conversion and became the bhakta, Chaitanya . This bhakta at times seemed to be possessed by the presence of Krishna, knew himself to be Krishna, spoke, moved and appeared with the light of the Godhead — none around him could think of or see him as anything else when he was in this glorified and transfigured condition. But from that he fell back to the ordinary consciousness of the bhakta and, as I have read in his biography, refused then to consider himself as anything more. These, I think, are the facts. Well then, what do they signify? Was he only Nimai Pandit at first? It is quite conceivable that he was so and the descent of the Godhead into him only took place after his conversion and spiritual change. But also afterwards when he was in his normal bhakta-consciousness, was he then no longer the Avatar? An intermittent Avatarhood? Krishna coming down for an afternoon call into Chaitanya and then going up again till the time came for the next visit? I find it difficult to believe in this phenomenon. The rational explanation is that in the phenomenon of Avatarhood there is a Consciousness behind, at first veiled or sometimes perhaps only half-veiled, which is that of the Godhead and a frontal consciousness, human or apparently human or at any rate with all the appearance of terrestriality, which is the instrumental Personality. In that case, it is possible that the secret Consciousness was all along there, but waited to manifest until after the conversion; and it manifested intermittently because the main work of Chaitanya was to establish the type of a spiritual and psychic bhakti and love in the emotional vital part of man, preparing the vital in us in that way to turn towards the Divine — at any rate, to fix that possibility in the earth-nature. It was not that there had not been the emotional type of bhakti before; but the completeness of it, the e´lan, the vital’s rapture in it had never manifested as it manifested in Chaitanya. But for that work it would never have done if he had always been in the Krishna consciousness; he would have been the Lord to whom all gave bhakti, but not the supreme example of the divine ecstatic bhakta. At the same time the occasional manifestation showed who he was and at the same time evidenced the mystic law of the Immanence.” CWSA-28/Letters on Yoga-I/p- 496-497, 42: CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-249 43: "This Yoga (Integral Yoga) too is not a Yoga of knowledge alone — knowledge is one of its means, but its base being self-offering, surrender, bhakti, it is based on the heart and nothing can be eventually done without this base. There are plenty of people here who do or have done Japa and base themselves on bhakti, very few comparatively who have done the “head” meditation; love and bhakti and works are usually the base — how many can proceed by knowledge? Only the few." CWSA-29/Letters on Yoga-II/p-226-227, 44: CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-66-67, 45: Feb-1951/Mother’s Agenda-Vol-1/P: 27, 46: CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-187, 47: "Whatever may have happened to Chaitanya or Ramalingam , whatever physical transformation they may have gone through is quite irrelevant to the aim of the supramentalisation of the body. Their new body was either a non-physical or subtle physical body not adapted for life on the earth. If it were not so, they would not have disappeared. The object of supramentalisation is a body fitted to embody and express the physical consciousness on earth so long as one remains in the physical life. It is a step in the spiritual evolution on the earth, not a step in the passage towards a supraphysical world. The supramentalisation is the most difficult part of the change arrived at by the supramental Yoga, and all depends on whether a sufficient change can be achieved in the consciousness at present to make such a step possible, but the nature of the step is different from that aimed at by other Yogas. There is not therefore much utility in these discussions — one has first of all to supramentalise sufficiently the mind and vital and physical consciousness generally — afterwards one can think of supramentalisation of the body. The psychic and spiritual transformation must come first, only afterwards would it be practical or useful to discuss the supramentalisation of the whole being down to the body." CWSA-29/Letters on Yoga-II/p-408 Download this WEB PAGE as a PDF file: “The past has been the history of a slow and difficult subconscious working with effects on the surface, it has been an unconscious evolution; the present is a middle stage, an uncertain spiral in which the human intelligence is used by the secret evolutionary Force of being and participates in its action without being fully taken into confidence, — it is an evolution slowly becoming conscious of itself; the future must be a more and more conscious evolution of the spiritual being until it is fully delivered into a self-aware action by the emergent gnostic principle.” Sri Aurobindo CWSA-22/The Life Divine/p-736

Sri K. Anurakta & The Evolution of Sri Matriniketan Ashram Sri K. Anurakta is recognised as one of the flame-buoyant and foremost potential Sadhakas of integral Yoga. He has realised some rare Spiritual height to become a part of The Mother’s most difficult Subconscient transformation action and his difficult task was to climb one known peak of Consciousness to another unknown peak and as a result his capacity to bear world’s suffering and blow increased proportionately. He served the next purpose of elevating the general Consciousness of the race by pouring the Mother’s Love and Grace on the bereaved Souls and awakened in them the spark of living Psychic Fire and the Divine Bliss. Devotees gathered around him to dump all their earthly problems and Karma and he bore and relieved most of their sufferings, miseries and sorrows by identifying them with the Divine and yet remained established in a state of absolute calm, complete surrender and highest plane of Turiya for several years. In Savitri, this highest state beyond Supramental is described as ‘the brooding bliss of the Infinite’’ or ‘The bliss that made the world in his body lived.’ The change of his physical appearance of luminous body, jyotirmaya deha, Divine beauty, divya saundarya, and capacity of eternal Love, prema samarthya, confirms that he was firm in the Yoga of cellular transformation. He was at once an Ashramite in Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry, who had the responsibilities of increasing persistent zeal to become one and possess the Divine Mother and the Lord, utsaha, a Sadhaka, while exploring new vistas of ascending peaks of Consciousness felt the need of much more still to be done, bhuri kartvam and increasing his capacity to bear the earth’s burden through static Divine union, titikshya, a consecrated Child of resolving human problems in large scale through dynamic Divine union, sarvabhutahiteratah, and an integral Yogi of becoming a transparent channel of Divine’s vast ascent and descent, divya aroha and avaroha. OM TAT SAT

Saturday Study Circle 31 January 2026 Sri Matriniketan Ashram 00:00 / 29:32 24 January 2026 Sri Matriniketan Ashram 00:00 / 30:01 17 January 2026 Sri Matriniketan Ashram 00:00 / 37:15 10 January 2026 Sri Matriniketan Ashram 00:00 / 29:01 3 January 2026 Sri Matriniketan Ashram 00:00 / 30:39 27 December 2025 Sri Matriniketan Ashram 00:00 / 29:01 20 December 2025 Sri Matriniketan Ashram 00:00 / 30:57 13 December 2025 Sri Matriniketan Ashram 00:00 / 32:40 6 December 2025 Sri Matriniketan Ashram 00:00 / 33:17 29 November 2025 Sri Matriniketan Ashram 00:00 / 31:27 22 November 2025 Sri Matriniketan Ashram 00:00 / 32:28 15 November 2025 Sri Matriniketan Ashram 00:00 / 34:37 8 November 2025 Sri Matriniketan Ashram 00:00 / 24:11 1 November 2025 Sri Matriniketan Ashram 00:00 / 31:26 25 October 2025 Sri Matriniketan Ashram 00:00 / 30:52 18 October 2025 Sri Matriniketan Ashram 00:00 / 31:48 11 October 2025 Sri Matriniketan Ashram 00:00 / 39:44 4 October 2025 Sri Matriniketan Ashram 00:00 / 28:20 “Sri Aurobindo was very, very conscious of this general confusion, and so he didn’t much like … he wanted absolutely no propaganda, but he also didn’t much like attempts to “explain things” to people and make them “understand,” because he very well knew how useless it is. He very, very often said it to me: no propaganda whatsoever, of course, and above all, above all, no attempt to make people understand: the maximum effect one can obtain is the effect of the Consciousness at work in the world (universal gesture), because in everyone it produces the utmost the person can do – the utmost of what he can understand, he understands through the influence of the pressure of the Consciousness . As soon as words intervene, the whole mind makes a mess of it.” The Mother The Mother’s Agenda/Vol-10/p-60, “I don’t believe in advertisement except for books etc., and in propaganda except for politics and patent medicines. But for serious work it is a poison. It means either a stunt or a boom—and stunts and booms exhaust the thing they carry on their crest and leave it lifeless and broken high and dry on shores of nowhere or it means a movement. A movement in the case of work like mine means the founding of a school or a sect or some damned nonsense. It means that hundreds and thousands of useless people join in and corrupt the work or reduce it to pompous farce from which the Truth that was coming down recedes into secrecy and silence. It is what has happened to the ‘religions’ and the reason of their failure.” Sri Aurobindo 02.10.1934, SABCL/26/p-375 (The above message hints that instead of propagating Their Teachings, those who put their concentration into living Their Teachings are instruments of Truth. Then that Influence will automatically spread over the earth. That is what we understand as self-expansion, which is an outcome of self-concentration.) " What is the true method for studying Sri Aurobindo’s works? (The Mother's reply) The true method is to read a little at a time, with concentration, keeping the mind as silent as possible, without actively trying to understand, but turned upwards, in silence, and aspiring for the light. Understanding will come little by little....And later, in one or two years, you will read the same thing again and then you will know that the first contact had been vague and incomplete, and that true understanding comes later, after having tried to put it into practice. " The Mother The Mother's Centenary Works/Vol-12/On Education/p-204 " We sat together in silence for a few minutes, enjoying the company of our soul, and we witnessed the gates of Eternity opening wide before us.... It is in silence that the soul best expresses itself.... It is in the silence of complete identification with the Divine that true understanding is obtained... With words one can at times understand, but only in silence one knows ..... Silence: the condition of the being when it listens to the Divine. " The Mother The Mother's Centenary Works/Vol-14/Words of the Mother-II/p-143 “Not inexplicable certainly; it was the condition of silence of the mind to which he (Sri Aurobindo) had come by his meditation for 3 days with Lele in Baroda and which he kept for many months and indeed always thereafter, all activity proceeding on the surface; but at that time there was no activity on the surface. Lele told him to make namaskar to the audience and wait and speech would come to him from some other source than the mind. So in fact, the speech came, and ever since all speech, writing, thought and outward activity have so come to him from the same source above the brain-mind.” Sri Aurobindo CWSA-36//Autobiographical Notes/p-111

Inconscient Education “A complete and radical change can only be brought about by bringing in persistently the spiritual light and intimate experience of the spiritual truth, power, bliss into the recalcitrant elements until they too recognise that their own way of fulfilment lies there, that they are themselves a diminished power of the spirit and can recover by this new way of being their own truth and integral nature. This illumination is constantly opposed by the Forces of the lower nature and still more by the adverse Forces that live and reign by the world’s imperfections and have laid down their formidable foundation on the black rock of the Inconscience.” Sri Aurobindo CWSA-22/The Life Divine/p-970 "From the negative point of view – I mean the difficulties to be overcome – one of the most serious obstacles is that the ignorant and falsifying outer consciousness, the ordinary consciousness legitimizes all the so-called physical laws, causes, effects and consequences, all that science has discovered physically and materially (laws of the body, for example, its needs, its health, its nourishment, all those things – they have such a solid, compact, established and concrete reality that it appears absolutely unquestionable.). All this is an unquestionable reality to the consciousness, a reality that remains independent and absolute even in the face of the eternal divine Reality...Well, to be able to cure that, which of all the obstacles is the greatest (I mean the habit of putting spiritual life on one side and material life on the other, of acknowledging the right of material laws to exist), one must make a resolution never to legitimize any of these movements, at any cost. " The Mother The Mother's Agenda/01.05.1958 Integral Inconscient Education: “Something that wished but knew not how to be, Teased the Inconscient to wake Ignorance.” Savitri-2 “The godheads from the dim Inconscient born” Savitri-10 “The poised inconscience shaken with a touch, The intuitive Silence trembling with a name, They cried to Life to invade the senseless mould And in the brute forms awake divinity.” Savitri-129 “An inconscient Power groped towards consciousness,” Savitri-137 “Ferment of the soul’s creation out of mire. A heavenly process donned this grey disguise, A fallen ignorance in its covert night Laboured to achieve its dumb unseemly work, A camouflage of the Inconscient’s need To release the glory of God in Nature’s mud.” Savitri-138 “Behind all moved seeking for vessels to hold A first raw vintage of the grapes of God, On earth’s mud a spilth of the supernal Bliss, Intoxicating the stupefied soul and mind A heady wine of rapture dark and crude, Dim, uncast yet into spiritual form, Obscure inhabitant of the world’s blind core, An unborn godhead’s will, a mute Desire.” Savitri-146 “All was dim sparkle on a foaming top: It whirled around a drifting shadow-self On an inconscient flood of Force in Time.” Savitri-147 “At the outset of this enigmatic world Which seems at once an enormous brute machine And a slow unmasking of the spirit in things, In this revolving chamber without walls In which God sits impassive everywhere As if unknown to himself and by us unseen In a miracle of inconscient secrecy, Yet is all here his action and his will.” Savitri-154 “Then in a fatal and stupendous hour Something that sprang from the stark Inconscient’s sleep Unwillingly begotten by the mute Void, Lifted its ominous head against the stars; Overshadowing earth with its huge body of Doom It chilled the heavens with the menace of a face.” Savitri-222-23 “Or stifled in the Inconscient’s hollow dusk, He sounded the mystery dark and bottomless Of the enormous and unmeaning deeps Whence struggling life in a dead universe rose.” Savitri-231 “Then in Illusion’s occult factory And in the Inconscient’s magic printing house Torn were the formats of the primal Night And shattered the stereotypes of Ignorance.” Savitri-231 “To teach the Ignorance is her difficult charge, Her thought starts from an original nescient Void And what she teaches she herself must learn Arousing knowledge from its sleepy lair.” Savitri-243-44 “This was the imbroglio made by sovereign Mind Looking from a gleam-ridge into the Night In her first tamperings with Inconscience: Its alien dusk baffles her luminous eyes; Her rapid hands must learn a cautious zeal; Only a slow advance the earth can bear.” Savitri-244 “On its unstable and enormous breast Beings and forces, forms, ideas like waves Jostled for figure and supremacy, And rose and sank and rose again in Time; And at the bottom of the sleepless stir, A Nothingness parent of the struggling worlds, A huge creator Death, a mystic Void, For ever sustaining the irrational cry, For ever excluding the supernal Word, Motionless, refusing question and response, Reposed beneath the voices and the march The dim Inconscient’s dumb incertitude.” Savitri-287 “This darkness hides our nobler destiny.” Savitri-330 “Heaven’s flaming lights descend and back return, The luminous Eye approaches and retires; Eternity speaks, none understands its word; Fate is unwilling and the Abyss denies; The Inconscient’s mindless waters block all done.” Savitri-371 “Where Ignorance is, there suffering too must come; Thy grief is a cry of darkness to the Light; Pain was the first-born of the Inconscience Which was thy body’s dumb original base; Already slept there pain’s subconscient shape:” Savitri-443 “By pain and joy, the bright and tenebrous twins, The inanimate world perceived its sentient soul, Else had the Inconscient never suffered change. Pain is the hammer of the Gods to break A dead resistance in the mortal’s heart, His slow inertia as of living stone.” Savitri-443 “At first appeared a dim half-neutral tide Of being emerging out of infinite Nought: A consciousness looked at the inconscient Vast And pleasure and pain stirred in the insensible Void. All was the deed of a blind World-Energy:” Savitri-477 “A conscious soul in the Inconscient’s world, Hidden behind our thoughts and hopes and dreams, An indifferent Master signing Nature’s acts Leaves the vicegerent mind a seeming king.” Savitri-478 “A nameless god in an unapproachable fane, In the secret adytum of his inmost soul He guards the being’s covered mysteries Beneath the threshold, behind shadowy gates Or shut in vast cellars of inconscient sleep. The immaculate Divine All-Wonderful Casts into the argent purity of his soul His splendour and his greatness and the light Of self-creation in Time’s infinity As into a sublimely mirroring glass.” Savitri-479 “All then becomes subconscient, tenebrous, Inconscience puts its seal on Nature’s page Or else a mad disorder whirls the brain Posting along a ravaged nature’s roads, A chaos of disordered impulses In which no light can come, no joy, no peace.” Savitri-491 “But when its feet had touched the quivering bloom, A mighty movement rocked the inner space As if a world were shaken and found its soul: Out of the Inconscient’s soulless and mindless night” Savitri-528 “Breaking the black Inconscient’s blind mute wall, Effacing the circles of the Ignorance, Powers and divinities burst flaming forth; Each part of the being trembling with delight Lay overwhelmed with tides of happiness And saw her hand in every circumstance And felt her touch in every limb and cell.” Savitri-529 “In the deep place where once the Serpent slept, There came a grip on Matter’s giant powers For large utilities in life’s little space; A firm ground was made for Heaven’s descending might.” Savitri-530 “Casting aside its veil of Ignorance, Allied to gods and cosmic beings and powers It built the harmony of its human state; Surrendered into the great World-Mother’s hands Only she obeyed her sole supreme behest In the enigma of the Inconscient’s world.” Savitri-530 “Enigma of the Inconscient’s sculptural sleep Symbols of the approach to darkness old And monuments of her titanic reign, Opening to depths like dumb appalling jaws That wait a traveller down a haunted path Attracted to a mystery that slays (the Soul), They watched across her road, cruel and still; Sentinels they stood of dumb Necessity, Mute heads of vigilant and sullen gloom, Carved muzzle of a dim enormous world.” Savitri-580 “Mine (Savitri’s) is the labour of the battling gods: Imposing on the slow reluctant years The flaming will that reigns beyond the stars, They lay the law of Mind on Matter’s works And win the soul’s wish from earth’s inconscient Force.” Savitri-588 “In that tremendous darkness heavy and bare She atoned for all since the first act whence sprang The error of the consciousness of Time, The rending of the Inconscient’s seal of sleep,” Savitri-599 “The Inconscient is the Superconscient’s sleep.” Savitri-600 “The inconscient world is the spirit’s self-made room, Eternal Night shadow of eternal Day.” Savitri-601 “A golden fire came in and burned Night’s heart; Her dusky mindlessness began to dream; The Inconscient conscious grew, Night felt and thought.” Savitri-601 “His (Supramental) consciousness dived into inconscient depths,” Savitri-621 “In dim mist-waters of inconscient sleep,” Savitri-632 “In finite things the conscious Infinite dwells: Involved it (Inconscient Self) sleeps in Matter’s helpless trance, It (Inconscient Self) rules the world from its sleeping senseless Void;” Savitri-658 “Almost it seemed as if in his symbol shape The world’s darkness had consented to Heaven-light And God needed no more the Inconscient’s screen.” Savitri-664 “Because he (Supermind) is there the Inconscient does its work,” Savitri-681 “Let not the inconscient gulf swallow man’s race That through earth’s ignorance struggles towards thy Light.” Savitri-687 “The Immanent shall be the witness God Watching on his many-petalled lotus-throne His actionless being and his silent might Ruling earth-nature by eternity’s law, A thinker waking the Inconscient’s world, An immobile centre of many infinitudes In his thousand-pillared temple by Time’s sea.” Savitri-706 Inconscient transformation becomes possible through the conscious intervention of the Incarnating Dual Power, who open God’s secret Supramental door to the most stubborn and recalcitrant darkest nether domain of existence. After the Inconscient Self opens by the pressure of the Supramental Force above the head, the Divine Force works from below the feet. Inconscient Education begins either when the old Inconscient foundation⁷ is made conscious by inflow of Superconscient Light and awareness from above to annex it to the Spirit’s height or after the recovery of the Inconscient Self which has the power to rend the Night of Ignorance or the dark Inconscient sheath is entrenched between two rivers of light flowing from the Superconscient Self above and Inconscient Self below. The aim of integral Inconscient Education is to unfold the truth of integral Knowledge which is concealed here in the original Inconscience and brought out of it by an emerging Consciousness which rises from gradation to gradation of its hierarchies of evolutionary development until it can manifest the integral Reality and a total Self-Knowledge. A certain line of materialistic enquiry considers the Inconscient sheath as the origin and creator of this existence. It has to be accepted that an Inconscient force and an Inconscient substance are the starting point of the evolution but it is recognised that the conscious Spirit is emerging in this difficult phase of nether evolution. This apparent Inconscience of the material universe carries in itself darkly and hazily all the powers and potentialities of the eternally self-revealed luminous Superconscient and to reveal it in Time is the slow and deliberate delight of Nature and the aim of her cycle. All three lower powers of mind, life and body build upon the Inconscient sheath and seem to originate and be supported by it. The black dragon of the Inconscience sustains with its vast wings and in its black darkness, the whole structure of the material universe rests. Its energies unroll the flux of things, its obscure murmur and intimations seem to be the starting point of consciousness and the source of all impulses of physical mind and vital mind. When the Inconscient is penetrated by higher and higher powers of Self and Consciousness, its obstruction to evolution and its circle of restrictions are slowly broken and the limitations of our material substances are diminished and transcended and a greater law of divine Consciousness possesses the mind, life and body for the transformation action. The Mother confirms ‘that a fundamental change of character demands an almost complete mastery over the subconscient and a very rigorous disciplining of whatever comes up from the inconscient, which, in ordinary natures, expresses itself as the effects of atavism and of the environment in which one was born. Only an almost abnormal growth of consciousness and the constant help of Grace can achieve this Herculean task. That is why this task has rarely been attempted and many famous teachers have declared it to be unrealisable and chimerical. Yet it is not unrealisable. The transformation of character has in fact been realised by means of a clear-sighted discipline and a perseverance so obstinate that nothing, not even the most persistent failures, can discourage it.’¹ This Book-9, Canto-1 of Savitri book is concentrated on Savitri’s entry into the Inconscient world. This world is the home of Death and only dead people can visit that unhealthy world of negation and darkness. King Aswapati travelled this world without dying and suffered multiple injuries that were slow to heal. In this Canto, the movement of Consciousness between the Supramental and Inconscient planes is observed which appears to be a long movement before Consciousness is preoccupied with Subconscient transformation (which is the message of Book-10, Canto-1 to 4). This Canto suggests that those who are established in Supramental Consciousness can alone visit the Inconscient world in deep trance and through that exercise alone Inconscient world can be illumined and transformed. Sri Aurobindo’s accident in 1938 was an attack of dark asuric force (Lord of Falsehood) while he was pursuing transformation action in the Subconscient/Inconscient Sheath. This Canto also suggests that a Sadhaka must be established in Supramental Consciousness before meeting his own death or death of kith and kin or brother Souls. Extreme adversity must be met ‘like a tree recovering from a wind.’ (Savitri-574) Savitri had the following experiences after Satyavan’s death: “She measured not her loss with helpless thoughts,” Savitri-571 “Then suddenly there came on her the change Which in tremendous moments of our lives Can overtake sometimes the human soul And hold it up towards its luminous source.” Savitri-571 “Over was the haunted pain, the rending fear: Her grief had passed away, her mind was still, Her heart beat quietly with a sovereign force. There came a freedom from the heart-strings’ clutch, Now all her acts sprang from a godhead’s calm.” Savitri-573 We find in the following passage how death can abruptly end the charm of life and it visits in our life as the last gift. “Death stays the journeying discoverer, Life. Thus is the throne of the Inconscient safe While the tardy coilings of the aeons pass” Savitri-18 “Our very being seems to us questionable, Our life a vague experiment, the soul A flickering light in a strange ignorant world, The earth a brute mechanic accident, A net of death in which by chance we live.” Savitri-49-50 “Fate waiting on the unseen steps of men And her evil and sorrow and last gift of death .” Savitri-204 “A rolling surge of silent death, it came Curving round the far edge of the quaking globe; Effacing heaven with its enormous stride It willed to expunge the choked and anguished air And end the fable of the joy of life. ” Savitri-534, “Although Death walks beside us on Life’s road, A dim bystander at the body’s start And a last judgment on man’s futile works, Other is the riddle of its ambiguous face: Death is a stair, a door, a stumbling stride The soul must take to cross from birth to birth, A grey defeat pregnant with victory, A whip to lash us towards our deathless state.” Savitri-600-601 This Book-9 Canto-1, suggests that after arriving in Supramental Consciousness, the transformation work pursued in the Subconscient and inconscient world may not be easy and may continue through many births. “That mightier spirit turned its mastering gaze On life and things, inheritor of a work Left to it unfinished from her halting past, (This line suggests that Subconscient and Inconscient transformation is a continuation of Savitri’s past birth extending over future births till she returns to earth as last Avatara .) When yet the mind, a passionate learner, toiled And ill-shaped instruments were crudely moved.” Savitri-573 (This line suggests mind’s infant state in transformation action.) This Canto suggests that in order to change destiny and conquer Death, one must have knowledge of past, present and future lives. This knowledge of triple time is possible by opening of the Psychic, Spiritual and Supramental being. “Only the spirit sees and all is known.” Savitri-571 “Now to the limitless gaze disclosed that sees” Savitri-572 “And live in borders of the seen and known.” Savitri-579 (One can foresee and know much before the happening of the event.) Its complementary line: “For what the spirit sees, creates a truth And what the soul imagines is made a world.” Savitri-456 “I know all past and all present and future existences, O Arjuna, but Me none yet knows.” The Gita-7.26 ‘Many are My lives that are past, and thine also, O Arjuna ; all of them I know, but thou knowest not…’ The Gita-4.5 This change of destiny is further strengthened by the following experience, as hinted in Savitri: “Only the spirit (of Savitri) knew the spirit (of Satyavan) still, And the heart divined the old loved heart, though changed.” Savitri-576 “All was the violent ocean of a will Where lived captive to an immense caress, Possessed in a supreme identity, Her aim, joy, origin, Satyavan alone.” Savitri-579 “Around him nameless, infinite she surged, Her spirit fulfilled in his spirit, rich with all Time, As if Love’s deathless moment had been found, A pearl within eternity’s white shell.” Savitri-579 The mystery of the Inconscient world is that it is a kingdom of titans who can slay the living Soul. They are cruel, sentinels of dumb necessity, and they watch across Savitri’s path mercilessly. In this midnight’s dumb abysses Savitri rose like a ‘columned shaft of fire and light,’² ‘against fixed destiny and the grooves of’² Iron Law. This Canto-I of Book-IX proposes that before confronting death, one’s Psychic being, Spiritual being, Cosmic Self and Supramental Being must be open. If these beings are open then one will remain firm, peaceful, equal in Soul and Nature during the extreme adversity. A path will be open in subtle world for resolving the imminent problems. Supramental force gives the passport to enter Dark Inconscient world without dying and changes its laws and slays the dark entities in their own Inconscient home. This is the root solution of the problem of existence. Savitri had gone through six phases of her sadhana . They are: (1) Sunlit path, (2) golden path, (3) Journey in the abysmal night of the Inconscient plane, (4) Journey in the Subconscient plane of dream twilight, (5) Permanent rise of consciousness to Sachchidananda plane of Everlasting Day, (6) Permanent descent of Sachchidananda consciousness through Return to Earth. This Canto-II of Book-IX represents the third phase of her Sadhana in the Inconscient plane. The purpose of entry into this dark world is to bridge the gulf between her relation with Satyavan (‘But now a silent gulf between them came’¹⁰ ) through large-scale invasion of Divine Love. Now this action of Divine Love is still remote from the Inconscient plane or ‘Even from herself cast out, from love remote.’¹¹ Due to this gulf, ‘Her eyes had lost their luminous Satyavan’¹¹ or ‘The soul of the beloved now seen no more.’¹² After the gulf is bridged, she experienced: ‘Her husband, grew into a luminous shade.’¹² ‘I will bear with him the ancient Mother’s load I will follow with him earth’s path that leads to God.’¹³ ‘For I (Savitri) who have trod with him (Satyavan) the tracts of Time,’¹³ ‘Wherever thou leadst his (Satyavan’s) soul I shall pursue.’¹³ The importance of Book-9, Canto-II is the movement of Consciousness through which the gulf between the Supramental plane and the Inconscient plane is bridged. If this gulf is not bridged then Satyavan cannot be traced or discovered in the Inconscient home of Death and by this loss of contact Satyavan cannot return to earth. In other Cantos, we have marked how, through the movement of Psychic, Spiritual, and Supramental Consciousness, different planes of Consciousness or ten worlds are bridged. They are: The gulf between Savitri and Satyavan in the Inconscient plane: “But now a silent gulf between them came” Savitri-584 “Visionless she moved amid insensible gulfs,” Savitri-584 The gulf between Savitri and Satyavan in the Subconscient plane: “In vain thou (Death) hast dug the dark unbridgeable gulf,” Savitri-648, A similar gulf King Aswapati felt in between the Supramental Self and the Bliss Self: “This world of bliss he saw and felt its call, But found no way to enter into its joy; Across the conscious gulf there was no bridge.” Savitri-128, Linking the gulf between the Spiritual and Mental planes: “A mediating ray had touched the earth (mediating ray is the Spiritual energy) Bridging the gulf between man’s mind and God’s; Its brightness linked our transience to the Unknown.” Savitri-353 The Psychic being can bridge the gulf between Spirit and Matter: “But soon the link of soul with form grew sure” Savitri-355 “Unlocked were inner spirit’s trance-closed doors:” Savitri-369 The Spirit travelling backward in Time in order to illumine dark untransformed world in universalised Consciousness: "Her witness spirit stood reviewing Time" Savitri-11 “A gap was rent in the all-concealing vault (of King Aswapati); The conscious ends of being went rolling back: The landmarks of the little person fell, The island ego joined its continent.” Savitri-25, Bridging the gulf between Bliss self and Sense mind: “A consciousness of beauty and of bliss, A knowledge which became what it perceived, Replaced the separated sense and heart And drew all Nature into its embrace.” Savitri-28 Bridging the gulf between Absolute, Alone, Real and his Fate in universalised Consciousness: “A union of the Real with the unique, A gaze of the Alone from every face, The presence of the Eternal in the hours Widening the mortal mind’s half-look on things, Bridging the gap between man's force and Fate Made whole the fragment-being we are here.” Savitri-35, The gulf between Psychic being and Spiritual Being is bridged: “In moments when the inner lamps are lit And the life’s cherished guests are left outside, (This line suggest life’s cherished guests stand as obstacles to Spiritual experience.) Our spirit sits alone and speaks to its gulfs. A wider consciousness opens then its doors; Invading from spiritual silences” Savitri-47-48, Our surface casual life is harmonized by bridging the gulf between surface action and inner life: “But who shall pierce into the cryptic gulf And learn what deep necessity of the soul Determined casual deed and consequence?” Savitri-52, Supramental action and removal all gulfs in different planes: “Because eternal eyes turned on earth's gulfs” Savitri-101 “She hopes by the creative act’s release To o’erleap sometimes the gulf she cannot fill, To heal awhile the wound of severance, Escape from the moment’s prison of littleness And meet the Eternal’s wide sublimities In the uncertain time-field portioned here.” Savitri-177 “Its (Supermind) mights that bridge the gulf twixt man and God, Its (Supermind) lights that combat Ignorance and Death.” Savitri-261, “There was no cleavage between soul and soul, There was no barrier between world and God.” Savitri-319 “There (in the Supramental) was no gulf between the thought and fact,” Savitri-327 “And made her joy a bridge twixt earth and heaven,” Savitri-534, “To make thy life a bridge twixt earth and heaven;” Savitri-536, (Death asked) “What bridge can cross the gulf that she (Truth supreme) has left Between her (Truth supreme) and the dream-world she (Truth supreme) has made?” Savitri-663, “The two (Heaven and Earth) longing to join, yet walk apart, Idly divided by their vain conceits; … They gaze across the silent gulfs of sleep.” Savitri-684 Bridging the gulf between Supramental/bliss Sheath and Inconscient/Subconscient Sheath (‘His consciousness dived into inconscient depths,’ Savitri-621) is the most difficult exercise of integral Yoga and hence from this point of view Book-9 and Book-10 are very important and the Mother had chosen Book-10 for translation into the French language in order to better understand and pursue Her Subconscient transformation. Inconscient Sheath is ‘an all-negating immensity’³ or ‘immense refusal of the eternal No.’⁴ In the core of it lies the Inconscient Self (‘Matter still slept empty of its Lord’ (Savitri-405)) which is the Divine’s last and the greatest Spiritual energy by whose intervention ‘a grand solution’⁵ will be witnessed in the cosmic life. So, after the discovery of the Psychic, Spiritual and Supramental Self, a Sadhaka’s task is to trace the Subconscient and Inconscient Selves, by whose discovery, Supramental energy will flow into mind, life, and body from below the feet. The simultaneous flow of Supramental energy from above the head and below the feet or ‘Our life is entrenched between two rivers of light’⁶ is the apex Spiritual experience for transformation action.⁹ The Divine Love⁸ labours in the depths as Inconscient Self and exults on the height as the Supramental/Bliss Self and this Divine Love has the capacity to rebuild Death’s perishable world. OM TAT SAT References: 1: TMCW-12/On Education/p-19, 2: Savitri-581, 3: Savitri-585, 4: Savitri-583, 5: Savitri-90, 6: Savitri-531, "A swimmer lost between two leaping seas." Savitri-700, 7: “So a whole slice of my life came back, but it didn’t stop there! It keeps extending back further and further, and memories keep on coming, things that go back sixty years now, even beyond, seventy, seventy-five years – they are all coming back. And so it all has to be put in order.” The Mother’s Agenda/November 5/1960, “The physical mind (or tamasic mind, an Inconscient negative energy) is the mind of the physical personality formed by the body. It grows with the body, but it isn't the mind of Matter: it is the mind of the physical being. For instance, it is the mind that makes one's character: the bodily, physical character, which is in large part formed by atavism and education. What is called "physical mind" is all that. Yes, it's the result of atavism, of education and of the formation of the body; that's what makes the physical character. For example, some people are patient, some are strong and so on – physically, I mean, not for vital or mental reasons, but purely physically everyone has a character. That's the physical mind. And it is part of any integral yoga: you discipline this physical mind. I have done it for more than sixty years.” The Mother’s Agenda/August-31/1965, 8: “Other traditions speak of the Consciousness, the divine Consciousness, instead of Love. One even finds accounts full of imagery depicting a Being of prismatic light lying in deep sleep in the cave of the Inconscient; and this Descent awakens him to an activity which is still (how to put it?) inner, an immobile activity, an activity by radiation. Countless rays issue from his body and spread throughout the Inconscient, and little by little they awaken in each thing, in each atom, as it were, the aspiration to Consciousness and the beginning of evolution.” July-28/1961/Mother’s Agenda/Vol-2/P-277-283, 9: “A transformation of human nature can only be achieved when the substance of the being is so steeped in the spiritual principle that all its movements are a spontaneous dynamism and a harmonised process of the spirit. But even when the higher powers and their intensities enter into the substance of the Inconscience , they are met by this blind opposing Necessity and are subjected to this circumscribing and diminishing law of the nescient substance. It opposes them with its strong titles of an established and inexorable Law, meets always the claim of life with the law of death, the demand of Light with the need of a relief of shadow and a background of darkness, the sovereignty and freedom and dynamism of the spirit with its own force of adjustment by limitation, demarcation by incapacity, foundation of energy on the repose of an original Inertia. There is an occult truth behind its negations which only the Supermind with its reconciliation of contraries in the original Reality can take up and so discover the pragmatic solution of the enigma. Only the supramental Force can entirely overcome this difficulty of the fundamental Nescience; for with it enters an opposite and luminous imperative Necessity which underlies all things and is the original and final self-determining truth-force of the self- existent Infinite. This greater luminous spiritual Necessity and its sovereign imperative alone can displace or entirely penetrate, transform into itself and so replace the blind Ananke of the Inconscience.” CWSA-22/The Life Divine/p-997, “The whole concentration of the being will be shifted from below upwards and from without inwards; our higher and inner being now unknown to us will become ourselves, and the outer or surface being which we now take for ourselves will be only an open front or an annexe through which the true being meets the universe. The outer world itself will become inward to the spiritual awareness, a part of itself, intimately embraced in a knowledge and feeling of unity and identity, penetrated by an intuitive regard of the mind, responded to by the direct contact of consciousness with consciousness, taken into an achieved integrality. The old inconscient foundation itself will be made conscious in us by the inflow of light and awareness from above and its depths annexed to the heights of the spirit. An integral consciousness will become the basis of an entire harmonisation of life through the total transformation, unification, integration of the being and the nature .” CWSA-22/The Life Divine/p-753, “If there is to be an entire transformation, it can only be by the full emergence of the law of the spirit; its power of supermind or gnosis must have entered into Matter and it must evolve in Matter. It must change the mental into the supramental being, make the inconscient in us conscious, spiritualise our material substance, erect its law of gnostic consciousness in our whole evolutionary being and nature. This must be the culminating emergence or, at least, that stage in the emergence which first decisively changes the nature of the evolution by transforming its action of Ignorance and its basis of Inconscience.” CWSA-22/The Life Divine/p-733-734, 10: Savitri-583 11: Savitri-584, 12: Savitri-585, 13: Savitri-590, Download this WEB PAGE in PDF format: "At the very bottom of the inconscience most hard and rigid and narrow and stifling, I struck upon an almighty spring that cast me up forthwith into a formless, limitless Vast, generator of all creation. " "The spring? It means exactly this: in the deepest depths of the Inconscient is the supreme spring that makes us touch the Supreme. It is like the Supreme making us touch the Supreme: that is the almighty spring. When you arrive at the very bottom of the Inconscient, you touch the Supreme ." The Mother The Mother's Agenda/8.11.1958,11.11.1958

Study of The Bhagavad Gita The Editor’s Note “I may say that the way of the Gita is itself a part of the Yoga here and those who have followed it, to begin with or as a first stage, have a stronger basis than others for this Yoga . To look down on it therefore as something separate and inferior is not a right standpoint… I suggested the Gita method for you because the opening which is necessary for the Yoga here seems to be too difficult for you. If you made a less strenuous demand upon yourself, there might be a greater chance.” Sri Aurobindo CWSA-29/Letters on Yoga-II/p-445-446 The Gita informs us that only Avatars are born-free and they are free from the influence of lower Nature and ordinary action from their very birth, janma karma cha me divyam .³ All others, ordinary human beings, twice-born Souls, Instruments and Emanations are not free from the influence of the lower Nature of the three Gunas .³ Through Yoga or practice of Self-control, or by opening themselves to the Influence of Avatars , they arrive at constant union with the Divine, mayi vartate,⁵ mayi nivasisyasi,⁸ nitya yukta .⁴⁸ The Lord of the Gita hints about His past incarnations before the beginning of creation or as hinted in Savitri, He was ‘older than the birth of Time’⁹ and during this period He gave the imperishable, highest, royal synthetic Yoga to Sun God, Vivasvan. Vivasvan gave it to Manu , the father of men or as hinted in Savitri, ‘first man’¹⁰ of creation. Manu gave it to Ikshvaku , the head of the Solar line and the first King of the solar race. Thus, it came down from royal Sage to royal Sage till it was lost in the great lapse of Time. This same, ancient and original reconciling Yogic path was declared again to Arjuna by Lord Sri Krishna in the war field of Kurukshetra . Now this truth of ‘the largest development in the shortest possible path’¹⁶ or the highest secret of Purushottama Consciousness, its dynamic state, Para-prakriti, and a supreme relation between dual Godhead, Paramatma and Para-prakriti is again revealed⁵ to Sri Aurobindo in the book ‘Essays on the Gita’ and subsequently in the book ‘The Synthesis of Yoga .’ Essays on the Gita gives the message of rending²⁷ the veil between mind and preliminary stairs of Supermind by the long movement of Cosmic Consciousness through realisation of this existence as the body of the Divine, Vasudevah sarvamit i¹¹ and to live in the world with the sense of oneness with all existence, ekatvamasthitah, ⁵ oneness in every separate being, ekatvena prithaktvena ,²⁶ and without separation from the transcendent Divine, mayi nivasisyasi. ⁸ Thus, a Spiritual man pauses at the border of Overmind or preliminary Supramental Consciousness; he has three qualities of oneness, harmony and order that predominate his frontal surface Nature. This was Sri Aurobindo’s state of Consciousness at Alipore Jail and the beginning of His decisive Spiritual life. Ordering of creation through largescale destruction²⁵ of all that are Soul slaying truth, nasana atmanah ,¹⁷ transitory, anityam ,¹⁸ unproductive, klaibyam ,¹⁹ unrighteousness, adharmam, ²⁰ corrupt, produsyanti, ²¹ evil, anistam ,²² unjust, asatyam ,²³ divisible, vibhaktam ,²⁴ and narrow, khudram ,¹⁹ is identified as extension of Supramental action.¹² Thus, existence moves ahead towards the manifestation of new Consciousness and the Divine is a hierarchy of affirmative energies by whose activation mankind can move towards a superior existence and Divine life. On this occasion, the Lord has manifested here as the Time, the Destroyer for creation, ceaseless action and preservation of His existence. The Spiritual significance of the Gita is immense as its Divine is both manifest, saguna and unmanifest, nirguna , and beyond both, THAT, Tat, thus leading the creation towards the complete Divine union. The Gita is a synthesis of six mutually antagonist schools of ancient teachings that of Mimamsa, Vedanta, Vaisesika, Nyaya, Sankhya and Yoga. Mimamsa is specialised and narrow form of Yoga in which Vedic sacrifice offered with desire, ritualised work and knowledge of gods are accepted as means of salvation. It also accepts fruits of enjoyment and lordship in earth, heaven and the world in between them. In the Vedanta , the above approach is accepted as a preliminary state of ignorance and they are in the end either transcended or renounced as an obstacle to the seeker of liberation; the Vedic worship of gods are accepted by Vedantists as material and mental powers, who do not desire man to be free and oppose the principles of liberation; thus, the Vedanta perceived Divine as Immutable Self, Paramatma , who has to be attained not by sacrificial work and adoration but by knowledge. Vaisesika, gives importance to the Vedantic liberation in addition to the exploration of nature of the nine eternal substances that of air, fire, water, earth, mind, ether, time, space and soul, of which the first five including mind are recognised as atomic. Nyaya , the Science of logic, is an extension of the Vaisesika, in which the multiple subtle worlds beyond the material world are identified, which are the source and creator of the material principles. Sankhya accepts the Divine as inactive and immutable Purusha and makes an opposition between the static state of Purusha , akarta and the dynamic state of Prakriti, kartri, and hence Sankya liberation culminates with the cessation of all works. This Sankhya doctrine created the world by double principles of (many) Purusha and (single) Prakriti , which is a valid and indispensable practical knowledge in the lower hemisphere but ‘not all the true truth… and the highest truth’³⁰ of existence. Yoga accepts the notion of the Divine as Ishwara , who is the Lord of Shakti and active Prakriti ; hence, its liberation is not the cessation of work and freedom of Soul is realised even though involved in all works. Thus, liberation of the Soul is compatible with ceaseless world action; sarvabhuta- hite ratah , ‘is not inconsistent with living in Brahman ’¹⁴ and it is through desireless sacrificial action, the Kshara Purusha in the heart (which is all existence, sarva bhutani ) is united with Akshara Purusha above the head (which sees Divine everywhere, mam pasyati sarvatra ). The world admires the Gita ‘as one of the greatest scriptures, especially for its treatment of the problem of the place of works in spiritual endeavour’²⁹ and it introduces ‘a new and satisfying spiritual norm of works’⁴⁷ or the best standard of Karma Yoga ‘laid down for all time’²⁹ for the whole of humanity of doing all works from a glad, unattached, free and liberated Soul state with the knowledge of Wheel of Works. The method of ‘Yoga has been admitted for the self-surrender of the will, mind, heart, all the psychological being to the Ishwara , the divine Lord of the nature. It has been completed by the revelation of the supernal Master of existence as the original Godhead of whom the Jiva is the partial being in Nature.’⁴⁴ The limitation of Yoga is exceeded in integral Yoga ‘by the soul’s seeing of all things as the Lord in the light of a perfect spiritual oneness.’⁴⁴ The Vedanta and Sankhya give the message of absolute calm, seclusion and cessation of work as indispensable to attain Knowledge and state of Samadhi. They suffer the disadvantage that universalisation of their teachings of saintly inactivity will lead towards world dissolution and destructions, upahanyam .¹ A physical abstention of work is identified as a dangerous proposition, ‘for it exerts a misleading influence on ordinary men.’⁴ The Gita does not synthesise the teaching of the Hatha and Raja Yoga like the synthetic teachings of the more powerful Tantra , but a passing reference is made to their systemised method and concentration on physical, vital and mental perfection. Buddhism and Illusionist Mayavada are the later developments of Religious Schools in which the former rejected the World, the Self and the Divine as illusions and accepted a Divine discipline of action and devotion in the form of universal love and fathomless compassion and the latter developed intolerance towards action, accepted Divine as Real by the exclusion of the illusory world. The Mahayanist Buddhism is largely influenced by the message of the Gita and transformed its original school of quietistic and illuminated ascetic trend into a ‘religion of meditative devotion and compassionate action.’⁶ It bridged the gulf between a high Nirvanic state of absolute impersonality and dynamic possibilities of life and action. The later school of the Vaishnava Bhakti movement is an exclusive absorption in some Divine Personality and Divine value of His manifestation to the exclusion of Divine Impersonality. These ancient and later Vedantic Teachings either lead to the impersonal form of Brahman, nirguna Brahman or the personal form of Deity, saguna Brahman or to the liberation in actionless knowledge of deep Samadhi or the liberation absorbed in highest Delight of Turiya. The Gita claims its teachings superior to all other forms of ancient Yoga by raising the Consciousness to a plane called an all-inclusive Purushottama state where the limitation, rigidity and partial truth of all other exclusive Yogic paths are corrected, broadened and united; all the powers of Being are directed Godward, reconciled Divine Knowledge, Action and Ecstasy, and widened by complete self-absorption in the Eternal and perfect Divine union by identity. The Gita has attempted to preserve the balance of the six ancient doctrines, and maintains the essential foundation of original synthesis but the form, combinations and terminologies have changed and restated in the light of the developed new Spiritual experiences. Thus, through firm subtlety and high courage, it opens the gate of unexplored planes and powers of Nature and Soul in universalised Consciousness and knowledge of the Eternal Source from whom one comes and by whom he lives. It has the high role of liberating humanity. In a Spiritualised World, the sense-enjoyment is changed into Soul-enjoyment. This is extended in integral Yoga in transforming humanity, prakritijairmuktam,³ where the Soul’s ecstatic oneness with the Divine extended towards the race is complemented by Subliminal, Psychic, Spiritual and Supramental sense enjoyments leading the creation towards permanent descent and the full possession of Sachchidananda Consciousness. The difference between ancient Shastras and the integral Shastra is that truth, vision and Spiritual experiences hinted³¹ in the former are vividly experienced in the latter. The integral Yoga gives this message that the supreme mystery hinted in the Gita, the Upanishad and the Veda but never developed is its one of the principal motives to uncover which is the quest for double immortality of Soul and Nature and quadruple perfection of Soul, Nature, Life and Consciousness that will come in stages and as hinted by the Mother , which ‘will stretch over thousands of years.’² A traditional Sadhaka , after realisation of Kshara, Akshara and Purushottama consciousness feels that this realisation cannot be reconciled⁷ with the untransformed nature of the three Gunas . So, he has no unfinished task left and hence enjoys the Spirit’s ecstatic state, concentrates on the issue of freedom from rebirth and escapes into the supreme abode of param dham through the passage of Purushottama state. Or he will prefer to live in the Supramental Centre above the head and utilises this Centre as a passage of escape into the final destination of Param Dham . In integral Yoga, after realisation of Kshara, Akshara and Purushottama consciousness or after realisation of Psychic, Spiritual and Supramental Being, a Sadhaka’s difficult task begins of reconciling static Matter with dynamic Spirit and thus Divine Shakti consciously pours into the material vessel. He will not settle back to enjoy the delight and fruit of his Spiritual achievement rather he identifies himself with world problems and world suffering through the activation of the universal Self. His Psychic, Spiritual and Supramental purification, transformation and perfection resume action from a firmly established Psychic heart centre and from firmly established Karma Yoga where Divine Will, Knowledge and Love are perfectly reconciled. He will initially learn the lesson to move the consciousness ceaselessly between Psychic and Spiritual Being superseding his earlier movement limiting to three modes of Nature, gunas, and finally learns the lesson to move the Consciousness between Bliss Self and Inconscient Self.²⁸ He will call down the Supreme Mother and Supreme Purusha into his Psychic heart centre and utilises this centre as meeting point of dual Godhead and activation of the corresponding Supramental energy. The double sincerity, dvibidha nistha, ¹⁵ with which the Gita proposes to begin Yoga of Works and Knowledge simultaneously is transformed in integral Yoga into multiple sincerity or integral sincerity where Yoga proceeds ahead with the triple wheel of Karma, Jnana and Bhakti Yoga and culminates with the aid and movement of the fourth wheel, known as Yoga of Self-perfection. Sri Aurobindo’s writings suggest that those whose intellect is Spiritualized, or who have practiced the Buddhi Yoga (Sankhya) of the Gita , (Buddhi Yoga proposes to live in an active trance, samadhi, where mind is pacified, equality is established and one lives without desire.) can directly benefit from the Supramental energy now active in the earth’s atmosphere or through purified intellect ' some of the nearest keys to the supramental action are discoverable ' (CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-813) or " a series of mental representations which may be made clues to the true truth and, more and more refined and illuminated and rendered transparent by the influence, the infiltration and the descent of the light from above, prepare the intelligence for opening to the capacity of true knowledge. " (CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-887-888) “All that [ideas such as “everything will soon be spiritualised”] is absurd. The descent of the supramental means only that the Power will be there in the earth consciousness as a living force just as the thinking mental and the higher mental are already there. But an animal cannot take advantage of the presence of the thinking mental Power or an undeveloped man of the presence of the higher mental Power — so too everybody will not be able to take advantage of the presence of the supramental Power. I have also often enough said that it will be at first for the few, not for the whole earth, — only there will be a growing influence of it on the earth life.” CWSA-28/Letters on Yoga/p-290, "Eventually their (purified intelligence and will, buddhya visuddhaya, The Gita-18.51) response can be opened up to the perfect discernings, intuitions, inspirations, revelations of the supermind and proceed by a more and more luminous and even infallible action. " (CWSA/24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-655) Furthermore, The Mother has emphasized: “A new consciousness is at work upon earth to prepare the coming of the superhuman being… Open yourselves to this consciousness if you aspire to serve the Divine Work…To come into contact with this new consciousness, the essential condition is no longer to have any desires and to be wholly sincere.” (The Mother’s Agenda- 9th April 1969) This book The Bhagavad Gita and Integral Yoga is a preparation to glimpse a far greater Light, a means to begin the eternal unfolding of the Truth and an offering of love, service and gratitude to the Divine by desiring nothing from Him and His creation in return, anapekhyah .¹³ OM TAT SAT References of the above Editor's Note are available in the manuscript of 'The Bhagavad Gita and Integral Yoga' (page 14) . 1 /Introduction Summary or A Brief Restatement: The first verse of the Gita is: Dhritarashtra said : On the field of Kurukshetra (symbol of outer war), the field of the working out of the Dharma (symbol of inner war), gathered together, eager for battle, what did they, O Sanjaya , my people and the Pandavas ? ଧୃତରାଷ୍ଟ୍ର କହିଲେ: “ହେ ସଞ୍ଜୟ ଯୁଧ୍ୟ କରିବା ପାଇଁ ବ୍ୟାକୁଳ ଭାବରେ ସମବେତ ହୋଇଥିବା ମୋ ପୁତ୍ର ଏବଂ ପାଣ୍ଡୁ ପୁତ୍ରମାନେ ଅନ୍ତର ଯୁଧ୍ୟର ପ୍ରତୀକ ଧର୍ମକ୍ଷେତ୍ର ଓ ବାହ୍ୟ ଯୁଧ୍ୟର ପ୍ରତୀକ କୁରୁକ୍ଷେତ୍ରରେ କଣ କରୁଛନ୍ତି?” Supporting Material to Pursue Integral Yoga: (1) Integral Yoga proposes to utilize nine-tenths of time to wage inner war extending over nine inner planes, and one-tenths of time is devoted to pursuing outer war to manifest truth and wisdom in the material world. (King Aswapati’s experience) “Assaults of Hell endured and Titan strokes And bore the fierce inner wounds that are slow to heal.” Savitri-230 “Or must fire always test the great of soul?” Savitri-423 “A million wounds gape in his (Avatar’s) secret heart.” Savitri-446, 2: “Are there not still million fights to wage?” Savitri-687, “A line from Savitri constantly haunts or assails me—it is when the Lord proposes that she come live a blissful life above, and she replies, “No, there are still too many battles to wage on earth.” That went deep into me, and it returns each time difficulties arise, as if to say, “Don’t complain.” And there are plenty!...” The Mother /The Mother’s Agenda-3/85, 17th February, 1962, 3: Integral Yoga is the synthesis of all the wide and supple methods of All Nature pursued by (1) the exclusive Spirituality of later Vedantic ascetics, the exclusive worshipper of the Being, the Brahman , the Ishwara ; (2) the synthetic Spirituality of Tantrics, the exclusive worshipper of the Energy, the Consciousness, the Divine Mother, the Ishwari and (3) the comprehensive Spirituality of the ancient Vedantic Seers who work out passive and active relation between the Purusha and Prakriti in Ignorance, Ishwara and Shakti relation in Spiritual plane, Jnana , and Brahman and Maya relation in Supramental plane, Vijnana , resulting in Ananda . 4: “The Avatar comes to (1) reveal the divine nature in man above this lower nature and (2) to show what are the divine works, free, unegoistic, disinterested, impersonal, universal, full of the divine light, the divine power and the divine love. He comes as the divine personality which shall fill the consciousness of the human being and replace the limited egoistic personality, so that it shall be liberated out of ego into infinity and universality, out of birth into immortality. He comes as the divine power and love which calls men to itself, so that they may take refuge in that and no longer in the insufficiency of their human wills and the strife of their human fear, wrath and passion, and liberated from all this unquiet and suffering may live in the calm and bliss of the Divine.” CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-175-176 OM TAT SAT 2 / The Message of The Gita Summary or A Brief Restatement: The Self-disciplines of sattwic renunciation, tyaga, of sattwic faith, sraddha, of sattwic sincerity, Nistha, and of sattwic surrender, Yajna , are not the main methods of the Gita but its main method is self-control by ‘the strong immobility of an immortal spirit’ or ‘having fixed the mind, life and body in the higher Spiritual Self one should not think anything at all.’ The former sattwic methods are accepted as substitute self-disciplines of integral Yoga, pursued till the Spiritual method evolves. So, spontaneous renunciation, faith, sincerity and surrender born out of Psychic (Kshara Purusha ) and Spiritual (Akshara Purusha ) opening are identified as the method or self-disciplines of integral Yoga and through the evolution of this higher method, the consciousness is moved consciously between Psychic and Spiritual planes. In integral Yoga and the Gita , the substitute method of movement of consciousness between three gunas will be initially replaced by intermittent movements of consciousness between gunas and gunatita state and finally be replaced by movement consciousness between Psychic (Kshara) and Spiritual (Akshara) planes. And after a long period of this movement, the Consciousness will ascend to the Supramental plane (Purushottama ) and then there is the conscious movement of consciousness between the Psychic, Spiritual and Supramental planes. Through this prolonged movement, the Psychic being is Spiritualised and Supramentalised or the Spiritual Mother and Supramental Mother consent to live permanently in the Psychic heart centre. OM TAT SAT 3 / The Eighteen Questions Raised by Arjuna , A Seeker Of Truth A Brief Restatement: The original question raised by Arjuna throughout the Gita is identified as the experience of Divine perfection ‘vividly to works and life.’ Those who want to Divinise life and action can draw enormous benefits from the teachings of the Gita . 1: “Arjuna said: How, O Madhusudana shall I strike Bhisma and Drona with weapons in battle, both being worthy of worship, O slayer of enemies?” The Gita-2.4 2: “Arjuna said: It is the poorness of Spirit that has smitten away from me my true heroic higher Nature, my whole consciousness is bewildered by three gunas and cannot discern truth and falsehood, right and wrong. I ask Thee how can I discern truth, right and good? —That tell me decisively. I am thy disciple and seek refuge in Thee; enlighten me.” The Gita-2.7 3: “Arjuna said: How can I be liberated from sorrow that dries up the senses, even if I attain the riches and unrivalled kingdom on earth and even all the sovereignty of the kingdom of Gods?” The Gita-2.8 4: “Arjuna said: What is the sign of the man in Samadhi, man of stable intelligence, Sthitaprajna ? How does, O Keshava , the sage of settled understanding speak, how sit, how walk?” The Gita-2.54 5: “Arjuna said: If thou holdest the intelligence to be greater than works, O Janardana , why then dost thou, O Keshava , appoint me to this terrible work? Thou bewilderest my intelligence with a mixed and tangled speech; tell me decisively the one thing by which I may attain to the supreme good.” The Gita-3.1, 2 6: “Arjuna said: But what is this in us that drive a man to sin, as if by force, even against his own struggling will?” The Gita-3.36 7: “Arjuna said: Recent is Thy birth, far ancient was the birth of Sun God, how then I am to comprehend that Thou declaredst it to him in the beginning of creation?” The Gita-4.4 8: “Arjuna said: Thou Declarest to me the renunciation of works (Sankhya/Jnana Yoga ), O Krishna; and again, thou declare to me (Karma) Yoga; which one of these is a better way, that tell me with clear decisiveness.” The Gita-5.1 9: “Arjuna said: This Yoga which has been declared by Thee of the nature of equality, O Madhusudana, I see no stable foundation for it owing to restlessness. Restless indeed is the mind, O Krishna; it is vehement, strong and difficult to bend; I deem it as hard to control as the wind.” The Gita-6.33, 34 10: “Arjuna said: He who takes up Yoga with faith, but cannot control himself with the mind wandering away from Yoga, failing to attain perfection in Yoga, what is his end, O Krishna ? Does he not, O Mighty-armed, lose both this life and the Brahmic consciousness to which he aspires and falling from both perish like a dissolving cloud? Please dispel the doubt of mine completely, O Krishna ; for there is none other than Thyself who can destroy this doubt.” The Gita-6.37, 38, 39 11: “Seven Questions raised by Arjuna : (1) What is tad brahma , (2) what is adhyatma and (3) what is karma , O Purushottama? (4) What is declared to be adhibhuta , (5) what is called adhidaiva? (6) What is adhiyajna in this body? O Madhusudana ? (7) And how in the critical moment of departure from physical existence, art Thou to be known by the self-controlled?” The Gita-8.1, 2 12: “Arjuna said: Thou shouldest tell me of Thy Divine Self-manifestations, all without exception, Thy Vibhutis by which Thou standest pervading these worlds. How shall I know Thee, O Yogin , by thinking of Thee everywhere at all moments and in what pre-eminent becomings should I think of Thee, O Blessed Lord? In detail tell me of Thy Yoga and Vibhuti O Janardana ; tell me ever more of it; it is nectar of immortality to me, and however much of it I hear, I am not satiated.” The Gita-10.16, 17, 18 13: “Arjuna said: This word concerning the highest spiritual secret of existence which Thou hast spoken out of compassion for me; by this my delusion is dispelled. The birth and passing away of existences have been heard by me in detail from Thee, O Lotus-eyed, and also Thy imperishable greatness. As Thou hast declared Thyself to be, O Supreme Lord even so it is, (still) I desire to see Thy Divine form and body of Purushottama. If Thou thinkest that it can be seen by me, O Lord, show me then, O Master of Yoga, Thy imperishable Self.” The Gita-11.1, 2, 3, 4 14: “Arjuna said: Those seekers of Bhakti Yajna who thus by a constant union seek after Thy personal Form and those seekers of Jnana Yajna who seek after Thy unmanifest Immutable impersonal Form, which of them are greater Yajna? ” The Gita-12.1 15: “Six Questions raised by Arjuna: (1) The Field, Kshetra, and (2) the Knower of the Field, Kshetrajna , (3) Knowledge, Jnana, and (4) the object of Knowledge, Jneya, (5) Nature, Prakriti and (6) Self, Purusha, these I would like to learn, O Keshava .” The Gita-13.1 16: “Arjuna said: By what signs is he marked, O Lord, who has risen above the three Gunas ? How he acts and behaves and how does he go beyond the three Gunas ?” The Gita-14.21 Or this question may be put in contemporary language as how can one break the golden chain of three gunas ? 17: “Arjuna said : Those who offer sacrifice full of faith (sraddha ) but abandoning the rule of the Shastra , what is that concentrated will of devotion, nistha, in them, O Krishna ? Is it Sattwa , Rajas or Tamas ?” The Gita-17.1 Or this question may be put in the following language, “Lord, You have insisted of rising above the three gunas, while yet one remains in the action of all type, sarva karmani , and You have not explained me sufficiently the diversities in which the gunas work, and unless I know that, it will be difficult for me to discern with sincerity and rise beyond them.” Or this question may be put in the language of The Synthesis of Yoga, ‘Lord, You have insisted to trace out ‘the full account’ of my imperfection before striving to attend perfection. How can I know those imperfections fully in terms of triple divisible consciousness of tamas, rajas and sattwa that have strongly possessed this mind, life and body?’ 18: “Arjuna said: I desire to know, O Mighty-armed, the essence of asceticism, Sannyasa and renunciation, Tyaga , O Hrishikesha, and their difference, O Keshinisudana .” The Gita-18.1 Or this question may be put in the following language, “How, while absorbed and continually forced outward by the engrossing call of its active nature, is it to get back to its real self and spiritual existence?” The above eighteen questions raised by Arjuna must be established in the mind of the truth Seekers, and this awareness will assist them to begin Yoga with a definite and firm objective. OM TAT SAT 4 / The Gita's Injunction Issued To Developing Souls A Brief Restatement: The Gita identifies the most ignorant developing Souls as mudha , perform all action without true order, avidhi-purbakam, without sacrifice, giving and askesis and they live in a divisible consciousness of three gunas. It identifies ignorant developing Souls as child Souls, bala , who perform all action without reconciling it with the knowledge of the higher worlds. It identifies developed Souls as ripened Souls, Punditah, who live in the indivisible Consciousness beyond the gunas and they do all action as sacrifice without attachment to fruits of work with right order, vidhi-purbakam , and from higher planes of consciousness. The Gita insists the inclusion of all works, sarva karmani, in the conception of Spiritual activity and does not intend to confine it to Vedic religious activities of sacrifice and ceremony only. Integral Yoga divides all work into two parts, work that is closer to the sacrificial fire, the Psychic being and the work that is farther from this sacrificial fire and proposes that ‘none ought necessarily to be excluded from the wide framework of the divine life.’ The Gita issues injunction on earth-bound Soul who acts by three gunas , that let Shastra or written truth be the authority to determine what ought to be done and what ought not to be done. One should work here as per the four-fold law declared in the Shastra. He who disregards the rules of Shastra acts under the impulsion of desire and ego neither attains perfection, nor happiness, nor highest Soul status. Those who practice violent austerities not ordained by Shastra with vanity, egoism, impelled by the force of desire, passions, tormenting the aggregates of the body where the Divine is stationed, know those insensible seekers as asuric in their resolves. The Souls that fail to get faith in this Dharma , O, Parantapa, not attaining to Me, return into the path of ordinary mortal living. OM TAT SAT 5 / The Gita's Injunction issued To The Developed Souls A Brief Restatement: The traditional Yoga of the Gita proposes that a developed Soul is free from seven deformations, vicaras , that of liking and disliking, iccha, dvesah , pleasure and pain, sukham, dukham , subjection to lower consciousness, chetana , place together truth and falsehood, sanghatah , tamasic and rajasic persistence, dhriti. Integral Yoga proposes51 that a developed Soul or adult Soul is free from seven deformations, vicaras that of (1) hatred, (2) disliking, (3) scorn, (4) repulsion, (5) clinging, (6) attachment and (7) preference. Mind is restless and very difficult to pacify. But O Arjuna, it can be controlled by constant practice and non-attachment.4 Without self-control, this Yoga is difficult to attain. Yoga is attainable by self-controlled seeker.5 “Sense hunger does not cease with the mental self-control, samyama , it ceases when the Supreme is seen. So even the mind of the wise man, yatatah, who labours for self-perfection is carried away by vehement insistences of senses. Having brought all the senses under control, samyama, he must sit firm in Yoga, wholly given up to Me; for whose senses are mastered, of him the intelligence is firmly established (in its proper seat), sthitaprajna . The enjoyments born of external touches of things are the causes of sorrow, the sage, the man of awakened understanding, buddhah , does not place his delight in these senses.” 6 “Abandoning without exception all the desires born of the desire-will and holding in control all the senses by the mind so that they shall not run to all sides, one should gradually withdraw into tranquillity by a buddhi controlled by steadiness, and having fixed the mind in the Self one should not think of anything at all.”7 “This Yoga must be continually practiced with a heart free from despondent sinking.”14 The Gita’s injunctions issued to the developed Souls are that “All the doors of senses must be closed, the mind must be shut in into the heart, the life-force taken up out of its diffused movement into the head, the intelligence must be concentrated on the single syllable OM and its conceptive thought must remember the supreme Godhead...”23 and this self-discipline is extended in integral Yoga for dynamic Divine union and transformation of Nature instead of escape into param dham by abandoning the body. OM TAT SAT 6 / The Gita's Teachings Of Karma Yoga A Brief Restatement: A traditional Karma Yogi is considered great if in him Kshara Purusha is dynamised and all initiation of works are activated from within. In a greater Karma Yogi, Kshara and Akshara are both simultaneously dynamised and his consciousness undulates between Kshara and Akshara or waking trance and non-waking trance and preoccupies himself in both objective manifesting action and subjective subtle and Superconscient action by a pressure and direction from within and above respectively. In the greatest Karma Yogi , Uttama Purusha is dynamised along with Kshara and Akshara Purusha . This Purushottama Consciousness is settled in the body where the Jiva holds together the triple Purusha. In this state of Consciousness intense waking trance is stabilised and one moves freely in his multiple subtle bodies without losing waking consciousness. In integral Yoga he will direct the Supramental energy dynamised due to his relatively stronger part of Divine Will towards relatively weaker parts of his untransformed emotional and intellectual Nature. Six signs of Divine Worker: A Divine Worker can be known from six signs. Those who want to serve the Divine must develop these six qualities: First sign of the Divine Worker: “The Divine is the lord of his works, he is only their channel through the instrumentality of his nature conscious of and subject to her Lord. By the flaming intensity and purity of this knowledge all his works are burned up as in a fire and his mind remains without any stain or disfiguring mark from them, calm, silent, unperturbed, white and clean and pure. To do all in this liberating knowledge, without the personal egoism of the doer, is the first sign of the divine worker. ” CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-179-181 Second sign of the Divine Worker: “The second sign is freedom from desire; for where there is not the personal egoism of the doer, desire becomes impossible; it is starved out, sinks for want of a support, dies of inanition. Outwardly the liberated man seems to undertake works of all kinds like other men, on a larger scale perhaps with a more powerful will and driving-force, for the might of the divine will works in his active nature; but from all his inceptions and under- takings the inferior concept and nether will of desire is entirely banished, sarve samarambhah kamasankalpavarjitah. (The Gita-4.19) He has abandoned all attachment to the fruits of his works, and where one does not work for the fruit, but solely as an impersonal instrument of the Master of works, desire can find no place, — not even the desire to serve successfully, for the fruit is the Lord’s and determined by him and not by the personal will and effort, or to serve with credit and to the Master’s satisfaction, for the real doer is the Lord himself and all glory belongs to a form of his Shakti missioned in the nature and not to the limited human personality. The human mind and soul of the liberated man does nothing, na kinchit karoti; (The Gita-4.20) even though through his nature he engages in action, it is the Nature, the executive Shakti , it is the conscious Goddess governed by the divine Inhabitant who does the work.” CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-179-181 Third sign of the Divine Worker: “For sin consists not at all in the outward deed, but in an impure reaction of the personal will, mind and heart which accompanies it or causes it; the impersonal, the spiritual is always pure, apapaviddham, (Isha Upanishad-8) and gives to all that it does its own inalienable purity. This spiritual impersonality is a third sign of the divine worker. All human souls, indeed, who have attained to a certain greatness and largeness are conscious of an impersonal Force or Love or Will and Knowledge working through them, but they are not free from egoistic reactions, sometimes violent enough, of their human personality. But this freedom the liberated soul has attained; for he has cast his personality into the impersonal, where it is no longer his, but is taken up by the divine Person, the Purushottama, who uses all finite qualities infinitely and freely and is bound by none. He has become a soul and ceased to be a sum of natural qualities; and such appearance of personality as remains for the operations of Nature, is something unbound, large, flexible, universal; it is a free mould for the Infinite, it is a living mask of the Purushottama.” CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-179-181 Fourth sign of the Divine Worker: “The result of this knowledge, this desirelessness and this impersonality is a perfect equality in the soul and the nature. Equality is the fourth sign of the divine worker. He has, says the Gita, passed beyond the dualities; he is dvandvatıta . (The Gita-4.22) We have seen that he regards with equal eyes, without any disturbance of feeling, failure and success, victory and defeat; but not only these, all dualities are in him surpassed and reconciled. The outward distinctions by which men determine their psychological attitude towards the happenings of the world, have for him only a subordinate and instrumental meaning. He does not ignore them, but he is above them. Good happening and evil happening, so all-important to the human soul subject to desire, are to the desireless divine soul equally welcome since by their mingled strand are worked out the developing forms of the eternal good.” CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-179-181 Fifth sign of the Divine Worker: “Again, the sign of the divine worker is that which is central to the divine consciousness itself, a perfect inner joy and peace which depends upon nothing in the world for its source or its continuance; it is innate, it is the very stuff of the soul’s consciousness, it is the very nature of divine being. The ordinary man depends upon outward things for his happiness; therefore he has desire; therefore he has anger and passion, pleasure and pain, joy and grief; therefore he measures all things in the balance of good fortune and evil fortune. None of these things can affect the divine soul; it is ever satisfied without any kind of dependence, nitya-trupto nirasrayah ; (The Gita-4.20) for its delight, its divine ease, its happiness, its glad light are eternal within, ingrained in itself, atma-ratih, antah sukhontararamas tathantarjyotir eva yah . (The Gita-5.24)” CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-184 Sixth sign of the Divine Worker: “He (a Sadhak) himself, safe in the immutable, unmodified soul, is beyond the grip of the three gunas, trigunatita ; he is neither sattwic, rajasic nor tamasic; he sees with a clear untroubled spirit the alternations of the natural modes and qualities in his action, their rhythmic play of light and happiness, activity and force, rest and inertia. This superiority of the calm soul observing its action but not involved in it, this trigunatitya , is also a high sign of the divine worker. By itself the idea might lead to a doctrine of the mechanical determinism of Nature and the perfect aloofness and irresponsibility of the soul; but the Gita effectively avoids this fault of an insufficient thought by its illumining supertheistic idea of the Purushottama . It makes it clear that it is not in the end Nature which mechanically determines its own action; it is the will of the Supreme which inspires her; he who has already slain the Dhritarashtrians , he of whom Arjuna is only the hu- man instrument, a universal Soul, a transcendent Godhead is the master of her labour. The reposing of works in the Impersonal is a means of getting rid of the personal egoism of the doer, but the end is to give up all our actions to that great Lord of all, sarva-loka-mahesvara. ” CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-186 OM TAT SAT 7/ The Gita's Teachings of Jnana Yoga A Brief Restatement: A traditional Jnana Yogi is considered great if in him Akshara Purusha or Spiritual Being is first dynamised through renunciation, tyaga, vairagya, effort, practice of Yoga, abhyasa, concentration, samyama and askesis, tapasya. In a greater Jnana Yogi, by the pressure of this Spiritual being or descent of Divine Force from above the head, Kshara Purusha or Psychic being in the heart is dynamised. His Yoga becomes easier as he actively participates in the world action through activation of Kshara Purusha. In the greatest Jnana Yogi, Uttama Purusha is dynamised along with Kshara and Akshara Purusha. This Purushottama Consciousness is settled in the body where the Jiva holds together the triple Purusha. In this state of Consciousness, intense waking trance is stabilised and one moves freely in his multiple subtle bodies without losing waking consciousness. In integral Yoga he will direct the Supramental energy dynamised due to his relatively stronger part of Divine Knowledge towards relatively weaker parts of his untransformed emotional and volitional Nature. OM TAT SAT 8/ The Gita's Teachings of Bhakti Yoga A Brief Restatement: A traditional Bhakti Yogi is considered great when he reconciles his devotion with sacrificial action and realises the Kshara Purusha or Psychic being in the heart. A Greater Bhakti Yogi reconciles his devotion of personal Godhead with the Impersonal Godhead of Jnana Yoga and realises Akshara Purusha or Spiritual Being in addition to the earlier realisation of Kshara Purusha. The greatest Bhakti Yogi realises Kshara and Akshara Purushas’ union with the Purushottama, who finally consents to live in the heart, which is also the dual meeting ground of Uttama Purusha and Para Prakriti. The realisation of this dual Godhead in the heart is the beginning of realisation of Bliss Self which is beyond the Supramental action on earth. An integral Bhakti Yogi will direct the Supramental energy dynamised due to his relatively stronger part of Divine Love, Beauty and Delight towards relatively weaker parts of his untransformed volitional and intellectual Nature. His consciousness will move between triple fire of Kshara, Akshara and Purushottama Consciousness and the heart will be the centre of these triple action. OM TAT SAT 9/ Reconciliation of Karma, Jnana and Bhakti Yoga A Brief Restatement: Of all the Yogins the greatest Yogi, yoginam api sarvesam…yogi paramo, as indicated in the Gita, is a state in which he lives, acts in perfect union with the Divine, mayi nivasisyasi, in all possible human condition, in all possible world action his Consciousness does not fall from the oneness and constant communion with the Divine. The largest formulation of this Spiritual change is a total liberation of Soul, mind, heart and action, a casting of them all into the sense of the cosmic Self and the Divine Reality. A certain change of Nature is experienced by this Spiritual illumination but this is not complete and integral transformation of Nature which establishes a secured and established new principles and permanent new order of being in the field of terrestrial Nature. A Sadhaka becomes consecrated Child when this constant union with the Divine is dynamised to become one with the Divine Mother. In this established state a traditional Yogi can pursue integral Yoga by inverting the gained Supreme Divine Consciousness earthward. An integral Yogi lives in the great totality of Truth of Universal Consciousness, a totality, which is capable of infinite enlargements as there is no end to the extension of Divine Will, Knowledge, Love and Delight, nastyanto vistarasya me, and there is still much of the height to be reached and a wideness to be covered by the eye of vision, bhuri aspasta kartvam . Through intensification of Psychic and Spiritual contacts, he becomes able to enter the Cosmic Self and subsequently the lower realms of Supermind and inverts this gained Divine State towards lower sheaths of individual and universal Mind, Vital and Physical sheaths and transforms them. The great Integral Yogi, due to his integral surrender of Soul and Nature and particularly consecration of the most of the dark domains of Inconscient and Subconscient sheaths, and integral Sraddha of pouring down of Divine Supramental attributes of Light, Love, Ananda, Force, Wisdom and Truth and direct them to the yet untouched realm of Subconscient and Inconscient sheaths and continue transformation action there. The greater Integral Yogi can put forth many states of Consciousness at a time and is able to trace the Supermind concealed in the Inconscient and Subconscient sheath and activates the Inconscient and Subconscient Self; as a result, the source of Supramental Force and Delight can burst open and spread from Inconscient and Subconscient Self towards the untransformed Inconscient, Subconscient, Physical, Vital and Mental sheaths for large and mighty transformation action. The greatest Integral Yogi is he, who is able to activate the Supermind concealed in all the sheaths, identified as ten koshas, builds, purifies, transforms and perfects them and there is penetration of Supramental force from all the multiple sources of ten Selves; first intermittently, then constantly becomes a normal issue. Thus ten-fold personality is superimposed and combined to enrich his single new personality and his strong central being holds all together and works towards harmonisation and integration of multiple Selves and Nature. OM TAT SAT 10/ The Gita's Four Exclusive Teachings A Brief Restatement: The capacity to retain the comprehensive Knowledge in fragments is identified as exclusive knowledge. But by the retention of exclusive as well as all-inclusive knowledge of the Divine one becomes aware of His exclusive and all-inclusive Ananda . The successive stages of exclusive concentration and final entry into all-inclusive Ananda and Knowledge are:- firstly, the constant practice and non-attachment are powerful tools in regulating and silencing the intellect, mind, heart and body; secondly , better than this Abhyasa and Vairagya are the Yoga of Intelligence, where intelligence is united with Akshara Purusha, Buddhi Yukto , in order to cast away the bondage of work and the successful and luminous turning of the thought to the Truth behind things; thirdly, this buddhi Yoga too is excelled by dhyana yoga , a silent complete concentration on the Truth behind things through cessation of mental action, resolutely practiced until the bliss of Akshara Purusha is attained; fourthly , more powerful than dhyana Yoga is the giving up of the fruit of one’s work; one becomes a Yogi and preserves automatically an inner peace and calm which is a perfect and secure foundation of true life and the higher consciousness gained during meditation is dynamised in waking state; fifthly , the great Yogi, living in the truth, renouncing all actions of the lower mind, must do all outward works of life only for My sake, madartham api karmani; sixthly , the greater Yogi, who is still unable to keep personal consciousness fixed steadily in the Akshara Purusha and Uttama Purusha ; there are nights of long exile from Light, there are moments of revolt, doubt and failure rising from Subconscient planes; then by constant practice of union and repetition of supreme consciousness, the highest Spirit is established in the lower nature; seventhly , the greatest Yogi, yoginam api sarvesam , is he who in perfect union lives in Me, mayi nivasisyasi , at every moment, in every action, with all integrality of nature, ‘for Me has love, ekabhaktih and faith;’ ‘repose all thy mind and all thy understanding in Me;’ he is lifted up, bathed in the supernal blaze of the Divine Love and Will and Knowledge. From this last experience the all-inclusive Knowledge and Ananda resume action. The four stairs of the Gita's exclusive Teachings are: 1) Apara Jnana or Separative egoistic Apara Prakriti and seven-fold Ignorance:- 2) Guhya Jnana of Atman or secret knowledge of Kshara Purusha and Para prakriti of fourfold Soul force :- 3) Guhyatara Jnana of Brahmanirvana or more secret knowledge of Akshara Purusha and the action of intermediate Divine Nature through fourfold Divine Shaktis :- 4) Guhyatama Jnana of Paramam Dhama or inmost secret knowledge of cessation of birth or Moksha : - 11/ The Central Truth Of The Gita A Brief Restatement: The central truth of the Gita and integral Yoga are identified as Yajna , sacrifice, consecration, through this self-discipline one will arrive at the Spiritual experience of union with the Divine, yuktah. A seeker of Truth can possess the circumference of the circle by finding its centre or by practice of central truth of integral Yoga one can arrive at the aim of this Yoga. Aim of integral Yoga is integral Perfection arrived at by complete union with the static and dynamic aspect of the Divine through practice of absolute surrender. Complete union of Soul with the Purushottama consciousness in its static and dynamic identity are the aim of integral Yoga. In the Gita this identity is utilised to escape into the supreme abode of Param Dham and in integral Yoga this identity is utilised for the transformation and perfection of Nature. 12/ The Gita's Extension In Integral Yoga A Brief Restatement: In the Gita transformation of lower Nature into Divine Nature, Parambhavam and action of the Divine Mother, Para Prakriti are hinted but never developed and it does not teach directly the lesson to invert the Divine Force towards the earth nature rather it ‘pauses at the borders of the highest spiritual mind and does not cross them into the splendours of the supramental Light’ and opens the door towards Cosmic Consciousness, Vasudevah sarvamiti and from this Consciousness one can leap into preliminary stairs of Supramental Consciousness where the World, the Self and the God are reconciled. The highest contribution of the Gita to the world in terms of Consciousness is its Cosmic Consciousness, the revelation of the vision of Universal Godhead. Since the Gita is a Shastra of Purusha Yajna , sacrifice of Soul, which hints little about Prakriti Yajna , sacrifice of Nature, so holding together the dual Avatara, Ishwara and Shakti in the heart may not be practicable for a Sadhaka of the Gita in the initial phase of his sadhana . So to transform nature may not be feasible as the Divine Consciousness may not be directed sufficiently towards the lower nature or the descending Divine Force may transform a part of nature and is oblivious of the entire transformation or the present nature may be hostile against the descending Mother force resulting in the suspension of growth for this life. So a Sadhaka of integral Yoga has to enter and develop both Purusha Yajna and Prakriti Yajna extensively of which former is developed and latter is hinted in the Gita and reconcile its two doctrine Mamaibansa Jivabhuta, Jiva has become the Ishwara , and Paraprakritir Jivabhuta, Jiva has become the Ishwari or the Jiva in the heart is the meeting place of Kshara Purusha and Apara Prakriti, Akshara Purusha and Para-Shakti and Purushottama and Supramental Maya. To hold the Ishwara in the heart by traditional Yoga and to hold the Shakti in the heart by the traditional Tantra are reconciled in integral Yoga by holding together the dual Avatara, the dual Godhead, the static and the dynamic aspect of the Divine. 13/ The Extensive Development Of The Gita's Highest Hinted Truth In Integral Yoga A Brief Restatement: The fixed fate or doom of an individual is the outcome of Karma; Karma is the outcome of sin; sin is the outcome of evil; evil is the outcome of wrong action; wrong action is the outcome of wrong will or activation of physical and vital mind; wrong will is the outcome of wrong consciousness; wrong consciousness is the outcome of falsehood; and falsehood is the outcome of Ignorance or part knowledge. So, all doom can be transformed into high Spiritual destiny by emergence of integral Knowledge... So, man first has to work in Ignorance and learn the lesson within its limitation. He has to know it up to its farthest point so that he may be able to arrive at the border of Ignorance and Knowledge, where he meets the Truth, touch the final lid of its obscuration and develop faculties which enable him to overstep the powerful but really unsubstantial barrier of Ignorance. An integral Knowledge is a knowledge of truth of all planes of existence both separately followed by relation of each to all and relation of all to the truth of Spirit. 14/ Five All-Inclusive Teachings Of The Integral Yoga A Brief Restatement: " The four exclusive Teachings of the Gita are related with ascension of static consciousness to supreme Soul whereas the five all-inclusive teachings of integral Yoga are related with the descent of Supreme Nature of dynamic consciousness to earth and men. But there are certain Supramental experiences in which ‘a consciously felt descent is not indispensable’3 and there is still unknown higher source of Supramental where ‘actual feeling of a descent is not there.’3 The similar experience is also observed in The Mother’s experience of ‘Divine Love’ on the night of 12-13th April, 1962. Since in the Gita, the particular experience of the descent of Divine consciousness to Apara prakriti is ‘nowhere entirely spoken,’45 so in our discussion, we can rest satisfied with that Supramental action without having an actual feeling of the descent. Here the concept will be that since the presence of Sachchidananda is everywhere, so ‘if the inner doors are flung sufficiently open, the light from the sanctuary can suffuse the nearest and farthest chambers of the outer being.’3 The highest secret, rahasyam uttamam, is the Supramental revealed as Purushottama, the integral Divine, who is Nameless, Formless, all-embracing and all-exceeding Sachchidananda, ‘A touch that needs not hands to feel, to clasp,’4 ‘Acts at a distance without hands or feet’5 and is capable of assuming all Name and Form. ‘His hands and feet are on every side...and we live in His universal embrace.’29 In Supramental all things find their secret truth and their perfect reconciliation and the sense of individual identity is lost in the sole ecstasy of the Divine Beloved... The five gradations of Supermind represent the action of same Supreme Nature of Purushottama Consciousness in varying intensity, while capturing all the (ten) worlds, sarvaloka. The literal meaning of Madbhava, Sva Prakriti, Sadharmyam and Param Bhava are same that of becoming the nature of the Supreme, Para Prakriti, but here in this essay they have been used for different gradations or hierarchies of Divine Nature. This Divine Nature is identified as the Gita’s ‘supreme mystery which it does not work out at all, but leaves to be lived out, as later ages of Indian spirituality tried to live it out in great waves of love, of surrender, of ecstasy.’17 ‘It must not however be supposed that these (five) superimposed stages are shut off in experience from each other. I have placed them in what might be a regular order of ascending development for the better possibility of understanding in an intellectual statement.’30 15/ The Hierarchies Of Divine Living A Brief Restatement: Ashram³⁷ is an ancient Indian terminology used for collective Divine living and if one individual at its centre is having direct contact with the Divine, then this collective living around this Soul Centre is identified as the Divine Centre. Ashram's living evolves through the slow and swift evolution of Consciousness; thus, a hierarchy of ascending Consciousness is built which completes its action through a hierarchy of descent of Divine Consciousness... The collaborators of The Mother’s work in Consciousness are Sadhakas, Children and Integral Yogis, who are an indispensable part of collective Divine Living called the Ashram, the Divine Centre, while Visitors, Devotees and Ashramites¹ are its dispensable organ; the former represents the indivisible Spiritual Consciousness of developed Soul and the latter stands for the divisible mental consciousness of developing Soul. Visitors, Devotees, Ashramites, Sadhakas, Children and Integral Yogis are the beginners, expanders, stabilisers, intensifiers, identifiers and integrators of Consciousness respectively. Here they do not represent an individual or a person but a symbol of a transitional formative state in the hierarchy of ascending Consciousness. Each formative Consciousness has some limitation that inhibits our growth and Spiritual possibility that augments our progress, to which we are most concerned now. 16/ The Perfection Foreseen In The Gita And Integral Yoga A Brief Restatement: The Bhagavad Gita is the root knowledge and the foundation on which the comprehensive vision of Sri Aurobindo’s Teachings or integral Yoga rests. A thorough knowledge on the highest developed truth and highest hinted truth of the Gita is to ‘distinguish its essential and living message’ (CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-11) which is also an indispensable necessity to penetrate into the vast wisdom of integral Yoga. The perfection foreseen in the Gita and the integral Yoga are here restricted to multiple siddhis so that we can concentrate, contemplate, meditate, verify and enlarge our existing vessel through direct Spiritual experience. The Gita confirms that if the ripened Souls, Punditah, (The Gita-5.4) rightly and integrally perform either of the Karma, Jnana and Bhakti Yoga, in higher planes of consciousness, then they will arrive at the perfection of all the three Yogas. Integral Yoga proposes that ‘a more difficult, complex, wholly powerful process would be to start’ (CWSA/24/The Synthesis of Yoga-615) the Yoga ‘on three lines together, on a triple wheel of soul-power’ (CWSA/24/The Synthesis of Yoga-615) and this preparation will pave the passage clear for pursuance of a fourth Yoga named as ‘Yoga of Self-Perfection.’ “Our (integral) Yoga is not identical with the Yoga of the Gita’s Yoga. In our Yoga we begin with the idea, the will, the aspiration of the complete surrender; but at the same time we have to reject the lower nature, deliver our consciousness from it, deliver the self involved in the lower nature by the self rising to freedom in the higher nature...” Sri Aurobindo SABCL-26/On Himself/p126-127, “You will find that the Gita speaks of this rejection of all mental thought as one of the methods of Yoga and even the method it seems to prefer. This may be called the dhyana of liberation, as it frees the mind from slavery to the mechanical process of thinking and allows it to think or not think as it pleases and when it pleases, or to choose its own thoughts or else to go beyond thought to the pure perception of Truth called in our philosophy Vijnana .” Sri Aurobindo CWSA-36/Autobiographical Notes/p-294 "For the sadhaka of the integral Yoga it is necessary to remember that... His Yoga may be governed for a long time by one Scripture or by several successively, — if it is in the line of the great Hindu tradition, by the Gita , for example, the Upanishads, the Veda. Or it may be a good part of his development to include in its material a richly varied experience of the truths of many Scriptures and make the future opulent with all that is best in the past... The Gita itself thus declares that the Yogin in his progress must pass beyond the written Truth, — sabdabrahmativartate — beyond all that he has heard and all that he has yet to hear, — srotavyasya srutasya ca." Sri Aurobindo CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-55 "Then as (1) we get beyond the limitation of the three gunas, so also do (2) we get beyond the division of the fourfold law and (3) beyond the limitation of all distinctive dharmas, sarvadharman parityajya. (The Gita-18.66) (1) The Spirit takes up the individual into the universal Swabhava, (2) perfects and unifies the fourfold soul of nature in us and (3) does its self-determined works according to the divine will and the accomplished power of the godhead in the creature." Sri Aurobindo CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-524

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