Integral Bhakti Yoga
 

The Injunction issued to the Seekers of integral Yoga of Devotion:

                                   

“Wherever love and light and largeness lack,

These crooked fashioners take up their task.” Savitri-153

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"Her eternal Lover is her action’s cause;... 

Her will is to shut God into her works 

And keep him as her cherished prisoner

That never they may part again in Time.” Savitri-181-182

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“Wrong could not come where all was light and love.” Savitri-314

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“In the kingdom of the lotus of the heart

Love chanting its pure hymeneal hymn

Made life and body mirrors of sacred joy

And all the emotions gave themselves to God.” Savitri-529

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“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 labours in the depths, exults on the heights;

He shall remake thy universe, O Death.” Savitri-592

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“One who came love and lover and beloved

Eternal, built himself a wondrous field

And wove the measures of a marvellous dance.” Savitri-613

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“Disguised the Lover seeks and draws our souls.

He named himself for me, grew Satyavan.

For we were man and woman from the first,

The twin souls born from one undying fire.” Savitri-614

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“When unity is won, when strife is lost

And all is known and all is clasped by Love

Who would turn back to ignorance and pain?” Savitri-633

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“If our souls could see and love and clasp God’s Truth,

Its infinite radiance would seize our hearts,

Our being in God’s image be remade

And earthly life become the life divine.” Savitri-663

 

            “Three are the words that sum up the first state of the Yoga of devotion, faith, worship, obedience.

Three are the words that sum up the second state of the Yoga of devotion, adoration, delight, self-giving.

Three are the words that sum up the supreme state of the Yoga of devotion, love, ecstasy, surrender.”⁵⁸

Sri Aurobindo

 

            The integral Bhakti Yoga is the extensive extension of the Gita’s teachings of traditional Bhakti Yoga. It points out that a developing Soul’s adoration of personal Divine will deform the catholicity of Spirituality into a narrow religion.³⁶ So, as a corrective measure, a developing Soul must give more importance to Divine’s impersonal Form³⁵ than the adoration of His personal manifestation. As the Soul develops and he becomes the adult Soul, then he can adore and enter contact with the Divine’s seven-fold personal relation, which is for him more important³⁷ than the relation with the Divine’s impersonal Form. Thus, the Spiritual value of integral Yoga is secured from entry into Religion’s clutch, which makes the evolution slow and tardy.

 

1)        All Life is Yoga of Nature through Love. ‘All life turned into this cult of love, all actions done in the love of the Divine and in the love of the world and its creatures seen and felt as the Divine manifested in many disguises become by that very fact part of an integral Yoga.’²⁷ The three stages through which all life is transformed are; firstly, the Integral Bhakti Yoga turns all transient worldly normal emotional relation of human life into the joy of the All-Loving, the All-Beautiful and the All-Blissful. Worship, prayer and meditation are used only for the preparation and increase of intensity of the divine relationship. Integral Bhakti 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. ‘It is for this reason that the worship of god, the worship of idol, the human magnet or ideal are not to be despised; for these are steps through which the human race moves towards that blissful passion and ecstasy of the Infinite which, even in limiting it, they yet represent for our imperfect vision when we have still to use the inferior steps Nature has hewn for our feet and admit the stages of our progress. Certain idolatries are even indispensable for development of our emotional being; the man who knows be hasty at any time to shatter the images unless he can replace it in the heart of the worshipper by the Reality it figures.’²⁸ Secondly, Integral Bhakti Yoga recommends development of seven fold Divine personalities during its contact and active personal relation with the Divine as All Friend and All Master of Integral Karma Yoga, All Guru of Integral Jnana Yoga, All Father or Paramatma or Prajapati Brahma of Integral Vedantic teaching, All Mother or Para-Shakti of Integral Tantric Yoga, All Playmate and All Lover of Integral Bhakti Yoga. Thirdly, All Love, Human and Divine, has Spiritual force veiled and revealed respectively. It is an adoration offered initially to a limited and ignorant object and form and culminates in an all-inclusive and all-embracing Integral Divine. Human love is defined as the entry into exclusive enjoyment by entire separation from World, Self and God. This love begins with the craving of the flesh and when it tries to become Divine through complete self-giving, it culminates with the realisation of one Soul in two bodies (Spiritual realisation) and rapturous fusing of two Souls into one body (Psychic realisation). The Divine love is defined as entry into the same exclusive enjoyment without separation from World, Self and God. It begins with the realisation where human love ends and culminates with the realisation of all Souls in one body and realisation of all bodies in one Soul. The former is realised through Vedic sacrifice of adoration and consecration of all as the becoming of the Divine and the latter is realised through Vedantic sacrifice of adoration and consecration of all as the Being of the Divine. In Supramental Consciousness, the object of all emotion would be fully satisfied by embracing all contact of human relations in a purified flame Force.  

 

2)        Bhaktya mamvijanati jaban jaschasmi tatwatah, (The Gita-18.55) by devotion, he comes to know Me, who and how much I am in all reality and principles of My being. Bhakti is that which regards, adores, loves the Divine alone in all things, by that Bhakti He can be known, seen, and ever entered into. The Gita further confirms that of all Yogin, he who with all his inner self given up to Me, for Me has love and faith, him I hold to be the most united with Me in Yoga. Integral Bhakti is considered as the greatest power of Integral Yoga, which is the crown of Integral Karma Yoga and the flowering of the Integral Jnana Yoga.

 

3)        The traditional Bhakti Yoga leads away from world-existence to an absorption in the Transcendent and Supra-cosmic. The path of Integral 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 playfield of the Lord, with our human life as its final stage, pursued through the different phases of self-concealment and self-revelation. This larger application of 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. As in the other Yogas, so in integral Yoga, one comes to see the 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.

 

4)        So, the method with which Bhakti Yoga can begin is simple and straightforward, which is always a seeking after the Divine, a longing after some kind of touch, closeness or possession. When this comes upon us, the adoration becomes always primarily an inner worship; we begin to make ourselves a temple of the Divine, our thoughts and feelings a constant prayer of aspiration and a seeking, our whole life an external service and inner worship. It is with this change, this new soul tendency grows, ‘that the religion of the devotee becomes Yoga, a growing contact and union. It does not follow that outward worship will necessarily be dispensed with, but it will increasingly become only a physical expression or outflowing of the inner devotion and adoration, the wave of the Soul throwing itself out in speech and symbolic act.’⁴² ‘Therefore that there may be at all any possibility of a Yoga of devotion, we must assume first (first method of Yoga of Integral Bhakti) that the supreme Existence is not an abstraction or a state of existence, but a conscious Being; secondly, that he meets us in the universe and is in some way immanent in it as well as its source,--otherwise, we should have to go out of cosmic life to meet him; thirdly, he is capable of personal relations with us and must therefore be not incapable of personality; finally, that when we approach him by our human emotions, we receive a response in kind.’²⁹ ‘The more intimate yoga of Bhakti resolves itself simply into these four movements, (first) the desire of the Soul when it turns towards God and the straining of its emotion towards him, (second) the pain of love and the divine return of love, (third) the delight of love possessed and the play of that delight, (fourth) and the eternal enjoyment of the divine Lover which is the heart of celestial bliss.’³⁰ ‘There are supposed by those who systematise to be three stages of seeking through the devotion of the mind, first, the constant hearing of the Divine name, qualities and all that has been attached to them, secondly, the constant thinking on them or on the divine being or personality; thirdly, the settling and fixing of the mind on the object; and by this comes the full realisation.’³¹

 

5)        ‘The way of the integral Yoga of Bhakti will be to universalise this conception of the Deity, to personalise him intimately by a multiple and an all-embracing relation, to make Him constantly present to all the being and to devote, give up, surrender the whole being to Him, so that He shall dwell near to us and in us and we with Him and in Him. Manana and darsana, a constant thinking of Him in all things and seeing of Him always and everywhere is essential to this way of devotion.’³² ‘On the contrary, the sadhaka of the integral Yoga will not be satisfied until he has included all other names and forms of Deity in his own conception, seen his own Ishta Devata in all others, unified all Avatars in the unity of Him who descends in the Avatara, welded the truth in all teachings into the harmony of the Eternal Wisdom.’²⁶ ‘We may keep even our relation with the personal Deity in His forms and names; if for instance, our work is predominantly a work of Love it is as the Lord of Love that we can seek to serve and express Him, but we shall have at the same time an integral realisation of Him in all His names and forms and qualities and not mistake the front of Him which is prominent in our attitude to the world for all the infinite Godhead.’³³

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6)          "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."⁸⁹

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7)          ""Love is the power and passion of the divine self-delight and without love we may get the rapt peace of its infinity, the absorbed silence of the Ananda, but not its absolute depth of richness and fullness. Love leads us from the suffering of division into the bliss of perfect union, but without losing that joy of the act of union which is the soul’s greatest discovery and for which the life of the cosmos is a long preparation. Therefore to approach God by love is to prepare oneself for the greatest possible spiritual fulfilment."⁹⁰ 

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8)            How integral Bhakti Yoga is different from traditional Bhakti Yoga is observed from Sri Aurobindo's following letter, “Revolt and impatience mean always that there is a part of the being or something in the being which does not submit, has not given itself to God, but insists on God going out of his way to obey it. That may be very well in the Bhakti-marga, but it will not do on this Way (means here in integral Yoga). The revolt and impatience may come and will come in the heart or the prana when these are still subject to imperfection and impurity; but it is then for the will and the faith in your buddhi to reject them, not to act upon them. If the will consents, approves and supports them, it means that you are siding with the inner enemy. If you want rapid progress, the first condition is that you should not do this; for every time you do it, the enemy is strengthened and the shuddhi postponed.” CWSA-36/Autobiographical Notes/p-229,​

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Recapitulation:

“Or from the gold eye of her paramour” Savitri-349

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“An incense floated in the quivering air,

A mystic happiness trembled in the breast                                   

As if the invisible Beloved had come                                   

Assuming the sudden loveliness of a face                                   

And close glad hands could seize his fugitive feet                                   

And the world change with the beauty of a smile.” Savitri-290

                                   

“Our error crucifies Reality                                   

To force its (Reality’s) birth and divine body here,                                   

Compelling, incarnate in a human form (the Avatara)                                   

And breathing in limbs that one can touch and clasp,                                   

Its Knowledge to rescue an ancient Ignorance,                                   

Its saviour light the inconscient universe.” Savitri-170-71

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“The Lover winds around his play mate’s limb,

Choosing his (Spirit’s) tyranny, crushed in his embrace?

To seize him better with her (Matter’s) boundless heart

She (Matter) accepts the limiting circle of his (Spirit’s) arms,

Bows full of bliss beneath his mastering hands

And laughs in his rich constraints, most bound, most free.” Savitri-653

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            “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.”⁵⁹

            Sri Aurobindo

            “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.”⁶⁵

Sri Aurobindo

 

            In the traditional Bhakti Yoga, the relation between the Lover and the Beloved is considered closest of all relationships and it proceeds through different stages that are Sangsaya, fear of loss of love leading one to state of doubt, Viraha, sorrow of separation Abhimana, anger and jealousy of separation, Bichheda, the state of complete separation, Vyakulata, passion to reunite again and the end is Milana, complete union. The means through which the love is activated are: - Sammohona, attraction, Uchhatana, excitation Sosana, possession, Vikhyovana, disappointment and Dahana, burning sensation. Fear, doubt, anger, jealousy, grief, dissatisfaction and passion are the vital impurities. Integral Yoga rejects the vital being’s union with the Divine through the above-mentioned means as there is a danger of inrush of the lower nature and unpurified emotions; rather it experiences the same Divine union by directing purified emotions through the gate of the Psychic being which is a flowering of joy, union, confidence, self-giving and Ananda or one gets impersonal Spiritual Love by rejecting the personal egoistic limitations. The fundamental difference between the exclusive love of the traditional Bhakti Yoga and the comprehensive love of the integral Yoga is that in the former, the Divine union begins from vital sheath by turning vital emotions towards the Divine to arrive at Psychic (as that of Sri Chaitanya) and Spiritual union (as that of Sri Krishna); whereas the latter aims at constant union and control of Divine at every moment in all the ten sheaths and Divine union in the mental, vital and physical sheaths are perfected by the pressure of Psychic, Spiritual, Universal and Supramental Love.

 

            Love, Psychicised and Spritualised, necessarily offers a twofold fulfillment; the lover and Beloved enjoy their infinite variety of Divine union in difference and they throw themselves finally into an absolute and intense ecstasy of divine Oneness. The sense of this Oneness paves the passage of discovery of the Supramental. The prolongation of this ascending union and oneness establishes the Supramental concentration. When the Supramental concentration is established, the personal relation with the Divine is utterly satisfied and the Divine Beloved lives permanently with His visible material vibration. That is the experience of constant union and highest union, milana, with the Divine Beloved.

 

            A traditional Bhakti Yogi is considered great when he reconciles his devotion with sacrificial action and realises the Kshara Purusha or the Psychic being in the heart. A Greater Bhakti Yogi reconciles his devotion of the 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 Purusha’s 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 the 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 the triple fire of Kshara, Akshara and Purushottama Consciousness and the heart will be the centre of these triple actions.

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OM TAT SAT​

References:

1: CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-375,

2: “Among the virtuous ones who turn towards Me (the Divine) with devotion, O Arjuna, there are four kinds of bhaktas, the suffering, the seeker for good in the world, the seeker for knowledge, and those who adore Me with knowledge, O Lord of the Bharatas. Of those the knower, who is ever in constant union with the Divine, whose bhakti is all concentrated on Him, is the best, he loves Me perfectly and is My beloved.” The Gita-7.16, 17, “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.” CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-550,

3: The Gita-2.4,

4: The Gita-2.45,

5: The Gita-7.20,

6: The Gita-7.20 to 7.25,

7: “Even those who sacrifice to other godheads with devotion and faith, they also sacrifice to Me, O son of Kunti, though not according to the true law, avidhipurbakam.” The Gita-9.23, “Men are led away by various outer desires which take from them the working of the inner knowledge, they resort to other godheads and they set up this or that rule, which satisfies the need of their nature.” The Gita-7.20, “The sacrifice not performed according to the right rule of the Shastra, vidhi-hina, without giving of food, without the mantra, without gifts, empty of faith, is said to be tamasic.” The Gita-17.13,

8: The Gita-4.34,

9: The Gita-13.8,

10: The Gita-17.24,

11: The Gita-8.13,

12: The Gita-17.14,

13: “For the seeker of the integral Yoga… will meet him (the Divine) in the faces of the Gods, his cosmic personalities supporting the World-Play, detect him behind the mask of the Vibhutis, embodied World-Forces or human Leaders, reverence and obey him in the Guru, worship him in the Avatar.” CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-130,

14: “When I knew nothing, then I abhorred the criminal, sinful and impure, being myself full of crime, sin and impurity; but when I was cleansed and my eyes unsealed, then I bowed down in my spirit before the thief and murderer and adored the feet of the harlot; for I saw that these souls had accepted the terrible burden of evil and drained for all of us the greater portion of the churned poison of the world-ocean.” Sir Aurobindo, SABCL/17/The Hour of God-94-95. This statement of Sri Aurobindo is a restatement from the following words of the Gita and Essays on the Gita, “Those who take refuge in Me, O Partha, be they out-castes, born from the womb of sin (even a man of very evil conduct, The Gita-9.30), women, Vaisysas, even Shudras, they also attain to the highest Goal.” The Gita-9.32. “A divine compassion for the ignorance of the struggling mind, a divine will to pour forth on it all light and power and happiness there will be, indeed, for the apparent man; but for the divine Soul within him there will be more, there will be adoration and love. 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, (Thus equal adoration of all, is the condition of becoming the greatest Yogi.)

15: CWSA-22/The Life Divine/p-1022,

16: The Gita-8.7,

17: The Gita-17.4,

18: The Gita-9.29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34,

19: The Gita-11.48, 53, 54,

20: The Gita-8.28,

21: The Gita-14.26,

22: The Gita-18.54, 55,

23: The Gita-4.11, 7.21, 22, 23,

24: The Gita-6.32,

25: “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, — 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,

26: “On the contrary, the sadhaka of integral Yoga will not be satisfied until he has included all other names and forms of Deity in his own conception, seen his own Ishta Devata in all others, unified all Avatars in the unity of Him who descends in the Avatar, welded the truth in all teachings into the harmony of the Eternal Wisdom.” CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-66,

27: CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-165,

28: CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-159,

29: CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-557,

30: CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-571,

31: CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-574,

32: CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-601,

33: CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-382,

34: The Gita-3.3,

35: “The Divinity mentioned by Sri Aurobindo is NOT A PERSON, but a condition to be shared and lived by all those who prepare themselves for it.” The Mother’s Agenda-4th May-1967, “Petty minds think of Me, the unmanifest, as being limited by manifestation, because they know not my supreme nature of being, imperishable, most perfect.” The Gita-7.24,

36: “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/p-556, “I don’t want to put a photo of Sri Aurobindo or books (in Auroville) because it will look as if we want to start a new religion—I don’t want religions, an end to religions!” The Mother’s Agenda-9/110, “I am told that you (in Auroville) intend to distribute a reproduction of the portrait you did of me. It would be better not to introduce in this gathering anything personal that might suggest the atmosphere of nascent religion.” The Mother’s Agenda-11/353

37: “The Blessed Lord said those who are constantly most united, nityayukta, with Me and adore My manifest form, Saguna Brahman, emotional mind settled in Me and possessed of supreme faith of Bhakti Yoga, I consider them to be the greatest Yogi. And those Jnana Yogis, who seek after the Immutable, the Infinite, the Unmanifest, Nirguna Brahman, the Omnipresent, the Unthinkable, the high-seated Self, the Immobile, the Permanent, all their senses under control, equal visioned everywhere, intent on welfare of all beings, they also attain to My Purushottama state.” The Gita-12.2, 3, 4, “Discipleship to God the Teacher, sonship to God the Father, tenderness of God the Mother, clasp of the hand of the divine Friend, laughter and sport with our comrade and boy-Play-fellow, blissful servitude to God the Master, rapturous love of our divine Paramour, these are seven beatitudes of life in the human body. Canst thou unite all these in a single supreme and rainbow-hued relation? Then hast thou no need of any heaven and thou exceedest the emancipation of the Adwaitin.” SABCL-17/The Hour of God/p-137. (Above line indicates that a seven-fold personal relation with the Divine in Supramental plane is more valuable than the realisation of impersonal Divine in the Spiritual plane of the Adwaitin.)

38: The Gita-3.15,

39: ““Of those the knower, who is ever in constant union with the Divine, nitya Yukta, whose bhakti is all concentrated on Him, is the best, he loves Me perfectly and is My beloved.” The Gita-7.17, “He who continually remembers Me, thinking of none else, the Yogin, O Partha, who is in constant union with Me, finds Me easy to attain.” The Gita-8.14, “Always adoring Me, steadfast in spiritual endeavour, bowing down to Me with devotion, they worship Me ever in Yoga.” The Gita-9.14, “To those men who worship Me making Me alone the whole object of their thought, to those constantly in Yoga with Me, I spontaneously bring all types of inner and outer opulence.” The Gita-9.22, “The Lord said: Those who found their mind in Me and by constant union, possessed of a supreme faith, seek after Me, I hold to be the most perfectly in union of Yoga.” The Gita-12.2, “Let the Yogin practice continually union with the Self (so that that may become his normal consciousness) sitting apart and alone, with all desire and idea of possession banished from his mind, self-controlled in his whole being and consciousness.” The Gita-6.10, “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,

40: “But you need not be distressed when the pramada comes and the state of fall or clouded condition seems to persist, for there is no fear for you of a permanent fall since God himself has taken entire charge of you and if you stumble, it is because it is best for you to stumble, as a child by frequent stumbling and falling learns to walk. The necessity of apramattata disappears when you can replace the memory of the yoga and its objects by the continual remembrance of God in all things and happenings, the nitya anusmaran.a of the Gita. For those who can make the full surrender from the beginning there is no question; their path is utterly swift and easy.” Sri Aurobindo/CWSA-13/Essays in Philosophy and Yoga-p-86-87, “There fore at all times remember me and fight; for if thy mind and thy understanding are always fixed on and given up to Me, to Me thou shalt surely come.” The Gita-8.7, “All the doors of the senses closed, the mind 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, he who goes forth, abandoning the body, he attains to the highest status.” The Gita-8.12, 13, “He who continually remembers Me, nitya smarati, thinking of none else, the Yogin, O Partha, who is in constant union with Me, finds Me easy to attain.” The Gita-8.14, “Repeat my name whenever you have little time to spare…” The Mother, “It is by the constant remembrance that the being is prepared for the full opening. By the opening of the heart the Mother’s presence begins to be felt and by the opening to her Power above the Force of the higher consciousness comes down into the body and works there to change the whole nature.” CWSA-32/The Mother with Letters on the Mother/p-167

41: “On peaks where Silence listens with still heart

To the rhythmic metres of the rolling worlds,

He served the sessions of the triple Fire.” Savitri-299,

42: CWSA/24/The Synthesis of Yoga-572,

43: “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.”” 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/p-55, “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,

44: “...that is the Japa I do now—I do it all the time, while sleeping, while walking, while eating, while working, all the time.’ The Mother/The Mother’s Agenda-4/p-131, “He who continually remembers Me, thinking of none else, the Yogin. O Partha, who is in constant union with Me, finds Me easy to attain.” The Gita-8.14,

45: The Gita-5.3,

46: The Gita-2.45,

47: “There is not an entity, either on the earth or again in heaven among the gods, that is not subject to the workings of these three qualities (Gunas), born of nature.” The Gita-18.40, (This statement is not applicable to Avataras, janma karama cha me divyam.),

48: “The psychic and the spiritual opening with their experiences and consequences can lead away from life or to a Nirvana; but they are here being considered solely as steps in a transformation of the nature.” CWSA-22/The Life Divine/p-943,

49: “A dual Power at being’s occult poles

Still acted, nameless and invisible:

Her divine emptiness was their instrument.” Savitri-553

“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,

“One man who earnestly pursues the Yoga is of more value than a thousand well-known men.” Sri Aurobindo/CWSA-35/Letters on Himself And The Ashram/p-691,

"Therefore, besides the great solitaries who have sought and attained their self-liberation, we have the great spiritual teachers who have also liberated others and, supreme of all, the great dynamic souls who, feeling themselves stronger in the might of the Spirit than all the forces of the material life banded together, have thrown themselves upon the world, grappled with it in a loving wrestle and striven to compel its consent to its own transfiguration." CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-27

50: CWSA-22/The Life Divine/p-940-941,

51: CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-116,

52: The Gita-18.62,

53: The Gita-17.18,

54: CWSA-24/ The Synthesis of Yoga/p-776,

55: “What X quotes about the limitation of the power of the Guru to that of a teacher who shows the way but cannot help or guide is the conception of certain paths of Yoga such as the pure Adwaitin and the Buddhist which say that you must rely upon yourself and no one can help you; but even the pure Adwaitin does in fact rely upon the Guru and the chief mantra of Buddhism insists on s´aran.am to Buddha. For other paths of sadhana, especially those which like the Gita accept the reality of the individual soul as an “eternal portion” of the Divine or which believe that Bhagavan and the bhakta are both real, the help of the Guru has always been relied upon as an indispensable aid.” CWSA-29/Letters on Yoga-II/p-200,

56: The Mother’s Agenda- 18.04.1961, The Mother’s Agenda-4/p-131,

57: TMCW-14/Words of the Mother-II/p-219,

58: CWSA-12/Essays Human and Divine/p-348,

59: CWSA-35/Letters on Himself and the Ashram/p-837, CWSA-29/Letters on Yoga-II/p-333,

60: “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. There is an evolution of our outward nature, the nature of the mental being in the life and body, and 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, one on the surface, small, active, ignorant, swayed by thoughts and feelings, grief and joy and all kinds of reactions, 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, one static and one dynamic, one essential and spiritual in which it is Self perfect and absolute, 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

61: The Mother’s Agenda-07.07.1961,

62: CWSA-32/The Mother with Letters on the Mother/p-13,

63: “Thus awakening by the understandings to the Highest which is beyond even the discerning mind, putting force on the self by the self to make it firm and still, slay thou, O mighty-armed, this enemy in the form of desire, who is so hard to assail.” The Gita-3.43,

64: “This is a difficult lesson to learn, 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, 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 kaˆmam duraˆsadam, remember that utterance of the Gita, it is a keyword of our Yoga.” CWSA-36/Autobiographical Notes/p-229,

65: CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-550,

66: “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 and spirit. 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.” CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-95, (oneness in dynamic force is seen in Savitri, where Paraprakriti Savitri’s Viswarupa became active and her Light and Fire partially possessed Death. (“His body was eaten by light, his spirit devoured.” Savitri-667) In the Gita, Arjuna only saw the Viswarupa of the Lord but its Light ad flame did not possess Arjuna.) 

67: The Gita-6.31,

68: “On Me repose all thy mind and lodge all thy understanding in Me; doubt not that thou shalt dwell in Me, mayi nivasisyasi, above this mortal existence.” The Gita-12.8,

69: “For there is a caste of the soul which is truer and deeper than that of the body. 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 farther object in life than to reach and possess Him.” CWSA-17/Isha Upanishad/p-195-196,

70: “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,

71: “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,

72:  “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.

             A vital like a warrior, with an absolute self-control (the vital of this present incarnation was sexless—a warrior), an absolutely calm and imperturbable warrior—no desires, no attachments...Since my earliest childhood, I have done things which, to human consciousness, are “monstrous;” my mother went so far as to tell me that I was a real “monster,” because I had neither attachments nor desires. If I was asked, “Would you like to do this?” I answered, “I don’t care.” If people were nasty to me, or if people died or went away, it left me absolutely calm—and so: “You are a monster, you have no feelings.”

             And with that preparation... It is eighty-six years since I came here, mon petit! For thirty years I worked with Sri Aurobindo consciously, without letup, night and day... We shouldn’t be in a hurry.” The Mother’s Agenda/28.03.1964,

73: Collected from Nalini Da’s talk on 26.10.1976,

74: CWSA-32/The Mother with Letters on the Mother/p-4,

75: “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 on the Gita/p-55-56,

76: CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-106,

77: CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-565,

78: “But usually the representative influence occupies a much larger place in the life of the sadhaka. If the Yoga is guided by a received written Shastra, — some Word from the past which embodies the experience of former Yogins, — it may be practised either by personal effort alone or with the aid of a Guru. The spiritual knowledge is then gained through meditation on the truths that are taught and it is made living and conscious by their realisation in the personal experience; the Yoga proceeds by the results of prescribed methods taught in a Scripture or a tradition and reinforced and illumined by the instructions of the Master. This is a narrower practice, but safe and effective within its limits, because it follows a well-beaten track to a long familiar goal.” CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-55,

79: “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-61, “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-161,

80: “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.” Sri Aurobindo/CWSA-21/The Life Divine/p-360,

81: “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.” CWSA-28/Letters on Yoga-I/p-267,

“A still deep sea, he laughs in rolling waves;

Universal, he is all, — transcendent, none.

To man’s righteousness this is his cosmic crime,

Almighty beyond good and evil to dwell

Leaving the good to their fate in a wicked world

And evil to reign in this enormous scene.” Savitri-657,

“All person perished in its namelessness.” Savitri-308,

“Sri Aurobindo once said (jokingly, as it were), while talking with those around him (I was there and we were talking about Christianity and the "new Christ"), he told them, "Oh, if the new Christ comes, the Church will crucify him!"” The Mother’s Agenda-October-7, 1967,

“Hard is the world-redeemer’s heavy task;

The world itself becomes his adversary,

Those he would save are his antagonists:

This world is in love with its own ignorance,

Its darkness turns away from the saviour light,

 It gives the cross in payment for the crown.” Savitri-448,

“Inconscient traders in bundles of contraries,

They did what in others they would persecute;

When their eyes looked upon their fellow’s vice,

An indignation flamed, a virtuous wrath;

Oblivious of their own deep-hid offence,

Moblike they stoned a neighbour caught in sin.” Savitri-209

“There is no necessity to reveal one’s plans and movements to those who have no business to know it, who are incapable of understanding or who would act as enemies or spoil all as a result of their knowledge. Secrecy is perfectly admissible and usual in spiritual matters except in special relations like that of the Shishya to the Guru. We do not let people outside know what is going on in the Ashram but we do not tell any lies about it either. Most Yogis say nothing about their spiritual experiences to others or not until long afterwards and secrecy was a general rule among the ancient Mystics. No moral or spiritual law commands us to make ourselves naked to the world or open up our hearts and minds for public inspection. Gandhi talked about secrecy being a sin but that is one of his many extravagances.” SABCL-26/On Himself/p-380

82: CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-544,

83: CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-452,

84: CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-741,

85: “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, 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

86: Sri Aurobindo/Champaklal Speaks/p-191-192,

87: “Nevertheless, there is somewhere an absolute control, a real Ishwara. He is aware of it and knows that if he can find it, he will enter into control, become not only the passive sanctioning witness and upholding soul of her will, but the free powerful user and determiner of her movements. But this control seems to belong to another poise than the mentality. Sometimes he finds himself using it, but as a channel or instrument; it comes to him from above. It is clear then that it is supramental, a power of the Spirit greater than mental being which he already knows himself to be at the summit and in the secret core of his conscious being. To enter into identity with that Spirit must then be his way to control and lordship. He can do it passively by a sort of reflection and receiving in his mental consciousness, but then he is only a mould, channel or instrument, not a possessor or participant in the power. He can arrive at identity by an absorption of his mentality in inner spiritual being, but then the conscious action ceases in a trance of identity. To be active master of the nature he must evidently rise to some higher supramental poise where there is possible not only a passive, but an active identity with the controlling spirit. To find the way of rising to this greater poise and be self-ruler, Swarat, is a condition of his perfection." CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-637-638,

88: “In this self-development the soul finds that it has accomplished on this line the object of the whole integral Yoga, union with the Supreme in its self and in its universalised individuality. So long as he remains in the world-existence, this perfection must radiate out from him, — for that is the necessity of his oneness with the universe and its beings, — in an influence and action which help all around who are capable of it to rise to or advance towards the same perfection, and for the rest in an influence and action which help, as only the self-ruler and master man 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.” CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-642,

89 CWSA-23/ The Synthesis of Yoga/p-160-161,

90 CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-547,

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