Yoga of Self Perfection
“The power of the soul over its nature is of the utmost importance in the Yoga of self-perfection; if it did not exist, we could never get by conscious endeavour and aspiration out of the fixed groove of our present imperfect human being; if any greater perfection were intended, we should have to wait for Nature to effect it in her own slow or swift process of evolution.”
Sri Aurobindo
CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-628
“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.”
Sri Aurobindo
CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-750,
The Reconciliation of Karma, Jnana and Bhakti Yoga
“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, sarvabhuta-hite ratah. The perfect Yogin is no solitary musing on the Self in his ivory tower of spiritual isolation, but yuktah kritsna-karma-krit, 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.”¹⁴
Sri Aurobindo
“By constant reference of all one’s will and works to the Divine, love and adoration grow, the psychic being comes forward. (This line suggests that through Karma and Bhakti Yoga Psychic being opens.) 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.”⁶¹ (Here the Yoga of Self-perfection is linked with the transformation of Nature through the dynamic action of Divine Shakti)
Sri Aurobindo
“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 Purushottam is master at once of the eternal spiritual calm and the eternal cosmic activity. This is the synthesis of the Gita.”³⁷
Sri Aurobindo
“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.”⁴⁵
Sri Aurobindo
“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.”³⁹
Sri Aurobindo
“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.”⁴⁶
Sri Aurobindo
“To knowledge she (Mahakali) gives a conquering might, brings to beauty and harmony a high and mounting movement and imparts to the slow and difficult labour after perfection an impetus that multiplies the power and shortens the long way. Nothing can satisfy her that falls short of the supreme ecstasies, the highest heights, the noblest aims, the largest vistas.”⁴⁷
Sri Aurobindo
“Admitted to the heart she (Mahalakshmi) lifts wisdom to pinnacles of wonder and reveals to it the mystic secrets of the ecstasy that surpasses all knowledge, meets devotion with the passionate attraction of the Divine, teaches to strength and force the rhythm that keeps the might of their acts harmonious and in measure and casts on perfection the charm that makes it endure for ever.”⁴⁸
Sri Aurobindo
The triple self-disciplines of Karma, Jnana and Bhakti Yoga and the triple eternal poise of the Self, Kshara Purusha, Akshara Purusha and Uttama Purusha, and their simultaneous action are necessary for the totality of Divine realisation, samagram mam. Kshara Purusha’s union with Akshara Purusha is identified as the reconciliation of Karma and Jnana Yoga. Kshara Purusha’s union with the Purushottama is identified as the reconciliation of Karma and Bhakti Yoga. Akshara Purusha’s union with Purushottama is identified as the reconciliation of Jnana and Bhakti Yoga. When the three Purushas co-exist, then the reconciliation of triple Yoga becomes effective. Thus, Knowledge gives a sense of oneness of the Divine, while Love is its Bliss which is identified as the crown of Work and flowering of Knowledge and Work brings the Divine’s living power of Light and Sweetness. Thus, the natural oneness of Will, Knowledge and Love finds their greatest completeness in Supermind. Knowledge is the base of Supermind, while Will is its dynamic expression and Love is its expression of Joy and they move the consciousness towards integral self-awareness.
A traditional Yogi lives constantly in exclusive union with the Divine and an integral Yogi has three aspects of this union, (1) a union with the transcendent supreme Divine, (2) a union with universal Divine and (3) a dynamic Supramental action linking the transcendent origin and the universal Self and individual as a receiving and transmitting Psychic channel works out integral, all-inclusive and comprehensive Divine perfection. The exclusive transcendent Divine union of the traditional self-controlled Saint, Yatati, does not transform his nature; so, his manifold unsaintly movements are suppressed or ‘carried away by vehement insistence of senses’³⁸ and it can be corrected in integral Yoga by the difficult task of integrating his Being and Nature and by integration of his volitional, intellectual and emotional parts. If he is more attached to either of the three, Karma, Jnana and Bhakti Yogas, then attainment of equal concentration of the three Yogas will seem impossible. While reconciling the self-disciplines of the above three Yogas, he can repeat five specialised methods which are mostly derivative of Jnana Yoga or an extension of Yoga of Self-perfection. The first method³⁴ is to silence the desire mind, emotional mind, sensory mind, physical mind and intellectual mind and to allow in that perfect silence the disclosure of the ascent of the Self, the Spirit and the Divine. It brings the freedom of Spiritual Silence. The second method of Yoga of Self-perfection is to reject the intellect and its action and wait for the impulsion of command, call, adesh of the Divine Purusha within the heart. This secret Self is also seated in every centre of our being, the physical, the nervous, the emotional, the volitional, the conceptual or cognitive and higher Spiritual, Universal, Supramental and Bliss centres. And if these Selves are activated the respective instruments of nature and sheaths are transformed and perfected. The third method of the Yoga of self-perfection is to open the supreme mental centre, the thousand-petalled lotus above the head and establish a direct communication on the Supramental level. It acts doubly, the descent of Shakti from above downward, filling and transforming the mind, life and body and an action of ascent of Soul from below upwards raising all energies to the transcendence. The fourth method is to develop our intellect, heighten its capacity, light, intensity, degree and force of activity by the pressure of Psychic, Spiritual and Supramental Influence instead of eliminating it. The fifth method is not heightening and greatening of the intellectual activity alone, an attainment of intermediate Spiritualised intelligence alone and subsequently an intervention of the Supramental energy is needed that can light up and get rid of the deficiencies of thought, will and emotion, and drag them towards their last Divine perfection. This action must activate more constantly after one is established in the Psychic and Spiritual plane and there is seen the full Sun of Truth-Light with no cloud to moderate its splendour. The Divine Shakti will choose freely and flexibly one or combine all these methods and change the whole system integrally.
Reconciliation of Karma and Jnana Yoga¹³
“The voice that only by speech can move the mind
Became a silent knowledge in the soul;
The strength that only in action feels its truth
Was lodged now in a mute omnipotent peace.”
Savitri-32
“A deep surrender is their (Supramental Beings) source of might,
A still identity their way to know,
Motionless is their action like a sleep.”
Savitri-57
“Only when we have climbed above ourselves,
A line of the Transcendent meets our road
And joins us to the timeless and the true;
It brings to us the inevitable word,
The godlike act, the thoughts that never die.”
Savitri-109-10
“It seeks the truth to which all figures point;
It looks for the source of Light with vision’s lamp;
It works to find the Doer of all works,
The unfelt Self within who is the guide,
The unknown Self above who is the goal.”
Savitri-168
“A Word, a Wisdom watches us from on high,
A Witness sanctioning her will and works,
An Eye unseen in the unseeing vast;
There is an Influence from a Light above,
There are thoughts remote and sealed eternities;
A mystic motive drives the stars and suns.”
Savitri-168-69
“Even in our sceptic mind of ignorance
A foresight comes of some immense release,
Our will lifts towards it slow and shaping hands.”
Savitri-170
“It lit the thoughts that glow through the centuries
And moved to acts of superhuman force.”
Savitri-259
“Happy the worlds that have not felt our (Spiritual) fall,
Where Will is one with Truth and Good with Power;”
Savitri-281
“In each a seraph-winged high-browed Idea
United all knowledge by one master thought, (Reconciling wisdom)
Persuaded all action to one golden sense,
All powers subjected to a single power
And made a world where it could reign alone,
An absolute ideal’s perfect home.”
Savitri-281
“She reigns, inspirer of its multiple works
And thinker of the symbol of its scene.”
Savitri-295
“The labour to know seemed a vain strife of Mind;
All knowledge ended in the Unknowable:
The effort to rule seemed a vain pride of Will;
A trivial achievement scorned by Time,
All power retired into the Omnipotent.”
Savitri-305
“This Light comes not by struggle or by thought;
In the mind’s silence the Transcendent acts
And the hushed heart hears the unuttered Word.”
Savitri-315
“A strength he sought that was not yet on earth,
Help from a Power too great for mortal will,
The light of a Truth now only seen afar,
A sanction from his high omnipotent Source.”
Savitri-317
“The robes of mortal thinking were cast down
Leaving his knowledge bare to absolute sight;
Fate’s driving ceased and Nature’s sleepless spur:
The athlete heavings of the will were stilled
In the Omnipotent’s unmoving peace.”
Savitri-320
“His (King’s) mind answered to countless communing minds,
His words were syllables of the cosmos’ speech,
His life a field of the vast cosmic stir.
He felt the footsteps of a million wills
Moving in unison to a single goal.”
Savitri-325
“An immutable Power has made this mutable world;
A self-fulfilling transcendence treads man’s road;
The driver of the soul upon its path,
It knows its steps, its way is inevitable,
And how shall the end be vain when God is guide?
However man’s mind may tire or fail his flesh,
A will prevails cancelling his conscious choice:”
Savitri-339
“A Light there is that leads, a Power that aids;
Unmarked, unfelt it sees in him and acts:
Ignorant, he forms the All-Conscient in his depths,
Human, looks up to superhuman peaks:”
Savitri-339
“Assent to thy high self, create, endure.
Cease not from knowledge, let thy toil be vast.
No more can earthly limits pen thy force;
Equal thy work with long unending Time’s.”
Savitri-340
“He (flaming Pioneer) shall know what mortal mind barely durst think,
He shall do what the heart of the mortal could not dare.”
Savitri-344
“All heavenly light shall visit the earth’s thoughts,
The might of heaven shall fortify earthly hearts;
Earth’s deeds shall touch the superhuman’s height,
Earth’s seeing widen into the infinite.”
Savitri-344
“Let a great word be spoken from the heights
And one great act unlock the doors of Fate.”
Savitri-345
“The will of the Timeless working out in Time
In the free absolute steps of cosmic Truth
He thinks a dead machine or unconscious Fate.”
Savitri-457
“All here can change if the Magician choose.
If human will could be made one with God’s (Will),
If human thought could echo the thoughts of God,
Man might be all-knowing and omnipotent.”
Savitri-457-58
“Above her brows where will and knowledge meet
A mighty Voice invaded mortal space.”
Savitri-474
“There was no will behind the word and act,
No thought formed in her brain to guide the speech:”
Savitri-551
“Then like a thought fulfilled by some great word
That mightiness assumed a symbol form:
Savitri-573
“Immortal leader (Supermind) of her mortality,
Doer of her works and fountain of her words,
Invulnerable by Time, omnipotent,
It stood above her calm, immobile, mute.”
Savitri-573
“I (Savitri) 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.”
Savitri-634,
“A Will that without sense or motive acts,
An Intelligence needing not to think or plan,”
Savitri-680
“Thy servitudes (slaves) on earth are greater, King,
Than all the glorious liberties of heaven.”
Savitri-686
“Then shall the embodied being live as one
Who is a thought, a will of the Divine,
A mask or robe of his divinity,
An instrument and partner of his Force,
A point or line drawn in the infinite,
A manifest of the Imperishable.”
Savitri-706
“It is good that you have decided to concentrate on the true object of your coming here, but while absorption in mental work and social contacts is not favourable for Yoga, excessive seclusion has also its spiritual disadvantage. An inner concentration supported by a limitation of external contacts is sufficient. Some kind of activity and service to the Divine is also a very necessary element in the integral spiritual life.”⁶²
Sri Aurobindo
“Yoga and knowledge are, in this early part of the Gita’s teaching, the two wings of the soul’s ascent. By Yoga is meant union through divine works done without desire, with equality of soul to all things and all men, as a sacrifice to the Supreme, while knowledge is that on which this desirelessness, this equality, this power of sacrifice is founded. The two wings indeed assist each other’s flight; acting together, yet with a subtle alternation of mutual aid, like the two eyes in a man which see together because they see alternately, they increase one another mutually by interchange of substance. As the works grow more and more desireless, equal-minded, sacrificial in spirit, the knowledge increases; with the increase of the knowledge the soul becomes firmer in the desireless, sacrificial equality of its works.”¹⁸
Sri Aurobindo
“In its close, if not long before it, this way of works turns by communion with the Divine Presence, Will and Force into a way of Knowledge more complete and integral than any the mere creature intelligence can construct or the search of the intellect can discover.”⁴²
Sri Aurobindo
“O Lord, my one aspiration is to know Thee and serve Thee better every day. What do outer circumstances matter? They seem to me each day more vain and illusory, and I take less and less interest in what is going to happen to us in the outer life; but more and more am I intensely interested in the one thing which seems important to me: to know Thee better in order to serve Thee better. All outer events must converge upon this goal and this goal alone; and for that all depends upon the attitude we have towards them. To seek Thee constantly in all things, to want to manifest Thee ever better in every circumstance, in this attitude lies supreme Peace, perfect serenity, true contentment. In it life blossoms, widens, expands so magnificently in such majestic waves that no storm can any longer disturb it.”⁴⁰
The Mother
“The supramental nature on the contrary is just, harmonious and one, will and knowledge there only light of the spirit and power of the spirit, the power effecting the light, the light illumining the power. In the highest supramentality they are intimately fused together and do not even wait upon each other but are one movement, will illumining itself, knowledge fulfilling itself, both together a single jet of the being.”⁴⁹
Sri Aurobindo
“The Divine is centred in itself and when it throws out ideas and activities does not divide itself or imprison itself in them, but holds them and their movement in its infinity; undivided, its whole self is behind each Idea and each movement and at the same time behind all of them together.”⁵⁰
Sri Aurobindo
“But her (Maheswari) compassion does not blind her wisdom or turn her action from the course decreed; for the Truth of things is her one concern, knowledge her centre of power and to build our soul and our nature into the divine Truth her mission and her labour.”⁵¹
Sri Aurobindo
“You must learn to act always from within — from your inner being which is in contact with the Divine. The outer should be a mere instrument and should not be allowed at all to compel or dictate your speech, thought or action.”⁵⁷
Sri Aurobindo
Savitri book⁴³ hints that if Jnana Yoga can be reconciled with Karma Yoga, then the possibility of Spiritual fall reduces. The Gita insists on developing double sincerity, dvibidha Nistha,²⁵ among the seekers of truth that of (1) the Sankhya Yogis by the Yoga of Knowledge and (2) the Karma Yogis by the Yoga of Works. ‘There have been different gradations in this movement to bridge the gulf between an absolute impersonality and the dynamic possibilities of our nature.’⁶⁰
“Renunciation/Jnana Yoga and Karma Yoga, both bring about Soul’s salvation. But of these two Yogas, Yoga of Works is identified as the greatest Yoga.²⁶ He should be known as nityasannyasi, or constant union with the Divine through Jnana Yoga/renunciation, even when he is doing action, who neither dislikes nor desires; for free from dualities, he is released easily and happily from the bondage. Child Souls, bala, speak of Sankhya/Jnana Yoga and Karma Yoga apart from each other and limit them as opposing doctrines, not the ripened Souls/punditah; if a wise seeker of truth applies himself integrally to the one, he gets the essential truth result of both Karma and Jnana Yoga which is large, catholic and universally true. The highest status which is attained by Sankhya/Jnana Yoga through philosophical, intellectual, analytical and dualistic approach, to that state Karma Yoga also arrives through intuitional, devotional, practical, ethical, synthetic and arriving at knowledge through Spiritual experience. The ripened Souls see Sankhya/Jnana Yoga and Karma Yoga as one or they reconcile them perfectly. But the renunciation of Jnana Yoga is difficult to attain without Karma Yoga. Jnana Yoga becomes easy with the aid of Karma Yoga, because while doing all action a Yogi feels that he does no action but only the Nature is doing through him. So, the sage who has realised Divine union attains the Brahman soon. He who is united with the Divine through reconciliation of Karma and Jnana Yoga is the pure Soul, master of his Self, has conquered the senses; whose Self becomes the Self of all existences and even though he does work, he is not involved/attached to them. The wise seeker who has reconciled Karma and Jnana Yoga knows the true principle of things, tattwa jnana, his mind is united with the impersonal Akshara Purusha, feels, “I am doing nothing;” when he sees, hears, tastes, smells, eats, moves, sleeps, breathes, speaks, takes, ejects, opens his eyes and closes them, he holds that it is only the senses acting upon the objects of the senses. So, he acts by reposing in Brahman Consciousness by abandoning attachment. He is not stained by sin even as water clings not to the lotus leaf.”¹
“The greatest Yogi is he, who, controlling the ten senses by (Spiritual) mind, without attachment as taught in Jnana Yoga, engages with the organs of action of Karma Yoga.”¹⁶
“Knowledge, jnanam, the object of knowledge, jneyam, and the knower, parijnata, these three constitute the urge to (Divine) action. The doer, karta, the instrument, karanam, and the act, karma, these three hold the (Divine) action together.”²
Reconciliation of Jnana and Bhakti Yoga
“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
“The All-Conscious ventured into Ignorance,
The All-Blissful bore to be insensible.”
Savitri-66-67
Creator of this game of ray and shade
In this sweet and bitter paradoxical life,
Asks from the body the soul’s intimacies
And by the swift vibration of a nerve
Links its mechanic throbs to light and love.”
Savitri-138
“Wherever are soulless minds and guideless lives
And in a small body self is all that counts,
Wherever love and light and largeness lack,
These crooked fashioners take up their task.”
Savitri-153
“Even Light and Love by that cloaked danger’s spell
Turned from the brilliant nature of the gods
To fallen angels and misleading suns,
Became themselves a danger and a charm,
A perverse sweetness, heaven-born malefice:”
Savitri-203
“A happiness it brings of whispered truth;
There runs in its flow honeying the bosom of Space
A laughter from the immortal heart of Bliss,
And the unfathomed Joy of timelessness,
The sound of Wisdom’s murmur in the Unknown
And the breath of an unseen Infinity.”
Savitri-264
"There is the secrecy of the House of Flame,
The blaze of godlike thought and golden bliss,
The rapt idealism of heavenly sense;
There are the wonderful voices, the sun-laugh,
A gurgling eddy in rivers of God’s joy,
And the mysteried vineyards of the gold moon-wine,
All the fire and sweetness of which hardly here
A brilliant shadow visits mortal life."
Savitri-279
“There shimmered stealing out into the Mind
A mute and quivering ecstasy of light,”
Savitri-289
“An inner happiness abode in all,
A sense of universal harmonies,
A measureless secure eternity
Of truth and beauty and good and joy made one.”
Savitri-291
“Here came the thought that passes beyond Thought,
Here the still Voice which our listening cannot hear,
The Knowledge by which the knower is the known,
The Love in which beloved and lover are one.”
Savitri-297-98
“A Heart was felt in the spaces wide and bare,
A burning Love from white spiritual founts
Annulled the sorrow of the ignorant depths;
Suffering was lost in her immortal smile.
A Life from beyond grew conqueror here of death;
To err no more was natural to mind;
Wrong could not come where all was light and love.”
Savitri-313-14
“All that denies (Supreme Love) must be torn out and slain
And crushed the many longings (of desire Soul) for whose sake
We lose the One (Divine) for whom our lives were made.
Now other claims (of desire Soul) had hushed in him their cry:
Only he longed to draw her presence and power
Into his heart and mind and breathing frame;
Only he yearned to call for ever down
Her healing touch of love and truth and joy
Into the darkness of the suffering world.
His soul was freed and given to her alone.”
Savitri-316
“A word, a laughter, sprang from Silence’ breast,
A rhythm of Beauty in the calm of Space,
A knowledge in the fathomless heart of Time.”
Savitri-325
“A new creation from the old shall rise,
A Knowledge inarticulate find speech,
Beauty suppressed burst into paradise bloom,
Pleasure and pain dive into absolute bliss.”
Savitri-330
“His heart lay somewhere conscious and alone
Far down below him like a lamp in night;
Abandoned it lay, alone, imperishable,
Immobile with excess of passionate will,
His living, sacrificed and offered heart
Absorbed in adoration mystical,
Turned to its far-off fount of light and love.”
Savitri-331-332
“All-Knowledge wrap one mind in seas of light,
All-Love throb single in one human heart.”
Savitri-345
“A boundless knowledge greater than man’s thought,
A happiness too high for heart and sense
Locked in the world and yearning for release”
Savitri-362
“Behold this image cast by light and love,
A stanza of the ardour of the gods
Perfectly rhymed, a pillared ripple of gold!
Her body like a brimmed pitcher of delight
Shaped in a splendour of gold-coloured bronze
As if to seize earth’s truth of hidden bliss.”
Savitri-422
“He (Divine) is the prophet’s voice, the sight of the seer.
He is Beauty, nectar of the passionate soul,
He is the Truth by which the spirit lives.”
Savitri-516
“The mind becomes a mastered instrument
And life a hue and figure of the soul.
All happily grows towards knowledge and towards bliss.”
Savitri-530
“An inner law of beauty shapes our lives;
Our words become the natural speech of Truth,
Each thought is a ripple on a sea of Light.”
Savitri-530-31
“Imaginations flamed up from her breast,
Unearthly beauty, touches of surpassing joy
And plans of miracle, dreams of delight:”
Savitri-539
“A cosmic vision, a spiritual sense
Feels all the Infinite lodged in finite form
And seen through a quivering ecstasy of light
Discovers the bright face of the Bodiless,
In the truth of a moment, in the moment’s soul
Can sip the honey-wine of Eternity.”
Savitri-662
“In the harmony of an original sight
Delivered from our limiting ray of thought,
And the reluctance of our blinded hearts
To embrace the Godhead in whatever guise,
She saw all Nature marvellous without fault.”
Savitri-675
“Each feeling was the Eternal’s mighty child
And every thought was a sweet burning god.”
Savitri-678
“If knowledge is the widest power of the consciousness and its function is to free and illumine, yet love is the deepest and most intense and its privilege is to be the key to the most profound and secret recesses of the Divine Mystery.”³⁵
Sri Aurobindo
“Thus by spiritual development devotion becomes one with knowledge. The Jiva comes to delight in the one Godhead, — in the Divine known as all being and consciousness and delight and as all things and beings and happenings, known in Nature, known in the self, known for that which exceeds self and Nature. He is ever in constant union with him, nityayukta; his whole life and being are an eternal Yoga with the Transcendent than whom there is nothing higher, with the Universal besides whom there is none else and nothing else. On him is concentred all his bhakti, ekabhaktih, not on any partial godhead, rule or cult.”⁵³
Sri Aurobindo
“This is the God-lover who has the knowledge, jnani bhakta. And this knower, says the Godhead in the Gita, is my self; the others seize only motives and aspects in Nature, but he the very self-being and all-being of the Purushottama with which he is in union. His is the divine birth in the supreme Nature, integral in being, completed in will, absolute in love, perfected in knowledge. In him the Jiva’s cosmic existence is justified because it has exceeded itself and so found its own whole and highest truth of being.”⁵⁴
Sri Aurobindo
“It is possible, indeed, to begin with knowledge or Godward emotion solely or with both together and to leave works for the final movement of the Yoga. But there is then this disadvantage that we may tend to live too exclusively within, subtilised in subjective experience, shut off in our isolated inner parts; there we may get incrusted in our spiritual seclusion and find it difficult later on to pour ourselves triumphantly outwards and apply to life our gains in the higher Nature. When we turn to add this external kingdom also to our inner conquests, we shall find ourselves too much accustomed to an activity purely subjective and ineffective on the material plane. There will be an immense difficulty in transforming the outer life and the body.”⁵⁵
Sri Aurobindo
“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.”56Sri Aurobindo“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 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-603
Sri Aurobindo
“Whosoever knows in its right principles this seven-fold Vibhutis and four-fold Yoga-Shaktis, unites himself to Me by an un-trembling Bhakti Yoga; of this there is no doubt. I am the birth of everything and from Me all proceeds into the development of action and movement; understanding thus, the wise devotee adores 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 those who are in constant union with Me, and adore Me with an intense delight of love, I give the Buddhi/Jnana Yoga 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 ignorance.”³ “Turning their discerning mind to That, directing their whole conscious being to That, making that their whole aim and the sole subject of their devotion, they go whence there is no return. Their sins washed off by the waters of knowledge.”¹⁵ “The great souled, O Partha, who dwell in My Divine Nature know the Godhead lodged in human body as the Imperishable from whom all existences originate and so knowing they turn to Me with a sole and entire love. Always adoring Me, steadfast in spiritual endeavour, bowing down to Me with devotion, they worship Me ever in Yoga. Others also seek Me out by the sacrifice of knowledge and worship Me in My oneness and in every separate being and in all My million universal faces... Become My minded, My lover and adorer, a sacrificer to Me, bow thyself to Me; thus united with Me in the Self thou shalt come to Me, having Me as thy supreme goal.”²⁰ “There are two Purushas in this world: the Akshara Purusha is the immutable and impersonal in nature and the Kshara Purusha is the mutable and personal in nature. The mutable is all these existences and the high-seated brahmic Consciousness, Kutastha, is the Immutable. One remains in front as action and other remains behind as witness. But other than these two irreconcilable opposites is the highest Purusha, Uttama Purusha, the Paramatman, who enters the three worlds of mind, life and body and upbears them. Since I am beyond the mutable Self and am higher and greater than the immutable Self, so I am proclaimed in the Veda as Purushottama. He who lives without delusion and has total knowledge of Me as Purushottama, adores Me with all-knowledge and integral sacrifice and every way of his natural being.”¹⁹ “Neither by the study of the Vedas and sacrifices, nor by gifts or ceremonial rites or severe austerities, this form of My Universal vision can be seen…it can be seen, known, entered into only by that Bhakti which regards, adores and loves Me alone in all things.”²² “When one has become the Brahman, when one, serene in the Self, neither grieves nor desires, when one is equal to all beings, then one gets the supreme love and devotion to Me. By devotion, he comes to know Me, who and how much I am and in all the reality and principles of My being; having thus known Me he enters into That Purushottama Consciousness.”²³ The Gita’s seventh to twelfth chapters concentrate on the reconciliation of Jnana and Bhakti Yoga.⁵⁹
Reconciliation of Karma and Bhakti Yoga
“Acts vibrant with a superhuman light
And movements pushed by a superconscient force,
And joys that never flowed through mortal limbs,
And lovelier scenes than earth’s and happier lives.”
Savitri-28
“A large spontaneous order freed the will,
A sun-frank winging of the soul to bliss,
The breadth and greatness of the unfettered act
And the swift fire-heart’s golden liberty.”
Savitri-127
“There was no use for grudging ring or fence;
Each act was a perfection and a joy.”
Savitri-128
“Her eternal Lover is her action’s cause;
For him she leaped forth from the unseen Vasts
To move here in a stark unconscious (seemingly false) world.”
Savitri-181
“Mute in the fathomless passion of his will
He outstretched to her his folded hands of prayer.”
Savitri-295
“Nothing could satisfy but its delight:
Its (Supreme Self’s) absence left the greatest actions dull,
Its presence made the smallest (action) seem divine.”
Savitri-305
“An Influx presses from the closed Beyond
Forbidding to him rest and earthly ease,
Till he has found himself he cannot pause.”
Savitri-339
“In these great spirits now incarnate here
Love brought down power out of eternity
To make of life his new undying base.”
Savitri-397
“This bright perfection of her inner state
Poured overflowing into her outward scene,
Made beautiful dull common natural things
And action wonderful and time divine.
Even the smallest meanest work became
A sweet or glad and glorious sacrament,
An offering to the self of the great world
Or a service to the One in each and all.”
Savitri-532
“Immortal yearnings without name leap down,
Large quiverings of godhead seeking run
And weave upon a puissant field of calm
A high and lonely ecstasy of will.”
Savitri-572
“My God is will and triumphs in his paths,
My God is love and sweetly suffers all.
To him I have offered hope for sacrifice
And gave my longings as a sacrament.”
Savitri-591
“My will is greater than thy law, O Death;
My love is stronger than the bonds of Fate:”
Savitri-633
“By this way we arrive at the Yoga of works, and this Yoga has a place for personal devotion to the Divine, for the divine Will appears as the Master of our works to whose voice we must listen, whose divine impulsion we must obey and whose work it is the sole business of our active life and will to do.”²⁷
Sri Aurobindo
“For first by the force of your devotion your contact with the Divine Mother will become so intimate that at all times you will have only to concentrate and to put everything into her hands to have her present guidance, her direct command or sure impulse, the sure indication of the thing to be done and the way to do it and the result.”³⁶
Sri Aurobindo
“The way of works turns by this road of sacrifice to meet the path of Devotion; it can be itself a devotion as complete, as absorbing, as integral as any the desire of the heart can ask for or the passion of themind can imagine.”⁴²
Sri Aurobindo
“Of all Karma Yogis, whoever loves (Me) God in all and his Soul is founded upon the Divine Oneness, however he lives and acts, lives and acts always in (Me) God. He who sees with equality everything, grief and happiness in the image of Self, him I hold to be the greatest Yogi.”⁴ “Of all Karma Yogis, he who with all his inner self offered to Me (or turning of volitional, intellectual and emotional mind entirely towards the Divine), for Me has love and faith, him I hold to be most united with Me in Yoga. He who is most united with Me is considered as the greatest Yogi.”⁵ “The Blessed Lord said those who are most united with Me and adore Me through constant union, emotional mind settled in Me and possessed of supreme faith of Bhakti Yoga, I consider them to be the greatest Yogi.”⁶ “Be a doer of My works, accept Me as the supreme being and object, My Bhakta is free from all attachment and is having without enmity to all existence, for such man comes to Me.”⁷ “Those who give up all their action to Me, sarvani karmani mayi sannyasya, and wholly devoted to Me, worship meditating on Me with an unswerving Yoga, those who fix on Me all their consciousness, O Partha, speedily I deliver them out of the sea of death bound existence.”⁸ “When one does his own natural work, kartavya karma, by worshipping the Divine, from whom all beings originate, by whom all this universe is pervaded, he reaches the perfection, siddhi.”⁹
“But those men of virtuous deeds, Karma Yogis, in whom sin is come to an end, they, freed from delusion of dualities, worship Me, steadfast in the vow of self-consecration. They turn to Me as their only refuge and turn to Me in their Spiritual effort towards release from old age and death, come to know the Brahman, all the integrality of Para Prakriti and entirety of Divine Work.”¹⁰
“A Bhakta, having abandoned attachment, acts reposing his works on the Brahman, is not stained by sin even as water clings not to the lotus leaf.”¹⁷
The Gita Proposes that if the ceaseless Karma Yoga can be reconciled with ceaseless Bhakti Yoga, then it will be easier to pursue both the Yoga. While pursuing Karma Yoga, even if one has no Bhakti, he can grow devotion due to his union with the Divine. And if this process continues then he will arrive at the highest and absolute Bhakti.
“The Blessed Lord said to Arjuna: Yes, I will tell thee of My best and noblest attributes…among all sacrifices, Yajnas, I am the Japa Yajna, the silent and uninterrupted repetition of sacrificial adorable sacred name…Therefore all time of all life without interruption remember Me and fight (Divine action)… tasmat sarvesu kalesu mam anusmara yudhya cha. And also remember Me while leaving the body… tasmat sarvesu kalesu yoga-yukto bhavarjuna, therefore, O Arjuna, at all times of all life be in Yoga.” The Gita-10. 19, 25, 8.7, 13, 27
Reconciliation of Karma, Jnana and Bhakti Yoga
“A prayer, a master act, a king idea
Can link man’s strength to a transcendent Force.
Then miracle is made the common rule,
One mighty deed can change the course of things;
A lonely thought becomes omnipotent.”
Savitri-20
“His soul lived as eternity’s delegate,
His mind was like a fire assailing heaven,
His will a hunter in the trails of light.”
Savitri-23
“Rapt in the heart-beats of God-ecstasy.
He lived in the mystic space where thought is born
And will is nursed by an ethereal Power
And fed on the white milk of the Eternal’s strengths
Till it grows into the likeness of a god.”
Savitri-28
“Our souls can visit in great lonely hours
Still regions of imperishable Light,
All-seeing eagle-peaks of silent Power
And moon-flame oceans of swift fathomless Bliss
And calm immensities of spirit space.”
Savitri-46-47
“There is no perfect answer to our hopes;
There are blind voiceless doors that have no key;
Thought climbs in vain and brings a borrowed light,
Cheated by counterfeits sold to us in life’s mart,
Our hearts clutch at a forfeited heavenly bliss.”
Savitri-77
“Our instruments have not that greater light,
Our will tunes not with the eternal Will,
Our heart’s sight is too blind and passionate.”
Savitri-161
“His knowledge dwells in the house of Ignorance;
His force nears not even once the Omnipotent,
Rare are his visits of heavenly ecstasy.
The bliss which sleeps in things and tries to wake,
Breaks out in him in a small joy of life:”
Savitri-165
“Even in our sceptic mind of ignorance
A foresight comes of some immense release,
Our will lifts towards it slow and shaping hands.
Each part in us desires its absolute.
Our thoughts covet the everlasting Light,
Our strength derives from an omnipotent Force,
And since from a veiled God-joy the worlds were made
And since eternal Beauty asks for form
Even here where all is made of being’s dust,
Our hearts are captured by ensnaring shapes,
Our very senses blindly seek for bliss.”
Savitri-170
“Some hue of the Absolute could fall on life,
Some glory of knowledge and intuitive sight,
Some passion of the rapturous heart of Love."
Savitri-176
“There every thought and feeling is an act,
And every act a symbol and a sign,
And every symbol hides a living power.”
Savitri-183
“In knowledge to sum up omniscience,
In action to erect the Omnipotent,
To create her Creator here was her heart’s conceit,
To invade the cosmic scene with utter God.”
Savitri-195
“In a high state where ignorance is no more (SAT), (Jnana Yoga)
Each movement is a wave of peace and bliss (ANANDA), (Bhakti Yoga)
Repose God’s motionless creative force (CHIT), (Karma Yoga)
Action a ripple in the Infinite
And birth a gesture of Eternity.”
Savitri-200
"Happy the worlds that have not felt our fall,
Where Will is one with Truth and Good with Power;
Impoverished not by earth-mind’s indigence,
They keep God’s natural breath of mightiness,
His bare spontaneous swift intensities;
There is his great transparent mirror, Self,
And there his sovereign autarchy of bliss
In which immortal natures have their part,
Heirs and cosharers of divinity."
Savitri-281
“He cast from the rent stillness of his soul
A cry of adoration and desire (surrender of Bhakti Yoga)
And the surrender of his boundless mind (surrender of Jnana Yoga)
And the self-giving of his silent (will of) heart. (surrender of Karma Yoga)
He fell down at her feet unconscious, prone.”
Savitri-296
“In that high realm where no untruth can come,
Where all are different and all is one,
In the Impersonal’s ocean without shore
The Person in the World-Spirit anchored rode;
It thrilled with the mighty marchings of World-Force,
Its acts were the comrades of God’s infinite peace.”
Savitri-301
“There (in the Bliss Self) was no (tamasic) act, no movement in its Vast:…
There was no (sattwic) mind there with its need to know,
There was no (rajasic) heart there with its need to (human) love.”
Savitri-308
“Abolished is the burdening need of life:
Thought falls from us, we cease from joy and grief;
The ego is dead; we are freed from being and care,
We have done (sadhana) with birth and death and work and fate.”
Savitri-310
“The moment’s thought inspired the passing act.
A word, a laughter, sprang from Silence’ breast,
A rhythm of Beauty in the calm of Space,
A knowledge in the fathomless heart of Time.”
Savitri-325
“Too little the strength (tamas) that now with us is born,
Too faint the light (sattwa) that steals through Nature’s lids,
Too scant the joy (rajas) with which she buys our pain.”
Savitri-342
“In anguish we labour that from us may rise
A larger-seeing man with nobler heart,
A golden vessel of the incarnate Truth,
The executor of the divine attempt
Equipped to wear the earthly body of God,
Communicant and prophet and lover and king.”
Savitri-342
“Her greatness and her sweetness and her bliss,
Her might to possess and her vast power to love:
Earth made a stepping-stone to conquer heaven,
The soul saw beyond heaven’s limiting boundaries,
Met a great light from the Unknowable
And dreamed of a transcendent action’s sphere.”
Savitri-362
“The Wise who know see but one half of Truth, (sattwic men)
The strong climb hardly to a low-peaked height, (tamasic men)
The hearts that yearn are given one hour to love.” (rajasic men)
Savitri-372
“Thought, vision, feeling, sense, the body’s self
Are seized unutterably and he (King) endures
An ecstasy and an immortal change;
He feels a Wideness and becomes a Power,
All knowledge rushes on him like a sea:”
Savitri-375
“Afar from the brute noise of clamorous needs
The quieted all-seeking mind could feel,
At rest from its blind outwardness of will,
The unwearied clasp of her mute patient love
And know for a soul the mother of our forms.”
Savitri-380
“Only when thou hast climbed above thy mind
And liv’st in the calm vastness of the One
Can love be eternal in the eternal Bliss
And love divine replace the human tie.
There is a shrouded law, an austere force:
It bids thee strengthen thy undying spirit;
It offers its severe benignancies
Of work and thought and measured grave delight
As steps to climb to God’s far secret heights.”
Savitri-434,
“Thy mind’s light (sattwa) hides from thee the Eternal’s thought,
Thy heart’s hopes (rajas) hide from thee the Eternal’s will,
Earth’s joys (tamas) shut from thee the Immortal’s bliss.”
Savitri-443
“On the altar throwing thy thoughts, thy heart, thy works,
Thy fate is a long sacrifice to the gods
Till they have opened to thee thy secret self
And made thee one with the indwelling God.”
Savitri-458
“Conquer thy heart’s throbs, let thy heart beat in God:
Thy nature shall be the engine of his works,
Thy voice shall house the mightiness of his Word:
Then shalt thou harbour my force and conquer Death.”
Savitri-476
“Not he who has reared his temple in my thoughts
And made his sacred floor my human heart.
My God is will and triumphs in his paths,
My God is love and sweetly suffers all.
To him I have offered hope for sacrifice
And gave my longings as a sacrament.”
Savitri-591
“I am, I love, I see, I act, I will.”
Savitri-594
“The soul is a figure of the Unmanifest,
The mind labours to think the Unthinkable,
The life to call the Immortal into birth,
The body to enshrine the Illimitable.
The world is not cut off from Truth and God.”
Savitri-648
“My mind is a torch lit from the eternal sun,
My life a breath drawn by the immortal Guest,
My mortal body is the Eternal’s house.
Already the torch becomes the undying ray,
Already the life is the Immortal’s force,
The house grows of the householder part and one.
How sayst thou Truth can never light the human mind
And Bliss can never invade the mortal’s heart
Or God descend into the world he made?”
Savitri-648
“Action translates the movements of the soul,
Thought steps infallible and absolute
And life is a continual worship’s rite,
A sacrifice of rapture to the One.”
Savitri-662
“The Unseen’s eye that looks at the unseen,
When Light with a golden ecstasy fills his brain
And the Eternal’s wisdom drives his choice
And eternal Will seizes the mortal’s will.”
Savitri-665
“You shall reveal to them the hidden eternities,
The breath of infinitudes not yet revealed,
Some rapture of the bliss that made the world,
Some rush of the force of God’s omnipotence,
Some beam of the omniscient Mystery.”
Savitri-704
“A greater truth than earth’s shall roof-in earth
And shed its sunlight on the roads of mind;
A power infallible shall lead the thought,
A seeing Puissance govern life and act,
In earthly hearts kindle the Immortal’s fire.”
Savitri-707
“And hearts grow enamoured of divine delight
And human wills tune to the divine will,
These separate selves the Spirit’s oneness feel,”
Savitri-710
“A divine force shall flow through tissue and cell
And take the charge of breath and speech and act
And all the thoughts shall be a glow of suns
And every feeling a celestial thrill.”
Savitri-710
“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.”²¹
Sri Aurobindo
“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.”²⁸
Sri Aurobindo
“The supramental will is the dynamic expression of this self-knowledge, the supramental feeling the expression of the luminous joy of the self and all else in supermind a part of this one movement. At its highest range it becomes something greater than what we call knowledge; there it is the essential and integral self-awareness of the Divine in us, his being, consciousness, Tapas, Ananda, and all is the harmonious, unified, luminous movement of that one existence.” CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-831
Sri Aurobindo
Integral Yoga identifies that the inability to reconcile Karma Yoga with Jnana and Bhakti Yoga or inability to reconcile the harmony of outer life with inner life is a ‘maimed achievement.’⁴¹
“The exceedingly dear, atiba priya devotee is he who makes Divine 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.”¹¹
“Of these four kinds of noble devotees, the man of Knowledge with strong foundation of Karma and Bhakti Yoga, is dear to Me and I am supremely dear to him. He is ever in constant union with the Me, nitya yukta, and his devotion is concentrated on Me alone, ekabhakti. He loves Divine perfectly and is His beloved. He is the greatest Yogi. I hold him as verily Myself and he accepts Me as highest goal of Divine union. 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.”¹²
“And by doing also all actions always lodged in Me he attains by My Grace the eternal and imperishable status. Devoting all thyself to Me, giving up thy conscious mind all the action into Me, resorting to Yoga of the will and intelligence, be always one in heart and consciousness with Me.”²⁴
Supramental transformation work can be accelerated by calling down of the Divine Will of Karma Yoga, Divine Wisdom of Jnana Yoga and Divine Love of Bhakti Yoga. The Gita proposes that the Divine Will can be called down by silencing the personal will and by not initiating any work, sarbarambha parityagi; the Divine Wisdom can be called down by becoming indifferent towards world event, earthly joy, mental wisdom, udasina,and without thinking anything, na kinchit api chintayet; the Divine Love can be called down by expecting nothing from the Divine Lover and His creation, anapekhya. These are hinted in Savitri:
Supramental Transformation through Karma Yoga
“But since the integral transformation must embrace fully the dynamic being and take up into it the life of action and the world-self outside us, this completer change is demanded of the evolving nature.” ⁶¹
“Above blind fate and the antagonist powers
Moveless there stands a high unchanging Will;
To its omnipotence leave thy work’s result.
All things shall change in God’s transfiguring hour.”
Savitri-341
“Omnipotence, girdle with the power of God
Movements and moments of a mortal will,
Pack with the eternal might one human hour
And with one gesture change all future time.”
Savitri-345
“A seed shall be sown in Death’s tremendous hour,
A branch of heaven transplant to human soil;
Nature shall overleap her mortal step;
Fate shall be changed by an unchanging will.”
Savitri-346
“When superman is born as Nature’s king
His presence shall transfigure Matter’s world:”
Savitri-708
Supramental Transformation through Jnana Yoga:
“An unshaped consciousness desired light
And a blank prescience yearned towards distant change.”
Savitri-2
“A deeper interpretation greatened Truth,
A grand reversal of the Night and Day;
All the world’s values changed heightening life’s aim;
A wiser word, a larger thought came in
Than what the slow labour of human mind can bring,
A secret sense awoke that could perceive
A Presence and a Greatness everywhere.”
Savitri-42
“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
“When Nature who is now unconscious God
Translucent grows to the Eternal’s light,
Her seeing his sight, her walk his steps of power
And life is filled with a spiritual joy
And Matter is the Spirit’s willing bride.”
Savitri-538
“A voice began to speak from her own heart
That was not hers, yet mastered thought and sense.
As it spoke all changed within her and without;
All was, all lived; she felt all being one;
The world of unreality ceased to be:”
Savitri-554
“A Force descended trailing endless lights;
Linking Time’s seconds to infinity,
Illimitably it girt the earth and her:
It sank into her soul and she was changed.”
Savitri-573
“The supermind shall be his nature’s fount,
The Eternal’s truth shall mould his thoughts and acts,
The Eternal’s truth shall be his light and guide.
All then shall change, a magic order come
Overtopping this mechanical universe.”
Savitri-707
“But first high Truth must set her feet on earth
And man aspire to the Eternal’s light
And all his members feel the Spirit’s touch
And all his life obey an inner Force.”
Savitri-708
Supramental Transformation through Bhakti Yoga:
“A touch (of Divine Love) can alter the fixed front of Fate.
A sudden turn can come, a road appear.
A greater Mind, may see a greater Truth,
Or we may find when all the rest has failed
Hid in ourselves the key of perfect change.”
Savitri-256
“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 (Love) 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
“Awakened to the meaning of my heart
That to feel love and oneness is to live
And this the magic of our golden change,
Is all the truth I know or seek, O sage.”
Savitri-724
Supramental Transformation through Yoga of Self-perfection:
“A prayer, a master act, a king idea
Can link man’s strength to a transcendent Force.
Then miracle is made the common rule,
One mighty deed can change the course of things;
A lonely thought becomes omnipotent.”
Savitri-20
“High priests of wisdom, sweetness, might and bliss,
Discoverers of beauty’s sunlit ways
And swimmers of Love’s laughing fiery floods
And dancers within rapture’s golden doors,
Their tread one day shall change the suffering earth
And justify the light on Nature’s face.”
Savitri-344
“Authors of earth’s high change, to you it is given
To cross the dangerous spaces of the soul
And touch the mighty Mother stark awake
And meet the Omnipotent in this house of flesh
And make of life the million-bodied One.”
Savitri-370
“Thy spirit’s strength shall make thee one with God,
Thy agony shall change to ecstasy,
Indifference deepen into infinity’s calm
And joy laugh nude on the peaks of the Absolute.”
Savitri-455
“All underwent a high celestial change:
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
“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
“The Spirit shall be the master of his world
Lurking no more in form’s obscurity
And Nature shall reverse her action’s rule,
The outward world disclose the Truth it veils;
All things shall manifest the covert God,
All shall reveal the Spirit’s light and might
And move to its destiny of felicity.”
Savitri-708
“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.”⁶³
The Injunction issued to the seekers of integral Yoga of Self-perfection
“To seize the absolute in shapes that pass,
To fix the eternal’s touch in time-made things,
This is the law of all perfection here.”
Savitri-108
“A fiery stillness wakes the slumbering cells,
A passion of the flesh becoming spirit,
And marvellously is fulfilled at last
The miracle for which our life was made.”
Savitri-278
“On the other side of the eternal stairs
The mighty kingdoms of the deathless Flame
Aspired to reach the Being’s absolutes.”
Savitri-279
“A glorious shining Angel of the Way
Presented to the seeking of the soul
The sweetness and the might of an idea,
Each (idea) deemed Truth’s intimate fount and summit force,
The heart of the meaning of the universe,
Perfection’s key, passport to Paradise.
Yet were there regions where these absolutes met”
Savitri-281
“Carving perfection from a bright world-stuff,”
Savitri-301
“In this vast outbreak of perfection’s law
Imposing its fixity on the flux of things
He saw a hierarchy of lucent planes
Enfeoffed to this highest kingdom of God-state.”
Savitri-325-26
“This bright perfection of her inner state
Poured overflowing into her outward scene,
Made beautiful dull common natural things
And action wonderful and time divine.”
Savitri-532
“There the perfection born from eternity
Calls to it the perfection born in Time,
The truth of God surprising human life,
The image of God overtaking finite shapes.”
Savitri-561
“But the Divine is in his essence infinite and his manifestation too is multitudinously infinite. If that is so, it is not likely that our true integral perfection in being and in nature can come by one kind of realisation alone; it must combine many different standards of divine experience. It cannot be reached by the exclusive pursuit a single line of identity till that is raised to its absolute; it must harmonise many aspects of the Infinite. An integral consciousness with a multiform dynamic experience is essential for the complete transformation of our nature.”⁶²
Integral Yoga of Self-perfection begins after a Sadhaka is established sufficiently in three movements of Consciousness of Divine Powers of Will, Knowledge and Love through Karma, Jnana and Bhakti Yoga respectively.
1) All Life is kinetic Yoga of Self-Perfection. All life, we have said, is a Yoga of Nature; here in this material world life is her reaching out from her first Inconscience towards a return to union with the conscient Divine from whom She proceeded. The Yoga of Self-perfection is extended through all life in three stages. Firstly, in the integral Yoga perfection will mean a divine Spirit and a divine Nature which will admit of a Divine relation and action in the world; it will mean also in its entirety a Divinising of the whole nature, a rejection of all its wrong knots of being and action, but no rejection of any part of our being or of any field of our action. The approach to perfection must be therefore a large and complex movement and its results and workings will have an infinite and varied scope. We must fix in order to find a clue and method on certain essential and fundamental elements and requisites of perfection, siddhi; for if these are secured, all the rest will be found to be only their natural development or particular working. Secondly, the conversion action is an integral conversion of our ethical being into the Truth and Right of the divine Nature, of intellectual into the illumination of divine Knowledge, our emotional into the divine Love and Unity, our dynamic and volitional into a working of the divine Power, our aesthetic into a plenary reception and a creative Enjoyment of divine Beauty, not excluding even in the end a divine conversion of the vital and physical Sheaths. The ethical mind becomes perfect in proportion as it detaches itself from desire, sense suggestion, impulse, and customary dictated action and discovers a self of Right, Love, Strength and Purity in which it can live accomplished and make it the foundation of all its actions. The aesthetic mind is perfected in proportion as it detaches itself from all its cruder pleasures, and from outward conventional canons of the aesthetic reason and discovers a self-existent Self and Spirit of pure and infinite Beauty and Delight which gives its own light and joy to the material of the aesthesis. The mind of knowledge is perfected when it gets away from impression and dogma and opinion and discovers a light of Self-knowledge and Intuition which illumines all the workings of the sense and reason, all self-experience and world-experience. The will is perfected when it gets away from and behind its impulses and its customary grooves of effectuation and discovers an inner power of the Spirit which is the source of an Intuitive and luminous action and an original harmonious creation. Thirdly, intellectual, volitional, ethical, emotional, aesthetic and physical training and improvement are all satisfying to human perfection, but they are only in the end a constant movement in a circle without any last delivering and illumining aim, unless they arrive at a point where they can open themselves to the power and presence of the Spirit and admit its direct working. This direct Divine working of the Shakti effects a conversion and transformation of the whole being which is the indispensable condition of our real and integral perfection. To grow into the truth and power of the Spirit and by the direct action of that Power to be made a fit channel of its self-expression, a living of man in the Divine Consciousness and a Divine living of the Spirit in humanity, --will therefore be the principle and the whole object of an integral Yoga of Self-perfection.
2) For all perfection, the first pre-requisite is purification, suddhi of our untransformed Nature. Mind, heart, the soul of vital desire and the life in the body are the seats of impurity. Purification is a throwing away of limiting, binding, obscuring imperfections and confusions. Purification from desire brings the freedom of Psychic prana, purification from wrong emotions and troubling reactions bring freedom of the heart, purification from obscuring limited thought of sense mind brings freedom of the intelligence, purification from mere intellectuality brings the freedom of Gnosis.
3) Purification is the condition of liberation, Mukti. The Mukti of the Gita’s Yoga is identified in negative sense as liberation from four elements of desire, ego, dualities and three gunas. It is a release of self-extinction, a self-drowning in the Absolute, a dissolution of natural existence into some indefinable Absolute, moksa. Mukti of the integral Yoga in negative sense is to be desireless, ego-less, equal of mind, soul and Spirit and freedom from three gunas, nistraigunya; its positive sense of freedom is to be universal in Soul, transcendently one in Spirit with God and possessed of highest Divine Nature. Thus, in integral Yoga the liberation from untransformed impure Nature in a quiescent Bliss of the Spirit and a farther liberation and transformation of Nature by supreme kinetic Bliss, Power and Knowledge are indispensable and a Divine union of Supreme Spirit and Supreme Nature is integral liberation,⁵² Mukti. ‘There are all kinds of freedom – mental freedom, vital freedom, spiritual freedom – which are the fruits of successive masteries. But a completely new freedom has become possible with the Supramental Manifestation: it is the freedom of the body.”58
4) Mukti is the condition of Siddhi, perfection. Jatatam api siddhanam kaschinnam betti tatwatah, (the Gita-7.3) Those who strive and attain perfection among them very few know Me in all the principles of My Existence. Thus, very few can attain integral Perfection. Perfection is defined as a growth out of a lower undivine into a higher Divine nature. The first determining factor of Perfection, siddhi is the intensity of the Soul turning inward which can be activated either by the aspiration of the Soul or by the force of the will or by the concentration of the mind. Integral perfection is founded on a certain free universality of being, of love and joy, of play of knowledge and of play of will in power and will in unegoistic action.
5) Integral Yoga proposes six elements of perfection. They are perfection (1) of equality, samata, Shanti chatushtayam, (2) of Power, Shakti, Shakti-chatushtayam, (3) of evolution of mental into Gnostic being, Vijnana-chatusthayam, (4) of evolution of the physical body, Sharira-chatushtayam, (5) of action and enjoyment, Karma-chatushtayam and (6) of Brahmic unity, Brahma-chatushtayam. So here the perfection of Consciousness is divided into six elements that of (1) perfection of equality which is the normal state of an infinite Spiritual Consciousness, (2) perfection of dynamic state of consciousness known as Prakriti, Shakti and Maya; (3) perfection or supramentalisation of mental state of consciousness which is aware of things and forces in their apparent division and opposition to each other but not in their real unity, reflects new ideas as facts of life, modifies comfortably the internal and the external existence of the being, delivers out of its imprisonment but it is not yet master of the act and form and is aware therefore only of a fragmentary movement of its own total progressive activities; (4) perfection of physical consciousness which is a submerged consciousness, self-oblivious, and is lost in the form; this body consciousness is a patient servant and what it craves for is long life, good health, physical strength and comfortable easy life and the right action of the physical consciousness is distorted by the pressure of separative consciousness of physical mind; (5) perfection of action which is a consciousness of Divine will applying itself to the work and result and perfection of Delight which is the outcome of interaction and union of Knowledge and Will or Sat and Chit; (6) perfection of static state of Consciousness known as Purusha, Ishwara and Brahman.
6) The first element of Perfection of Equality: The perfection of equality are of six types, three passive equality that of endurance, titikha, indifference, udasinata and submission, nati, and three active equality that of equal taste of enjoyment, sama rasa, equal enjoyment of life, sama bhoga and equal delight, sama ananda. After firm establishment of equality, one gets peace, shanti; after establishment of peace, one feels Spiritual ease in all circumstances known as sukha; after establishment of Spiritual ease, one experiences exceeding bliss or the joy and laughter of the Soul, hasya. This is the normal state of a Spiritual man, siddha.
7) The second element of Perfection of Shakti: The Perfection of Shakti are of four type that (1) of perfection of four-fold Soul force, virya, (2) of perfection of four instrumental Nature, Shakti, (3) of perfection of four-fold Spiritual force, Divine Shakti, daivi Prakriti and (4) of perfection of faith, sraddha.
8) The Perfection of first element of Shakti, the soul Power, Virya: The perfection of fundamental Soul powers,virya or atmasiddhi are of four types that of Brahmana, Kshatriya, Vaisya, Shudra. The greater perfection of man comes when he enlarges himself to include all these four Soul powers and open his nature towards the rounded fullness and universal capacity. Our life is at once an inquiry after truth and knowledge, a battle and adventure of consciousness, a constant production, and adaptation, application of skill to material life and a sacrifice and service and doing of good of all creatures. The Yoga of Self-perfection gives this soul-force ‘its largest scope’ and develops integral spiritual dynamism. The full consummation comes in greatest souls most capable of perfection and can be attained by all who practice integral Yoga.
8a) The perfection of Brahmana soul-force is perfection of soul power of knowledge which is open to every kind of revelation, inspiration, intuition, Supramental discrimination, Supramental word, Supramental love, Supramental Delight, Supramental Peace and Silence.
8b) The perfection of Kshatriya soul-force is a high nobility of soul and 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.
8c) The perfection of Vaysya soul-force is a soul-power of mutuality, a free self-giving and spending of gift and possession in the work to be done, a skill that observes the law and adopts the relation and keeps the measure, a divine commerce, a large enjoyment of the mutual delight of life.
8d), The perfection of Shudra soul-force is 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, the self-surrender of the whole being to the Master of our being and his work in the world.
9) The perfection of second element of Shakti: The perfection of right Shakti is the perfection of essential modes of self-existence, tattvasiddhi which is of four types of instrumental Nature that of perfection of (1) body, (2) vital or psychic prana, (3) heart, citta and (4) intelligence, buddhi. It must be remembered that the purification of instrumental Nature must precede its perfection.
9a) The first element of perfection of instrumental Nature, the body: the perfection of body is of four types that of a greatness of sustaining force, mahattva, an abounding strength, energy and puissance of outgoing and managing force, bala, a lightness, swiftness and adaptability of the nervous and physical being, laghuta and a holding and responsive power in the whole physical machine and its driving springs, dharana-samarthya.
9b) The second element of perfection of instrumental Nature, the vital: the perfection of psychic prana are of four types that of fullness, purnata, clear purity and gladness, prasannata, equality, samata, capacity for possession and enjoyment, bhoga-samarthya.
9c) The third element of perfection of instrumental Nature, the heart: the perfection of chitta is of four types that of sweetness and mildness, saumya, strength and force, raudra, faith, kalyana-sraddha, illimitable widest and intensest capacity for love, prema-samarthya.
9d) The fourth element of perfection of the instrumental Nature: the perfection of buddhi is of four types that of purity, visuddhi, clear and strong radiance emanating from the sun of the Truth, prakasha, capable of variety of understanding, supple, rich, flexible, brilliant with all the flame and various with all the colours of the manifestation of the Truth, vichitra-bodha and integral capacity to hold all kind of exclusive and comprehensive knowledge, sarva-jnana-samarthya.
10) The Perfection of the third element of Shakti, Daivi Prakriti: The perfection of four instrumental nature that of intellect, heart, vital and body and of four soul nature that of Brahamana, Kshyatria, Vaisya and Shudra will grow depending on our surrender and activation of Divine Shakti, which are direct action of four Spiritual Mother Powers, chatwaromanabastatha, that of Maheswari, Mahakali, Mahalakshmi and Mahasaraswati.
10a) Maheswari: She is the Goddess of supreme knowledge, calm and passion of Supramental largeness.
10b) Mahakali: She is the Goddess of supreme Strength, power of swift Spiritual evolution, destroyer of all Falsehood.
10c: Mahalakshmi: She is the Goddess of supreme Delight, Love, Harmony and Beauty.
10d: Mahasaraswati: She is the Goddess of supreme Divine skill, material perfection of all works and executrix power of Divine Will.
11) The Perfection of fourth element of Shakti, Sraddha: The perfect faith is a prolonged ascent of the whole being to the truth seen by it and prolonged descent of the Divine Shakti to untransformed mind, life and body.
11a) First we have to keep this faith that nothing done in us or around us is in vain; all happenings are the workings under the universal condition of supreme self-Knowledge and Divine Will.
11b) All things are possible when the Ishwara as our supreme Self takes up the action and all that had taken place before and all that will be done here after was and will be part of Divine’s infallible and foreseeing guidance, intended for the fruition of our Yoga and perfection of our life.
11c) He holds us always during our Spiritual rise and even during our Spiritual fall His hand still holds us tightly but He makes our fall an occasion of greater rise of Consciousness.
11d) The highest state of Sraddha, helps us towards permanent ascent of Consciousness to supreme state and permanent descent of supreme Consciousness towards nether untransformed domains.
12) The third element of Perfection of evolution of mental into Gnostic being: The whole mind is made the passive channel of the Supramental activities. Therefore, the next step of perfection will be the evolution of the mental into the Gnostic being. This evolution is achieved by a breaking beyond the mental limitation, a stride upward into the next higher plane of region of our being hidden from us at present by the shining lid of the mental reflections and a conversion of all that we are into the terms of this greater Consciousness…
13) The fourth element of Perfection of the body: The body is made a channel of Supramental downflow and the same force outflows towards the outward world, the material existence. There is accordingly a profound transformation in the physical sense, a supramentalising of the physical sight, hearing, touch, smell and taste, that reveals to us something quite different view, develops behind them the inner and deeper senses which are hidden from physical organs and farther transforms them to completely new powers in all the senses, an extension of range and stretching out of the physical consciousness to an undreamed capacity. Thus Supramental removes physical limitation of falsehood in the material way of experience. The Supramental transformation enlarges the physical consciousness far beyond the limit of the body and physical organs become channel of psychic, spiritual and subliminal senses.
14) The fifth element of Perfection of perfect action and enjoyment: In the Gnostic consciousness it is entirely possible to act and enjoy perfectly. The Purusha enters union with Prakriti in cosmic manifestation for variations of his infinite existence, for knowledge, action and enjoyment. By this realisation the being can liberate himself from the mechanical action of Nature. This separative relation in Ignorance is uplifted in Knowledge as Krishna and Kali or Ishwara and Shakti union where Ishwara is Purusha who contains Prakritiand rules by the power of Shakti within him and it can participate in a higher dynamism of Divine work and can bring total unity and harmony of the being in the Spiritual nature. But neither action nor enjoyment will be the lower action of the gunas and consequent egoistic enjoyment mostly of the satisfaction of rajasic desire which is our present way of bounded living. Whatever desire will remain, if that name is given, will be the Divine desire, the will to delight of the Purusha enjoying in his freedom and perfection the action of the perfected Prakriti and all her members…
15) The sixth element of Perfection of Brahmic Unity: The Siddha of perfected Soul will live in union with the Purushottama in this Brahmic Consciousness, he will be conscious in the Brahman that is the All, sarvam brahma, in the Brahman infinite in being and infinite in quality, anantam brahma, in Brahman as self-existent consciousness and universal knowledge, jnanam brahma, in Brahman as the self-existent bliss and its universal delight of being, anandam brahma. He will experience the entire universe as manifestation of the One, all quality and action as the play of his universal and infinite energy, all knowledge and conscious experience as the outflowing of that consciousness, and all in terms of that one Ananda. This will be the highest reach of self-perfection.
Recapitulation
“Each part in us desires its absolute.”
Savitri-170
For by the form the Formless is brought close
And all perfection fringes the Absolute.”
Savitri-179
His finite parts approached their absolutes,
His actions framed the movements of the Gods,
His will took up the reins of cosmic Force.”
Savitri-302
All objects were to her shapes of living selves”
Savitri-357
“Fear not to be nothing that thou mayst be all;
Assent to the emptiness of the Supreme
That all in thee may reach its absolute.”
Savitri-536
“Since in Infinity’s silence woke a word,
A Mother-wisdom works in Nature’s breast
To pour delight on the heart of toil and want
And press perfection on life’s stumbling powers,
Impose heaven-sentience on the obscure abyss
And make dumb Matter conscious of its God.”
Savitri-353-54
“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.”⁴⁴
Sri Aurobindo
Of all the Yogins the greatest Yogi, yoginam api sarvesam²⁹…yogi paramo,³⁰ as indicated in the Gita, is a state in which he lives, acts in perfect union with the Divine, mayi nivasisyasi,³³ 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,³¹ 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.³² 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.
¹²³⁴⁵⁶⁷⁸⁹¹⁰
OM TAT SAT
References
1: The Gita-5.2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9,
2: The Gita-18.18,
3: The Gita-10.7 to 11,
4: The Gita-6.31, 32,
5: The Gita-6.47,
6: The Gita-12.2,
7: The Gita-11.55,
8: The Gita-12.6, 7,
9: The Gita-18.46,
10: The Gita-7.28, 29,
11: The Gita-12.20,
12: The Gita-7.17, 18, 19,
13: “The Gita insists that Sankhya and Yoga are not two different, incompatible and discordant systems, but one in their principle and aim; they differ only in their method and starting-point. The Sankhya also is a Yoga, but it proceeds by knowledge; it starts, that is to say, by intellectual discrimination and analysis of the principles of our being and attains its aim through the vision and possession of the Truth. Yoga, on the other hand, proceeds by works; it is in its first principle Karmayoga; but it is evident from the whole teaching of the Gita and its later definitions that the word karma is used in a very wide sense and that by Yoga is meant the selfless devotion of all the inner as well as the outer activities as a sacrifice to the Lord of all works, offered to the Eternal as Master of all the soul’s energies and austerities.” CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-70,
14: CWSA/19/Essays on the Gita-199,
15: The Gita-5.17,
16: The Gita-3.7,
17: The Gita-5.10,
18: CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-200,
19: The Gita-15.16, 17, 18, 19,
20: The Gita-9.13, 14, 15, 34,
21: CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-276,
22: The Gita-11.48, 54,
23: The Gita-18.54, 55,
24: The Gita-18.56, 57,
25: The Gita-3.3,
26: “The Blessed Lord said: 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.” The Gita-5.2, “Better indeed is knowledge than practice, than knowledge, meditation is better; than meditation, renunciation of the fruit of action, on renunciation follows peace.” The Gita12.12, “One can progress through meditation, but through work provided it is done in the right spirit one can progress ten times more.” The Mother/(CWM-14, p. 299),
27: CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-564,
28: CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-575,
29: The Gita-6.47,
30: The Gita-6.32,
31: The Gita-10.19,
32: The Rig Veda-1.10.2,
33: “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,
34: CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-802-07,
35: CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-149,
36: SABCL-25/The Mother/p-16,
37: CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-86,
38: The Gita-2.60,
39: CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-548,
40: Prayers and Meditations/12th March,1914,
41: CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-92,
42: CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-112-113,
43: “Happy the worlds that have not felt our (Spiritual) fall,
Where Will is one with Truth and Good with Power;” Savitri-281,
44: CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-576,
45: CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-114,
46: CWSA-21/The Life Divine/p-31,
47: CWSA-32/The Mother with Letters on the Mother/p-20,
48: CWSA-32/The Mother with Letters on the Mother/p-22,
49: CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-791,
50: CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-322
51: CWSA-32/The Mother with Letters on the Mother/p-19,
52: “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 mayaccept 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-675,
53: CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-287,
54: CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-287-288,
55: CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-93,
56: CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-309,
57: CWSA-29/Letters on Yoga-II/p-254,
58: The Mother’s Agenda-17.10.1957,
59: “The seventh to the twelfth chapters (of the Gita) lay down a large metaphysical statement of the nature of the Divine Being and on that foundation closely relate and synthetise knowledge and devotion, just as the first part of the Gita related and synthetised works and knowledge.” CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-263,
60: CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-546,
61: CWS-22/The Life Divine/p-995-996,
62: CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-114,
63: CWSA-22/The Life Divine/p-1017
Two kinds of perfection: “But this is still a very incomplete movement. We find that it progresses towards a greater completeness in proportion as we arrive at two kinds of perfection; first, a greater and greater detachment from the control of the lower suggestions; secondly, an increasing discovery of a self-existent Being, Light, Power and Ananda which surpasses and transforms the normal humanity.... The movement of perfection is (1) away from all domination by the lower nature and (2) towards a pure and powerful reflection of the being, power, knowledge and delight of the Spirit and Self in the buddhi. The Yoga of self-perfection is to make this double movement as absolute as possible.”
Sri Aurobindo
CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-668-669
Double perfection of Integral Yoga: “But on the other hand incapacity of force is also an imperfection. (First perfection) Laxity and weakness, self-indulgence, a certain flabbiness and limpness or inert passivity of the psychical being are the last result of an emotional and psychic life in which energy and power of assertion have been quelled, discouraged or killed. Nor is it a total perfection to have only the strength that endures or to cultivate only a heart of love, charity, tolerance, mildness, meekness and forbearance. (Second perfection) The other side of perfection is a self-contained and calm and unegoistic Rudra-power armed with psychic force, the energy of the strong heart which is capable of supporting without shrinking an insistent, an outwardly austere or even, where need is, a violent action. An unlimited light of energy, force, puissance harmonised with sweetness of heart and clarity, capable of being one with it in action, the lightning of Indra starting from the orb of the nectarous moon-rays of Soma is the double perfection. And these two things(1) saumyatva, (2) tejas, must base their presence and action on a firm equality of the temperament and of the psychical soul delivered from all crudity and all excess or defect of the heart’s light or the heart’s power.”
Sri Aurobindo
CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-736-737