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At the Feet of The Mother

Selections from The Synthesis of Yoga

Selections from “The Synthesis of Yoga” by Sri Aurobindo
Total duration 3 hrs 42 minutes, recorded by Gopal Naik.
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POSTS with audio and text of each selection are below


Indian Yoga, in its essence a special action or formulation of certain great powers of Nature, itself specialised, divided and variously formulated, is potentially one of these dynamic elements of the future life of humanity.
Yogic methods have something of the same relation to the customary psychological workings of man as has the scientific handling of the force of electricity or of steam to their normal operations in Nature.
No synthesis of Yoga can be satisfying which does not, in its aim, reunite God and Nature in a liberated and perfected human life [...]. The true and full object and utility of Yoga can only be accomplished when [...] we can once more, looking out both on the path and the achievement, say in a more perfect and luminous sense: “All life is Yoga.”
The chief processes of Hathayoga are asana and prayama. By its numerous asanas or fixed postures it first cures the body of that restlessness which is a sign of its inability to contain without working them off in action and movement the vital forces poured into it from the universal Life-Ocean, gives to it an extraordinary health, force and suppleness ...
By the practice of truth, by renunciation of all forms of egoistic seeking, by abstention from injury to others, by purity, by constant meditation and inclination to the divine Purusha who is the true lord of the mental kingdom, a pure, glad, clear state of mind and heart is established.
The Path of Knowledge aims at the realisation of the unique and supreme Self. ... as ordinarily followed, (it) leads to the rejection of the phenomenal worlds from the consciousness as an illusion and the final immergence without return of the individual soul in the Supreme.
The principle of Bhakti Yoga is to utilise all the normal relations of human life into which emotion enters and apply them [...] to the joy of the All-Loving, the All-Beautiful and the All-Blissful. Worship and meditation are used only for the preparation and increase of intensity of the divine relationship.
The Path of Works aims at the dedication of every human activity to the supreme Will. It begins by the renunciation of all egoistic aim for our works, all pursuit of action for an interested aim or for the sake of a worldly result. By this renunciation it so purifies the mind and the will ...
[...] here still exists in India a remarkable Yogic system which is in its nature synthetical and starts from a great central principle of Nature, a great dynamic force of Nature; but it is a Yoga apart, not a synthesis of other schools. This system is the way of the Tantra.
Certainly, this is no short cut or easy sadhana. [...] For it implies three stages of which only the last can be wholly blissful or rapid,—the attempt of the ego to enter into contact with the Divine, the [...] preparation of the whole lower Nature by the divine working to receive and become the higher Nature, and the eventual transformation.
.... the divine Power in us uses all life as the means of this integral Yoga. Every experience and outer contact with our world-environment, however trifling or however disastrous, is used for the work, and every inner experience [...] becomes a step on the path to perfection.
For the sadhaka of the integral Yoga it is necessary to remember that no written Shastra, however great its authority or however large its spirit, can be more than a partial expression of the eternal Knowledge. He will use, but never bind himself even by the greatest Scripture.
Man .... wishes to be dazzled in order that he may see. And this impatience, this ignorance may turn into a great danger and disaster if .... we call in another distorting Force more satisfying to our impulses and desires and ask it to guide us and give it the Divine Name.
All Yoga is in its nature a new birth; it is a birth out of the ordinary, the mentalised material life of man into a higher spiritual consciousness and a greater and diviner being.
Our whole being—soul, mind, sense, heart, will, life, body—must consecrate all its energies so entirely and in such a way that it shall become a fit vehicle for the Divine. This is no easy task...
The Divine that we adore is not only a remote extra-cosmic Reality, but a half-veiled Manifestation present and near to us here in the universe. Life is the field of a divine manifestation not yet complete...