Sri Aurobindo’s yoga aims to establish the Divine Consciousness in matter. Even now It operates hidden behind and veiled as well as distorted by the outer and lower nature. The work is complex and vast.
At the Feet of The Mother
Talks in Hindi
Sri Aurobindo’s yoga is integral in nature, and knowledge, work and bhakti are its inevitable components. Whichever way we start, it slowly brings all the three streams and weaves them together.
Spiritual life is a life dedicated towards God realization or the seeking after Truth and Peace and Bliss. Religious life is however not so much of a seeking but living according to some belief systems. Sometimes religious life can be a preparation for the spiritual but very often it stops our progress by keeping us tied to certain fixed and limited formulas.
If knowledge is taken as light and work as path, then bhakti is the key to the divine doors. The talk brings us the significance, importance and the way to achieve it, with numerous examples.
The work of a karma yogi is a work from the highest state of his consciousness without being troubled by the consequences or the outcome. Sri Aurobindo himself has shown the path of perfect karma yoga in several ways.
Behind many accepted social or religious truths of human life we can see a spiritual truth. When these truths are followed without proper knowledge or out of fear, they hardly help in the growth of a person, because growth comes with the growth of the state of consciousness.
The talk dwells on various outlooks and attitudes one can take towards life and self and world, especially on the inner attitude behind our daily life. Many clues shown by The Divine Master and The Mother are given, along with the practical examples.
We have to be careful of our thoughts, as our outer circumstances in some way represent our inner state. Our personal suffering many a times is created by our ignorance.
The Mother wants to establish the highest divine Law here upon earth. There is a process through which this can be established with the collaboration of man. But first he must become conscious of the different levels of consciousness and their effects upon him.
Our real self, the soul is like a seed but that is covered by many layers of ignorance. Freedom from Ignorance through emergence of the soul and manifestation of its divine qualities in our life is fundamental to this yoga.
Sadhak should be able to see the inner forces at work behind the veil of appearances and above all, the divine intention behind the play. With this new vision a sadhak can dwell anywhere without being shaken by outer happenings.
It seems outwardly that in integral yoga there is minimum amount of rules, but in fact the rules are very subtle and demand far more vigilance, as they are an inner necessity rather than outer imposition. Also, the outer rules may not be the same for each individual as each one’s nature and stage different.
‘The Chariot of Jagannath’ is an ideal that Sri Aurobindo envisaged and explained in his early Bengali writings of the same name. It is the symbol of the collective development of Society with the Divine at its centre.
One’s inner attitude determines the way of spiritual life, so the path of genuine evolution opens from within outwards rather than outside in. An inner initiation spontaneously happens with the growth of inner preparation and opening. It could come like a Mantra, or a sentence or an experience. The whole of our life gets its true meaning from this awakening.
Equipped with sraddha and prarthana, the sadhaka can walk in the path of yoga confidently as he can feel the joy and protection of the Divine always with him.
In this yoga one needs faith that the Divine exists and will reveal Himself in response to our sincere aspiration by His own Grace. Once this fundamental faith is there, a thousand failures cannot stop him achieving the goal.
Many parts of our being are not open to the Divine, and we have to persist until they open too. Absence of fear and a complete surrender are the best conditions to be in whatever are the outer circumstances, and facilitate a wide opening.
Taking the truth of Vedanta as its base, Sri Aurobindo reveals us the Truth of future and the way of its manifestation. The whole creation is created by Ananda, dwelling in Ananda and proceeding towards Ananda. We have to realize the delight of the Divine in the essence as well as in the manifestation.