Not to Destroy but to Transform (HH 219)

Sri Aurobindo’s yoga makes many departures from traditional yogas, because with the experience and advent of the Supermind a new possibility opens for creation. Ordinarily spiritual life divides itself into two halves or two camps so to say. On the one side is the material life, the life upon earth in an earthly body. On the other side there is the spiritual life free from ignorance, conscious of the Divine Presence. But this consciousness of the Divine is felt and experienced as something far Above or deep within. It is the consciousness of the Divine who is beyond the manifestation. But in the supramental state one experiences the Divine not only as the Unmanifest but also in the Becoming, in the flow and flux of manifestation. It reveals that each and every element of creation not only has the Divine Presence within it but is actually moving towards a greater and greater divine becoming. Each movement of nature owes its origin to the Divine and therefore is capable to being uplifted to its divine possibility. It has a divine origin and therefore also a divine future. It is this that opens the door to transformation.

Words of Nolini da

Up till now, spiritual life or discipline usually meant a division — a division between spiritual and unspiritual, between what is a help and forms a base for the higher life and what hinders and takes one away from it. This naturally led one to develop the first and kill the other. But for us there is no such radical division. For us everything in its truth is spiritual. Indeed there are deformations, disfigurations, wrong knowledge of things, but there is nothing unspiritual. All that we have to do is to purify, correct, reform, transform and fulfil — not to destroy and annihilate.

We do not uproot the past but replace it. There is here no nirodha, suppression with a view to abolish. That is not our way. Ignorance does not imply absence of the Divine. One can find the Divine even in the Ignorance; in the very depths of the Inconscience the touch of the Divine can be felt. For not only is the Divine there but the Divine is that. There can be no real cutting apart of the Divine from the non-Divine. Only we must find him out, discover him in his true form shorn of the disguise. The disguise grows transparent and he emerges resplendent in his light. Not to reject or discard but to replace the wrong appearance with the right is our way. We merge our human volition into the Divine Will, turn all the obscure movements of our ignorance into true movements of the Divine Consciousness. We adore and worship and approach the Divine in all things and everywhere, in his true light and form. We strive to see him established and revealed in all existence.

All is divine and all is in the Divine. This truth is to be realised in life. To let him reveal himself in his own truth is our sadhana, our way. That is why for us “All life is Yoga.”

Even Ravana is destroyed not simply to be destroyed but to become an adorer of Rama.

To sacrifice does not merely mean to slay but to dedicate.