Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

02. Synthetic Method and Integral Yoga

Fragment ID: 866

Work by itself is only a preparation, so is meditation by itself, but work done in the increasing yogic consciousness is a means of realisation as much as meditation is.... I have not said, I hope, that work only prepares. Meditation also prepares for the direct contact. If we are to do work only as a preparation and then become motionless meditative ascetics, then all my spiritual teaching is false and there is no use for supramental realisation or anything else that has not been done in the past....

The ignorance underlying this attitude is in the assumption that one must necessarily do only work or only meditation. Either work is the means or meditation is the means, but both cannot be! I have never said, so far as I know, that meditation should not be done. To set up an open competition or a closed one between work and meditation is a trick of the dividing mind and belongs to the old yoga. Please remember that I have been declaring all along an integral yoga in which Knowledge, Bhakti, Works – light of consciousness, Ananda and love, will and power in works – meditation, adoration, service of the Divine have all their place. Meditation is not greater than yoga of works nor works greater than yoga by knowledge – both are equal.

Another thing– it is a mistake to argue from one’s own very limited experience, ignoring that of others and build on it large generalisations about yoga. This is what many do, but the method has obvious demerits. You have no experience of major realisations through works, and you conclude that such realisations are impossible. But what of the many who have had them – elsewhere and here too in the Ashram?

Don’t conclude however that I am exalting works as the sole means of realisation. I am only giving it its due place.