Sri Aurobindo

The Hour of God

and other writings

III. On Yoga

The Web of Yoga [9]

The aim put before itself by Yoga is God; its method is tapasya. God is the All and that which exceeds, transcends the All; there is nothing in existence which is not God but God is not anything in that existence, except symbolically, in image to His own consciousness. Humanity also is symbol or eidolon of God, we are made in His image; and by that is meant, not a formal image, but in the image of His being and personality, the essence of divinity, its quality, the divine being and divine knowledge.

There are in everything existing phenomenally or, as we shall say, symbolically, two parts, the thing in itself and the symbol, Self and Nature, res (thing that is) and factum (thing that is made), immutable being and mutable becoming, that which is supernatural in it and that which is natural.

Everything in existence has something in it which seeks to transcend itself; Matter moves towards becoming Life, Life moves towards becoming Mind, Mind moves towards becoming ideal Truth, ideal Truth rises to become divine and infinite Spirit. The reason is that every symbol, being a partial expression of God, reaches out to and seeks to become its own entire reality; it aspires to become its real self by transcending its apparent self. Thing that is made is attracted towards thing that is, becoming towards being, the natural to the supernatural, symbol towards thing in itself, Nature towards God.

The upward movement is the means towards fulfilment of existence in the world; downward movement is destruction, Hell, perdition. Everything tends (moves) upward; once it is assured of its actual existence it seeks the supernatural. Every nature is a step towards some supernature, something natural to itself but supernatural to what is below it. Life is supernatural to Matter, Mind supernatural to Life, ideal being supernatural to mental being, infinite being supernatural to ideal being. So too man is supernatural to the animal, God is supernatural to man. Man too as soon as he has assured his natural existence, must insist on his upward movement towards God. The upward movement is towards Heaven, the downward movement towards Hell.

The animal soul fulfils itself when it transcends animality and becomes human. Humanity also fulfils itself when it transcends humanity and becomes God.

By yielding to Nature, we fall away both from Nature and from God; by transcending Nature we at once fulfil all the possibilities of Nature and rise towards God. The human touches first the divine and then becomes divine.

There are those who seek to kill Nature in order to become the self; but that is not God's intention in humanity. We have to transcend Nature, not to kill it.

Every movement of humanity which seeks to deny Nature however religious, lofty, austere, of whatever dazzling purity or etheriality, is doomed to failure, sick disappointment, disillusion or perversion. It is in its nature transient, because it contradicts God's condition for us. He has set Nature there as a condition of His self-fulfilment in the world.

Every movement of humanity which bids us be satisfied with Nature, dwell upon the earth and cease to look upwards, however rational, clear-sighted, practical, effective, comfortable it may be is doomed to weariness, prettification and cessation. It is in its nature transient because it contradicts God's intention in us. He dwells secret in Nature and compels us towards Him by His irresistible attraction.

Materialistic movements are as unnatural and abnormal as ascetic and negatory religions and philosophy. Under the pretence of bringing us back to Nature, they take us away from her entirely; for they forget that Nature is only phenomenally Nature but in reality she is God. The divine element in her is that which she most really is; the rest is only condition, process and stage in her development of the secret divinity.

Not to be immersed, emmeshed and bound by Nature, not to hate and destroy her, is the first thing we must learn if we would be complete Yogins and proceed towards our divine perfection.

Being still natural in the world to transcend Nature internally, so that both internally and externally we may master and use her as free and lord, svarat samrat, is our fulfilment.

Being still the symbol to reach through it the being that symbolises itself, to realise the symbol, is our fulfilment.

Being still a figure of humanity, man among men, a living body among living bodies, though housed in life and matter yet a mental being among mental beings, being and remaining all this that we are apparently, yet to exceed all this apparent manhood and become in the body what we are really, God, Spirit supreme and infinite, pure Bliss, pure Force, pure Light, this is our fulfilment.

Our whole apparent life is a becoming, but all becoming has for its goal and fulfilment being — and God is the only being; to become divine in the nature of the world, in the symbol of our humanity is our fulfilment.

Yoga practised may be in its aim either perfect or partial, either selective or comprehensive. Perfect and comprehensive Yoga avoids limitation by aspects and leads to entire divinity.

In order to exceed our Nature and become divine, we must first get God; for we are the lower imperfect term of our being, He its higher perfect term. The finite, to become infinite, must know, love and touch infinity; the symbol being in order to become its own reality, must know, love and perceive that Reality.

This necessarily is the imperative justification of religion; not of a church, creed or theology, — for all these things are religiosity, not religion, — but that personal and intimate religious temper and spirit which moves man to worship, to aspire to or to pant after his own idea of the Supreme; for without such worship in the heart or such aspiration . In the will or such thirst in the emotions, we shall not have he impulse or the strength for this great difficult and supreme effort of human nature to transcend itself and climb to its super -nature. Therefore have the prophets spoken and the Avatars co to inspire man to that great call upon his upward straining energies. The aim of rationalism and Science is to make man content with his humanity and thus contradict Nature, baffling her evolution; the aim of religion, — but not unhappily of the creeds and churches, — is to further the great aim of Nature by pushing man towards his evolution.

The attainment of God is the true object of all human effort for which all the other efforts political, social, literary,— intellectual, are only a necessary condition and preparation of the race; but there are both differences in the state of the attainment, differences in its range and effectivity. These states of divine attainment may usefully be distinguished: touch with God, in- dwelling in Him, and becoming He. The first is initial and elementary; unless passing the veil of our ordinary nature we touch the divine Being or He leaning down imposes His touch on us, unless we come first into contact with Him either in our heart, our mind, our works or our being, we cannot go into (indwell in) Him. If we are strong in spirit, the touch may indeed be rapid and summary, we may wake at once and stride forward to the state of divine indwelling, soul of man in the Soul of God, the individual in the universal; but the touch must be there. To enforce this preliminary step, to bring man into some kind of contact with God, is the common and... the sole preoccupation of human religions. It does not matter greatly for its purpose how it is done; in however crude and elementary a way, through whatever intellectual errors and emotional blunders or ethical outrages, the touch must be established; this imperatively and above all things the religious spirit demands. Nature, as always her way, presses on to her all-important, immediate steps and is willing to purchase a single great and general gain by any number of particular losses. Man, besides, is so various in the arrangement of his human qualities; the master spring as well as the peculiar temperament differs so greatly or so subtly in each individual that there can never be for this purpose of nature's, too many sects, disciplines or different religions. Swami Vivekananda has well seen the consummation of religion in a stage when each human individual has his own religion dictated by his own spiritual needs and nature; for collective creeds, churches and theologies, in spite of their temporary necessity and some undeniable permanent advantages, help to formalise the upward effort and deprive it of its adaptability, freedom and perfect individual sincerity. The priest and dogma will seldom leave God and the soul free to reach each other in that solitude and spontaneity which gives the union its highest force and delight. They are always pressing in to control and preside at the marriage and legitimise it with formulas, Riks and official registration.

Moreover the intellect of natural man is narrow, his effort soon exhausted and easily satisfied with imperfection. If he is led to think that his way of contact with the Divine is the only way, his own freedom of higher development is fettered or entirely taken away from him and in his intellectual and religious egoism he militates against the freedom of others. Most religions tend easily to believe that the contact with God once established, no matter with what limitations or of what kind, all is done that needs to be done, all fulfilled that God demands of us. Popular religions tend naturally to be dualistic and to preserve trenchant distinction between man and God dividing the symbol being from that which expresses itself in him; while with one hand they raise man towards his super-nature, with the other they hold him down to his ordinary nature. The lower is suffused with the glow of the heights and touched with its power and rapture, but it does not itself rise into and dwell within it. At its lowest the dualistic soul keeps(mainatains) the taint of its imperfections; at its highest, unless in rare self-transcending moments, keeps itself distinct in awe and reverence from the divine Lover; worships at His feet but cannot hide itself in His bosom.

Therefore Nature still following his upward surge, has provided a mightier rank of human souls who are capable of going forward beyond this preliminary effort and, having entered into the very being of God, of dwelling there in beatitude. Entering into the consciousness of the Infinite, feeling it all around them and in them, ever thrilling with its touch, aware of identity with it in nature, joy and inner awareness, they yet preserve a constant separateness of their special being in that identity. They do not plunge themselves wholly into that divine ocean or, if they go slowly into it they keep hold on a fathom line which will preserve their touch with the surface. In nature such men are Vishishtadwaitins, souls not drawn towards entire oneness. But unless man plunges himself wholly into God caring not whether he reemerge, unless the human sacrifices himself wholly to the divinity, keeping back no particle of his being, not even the last particle of separateness of the individual ego, the divine purpose in man cannot be utterly accomplished. Therefore Nature or the Will of God — for Nature is nothing but the Will of God in action — has provided that some having indwelt in God, human soul in divine soul, shall be irresistibly called immediately, with brief respite or at long last to the utter immersion. They go inward and throwaway the last trace of ego into God. Some of them, it has been said by a great teacher, are jivakotis, human beings leaning so pre-eminently to the symbol-nature, that, if they had lost it albeit for a while in the Reality, they lose themselves; once immersed, they cannot return; they are lost in God to humanity; others are isvarakotis, human beings whose centre has already been shifted upwards or from the beginning elevated in the superior planes of conscious existence, was established in God rather than Nature. Such men are already leaning down from God to Nature; they therefore may, in losing themselves in Him yet keep themselves and live in Man-God; they do not depart from their centre but rather go through it; arrived they are able to lean down again to humanity. Those who can thus emerge from their truth of God are the final helpers of humanity and are chosen by God and Nature to prepare the type of super natural men to which our humanity is rising.

There are, then, these three divine conditions, states separately conceived of humanity's God-attainment. Man being limited in energy and discrimination rather than catholic in intellect, fastens usually on this separate conception and limits himself to one or other of these conditions Yogic method, also, being careful of the different natures of men, suits itself to their limitations, becomes selective and concentrates upon one of these conditions or another. Or even it becomes partial as well as selective; for in its contact with God, it relates itself to a part of divine quality rather than the perfect divinity, to a God of mercy, a God of justice, the Divine Master, the Divine Friend, or else with some aspect of divine impersonal being, to Infinite Rapture, to Infinite Force or to Infinite Calm and Purity. In the indwelling there may be the same limitations, in the becoming also they may persist. There is no fault to be found with this selective process or with this partiality. They are necessary; human limitations demand this device; human perfectibility itself finds its account in these concessions. Nature knows her task and she proceeds to it with a wide, flexible and perfect wisdom which smiles at our impatient logical narrowness and rigid, one-sighted consistencies. She knows she has an infinitely complex and variable material to deal with and must be infinitely complex and variable in her methods. We only consider precise method and ultimate fulfilment; she has to reckon on her way with thousand-armed struggles and infinite possibilities.

Nevertheless, the ultimate aim and the perfect and comprehensive Yoga is that which embraces rather than selects. We are meant to be within the symbol of humanity what God is in Himself and Universally. Now God is free, absolute from these limitations and all-comprehensive. He is always one in his being, yet both one with and separate from his symbols and in that differentiated oneness able to stand quite apart from them. So we too in our ultimate divine realisation when we have become one with our divine Self, may and should be able also to stand out as the self at once of all things and beings, yet differentiated in the symbol, so as to enjoy a blissful divided closeness such as that of the Lover and Beloved mingling yet separate in their rapture; and may and should even be able to stand away from God with a sort of entire separateness holding His hand still, unlike the pure dualist, but still standing away from Him so that we may enjoy that infinity of human relation with God which is the wonder and beauty and joy of dualistic religions. To accomplish this is the full or the Purna Yoga and the Sadhak who can attain to it is in his condition the cornplete Yogin.

Is such a triune condition of the possible? Logically, it would seem impossible; logically, all trinities are chimeras and a thing must be one thing at a time and cannot combine three such divergent states as oneness, differentiated oneness and effective duality. But .in these matters an inch of experience goes farther than a yard of logic, and experience, you will find, affirms that the triune God-state is perfectly possible and simple once you have attained God's fullness. We must not apply to the soul a logic which is based on the peculiarities of matter. It is true of a clod that it cannot be at the same time a clod hanging up or posted on some bough, a clod protruding from the earth or a shapeless mass trodden into the mother soil. But this is because the clod is divided from the earthly form. The soul is not divided from God by these barriers of material dimension. What is true of matter is not true of spirit, nor do the standards of form apply to the formless. For matter is conscious being confined in form, the spirit is conscious being using form but not confined in it; and it is the privilege of spirit that though indivisible in its pure being, it is freely self-divisible in its conscious experience and can concentrate itself in many states at a time. It is by this Tapas, by this varied concentration of self-knowledge that Divine Existence creates and supports the world and is at once the same God and Nature and World, Personal and Impersonal, Pure and Varied, Qualitied and without Qualities, Krishna and Kali, and Shiva and Brahma and Vishnu, man and animal and vegetable and stone, all aspects of Himself and all symbols. We need not doubt therefore that we, recovering our divine reality, shall not be bound to a single condition or aspect but can command a triune or even a multiple soul-experience. We, becoming God, become that which is the All and exceeds and transcends the All, sarvabhūtāni āttmaivābhūd vijānatah. The soul of the perfect knower becomes all existent things and That transcendental in which all things have their existence, ihaiva, without ceasing to possess a human centre of separate experience. For this is the entire divinity that is the result of the perfect and comprehensive Yoga.