THE
principle of Yoga is the turning of one or of all powers
of our human existence into a means of reaching the
divine Being. In an ordinary Yoga one main power of
being or one group of its powers is made the means,
vehicle, path. In a synthetic Yoga all powers will be
combined and included in the transmuting instrumentation.
In Hathayoga the instrument is the body and life. All
the power of the body is stilled, collected, purified,
heightened, concentrated to its utmost limits or beyond
any limits by Asana and other physical processes; the
power of the life too is similarly purified, heightened,
concentrated by Asana and Pranayama. This concentration
of powers is then directed towards that physical centre
in which the divine consciousness sits concealed in
the human body. The power of Life, Nature-power, coiled
up with all its secret forces asleep in the lowest nervous
plexus of the earth-being,—for only so much escapes
into waking action in our normal operations as is sufficient
for the limited uses of human life,—rises awakened
through centre after centre and awakens, too, in its
ascent and passage the forces of each successive nodus
of our being, the nervous life, the heart of emotion
and ordinary mentality, the speech, sight, will, the
higher knowledge, till through and above the brain it
meets with and it becomes one with the divine consciousness.
In Rajayoga the chosen instrument is the mind. Our ordinary
mentality is first disciplined, purified and directed
towards the divine Being, then by a summary process
of Asana and Pranayama the physical force of our being
is stilled and concentrated, the life-force released
into a rhythmic movement capable of cessation and concentrated
into a higher power of its upward action, the mind,
supported and strengthened by this greater action and
concentration of the body and life upon which it rests,
is itself purified of all its unrest and emotion and
its habitual thought-waves, liberated from distraction
and dispersion, given its highest force of concentration,
gathered up into a trance of absorption. Two objects,
the one temporal, the other eternal, are gained by this
discipline. Mind-power develops in another concentrated
action abnormal capacities of knowledge, effective will,
deep light of reception, powerful light of thought-radiation
which are altogether beyond the narrow range of our
normal mentality; it arrives at the Yogic or occult
powers around which there has been woven so much quite
dispensable and yet perhaps salutary mystery. But the
one final end and the one all-important gain is that
the mind, stilled and cast into a concentrated trance,
can lose itself in the divine consciousness and the
soul be made free to unite with the divine Being.
The triple way takes for its chosen instruments the
three main powers of the mental soul-life of the human
being. Knowledge selects the reason and the mental vision
and it makes them by purification, concentration and
a certain discipline of a God-directed seeking its means
for the greatest knowledge and the greatest vision of
all, God-knowledge and God-vision. Its aim is to see,
know and be the Divine. Works, action selects for its
instrument the will of the doer of works; it makes life
an offering of sacrifice to the Godhead and by purification,
concentration and a certain discipline of subjection
to the divine Will a means for contact and increasing
unity of the soul of man with the divine Master of the
universe. Devotion selects the emotional and aesthetic
powers of the soul and by turning them all Godward in
a perfect purity, intensity, infinite passion of seeking
makes them a means of God-possession in one or many
relations of unity with the Divine Being. All aim in
their own way at a union or unity of the human soul
with the supreme Spirit.
Each Yoga in its process has the character of the instrument
it uses; thus the Hathayogic process is psycho-physical,
the Rajayogic mental and psychic, the way of knowledge
is spiritual and cognitive, the way of devotion spiritual,
emotional and aesthetic, the way of works spiritual
and dynamic by action. Each is guided in the ways of
its own characteristic power. But all power is in the
end one, all power is really soul-power. In the ordinary
process of life, body and mind this truth is quite obscured
by the dispersed, dividing and distributive action of
Nature which is the normal condition of all our functionings,
although even there it is in the end evident; for all
material energy contains hidden the vital, mental, psychic,
spiritual energy and in the end it must release these
forms of the one Shakti, the vital energy conceals and
liberates into action all the other forms, the mental
supporting itself on the life and body and their powers
and functionings contains undeveloped or only partially
developed the psychic and the spiritual power of the
being. But when by Yoga any of these powers is taken
up from the dispersed and distributive action, raised
to its highest degree, concentrated, it becomes manifest
soul-power and reveals the essential unity. Therefore
the Hathayogic process has too its pure psychic and
spiritual result, the Rajayogic arrives by psychic means
at a spiritual consummation. The triple way may appear
to be altogether mental and spiritual in its way of
seeking and its objectives, but it can be attended by
results more characteristic of the other paths, which
offer themselves in a spontaneous and involuntary flowering,
and for the same reason, because soul-power is all-power
and where it reaches its height in one direction its
other possibilities also begin to show themselves in
fact or in incipient potentiality. This unity at once
suggests the possibility of a synthetic Yoga.
Tantric
discipline is in its nature a synthesis. It has seized
on the large universal truth that there are two poles
of being whose essential unity is the secret of existence,
Brahman and Shakti, Spirit and Nature, and that Nature
is power of the spirit or rather is spirit as power.
To raise nature in man into manifest power of spirit
is its method and it is the whole nature that it gathers
up for the spiritual conversion. It includes in its
system of instrumentation the forceful Hathayogic process
and especially the opening up of the nervous centres
and the passage through them of the awakened Shakti
on her way to her union with the Brahman, the subtler
stress of the Rajayogic purification, meditation and
concentration, the leverage of will-force, the motive
power of devotion, the key of knowledge. But it does
not stop short with an effective assembling of the different
powers of these specific Yogas. In two directions it
enlarges by its synthetic turn the province of the Yogic
method. First, it lays its hand firmly on many of the
main springs of human quality, desire, action and it
subjects them to an intensive discipline with the soul's
mastery of its motives as a first aim and their elevation
to a diviner spiritual level as its final utility. Again,
it includes in its objects of Yoga not only liberation,
which is the one all-mastering preoccupation of the
specific systems, but a cosmic enjoyment of the power
of the Spirit, which the others may take incidentally
on the way, in part, casually, but avoid making a motive
or object. It is a bolder and larger system.
In the method of synthesis which we have been following,
another clue of principle has been pursued which is
derived from another view of the possibilities of Yoga.
This starts from the method of Vedanta to arrive at
the aim of the Tantra. In the tantric method Shakti
is all-important, becomes the key to the finding of
spirit; in this synthesis spirit, soul is all-important,
becomes the secret of the taking up of Shakti. The tantric
method starts from the bottom and grades the ladder
of ascent upwards to the summit; therefore its initial
stress is upon the action of the awakened Shakti in
the nervous system of the body and its centres; the
opening of the six lotuses is the opening up of the
ranges of the power of Spirit. Our synthesis takes man
as a spirit in mind much more than a spirit in body
and assumes in him the capacity to begin on that level,
to spiritualise his being by the power of the soul in
mind opening itself directly to a higher spiritual force
and being and to perfect by that higher force so possessed
and brought into action the whole of his nature. For
that reason our initial stress has fallen upon the utilisation
of the powers of soul in mind and the turning of the
triple key of knowledge, works and love in the locks
of the spirit; the Hathayogic methods can be dispensed
with,—though there is no objection to their partial
use,—the Rajayogic will only enter in as an informal
element. To arrive by the shortest way at the largest
development of spiritual power and being and divinise
by it a liberated nature in the whole range of human
living is our inspiring motive.
The principle in view is a self-surrender, a giving
up of the human being into the being, consciousness,
power, delight of the Divine, a union or communion at
all the points of meeting in the soul of man, the mental
being, by which the Divine himself, directly and without
veil master and possessor of the instrument, shall by
the light of his presence and guidance perfect the human
being in all the forces of the Nature for a divine living.
Here we arrive at a farther enlargement of the objects
of the Yoga. The common initial purpose of all Yoga
is the liberation of the soul of man from its present
natural ignorance and limitation, its release into spiritual
being, its union with the highest self and Divinity.
But ordinarily this is made not only the initial but
the whole and final object: enjoyment of spiritual being
there is, but either in a dissolution of the human and
individual into the silence of self-being or on a higher
plane in another existence. The Tantric system makes
liberation the final, but not the only aim; it takes
on its way a full perfection and enjoyment of the spiritual
power, light and joy in the human existence, and even
it has a glimpse of a supreme experience in which liberation
and cosmic action and enjoyment are unified in a final
overcoming of all oppositions and dissonances. It is
this wider view of our spiritual potentialities from
which we begin, but we add another stress which brings
in a completer significance. We regard the spirit in
man not as solely an individual being travelling to
a transcendent unity with the Divine, but as a universal
being capable of oneness with the Divine in all souls
and all Nature and we give this extended view its entire
practical consequence. The human soul's individual liberation
and enjoyment of union with the Divine in spiritual
being, consciousness and delight must always be the
first object of the Yoga; its free enjoyment of the
cosmic unity of the Divine becomes a second object;
but out of that a third appears, the effectuation of
the meaning of the divine unity with all beings by a
sympathy and participation in the spiritual purpose
of the Divine in humanity. The individual Yoga then
turns from its separateness and becomes a part of the
collective Yoga of the divine Nature in the human race.
The liberated individual being, united with the Divine
in self and spirit, becomes in his natural being a self-perfecting
instrument for the perfect outflowering of the Divine
in humanity.
This
outflowering has its two terms; first, comes the growth
out of the separative human ego into the unity of the
spirit, then the possession of the divine nature in
its proper and its higher forms and no longer in the
inferior forms of the mental being which are a mutilated
translation and not the authentic text of the original
script of divine Nature in the cosmic individual. In
other words, a perfection has to be aimed at which amounts
to the elevation of the mental into the full spiritual
and supramental nature. Therefore this integral Yoga
of knowledge, love and works has to be extended into
a Yoga of spiritual and gnostic self-perfection. As
gnostic knowledge, will and Ananda are a direct instrumentation
of spirit and can only be won by growing into the spirit,
into divine being, this growth has to be the first aim
of our Yoga. The mental being has to enlarge itself
into the oneness of the Divine before the Divine will
perfect in the soul of the individual its gnostic outflowering.
That is the reason why the triple way of knowledge,
works and love becomes the keynote of the whole Yoga,
for that is the direct means for the soul in mind to
rise to its highest intensities where it passes upward
into the divine oneness. That too is the reason why
the Yoga must be integral. For if immergence in the
Infinite or some close union with the Divine were all
our aim, an integral Yoga would be superfluous, except
for such greater satisfaction of the being of man as
we may get by a self-lifting of the whole of it towards
its Source. But it would not be needed for the essential
aim, since by any single power of the soul-nature we
can meet with the Divine; each at its height rises up
into the infinite and absolute, each therefore offers
a sufficient way of arrival, for all the hundred separate
paths meet in the Eternal. But the gnostic being is
a complete enjoyment and possession of the whole divine
and spiritual nature; and it is a complete lifting of
the whole nature of man into its power of a divine and
spiritual existence. Integrality becomes then an essential
condition of this Yoga.
At the same time we have seen that each of the three
ways at its height, if it is pursued with a certain
largeness, can take into itself the powers of the others
and lead to their fulfilment. It is therefore sufficient
to start by one of them and find the point at which
it meets the other at first parallel lines of advance
and melts into them by its own widenings. At the same
time a more difficult, complex, wholly powerful process
would be to start, as it were, on three lines together,
on a triple wheel of soul-power. But the consideration
of this possibility must be postponed till we have seen
what are the conditions and means of the Yoga of self-perfection.
For we shall see that this also need not be postponed
entirely, but a certain preparation of it is part of
and a certain initiation into it proceeds by the growth
of the divine works, love and knowledge.
-Sri
Aurobindo
