SRI AUROBINDO's INTEGRAL YOGA
THE PRINCIPLE of Yoga is the turning of one or of all
powers of our human existence into a means of reaching
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 theHathayogic 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,
theway of works spiritual and dynamic by action. Each is guided
in theways 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 syntheticYoga.
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,1 which is the one allmastering
preoccupation of the specific systems, but a cosmic
enjoyment2 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
1 Mukti. 2 Bhukti.
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.
