{"id":1218,"date":"2013-07-13T01:33:20","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:33:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=1218"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:33:20","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:33:20","slug":"04-the-motives-of-devotion-vol-21-the-synthesis-of-yoga-volume-21","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/01-sabcl\/21-the-synthesis-of-yoga-volume-21\/04-the-motives-of-devotion-vol-21-the-synthesis-of-yoga-volume-21","title":{"rendered":"-04_The Motives of Devotion.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\n\n
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\n


\n
\nChapter II<\/font><\/b> <\/font><\/p>\n

\nThe Motives of Devotion<\/font><\/b> <\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

                A<\/font><\/b>LL<\/font>
\nreligion begins with the conception of some Power or existence greater and
\nhigher than our limited and mortal selves, a thought and act of worship done to
\nthat Power, and an obedience offered to its will, its laws or its demands. But
\nReligion, in its beginnings, sets an immeasurable gulf between the Power thus
\nconceived, worshipped and obeyed and the worshipper. Yoga in its culmination
\nabolishes the gulf; for Yoga is union. We arrive at union with it through knowledge;
\nfor as our first obscure conceptions of it clarify, enlarge, deepen, we come to recognise it as our own highest self, the origin and sustainer of our being and
\nthat towards which it tends. We arrive at union with it through works; for from
\nsimply obeying we come to identify our will with its Will, since only in
\nproportion as it is identified with this Power that is its source and ideal,
\ncan our will become perfect and divine. We arrive at union with it also by
\nworship; for the thought and act of a distant worship develops into the
\nnecessity of close adoration and this into the intimacy of love, and the
\nconsummation of love is union with the Beloved. It is from this development of
\nworship that the Yoga of devotion starts and it is by this union with the
\nBeloved that it finds its highest point and consummation. <\/p>\n

All our
\ninstincts and the movements of our being begin by supporting themselves on the
\nordinary motives of our lower human nature, \u2013 mixed and egoistic motives at
\nfirst, but afterwards they purify and elevate themselves, they become an intense
\nand special need of our higher nature quite apart from the results our actions
\nbring with them; finally they exalt themselves into a sort of categorical
\nimperative of our being, and it is through our obedience to this that we arrive
\nat that supreme something self-existent in us which was all the time drawing us
\ntowards it, first by the lures of our egoistic nature, then by something much<\/p>\n

\n Page \u2013 528<\/span><\/p>\n

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 higher, larger, more universal,
\nuntil we are able to feel its own direct attraction which is the strongest and
\nmost imperative of all. In the transformation of ordinary religious worship
\ninto the Yoga of pure Bhakti we see this development from the motived<\/span> and interested worship of popular religion into a
\nprinciple of motiveless and self-existent love. This last is in fact the touchstone
\nof the real Bhakti and shows whether we are really in the central way or are
\nonly upon one of the bypaths leading to it. We have to throw away the props of
\nour weakness, the motives of the ego, the lures of our lower nature before we
\ncan deserve the divine union. <\/p>\n

Faced with the
\nsense of a Power or perhaps a number of Powers greater and higher than himself
\nby whom his life in Nature is overshadowed, influenced, governed, man naturally
\napplies to it or to them the first primitive feelings of the natural being
\namong the difficulties, desires and dangers of that life,\u2014fear and interest.
\nThe enormous part played by these motives in the evolution of the religious
\ninstinct, is undeniable, and in fact, man being what he is, it could hardly
\nhave been less; and even when religion has advanced fairly far on its road, we
\nsee these motives still surviving, active, playing a sufficiently large part,
\njustified and appealed to by Religion herself in support of her claims on man.
\nThe fear of God, it is said, \u2013 or, it may be added for the sake of historical
\ntruth, the fear of the Gods, \u2013 is the beginning of religion, a half-truth upon
\nwhich scientific research, trying to trace the evolution of religion,
\nordinarily in a critical and often a hostile rather than in a sympathetic
\nspirit, has laid undue emphasis. But not the fear of God only, for man does not
\nact, even most primitively, from fear alone, but from twin motives, fear and
\ndesire, fear of things unpleasant and maleficent and desire of things pleasant
\nand beneficent, \u2013 therefore from fear and interest. Life to him is primarily
\nand engrossingly, \u2013 until he learns to live more in his soul and only
\nsecondarily in the action and reaction of outward things, \u2013 a series of actions
\nand results, things to be desired, pursued and gained by action and things to
\nbe dreaded and shunned, yet which may come upon him as a result of action. And
\nit is not only by his own action but by that also of others and of Nature
\naround him that <\/p>\n

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\n

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 these things come to him. As
\nsoon, then, as he comes to sense a Power behind all this which can influence or
\ndetermine action and result, he conceives of it as a dispenser of boons and
\nsufferings, able and under certain conditions willing to help him or hurt, save
\nand destroy. <\/p>\n

In the most
\nprimitive parts of his being he conceives of it as a thing of natural egoistic
\nimpulses like himself, beneficent when pleased, maleficent when offended;
\nworship is then a means of propitiation by gifts and a supplication by prayer.
\nHe gets God on his side by praying to him and flattering him. With a more
\nadvanced mentality, he conceives of the action of life as reposing on a certain
\nprinciple of divine justice, which he reads always according to his own ideas
\nand character, as a sort of enlarged copy of his human justice; he conceives
\nthe idea of moral good and evil and looks upon suffering and calamity and all
\nthings unpleasant as a punishment for his sins and upon happiness and good fortune
\nand all things pleasant as a reward of his virtue. God appears to him as a
\nking, judge, legislator, executor of justice. But still regarding him as a sort
\nof magnified Man, he imagines that as his own justice can be deflected by
\nprayers and propitiation, so the divine justice can also be deflected by the
\nsame means. Justice is to him reward and punishment, and the justice of
\npunishment can be modified by mercy to the suppliant, while rewards can be
\nsupplemented by special favours and kindness such as Power when pleased can
\nalways bestow on its adherents and worshippers. Moreover God like ourselves is
\ncapable of wrath and revenge, and wrath and revenge can be turned by gifts and
\nsupplication and atonement; he is capable too of partiality, and his partiality
\ncan be attracted by gifts, by prayer and by praise. Therefore instead of
\nrelying solely on the observation of the moral law, worship as prayer and
\npropitiation is still continued. <\/p>\n

Along with
\nthese motives there arises another development of personal feeling, first of
\nthe awe which one naturally feels for something vast, powerful and incalculable
\nbeyond our nature by a certain inscrutability in the springs and extent of its
\naction, and of the veneration and adoration which one feels for that which is
\nhigher in its nature or its perfection than ourselves. <\/p>\n

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 For, even while preserving
\nlargely the idea of a God endowed with the qualities of human nature, there
\nstill grows up along with it, mixed up with it or superadded, the conception of
\nan omniscience and omnipotence and a mysterious perfection quite other than our
\nnature. A confused mixture of all these motives, variously developed, often
\nmodified, subtilised or glossed over, is what constitutes nine tenths of
\npopular religion; the other tenth is a suffusion of the rest by the percolation
\ninto it of nobler, more beautiful and profounder ideas of the Divine which
\nminds of a greater spirituality have been able to bring into the more primitive
\nreligious concepts of mankind. The result is usually crude enough and a ready
\ntarget for the shafts of scepticism and unbelief, \u2013 powers of the human mind
\nwhich have their utility even for faith and religion, since they compel a religion
\nto purify gradually what is crude or false in its conceptions. But what we have
\nto see is how far in purifying and elevating the religious instinct of worship
\nany of these earlier motives need to survive and enter into the Yoga of
\ndevotion which itself starts from worship. That depends on how far they
\ncorrespond to any truth of the divine Being and its relations with the human
\nsoul; for we seek by Bhakti union with the Divine and true relation with it,
\nwith its truth and not with any mirage of our lower nature and of its egoistic
\nimpulses and ignorant conceptions. <\/p>\n

The ground on
\nwhich sceptical unbelief assails Religion, namely, that there is in fact no
\nconscient Power or Being in the universe greater and higher than ourselves or
\nin any way influencing or controlling our existence, is one which Yoga cannot accept,
\nas that would contradict all spiritual experience and make Yoga itself
\nimpossible. Yoga is not a matter of theory or dogma, like philosophy or popular
\nreligion, but a matter of experience. Its experience is that of a conscient
\nuniversal and supracosmic Being with whom it brings us into union, and this
\nconscious experience of union with the Invisible, always renewable and
\nverifiable, is as valid as our conscious experience of a physical world and of
\nvisible bodies with whose invisible minds we daily communicate. Yoga proceeds
\nby conscious union, the conscious being is its instrument, and a conscious
\nunion with the Inconscient cannot be. It is true that it goes beyond the human
\nconscious-<\/p>\n

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\n

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 ness and in Samadhi becomes
\nsuperconscient, but this is not an annullation of our conscious being, it is
\nonly its self-exceeding, the going beyond its present level and normal limits. <\/p>\n

So far, then,
\nall Yogic experience is agreed. But Religion and the Yoga of Bhakti go farther;
\nthey attribute to this Being a Personality and human relations with the human
\nbeing. In both the human being approaches the Divine by means of his humanity,
\nwith human emotions, as he would approach a fellow-being, but with more intense
\nand exalted feelings; and not only so, but the Divine also responds in a manner
\nanswering to these emotions. In that possibility of response lies the whole question;
\nfor if the Divine is impersonal, featureless and relationless<\/span>,
\nno such response is possible and all human approach to it becomes an absurdity;
\nwe must rather dehumanise<\/span>, depersonalise<\/span>,
\nannul ourselves in so far as we are human beings or any kind of beings; on no
\nother conditions and by no other means can we approach it. Love, fear, prayer,
\npraise, worship of an Impersonality which has no relation with us or with
\nanything in the universe and no feature that our minds can lay hold of, are
\nobviously an irrational foolishness. On such terms religion and devotion become
\nout of the question. The Adwaitin in order to find a religious basis for his
\nbare and sterile philosophy, has to admit the practical existence of God and
\nthe gods and to delude his mind with the language of Maya. Buddhism only became
\na popular religion when Buddha had taken the place of the supreme Deity as an
\nobject of worship. <\/p>\n

Even if the Supreme be capable of
\nrelations with us but only of impersonal relations, religion is robbed of its
\nhuman vitality and the Path of Devotion ceases to be effective or even
\npossible. We may indeed apply our human emotions to it, but in a vague and
\nimprecise fashion, with no hope of a human response: the only way in which it
\ncan respond to us, is by stilling our emotions and throwing upon us its own
\nimpersonal calm and immutable equality; and this is what in fact happens when
\nwe approach the pure impersonality of the Godhead. We can obey it as a Law,
\nlift our souls to it in aspiration towards its tranquil being, grow into it by
\nshedding from us our emotional nature; the human being in us is not satisfied,
\nbut it is quieted, balanced, stilled. <\/p>\n

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 But the Yoga of devotion,
\nagreeing in this with Religion, insists on a closer and warmer worship than
\nthis impersonal aspiration. It aims at a divine fulfilment of the humanity in
\nus as well as of the impersonal part of our being; it aims at a divine
\nsatisfaction of the emotional being of man. It demands of the Supreme
\nacceptance of our love and a response in kind; as we delight in Him and seek
\nHim, so it believes that He too delights in us and seeks us. Nor can this
\ndemand be condemned as irrational, for if the supreme and universal Being did
\nnot take any delight in us, it is not easy to see how we could have come into
\nbeing or could remain in being, and if He does not at all draw us towards him,
\n\u2013 a divine seeking of us, \u2013 there would seem to be no reason in Nature why we
\nshould turn from the round of our normal existence to seek Him. <\/p>\n

Therefore that
\nthere may be at all any possibility of a Yoga of devotion, we must assume first
\nthat the supreme Existence is not an abstraction or a state of existence, but a
\nconscious Being; secondly, that he meets us in the universe and is in some way
\nimmanent in it as well as its source, \u2013 otherwise, we should have to go out of
\ncosmic life to meet him; thirdly, that he is capable of personal relations with
\nus and must therefore be not incapable of personality; finally, that when we approach
\nhim by our human emotions, we receive a response in kind. This does not mean
\nthat the nature of the Divine is precisely the same as our human nature though
\nupon a larger scale, or that it is that nature pure of certain perversions and God
\na magnified or else an ideal Man. God is not and cannot be an ego limited by
\nhis qualities as we are in our normal consciousness. But on the other hand our
\nhuman consciousness must certainly originate and have been derived from the Divine;
\nthough the forms which it takes in us may and must be other than the divine
\nbecause we are limited by ego, not universal, not superior to our nature, not greater
\nthan our qualities and their workings, as he is, still our human emotions and
\nimpulses must have behind them a Truth in him of which they are the limited and
\nvery often, therefore, the perverse or even the degraded forms. By approaching
\nhim through our emotional being we approach that Truth, it comes down to us to
\nmeet our emotions and lift them <\/p>\n

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 towards it; through it our
\nemotional being is united with him. Secondly, this supreme Being is also the
\nuniversal Being and our relations with the universe are all means by which we are
\nprepared for entering into relation with him. All the emotions with which we
\nconfront the action of the universal existence upon us, are really directed
\ntowards him, in ignorance at first, but it is by directing them in growing
\nknowledge towards him that we enter into more intimate relations with him, and
\nall that is false and ignorant in them will fall away as we draw nearer towards
\nunity. To all of them he answers, taking us in the stage of progress in which
\nwe are; for if we met no kind of response or help to our imperfect approach, the
\nmore perfect relations could never be established. Even as men approach him, so
\nhe accepts them and responds too by the divine Love to their bhakti, tathaiva<\/i><\/span> bhajate<\/span><\/i>.
\nWhatever form of being, whatever qualities they lend to him, through that form
\nand those qualities he helps them to develop, encourages or governs their
\nadvance and in their straight way or their crooked draws them towards him. What
\nthey see of him is a truth, but a truth represented to them in the terms of
\ntheir own being and consciousness, partially, distortedly, not in the terms of
\nits own higher reality, not in the aspect which it assumes when we become aware
\nof the complete Divinity. This is the justification of the cruder and more
\nprimitive elements of religion and also their sentence of transience and
\npassing. They are justified because there is a truth of the Divine behind them
\nand only so could that truth of the Divine be approached in that stage of the
\ndeveloping human consciousness and be helped forward; they are condemned,
\nbecause to persist always in these crude conceptions and relations with the
\nDivine is to miss that closer union towards which these crude beginnings are the
\nfirst steps, however faltering.<\/p>\n

All life, we
\nhave said, is a Yoga of Nature; here in this material world life is her
\nreaching out from her first inconscience towards a return to union with the
\nconscient Divine from whom she proceeded. In religion the mind of man, her
\naccomplished instrument, becomes aware of her goal in him, responds to her
\naspiration. Even popular religion is a sort of ignorant Yoga of devotion. But
\nit does not become what we specifically call Yoga <\/p>\n

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\n

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 until the motive becomes in a
\ncertain degree clairvoyant, until it sees that union is its object and that
\nlove is the principle of union, and until therefore it tries to realise love
\nand lose its separative character in love. When that has been accomplished,
\nthen the Yoga has taken its decisive step and is sure of its fruition. Thus the
\nmotives of devotion have first to direct themselves engrossingly and
\npredominantly towards the Divine, then to transform themselves so that they are
\nrid of their more earthy elements and finally to take their stand in pure and
\nperfect love. All those that cannot coexist with the perfect union of love, must
\neventually fall away, while only those that can form themselves into
\nexpressions of divine love and into means of enjoying divine love, can remain.
\nFor love is the one emotion in us which can be entirely motiveless and
\nself-existent; love need have no other motive than love. For all our emotions
\narise either from the seeking after delight and the possession of it, or from
\nthe baffling of the search, or from the failure of the delight we have
\npossessed or had thought to grasp; but love is that by which we can enter
\ndirectly into possession of the self-existent delight of the divine Being.
\nDivine love is indeed itself that possession and, as it were, the body of the
\nAnanda. <\/p>\n

These are the
\ntruths which condition our approach to this Yoga and our journey on this path.
\nThere are subsidiary questions which arise and trouble the intellect of man,
\nbut, though we may have yet to deal with them they are not essential. Yoga of
\nBhakti is a matter of the heart and not of the intellect. For even for the
\nknowledge which comes on this way, we set out from the heart and not from the
\nintelligence. The truth of the motives of the heart’s devotion and their final
\narrival and in some sort their disappearance into the supreme and unique
\nself-existent motive of love, is therefore all that initially and essentially
\nconcerns us. Such difficult questions there are as whether the Divine has an
\noriginal supraphysical<\/span> form or power of form from
\nwhich all forms proceed or is eternally formless; all we need at present say is
\nthat the Divine does at least accept the various forms which the devotee gives
\nto him and through them meets him in love, while the mixing of our spirits with
\nhis spirit is essential to the fruition of Bhakti. So too, certain religions
\nand religious philosophies <\/p>\n

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\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

 seek to bind down devotion by a
\nconception of an eternal difference between the human soul and the Divine,
\nwithout which they say love and devotion cannot exist, while that philosophy
\nwhich considers that One alone exists, consigns love and devotion to a movement
\nin the ignorance, necessary perhaps or at the least useful as a preparatory movement
\nwhile yet the ignorance lasts, but impossible when all difference is abolished
\nand therefore to be transcended and discarded. We may hold, however, the truth
\nof the one existence in this sense that all in Nature is the Divine even though
\nGod be more than all in Nature, and love becomes then a movement by which the
\nDivine in Nature and man takes possession of and enjoys the delight of the
\nuniversal and the supreme Divine. In any case, love has necessarily a twofold fulfilment
\nby its very nature, that by which the lover and the beloved enjoy their union
\nin difference and all too that enhances the joy of various union, and that by
\nwhich they throw themselves into each other and become one Self. That truth is
\nquite sufficient to start with, for it is the very nature of love, and since
\nlove is the essential motive of this Yoga, as is the whole nature of love, so
\nwill be too the crown and fulfilment of the movement of the Yoga.<\/p>\n

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