{"id":1229,"date":"2013-07-13T01:33:24","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:33:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=1229"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:33:24","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:33:24","slug":"05-the-godward-emotions-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\/05-the-godward-emotions-vol-21-the-synthesis-of-yoga-volume-21","title":{"rendered":"-05_The Godward Emotions.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
\n
\n


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

 <\/font>The Godward Emotions<\/font><\/b> <\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

            T<\/font><\/b>HE<\/font>
\nprinciple of Yoga is to turn Godward all or any of the powers of the human
\nconsciousness so that through that activity of the being there may be contact,
\nrelation, union. In the Yoga of Bhakti it is the emotional nature that is made
\nthe instrument. Its main principle is to adopt some human relation between man
\nand the Divine Being by which through the ever intenser flowing of the heart’s
\nemotions towards him the human soul may at last be wedded to and grow one with
\nhim in a passion of divine Love. It is not ultimately the pure peace of oneness
\nor the power and desireless will of oneness, but the ecstatic joy of union
\nwhich the devotee seeks by his Yoga. Every feeling that can make the heart
\nready for this ecstasy the Yoga admits; everything that detracts from it must
\nincreasingly drop away as the strong union of love becomes closer and more
\nperfect. <\/p>\n

All the
\nfeelings with which religion approaches the worship, service and love of God,
\nthe Yoga admits, if not as its final accompaniments, yet as preparatory
\nmovements of the emotional nature. But there is one feeling with which the
\nYoga, at least as practised in India,
\nhas very little dealing. In certain religions, in most perhaps, the idea of the
\nfear of God plays a very large part, sometimes the largest, and the God-fearing
\nman is the typical worshipper of these religions. The sentiment of fear is
\nindeed perfectly consistent with devotion of a certain kind and up to a certain
\npoint; at its highest it rises into a worship of the divine Power, the divine
\nJustice, divine Law, divine Righteousness, and ethical obedience, an awed
\nreverence for the almighty Creator and Judge. Its motive is therefore ethico<\/span>-religious and it belongs not so strictly to the
\ndevotee, but to the man of works moved by a devotion to the divine ordainer<\/span> and judge of his works. It regards God as the King
\nand does not approach too near the glory <\/p>\n

 Page \u2013 537<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

of his throne unless justified by
\nrighteousness or led there by a mediator who will turn away the divine wrath
\nfor sin. Even when it draws nearest, it keeps an awed distance between itself
\nand the high object of its worship. It cannot embrace the Divine with all the
\nfearless confidence of the child in his mother or of the lover in his beloved
\nor with that intimate sense of oneness which perfect love brings with it. <\/p>\n

The origin of
\nthis divine fear was crude enough in some of the primitive popular religions.
\nIt was the perception of powers in the world greater than man, obscure in their
\nnature and workings, which seemed always ready to strike him down in his
\nprosperity and to smite him for any actions which displeased them. Fear of the
\ngods arose from man’s ignorance of God and his ignorance of the laws that
\ngovern the world. It attributed to the higher powers caprice and human passion;
\nit made them in the image of the great ones of the earth, capable of whim,
\ntyranny, personal enmity, jealous of any greatness in man which might raise him
\nabove the littleness of terrestrial nature and bring him too near to the divine
\nnature. With such notions no real devotion could arise, except that doubtful
\nkind which the weaker may feel for the stronger whose protection he can buy by
\nworship and gifts and propitiation and obedience to such laws as he may have
\nlaid upon those beneath him and may enforce by rewards and punishments, or else
\nthe submissive and prostrate reverence and adoration which one may feel for a
\ngreatness, glory, wisdom, sovereign power which is above the world and is the
\nsource or at any rate the regulator of all its laws and happenings. <\/p>\n

A nearer
\napproach to the beginnings of the way of devotion becomes possible when this
\nelement of divine Power disengages itself from these crudities and fixes on the
\nidea of a divine ruler, creator of the world and master of the Law who governs
\nthe earth and heavens and is the guide and helper and saviour<\/span>
\nof his creatures. This larger and higher idea of the divine Being long kept
\nmany elements and still keeps some elements of the old crudity. The Jews who
\nbrought it forward most prominently and from whom it overspread a great part of
\nthe world, could believe in a God of righteousness who was exclusive,
\narbitrary, wrathful, jealous, often cruel and even wantonly sanguinary. Even
\nnow <\/p>\n

 Page \u2013 538<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

 it is possible for some to
\nbelieve in a Creator who has made heaven and hell, an eternal hell, the two
\npoles of his creation, and has even according to some religions predestined the
\nsouls he has created not only to sin and punishment, but to an eternal
\ndamnation. But even apart from these extravagances of a childish religious
\nbelief, the idea of the almighty Judge, Legislator, King, is a crude and
\nimperfect idea of the Divine, when taken by itself, because it takes an
\ninferior and an external truth for the main truth and it tends to prevent a
\nhigher approach to a more intimate reality. It exaggerates the importance of
\nthe sense of sin and thereby prolongs and increases the soul’s fear and
\nself-distrust and weakness. It attaches the pursuit of virtue and the shunning
\nof sin to the idea of rewards and punishment, though given in an after life,
\nand makes them dependent on the lower motives of fear and interest instead of
\nthe higher spirit which should govern the ethical being. It makes hell and
\nheaven and not the Divine himself the object of the human soul in its religious
\nliving. These crudities have served their turn in the slow education of the
\nhuman mind, but they are of no utility to the Yogin who knows that whatever truth
\nthey may represent belongs rather to the external relations of the developing
\nhuman soul with the external law of the universe than any intimate truth of the
\ninner relations of the human soul with the Divine; but it is these which are
\nthe proper field of Yoga. <\/p>\n

Still out of
\nthis conception there arise certain developments which bring us nearer to the
\nthreshold of the Yoga of devotion. First, there can emerge the idea of the
\nDivine as the source and law and aim of our ethical being and from this there
\ncan come the knowledge of him as the highest Self to which our active nature
\naspires, the Will to which we have to assimilate our will, the eternal Right
\nand Purity and Truth and Wisdom into harmony with which our nature has to grow
\nand towards whose being our being is attracted. By this way we arrive at the
\nYoga of works, and this Yoga has a place for personal devotion to the Divine,
\nfor the divine Will appears as the Master of our works to whose voice we must
\nlisten, whose divine impulsion we must obey and whose work it is the sole
\nbusiness of our active life and will to do. Secondly, there emerges the idea of
\nthe divine Spirit, the <\/p>\n

 Page \u2013 539<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

\n father of all who extends his
\nwings of benignant protection and love over all his creatures, and from that
\ngrows between the soul and the Divine the relation of father and child, a
\nrelation of love, and as a result the relation of brotherhood with our
\nfellow-beings. These relations of the Divine into the calm pure light of whose
\nnature we have to grow and the Master whom we approach through works and
\nservice, the Father who responds to the love of the soul that approaches him as
\nthe child, are admitted elements of the Yoga of devotion.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n

The moment we
\ncome well into these developments and their deeper spiritual meaning, the
\nmotive of the fear of God becomes otiose, superfluous and even impossible. It
\nis of importance chiefly in the ethical field when the soul has not yet grown
\nsufficiently to follow good for its own sake and needs an authority above it
\nwhose wrath or whose stern passionless judgment it can fear and found upon that
\nfear its fidelity to virtue. When we grow into spirituality, this motive can no
\nlonger remain except by the lingering on of some confusion in the mind, some
\npersistence of the old mentality. Moreover, the ethical aim in Yoga is
\ndifferent from that of the external idea of virtue. Ordinarily, ethics is
\nregarded as a sort of machinery of right action, the act is everything and how
\nto do the right act is the whole question and the whole trouble. But to the Yogin
\naction is chiefly important not for its own sake, but rather as a means for the
\ngrowth of the soul Godward. Therefore what Indian spiritual writings lay stress
\nupon is not so much the quality of the action to be done as the quality of the
\nsoul from which the action flows, upon its truth, fearlessness, purity, love,
\ncompassion, benevolence, absence of the will to hurt, and upon the actions as
\ntheir outflowings<\/span>. The old western idea that human
\nnature is intrinsically bad and virtue is a thing to be followed out in despite
\nof our fallen nature to which it is contrary, is foreign to the Indian
\nmentality trained from ancient times in the ideas of the Yogins. Our nature
\ncontains, as well as its passionate rajasic and its downward-tending tamasic
\nquality, a purer sattwic element and it is the encouragement of this, its
\nhighest part, which is the business of ethics. By it we increase the divine
\nnature, daivī<\/i><\/span> prakŗti<\/span><\/i>,
\nwhich is present in us and get rid of the Titanic and demoniac elements. Not <\/p>\n

\n <\/font>Page \u2013 540<\/font><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

therefore the Hebraic
\nrighteousness of the God-fearing man, but the purity, love, beneficence, truth,
\nfearlessness, harmlessness of the saint and the God-lover are the goal of the
\nethical growth according to this notion. And, speaking more largely, to grow
\ninto the divine nature is the consummation of the ethical being. This can be
\ndone best by realising God as the higher Self, the guiding and uplifting Will
\nor the Master whom we love and serve. Not fear of him, but love of him and
\naspiration to the freedom and eternal purity of his being must be the motive. <\/p>\n

Certainly, fear
\nenters into the relations of the master and the servant and even of the father
\nand the child, but only when they are on the human level, when control and
\nsubjection and punishment figure predominantly in them and love is obliged to efface
\nitself more or less behind the mask of authority. The Divine even as the Master
\ndoes not punish anybody, does not threaten, does not force obedience. It is the
\nhuman soul that has freely to come to the Divine and offer itself to his overpowering
\nforce that he may seize and uplift it towards his own divine levels, and give
\nit that joy of mastery of the finite nature by the Infinite and of service to
\nthe Highest by which there comes freedom from the ego and the lower nature.
\nLove is the key of this relation, and this service, dāsyam<\/i><\/span>,<\/i> is in Indian Yoga the happy service of the divine Friend or the passionate
\nservice to the divine Beloved. The Master of the worlds who in the Gita demands
\nof his servant, the bhakta<\/span>, to be nothing more in
\nlife than his instrument, makes this claim as the friend, the guide, the higher
\nSelf, and describes himself as the Lord of all the worlds who is the friend of
\nall creatures, sarvalokamaheśvaram<\/i><\/span> suhŗdam<\/span> sarvabhūtānām<\/span><\/i>; the two relations in fact
\nmust go together and neither can be perfect without the other. So too it is not
\nthe fatherhood of God as the Creator who demands obedience because he is the
\nmaker of our being, but the fatherhood of love which leads us towards the
\ncloser soul-union of Yoga. Love is the real key in both, and perfect love is
\ninconsistent with the admission of the motive of fear. Closeness of the human
\nsoul to the Divine is the object, and fear sets always a barrier and a
\ndistance; even awe and reverence for the divine Power are a sign of distance
\nand division and they disappear in the intimacy of the union of love. <\/p>\n

 Page \u2013 541<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

 Moreover, fear belongs to the
\nlower nature, to the lower self, and in approaching the higher Self must be put
\naside before we can enter into its presence. <\/p>\n

This relation
\nof the divine fatherhood and the closer relation with the Divine as the
\nMother-Soul of the universe have their springs in another early religious
\nmotive. One type of the Bhakta, says the Gita, is the devotee who comes to the Divine
\nas the giver of his wants, the giver of his good, the satisfier of the needs of
\nhis inner and his outer being. \u201cI bring to my bhakta<\/span>\u201d
\nsays the Lord \u201chis getting and his having of good, yogakşemam<\/i><\/span> vahāmyaham<\/span><\/i>.\u201d
\nThe life of man is a life of wants and needs and therefore of desires, not only
\nin his physical and vital, but in his mental and spiritual being. When he becomes
\nconscious of a greater Power governing the world, he approaches it through
\nprayer for the fulfilment of his needs, for help in his rough journey, for
\nprotection and aid in his struggle. Whatever crudities there may be in the
\nordinary religious approach to God by prayer, and there are many, especially
\nthat attitude which imagines the Divine as if capable of being propitiated,
\nbribed, flattered into acquiescence or indulgence by praise, entreaty and gifts
\nand has often little regard to the spirit in which he is approached, still this
\nway of turning to the Divine is an essential movement of our religious being
\nand reposes on a universal truth. <\/p>\n

The efficacy of
\nprayer is often doubted and prayer itself supposed to be a thing irrational and
\nnecessarily superfluous and ineffective. It is true that the universal will
\nexecutes always its aim and cannot be deflected by egoistic propitiation and
\nentreaty, it is true of the Transcendent who expresses himself in the universal
\norder that being omniscient his larger knowledge must foresee the thing to be
\ndone and it does not need direction or stimulation by human thought and that the
\nindividual’s desires are not and cannot be in any world-order the true
\ndetermining factor. But neither is that order or the execution of the universal
\nwill altogether effected by mechanical Law, but by powers and forces of which
\nfor human life at least human will, aspiration and faith are not among the least
\nimportant. Prayer is only a particular form given to that will, aspiration and
\nfaith. Its forms are very often crude and not only childlike, which is in itself
\nno defect<\/span>,<\/p>\n

 Page \u2013 542<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

 but childish; but still it has a real power and significance. Its power and
\nsense is to put the will, aspiration and faith of man into touch with the
\ndivine Will as that of a conscious Being with whom we can enter into conscious
\nand living relations. For our will and aspiration can act either by our own
\nstrength and endeavour, which can no doubt be made a thing great and effective
\nwhether for lower or higher purposes, \u2013 and there are plenty of disciplines
\nwhich put it forward as the one force to be used, \u2013 or it can act in dependence
\nupon and with subordination to the divine or the universal Will. And this
\nlatter way again may either look upon that Will as responsive indeed to our
\naspiration, but almost mechanically, by a sort of law of energy, or at any rate
\nquite impersonally, or else it may look upon it as responding consciously to
\nthe divine aspiration and faith of the human soul and consciously bringing to
\nit the help, the guidance, the protection and fruition demanded, yogakşemam<\/i><\/span> vahāmyaham<\/span><\/i>.\n<\/p>\n

Prayer helps to
\nprepare this relation for us at first on the lower plane even while it is there
\nconsistent with much that is mere egoism and self-delusion; but afterwards we
\ncan draw towards the spiritual truth which is behind it. It is not then the giving
\nof the thing asked for that matters, but the relation itself, the contact of
\nman’s life with God, the conscious interchange. In spiritual matters and in the
\nseeking of spiritual gains, this conscious relation is a great power; it is a
\nmuch greater power than our own entirely self-reliant struggle and effort and
\nit brings a fuller spiritual growth and experience. Necessarily in the end
\nprayer either ceases in the greater thing for which it prepared us, \u2013 in fact
\nthe form we call prayer is not itself essential so long as the faith, the will,
\nthe aspiration are there, \u2013 or remains only for the joy of the relation. Also
\nits objects, the artha<\/span> or interest it seeks to
\nrealise, become higher and higher until we reach the highest motiveless devotion,
\nwhich is that of divine love pure and simple without any other demand or
\nlonging. <\/p>\n

The relations
\nwhich arise out of this attitude towards the Divine, are that of the divine
\nFather and the Mother with the child and that of the divine Friend. To the
\nDivine as these things the human soul comes for help, for protection, for
\nguidance, for fruition, \u2013 or if knowledge be the aim, to the Guide, Teacher, <\/p>\n

 Page \u2013 543<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

 Giver of light, for the Divine is
\nthe Sun of knowledge, \u2013 or it comes in pain and suffering for relief and solace
\nand deliverance, it may be deliverance either from the suffering itself or from
\nthe world-existence which is the habitat of the suffering or from all its inner
\nand real causes. \u00b9 In these things we find there is a certain gradation. For
\nthe relation of fatherhood is always less close, intense, passionate, intimate,
\nand therefore it is less resorted to in the Yoga which seeks for the closest
\nunion. That of the divine Friend is a thing sweeter and more intimate, admits
\nof an equality and intimacy even in inequality and the beginning of mutual
\nself-giving; at its closest when all idea of other giving and taking
\ndisappears, when this relation becomes motiveless except for the one sole all-sufficing
\nmotive of love, it turns into the free and happy relation of the playmate in
\nthe Lila of existence. But closer and more intimate still is the relation of
\nthe Mother and the child, and that therefore plays a very large part wherever
\nthe religious impulse is most richly fervent and springs most warmly from the
\nheart of man. The soul goes to the Mother-Soul in all its desires and troubles
\nand the divine Mother wishes that it should be so, so that she may pour out her
\nheart of love. It turns to her too because of the self-existent nature of this
\nlove and because that points us to the home towards which we turn from our
\nwanderings in the world and to the bosom in which we find our rest.<\/p>\n

But the highest
\nand the greatest relation is that which starts from none of the ordinary
\nreligious motives, but is rather of the very essence of Yoga, springs from the
\nvery nature of love itself; it is the passion of the Lover and the Beloved. Wherever
\nthere is the desire of the soul for its utter union with God, this form of the
\ndivine yearning makes its way even into religions which seem to do without it
\nand give it no place in their ordinary system. Here the one thing asked for is
\nlove, the one thing feared is the loss of love, the one sorrow is the sorrow of
\nseparation of love; for all other things either do not exist for the lover or
\ncome in only as incidents or as results and not as objects or conditions <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00b9 These
\nare three of the four classes of devotee which are recognised<\/span>
\nby the Gita, ārta<\/i><\/span>, arthārthī<\/span>,
\njij\u00f1āsu<\/span><\/i>, the distressed, the seeker of
\npersonal objects and the seeker of God-knowledge.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n Page \u2013 544<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

 of love. All love is indeed in
\nits nature self-existent because it springs from a secret oneness in being and
\na sense of that oneness or desire of oneness in the heart between souls that
\nare yet able to conceive of themselves as different from each other and
\ndivided. Therefore all these other relations too can arrive at their
\nself-existent motiveless joy of being for the sake of love alone. But still
\nthey start from and to the end they to some extent find a satisfaction of their
\nplay in other motives. But here the beginning is love and the end is love and
\nthe whole aim is love. There is indeed the desire of possession, but even this
\nis overcome in the fullness of the self-existent love and the final demand of
\nthe Bhakta is simply that his Bhakti may never cease nor diminish. He does not ask
\nfor heaven or for liberation from birth or for any other object, but only that
\nhis love may be eternal and absolute. <\/p>\n

Love is a
\npassion and it seeks for two things, eternity and intensity, and in the
\nrelation of the Lover and Beloved the seeking for eternity and for intensity is
\ninstinctive and self-born. Love is a seeking for mutual possession, and it is
\nhere that the demand for mutual possession becomes absolute. Passing beyond
\ndesire of possession which means a difference, it is a seeking for oneness, and
\nit is here that the idea of oneness, of two souls merging into each other and
\nbecoming one finds the acme of its longing and the utterness of its
\nsatisfaction. Love, too, is a yearning for beauty, and it is here that the
\nyearning is eternally satisfied in the vision and the touch and the joy of the
\nAll-beautiful. Love is a child and a seeker of Delight, and it is here that it
\nfinds the highest possible ecstasy both of the heart-consciousness and of every
\nfibre of the being. Moreover, this relation is that which as between human
\nbeing and human being demands the most and, even while reaching the greatest
\nintensities, is still the least satisfied, because only in the Divine can it
\nfind its real and its utter satisfaction. Therefore it is here most that the
\nturning of human emotion Godwards finds its full meaning and discovers all the
\ntruth of which love is the human symbol, all its essential instincts divinised<\/span>, raised, satisfied in the bliss from which our
\nlife was born and towards which by oneness it returns in the Ananda of the
\ndivine existence where love is absolute, eternal and unalloyed.<\/p>\n

 Page \u2013 545<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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