{"id":2149,"date":"2013-07-13T01:39:45","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:39:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=2149"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:39:45","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:39:45","slug":"05-chapter-v-the-synthesis-of-the-systems-vol-23-24-the-synthesis-of-yoga","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/03-cwsa\/23-24-the-synthesis-of-yoga\/05-chapter-v-the-synthesis-of-the-systems-vol-23-24-the-synthesis-of-yoga","title":{"rendered":"-05_Chapter V The Synthesis of the Systems.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

\n\n\n
\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tChapter V <\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe Synthesis of the Systems<\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tB<\/font>Y THE<\/b> very nature of the principal Yogic schools, each
\ncovering in its operations a part of the complex human integer and attempting to bring out its highest possibilities,
\nit will appear that a synthesis of all of them largely conceived and applied might well result in an integral Yoga. But they are so
\ndisparate in their tendencies, so highly specialised and elaborated in their forms, so long confirmed in the mutual opposition of
\ntheir ideas and methods that we do not easily find how we can arrive at their right union. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAn undiscriminating combination in block would not be a synthesis, but a confusion. Nor would a successive practice of
\neach of them in turn be easy in the short span of our human life and with our limited energies, to say nothing of the waste
\nof labour implied in so cumbrous a process. Sometimes, indeed, Hathayoga and Rajayoga are thus successively practised. And in
\na recent unique example, in the life of Ramakrishna Paramhansa, we see a colossal spiritual capacity first driving straight to the
\ndivine realisation, taking, as it were, the kingdom of heaven by violence, and then seizing upon one Yogic method after another and extracting the substance out of it with an incredible rapidity, always to return to the heart of the whole matter, the
\nrealisation and possession of God by the power of love, by the extension of inborn spirituality into various experience and
\nby the spontaneous play of an intuitive knowledge. Such an example cannot be generalised. Its object also was special and
\ntemporal, to exemplify in the great and decisive experience of a master-soul the truth, now most necessary to humanity, towards
\nwhich a world long divided into jarring sects and schools is with difficulty labouring, that all sects are forms and fragments of a
\nsingle integral truth and all disciplines labour in their different ways towards one supreme experience. To know, be and possess  <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 <\/font>41<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\tthe Divine is the one thing needful and it includes or leads up
\nto all the rest; towards this sole good we have to drive and this attained, all the rest that the divine Will chooses for us, all
\nnecessary form and manifestation, will be added. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe synthesis we propose cannot, then, be arrived at either
\nby combination in mass or by successive practice. It must therefore be effected by neglecting the forms and outsides of the
\nYogic disciplines and seizing rather on some central principle common to all which will include and utilise in the right place
\nand proportion their particular principles, and on some central dynamic force which is the common secret of their divergent
\nmethods and capable therefore of organising a natural selection and combination of their varied energies and different utilities.
\nThis was the aim which we set before ourselves at first when we entered upon our comparative examination of the methods of
\nNature and the methods of Yoga and we now return to it with the possibility of hazarding some definite solution. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tWe observe, first, that there still exists in India a remarkable Yogic system which is in its nature synthetical and starts from
\na great central principle of Nature, a great dynamic force of Nature; but it is a Yoga apart, not a synthesis of other schools.
\nThis system is the way of the Tantra. Owing to certain of its developments Tantra has fallen into discredit with those who
\nare not Tantrics; and especially owing to the developments of its left-hand path, the Vama Marga, which not content with
\nexceeding the duality of virtue and sin and instead of replacing them by spontaneous rightness of action seemed, sometimes,
\nto make a method of self-indulgence, a method of unrestrained social immorality. Nevertheless, in its origin, Tantra was a great
\nand puissant system founded upon ideas which were at least partially true. Even its twofold division into the right-hand and
\nleft-hand paths, Dakshina Marga and Vama Marga, started from a certain profound perception. In the ancient symbolic sense of
\nthe words Dakshina and Vama, it was the distinction between the way of Knowledge and the way of Ananda,
\n\t\t\t\u2014 Nature in man
\nliberating itself by right discrimination in power and practice of its own energies, elements and potentialities and Nature in man<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 <\/font>42<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\t liberating itself by joyous acceptance in power and practice of
\nits own energies, elements and potentialities. But in both paths there was in the end an obscuration of principles, a deformation
\nof symbols and a fall. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIf, however, we leave aside, here also, the actual methods
\nand practices and seek for the central principle, we find, first, that Tantra expressly differentiates itself from the Vedic methods
\nof Yoga. In a sense, all the schools we have hitherto examined are Vedantic in their principle; their force is in knowledge, their
\nmethod is knowledge, though it is not always discernment by the intellect, but may be, instead, the knowledge of the heart expressed in love and faith or a knowledge in the will working out through action. In all of them the lord of the Yoga is the Purusha,
\nthe Conscious Soul that knows, observes, attracts, governs. But in Tantra it is rather Prakriti, the Nature-Soul, the Energy, the
\nWill-in-Power executive in the universe. It was by learning and applying the intimate secrets of this Will-in-Power, its method,
\nits Tantra, that the Tantric Yogin pursued the aims of his discipline, \u2014 mastery, perfection, liberation, beatitude. Instead of
\ndrawing back from manifested Nature and its difficulties, he confronted them, seized and conquered. But in the end, as is
\nthe general tendency of Prakriti, Tantric Yoga largely lost its principle in its machinery and became a thing of formulae and
\noccult mechanism still powerful when rightly used but fallen from the clarity of their original intention. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tWe have in this central Tantric conception one side of the truth, the worship of the Energy, the Shakti, as the sole effective
\nforce for all attainment. We get the other extreme in the Vedantic conception of the Shakti as a power of Illusion and in the search
\nafter the silent inactive Purusha as the means of liberation from the deceptions created by the active Energy. But in the integral
\nconception the Conscious Soul is the Lord, the Nature-Soul is his executive Energy. Purusha is of the nature of Sat, the being of
\nconscious self-existence pure and infinite; Shakti or Prakriti is of the nature of Chit,
\n\t\t\t\u2014 it is power of the Purusha’s self-conscious
\nexistence, pure and infinite. The relation of the two exists between the poles of rest and action. When the Energy is absorbed <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 <\/font>43<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\tin the bliss of conscious self-existence, there is rest; when the
\nPurusha pours itself out in the action of its Energy, there is action, creation and the enjoyment or Ananda of becoming. But
\nif Ananda is the creator and begetter of all becoming, its method is Tapas or force of the Purusha’s consciousness dwelling upon
\nits own infinite potentiality in existence and producing from it ~\u00af<\/i>
\ntruths of conception or real Ideas, vijnana<\/i>, which, proceeding from an omniscient and omnipotent Self-existence, have the
\nsurety of their own fulfilment and contain in themselves the nature and law of their own becoming in the terms of mind,
\nlife and matter. The eventual omnipotence of Tapas and the infallible fulfilment of the Idea are the very foundation of all
\nYoga. In man we render these terms by Will and Faith, \u2014 a will that is eventually self-effective because it is of the substance of
\nKnowledge and a faith that is the reflex in the lower consciousness of a Truth or real Idea yet unrealised in the manifestation.
\nIt is this self-certainty of the Idea which is meant by the Gita when it says,
\nyo yac-chraddhah sa eva sah<\/i>, “whatever is a man’s
\n.<\/i> .<\/i>
\nfaith or the sure Idea in him, that he becomes.” <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tWe see, then, what from the psychological point of view,
\n\t\t\t\u2014 and Yoga is nothing but practical psychology, \u2014 is the conception of Nature from which we have to start. It is the selffulfilment of the Purusha through his Energy. But the movement of Nature is twofold, higher and lower, or, as we may choose
\nto term it, divine and undivine. The distinction exists indeed for practical purposes only; for there is nothing that is not divine,
\nand in a larger view it is as meaningless, verbally, as the distinction between natural and supernatural, for all things that are
\nare natural. All things are in Nature and all things are in God. But, for practical purposes, there is a real distinction. The lower
\nNature, that which we know and are and must remain so long as the faith in us is not changed, acts through limitation and
\ndivision, is of the nature of Ignorance and culminates in the life of the ego; but the higher Nature, that to which we aspire, acts
\nby unification and transcendence of limitation, is of the nature of Knowledge and culminates in the life divine. The passage
\nfrom the lower to the higher is the aim of Yoga; and this passage<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 <\/font>44<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\t may effect itself by the rejection of the lower and escape into the
\nhigher, \u2014 the ordinary view-point, \u2014 or by the transformation of the lower and its elevation to the higher Nature. It is this,
\nrather, that must be the aim of an integral Yoga. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBut in either case it is always through something in the lower
\nthat we must rise into the higher existence, and the schools of Yoga each select their own point of departure or their own
\ngate of escape. They specialise certain activities of the lower Prakriti and turn them towards the Divine. But the normal
\naction of Nature in us is an integral movement in which the full complexity of all our elements is affected by and affects all
\nour environments. The whole of life is the Yoga of Nature. The Yoga that we seek must also be an integral action of Nature,
\nand the whole difference between the Yogin and the natural man will be this, that the Yogin seeks to substitute in himself for
\nthe integral action of the lower Nature working in and by ego and division the integral action of the higher Nature working in
\nand by God and unity. If indeed our aim be only an escape from the world to God, synthesis is unnecessary and a waste of time;
\nfor then our sole practical aim must be to find out one path out of the thousand that lead to God, one shortest possible of short
\ncuts, and not to linger exploring different paths that end in the same goal. But if our aim be a transformation of our integral
\nbeing into the terms of God-existence, it is then that a synthesis becomes necessary. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe method we have to pursue, then, is to put our whole conscious being into relation and contact with the Divine and to
\ncall Him in to transform our entire being into His. Thus in a sense God Himself, the real Person in us, becomes the sadhaka of the
\nsadhana\u00b9<\/font> as well as the Master of the Yoga by whom the lower personality is used as the centre of a divine transfiguration and
\nthe instrument of its own perfection. In effect, the pressure of the Tapas, the force of consciousness in us dwelling in the Idea of the
\ndivine Nature upon that which we are in our entirety, produces <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\u00b9<\/font><\/i>
\nSadhana<\/i>, the practice by which perfection, siddhi<\/i>, is attained; sadhaka<\/i>, the Yogin who seeks by that practice the
\nsiddhi<\/i>. <\/p>\n

<\/font><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 <\/font>45<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\tits own realisation. The divine and all-knowing and all-effecting
\ndescends upon the limited and obscure, progressively illumines and energises the whole lower nature and substitutes its own
\naction for all the terms of the inferior human light and mortal activity. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIn psychological fact this method translates itself into the progressive surrender of the ego with its whole field and all its
\napparatus to the Beyond-ego with its vast and incalculable but always inevitable workings. Certainly, this is no short cut or easy
\nsadhana. It requires a colossal faith, an absolute courage and above all an unflinching patience. For it implies three stages of
\nwhich only the last can be wholly blissful or rapid, \u2014 the attempt of the ego to enter into contact with the Divine, the wide, full
\nand therefore laborious preparation of the whole lower Nature by the divine working to receive and become the higher Nature,
\nand the eventual transformation. In fact, however, the divine Strength, often unobserved and behind the veil, substitutes itself
\nfor our weakness and supports us through all our failings of faith, courage and patience. It “makes the blind to see and the
\nlame to stride over the hills.” The intellect becomes aware of a Law that beneficently insists and a succour that upholds; the
\nheart speaks of a Master of all things and Friend of man or a universal Mother who upholds through all stumblings. Therefore this path is at once the most difficult imaginable and yet, in comparison with the magnitude of its effort and object, the
\nmost easy and sure of all. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThere are three outstanding features of this action of the
\nhigher when it works integrally on the lower nature. In the first place it does not act according to a fixed system and succession
\nas in the specialised methods of Yoga, but with a sort of free, scattered and yet gradually intensive and purposeful working
\ndetermined by the temperament of the individual in whom it operates, the helpful materials which his nature offers and the
\nobstacles which it presents to purification and perfection. In a sense, therefore, each man in this path has his own method of
\nYoga. Yet are there certain broad lines of working common to all which enable us to construct not indeed a routine system, but<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 <\/font>46<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\tyet some kind of Shastra or scientific method of the synthetic
\nYoga. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tSecondly, the process, being integral, accepts our nature such
\nas it stands organised by our past evolution and without rejecting anything essential compels all to undergo a divine change.
\nEverything in us is seized by the hands of a mighty Artificer and transformed into a clear image of that which it now seeks
\nconfusedly to present. In that ever-progressive experience we begin to perceive how this lower manifestation is constituted
\nand that everything in it, however seemingly deformed or petty or vile, is the more or less distorted or imperfect figure of some
\nelement or action in the harmony of the divine Nature. We begin to understand what the Vedic Rishis meant when they spoke of
\nthe human forefathers fashioning the gods as a smith forges the crude material in his smithy. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThirdly, the divine Power in us uses all life as the means of this integral Yoga. Every experience and outer contact with our
\nworld-environment, however trifling or however disastrous, is used for the work, and every inner experience, even to the most
\nrepellent suffering or the most humiliating fall, becomes a step on the path to perfection. And we recognise in ourselves with
\nopened eyes the method of God in the world, His purpose of light in the obscure, of might in the weak and fallen, of delight in
\nwhat is grievous and miserable. We see the divine method to be the same in the lower and in the higher working; only in the one
\nit is pursued tardily and obscurely through the subconscious in Nature, in the other it becomes swift and self-conscious and the
\ninstrument confesses the hand of the Master. All life is a Yoga of Nature seeking to manifest God within itself. Yoga marks the
\nstage at which this effort becomes capable of self-awareness and therefore of right completion in the individual. It is a gathering
\nup and concentration of the movements dispersed and loosely combined in the lower evolution. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAn integral method and an integral result. First, an integral realisation of Divine Being; not only a realisation of the One in
\nits indistinguishable unity, but also in its multitude of aspects which are also necessary to the complete knowledge of it by <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 <\/font>47<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\tthe relative consciousness; not only realisation of unity in the
\nSelf, but of unity in the infinite diversity of activities, worlds and creatures. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tTherefore, also, an integral liberation. Not only the freedom born of unbroken contact and identification of the individual  being in all its parts with the Divine, sā<\/font>yujya-mukti<\/i>, by which it
\n\t\t\tcan become free\u00b2<\/font> even in its separation, even in the duality; not  only the sā<\/font>lokya-mukti <\/i>by which the whole conscious existence
\ndwells in the same status of being as the Divine, in the state of Sachchidananda; but also the acquisition of the divine nature by
\nthe transformation of this lower being into the human image of 
\nthe Divine, sā<\/font>dharmya-mukti<\/i>, and the complete and final release of all, the liberation of the consciousness from the transitory
\nmould of the ego and its unification with the One Being, universal both in the world and the individual and transcendentally
\none both in the world and beyond all universe. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBy this integral realisation and liberation, the perfect harmony of the results of Knowledge, Love and Works. For there is attained the complete release from ego and identification in
\nbeing with the One in all and beyond all. But since the attaining consciousness is not limited by its attainment, we win also the
\nunity in Beatitude and the harmonised diversity in Love, so that all relations of the play remain possible to us even while we
\nretain on the heights of our being the eternal oneness with the Beloved. And by a similar wideness, being capable of a freedom
\nin spirit that embraces life and does not depend upon withdrawal from life, we are able to become without egoism, bondage or
\nreaction the channel in our mind and body for a divine action poured out freely upon the world. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe divine existence is of the nature not only of freedom, but of purity, beatitude and perfection. An integral purity which
\nshall enable on the one hand the perfect reflection of the divine Being in ourselves and on the other the perfect outpouring of its
\nTruth and Law in us in the terms of life and through the right<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\u00b2.<\/font> As the Jivanmukta, who is entirely free even without dissolution of the bodily life in a final Samadhi.
\n\t\t\t<\/font><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 <\/font>48<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\t functioning of the complex instrument we are in our outer parts,
\nis the condition of an integral liberty. Its result is an integral beatitude, in which there becomes possible at once the Ananda
\nof all that is in the world seen as symbols of the Divine and the Ananda of that which is not-world. And it prepares the
\nintegral perfection of our humanity as a type of the Divine in the conditions of the human manifestation, a perfection founded
\non a certain free universality of being, of love and joy, of play of knowledge and of play of will in power and will in unegoistic
\naction. This integrality also can be attained by the integral Yoga. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPerfection includes perfection of mind and body, so that the
\nhighest results of Rajayoga and Hathayoga should be contained in the widest formula of the synthesis finally to be effected by
\nmankind. At any rate a full development of the general mental and physical faculties and experiences attainable by humanity
\nthrough Yoga must be included in the scope of the integral ^<\/i>
\nmethod. Nor would these have any raison d’etre <\/i>unless employed for an integral mental and physical life. Such a mental
\nand physical life would be in its nature a translation of the spiritual existence into its right mental and physical values. Thus
\nwe would arrive at a synthesis of the three degrees of Nature and of the three modes of human existence which she has evolved
\nor is evolving. We would include in the scope of our liberated being and perfected modes of activity the material life, our base,
\nand the mental life, our intermediate instrument. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tNor would the integrality to which we aspire be real or even
\npossible, if it were confined to the individual. Since our divine perfection embraces the realisation of ourselves in being, in life
\nand in love through others as well as through ourselves, the extension of our liberty and of its results in others would be the
\ninevitable outcome as well as the broadest utility of our liberation and perfection. And the constant and inherent attempt of
\nsuch an extension would be towards its increasing and ultimately complete generalisation in mankind. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe divinising of the normal material life of man and of his great secular attempt of mental and moral self-culture in the
\nindividual and the race by this integralisation of a widely perfect<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 <\/font>49<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\tspiritual existence would thus be the crown alike of our individual and of our common effort. Such a consummation being no other than the kingdom of heaven within reproduced in the
\nkingdom of heaven without, would be also the true fulfilment of the great dream cherished in different terms by the world’s
\nreligions. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe widest synthesis of perfection possible to thought is
\nthe sole effort entirely worthy of those whose dedicated vision perceives that God dwells concealed in humanity. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 <\/font>50<\/font><\/p>\n

\t\t\t<\/span><\/span>\n\t\t\t<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chapter V   The Synthesis of the Systems   BY THE very nature of the principal Yogic schools, each covering in its operations a part…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[46],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2149","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-23-24-the-synthesis-of-yoga","wpcat-46-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2149","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2149"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2149\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2149"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2149"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2149"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}