{"id":2162,"date":"2013-07-13T01:39:50","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:39:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=2162"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:39:50","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:39:50","slug":"03-chapter-iii-the-threefold-life-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\/03-chapter-iii-the-threefold-life-vol-23-24-the-synthesis-of-yoga","title":{"rendered":"-03_Chapter III The Threefold Life.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <span lang=\"en-gb\"><\/p>\n<div align=\"center\">\n<table border=\"0\" cellpadding=\"0\" cellspacing=\"0\" width=\"100%\">\n<tr>\n<td width=\"100%\" valign=\"top\">\n\t\t\t<span lang=\"en-gb\"><\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;text-indent: 0pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n\t\t\t<b><font size=\"4\">Chapter III <\/font> <\/b><\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;text-indent: 0pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n\t\t\t&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;text-indent: 0pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n\t\t\t<b><font size=\"4\">The Threefold Life <\/font> <\/b><\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;text-indent: 0pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n\t\t\t&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;text-indent: 0pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n\t\t\t<b><font size=\"5\">N<\/font>ATURE,<\/b> then, is an evolution or progressive self-manifestation of an eternal and secret existence, with three successive forms as her three steps of ascent. And we<br \/>\nhave consequently as the condition of all our activities these three mutually interdependent possibilities, the bodily life, the<br \/>\nmental existence and the veiled spiritual being which is in the involution the cause of the others and in the evolution their result. Preserving and perfecting the physical, fulfilling the mental, it is Nature&#8217;s aim and it should be ours to unveil in the perfected<br \/>\nbody and mind the transcendent activities of the Spirit. As the mental life does not abrogate but works for the elevation and<br \/>\nbetter utilisation of the bodily existence, so too the spiritual should not abrogate but transfigure our intellectual, emotional,<br \/>\naesthetic and vital activities. <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;text-indent: 25pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n\t\t\tFor man, the head of terrestrial Nature, the sole earthly<br \/>\nframe in which her full evolution is possible, is a triple birth. He has been given a living frame in which the body is the vessel and<br \/>\nlife the dynamic means of a divine manifestation. His activity is centred in a progressive mind which aims at perfecting itself as<br \/>\nwell as the house in which it dwells and the means of life that it uses, and is capable of awaking by a progressive self-realisation<br \/>\nto its own true nature as a form of the Spirit. He culminates in what he always really was, the illumined and beatific spirit<br \/>\nwhich is intended at last to irradiate life and mind with its now concealed splendours. <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;text-indent: 25pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n\t\t\tSince this is the plan of the divine Energy in humanity, the whole method and aim of our existence must work by the interaction of these three elements in the being. As a result of their separate formulation in Nature, man has open to him a choice<br \/>\nbetween three kinds of life, the ordinary material existence, a life of mental activity and progress and the unchanging spiritual<br \/>\n &nbsp;<br \/>\n&nbsp; <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n\t\t\t<font size=\"2\">Page <font face=\"Times New Roman\">\u2013 <\/font>20<\/font><\/p>\n<hr>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n\t\t\tbeatitude. But he can, as he progresses, combine these three<br \/>\nforms, resolve their discords into a harmonious rhythm and so create in himself the whole godhead, the perfect Man. <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;text-indent: 25pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n\t\t\tIn ordinary Nature they have each their own characteristic and governing impulse. <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;text-indent: 25pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n\t\t\tThe characteristic energy of bodily Life is not so much in progress as in persistence, not so much in individual<br \/>\n\t\t\tself-enlargement as in self-repetition. There is, indeed, in physical Nature a progression from type to type, from the vegetable to the<br \/>\nanimal, from the animal to man; for even in inanimate Matter Mind is at work. But once a type is marked off physically, the<br \/>\nchief immediate preoccupation of the terrestrial Mother seems to be to keep it in being by a constant reproduction. For Life always<br \/>\nseeks immortality; but since individual form is impermanent and only the idea of a form is permanent in the consciousness<br \/>\nthat creates the universe, \u2014 for there it does not perish, \u2014 such constant reproduction is the only possible material immortality.<br \/>\nSelf-preservation, self-repetition, self-multiplication are necessarily, then, the predominant instincts of all material existence.<br \/>\nMaterial life seems ever to move in a fixed cycle. <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;text-indent: 25pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n\t\t\tThe characteristic energy of pure Mind is change, and<br \/>\nthe more our mentality acquires elevation and organisation, the more this law of Mind assumes the aspect of a continual<br \/>\nenlargement, improvement and better arrangement of its gains and so of a continual passage from a smaller and simpler to a<br \/>\nlarger and more complex perfection. For Mind, unlike bodily life, is infinite in its field, elastic in its expansion, easily variable<br \/>\nin its formations. Change, then, self-enlargement and self-improvement are its proper instincts. Mind too moves in cycles,<br \/>\nbut these are ever-enlarging spirals. Its faith is perfectibility, its watchword is progress. <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;text-indent: 25pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n\t\t\tThe characteristic law of Spirit is self-existent perfection and immutable infinity. It possesses always and in its own right<br \/>\nthe immortality which is the aim of Life and the perfection which is the goal of Mind. The attainment of the eternal and the<br \/>\nrealisation of that which is the same in all things and beyond all things, equally blissful in universe and outside it, untouched by<br \/>\n &nbsp;<br \/>\n&nbsp; <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n\t\t\t<font size=\"2\">Page <font face=\"Times New Roman\">\u2013 <\/font>21<\/font><\/p>\n<hr>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n\t\t\tthe imperfections and limitations of the forms and activities in<br \/>\nwhich it dwells, are the glory of the spiritual life. <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;text-indent: 25pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n\t\t\tIn each of these forms Nature acts both individually and<br \/>\ncollectively; for the Eternal affirms Himself equally in the single form and in the group-existence, whether family, clan and nation or groupings dependent on less physical principles or the supreme group of all, our collective humanity. Man also may<br \/>\nseek his own individual good from any or all of these spheres of activity, or identify himself in them with the collectivity and live<br \/>\nfor it, or, rising to a truer perception of this complex universe, harmonise the individual realisation with the collective aim. For<br \/>\nas it is the right relation of the soul with the Supreme, while it is in the universe, neither to assert egoistically its separate being<br \/>\nnor to blot itself out in the Indefinable, but to realise its unity with the Divine and the world and unite them in the individual,<br \/>\nso the right relation of the individual with the collectivity is neither to pursue egoistically his own material or mental progress or<br \/>\nspiritual salvation without regard to his fellows, nor for the sake of the community to suppress or maim his proper development,<br \/>\nbut to sum up in himself all its best and completest possibilities and pour them out by thought, action and all other means on<br \/>\nhis surroundings so that the whole race may approach nearer to the attainment of its supreme personalities. <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;text-indent: 25pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n\t\t\tIt follows that the object of the material life must be to fulfil, above all things, the vital aim of Nature. The whole aim of the<br \/>\nmaterial man is to live, to pass from birth to death with as much comfort or enjoyment as may be on the way, but anyhow to live.<br \/>\nHe can subordinate this aim, but only to physical Nature&#8217;s other instincts, the reproduction of the individual and the conservation<br \/>\nof the type in the family, class or community. Self, domesticity, the accustomed order of the society and of the nation are the<br \/>\nconstituents of the material existence. Its immense importance in the economy of Nature is self-evident, and commensurate is the<br \/>\nimportance of the human type which represents it. He assures her of the safety of the framework she has made and of the<br \/>\norderly continuance and conservation of her past gains. <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;text-indent: 25pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n\t\t\tBut by that very utility such men and the life they lead are<br \/>\n &nbsp;<br \/>\n&nbsp; <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n\t\t\t<font size=\"2\">Page <font face=\"Times New Roman\">\u2013 <\/font>22<\/font><\/p>\n<hr>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n\t\t\tcondemned to be limited, irrationally conservative and earthbound. The customary routine, the customary institutions, the inherited or habitual forms of thought,<br \/>\n\t\t\t\u2014 these things are the<br \/>\nlife-breath of their nostrils. They admit and jealously defend the changes compelled by the progressive mind in the past, but<br \/>\ncombat with equal zeal the changes that are being made by it in the present. For to the material man the living progressive<br \/>\nthinker is an ideologue, dreamer or madman. The old Semites who stoned the living prophets and adored their memories when<br \/>\ndead, were the very incarnation of this instinctive and unintelligent principle in Nature. In the ancient Indian distinction<br \/>\nbetween the once born and the twice born, it is to this material man that the former description can be applied. He does<br \/>\nNature&#8217;s inferior works; he assures the basis for her higher activities; but not to him easily are opened the glories of her second<br \/>\nbirth. <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;text-indent: 25pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n\t\t\tYet he admits so much of spirituality as has been enforced on<br \/>\nhis customary ideas by the great religious outbursts of the past and he makes in his scheme of society a place, venerable though<br \/>\nnot often effective, for the priest or the learned theologian who can be trusted to provide him with a safe and ordinary spiritual<br \/>\npabulum. But to the man who would assert for himself the liberty of spiritual experience and the spiritual life, he assigns,<br \/>\nif he admits him at all, not the vestment of the priest but the robe of the Sannyasin. Outside society let him exercise his dangerous freedom. So he may even serve as a human lightning-rod receiving the electricity of the Spirit and turning it away from<br \/>\nthe social edifice. <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;text-indent: 25pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n\t\t\tNevertheless it is possible to make the material man and his<br \/>\nlife moderately progressive by imprinting on the material mind the custom of progress, the habit of conscious change, the fixed<br \/>\nidea of progression as a law of life. The creation by this means of progressive societies in Europe is one of the greatest triumphs<br \/>\nof Mind over Matter. But the physical nature has its revenge; for the progress made tends to be of the grosser and more outward<br \/>\nkind and its attempts at a higher or a more rapid movement bring about great wearinesses, swift exhaustions, startling recoils.<br \/>\n &nbsp;<br \/>\n&nbsp; <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n\t\t\t<font size=\"2\">Page <font face=\"Times New Roman\">\u2013 <\/font>23<\/font><\/p>\n<hr>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;text-indent: 25pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n\t\t\tIt is possible also to give the material man and his life a<br \/>\nmoderate spirituality by accustoming him to regard in a religious spirit all the institutions of life and its customary activities. The<br \/>\ncreation of such spiritualised communities in the East has been one of the greatest triumphs of Spirit over Matter. Yet here, too,<br \/>\nthere is a defect; for this often tends only to the creation of a religious temperament, the most outward form of spirituality.<br \/>\nIts higher manifestations, even the most splendid and puissant, either merely increase the number of souls drawn out of social<br \/>\nlife and so impoverish it or disturb the society for a while by a momentary elevation. The truth is that neither the mental<br \/>\neffort nor the spiritual impulse can suffice, divorced from each other, to overcome the immense resistance of material Nature.<br \/>\nShe demands their alliance in a complete effort before she will suffer a complete change in humanity. But, usually, these two<br \/>\ngreat agents are unwilling to make to each other the necessary concessions. <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;text-indent: 25pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n\t\t\tThe mental life concentrates on the aesthetic, the ethical and the intellectual activities. Essential mentality is idealistic and a<br \/>\nseeker after perfection. The subtle self, the brilliant Atman,<sup><font size=\"2\">1<\/font><\/sup> is ever a dreamer. A dream of perfect beauty, perfect conduct,<br \/>\nperfect Truth, whether seeking new forms of the Eternal or revitalising the old, is the very soul of pure mentality. But it<br \/>\nknows not how to deal with the resistance of Matter. There it is hampered and inefficient, works by bungling experiments and<br \/>\nhas either to withdraw from the struggle or submit to the grey actuality. Or else, by studying the material life and accepting the<br \/>\nconditions of the contest, it may succeed, but only in imposing temporarily some artificial system which infinite Nature either<br \/>\nrends and casts aside or disfigures out of recognition or by withdrawing her assent leaves as the corpse of a dead ideal. Few and<br \/>\nfar between have been those realisations of the dreamer in Man which the world has gladly accepted, looks back to with a fond<br \/>\nmemory and seeks, in its elements, to cherish. <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;text-indent: 25pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n\t\t\t&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;text-indent: 25pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n\t\t\t<font size=\"2\">1<br \/>\nWho dwells in Dream, the inly conscious, the enjoyer of abstractions, the Brilliant. Mandukya Upanishad 4.<br \/>\n &nbsp;<br \/>\n&nbsp; <\/font> <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n\t\t\t<font size=\"2\">Page <font face=\"Times New Roman\">\u2013 <\/font>24<\/font><\/p>\n<hr>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;text-indent: 25pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n\t\t\tWhen the gulf between actual life and the temperament of<br \/>\nthe thinker is too great, we see as the result a sort of withdrawing of the Mind from life in order to act with a greater freedom in its<br \/>\nown sphere. The poet living among his brilliant visions, the artist absorbed in his art, the philosopher thinking out the problems<br \/>\nof the intellect in his solitary chamber, the scientist, the scholar caring only for their studies and their experiments, were often<br \/>\nin former days, are even now not unoften the Sannyasins of the intellect. To the work they have done for humanity, all its past<br \/>\nbears record. <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;text-indent: 25pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n\t\t\tBut such seclusion is justified only by some special activity.<br \/>\nMind finds fully its force and action only when it casts itself upon life and accepts equally its possibilities and its resistances<br \/>\nas the means of a greater self-perfection. In the struggle with the difficulties of the material world the ethical development of<br \/>\nthe individual is firmly shaped and the great schools of conduct are formed; by contact with the facts of life Art attains to vitality, Thought assures its abstractions, the generalisations of the philosopher base themselves on a stable foundation of science<br \/>\nand experience. <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;text-indent: 25pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n\t\t\tThis mixing with life may, however, be pursued for the sake<br \/>\nof the individual mind and with an entire indifference to the forms of the material existence or the uplifting of the race. This<br \/>\nindifference is seen at its highest in the Epicurean discipline and is not entirely absent from the Stoic; and even altruism does the<br \/>\nworks of compassion more often for its own sake than for the sake of the world it helps. But this too is a limited fulfilment. The<br \/>\nprogressive mind is seen at its noblest when it strives to elevate the whole race to its own level whether by sowing broadcast<br \/>\nthe image of its own thought and fulfilment or by changing the material life of the race into fresh forms, religious, intellectual,<br \/>\nsocial or political, intended to represent more nearly that ideal of truth, beauty, justice, righteousness with which the man&#8217;s own<br \/>\nsoul is illumined. Failure in such a field matters little; for the mere attempt is dynamic and creative. The struggle of Mind to<br \/>\nelevate life is the promise and condition of the conquest of life by that which is higher even than Mind.<br \/>\n &nbsp;<br \/>\n&nbsp; <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n\t\t\t<font size=\"2\">Page <font face=\"Times New Roman\">\u2013 <\/font>25<\/font><\/p>\n<hr>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;text-indent: 25pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n\t\t\tThat highest thing, the spiritual existence, is concerned with<br \/>\nwhat is eternal but not therefore entirely aloof from the transient. For the spiritual man the mind&#8217;s dream of perfect beauty is<br \/>\nrealised in an eternal love, beauty and delight that has no dependence and is equal behind all objective appearances; its dream<br \/>\nof perfect Truth in the supreme, self-existent, self-apparent and eternal Verity which never varies, but explains and is the secret<br \/>\nof all variations and the goal of all progress; its dream of perfect action in the omnipotent and self-guiding Law that is inherent<br \/>\nfor ever in all things and translates itself here in the rhythm of the worlds. What is fugitive vision or constant effort of creation<br \/>\nin the brilliant Self is an eternally existing Reality in the Self that knows<sup><font size=\"2\">2<\/font><\/sup> and is the Lord. <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;text-indent: 25pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n\t\t\tBut if it is often difficult for the mental life to accommodate itself to the dully resistant material activity, how much more<br \/>\ndifficult must it seem for the spiritual existence to live on in a world that appears full not of the Truth but of every lie and<br \/>\nillusion, not of Love and Beauty but of an encompassing discord and ugliness, not of the Law of Truth but of victorious selfishness<br \/>\nand sin? Therefore the spiritual life tends easily in the saint and Sannyasin to withdraw from the material existence and reject it<br \/>\neither wholly and physically or in the spirit. It sees this world as the kingdom of evil or of ignorance and the eternal and divine<br \/>\neither in a far-off heaven or beyond where there is no world and no life. It separates itself inwardly, if not also physically, from<br \/>\nthe world&#8217;s impurities; it asserts the spiritual reality in a spotless isolation. This withdrawal renders an invaluable service to the<br \/>\nmaterial life itself by forcing it to regard and even to bow down to something that is the direct negation of its own petty ideals,<br \/>\nsordid cares and egoistic self-content. <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;text-indent: 25pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n\t\t\tBut the work in the world of so supreme a power as spiritual<br \/>\nforce cannot be thus limited. The spiritual life also can return upon the material and use it as a means of its own greater <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;text-indent: 25pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n\t\t\t&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;text-indent: 25pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n\t\t\t<font size=\"2\">2 The Unified, in whom conscious thought is concentrated, who is all delight and<br \/>\nenjoyer of delight, the Wise. . . . He is the Lord of all, the Omniscient, the inner Guide. Mandukya Upanishad 5, 6.<br \/>\n &nbsp;<br \/>\n&nbsp; <\/font> <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n\t\t\t<font size=\"2\">Page <font face=\"Times New Roman\">\u2013 <\/font>26<\/font><\/p>\n<hr>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n\t\t\tfullness. Refusing to be blinded by the dualities, the appearances, it can seek in all appearances whatsoever the vision of the same Lord, the same eternal Truth, Beauty, Love, Delight. The<br \/>\nVedantic formula of the Self in all things, all things in the Self and all things as becomings of the Self is the key to this richer<br \/>\nand all-embracing Yoga. <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;text-indent: 25pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n\t\t\tBut the spiritual life, like the mental, may thus make use<br \/>\nof this outward existence for the benefit of the individual with a perfect indifference to any collective uplifting of the merely<br \/>\nsymbolic world which it uses. Since the Eternal is for ever the same in all things and all things the same to the Eternal, since<br \/>\nthe exact mode of action and the result are of no importance compared with the working out in oneself of the one great<br \/>\nrealisation, this spiritual indifference accepts no matter what environment, no matter what action, dispassionately, prepared<br \/>\nto retire as soon as its own supreme end is realised. It is so that many have understood the ideal of the Gita. Or else the<br \/>\ninner love and bliss may pour itself out on the world in good deeds, in service, in compassion, the inner Truth in the giving<br \/>\nof knowledge, without therefore attempting the transformation of a world which must by its inalienable nature remain a battlefield of the dualities, of sin and virtue, of truth and error, of joy and suffering. <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;text-indent: 25pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n\t\t\tBut if Progress also is one of the chief terms of world-existence and a progressive manifestation of the Divine the true<br \/>\nsense of Nature, this limitation also is invalid. It is possible for the spiritual life in the world, and it is its real mission, to<br \/>\nchange the material life into its own image, the image of the Divine. Therefore, besides the great solitaries who have sought<br \/>\nand attained their self-liberation, we have the great spiritual teachers who have also liberated others and, supreme of all,<br \/>\nthe great dynamic souls who, feeling themselves stronger in the might of the Spirit than all the forces of the material life banded<br \/>\ntogether, have thrown themselves upon the world, grappled with it in a loving wrestle and striven to compel its consent to its<br \/>\nown transfiguration. Ordinarily, the effort is concentrated on a mental and moral change in humanity, but it may extend itself<br \/>\n &nbsp;<br \/>\n&nbsp; <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n\t\t\t<font size=\"2\">Page <font face=\"Times New Roman\">\u2013 <\/font>27<\/font><\/p>\n<hr>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n\t\t\talso to the alteration of the forms of our life and its institutions<br \/>\nso that they too may be a better mould for the inpourings of the Spirit. These attempts have been the supreme landmarks<br \/>\nin the progressive development of human ideals and the divine preparation of the race. Every one of them, whatever its outward<br \/>\nresults, has left Earth more capable of Heaven and quickened in its tardy movements the evolutionary Yoga of Nature. <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;text-indent: 25pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n\t\t\tIn India, for the last thousand years and more, the spiritual life and the material have existed side by side to the exclusion<br \/>\nof the progressive mind. Spirituality has made terms for itself with Matter by renouncing the attempt at general progress. It<br \/>\nhas obtained from society the right of free spiritual development for all who assume some distinctive symbol, such as the garb<br \/>\nof the Sannyasin, the recognition of that life as man&#8217;s goal and those who live it as worthy of an absolute reverence, and the<br \/>\ncasting of society itself into such a religious mould that its most customary acts should be accompanied by a formal reminder of<br \/>\nthe spiritual symbolism of life and its ultimate destination. On the other hand, there was conceded to society the right of inertia<br \/>\nand immobile self-conservation. The concession destroyed much of the value of the terms. The religious mould being fixed, the<br \/>\nformal reminder tended to become a routine and to lose its living sense. The constant attempts to change the mould by new sects<br \/>\nand religions ended only in a new routine or a modification of the old; for the saving element of the free and active mind had<br \/>\nbeen exiled. The material life, handed over to the Ignorance, the purposeless and endless duality, became a leaden and dolorous<br \/>\nyoke from which flight was the only escape. <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;text-indent: 25pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n\t\t\tThe schools of Indian Yoga lent themselves to the compromise. Individual perfection or liberation was made the aim, seclusion of some kind from the ordinary activities the condition, the renunciation of life the culmination. The teacher gave his knowledge only to a small circle of disciples. Or if a wider<br \/>\nmovement was attempted, it was still the release of the individual soul that remained the aim. The pact with an immobile society<br \/>\nwas, for the most part, observed. <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;text-indent: 25pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n\t\t\tThe utility of the compromise in the then actual state of the<br \/>\n &nbsp;<br \/>\n&nbsp; <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n\t\t\t<font size=\"2\">Page <font face=\"Times New Roman\">\u2013 <\/font>28<\/font><\/p>\n<hr>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n\t\t\tworld cannot be doubted. It secured in India a society which<br \/>\nlent itself to the preservation and the worship of spirituality, a country apart in which as in a fortress the highest spiritual ideal<br \/>\ncould maintain itself in its most absolute purity unoverpowered by the siege of the forces around it. But it was a compromise,<br \/>\nnot an absolute victory. The material life lost the divine impulse to growth, the spiritual preserved by isolation its height and<br \/>\npurity, but sacrificed its full power and serviceableness to the world. Therefore, in the divine Providence the country of the<br \/>\nYogins and the Sannyasins has been forced into a strict and imperative contact with the very element it had rejected, the<br \/>\nelement of the progressive Mind, so that it might recover what was now wanting to it. <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;text-indent: 25pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n\t\t\tWe have to recognise once more that the individual exists not in himself alone but in the collectivity and that individual<br \/>\nperfection and liberation are not the whole sense of God&#8217;s intention in the world. The free use of our liberty includes also the<br \/>\nliberation of others and of mankind; the perfect utility of our perfection is, having realised in ourselves the divine symbol, to<br \/>\nreproduce, multiply and ultimately universalise it in others. <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;text-indent: 25pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n\t\t\tTherefore from a concrete view of human life in its threefold<br \/>\npotentialities we come to the same conclusion that we had drawn from an observation of Nature in her general workings and the<br \/>\nthree steps of her evolution. And we begin to perceive a complete aim for our synthesis of Yoga. <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;text-indent: 25pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n\t\t\tSpirit is the crown of universal existence; Matter is its basis; Mind is the link between the two. Spirit is that which is eternal; Mind and Matter are its workings. Spirit is that which is concealed and has to be revealed; mind and body are the means<br \/>\nby which it seeks to reveal itself. Spirit is the image of the Lord of the Yoga; mind and body are the means He has provided for<br \/>\nreproducing that image in phenomenal existence. All Nature is an attempt at a progressive revelation of the concealed Truth, a<br \/>\nmore and more successful reproduction of the divine image. <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;text-indent: 25pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n\t\t\tBut what Nature aims at for the mass in a slow evolution,<br \/>\nYoga effects for the individual by a rapid revolution. It works by a quickening of all her energies, a sublimation of all her<br \/>\n &nbsp;<br \/>\n&nbsp; <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n\t\t\t<font size=\"2\">Page <font face=\"Times New Roman\">\u2013 <\/font>29<\/font><\/p>\n<hr>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n\t\t\tfaculties. While she develops the spiritual life with difficulty and<br \/>\nhas constantly to fall back from it for the sake of her lower realisations, the sublimated force, the concentrated method of<br \/>\nYoga can attain directly and carry with it the perfection of the mind and even, if she will, the perfection of the body. Nature<br \/>\nseeks the Divine in her own symbols: Yoga goes beyond Nature to the Lord of Nature, beyond universe to the Transcendent and<br \/>\ncan return with the transcendent light and power, with the fiat of the Omnipotent. <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;text-indent: 25pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n\t\t\tBut their aim is one in the end. The generalisation of Yoga in humanity must be the last victory of Nature over her own delays<br \/>\nand concealments. Even as now by the progressive mind in Science she seeks to make all mankind fit for the full development<br \/>\nof the mental life, so by Yoga must she inevitably seek to make all mankind fit for the higher evolution, the second birth, the<br \/>\nspiritual existence. And as the mental life uses and perfects the material, so will the spiritual use and perfect the material and the<br \/>\nmental existence as the instruments of a divine self-expression. The ages when that is accomplished, are the legendary Satya or<br \/>\nKrita<sup><font size=\"2\">3<\/font><\/sup> Yugas, the ages of the Truth manifested in the symbol, of the great work done when Nature in mankind, illumined,<br \/>\nsatisfied and blissful, rests in the culmination of her endeavour. <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;text-indent: 25pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n\t\t\tIt is for man to know her meaning, no longer misunderstanding, vilifying or misusing the universal Mother, and to aspire always by her mightiest means to her highest ideal. <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;text-indent: 25pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n\t\t\t&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;text-indent: 25pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<font size=\"2\">3 Satya means Truth; Krita, effected or completed.<br \/>\n &nbsp; <\/font> <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;text-indent: 25pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n\t\t\t&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n\t\t\t<font size=\"2\">Page <font face=\"Times New Roman\">\u2013 <\/font>30<\/font><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Chapter III &nbsp; The Threefold Life &nbsp; NATURE, then, is an evolution or progressive self-manifestation of an eternal and secret existence, with three successive forms&#8230;<\/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-2162","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\/2162","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=2162"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2162\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2162"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2162"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2162"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}