{"id":2164,"date":"2013-07-13T01:39:51","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:39:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=2164"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:39:51","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:39:51","slug":"50-chapter-iv-the-way-of-devotion-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\/50-chapter-iv-the-way-of-devotion-vol-23-24-the-synthesis-of-yoga","title":{"rendered":"-50_Chapter IV The Way of Devotion.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

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

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

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe Way of Devotion
\n\t\t\t<\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tB<\/font>HAKTI<\/b> in itself is as wide as the heart-yearning of the
\nsoul for the Divine and as simple and straightforward as love and desire going straight towards their object. It cannot therefore be fixed down to any systematic method, cannot found itself on a psychological science like the Rajayoga, or
\na psycho-physical like the Hathayoga, or start from a definite intellectual process like the ordinary method of the Jnanayoga.
\nIt may employ various means or supports, and man, having in him a tendency towards order, process and system, may try to
\nmethodise his resort to these auxiliaries: but to give an account of their variations one would have to review almost all man’s
\nnumberless religions upon their side of inner approach to the Deity. Really, however, the more intimate yoga of Bhakti resolves
\nitself simply into these four movements, the desire of the Soul when it turns towards God and the straining of its emotion
\ntowards him, the pain of love and the divine return of love, the delight of love possessed and the play of that delight, and
\nthe eternal enjoyment of the divine Lover which is the heart of celestial bliss. These are things that are at once too simple and
\ntoo profound for methodising or for analysis. One can at best only say, here are these four successive elements, steps, if we
\nmay so call them, of the siddhi, and here are, largely, some of the means which it uses, and here again are some of the aspects
\nand experiences of the sadhana of devotion. We need only trace broadly the general line they follow before we turn to consider
\nhow the way of devotion enters into a synthetic and integral Yoga, what place it takes there and how its principle affects the
\nother principles of divine living. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAll Yoga is a turning of the human mind and the human
\nsoul, not yet divine in realisation, but feeling the divine impulse and attraction in it, towards that by which it finds its greater<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

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\n

\n\t\t\tbeing. Emotionally, the first form which this turning takes must
\nbe that of adoration. In ordinary religion this adoration wears the form of external worship and that again develops a most
\nexternal form of ceremonial worship. This element is ordinarily necessary because the mass of men live in their physical minds,
\ncannot realise anything except by the force of a physical symbol and cannot feel that they are living anything except by the force
\nof a physical action. We might apply here the Tantric gradation of sā<\/font>dhana<\/i>, which makes the way of the paś<\/font>u<\/i>, the herd, the
\nanimal or physical being, the lowest stage of its discipline, and say that the purely or predominantly ceremonial adoration is the
\nfirst step of this lowest part of the way. It is evident that even real religion,
\n\t\t\t\u2014 and Yoga is something more than religion, \u2014 only
\nbegins when this quite outward worship corresponds to something really felt within the mind, some genuine submission, awe
\nor spiritual aspiration, to which it becomes an aid, an outward expression and also a sort of periodical or constant reminder
\nhelping to draw back the mind to it from the preoccupations of ordinary life. But so long as it is only an idea of the Godhead to
\nwhich one renders reverence or homage, we have not yet got to the beginning of Yoga. The aim of Yoga being union, its beginning must always be a seeking after the Divine, a longing after some kind of touch, closeness or possession. When this comes on
\nus, the adoration becomes always primarily an inner worship; we begin to make ourselves a temple of the Divine, our thoughts
\nand feelings a constant prayer of aspiration and seeking, our whole life an external service and worship. It is as this change,
\nthis new soul-tendency grows, that the religion of the devotee becomes a Yoga, a growing contact and union. It does not follow
\nthat the outward worship will necessarily be dispensed with, but it will increasingly become only a physical expression or
\nout-flowing of the inner devotion and adoration, the wave of the soul throwing itself out in speech and symbolic act. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAdoration, before it turns into an element of the deeper Yoga of devotion, a petal of the flower of love, its homage and
\nself-uplifting to its sun, must bring with it, if it is profound, an increasing consecration of the being to the Divine who is adored.
\n  <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

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\n

\n\t\t\tAnd one element of this consecration must be a self-purifying
\nso as to become fit for the divine contact, or for the entrance of the Divine into the temple of our inner being, or for his self-revelation in the shrine of the heart. This purifying may be ethical in its character, but it will not be merely the moralist’s seeking
\nfor the right and blameless action or even, when once we reach the stage of Yoga, an obedience to the law of God as revealed in
\nformal religion; but it will be a throwing away, katharsis<\/i>, of all that conflicts whether with the idea of the Divine in himself or
\nof the Divine in ourselves. In the former case it becomes in habit of feeling and outer act an imitation of the Divine, in the latter
\na growing into his likeness in our nature. What inner adoration is to ceremonial worship, this growing into the divine likeness is
\nto the outward ethical life. It culminates in a sort of liberation by likeness to the Divine,\u00b9<\/font> a liberation from our lower nature
\nand a change into the divine nature. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tConsecration becomes in its fullness a devoting of all our
\nbeing to the Divine; therefore also of all our thoughts and our works. Here the Yoga takes into itself the essential elements of
\nthe Yoga of works and the Yoga of knowledge, but in its own manner and with its own peculiar spirit. It is a sacrifice of life and
\nworks to the Divine, but a sacrifice of love more than a tuning of the will to the divine Will. The bhakta offers up his life and all
\nthat he is and all that he has and all that he does to the Divine. This surrender may take the ascetic form, as when he leaves
\nthe ordinary life of men and devotes his days solely to prayer and praise and worship or to ecstatic meditation, gives up his
\npersonal possessions and becomes the monk or the mendicant whose one and only possession is the Divine, gives up all actions
\nin life except those only which help or belong to the communion with the Divine and communion with other devotees, or at most
\nkeeps the doing from the secure fortress of the ascetic life of those services to men which seem peculiarly the out-flowing of
\nthe divine nature of love, compassion and good. But there is the wider self-consecration, proper to any integral Yoga, which, <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\u00b9<\/font>
\nsā<\/font>drś<\/font>ya-mukti<\/i>. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 <\/font>573<\/font>  <\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\taccepting the fullness of life and the world in its entirety as the
\nplay of the Divine, offers up the whole being into his possession; it is a holding of all one is and has as belonging to him only and
\nnot to ourselves and a doing of all works as an offering to him. By this comes the complete active consecration of both the inner
\nand the outer life, the unmutilated self-giving. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThere is also the consecration of the thoughts to the Divine.
\nIn its inception this is the attempt to fix the mind on the object of adoration,
\n\t\t\t\u2014 for naturally the restless human mind is occupied with other objects and, even when it is directed upwards, constantly drawn away by the world,
\n\t\t\t\u2014 so that in the end it
\nhabitually thinks of him and all else is only secondary and thought of only in relation to him. This is done often with the
\naid of a physical image or, more intimately and characteristically, of a mantra or a divine name through which the divine being
\nis realised. There are supposed by those who systematise to be three stages of the seeking through the devotion of the mind,
\nfirst, the constant hearing of the divine name, qualities and all that has been attached to them, secondly, the constant thinking
\non them or on the divine being or personality, thirdly, the settling and fixing of the mind on the object; and by this comes the full
\nrealisation. And by these, too, there comes when the accompanying feeling or the concentration is very intense, the Samadhi,
\nthe ecstatic trance in which the consciousness passes away from outer objects. But all this is really incidental; the one thing essential is the intense devotion of the thought in the mind to the object of adoration. Although it seems akin to the contemplation
\nof the way of knowledge, it differs from that in its spirit. It is in its real nature not a still, but an ecstatic contemplation; it seeks not
\nto pass into the being of the Divine, but to bring the Divine into ourselves and to lose ourselves in the deep ecstasy of his presence
\nor of his possession; and its bliss is not the peace of unity, but the ecstasy of union. Here, too, there may be the separative self-consecration which ends in the giving up of all other thought of life for the possession of this ecstasy, eternal afterwards in
\nplanes beyond, or the comprehensive consecration in which all the thoughts are full of the Divine and even in the occupations
\n  <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 <\/font>574<\/font>
\n <\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\tof life every thought remembers him. As in the other Yogas, so
\nin this, one comes to see the Divine everywhere and in all and to pour out the realisation of the Divine in all one’s inner activities
\nand outward actions. But all is supported here by the primary force of the emotional union: for it is by love that the entire
\nself-consecration and the entire possession is accomplished, and thought and action become shapes and figures of the divine love
\nwhich possesses the spirit and its members. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThis is the ordinary movement by which what may be at
\nfirst a vague adoration of some idea of the Divine takes on the hue and character and then, once entered into the path of Yoga,
\nthe inner reality and intense experience of divine love. But there is the more intimate Yoga which from the first consists in this
\nlove and attains only by the intensity of its longing without other process or method. All the rest comes, but it comes out
\nof this, as leaf and flower out of the seed; other things are not the means of developing and fulfilling love, but the radiations of
\nlove already growing in the soul. This is the way that the soul follows when, while occupied perhaps with the normal human
\nlife, it has heard the flute of the Godhead behind the near screen of secret woodlands and no longer possesses itself, can have no
\nsatisfaction or rest till it has pursued and seized and possessed the divine flute-player. This is in essence the power of love itself
\nin the heart and soul turning from earthly objects to the spiritual source of all beauty and delight. There live in this seeking all the
\nsentiment and passion, all the moods and experiences of love concentrated on a supreme object of desire and intensified a
\nhundredfold beyond the highest acme of intensity possible to a human love. There is the disturbance of the whole life, the
\nillumination by an unseized vision, the unsatisfied yearning for a single object of the heart’s desire, the intense impatience of all
\nthat distracts from the one preoccupation, the intense pain of the obstacles that stand in the way of possession, the perfect vision of
\nall beauty and delight in a single form. And there are all the many moods of love, the joy of musing and absorption, the delight of
\nthe meeting and fulfilment and embrace, the pain of separation, the wrath of love, the tears of longing, the increased delight<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

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\n  <\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\tof reunion. The heart is the scene of this supreme idyll of the
\ninner consciousness, but a heart which undergoes increasingly an intense spiritual change and becomes the radiantly unfolding
\nlotus of the spirit. And as the intensity of its seeking is beyond the highest power of the normal human emotions, so also the delight
\nand the final ecstasy are beyond the reach of the imagination and beyond expression by speech. For this is the delight of the
\nGodhead that passes human understanding. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIndian bhakti has given to this divine love powerful forms,
\npoetic symbols which are not in reality so much symbols as intimate expressions of truth which can find no other expression. It uses human relations and sees a divine person, not as mere figures, but because there are divine relations of supreme
\nDelight and Beauty with the human soul of which human relations are the imperfect but still the real type, and because that
\nDelight and Beauty are not abstractions or qualities of a quite impalpable metaphysical entity, but the very body and form
\nof the supreme Being. It is a living Soul to which the soul of the bhakta yearns; for the source of all life is not an idea or a
\nconception or a state of existence, but a real Being. Therefore in the possession of the divine Beloved all the life of the soul
\nis satisfied and all the relations by which it finds and in which it expresses itself, are wholly fulfilled; therefore, too, by any
\nand all of them can the Beloved be sought, though those which admit the greatest intensity, are always those by which he can
\nbe most intensely pursued and possessed with the profoundest ecstasy. He is sought within in the heart and therefore apart
\nfrom all by an inward-gathered concentration of the being in the soul itself; but he is also seen and loved everywhere where
\nhe manifests his being. All the beauty and joy of existence is seen as his joy and beauty; he is embraced by the spirit in all beings;
\nthe ecstasy of love enjoyed pours itself out in a universal love; all existence becomes a radiation of its delight and even in its
\nvery appearances is transformed into something other than its outward appearance. The world itself is experienced as a play
\nof the divine Delight, a Lila, and that in which the world loses itself is the heaven of beatitude of the eternal union.
\n   <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 <\/font>576<\/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 IV   The Way of Devotion   BHAKTI in itself is as wide as the heart-yearning of the soul for the Divine and as…<\/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-2164","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\/2164","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=2164"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2164\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}