{"id":2172,"date":"2013-07-13T01:39:54","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:39:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=2172"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:39:54","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:39:54","slug":"01-life-and-yoga-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\/01-life-and-yoga-vol-23-24-the-synthesis-of-yoga","title":{"rendered":"-01_Life and Yoga.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

“All life is Yoga.”<\/b> <\/p>\n

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

Sri Aurobindo in 1950 <\/p>\n

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

\n\t\t\tIntroduction<\/font><\/b> <\/p>\n

  <\/p>\n

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

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

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

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\n\t\t\tLife and Yoga <\/a> <\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tT<\/font>HERE <\/b>are two necessities of
\n\t\t\tNature’s workings which seem always to intervene in the greater
\n\t\t\tforms of human activity, whether these belong to our ordinary fields
\n\t\t\tof movement or seek those exceptional spheres and fulfilments which
\n\t\t\tappear to us high and divine. Every such form tends towards a
\n\t\t\tharmonised complexity and totality which again breaks apart into
\n\t\t\tvarious channels of special effort and tendency, only to unite once
\n\t\t\tmore in a larger and more puissant synthesis. Secondly, development into forms is an imperative rule of effective
\nmanifestation; yet all truth and practice too strictly formulated becomes old and loses much, if not all, of its virtue; it must be
\nconstantly renovated by fresh streams of the spirit revivifying the dead or dying vehicle and changing it, if it is to acquire a
\nnew life. To be perpetually reborn is the condition of a material immortality. We are in an age, full of the throes of travail, when
\nall forms of thought and activity that have in themselves any strong power of utility or any secret virtue of persistence are
\nbeing subjected to a supreme test and given their opportunity of rebirth. The world today presents the aspect of a huge cauldron
\nof Medea in which all things are being cast, shredded into pieces, experimented on, combined and recombined either to perish and
\nprovide the scattered material of new forms or to emerge rejuvenated and changed
\n\t\t\tfor a fresh term of existence. Indian Yoga, in its essence a special
\n\t\t\taction or formulation of certain great powers of Nature, itself
\n\t\t\tspecialised, divided and variously formulated, is potentially one of
\n\t\t\tthese dynamic elements of the future life of humanity. The child of
\n\t\t\timmemorial ages, preserved by its vitality and truth into our modern
\n\t\t\ttimes, it is now emerging from the secret schools and ascetic retreats in which it had taken refuge and
\nis seeking its place in the future sum of living human powers and utilities. But it has first to rediscover itself, bring to the surface
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 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 <\/font>5<\/font><\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\tthe profoundest reason of its being in that general truth and that
\nunceasing aim of Nature which it represents, and find by virtue of this new self-knowledge and self-appreciation its own recovered and larger synthesis. Reorganising itself, it will enter more easily and powerfully into the reorganised life of the race which
\nits processes claim to lead within into the most secret penetralia and upward to the highest altitudes of existence and personality.\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIn the right view both of life and of Yoga all life is either consciously or subconsciously a Yoga. For we mean by this term
\na methodised effort towards self-perfection by the expression of the secret potentialities latent in the being and
\n\t\t\t\u2014 highest condition of victory in that effort \u2014 a union of the human individual with the universal and transcendent Existence we see partially
\nexpressed in man and in the Cosmos. But all life, when we look behind its appearances, is a vast Yoga of Nature who attempts
\nin the conscious and the subconscious to realise her perfection in an ever-increasing expression of her yet unrealised potentialities
\nand to unite herself with her own divine reality. In man, her thinker, she for the first time upon this Earth devises
\n\t\t\tself-conscious means and willed arrangements of activity by which this great purpose may be more swiftly and puissantly
\n\t\t\tattained. Yoga, as Swami Vivekananda has said, may be regarded as a
\n\t\t\tmeans of compressing one’s evolution into a single life or a few
\n\t\t\tyears or even a few months of bodily existence. A given system of
\n\t\t\tYoga, then, can be no more than a selection or a compression, into
\n\t\t\tnarrower but more energetic forms of intensity, of the general methods which are already being used loosely, largely, in a
\nleisurely movement, with a profuser apparent waste of material and energy but with a more complete combination by the great
\nMother in her vast upward labour. It is this view of Yoga that can alone form the basis for a sound and rational synthesis
\nof Yogic methods. For then Yoga ceases to appear something mystic and abnormal which has no relation to the ordinary
\nprocesses of the World-Energy or the purpose she keeps in view in her two great movements of subjective and objective
\n\t\t\tself-fulfilment; it reveals itself rather as an intense and exceptional use of powers that she has already manifested or is progressively
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 <\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\torganising in her less exalted but more general operations. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tYogic methods have something of the same relation to the customary psychological workings of man as has the scientific
\nhandling of the force of electricity or of steam to their normal operations in Nature. And they, too, like the operations of Science, are formed upon a knowledge developed and confirmed by regular experiment, practical analysis and constant result. All
\nRajayoga, for instance, depends on this perception and experience that our inner elements, combinations, functions, forces,
\ncan be separated or dissolved, can be new-combined and set to novel and formerly impossible workings or can be transformed
\nand resolved into a new general synthesis by fixed internal processes. Hathayoga similarly depends on this perception and
\nexperience that the vital forces and functions to which our life is normally subjected and whose ordinary operations seem set and
\nindispensable, can be mastered and the operations changed or suspended with results that would otherwise be impossible and
\nthat seem miraculous to those who have not seized the rationale of their process. And if in some other of its forms this character
\nof Yoga is less apparent, because they are more intuitive and less mechanical, nearer, like the Yoga of Devotion, to a supernal
\necstasy or, like the Yoga of Knowledge, to a supernal infinity of consciousness and being, yet they too start from the use of some
\nprincipal faculty in us by ways and for ends not contemplated in its everyday spontaneous workings. All methods grouped under
\nthe common name of Yoga are special psychological processes founded on a fixed truth of Nature and developing, out of normal functions, powers and results which were always latent but which her ordinary movements do not easily or do not often
\nmanifest. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBut as in physical knowledge the multiplication of scientific
\nprocesses has its disadvantages, as that tends, for instance, to develop a victorious artificiality which overwhelms our natural
\nhuman life under a load of machinery and to purchase certain forms of freedom and mastery at the price of an increased
\nservitude, so the preoccupation with Yogic processes and their exceptional results may have its disadvantages and losses. The
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\n\t\t\tYogin tends to draw away from the common existence and lose
\nhis hold upon it; he tends to purchase wealth of spirit by an impoverishment of his human activities, the inner freedom by
\nan outer death. If he gains God, he loses life, or if he turns his efforts outward to conquer life, he is in danger of losing
\nGod. Therefore we see in India that a sharp incompatibility has been created between life in the world and spiritual growth and
\nperfection, and although the tradition and ideal of a victorious harmony between the inner attraction and the outer demand
\nremains, it is little or else very imperfectly exemplified. In fact, when a man turns his vision and energy inward and enters on
\nthe path of Yoga, he is popularly supposed to be lost inevitably to the great stream of our collective existence and the secular
\neffort of humanity. So strongly has the idea prevailed, so much has it been emphasised by prevalent philosophies and religions
\nthat to escape from life is now commonly considered as not only the necessary condition, but the general object of Yoga. No
\nsynthesis of Yoga can be satisfying which does not, in its aim, reunite God and Nature in a liberated and perfected human life
\nor, in its method, not only permit but favour the harmony of our inner and outer activities and experiences in the divine consummation of both. For man is precisely that term and symbol of a higher Existence descended into the material world in which it is
\npossible for the lower to transfigure itself and put on the nature of the higher and the higher to reveal itself in the forms of the
\nlower. To avoid the life which is given him for the realisation of that possibility, can never be either the indispensable condition
\nor the whole and ultimate object of his supreme endeavour or of his most powerful means of self-fulfilment. It can only be
\na temporary necessity under certain conditions or a specialised extreme effort imposed on the individual so as to prepare a
\ngreater general possibility for the race. The true and full object and utility of Yoga can only be accomplished when the conscious
\nYoga in man becomes, like the subconscious Yoga in Nature, outwardly conterminous with life itself and we can once more,
\nlooking out both on the path and the achievement, say in a more perfect and luminous sense: “All life is Yoga.”
\n  <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013  8<\/font><\/font><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Synthesis of Yoga “All life is Yoga.” Sri Aurobindo in 1950 Introduction   The Conditions of the Synthesis Chapter I   Life and Yoga…<\/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-2172","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\/2172","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=2172"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2172\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2172"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2172"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2172"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}