{"id":2208,"date":"2013-07-13T01:40:07","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T08:40:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=2208"},"modified":"2013-11-28T15:06:43","modified_gmt":"2013-11-28T23:06:43","slug":"11-chapter-vi-the-ascent-of-the-sacrifice-2-the-works-of-love-the-works-of-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\/11-chapter-vi-the-ascent-of-the-sacrifice-2-the-works-of-love-the-works-of-life-vol-23-24-the-synthesis-of-yoga","title":{"rendered":"-11_Chapter VI The Ascent of the Sacrifice – 2 The Works of Love – The Works of Life.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\n\n
\n\t<\/p>\n

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

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe Ascent of the Sacrifice \u00ad 2
\n<\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe Works of Love \u2014 The Works of Life<\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tI<\/font>T IS<\/b> therefore through the sacrifice of love, works and knowledge with the psychic being as the leader and priest of the
\nsacrifice that life itself can be transformed into its own true spiritual figure. If the sacrifice of knowledge rightly done is easily
\nthe largest and purest offering we can bring to the Highest, the sacrifice of love is not less demanded of us for our spiritual
\nperfection; it is even more intense and rich in its singleness and can be made not less vast and pure. This pure wideness
\nis brought into the intensity of the sacrifice of love when into all our activities there is poured the spirit and power of a divine
\ninfinite joy and the whole atmosphere of our life is suffused with an engrossing adoration of the One who is the All and the Highest. For then does the sacrifice of love attain its utter perfection when, offered to the divine All, it becomes integral, catholic and
\nboundless, and when, uplifted to the Supreme, it ceases to be the weak, superficial and transient movement men call love and
\nbecomes a pure and grand and deep uniting Ananda. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAlthough it is a divine love for the supreme and universal Divine
\n\t\t\tthat must be the rule of our spiritual existence, this does not
\n\t\t\texclude altogether all forms of individual love or the ties that
\n\t\t\tdraw soul to soul in manifested existence. A psychic change is
\n\t\t\tdemanded, a divestiture of the masks of the Ignorance, a
\n\t\t\tpurification of the egoistic mental, vital and physical movements
\n\t\t\tthat prolong the old inferior consciousness; each movement of love,
\n\t\t\tspiritualised, must depend no longer on mental preference, vital
\n\t\t\tpassion or physical craving, but on the recognition of soul by soul,
\n\t\t\t\u2014 love restored to its fundamental spiritual and psychic essence
\n\t\t\twith the mind, the vital, the physical as manifesting instruments
\n\t\t\tand elements of that greater oneness. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 <\/font>158<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\t In this change the individual love also is converted by a natural
\nheightening into a divine love for the Divine Inhabitant immanent in a mind and soul and body occupied by the One in all
\ncreatures. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAll love, indeed, that is adoration has a spiritual force behind
\nit, and even when it is offered ignorantly and to a limited object, something of that splendour appears through the poverty of the
\nrite and the smallness of its issues. For love that is worship is at once an aspiration and a preparation: it can bring even within
\nits small limits in the Ignorance a glimpse of a still more or less blind and partial but surprising realisation; for there are
\nmoments when it is not we but the One who loves and is loved in us, and even a human passion can be uplifted and glorified
\nby a slight glimpse of this infinite Love and Lover. It is for this reason that the worship of the god, the worship of the idol,
\nthe human magnet or ideal are not to be despised; for these are steps through which the human race moves towards that blissful
\npassion and ecstasy of the Infinite which, even in limiting it, they yet represent for our imperfect vision when we have still to
\nuse the inferior steps Nature has hewn for our feet and admit the stages of our progress. Certain idolatries are indispensable
\nfor the development of our emotional being, nor will the man who knows be hasty at any time to shatter the image unless he
\ncan replace it in the heart of the worshipper by the Reality it figures. Moreover, they have this power because there is always
\nsomething in them that is greater than their forms and, even when we reach the supreme worship, that abides and becomes
\na prolongation of it or a part of its catholic wholeness. Our knowledge is still imperfect in us, love incomplete if even when
\nwe know That which surpasses all forms and manifestations, we cannot still accept the Divine in creature and object, in man, in
\nthe kind, in the animal, in the tree, in the flower, in the work of our hands, in the Nature-Force which is then no longer to us
\nthe blind action of a material machinery but a face and power of the universal Shakti: for in these things too is the presence of
\nthe Eternal. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAn ultimate inexpressible adoration offered by us to the <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 <\/font>159<\/font> <\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\t Transcendent, to the Highest,\u00b9<\/font>
\n\t\t\tto the Ineffable, is yet no complete worship if it is not offered to
\n\t\t\thim wherever he manifests or wherever even he hides his godhead \u2014 in
\n\t\t\tman\u00b2<\/font> and object and
\nevery creature. An Ignorance is there no doubt which imprisons the heart, distorts its feelings, obscures the significance of its
\noffering; all partial worship, all religion which erects a mental or a physical idol is tempted to veil and protect the truth in it
\nby a certain cloak of ignorance and easily loses the truth in its image. But the pride of exclusive knowledge is also a limitation
\nand a barrier. For there is, concealed behind individual love, obscured by its ignorant human figure, a mystery which the
\nmind cannot seize, the mystery of the body of the Divine, the secret of a mystic form of the Infinite which we can approach
\nonly through the ecstasy of the heart and the passion of the pure and sublimated sense, and its attraction which is the call
\nof the divine Flute-player, the mastering compulsion of the AllBeautiful, can only be seized and seize us through an occult love
\nand yearning which in the end makes one the Form and the Formless, and identifies Spirit and Matter. It is that which the
\nspirit in Love is seeking here in the darkness of the Ignorance and it is that which it finds when individual human love is changed
\ninto the love of the Immanent Divine incarnate in the material universe. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAs with individual, so with universal Love; all that widening of the self through sympathy, goodwill, universal benevolence
\nand beneficence, love of mankind, love of creatures, the attraction of all the myriad forms and presences that surround us,
\nby which mentally and emotionally man escapes from the first limits of his ego, has to be taken up into a unifying divine love for
\nthe universal Divine. Adoration fulfilled in love, love in Ananda, \u2014 the surpassing love, the self-wrapped ecstasy of transcendent
\ndelight in the Transcendent which awaits us at the end of the path of Devotion,
\n\u2014 has for its wider result a universal love for
\nall beings, the Ananda of all that is; we perceive behind every veil the Divine, spiritually embrace in all forms the All-Beautiful. A <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\u00b9<\/font>
\nparam bhā<\/font>vam<\/i>.      <\/i>
\n\t\t\t\u00b2<\/font> mā<\/font>nus<\/i>ī<\/i><\/font><\/font>m tanum ā<\/font><\/i>ś<\/i><\/font>ritam<\/i>. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t      <\/i><\/font><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 <\/font>160<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\t universal delight in his endless manifestation flows through us,
\ntaking in its surge every form and movement, but not bound or stationary in any and always reaching out to a greater and more
\nperfect expression. This universal love is liberative and dynamic for transformation; for the discord of forms and appearances
\nceases to affect the heart that has felt the one Truth behind them all and understood their perfect significance. The impartial
\nequality of soul of the selfless worker and knower is transformed by the magic touch of divine Love into an all-embracing ecstasy
\nand million-bodied beatitude. All things become bodies and all movements the playings of the divine Beloved in his infinite
\nhouse of pleasure. Even pain is changed and in their reaction and even in their essence things painful alter; the forms of pain
\nfall away, there are created in their place the forms of Ananda. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThis is in its essence the nature of the change of consciousness which turns existence itself into a glorified field of a Divine Love and Ananda. In its essence it begins for the seeker when
\nhe passes from the ordinary to the spiritual level and looks with a new heart of luminous vision and feeling on the world and
\nself and others. It reaches its height when the spiritual becomes also the supramental level and then also it is possible not only
\nto feel it in essence but realise it dynamically as a Power for the transformation of the whole inner life and the whole outer
\nexistence. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t* *<\/font><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIt is not altogether difficult for the mind to envisage, even though
\nit may be difficult for the human will with its many earth-ties to accept, this transformation of the spirit and nature of love
\nfrom the character of a mixed and limited human emotion to a supreme and all-embracing divine passion. It is when we come to
\nthe works of love that a certain perplexity is likely to intervene. It is possible, as in a certain high exaggeration of the path of
\nknowledge, to cut here also the knot of the problem, escape the difficulty of uniting the spirit of love with the crudities of
\nthe world-action by avoiding it; it is open to us, withdrawing  <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 <\/font>161<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\t from outward life and action altogether, to live alone with our
\nadoration of the Divine in the heart’s silence. It is possible too to admit only those acts that are either in themselves an expression
\nof love for the Divine, prayer, praise, symbolic acts of worship or subordinate activities that may be attached to these things
\nand partake of their spirit, and to leave aside all else; the soul turns away to satisfy its inner longing in the absorbed or the
\nGod-centred life of the saint and devotee. It is possible, again, to open the doors of life more largely and to spend one’s love
\nof the Divine in acts of service to those around us and to the race; one can do the works of philanthropy, benevolence and
\nbeneficence, charity and succour to man and beast and every creature, transfigure them by a kind of spiritual passion, at least
\nbring into their merely ethical appearance the greater power of a spiritual motive. This is indeed the solution most commonly
\nfavoured by the religious mind of today and we see it confidently advanced on all sides as the proper field of action of the God-seeker or of the man whose life is founded on divine love and knowledge. But the integral Yoga pushed towards a complete
\nunion of the Divine with the earth-life cannot stop short in this narrow province or limit this union within the lesser dimensions
\nof an ethical rule of philanthropy and beneficence. All action must be made in it part of the God-life, our acts of knowledge,
\nour acts of power and production and creation, our acts of joy and beauty and the soul’s pleasure, our acts of will and endeavour and struggle and not our acts only of love and beneficent service. Its way to do these things will be not outward and
\nmental, but inward and spiritual, and to that end it will bring into all activities, whatever they are, the spirit of divine love, the
\nspirit of adoration and worship, the spirit of happiness in the Divine and in the beauty of the Divine so as to make all life a
\nsacrifice of the works of the soul’s love to the Divine, its cult of the Master of its existence. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIt is possible so to turn life into an act of adoration to the Supreme by the spirit in one’s works; for, says the Gita, “He who
\ngives to me with a heart of adoration a leaf, a flower, a fruit or a cup of water, I take and enjoy that offering of his devotion”; and
\n   <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 <\/font>162<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\t it is not only any dedicated external gift that can be so offered
\nwith love and devotion, but all our thoughts, all our feelings and sensations, all our outward activities and their forms and objects
\ncan be such gifts to the Eternal. It is true that the special act or form of action has its importance, even a great importance, but
\nit is the spirit in the act that is the essential factor; the spirit of which it is the symbol or materialised expression gives it its
\nwhole value and justifying significance. Or it may be said that a complete act of divine love and worship has in it three parts that
\nare the expressions of a single whole, \u2014 a practical worship of the Divine in the act, a symbol of worship in the form of the act
\nexpressing some vision and seeking or some relation with the Divine, an inner adoration and longing for oneness or feeling
\nof oneness in the heart and soul and spirit. It is so that life can be changed into worship,
\n\u2014 by putting behind it the spirit of
\na transcendent and universal love, the seeking of oneness, the sense of oneness; by making each act a symbol, an expression of
\nGodward emotion or a relation with the Divine; by turning all we do into an act of worship, an act of the soul’s communion, the
\nmind’s understanding, the life’s obedience, the heart’s surrender. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIn any cult the symbol, the significant rite or expressive
\nfigure is not only a moving and enriching aesthetic element, but a physical means by which the human being begins to make
\noutwardly definite the emotion and aspiration of his heart, to confirm it and to dynamise it. For if without a spiritual aspiration worship is meaningless and vain, yet the aspiration also without the act and the form is a disembodied and, for life, an
\nincompletely effective power. It is unhappily the fate of all forms in human life to become crystallised, purely formal and therefore
\neffete, and although form and cult preserve always their power for the man who can still enter into their meaning, the majority
\ncome to use the ceremony as a mechanical rite and the symbol as a lifeless sign, and because that kills the soul of religion, cult and
\nform have in the end to be changed or thrown aside altogether. There are those even to whom all cult and form are for this
\nreason suspect and offensive; but few can dispense with the support of outward symbols and, even, a certain divine element
\n  <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 <\/font>163<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\tin human nature demands them always for the completeness of
\nits spiritual satisfaction. Always the symbol is legitimate in so far as it is true, sincere, beautiful and delightful, and even one
\nmay say that a spiritual consciousness without any aesthetic or emotional content is not entirely or at any rate not integrally
\nspiritual. In the spiritual life the basis of the act is a spiritual consciousness perennial and renovating, moved to express itself
\nalways in new forms or able to renew the truth of a form always by the flow of the spirit, and to so express itself and make every
\naction a living symbol of some truth of the soul is the very nature of its creative vision and impulse. It is so that the spiritual seeker
\nmust deal with life and transmute its form and glorify it in its essence. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA supreme divine Love is a creative Power and, even though it can
\n\t\t\texist in itself silent and unchangeable, yet rejoices in external
\n\t\t\tform and expression and is not condemned to be a speechless and
\n\t\t\tbodiless godhead. It has even been said that creation itself was an
\n\t\t\tact of love or at least the building up of a field in which Divine
\n\t\t\tLove could devise its symbols and fulfil itself in act of mutuality
\n\t\t\tand self-giving, and, if not the initial nature of creation, this
\n\t\t\tmay well be its ultimate object and motive. It does not so appear
\n\t\t\tnow because, even if a Divine Love is there in the world upholding
\n\t\t\tall this evolution of creatures, yet the stuff of life and its
\n\t\t\taction is made up of an egoistic formation, a division, a struggle
\n\t\t\tof life and consciousness to exist and survive in an apparently
\n\t\t\tindifferent, inclement or even hostile world of inanimate and
\n\t\t\tinconscient Matter. In the confusion and obscurity of this struggle
\n\t\t\tall are thrown against each other with a will in each to assert its
\n\t\t\town existence first and foremost and only secondarily to assert
\n\t\t\titself in others and very partially for others; for even man’s
\n\t\t\taltruism remains essentially egoistic and must be so till the soul
\n\t\t\tfinds the secret of the divine Oneness. It is to discover that at
\n\t\t\tits supreme source, to bring it from within and to radiate it out up
\n\t\t\tto the extreme confines of life that is turned the effort of the
\n\t\t\tYoga. All action, all creation must be turned into a form, a symbol
\n\t\t\tof the cult, the adoration, the sacrifice; it must carry something
\n\t\t\tthat makes it bear in it <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 <\/font>164<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\t the stamp of a dedication, a reception and translation of the
\nDivine Consciousness, a service of the Beloved, a self-giving, a surrender. This has to be done wherever possible in the outward
\nbody and form of the act; it must be done always in its inward emotion and an intensity that shows it to be an outflow from
\nthe soul towards the Eternal. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIn itself the adoration in the act is a great and complete
\nand powerful sacrifice that tends by its self-multiplication to reach the discovery of the One and make the radiation of the
\nDivine possible. For devotion by its embodiment in acts not only makes its own way broad and full and dynamic, but brings at
\nonce into the harder way of works in the world the divinely passionate element of joy and love which is often absent in its
\nbeginning when it is only the austere spiritual Will that follows in a struggling uplifting tension the steep ascent, and the heart
\nis still asleep or bound to silence. If the spirit of divine love can enter, the hardness of the way diminishes, the tension is lightened, there is a sweetness and joy even in the core of difficulty and struggle. The indispensable surrender of all our will and
\nworks and activities to the Supreme is indeed only perfect and perfectly effective when it is a surrender of love. All life turned
\ninto this cult, all actions done in the love of the Divine and in the love of the world and its creatures seen and felt as the Divine
\nmanifested in many disguises become by that very fact part of an integral Yoga. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIt is the inner offering of the heart’s adoration, the soul of it in the symbol, the spirit of it in the act, that is the very life of
\nthe sacrifice. If this offering is to be complete and universal, then a turning of all our emotions to the Divine is imperative. This
\nis the intensest way of purification for the human heart, more powerful than any ethical or aesthetic catharsis could ever be
\nby its half-power and superficial pressure. A psychic fire within must be lit into which all is thrown with the Divine Name upon
\nit. In that fire all the emotions are compelled to cast off their grosser elements and those that are undivine perversions are
\nburned away and the others discard their insufficiencies, till a spirit of largest love and a stainless divine delight arises out of the <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 <\/font>165<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\t flame and smoke and frankincense. It is the divine love which so
\nemerges that, extended in inward feeling to the Divine in man and all creatures in an active universal equality, will be more
\npotent for the perfectibility of life and a more real instrument than the ineffective mental ideal of brotherhood can ever be. It
\nis this poured out into acts that could alone create a harmony in the world and a true unity between all its creatures; all else
\nstrives in vain towards that end so long as Divine Love has not disclosed itself as the heart of the delivered manifestation in
\nterrestrial Nature. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIt is here that the emergence of the secret psychic being in
\nus as the leader of the sacrifice is of the utmost importance; for this inmost being alone can bring with it the full power of the
\nspirit in the act, the soul in the symbol. It alone can assure, even while the spiritual consciousness is incomplete, the perennial
\nfreshness and sincerity and beauty of the symbol and prevent it from becoming a dead form or a corrupted and corrupting
\nmagic; it alone can preserve for the act its power with its significance. All the other members of our being, mind, life-force,
\nphysical or body consciousness, are too much under the control of the Ignorance to be a sure instrumentation and much less can
\nthey be a guide or the source of an unerring impulse. Always the greater part of the motive and action of these powers clings to the
\nold law, the deceiving tablets, the cherished inferior movements of Nature and they meet with reluctance, alarm or revolt or
\nobstructing inertia the voices and the forces that call and impel us to exceed and transform ourselves into a greater being and
\na wider Nature. In their major part the response is either a resistance or a qualified or temporising acquiescence; for even if
\nthey follow the call, they yet tend \u2014 when not consciously, then by automatic habit
\n\u2014 to bring into the spiritual action their own
\nnatural disabilities and errors. At every moment they are moved to take egoistic advantage of the psychic and spiritual influences
\nand can be detected using the power, joy or light these bring into us for a lower life-motive. Afterwards too, even when the
\nseeker has opened to the Divine Love transcendental, universal or immanent, yet if he tries to pour it into life, he meets the <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 <\/font>166<\/font>  <\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\t power of obscuration and perversion of these lower Nature-forces. Always they draw away towards pitfalls, pour into that higher intensity their diminishing elements, seek to capture the
\ndescending Power for themselves and their interests and degrade it into an aggrandised mental, vital or physical instrumentation
\nfor desire and ego. Instead of a Divine Love creator of a new heaven and a new earth of Truth and Light, they would hold it
\nhere prisoner as a tremendous sanction and glorifying force of sublimation to gild the mud of the old earth and colour with
\nits rose and sapphire the old turbid unreal skies of sentimentalising vital imagination and mental idealised chimera. If that
\nfalsification is permitted, the higher Light and Power and Bliss withdraw, there is a fall back to a lower status; or else the
\nrealisation remains tied to an insecure half-way and mixture or is covered and even submerged by an inferior exaltation that
\nis not the true Ananda. It is for this reason that Divine Love which is at the heart of all creation and the most powerful of
\nall redeeming and creative forces has yet been the least frontally present in earthly life, the least successfully redemptive, the least
\ncreative. Human nature has been unable to bear it in its purity for the very reason that it is the most powerful, pure, rare and
\nintense of all the divine energies; what little could be seized has been corrupted at once into a vital pietistic ardour, a defenceless
\nreligious or ethical sentimentalism, a sensuous or even sensual erotic mysticism of the roseate coloured mind or passionately
\nturbid life-impulse and with these simulations compensated its inability to house the Mystic Flame that could rebuild the world
\nwith its tongues of sacrifice. It is only the inmost psychic being unveiled and emerging in its full power that can lead the pilgrim
\nsacrifice unscathed through these ambushes and pitfalls; at each moment it catches, exposes, repels the mind’s and the life’s falsehoods, seizes hold on the truth of the Divine Love and Ananda and separates it from the excitement of the mind’s ardours
\n\t\t\tand the blind enthusiasms of the misleading life-force. But all
\n\t\t\tthings that are true at their core in mind and life and the physical
\n\t\t\tbeing it extricates and takes with it in the journey till they stand
\n\t\t\ton the heights, new in spirit and sublime in figure. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 <\/font>167<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\t          
\n\t\t\tAnd yet even the leading of the inmost psychic being is
\nnot found sufficient until it has succeeded in raising itself out of this mass of inferior Nature to the highest spiritual levels
\nand the divine spark and flame descended here have rejoined themselves to their original fiery Ether. For there is there no
\nlonger a spiritual consciousness still imperfect and half lost to itself in the thick sheaths of human mind, life and body, but
\nthe full spiritual consciousness in its purity, freedom and intense wideness. There, as it is the eternal Knower that becomes the
\nKnower in us and mover and user of all knowledge, so it is the eternal All-Blissful who is the Adored attracting to himself the
\neternal divine portion of his being and joy that has gone out into the play of the universe, the infinite Lover pouring himself out in
\nthe multiplicity of his own manifested selves in a happy Oneness. All Beauty in the world is there the beauty of the Beloved, and
\nall forms of beauty have to stand under the light of that eternal Beauty and submit themselves to the sublimating and transfiguring power of the unveiled Divine Perfection. All Bliss and Joy are there of the All-Blissful, and all inferior forms of enjoyment,
\nhappiness or pleasure are subjected to the shock of the intensity of its floods or currents and either they are broken to pieces
\nas inadequate things under its convicting stress or compelled to transmute themselves into the forms of the Divine Ananda. Thus
\nfor the individual consciousness a Force is manifested which can deal sovereignly in it with the diminutions and degradations of
\nthe values of the Ignorance. At last it begins to be possible to bring down into life the immense reality and intense concreteness
\nof the love and joy that are of the Eternal. Or at any rate it will be possible for our spiritual consciousness to raise itself out
\nof mind into the supramental Light and Force and Vastness; there in the light and potency of the supramental Gnosis are the
\nsplendour and joy of a power of divine self-expression and self-organisation which could rescue and re-create even the world of
\nthe Ignorance into a figure of the Truth of the Spirit. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThere in the supramental Gnosis is the fulfilment, the culminating
\n\t\t\theight, the all-embracing extent of the inner adoration, the
\n\t\t\tprofound and integral union, the flaming wings of Love <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 <\/font>168<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\t upbearing the power and joy of a supreme Knowledge. For
\nsupramental Love brings an active ecstasy that surpasses the void passive peace and stillness which is the heaven of the liberated
\nMind and does not betray the deeper greater calm which is the beginning of the supramental silence. The unity of a love which
\nis able to include in itself all differences without being diminished or abrogated by their present limitations and apparent
\ndissonances is raised to its full potentiality on the supramental level. For there an intense oneness with all creatures founded on
\na profound oneness of the soul with the Divine can harmonise with a play of relations that only makes the oneness more perfect
\nand absolute. The power of Love supramentalised can take hold of all living relations without hesitation or danger and turn them
\nGodwards delivered from their crude, mixed and petty human settings and sublimated into the happy material of a divine life.
\nFor it is the very nature of the supramental experience that it can perpetuate the play of difference without forfeiting or in the least
\ndiminishing either the divine union or the infinite oneness. For a supramentalised consciousness it would be utterly possible
\nto embrace all contacts with men and the world in a purified flame-force and with a transfigured significance, because the
\nsoul would then perceive always as the object of all emotion and all seeking for love or beauty the One Eternal and could
\nspiritually use a wide and liberated life-urge to meet and join with that One Divine in all things and all creatures. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t* *<\/font><\/p>\n

\nInto the third and last category of the works of sacrifice can be gathered all that is directly proper to the Yoga of works;
\nfor here is its direct field of effectuation and major province. It covers the entire range of life’s more visible activities; under
\nit fall the multiform energies of the Will-to-Life throwing itself outward to make the most of material existence. It is here that
\nan ascetic or other-worldly spirituality feels an insurmountable denial of the Truth which it seeks after and is compelled to turn
\naway from terrestrial existence, rejecting it as for ever the dark <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 <\/font>169<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n playground of an incurable Ignorance. Yet it is precisely these
\nactivities that are claimed for a spiritual conquest and divine transformation by the integral Yoga. Abandoned altogether by
\nthe more ascetic disciplines, accepted by others only as a field of temporary ordeal or a momentary, superficial and ambiguous
\nplay of the concealed spirit, this existence is fully embraced and welcomed by the integral seeker as a field of fulfilment, a
\nfield for divine works, a field of the total self-discovery of the concealed and indwelling spirit. A discovery of the Divinity in
\noneself is his first object, but a total discovery too of the Divinity in the world behind the apparent denial offered by its scheme
\nand figures and, last, a total discovery of the dynamism of some transcendent Eternal; for by its descent this world and self will
\nbe empowered to break their disguising envelopes and become divine in revealing form and manifesting process as they now
\nare secretly in their hidden essence. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThis object of the integral Yoga must be accepted wholly
\nby those who follow it, but the acceptance must not be in ignorance of the immense stumbling-blocks that lie in the way of
\nthe achievement; on the contrary we must be fully aware of the compelling cause of the refusal of so many other disciplines to
\nregard even its possibility, much less its imperative character, as the true meaning of terrestrial existence. For here in the works of
\nlife in the earth-nature is the very heart of the difficulty that has driven Philosophy to its heights of aloofness and turned away
\neven the eager eye of Religion from the malady of birth in a mortal body to a distant Paradise or a silent peace of Nirvana.
\nA way of pure Knowledge is comparatively straightforward and easy to the tread of the seeker in spite of our mental limitations
\nand the pitfalls of the Ignorance; a way of pure Love, although it has its stumbling-blocks and its sufferings and trials, can in
\ncomparison be as easy as the winging of a bird through the free azure. For Knowledge and Love are pure in their essence and
\nbecome mixed and embarrassed, corrupted and degraded only when they enter into the ambiguous movement of the life-forces
\nand are seized by them for the outward life’s crude movements and obstinately inferior motives. Alone of the three powers Life
\n  <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 <\/font>170<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\t or at least a certain predominant Will-in-Life has the appearance
\nof something impure, accursed or fallen in its very essence. At its contact, wrapped in its dull sheaths or caught in its iridescent quagmires, the divinities themselves become common and muddy and hardly escape from being dragged downwards into
\nits perversions and disastrously assimilated to the demon and the Asura. A principle of dark and dull inertia is at its base; all
\nare tied down by the body and its needs and desires to a trivial mind, petty desires and emotions, an insignificant repetition of
\nsmall worthless functionings, needs, cares, occupations, pains, pleasures that lead to nothing beyond themselves and bear the
\nstamp of an ignorance that knows not its own why and whither. This physical mind of inertia believes in no divinity other than
\nits own small earth-gods; it aspires perhaps to a greater comfort, order, pleasure, but asks for no uplifting and no spiritual
\ndeliverance. At the centre we meet a stronger Will of life with a greater gusto, but it is a blinded Daemon, a perverted spirit and
\nexults in the very elements that make of life a striving turmoil and an unhappy imbroglio. It is a soul of human or Titanic desire
\nclinging to the garish colour, disordered poetry, violent tragedy or stirring melodrama of this mixed flux of good and evil, joy
\nand sorrow, light and darkness, heady rapture and bitter torture. It loves these things and would have more and more of them or,
\neven when it suffers and cries out against them, can accept or joy in nothing else; it hates and revolts against higher things and
\nin its fury would trample, tear or crucify any diviner Power that has the presumption to offer to make life pure, luminous and
\nhappy and snatch from its lips the fiery brew of that exciting mixture. Another Will-in-Life there is that is ready to follow the
\nameliorating ideal Mind and is allured by its offer to extract some harmony, beauty, light, nobler order out of life, but this
\nis a smaller part of the vital nature and can be easily overpowered by its more violent or darker duller yoke-comrades;
\nnor does it readily lend itself to a call higher than that of the Mind unless that call defeats itself, as Religion usually does,
\nby lowering its demand to conditions more intelligible to our obscure vital nature. All these forces the spiritual seeker grows <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 <\/font>171<\/font> <\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\t aware of in himself and finds all around him and has to struggle
\nand combat incessantly to be rid of their grip and dislodge the long-entrenched mastery they have exercised over his own being
\nas over the environing human existence. The difficulty is great; for their hold is so strong, so apparently invincible that it justifies
\nthe disdainful dictum which compares human nature to a dog’s tail, \u2014 for, straighten it never so much by force of ethics, religion, reason or any other redemptive effort, it returns in the end always to the crooked curl of Nature. And so great is the vim, the
\nclutch of that more agitated Life-Will, so immense the peril of its passions and errors, so subtly insistent or persistently invasive,
\nso obstinate up to the very gates of Heaven the fury of its attack or the tedious obstruction of its obstacles that even the saint
\nand the Yogin cannot be sure of their liberated purity or their trained self-mastery against its intrigue or its violence. All labour
\nto straighten out this native crookedness strikes the struggling will as a futility; a flight, a withdrawal to happy Heaven or
\npeaceful dissolution easily finds credit as the only wisdom and to find a way not to be born again gets established as the only
\nremedy for the dull bondage or the poor shoddy delirium or the blinded and precarious happiness and achievement of earthly
\nexistence. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA remedy yet there should be and is, a way of redress and
\na chance of transformation for this troubled vital nature; but for that the cause of deviation must be found and remedied at
\nthe heart of Life itself and in its very principle, since Life too is a power of the Divine and not a creation of some malignant
\nChance or dark Titanic impulse, however obscure or perverted may be its actual appearance. In Life itself there is the seed of
\nits own salvation, it is from the Life-Energy that we must get our leverage; for though there is a saving light in Knowledge,
\na redeeming and transforming force in Love, these cannot be effective here unless they secure the consent of Life and can
\nuse the instrumentation of some delivered energy at its centre for a sublimation of the erring human into a divine Life-Force.
\nIt is not possible to cut the difficulty by a splitting up of the works of sacrifice; we cannot escape it by deciding that we shall
\n  
\n  <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 <\/font>172<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\t do only the works of Love and Knowledge and leave aside the
\nworks of will and power, possession and acquisition, production and fruitful expense of capacity, battle and victory and mastery,
\nstriking away from us the larger part of life because it seems to be made of the very stuff of desire and ego and therefore doomed
\nto be a field of disharmony and mere conflict and disorder. For the division cannot really be made; or, if attempted, it must
\nfail in its essential purpose, since it would isolate us from the total energies of the World-Power and sterilise an important
\npart of integral Nature, just the one force in it that is a necessary instrument in any world-creative purpose. The Life-Force is an
\nindispensable intermediary, the effectuating element in Nature here; mind needs its alliance if the works of mind are not to
\nremain shining inner formations without a body; the spirit needs it to give an outer force and form to its manifested possibilities
\nand arrive at a complete self-expression incarnated in Matter. If Life refuses the aid of its intermediary energy to the spirit’s other
\nworkings or is itself refused, they are likely to be reduced for all the effect they can have here to a static seclusion or a golden
\nimpotence; or if anything is done, it will be a partial irradiation of our action more subjective than objective, modifying existence perhaps, but without force to change it. Yet if Life brings its forces to the spirit but unregenerate, a worse result may
\nfollow since it is likely to reduce the spiritual action of Love or Knowledge to diminished and corrupted motions or make them
\naccomplices of its own inferior or perverse workings. Life is indispensable to the completeness of the creative spiritual realisation, but life released, transformed, uplifted, not the ordinary mentalised human-animal life, nor the demoniac or Titanic, nor
\neven the divine and the undivine mixed together. Whatever may be done by other world-shunning or heaven-seeking disciplines,
\nthis is the difficult but unavoidable task of the integral Yoga; it cannot afford to leave unsolved the problem of the outward
\nworks of Life, it must find in them their native Divinity and ally it firmly and for ever to the divinities of Love and Knowledge. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIt is no solution either to postpone dealing with the works of Life
\n\t\t\ttill Love and Knowledge have been evolved to a point <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 <\/font>173<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\t at which they can sovereignly and with safety lay hold on the
\nLife-Force to regenerate it; for we have seen that they have to rise to immense heights before they can be secure from the vital
\nperversion which hampers or hamstrings their power to deliver. If once our consciousness could reach the heights of a supramental Nature, then indeed these disabilities would disappear. But here there is the dilemma that it is impossible to reach the
\nsupramental heights with the burden of an unregenerated Life-Force on our shoulders and equally impossible to regenerate
\nradically the Will-in-Life without bringing down the infallible light and unconquerable power that belong to the spiritual and
\nsupramental levels. The Supramental Consciousness is not only a Knowledge, a Bliss, an intimate Love and Oneness, it is also
\na Will, a principle of Power and Force, and it cannot descend till the element of Will, of Power, of Force in this manifested
\nNature is sufficiently developed and sublimated to receive and bear it. But Will, Power, Force are the native substance of the
\nLife-Energy, and herein lies the justification for the refusal of Life to acknowledge the supremacy of Knowledge and Love alone,
\n\u2014 for its push towards the satisfaction of something far more unreflecting, headstrong and dangerous that can yet venture too
\nin its own bold and ardent way towards the Divine and Absolute. Love and Wisdom are not the only aspects of the Divine,
\nthere is also its aspect of Power. As the mind gropes for Knowledge, as the heart feels out for Love, so the life-force, however
\nfumblingly or trepidantly, stumbles in search of Power and the control given by Power. It is a mistake of the ethical or religious
\nmind to condemn Power as in itself a thing not to be accepted or sought after because naturally corrupting and evil; in spite
\nof its apparent justification by a majority of instances, this is at its core a blind and irrational prejudice. However corrupted and
\nmisused, as Love and Knowledge too are corrupted and misused, Power is divine and put here for a divine use. Shakti, Will, Power
\nis the driver of the worlds and, whether it be Knowledge-Force or Love-Force or Life-Force or Action-Force or Body-Force, is
\nalways spiritual in its origin and divine in its native character. It is the use of it made in the Ignorance by brute, man or Titan
\n  <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 <\/font>174<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\t that has to be cast aside and replaced by its greater natural \u2014
\neven if to us supernormal \u2014 action led by the Light of an inner consciousness which is in tune with the Infinite and the Eternal.
\nThe integral Yoga cannot reject the works of Life and be satisfied with an inward experience only; it has to go inward in order to
\nchange the outward, making the Life-Force a part and a working of a Yoga-Energy which is in touch with the Divine and divine
\nin its guidance. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAll the difficulty in dealing spiritually with the works of Life
\narises because the Will-in-Life for its purposes in the Ignorance has created a false soul of desire and substituted it for that spark
\nof the Divine which is the true psyche. All or most of the works of life are at present or seem to be actuated and vitiated by this
\nsoul of desire; even those that are ethical or religious, even those that wear the guise of altruism, philanthropy, self-sacrifice, self-denial, are shot through and through with the threads of its making. This soul of desire is a separative soul of ego and all its
\ninstincts are for a separative self-affirmation; it pushes always, openly or under more or less shining masks, for its own growth,
\nfor possession, for enjoyment, for conquest and empire. If the curse of disquiet and disharmony and perversion is to be lifted
\nfrom Life, the true soul, the psychic being, must be given its leading place and there must be a dissolution of the false soul
\nof desire and ego. But this does not mean that life itself must be coerced and denied its native line of fulfilment; for behind
\nthis outer life soul of desire there is in us an inner and true vital being which has not to be dissolved but brought out into
\nprominence and released to its true working as a power of the Divine Nature. The prominence of this true vital being under
\nthe lead of the true inmost soul within us is the condition for the divine fulfilment of the objects of the Life-Force. Those objects
\nwill even remain the same in essence, but transformed in their inner motive and outer character. The Divine Life-Power too will
\nbe a will for growth, a force of self-affirmation, but affirmation of the Divine within us, not of the little temporary personality on
\nthe surface, \u2014 growth into the true divine Individual, the central being, the secret imperishable Person who can emerge only by
\n  <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 <\/font>175<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\t the subordination and disappearance of the ego. This is life’s true
\nobject: growth, but a growth of the spirit in Nature, affirming and developing itself in mind, life and body; possession, but a
\npossession by the Divine of the Divine in all things, and not of things for their own sake by the desire of the ego; enjoyment, but
\nan enjoyment of the divine Ananda in the universe; battle and conquest and empire in the shape of a victorious conflict with
\nthe Powers of Darkness, an entire spiritual self-rule and mastery over inward and outward Nature, a conquest by Knowledge,
\nLove and Divine Will over the domains of the Ignorance. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThese are the conditions and these must be the aims of the
\ndivine effectuation of the works of Life and their progressive transformation which is the third element of the triple sacrifice.
\nIt is not a rationalisation but a supramentalisation, not a moralising but a spiritualising of life that is the object of the Yoga. It is
\nnot a handling of externals or superficial psychological motives that is its main purpose, but a refounding of life and its action
\non their hidden divine element; for only such a refounding of life can bring about its direct government by the secret Divine Power
\nabove us and its transfiguration into a manifest expression of the Divinity, not as now a disguise and a disfiguring mask of the
\neternal Actor. It is a spiritual essential change of consciousness, not the surface manipulation which is the method of Mind and
\nReason, that can alone make Life other than it now is and rescue it out of its present distressed and ambiguous figure. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t* *<\/font><\/p>\n

\nIt is then by a transformation of life in its very principle, not by an external manipulation of its phenomena, that the integral
\nYoga proposes to change it from a troubled and ignorant into a luminous and harmonious movement of Nature. There are
\nthree conditions which are indispensable for the achievement of this central inner revolution and new formation; none of them is
\naltogether sufficient in itself, but by their united threefold power the uplifting can be done, the conversion made and completely
\nmade. For, first, life as it is is a movement of desire and it has  <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 <\/font>176<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n built in us as its centre a desire-soul which refers to itself all the
\nmotions of life and puts in them its own troubled hue and pain of an ignorant, half-lit, baffled endeavour: for a divine living, desire
\nmust be abolished and replaced by a purer and firmer motive-power, the tormented soul of desire dissolved and in its stead
\nthere must emerge the calm, strength, happiness of a true vital being now concealed within us. Next, life as it is is driven or led
\npartly by the impulse of the life-force, partly by a mind which is mostly a servant and abettor of the ignorant life-impulse, but
\nin part also its uneasy and not too luminous or competent guide and mentor; for a divine life the mind and the life-impulse must
\ncease to be anything but instruments and the inmost psychic being must take their place as the leader on the path and the
\nindicator of a divine guidance. Last, life as it is is turned towards the satisfaction of the separative ego; ego must disappear and
\nbe replaced by the true spiritual person, the central being, and life itself must be turned towards the fulfilment of the Divine in
\nterrestrial existence; it must feel a Divine Force awaking within it and become an obedient instrumentation of its purpose. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThere is nothing that is not ancient and familiar in the first of these three transforming inner movements; for it has always
\nbeen one of the principal objects of spiritual discipline. It has been best formulated in the already expressed doctrine of the
\nGita by which a complete renouncement of desire for the fruits as the motive of action, a complete annulment of desire itself, the
\ncomplete achievement of a perfect equality are put forward as the normal status of a spiritual being. A perfect spiritual equality
\nis the one true and infallible sign of the cessation of desire, \u2014 to be equal-souled to all things, unmoved by joy and sorrow,
\nthe pleasant and the unpleasant, success or failure, to look with an equal eye on high and low, friend and enemy, the virtuous
\nand the sinner, to see in all beings the manifold manifestation of the One and in all things the multitudinous play or the slow
\nmasked evolution of the embodied Spirit. It is not a mental quiet, aloofness, indifference, not an inert vital quiescence, not a passivity of the physical consciousness consenting to no movement or to any movement that is the condition aimed at, though these
\n   <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 <\/font>177<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\t things are sometimes mistaken for this spiritual condition, but
\na wide comprehensive unmoved universality such as that of the Witness Spirit behind Nature. For all here seems to be a mobile
\nhalf-ordered half-confused organisation of forces, but behind them one can feel a supporting peace, silence, wideness, not
\ninert but calm, not impotent but potentially omnipotent with a concentrated, stable, immobile energy in it capable of bearing all
\nthe motions of the universe. This Presence behind is equal-souled to all things: the energy it holds in it can be unloosed for any
\naction, but no action will be chosen by any desire in the Witness Spirit; a Truth acts which is beyond and greater than the action
\nitself or its apparent forms and impulses, beyond and greater than mind or life-force or body, although it may take for the
\nimmediate purpose a mental, a vital or a physical appearance. It is when there is this death of desire and this calm equal wideness
\nin the consciousness everywhere, that the true vital being within us comes out from the veil and reveals its own calm, intense
\nand potent presence. For such is the true nature of the vital
\nbeing, prā<\/font>n<\/font>amaya purus<\/font>a<\/i>; it is a projection of the Divine Purusha .<\/i>
\ninto life, \u2014 tranquil, strong, luminous, many-energied, obedient to the Divine Will, egoless, yet or rather therefore capable of
\nall action, achievement, highest or largest enterprise. The true Life-Force too reveals itself as no longer this troubled harassed
\ndivided striving surface energy, but a great and radiant Divine Power, full of peace and strength and bliss, a wide-wayed Angel
\nof Life with its wings of Might enfolding the universe. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd yet this transformation into a large strength and equality is insufficient; for if it opens to us the instrumentation of a Divine Life, it does not provide its government and initiative. It is
\nhere that the presence of the released psychic being intervenes; it does not give the supreme government and direction,
\n\u2014 for that
\nis not its function, \u2014 but it supplies during the transition from ignorance to a divine Knowledge a progressive guidance for the
\ninner and outer life and action; it indicates at each moment the method, the way, the steps that will lead to that fulfilled
\nspiritual condition in which a supreme dynamic initiative will be always there directing the activities of a divinised Life-Force. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 <\/font>178<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\tThe light it sheds illuminates the other parts of the nature which,
\nfor want of any better guidance than their own confused and groping powers, have been wandering in the rounds of the Ignorance; it gives to mind the intrinsic feeling of the thoughts and perceptions, to life the infallible sense of the movements
\nthat are misled or misleading and those that are well-inspired; something like a quiet oracle from within discloses the causes of
\nour stumblings, warns in time against their repetition, extracts from experience and intuition the law, not rigid but plastic,
\nof a just direction for our acts, a right stepping, an accurate impulse. A will is created that becomes more in consonance
\nwith evolving Truth rather than with the circling and dilatory mazes of a seeking Error. A determined orientation towards the
\ngreater Light to be, a soul-instinct, a psychic tact and insight into the true substance, motion and intention of things, coming
\nalways nearer and nearer to a spiritual vision, to a knowledge by inner contact, inner sight and even identity, begin to replace the
\nsuperficial keenness of mental judgment and the eager graspings of the life-force. The works of Life right themselves, escape from
\nconfusion, substitute for the artificial or legal order imposed by the intellect and for the arbitrary rule of desire the guidance
\nof the soul’s inner insight, enter into the profound paths of the Spirit. Above all, the psychic being imposes on life the law of
\nthe sacrifice of all its works as an offering to the Divine and the Eternal. Life becomes a call to that which is beyond Life; its
\nevery smallest act enlarges with the sense of the Infinite. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAs an inner equality increases and with it the sense of the
\ntrue vital being waiting for the greater direction it has to serve, as the psychic call too increases in all the members of our nature, That to which the call is addressed begins to reveal itself, descends to take possession of the life and its energies and fills
\nthem with the height, intimacy, vastness of its presence and its purpose. In many, if not most, it manifests something of itself
\neven before the equality and the open psychic urge or guidance are there. A call of the veiled psychic element oppressed by the
\nmass of the outer ignorance and crying for deliverance, a stress of eager meditation and seeking for knowledge, a longing of the <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 <\/font>179<\/font>  <\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\t heart, a passionate will ignorant yet but sincere may break the
\nlid that shuts off that Higher from this Lower Nature and open the floodgates. A little of the Divine Person may reveal itself
\nor some Light, Power, Bliss, Love out of the Infinite. This may be a momentary revelation, a flash or a brief-lived gleam that
\nsoon withdraws and waits for the preparation of the nature; but also it may repeat itself, grow, endure. A long and large and
\ncomprehensive working will then have begun, sometimes luminous or intense, sometimes slow and obscure. A Divine Power
\ncomes in front at times and leads and compels or instructs and enlightens; at others it withdraws into the background and seems
\nto leave the being to its own resources. All that is ignorant, obscure, perverted or simply imperfect and inferior in the being is
\nraised up, perhaps brought to its acme, dealt with, corrected, exhausted, shown its own disastrous results, compelled to call for
\nits own cessation or transformation or expelled as worthless or incorrigible from the nature. This cannot be a smooth and even
\nprocess; alternations there are of day and night, illumination and darkness, calm and construction or battle and upheaval, the
\npresence of the growing Divine Consciousness and its absence, heights of hope and abysses of despair, the clasp of the Beloved
\nand the anguish of its absence, the overwhelming invasion, the compelling deceit, the fierce opposition, the disabling mockery
\nof hostile Powers or the help and comfort and communion of the Gods and the Divine Messengers. A great and long revolution
\nand churning of the ocean of Life with strong emergences of its nectar and its poison is enforced till all is ready and the increasing
\nDescent finds a being, a nature prepared and conditioned for its complete rule and its all-encompassing presence. But if the
\nequality and the psychic light and will are already there, then this process, though it cannot be dispensed with, can still be much
\nlightened and facilitated: it will be rid of its worst dangers; an inner calm, happiness, confidence will support the steps through
\nall the difficulties and trials of the transformation and the growing Force profiting by the full assent of the nature will rapidly
\ndiminish and eliminate the power of the opposing forces. A sure guidance and protection will be present throughout, sometimes
\n   <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 <\/font>180<\/font> <\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\t standing in front, sometimes working behind the veil, and the
\npower of the end will be already there even in the beginning and in the long middle stages of the great endeavour. For at all times
\nthe seeker will be aware of the Divine Guide and Protector or the working of the supreme Mother-Force; he will know that all is
\ndone for the best, the progress assured, the victory inevitable. In either case the process is the same and unavoidable, a taking up
\nof the whole nature, of the whole life, of the internal and of the external, to reveal and handle and transform its forces and their
\nmovements under the pressure of a diviner Life from above, until all here has been possessed by greater spiritual powers and made
\nan instrumentation of a spiritual action and a divine purpose. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIn this process and at an early stage of it it becomes evident
\nthat what we know of ourselves, our present conscious existence, is only a representative formation, a superficial activity, a changing external result of a vast mass of concealed existence. Our visible life and the actions of that life are no more than a series
\nof significant expressions, but that which it tries to express is not on the surface; our existence is something much larger than
\nthis apparent frontal being which we suppose ourselves to be and which we offer to the world around us. This frontal and
\nexternal being is a confused amalgam of mind-formations, life-movements, physical functionings of which even an exhaustive
\nanalysis into its component parts and machinery fails to reveal the whole secret. It is only when we go behind, below, above into
\nthe hidden stretches of our being that we can know it; the most thorough and acute surface scrutiny and manipulation cannot
\ngive us the true understanding or the completely effective control of our life, its purposes, its activities; that inability indeed is the
\ncause of the failure of reason, morality and every other surface action to control and deliver and perfect the life of the human
\nrace. For below even our most obscure physical consciousness is a subconscious being in which as in a covering and supporting
\nsoil are all manner of hidden seeds that sprout up, unaccountably to us, on our surface and into which we are constantly throwing
\nfresh seeds that prolong our past and will influence our future, \u2014 a subconscious being, obscure, small in its motions, capriciously
\n  <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 <\/font>181<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\t and almost fantastically subrational, but of an immense potency
\nfor the earth-life. Again behind our mind, our life, our conscious physical there is a larger subliminal consciousness,
\n\u2014 there are
\ninner mental, inner vital, inner more subtle physical reaches supported by an inmost psychic existence which is the animating
\nsoul of all the rest; and in these hidden reaches too lie a mass of numerous pre-existent personalities which supply the material, the motive-forces, the impulsions of our developing surface existence. For in each one of us here there may be one central
\nperson, but also a multitude of subordinate personalities created by the past history of its manifestation or by expressions of it on
\nthese inner planes which support its present play in this external material cosmos. And while on our surface we are cut off from
\nall around us except through an exterior mind and sense contact which delivers but little of us to our world or of our world to
\nus, in these inner reaches the barrier between us and the rest of existence is thin and easily broken; there we can feel at once
\n\u2014 not merely infer from their results, but feel directly \u2014 the action of the secret world-forces, mind-forces, life-forces, subtle
\nphysical forces that constitute universal and individual existence; we shall even be able, if we will but train ourselves to it, to lay
\nour hands on these world-forces that throw themselves on us or surround us and more and more to control or at least strongly
\nmodify their action on us and others, their formations, their very movements. Yet again, above our human mind are still greater
\nreaches superconscient to it and from there secretly descend influences, powers, touches which are the original determinants
\nof things here and, if they were called down in their fullness, could altogether alter the whole make and economy of life in the
\nmaterial universe. It is all this latent experience and knowledge that the Divine Force working upon us by our opening to it in
\nthe integral Yoga, progressively reveals to us, uses and works out the consequences as means and steps towards a transformation
\nof our whole being and nature. Our life is thenceforth no longer a little rolling wave on the surface, but interpenetrant if not
\ncoincident with the cosmic life. Our spirit, our self rises not only into an inner identity with some wide cosmic Self but into<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 <\/font>182<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\t some contact with that which is beyond, though aware of and
\ndominant over the action of the universe. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIt is thus by an integralisation of our divided being that
\nthe Divine Shakti in the Yoga will proceed to its object; for liberation, perfection, mastery are dependent on this integralisation, since the little wave on the surface cannot control its own movement, much less have any true control over the vast life
\naround it. The Shakti, the power of the Infinite and the Eternal descends within us, works, breaks up our present psychological
\nformations, shatters every wall, widens, liberates, presents us with always newer and greater powers of vision, ideation, perception and newer and greater life-motives, enlarges and new-models increasingly the soul and its instruments, confronts us
\nwith every imperfection in order to convict and destroy it, opens to a greater perfection, does in a brief period the work of many
\nlives or ages so that new births and new vistas open constantly within us. Expansive in her action, she frees the consciousness
\nfrom confinement in the body; it can go out in trance or sleep or even waking and enter into worlds or other regions of this world
\nand act there or carry back its experience. It spreads out, feeling the body only as a small part of itself, and begins to contain
\nwhat before contained it; it achieves the cosmic consciousness and extends itself to be commensurate with the universe. It begins to know inwardly and directly and not merely by external observation and contact the forces at play in the world, feels
\ntheir movement, distinguishes their functioning and can operate immediately upon them as the scientist operates upon physical
\nforces, accept their action and results in our mind, life, body or reject them or modify, change, reshape, create immense new
\npowers and movements in place of the old small functionings of the nature. We begin to perceive the working of the forces
\nof universal Mind and to know how our thoughts are created by that working, separate from within the truth and falsehood
\nof our perceptions, enlarge their field, extend and illumine their significance, become master of our own minds and active to
\nshape the movements of Mind in the world around us. We begin to perceive the flow and surge of the universal life-forces, <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 <\/font>183<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\t detect the origin and law of our feelings, emotions, sensations,
\npassions, are free to accept, reject, new-create, open to wider, rise to higher planes of Life-Power. We begin to perceive too
\nthe key to the enigma of Matter, follow the interplay of Mind and Life and Consciousness upon it, discover more and more its
\ninstrumental and resultant function and detect ultimately the last secret of Matter as a form not merely of Energy but of involved
\nand arrested or unstably fixed and restricted consciousness and begin to see too the possibility of its liberation and plasticity
\nof response to higher Powers, its possibilities for the conscious and no longer the more than half-inconscient incarnation and
\nself-expression of the Spirit. All this and more becomes more and more possible as the working of the Divine Shakti increases
\nin us and, against much resistance or labour to respond of our obscure consciousness, through much struggle and movement
\nof progress and regression and renewed progress necessitated by the work of intensive transformation of a half-inconscient
\ninto a conscious substance, moves to a greater purity, truth, height, range. All depends on the psychic awakening in us, the
\ncompleteness of our response to her and our growing surrender. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBut all this can only constitute a greater inner life with
\na greater possibility of the outer action and is a transitional achievement; the full transformation can come only by the ascent of the sacrifice to its farthest heights and its action upon life with the power and light and beatitude of the divine supramental
\nGnosis. For then alone all the forces that are divided and express themselves imperfectly in life and its works are raised to their
\noriginal unity, harmony, single truth, authentic absoluteness and entire significance. There Knowledge and Will are one, Love and
\nForce a single movement; the opposites that afflict us here are resolved into their reconciled unity: good develops its absolute
\nand evil divesting itself of its error returns to the good that was behind it; sin and virtue vanish in a divine purity and an
\ninfallible truth-movement; the dubious evanescence of pleasure disappears in a Bliss that is the play of an eternal and happy
\nspiritual certitude, and pain in perishing discovers the touch of an Ananda which was betrayed by some dark perversion and <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 <\/font>184<\/font> 
\n <\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\t incapacity of the will of the Inconscient to receive it. These
\nthings, to the Mind an imagination or a mystery, become evident and capable of experience as the consciousness rises out of
\nlimited embodied Matter-mind to the freedom and fullness of the higher and higher ranges of the super-intelligence; but they
\ncan become entirely true and normal only when the supramental becomes the law of the nature. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIt is therefore on the accomplishment of this ascent and on the possibility of a full dynamism from these highest levels
\ndescending into earth-consciousness that is dependent the justification of Life, its salvation, its transformation into a Divine
\nLife in a transfigured terrestrial Nature. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t* *<\/font><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe nature of the integral Yoga so conceived, so conditioned,
\nprogressing by these spiritual means, turning upon this integral transformation of the nature, determines of itself its answer to
\nthe question of the ordinary activities of life and their place in the Yoga. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThere is not and cannot be here any ascetic or contemplative or mystic abandonment of works and life altogether, any gospel
\nof an absorbed meditation and inactivity, any cutting away or condemnation of the Life-Force and its activities, any rejection
\nof the manifestation in the earth-nature. It may be necessary for the seeker at any period to withdraw into himself, to remain
\nplunged in his inner being, to shut out from him the noise and turmoil of the life of the Ignorance until a certain inner change
\nhas been accomplished or something achieved without which a further effective action on life has become difficult or impossible.
\nBut this can only be a period or an episode, a temporary necessity or a preparatory spiritual manoeuvre; it cannot be the rule of
\nhis Yoga or its principle. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA splitting up of the activities of human existence on a
\nreligious or an ethical basis or both together, a restriction to the works of worship only or to the works of philanthropy and
\nbeneficence only would be contrary to the spirit of the integral  <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 <\/font>185<\/font> <\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\tYoga. Any merely mental rule or merely mental acceptance or
\nrepudiation is alien to the purpose and method of its discipline. All must be taken to a spiritual height and placed upon a spiritual
\nbasis; the presence of an inner spiritual change and an outer transformation must be enforced upon the whole of life and not
\nmerely on a part of life; all must be accepted that is helpful towards this change or admits it, all must be rejected that is
\nincapable or inapt or refuses to submit itself to the transforming movement. There must be no attachment to any form of things
\nor of life, any object, any activity; all must be renounced if need be, all must be admitted that the Divine chooses as its material
\nfor the divine life. But what accepts or rejects must be neither mind nor open or camouflaged vital will of desire nor ethical
\nsense, but the insistence of the psychic being, the command of the Divine Guide of the Yoga, the vision of the higher Self
\nor Spirit, the illumined guidance of the Master. The way of the spirit is not a mental way; a mental rule or mental consciousness
\ncannot be its determinant or its leader. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tEqually, a combination or a compromise between two orders of consciousness, the spiritual and the mental or the spiritual and the vital or a mere sublimation from within of Life
\noutwardly unchanged cannot be the law or the aim of the Yoga. All life must be taken up but all life must be transformed; all
\nmust become a part, a form, an adequate expression of a spiritual being in the supramental nature. This is the height and crowning
\nmovement of a spiritual evolution in the material world, and as the change from the vital animal to mental man made life another thing altogether in basic consciousness, scope, significance, so this change from the materialised mental being to the spiritual
\nand supramental being using but not dominated by matter must take up life and make it another thing altogether than the flawed,
\nimperfect limited human, quite other in its basic consciousness, scope, significance. All forms of life activity that cannot bear the
\nchange must disappear, all that can bear it will survive and enter into the kingdom of the spirit. A divine Force is at work and
\nwill choose at each moment what has to be done or has not to be done, what has to be momentarily or permanently taken up, <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 <\/font>186<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\tmomentarily or permanently abandoned. For provided we do not
\n\t\t\tsubstitute for that our desire or our ego, and to that end the soul
\n\t\t\tmust be always awake, always on guard, alive to the divine guidance,
\n\t\t\tresistant to the undivine misleading from within or without us, that
\n\t\t\tForce is sufficient and alone competent and she will lead us to the
\n\t\t\tfulfilment along ways and by means too large, too inward, too
\n\t\t\tcomplex for the mind to follow, much less to dictate. It is an
\n\t\t\tarduous and difficult and dangerous way, but there is none other. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tTwo rules alone there are that will diminish the difficulty and
\n\t\t\tobviate the danger. One must reject all that comes from the ego,
\n\t\t\tfrom vital desire, from the mere mind and its presumptuous reasoning
\n\t\t\tincompetence, all that ministers to these agents of the Ignorance.
\n\t\t\tOne must learn to hear and follow the voice of the inmost soul, the
\n\t\t\tdirection of the Guru, the command of the Master, the working of the
\n\t\t\tDivine Mother. Whoever clings to the desires and weaknesses of the
\n\t\t\tflesh, the cravings and passions of the vital in its turbulent
\n\t\t\tignorance, the dictates of his personal mind unsilenced and
\n\t\t\tunillumined by a greater knowledge, cannot find the true inner law
\n\t\t\tand is heaping obstacles in the way of the divine fulfilment.
\n\t\t\tWhoever is able to detect and renounce those obscuring agencies and
\n\t\t\tto discern and follow the true Guide within and without will
\n\t\t\tdiscover the spiritual law and reach the goal of the Yoga. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA radical and total change of consciousness is not only the whole
\n\t\t\tmeaning but, in an increasing force and by progressive stages, the
\n\t\t\twhole method of the integral Yoga.   <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 <\/font>187<\/font><\/p>\n

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

Chapter VI   The Ascent of the Sacrifice \u00ad 2   The Works of Love \u2014 The Works of Life   IT IS therefore through…<\/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-2208","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\/2208","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=2208"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2208\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9576,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2208\/revisions\/9576"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2208"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2208"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2208"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}