{"id":2214,"date":"2013-07-13T01:40:09","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:40:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=2214"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:40:09","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:40:09","slug":"07-chapter-ii-self-consecration-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\/07-chapter-ii-self-consecration-vol-23-24-the-synthesis-of-yoga","title":{"rendered":"-07_Chapter II Self-Consecration.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

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

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

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tSelf-Consecration <\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA<\/font>LL YOGA<\/b> is in its nature a new birth; it is a birth out of
\nthe ordinary, the mentalised material life of man into a higher spiritual consciousness and a greater and diviner
\nbeing. No Yoga can be successfully undertaken and followed unless there is a strong awakening to the necessity of that larger
\nspiritual existence. The soul that is called to this deep and vast inward change, may arrive in different ways to the initial departure. It may come to it by its own natural development which has been leading it unconsciously towards the awakening; it may
\nreach it through the influence of a religion or the attraction of a philosophy; it may approach it by a slow illumination or leap
\nto it by a sudden touch or shock; it may be pushed or led to it by the pressure of outward circumstances or by an inward
\nnecessity, by a single word that breaks the seals of the mind or by long reflection, by the distant example of one who has trod
\nthe path or by contact and daily influence. According to the nature and the circumstances the call will come. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBut in whatever way it comes, there must be a decision of the mind and the will and, as its result, a complete and effective
\nself-consecration. The acceptance of a new spiritual idea-force and upward orientation in the being, an illumination, a turning
\nor conversion seized on by the will and the heart’s aspiration, \u2014 this is the momentous act which contains as in a seed all the
\nresults that the Yoga has to give. The mere idea or intellectual seeking of something higher beyond, however strongly grasped
\nby the mind’s interest, is ineffective unless it is seized on by the heart as the one thing desirable and by the will as the one thing to
\nbe done. For truth of the Spirit has not to be merely thought but to be lived, and to live it demands a unified single-mindedness
\nof the being; so great a change as is contemplated by the Yoga is not to be effected by a divided will or by a small portion of the<\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\t energy or by a hesitating mind. He who seeks the Divine must
\nconsecrate himself to God and to God only. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIf the change comes suddenly and decisively by an overpowering influence, there is no further essential or lasting difficulty. The choice follows upon the thought, or is simultaneous with it,
\nand the self-consecration follows upon the choice. The feet are already set upon the path, even if they seem at first to wander uncertainly and even though the path itself may be only obscurely seen and the knowledge of the goal may be imperfect. The secret
\nTeacher, the inner Guide is already at work, though he may not yet manifest himself or may not yet appear in the person of
\nhis human representative. Whatever difficulties and hesitations may ensue, they cannot eventually prevail against the power
\nof the experience that has turned the current of the life. The call, once decisive, stands; the thing that has been born cannot
\neventually be stifled. Even if the force of circumstances prevents a regular pursuit or a full practical self-consecration from the first,
\nstill the mind has taken its bent and persists and returns with an ever-increasing effect upon its leading preoccupation. There
\nis an ineluctable persistence of the inner being, and against it circumstances are in the end powerless, and no weakness in the
\nnature can for long be an obstacle. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBut this is not always the manner of the commencement.
\nThe sadhaka is often led gradually and there is a long space between the first turning of the mind and the full assent of
\nthe nature to the thing towards which it turns. There may at first be only a vivid intellectual interest, a forcible attraction
\ntowards the idea and some imperfect form of practice. Or perhaps there is an effort not favoured by the whole nature, a
\ndecision or a turn imposed by an intellectual influence or dictated by personal affection and admiration for someone who is
\nhimself consecrated and devoted to the Highest. In such cases, a long period of preparation may be necessary before there comes
\nthe irrevocable consecration; and in some instances it may not come. There may be some advance, there may be a strong effort,
\neven much purification and many experiences other than those that are central or supreme; but the life will either be spent in<\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\t preparation or, a certain stage having been reached, the mind
\npushed by an insufficient driving-force may rest content at the limit of the effort possible to it. Or there may even be a recoil to
\nthe lower life, \u2014 what is called in the ordinary parlance of Yoga a fall from the path. This lapse happens because there is a defect
\nat the very centre. The intellect has been interested, the heart attracted, the will has strung itself to the effort, but the whole
\nnature has not been taken captive by the Divine. It has only acquiesced in the interest, the attraction or the endeavour. There
\nhas been an experiment, perhaps even an eager experiment, but not a total self-giving to an imperative need of the soul or to
\nan unforsakable ideal. Even such imperfect Yoga has not been wasted; for no upward effort is made in vain. Even if it fails in the
\npresent or arrives only at some preparatory stage or preliminary realisation, it has yet determined the soul’s future. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBut if we desire to make the most of the opportunity that this life gives us, if we wish to respond adequately to the call
\nwe have received and to attain to the goal we have glimpsed, not merely advance a little towards it, it is essential that there
\nshould be an entire self-giving. The secret of success in Yoga is to regard it not as one of the aims to be pursued in life, but as
\nthe one and only aim, not as an important part of life, but as the whole of life. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

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

\nAnd since Yoga is in its essence a turning away from the ordinary material and animal life led by most men or from the
\nmore mental but still limited way of living followed by the few to a greater spiritual life, to the way divine, every part of our
\nenergies that is given to the lower existence in the spirit of that existence is a contradiction of our aim and our self-dedication.
\nOn the other hand, every energy or activity that we can convert from its allegiance to the lower and dedicate to the service of
\nthe higher is so much gained on our road, so much taken from the powers that oppose our progress. It is the difficulty of this
\nwholesale conversion that is the source of all the stumblings in <\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\t the path of Yoga. For our entire nature and its environment, all
\nour personal and all our universal self, are full of habits and of influences that are opposed to our spiritual rebirth and work
\nagainst the whole-heartedness of our endeavour. In a certain sense we are nothing but a complex mass of mental, nervous
\nand physical habits held together by a few ruling ideas, desires and associations,
\n\t\t\t\u2014 an amalgam of many small self-repeating
\nforces with a few major vibrations. What we propose in our Yoga is nothing less than to break up the whole formation of
\nour past and present which makes up the ordinary material and mental man and to create a new centre of vision and a new
\nuniverse of activities in ourselves which shall constitute a divine humanity or a superhuman nature. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe first necessity is to dissolve that central faith and vision in the mind which concentrate it on its development and satisfaction and interests in the old externalised order of things. It is imperative to exchange this surface orientation for the deeper
\nfaith and vision which see only the Divine and seek only after the Divine. The next need is to compel all our lower being to
\npay homage to this new faith and greater vision. All our nature must make an integral surrender; it must offer itself in every part
\nand every movement to that which seems to the unregenerated sense-mind so much less real than the material world and its
\nobjects. Our whole being \u2014 soul, mind, sense, heart, will, life, body \u2014 must consecrate all its energies so entirely and in such
\na way that it shall become a fit vehicle for the Divine. This is no easy task; for everything in the world follows the fixed habit
\nwhich is to it a law and resists a radical change. And no change can be more radical than the revolution attempted in the integral
\nYoga. Everything in us has constantly to be called back to the central faith and will and vision. Every thought and impulse has
\nto be reminded in the language of the Upanishad that “That is the divine Brahman and not this which men here adore.” Every
\nvital fibre has to be persuaded to accept an entire renunciation of all that hitherto represented to it its own existence. Mind has
\nto cease to be mind and become brilliant with something beyond it. Life has to change into a thing vast and calm and intense and <\/p>\n

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\n

\n\t\t\t powerful that can no longer recognise its old blind eager narrow
\nself of petty impulse and desire. Even the body has to submit to a mutation and be no longer the clamorous animal or the
\nimpeding clod it now is, but become instead a conscious servant and radiant instrument and living form of the spirit. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe difficulty of the task has led naturally to the pursuit of easy and trenchant solutions; it has generated and fixed deeply
\nthe tendency of religions and of schools of Yoga to separate the life of the world from the inner life. The powers of this
\nworld and their actual activities, it is felt, either do not belong to God at all or are for some obscure and puzzling cause, Maya
\nor another, a dark contradiction of the divine Truth. And on their own opposite side the powers of the Truth and their ideal
\nactivities are seen to belong to quite another plane of consciousness than that, obscure, ignorant and perverse in its impulses
\nand forces, on which the life of the earth is founded. There appears at once the antinomy of a bright and pure kingdom of
\nGod and a dark and impure kingdom of the devil; we feel the opposition of our crawling earthly birth and life to an exalted
\nspiritual God-consciousness; we become readily convinced of the incompatibility of life’s subjection to Maya with the soul’s
\nconcentration in pure Brahman existence. The easiest way is to turn away from all that belongs to the one and to retreat by
\na naked and precipitous ascent into the other. Thus arises the attraction and, it would seem, the necessity of the principle of
\nexclusive concentration which plays so prominent a part in the specialised schools of Yoga; for by that concentration we can
\narrive through an uncompromising renunciation of the world at an entire self-consecration to the One on whom we concentrate.
\nIt is no longer incumbent on us to compel all the lower activities to the difficult recognition of a new and higher spiritualised life
\nand train them to be its agents or executive powers. It is enough to kill or quiet them and keep at most the few energies necessary,
\non one side, for the maintenance of the body and, on the other, for communion with the Divine. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe very aim and conception of an integral Yoga debar us from adopting this simple and strenuous high-pitched process.<\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\t The hope of an integral transformation forbids us to take a
\nshort cut or to make ourselves light for the race by throwing away our impedimenta. For we have set out to conquer all ourselves and the world for God; we are determined to give him our becoming as well as our being and not merely to bring the
\npure and naked spirit as a bare offering to a remote and secret Divinity in a distant heaven or abolish all we are in a holocaust
\nto an immobile Absolute. The Divine that we adore is not only a remote extra-cosmic Reality, but a half-veiled Manifestation
\npresent and near to us here in the universe. Life is the field of a divine manifestation not yet complete: here, in life, on earth, in
\n\t\t\tthe body, \u2014 ihaiva<\/i>, as the Upanishads insist, \u2014 we have to unveil the Godhead; here we must make its transcendent greatness,
\nlight and sweetness real to our consciousness, here possess and, as far as may be, express it. Life then we must accept in our
\nYoga in order utterly to transmute it; we are forbidden to shrink from the difficulties that this acceptance may add to our struggle.
\nOur compensation is that even if the path is more rugged, the effort more complex and bafflingly arduous, yet after a certain
\npoint we gain an immense advantage. For once our minds are reasonably fixed in the central vision and our wills are on the
\nwhole converted to the single pursuit, Life becomes our helper. Intent, vigilant, integrally conscious, we can take every detail
\nof its forms and every incident of its movements as food for the sacrificial Fire within us. Victorious in the struggle, we can
\ncompel Earth herself to be an aid towards our perfection and can enrich our realisation with the booty torn from the Powers
\nthat oppose us. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

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

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThere is another direction in which the ordinary practice of Yoga
\narrives at a helpful but narrowing simplification which is denied to the sadhaka of the integral aim. The practice of Yoga brings us
\nface to face with the extraordinary complexity of our own being, the stimulating but also embarrassing multiplicity of our personality, the rich endless confusion of Nature. To the ordinary man<\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\t who lives upon his own waking surface, ignorant of the self’s
\ndepths and vastnesses behind the veil, his psychological existence is fairly simple. A small but clamorous company of desires, some
\nimperative intellectual and aesthetic cravings, some tastes, a few ruling or prominent ideas amid a great current of unconnected
\nor ill-connected and mostly trivial thoughts, a number of more or less imperative vital needs, alternations of physical health
\nand disease, a scattered and inconsequent succession of joys and griefs, frequent minor disturbances and vicissitudes and rarer
\nstrong searchings and upheavals of mind or body, and through it all Nature, partly with the aid of his thought and will, partly
\nwithout or in spite of it, arranging these things in some rough practical fashion, some tolerable disorderly order,
\n\t\t\t\u2014 this is the
\nmaterial of his existence. The average human being even now is in his inward existence as crude and undeveloped as was
\nthe bygone primitive man in his outward life. But as soon as we go deep within ourselves,
\n\t\t\t\u2014 and Yoga means a plunge into
\nall the multiple profundities of the soul, \u2014 we find ourselves subjectively, as man in his growth has found himself objectively,
\nsurrounded by a whole complex world which we have to know and to conquer. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe most disconcerting discovery is to find that every part of us \u2014 intellect, will, sense-mind, nervous or desire self, the heart,
\nthe body \u2014 has each, as it were, its own complex individuality and natural formation independent of the rest; it neither agrees
\nwith itself nor with the others nor with the representative ego which is the shadow cast by some central and centralising self
\non our superficial ignorance. We find that we are composed not of one but many personalities and each has its own demands
\nand differing nature. Our being is a roughly constituted chaos into which we have to introduce the principle of a divine order.
\nMoreover, we find that inwardly too, no less than outwardly, we are not alone in the world; the sharp separateness of our ego
\nwas no more than a strong imposition and delusion; we do not exist in ourselves, we do not really live apart in an inner privacy
\nor solitude. Our mind is a receiving, developing and modifying machine into which there is being constantly passed from<\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\t moment to moment a ceaseless foreign flux, a streaming mass of
\ndisparate materials from above, from below, from outside. Much more than half our thoughts and feelings are not our own in the
\nsense that they take form out of ourselves; of hardly anything can it be said that it is truly original to our nature. A large part
\ncomes to us from others or from the environment, whether as raw material or as manufactured imports; but still more largely
\nthey come from universal Nature here or from other worlds and planes and their beings and powers and influences; for we
\nare overtopped and environed by other planes of consciousness, mind planes, life planes, subtle matter planes, from which our
\nlife and action here are fed, or fed on, pressed, dominated, made use of for the manifestation of their forms and forces.
\nThe difficulty of our separate salvation is immensely increased by this complexity and manifold openness and subjection to the
\nin-streaming energies of the universe. Of all this we have to take account, to deal with it, to know what is the secret stuff of our
\nnature and its constituent and resultant motions and to create in it all a divine centre and a true harmony and luminous order. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIn the ordinary paths of Yoga the method used for dealing with these conflicting materials is direct and simple. One or
\nanother of the principal psychological forces in us is selected as our single means for attaining to the Divine; the rest is quieted
\ninto inertia or left to starve in its smallness. The Bhakta, seizing on the emotional forces of the being, the intense activities of
\nthe heart, abides concentrated in the love of God, gathered up as into a single one-pointed tongue of fire; he is indifferent to
\nthe activities of thought, throws behind him the importunities of the reason, cares nothing for the mind’s thirst for knowledge.
\nAll the knowledge he needs is his faith and the inspirations that well up from a heart in communion with the Divine. He
\nhas no use for any will to works that is not turned to the direct worship of the Beloved or the service of the temple. The
\nman of Knowledge, self-confined by a deliberate choice to the force and activities of discriminative thought, finds release in
\nthe mind’s hushed inward-drawn endeavour. He concentrates on the idea of the self, succeeds by a subtle inner discernment <\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\t in distinguishing its silent presence amid the veiling activities of
\nNature, and through the perceptive idea arrives at the concrete spiritual experience. He is indifferent to the play of the emotions,
\ndeaf to the hunger-call of passion, closed to the activities of Life, \u2014 the more blessed he, the sooner they fall away from him and
\nleave him free, still and mute, the eternal non-doer. The body is his stumbling-block, the vital functions are his enemies; if their
\ndemands can be reduced to a minimum, that is his great good fortune. The endless difficulties that arise from the environing
\nworld are dismissed by erecting firmly against them a defence of outer physical and inner spiritual solitude; safe behind a wall of
\ninner silence, he remains impassive and untouched by the world and by others. To be alone with oneself or alone with the Divine,
\nto walk apart with God and his devotees, to entrench oneself in the single self-ward endeavour of the mind or Godward passion
\nof the heart is the trend of these Yogas. The problem is solved by the excision of all but the one central difficulty which pursues
\nthe one chosen motive-force; into the midst of the dividing calls of our nature the principle of an exclusive concentration comes
\nsovereignly to our rescue. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBut for the sadhaka of the integral Yoga this inner or this
\nouter solitude can only be incidents or periods in his spiritual progress. Accepting life, he has to bear not only his own burden,
\nbut a great part of the world’s burden too along with it, as a continuation of his own sufficiently heavy load. Therefore his Yoga
\nhas much more of the nature of a battle than others; but this is not only an individual battle, it is a collective war waged over a
\nconsiderable country. He has not only to conquer in himself the forces of egoistic falsehood and disorder, but to conquer them
\nas representatives of the same adverse and inexhaustible forces in the world. Their representative character gives them a much
\nmore obstinate capacity of resistance, an almost endless right to recurrence. Often he finds that even after he has won persistently
\nhis own personal battle, he has still to win it over and over again in a seemingly interminable war, because his inner existence has
\nalready been so much enlarged that not only it contains his own being with its well-defined needs and experiences, but is in <\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\t solidarity with the being of others, because in himself he contains
\nthe universe. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tNor is the seeker of the integral fulfilment permitted to
\nsolve too arbitrarily even the conflict of his own inner members. He has to harmonise deliberate knowledge with unquestioning faith; he must conciliate the gentle soul of love with the formidable need of power; the passivity of the soul that lives
\ncontent in transcendent calm has to be fused with the activity of the divine helper and the divine warrior. To him as to all seekers
\nof the spirit there are offered for solution the oppositions of the reason, the clinging hold of the senses, the perturbations of
\nthe heart, the ambush of the desires, the clog of the physical body; but he has to deal in another fashion with their mutual
\nand internal conflicts and their hindrance to his aim, for he must arrive at an infinitely more difficult perfection in the handling of
\nall this rebel matter. Accepting them as instruments for the divine realisation and manifestation, he has to convert their jangling
\ndiscords, to enlighten their thick darknesses, to transfigure them separately and all together, harmonising them in themselves and
\nwith each other, \u2014 integrally, omitting no grain or strand or vibration, leaving no iota of imperfection anywhere. An exclusive concentration, or even a succession of concentrations of that kind, can be in his complex work only a temporary convenience; it has to be abandoned as soon as its utility is over. An all-inclusive concentration is the difficult achievement towards
\nwhich he must labour. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

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

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tConcentration is indeed the first condition of any Yoga, but it
\nis an all-receiving concentration that is the very nature of the integral Yoga. A separate strong fixing of the thought, of the
\nemotions or of the will on a single idea, object, state, inner movement or principle is no doubt a frequent need here also;
\nbut this is only a subsidiary helpful process. A wide massive opening, a harmonised concentration of the whole being in all
\nits parts and through all its powers upon the One who is the All <\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\t is the larger action of this Yoga without which it cannot achieve
\nits purpose. For it is the consciousness that rests in the One and that acts in the All to which we aspire; it is this that we seek to
\nimpose on every element of our being and on every movement of our nature. This wide and concentrated totality is the essential
\ncharacter of the Sadhana and its character must determine its practice. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBut even though the concentration of all the being on the Divine is the character of the Yoga, yet is our being too complex
\na thing to be taken up easily and at once, as if we were taking up the world in a pair of hands, and set in its entirety to a
\nsingle task. Man in his effort at self-transcendence has usually to seize on some one spring or some powerful leverage in the
\ncomplicated machine that his nature is; this spring or lever he touches in preference to others and uses it to set the machine in
\nmotion towards the end that he has in view. In his choice it is always Nature itself that should be his guide. But here it must be
\nNature at her highest and widest in him, not at her lowest or in some limiting movement. In her lower vital activities it is desire
\nthat Nature takes as her most powerful leverage; but the distinct character of man is that he is a mental being, not a merely vital
\ncreature. As he can use his thinking mind and will to restrain and correct his life impulses, so too he can bring in the action
\nof a still higher luminous mentality aided by the deeper soul in him, the psychic being, and supersede by these greater and purer
\nmotive-powers the domination of the vital and sensational force that we call desire. He can entirely master or persuade it and
\noffer it up for transformation to its divine Master. This higher mentality and this deeper soul, the psychic element in man, are
\nthe two grappling hooks by which the Divine can lay hold upon his nature. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe higher mind in man is something other, loftier, purer, vaster, more powerful than the reason or logical intelligence.
\nThe animal is a vital and sensational being; man, it is said, is distinguished from the animal by the possession of reason.
\nBut that is a very summary, a very imperfect and misleading account of the matter. For reason is only a particular and limited<\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\tutilitarian and instrumental activity that proceeds from something much greater than itself, from a power that dwells in an ether more luminous, wider, illimitable. The true and ultimate, as
\ndistinguished from the immediate or intermediate importance of our observing, reasoning, inquiring, judging intelligence is that
\nit prepares the human being for the right reception and right action of a Light from above which must progressively replace
\nin him the obscure light from below that guides the animal. The latter also has a rudimentary reason, a kind of thought,
\na soul, a will and keen emotions; even though less developed, its psychology is yet the same in kind as man’s. But all these
\ncapacities in the animal are automatically moved and strictly limited, almost even constituted by the lower nervous being. All
\nanimal perceptions, sensibilities, activities are ruled by nervous and vital instincts, cravings, needs, satisfactions, of which the
\nnexus is the life-impulse and vital desire. Man too is bound, but less bound, to this automatism of the vital nature. Man
\ncan bring an enlightened will, an enlightened thought and enlightened emotions to the difficult work of his self-development;
\nhe can more and more subject to these more conscious and reflecting guides the inferior function of desire. In proportion as
\nhe can thus master and enlighten his lower self, he is man and no longer an animal. When he can begin to replace desire altogether
\nby a still greater enlightened thought and sight and will in touch with the Infinite, consciously subject to a diviner will than his
\nown, linked to a more universal and transcendent knowledge, he has commenced the ascent towards the superman; he is on
\nhis upward march towards the Divine. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIt is, then, in the highest mind of thought and light and will
\nor it is in the inner heart of deepest feeling and emotion that we must first centre our consciousness,
\n\t\t\t\u2014 in either of them or, if we
\nare capable, in both together, \u2014 and use that as our leverage to lift the nature wholly towards the Divine. The concentration of
\nan enlightened thought, will and heart turned in unison towards one vast goal of our knowledge, one luminous and infinite source
\nof our action, one imperishable object of our emotion is the starting-point of the Yoga. And the object of our seeking must be <\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\t the very fount of the Light which is growing in us, the very origin
\nof the Force which we are calling to move our members. Our one objective must be the Divine himself to whom, knowingly
\nor unknowingly, something always aspires in our secret nature. There must be a large, many-sided yet single concentration of the
\nthought on the idea, the perception, the vision, the awakening touch, the soul’s realisation of the one Divine. There must be
\na flaming concentration of the heart on the seeking of the All and Eternal and, when once we have found him, a deep plunging
\nand immersion in the possession and ecstasy of the All-Beautiful. There must be a strong and immovable concentration of the will
\non the attainment and fulfilment of all that the Divine is and a free and plastic opening of it to all that he intends to manifest
\nin us. This is the triple way of the Yoga. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

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

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBut on that which as yet we know not how shall we concentrate?
\nAnd yet we cannot know the Divine unless we have achieved this concentration of our being upon him. A concentration which
\nculminates in a living realisation and the constant sense of the presence of the One in ourselves and in all of which we are
\naware, is what we mean in Yoga by knowledge and the effort after knowledge. It is not enough to devote ourselves by the
\nreading of Scriptures or by the stress of philosophic reasoning to an intellectual understanding of the Divine; for at the end of
\nour long mental labour we might know all that has been said of the Eternal, possess all that can be thought about the Infinite and
\nyet we might not know him at all. This intellectual preparation can indeed be the first stage in a powerful Yoga, but it is not
\nindispensable: it is not a step which all need or can be called upon to take. Yoga would be impossible, except for a very few, if the
\nintellectual figure of knowledge arrived at by the speculative or meditative Reason were its indispensable condition or a binding
\npreliminary. All that the Light from above asks of us that it may begin its work is a call from the soul and a sufficient point of
\nsupport in the mind. This support can be reached through an <\/p>\n

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\n

\n\t\t\t insistent idea of the Divine in the thought, a corresponding will in the dynamic parts, an aspiration, a faith, a need in the heart.
\nAny one of these may lead or predominate, if all cannot move in unison or in an equal rhythm. The idea may be and must
\nin the beginning be inadequate; the aspiration may be narrow and imperfect, the faith poorly illumined or even, as not surely
\nfounded on the rock of knowledge, fluctuating, uncertain, easily diminished; often even it may be extinguished and need to be
\nlit again with difficulty like a torch in a windy pass. But if once there is a resolute self-consecration from deep within, if there is
\nan awakening to the soul’s call, these inadequate things can be a sufficient instrument for the divine purpose. Therefore the wise
\nhave always been unwilling to limit man’s avenues towards God; they would not shut against his entry even the narrowest portal,
\nthe lowest and darkest postern, the humblest wicket-gate. Any name, any form, any symbol, any offering has been held to be
\nsufficient if there is the consecration along with it; for the Divine knows himself in the heart of the seeker and accepts the sacrifice. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBut still the greater and wider the moving idea-force behind the consecration, the better for the seeker; his attainment
\nis likely to be fuller and more ample. If we are to attempt an integral Yoga, it will be as well to start with an idea of the Divine
\nthat is itself integral. There should be an aspiration in the heart wide enough for a realisation without any narrow limits. Not
\nonly should we avoid a sectarian religious outlook, but also all one-sided philosophical conceptions which try to shut up the Ineffable in a restricting mental formula. The dynamic conception or impelling sense with which our Yoga can best set out would be
\nnaturally the idea, the sense of a conscious all-embracing but all-exceeding Infinite. Our uplook must be to a free, all-powerful,
\nperfect and blissful One and Oneness in which all beings move and live and through which all can meet and become one. This
\nEternal will be at once personal and impersonal in his self-revelation and touch upon the soul. He is personal because he is
\nthe conscious Divine, the infinite Person who casts some broken reflection of himself in the myriad divine and undivine personalities of the universe. He is impersonal because he appears to us <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

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\n

\nas an infinite Existence, Consciousness and Ananda and because he is the fount, base and constituent of all existences and all
\nenergies, the very material of our being and mind and life and body, our spirit and our matter. The thought, concentrating on
\nhim, must not merely understand in an intellectual form that he exists, or conceive of him as an abstraction, a logical necessity;
\nit must become a seeing thought able to meet him here as the Inhabitant in all, realise him in ourselves, watch and take hold
\non the movement of his forces. He is the one Existence: he is the original and universal Delight that constitutes all things and
\nexceeds them: he is the one infinite Consciousness that composes all consciousnesses and informs all their movements: he is the
\none illimitable Being who sustains all action and experience: his will guides the evolution of things towards their yet unrealised
\nbut inevitable aim and plenitude. To him the heart can consecrate itself, approach him as the supreme Beloved, beat and move in
\nhim as in a universal sweetness of Love and a living sea of Delight. For his is the secret Joy that supports the soul in all
\nits experiences and maintains even the errant ego in its ordeals and struggles till all sorrow and suffering shall cease. His is the
\nLove and the Bliss of the infinite divine Lover who is drawing all things by their own path towards his happy oneness. On him the
\nWill can unalterably fix as the invisible Power that guides and fulfils it and as the source of its strength. In the impersonality
\nthis actuating Power is a self-illumined Force that contains all results and calmly works until it accomplishes, in the personality
\nan all-wise and omnipotent Master of the Yoga whom nothing can prevent from leading it to its goal. This is the faith with
\nwhich the seeker has to begin his seeking and endeavour; for in all his effort here, but most of all in his effort towards the
\nUnseen, mental man must perforce proceed by faith. When the realisation comes, the faith divinely fulfilled and completed will
\nbe transformed into an eternal flame of knowledge. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

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

\n\t\t\tInto all our endeavour upward the lower element of desire will <\/p>\n

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\n

\n\t\t\t at first naturally enter. For what the enlightened will sees as the thing to be done and pursues as the crown to be conquered,
\nwhat the heart embraces as the one thing delightful, that in us which feels itself limited and opposed and, because it is limited,
\ncraves and struggles, will seek with the troubled passion of an egoistic desire. This craving life-force or desire-soul in us has to
\nbe accepted at first, but only in order that it may be transformed. Even from the very beginning it has to be taught to renounce all
\nother desires and concentrate itself on the passion for the Divine. This capital point gained, it has to be taught to desire, not for
\nits own separate sake, but for God in the world and for the Divine in ourselves; it has to fix itself upon no personal spiritual
\ngain, though of all possible spiritual gains we are sure, but on the great work to be done in us and others, on the high coming
\nmanifestation which is to be the glorious fulfilment of the Divine in the world, on the Truth that has to be sought and lived and
\nenthroned for ever. But last, most difficult for it, more difficult than to seek with the right object, it has to be taught to seek in the
\nright manner; for it must learn to desire, not in its own egoistic way, but in the way of the Divine. It must insist no longer, as
\nthe strong separative will always insists, on its own manner of fulfilment, its own dream of possession, its own idea of the right
\nand the desirable; it must yearn to fulfil a larger and greater Will and consent to wait upon a less interested and ignorant guidance.
\nThus trained, Desire, that great unquiet harasser and troubler of man and cause of every kind of stumbling, will become fit to be
\ntransformed into its divine counterpart. For desire and passion too have their divine forms; there is a pure ecstasy of the soul’s
\nseeking beyond all craving and grief, there is a Will of Ananda that sits glorified in the possession of the supreme beatitudes. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tWhen once the object of concentration has possessed and is possessed by the three master instruments, the thought, the
\nheart and the will, \u2014 a consummation fully possible only when the desire-soul in us has submitted to the Divine Law,
\n\t\t\t\u2014 the
\nperfection of mind and life and body can be effectively fulfilled in our transmuted nature. This will be done, not for the personal
\nsatisfaction of the ego, but that the whole may constitute a fit <\/p>\n

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\n

\n\t\t\t temple for the Divine Presence, a faultless instrument for the divine work. For that work can be truly performed only when
\nthe instrument, consecrated and perfected, has grown fit for a selfless action,
\n\t\t\t\u2014 and that will be when personal desire and
\negoism are abolished, but not the liberated individual. Even when the little ego has been abolished, the true spiritual Person
\ncan still remain and God’s will and work and delight in him and the spiritual use of his perfection and fulfilment. Our works will
\nthen be divine and done divinely; our mind and life and will, devoted to the Divine, will be used to help fulfil in others and
\n\t\t\tin the world that which has been first realised in ourselves, \u2014 all that we can manifest of the embodied Unity, Love, Freedom,
\nStrength, Power, Splendour, immortal Joy which is the goal of the Spirit’s terrestrial adventure. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe Yoga must start with an effort or at least a settled turn towards this total concentration. A constant and unfailing will
\nof consecration of all ourselves to the Supreme is demanded of us, an offering of our whole being and our many-chambered
\nnature to the Eternal who is the All. The effective fullness of our concentration on the one thing needful to the exclusion of all
\nelse will be the measure of our self-consecration to the One who is alone desirable. But this exclusiveness will in the end exclude
\nnothing except the falsehood of our way of seeing the world and our will’s ignorance. For our concentration on the Eternal
\nwill be consummated by the mind when we see constantly the Divine in itself and the Divine in ourselves, but also the Divine
\nin all things and beings and happenings. It will be consummated by the heart when all emotion is summed up in the love of the
\nDivine, \u2014 of the Divine in itself and for itself, but love too of the Divine in all its beings and powers and personalities and forms
\nin the Universe. It will be consummated by the will when we feel and receive always the divine impulsion and accept that alone as
\nour sole motive force; but this will mean that, having slain to the last rebellious straggler the wandering impulses of the egoistic
\nnature, we have universalised ourselves and can accept with a constant happy acceptance the one divine working in all things.
\nThis is the first fundamental siddhi of the integral Yoga.<\/p>\n

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\n

\n\t\t\t 
\nIt is nothing less that is meant in the end when we speak of the absolute consecration of the individual to the Divine. But
\nthis total fullness of consecration can only come by a constant progression when the long and difficult process of transforming
\ndesire out of existence is completed in an ungrudging measure. Perfect self-consecration implies perfect self-surrender. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

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

\nFor here, there are two movements with a transitional stage between them, two periods of this Yoga,
\n\t\t\t\u2014 one of the process of
\nsurrender, the other of its crown and consequence. In the first the individual prepares himself for the reception of the Divine into
\nhis members. For all this first period he has to work by means of the instruments of the lower Nature, but aided more and more
\nfrom above. But in the later transitional stage of this movement our personal and necessarily ignorant effort more and more
\ndwindles and a higher Nature acts; the eternal Shakti descends into this limited form of mortality and progressively possesses
\nand transmutes it. In the second period the greater movement wholly replaces the lesser, formerly indispensable first action; but
\nthis can be done only when our self-surrender is complete. The ego person in us cannot transform itself by its own force or will
\nor knowledge or by any virtue of its own into the nature of the Divine; all it can do is to fit itself for the transformation and make
\nmore and more its surrender to that which it seeks to become. As long as the ego is at work in us, our personal action is and must
\nalways be in its nature a part of the lower grades of existence; it is obscure or half-enlightened, limited in its field, very partially
\neffective in its power. If a spiritual transformation, not a mere illumining modification of our nature, is to be done at all, we
\nmust call in the Divine Shakti to effect that miraculous work in the individual; for she alone has the needed force, decisive,
\nall-wise and illimitable. But the entire substitution of the divine for the human personal action is not at once entirely possible.
\nAll interference from below that would falsify the truth of the superior action must first be inhibited or rendered impotent,<\/p>\n

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\n

\nand it must be done by our own free choice. A continual and
\nalways repeated refusal of the impulsions and falsehoods of the lower nature is asked from us and an insistent support to the
\nTruth as it grows in our parts; for the progressive settling into our nature and final perfection of the incoming informing Light,
\nPurity and Power needs for its development and sustenance our free acceptance of it and our stubborn rejection of all that is
\ncontrary to it, inferior or incompatible. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIn the first movement of self-preparation, the period of personal effort, the method we have to use is this concentration of the whole being on the Divine that it seeks and, as its corollary,
\nthis constant rejection, throwing out, katharsis<\/i>, of all that is not the true Truth of the Divine. An entire consecration of all that
\nwe are, think, feel and do will be the result of this persistence. This consecration in its turn must culminate in an integral self-giving to the Highest; for its crown and sign of completion is the whole nature’s all-comprehending absolute surrender. In the
\nsecond stage of the Yoga, transitional between the human and the divine working, there will supervene an increasing purified
\nand vigilant passivity, a more and more luminous divine response to the Divine Force, but not to any other; and there will be as
\na result the growing inrush of a great and conscious miraculous working from above. In the last period there is no effort at
\nall, no set method, no fixed sadhana; the place of endeavour and tapasya will be taken by a natural, simple, powerful and
\nhappy disclosing of the flower of the Divine out of the bud of a purified and perfected terrestrial nature. These are the natural
\nsuccessions of the action of the Yoga. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThese movements are indeed not always or absolutely arranged in a strict succession to each other. The second stage begins in part before the first is completed; the first continues
\nin part until the second is perfected; the last divine working can manifest from time to time as a promise before it is finally
\nsettled and normal to the nature. Always too there is something higher and greater than the individual which leads him even in
\nhis personal labour and endeavour. Often he may become, and remain for a time, wholly conscious, even in parts of his being
\n  <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

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\n

\n\t\t\tpermanently conscious, of this greater leading behind the veil, and that may happen long before his whole nature has been
\npurified in all its parts from the lower indirect control. Even, he may be thus conscious from the beginning; his mind and heart,
\nif not his other members, may respond to that seizing and penetrating guidance with a certain initial completeness from the very
\nfirst steps of the Yoga. But it is the constant and complete and uniform action of the great direct control that more and more
\ndistinguishes the transitional stage as it proceeds and draws to its close. This predominance of a greater diviner leading, not
\npersonal to ourselves, indicates the nature’s increasing ripeness for a total spiritual transformation. It is the unmistakable sign
\nthat the self-consecration has not only been accepted in principle but is fulfilled in act and power. The Supreme has laid his
\nluminous hand upon a chosen human vessel of his miraculous Light and Power and Ananda.
\n   <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

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