{"id":975,"date":"2013-07-13T01:31:41","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:31:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=975"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:31:41","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:31:41","slug":"12-the-ascent-of-the-sacrifice-1-vol-20-the-synthesis-of-yoga-volume-20","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/01-sabcl\/20-the-synthesis-of-yoga-volume-20\/12-the-ascent-of-the-sacrifice-1-vol-20-the-synthesis-of-yoga-volume-20","title":{"rendered":"-12_The Ascent of the Sacrifice\u00e2\u20ac\u201c1.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
\n
\n


\nChapter V<\/span><\/font><\/b> <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\nThe
\nAscent of the Sacrifice \u2013 1<\/span><\/font><\/b> <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/font><\/span>The Works of Knowledge \u2013 The Psychic
\nBeing<\/span><\/font> <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0
\n<\/font> <\/span>T<\/font><\/span>HIS<\/span><\/font> then is in its
\nfoundations the integral knowledge of the Supreme and Infinite to whom we offer
\nour sacrifice, and this the nature of the sacrifice itself in its triple
\ncharacter, \u2013 a sacrifice of works, a sacrifice of love and adoration, a
\nsacrifice of knowledge. For even when we speak of the sacrifice of works by
\nitself, we do not mean the offering only of our outward acts, but of all that is
\nactive and dynamic in us; our internal movements no less than our external
\ndoings are to be consecrated on the one altar. The inner heart of all work that
\nis made into a sacrifice is a labour of self-discipline and self-perfection by
\nwhich we can hope to become conscious and luminous with a Light from above
\npoured into all our movements of mind, heart, will, sense, life and body. An
\nincreasing light of divine consciousness will make us close in soul and one by
\nidentity in our inmost being and spiritual substance with the Master of the
\nworld-sacrifice, \u2013 the supreme object of existence proposed by the ancient
\nVedanta; but also it will tend to make us one in our becoming by resemblance to
\nthe Divine in our nature, the mystic sense of the symbol of sacrifice in the
\nsealed speech of the seers of the Veda.<\/span><\/p>\n

But if this is to be the
\ncharacter of the rapid evolution from a mental to a spiritual being
\ncontemplated by the integral Yoga, a question arises full of many perplexities
\nbut of great dynamic importance. How are we to deal with life and works as they
\nnow are, with the activities proper to our still unchanged human nature? An
\nascension towards a greater consciousness, an occupation of our mind, life and
\nbody by its powers has been accepted as the outstanding object of the Yoga: but
\nstill life here, not some other life elsewhere, is proposed as the immediate <\/span>
\n
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage
\n\u2013 125<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

field of the action of the Spirit, \u2013 a
\ntransformation, not an annihilation of our instrumental being and nature. What
\nthen becomes of the present activities of our being, activities of the mind
\nturned towards knowledge and the expression of knowledge, activities of our
\nemotional and sensational parts, activities of outward conduct, creation,
\nproduction, the will turned towards mastery over men, things, life, the world,
\nthe forces of Nature? Are they to be abandoned and to be replaced by some other
\nway of living in which a spiritualised consciousness can find its true
\nexpression and figure? Are they to be maintained as they are in their outward
\nappearance, but transformed by an inner spirit in the act or enlarged in scope
\nand liberated into new forms by a reversal of consciousness such as was seen on
\nearth when man took up the vital activities of the animal to mentalise and
\nextend and transfigure them by the infusion of reason, thinking will, refined
\nemotion, an organised intelligence? Or is there to be an abandonment in part, a
\npreservation only of such of them as can bear a spiritual change and, for the rest,
\nthe creation of a new life expressive, in its form no less than in its
\ninspiration and motive-force, of the unity, wideness, peace, joy and harmony of
\nthe liberated spirit? It is this problem most of all that has exercised the
\nminds of those who have tried to trace the paths that lead from the human to
\nthe Divine in the long journey of the Yoga.<\/span><\/p>\n

Every kind of solution
\nhas been offered from the entire abandonment of works and life, so far as that
\nis physically possible, to the acceptance of life as it is but with a new
\nspirit animating and uplifting its movements, in appearance the same as they
\nwere but changed in the spirit behind them and therefore in their inner
\nsignificance. The extreme solution insisted on by the world-shunning ascetic or
\nthe inward-turned ecstatical and self-oblivious mystic is evidently foreign to
\nthe purpose of an integral Yoga; for if we are to realise the Divine in the
\nworld, it cannot be done by leaving aside the world-action and action itself
\naltogether. At a less high pitch it was laid down by the religious mind in
\nancient times that one should keep only such actions as are in their nature
\npart of the seeking, service or cult of the Divine and such others as are
\nattached to these or, in <\/span>
\n
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage
\n\u2013 126<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

addition, those that are indispensable to the
\nordinary setting of life but done in a religious spirit and according to the
\ninjunctions of traditional religion and Scripture. But this is too formalist a
\nrule for the fulfilment of the free spirit in works, and it is besides professedly
\nno more than a provisional solution for tiding over the transition from life in
\nthe world to a life in the Beyond which still remains the sole ultimate
\npurpose. An integral Yoga must lean rather to the catholic injunction of the
\nGita that even the liberated soul, living in the Truth, should still do all the
\nworks of life so that the plan of the universal evolution under a secret divine
\nleading may not languish or suffer. But if all works are to be done with the
\nsame forms and on the same lines as they are now done in the Ignorance, our
\ngain is only inward and our life is in danger of becoming the dubious and
\nambiguous formula of an inner Light doing the works of an outer Twilight, the
\nperfect Spirit expressing itself in a mould of imperfection foreign to its own
\ndivine nature. If no better can be done for a time, \u2013 and during a long period
\nof transition something like this does inevitably happen, \u2013 then so it must
\nremain till things are ready and the spirit within is powerful enough to impose
\nits own forms on the life of the body and the world outside; but this can be
\naccepted only as a transitional stage and not as our soul’s ideal or the
\nultimate goal of the passage.<\/span><\/p>\n

For the same reason the
\nethical solution is insufficient; for an ethical rule merely puts a bit in the
\nmouth of the wild horses of Nature and exercises over them a difficult and
\npartial control, but it has no power to transform Nature so that she may move
\nin a secure freedom fulfilling the intuitions that proceed from a divine
\nself-knowledge. At best its method is to lay down limits, to coerce the devil,
\nto put the wall of a relative and very doubtful safety around us. This or some
\nsimilar device of self-protection may be necessary for a time whether in
\nordinary life or in Yoga; but in Yoga it can only be the mark of a transition.
\nA fundamental transformation and a pure wideness of spiritual life are the aim
\nbefore us and, if we are to reach it, we must find a deeper solution, a surer
\nsupra-ethical dynamic principle. To be spiritual within, ethical in the outside
\nlife, this is the ordinary<\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage
\n\u2013 127<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

religious solution, but it is a compromise; the
\nspiritualisation of both the inward being and the outward life and not a
\ncompromise between life and the spirit is the goal of which we are the seekers.
\nNor can the human confusion of values which obliterates the distinction between
\nspiritual and moral and even claims that the moral is the only true spiritual
\nelement in our nature be of any use to us; for ethics is a mental control, and
\nthe limited erring mind is not and cannot be the free and ever-luminous spirit.
\nIt is equally impossible to accept the gospel that makes life the one aim,
\ntakes its elements fundamentally as they are and only calls in a half-spiritual
\nor pseudo-spiritual light to flush and embellish it. Inadequate too is the very
\nfrequent attempt at a misalliance between the vital and the spiritual, a mystic
\nexperience within with an aestheticised intellectual and sensuous Paganism or
\nexalted hedonism outside leaning upon it and satisfying itself in the glow of a
\nspiritual sanction; for this too is a precarious and never successful
\ncompromise and it is as far from the divine Truth and its integrality as the
\npuritanic opposite. These are all stumbling solutions of the fallible human
\nmind groping for a transaction between the high spiritual summits and the lower
\npitch of the ordinary mind-motives and life-motives. Whatever partial truth may
\nbe hidden behind them, that truth can only be accepted when it has been raised
\nto the spiritual level, tested in the supreme Truth-consciousness and
\nextricated from the soil and error of the Ignorance.<\/span><\/p>\n

In sum, it may be safely
\naffirmed that no solution offered can be anything but provisional until a
\nSupramental Truth-consciousness is reached by which the appearances of things
\nare put in their place and their essence revealed and that in them which
\nderives straight from the spiritual essence. In the meanwhile our only safety
\nis to find a guiding law of spiritual experience \u2013 or else to liberate a light
\nwithin that can lead us on the way until that greater direct
\nTruth-consciousness is reached above us or born within us. For all else in us
\nthat is only outward, all that is not a spiritual sense or seeing, the
\nconstructions, representations or conclusions of the intellect, the suggestions
\nor instigations of the life-force, the positive necessities of physic-<\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage
\n\u2013 128<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

cal things are sometimes half-lights, sometimes
\nfalse lights that can at best only serve for a while or serve a little and for
\nthe rest either detain or confuse us. The guiding law of spiritual experience
\ncan only come by an opening of human consciousness to the Divine Consciousness;
\nthere must be the power to receive in us the working and command and dynamic
\npresence of the Divine Shakti and surrender ourselves to her control; it is
\nthat surrender and that control which bring the guidance. But the surrender is
\nnot sure, there is no absolute certitude of the guidance so long as we are
\nbesieged by mind formations and life impulses and instigations of ego which may
\neasily betray us into the hands of a false experience. This danger can only be
\ncountered by the opening of a now nine-tenths concealed inmost soul or psychic
\nbeing that is already there but not commonly active within us. That is the
\ninner light we must liberate; for the light of this inmost soul is our one sure
\nillumination so long as we walk still amidst the siege of the Ignorance and the
\nTruth-consciousness has not taken up the entire control of our Godward
\nendeavour. The working of the Divine Force in us under the conditions of the
\ntransition and the light of the psychic being turning us always towards a
\nconscious and seeing obedience to that higher impulsion and away from the
\ndemands and instigations of the Forces of the Ignorance, these between them
\ncreate an ever progressive inner law of our action which continues till the
\nspiritual and supramental can be established in our nature. In the transition
\nthere may well be a period in which we take up all life and action and offer them
\nto the Divine for purification, change and deliverance of the truth within
\nthem, another period in which we draw back and build a spiritual wall around us
\nadmitting through its gates only such activities as consent to undergo the law
\nof the spiritual transformation, a third in which a free and all-embracing
\naction, but with new forms fit for the utter truth of the Spirit, can again be
\nmade possible. These things, however, will be decided by no mental rule but in
\nthe light of the soul within us and by the ordaining force and progressive
\nguidance of the Divine Power that secretly or overtly first impels, then begins
\nclearly to control and order and finally takes up the whole burden of the Yoga. <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage
\n\u2013 129<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

In accordance with the
\ntriple character of the sacrifice we may divide works too into a triple order,
\nthe works of Knowledge, the works of Love, the works of the Will-in-Life, and
\nsee how this more plastic spiritual rule applies to each province and effects
\nthe transition from the lower to the higher nature.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/p>\n

*\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>*<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/p>\n

It is natural from the
\npoint of view of the Yoga to divide into two categories the activities of the
\nhuman mind in its pursuit of knowledge. There is the supreme supra-intellectual
\nknowledge which concentrates itself on the discovery of the One and Infinite in
\nits transcendence or tries to penetrate by intuition, contemplation, direct
\ninner contact into the ultimate truths behind the appearances of Nature; there
\nis the lower science which diffuses itself in an outward knowledge of phenomena,
\nthe disguises of the One and Infinite as it appears to us in or through the
\nmore exterior forms of the world-manifestation around us. These two, an upper
\nand a lower hemisphere, in the form of them constructed or conceived by men
\nwithin the mind’s ignorant limits, have even there separated themselves, as
\nthey developed, with some sharpness…. Philosophy, sometimes spiritual or at
\nleast intuitive, sometimes abstract and intellectual, sometimes
\nintellectualising spiritual experience or supporting with a logical apparatus
\nthe discoveries of the spirit, has claimed always to take the fixation of
\nultimate Truth as its province. But even when it did not separate itself on
\nrarefied metaphysical heights from the knowledge that belongs to the practical
\nworld and the pursuit of ephemeral objects, intellectual Philosophy by its
\nhabit of abstraction has seldom been a power for life. It has been sometimes
\npowerful for high speculation, pursuing mental Truth for its own sake without
\nany ulterior utility or object, sometimes for a subtle gymnastic of the mind in
\na mistily bright cloud-land of words and ideas, but it has walked or
\nacrobatised far from the more tangible realities of existence. Ancient
\nPhilosophy in <\/span>Europe<\/span> was more dynamic, but
\nonly for the few; in <\/span>India<\/span> in its more
\nspiritualised forms, it strongly influenced but without transforming the life
\nof the race…. Religion did not attempt, like Philosophy, to live <\/span>
\n
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage
\n\u2013 130<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

alone on the heights; its aim was rather to take
\nhold of man’s parts of life even more than his parts of mind and draw them
\nGodwards; it professed to build a bridge between spiritual Truth and the vital
\nand material human existence; it strove to subordinate and reconcile the lower
\nto the higher, make life serviceable to God, Earth obedient to Heaven. It has
\nto be admitted that too often this necessary effort had the opposite result of
\nmaking Heaven a sanction for Earth’s desires; for, continually, the religious
\nidea has been turned into an excuse for the worship and service of the human
\nego. Religion, leaving constantly its little shining core of spiritual
\nexperience, has lost itself in the obscure mass of its ever extending ambiguous
\ncompromises with life: in attempting to satisfy the thinking mind, it more
\noften succeeded in oppressing or fettering it with a mass of theological
\ndogmas; while seeking to net the human heart, it fell itself into pits of
\npietistic emotionalism and sensationalism; in the act of annexing the vital
\nnature of man to dominate it, it grew itself vitiated and fell a prey to all
\nthe fanaticism, homicidal fury, savage or harsh turn for oppression,
\npullulating falsehood, obstinate attachment to ignorance to which that vital
\nnature is prone; its desire to draw the physical in man towards God betrayed it
\ninto chaining itself to ecclesiastic mechanism, hollow ceremony and lifeless
\nritual. The corruption of the best produced the worst by that strange chemistry
\nof the power of life which generates evil out of good even as it can also
\ngenerate good out of evil. At the same time in a vain effort at self-defence
\nagainst this downward gravitation, Religion was driven to cut existence into
\ntwo by a division of knowledge, works, art, life itself into two opposite
\ncategories, the spiritual and the worldly, religious and mundane, sacred and
\nprofane; but this defensive distinction itself became conventional and
\nartificial and aggravated rather than healed the disease…. On their side
\nScience and Art and the knowledge of Life, although at first they served or
\nlived in the shadow of Religion, ended by emancipating themselves, became
\nestranged or hostile, or have even recoiled with indifference, contempt or
\nscepticism from what seem to them the cold, barren and distant or unsubstantial
\nand illusory heights of unreality to which metaphysical Philosophy and Religion
\naspire. For a time
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage
\n\u2013 131<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

the divorce has been as complete as the
\none-sided intolerance of the human mind could make it and threatened even to
\nend in a complete extinction of all attempt at a higher or a more spiritual
\nknowledge. Yet even in the earthward life a higher knowledge is indeed the one
\nthing that is throughout needful, and without it the lower sciences and
\npursuits, however fruitful, however rich, free, miraculous in the abundance of
\ntheir results, become easily a sacrifice offered without due order and to false
\ngods; corrupting, hardening in the end the heart of man, limiting his mind’s
\nhorizons, they confine in a stony material imprisonment or lead to a final
\nbaffling incertitude and disillusionment. A sterile agnosticism awaits us above
\nthe brilliant phosphorescence of a half-knowledge that is still the Ignorance.<\/span><\/p>\n

A Yoga turned towards an
\nall-embracing realisation of the Supreme will not despise the works or even the
\ndreams, if dreams they are, of the Cosmic Spirit or shrink from the splendid
\ntoil and many-sided victory which he has assigned to himself in the human
\ncreature. But its first condition for this liberality is that our works in the
\nworld too must be part of the sacrifice offered to the Highest and to none
\nelse, to the Divine Shakti and to no other Power, in the right spirit and with
\nthe right knowledge, by the free soul and not by the hypnotised bondslave of
\nmaterial Nature. If a division of works has to be made, it is between those that
\nare nearest to the heart of the sacred flame and those that are least touched
\nor illumined by it because they are more at a distance, or between the fuel
\nthat burns strongly and brightly and the logs that if too thickly heaped on the
\naltar may impede the ardour of the fire by their rather damp, heavy and
\ndiffused abundance. But, otherwise, apart from this division, all activities of
\nknowledge that seek after or express Truth are in themselves rightful materials
\nfor a complete offering; none ought necessarily to be excluded from the wide
\nframework of the divine life. The mental and physical sciences which examine
\ninto the laws and forms and processes of things, those which concern the life
\nof men and animals, the social, political, linguistic and historical and those
\nwhich seek to know and control the labours and activities by which man subdues
\nand utilises his world and environment, and the noble and beautiful Arts which
\nare at once work and knowledge, <\/span>
\n
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage
\n\u2013 132<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

\u2013 for every well-made and significant poem,
\npicture, statue or building is an act of creative knowledge, a living discovery
\nof the consciousness, a figure of Truth, a dynamic form of mental and vital
\nself-expression or world-expression, \u2013 all that seeks, all that finds, all that
\nvoices or figures is a realisation of something of the play of the Infinite and
\nto that extent can be made a means of God-realisation or of divine formation.
\nBut the Yogin has to see that it is no longer done as part of an ignorant
\nmental life; it can be accepted by him only if by the feeling, the remembrance,
\nthe dedication within it, it is turned into a movement of the spiritual
\nconsciousness and becomes a part of its vast grasp of comprehensive
\nilluminating knowledge.<\/span><\/p>\n

For all must be done as
\na sacrifice, all activities must have the One Divine for their object and the
\nheart of their meaning. The Yogin’s aim in the sciences that make for knowledge
\nshould be to discover and understand the workings of the Divine
\nConsciousness-Puissance in man and creatures and things and forces, her
\ncreative significances, her execution of the mysteries, the symbols in which
\nshe arranges the manifestation. The Yogin’s aim in the practical sciences,
\nwhether mental and physical or occult and psychic, should be to enter into the
\nways of the Divine and his processes, to know the materials and means for the
\nwork given to us so that we may use that knowledge for a conscious and
\nfaultless expression of the spirit’s mastery, joy and self-fulfilment. The
\nYogin’s aim in the Arts should not be a mere aesthetic, mental or vital
\ngratification, but, seeing the Divine everywhere, worshipping it with a
\nrevelation of the meaning of its own works, to express that One Divine in ideal
\nforms, the One Divine in principles and forces, the One Divine in gods and men
\nand creatures and objects. The theory that sees an intimate connection between
\nreligious aspiration and the truest and greatest Art is in essence right; but
\nwe must substitute for the mixed and doubtful religious motive a spiritual
\naspiration, vision, interpreting experience. For the wider and more
\ncomprehensive the seeing, the more it contains in itself the sense of the
\nhidden Divine in humanity and in all things and rises beyond a superficial
\nreligiosity into the spiritual life, the more luminous, flexible, deep and
\npowerful will the Art be that springs from that high motive. The Yogin’s
\ndistinction from other men is this that he <\/span>
\n
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage
\n\u2013 133<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

lives in a higher and vaster spiritual
\nconsciousness; all his work of knowledge or creation must then spring from
\nthere: it must not be made in the mind, \u2013 for it is a greater truth and vision
\nthan mental man’s that he has to express or rather that presses to express
\nitself through him and mould his works, not for his personal satisfaction, but
\nfor a divine purpose.<\/span><\/p>\n

At the same time the
\nYogin who knows the Supreme is not subject to any need or compulsion in these
\nactivities; for to him they are neither a duty nor a necessary occupation for
\nthe mind nor a high amusement, nor imposed even by the loftiest human purpose.
\nHe is not attached, bound and limited by any nor has he any personal motive of
\nfame, greatness or personal satisfaction in these works; he can leave or pursue
\nthem as the Divine in him wills, but he need not otherwise abandon them in his
\npursuit of the higher integral knowledge. He will do these things just as the
\nsupreme Power acts and creates, for a certain spiritual joy in creation and
\nexpression or to help in the holding together and right ordering or leading of
\nthis world of God’s workings. The Gita teaches that the man of knowledge shall
\nby his way of life give to those who have not yet the spiritual consciousness,
\nthe love and habit of all works and not only of actions recognised as pious,
\nreligious or ascetic in their character; he should not draw men away from the
\nworld-action by his example. For the world must proceed in its great upward
\naspiring; men and nations must not be led to fall away from even an ignorant
\nactivity into a worse ignorance of inaction or to sink down into that miserable
\ndisintegration and tendency of dissolution which comes upon communities and
\npeoples when there predominates the tamasic principle, the principle whether of
\nobscure confusion and error or of weariness and inertia. \u201cFor I too,\u201d says the
\nLord in the Gita, \u201chave no need to do works, since there is nothing I have not
\nor must yet gain for myself; yet I do works in the world: for if I did not do
\nworks, all laws would fall into confusion, the worlds would sink towards chaos
\nand I would be the destroyer of these peoples.\u201d The spiritual life does not
\nneed, for its purity, to destroy interest in all things except the
\nInexpressible or to cut at the roots of the Sciences, the Arts and Life. It may
\nwell be one of the effects of an integral spiritual knowledge and activity to lift
\nthem out of <\/span>
\n
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage
\n\u2013 134<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

their limitations, substitute for our mind’s
\nignorant, limited, tepid or trepidant pleasure in them a free, intense and
\nuplifting urge of delight and supply a new source of creative spiritual power
\nand illumination by which they can be carried more swiftly and profoundly
\ntowards their absolute light in knowledge and their yet undreamed possibilities
\nand most dynamic energy of content and form and practice. The one thing needful
\nmust be pursued first and always; but all things else come with it as its
\noutcome and have not so much to be added to us as recovered and reshaped in its
\nself-light and as portions of its self-expressive force.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/p>\n

*\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>*<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/p>\n

This then is the true
\nrelation between divine and human knowledge; it is not a separation into
\ndisparate fields, sacred and profane, that is the heart of the difference, but
\nthe character of the consciousness behind the working. All is human knowledge
\nthat proceeds from the ordinary mental consciousness interested in the outside
\nor upper layers of things, in process, in phenomena for their own sake or for
\nthe sake of some surface utility or mental or vital satisfaction of Desire or
\nof the Intelligence. But the same activity of knowledge can become part of the
\nYoga if it proceeds from the spiritual or spiritualising consciousness which
\nseeks and finds in all that it surveys or penetrates the presence of the
\ntimeless Eternal and the ways of manifestation of the Eternal in Time. It is
\nevident that the need of a concentration indispensable for the transition out
\nof the Ignorance may make it necessary for the seeker to gather together his
\nenergies and focus them only on that which will help the transition and to
\nleave aside or subordinate for the time all that is not directly turned towards
\nthe one object. He may find that this or that pursuit of human knowledge with
\nwhich he was accustomed to deal by the surface power of the mind still brings
\nhim by reason of this tendency or habit out of the depths to the surface or
\ndown from the heights which he has climbed or is nearing to lower levels. These
\nactivities then may have to be intermitted or put aside until, secure in a
\nhigher consciousness, he is able to turn its powers on all the mental fields;
\nthen, subjected to that light or taken up into it, they are turned, <\/span>
\n
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by the transformation of his consciousness, into
\na province of the spiritual and divine. All that cannot be so transformed or
\nrefuses to be part of a divine consciousness he will abandon without
\nhesitation, but not from any preconceived prejudgment of its unfitness or its
\nincapacity to be an element of the new inner life. There can be no fixed mental
\ntest or principle for these things; he will therefore follow no unalterable
\nrule, but accept or repel an activity of the mind according to his feeling,
\ninsight or experience until the greater Power and Light are there to turn their
\nunerring scrutiny on all that is below and choose or reject their material out
\nof what the human evolution has prepared for the divine labour.<\/span><\/p>\n

How precisely or by what
\nstages this progression and change will take place must depend on the form,
\nneed and powers of the individual nature. In the spiritual domain the essence
\nis always one, but there is yet an infinite variety and, at any rate in the
\nintegral Yoga, the rigidity of a strict and precise mental rule is seldom
\napplicable; for, even when they walk in the same direction, no two natures
\nproceed on exactly the same lines, in the same series of steps or with quite
\nidentical stages of their progress. It may yet be said that a logical
\nsuccession of the states of progress would be very much in this order. First,
\nthere is a large turning in which all the natural mental activities proper to
\nthe individual nature are taken up or referred to a higher standpoint and
\ndedicated by the soul in us, the psychic being, the priest of the sacrifice, to
\nthe divine service; next, there is an attempt at an ascent of the being and a
\nbringing down of the Light and Power proper to some new height of consciousness
\ngained by its upward effort into the whole action of the knowledge. Here there
\nmay be a strong concentration on the inward central change of the consciousness
\nand an abandonment of a large part of the outward-going mental life or else its
\nrelegation to a small and subordinate place. At different stages it or parts of
\nit may be taken up again from time to time to see how far the new inner psychic
\nand spiritual consciousness can be brought into its movements; but that compulsion
\nof the temperament or the nature which in human beings necessitates one kind of
\nactivity or another and makes it seem almost an indispensable portion of <\/span>
\n
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the existence, will diminish and eventually no
\nattachment will be left, no lower compulsion or driving force felt anywhere.
\nOnly the Divine will matter, the Divine alone will be the one need of the whole
\nbeing; if there is any compulsion to activity it will be not that of implanted
\ndesire or of force of Nature, but the luminous driving of some greater
\nConsciousness-Force which is becoming more and more the sole motive power of
\nthe whole existence. On the other hand, it is possible at any period of the
\ninner spiritual progress that one may experience an extension rather than a
\nrestriction of the activities; there may be an opening of new capacities of
\nmental creation and new provinces of knowledge by the miraculous touch of the
\nYoga-Shakti. Aesthetic feeling, the power of artistic creation in one field or
\nmany fields together, talent or genius of literary expression, a faculty of
\nmetaphysical thinking, any power of eye or ear or hand or mind-power may awaken
\nwhere none was apparent before. The Divine within may throw these latent riches
\nout from the depths in which they were hidden or a Force from above may pour
\ndown its energies to equip the instrumental nature for the activity or the
\ncreation of which it is meant to be a channel or a builder. But, whatever may
\nbe the method or the course of development chosen by the hidden Master of the
\nYoga, the common culmination of this stage is the growing consciousness of him
\nalone as the mover, decider, shaper of all the movements of the mind and all
\nthe activities of knowledge. <\/span><\/p>\n

There are two signs of
\nthe transformation of the seeker’s mind of knowledge and works of knowledge
\nfrom the process of the Ignorance to the process of a liberated consciousness
\nworking partly, then wholly in the light of the Spirit. There is first a
\ncentral change of the consciousness and a growing direct experience, vision,
\nfeeling of the Supreme and the cosmic existence, the Divine in itself and the
\nDivine in all things; the mind will be taken up into a growing preoccupation
\nwith this first and foremost and will feel itself heightening, widening into a
\nmore and more illumined means of expression of the one fundamental knowledge.
\nBut also the central Consciousness in its turn will take up more and more the
\nouter mental activities of knowledge and turn them into a parcel of itself or
\nan annexed province; it will infuse <\/span>
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into them its more authentic movement and make a
\nmore and more spiritualised and illumined mind its instrument in these surface
\nfields, its new conquests, as well as in its own deeper spiritual empire. And
\nthis will be the second sign, the sign of a certain completion and perfection,
\nthat the Divine himself has become the Knower and all the inner movements,
\nincluding the activities of what was once a purely human mental action, have
\nbecome his field of knowledge. There will be less and less individual choice,
\nopinion, preference, less and less of intellectualisation, mental weaving,
\ncerebral galley-slave labour; a Light within will see all that has to be seen,
\nknow all that has to be known, develop, create, organise. It will be the Inner
\nKnower who will do in the liberated and universalised mind of the individual
\nthe works of an all-comprehending knowledge.<\/span><\/p>\n

These two changes are
\nthe signs of a first effectuation in which the activities of the mental nature
\nare lifted up, spiritualised, widened, universalised, liberated, led to a
\nconsciousness of their true purpose as an instrumentation of the Divine
\ncreating and developing its manifestation in the temporal universe. But this
\ncannot be the whole scope of the transformation; for it is not in these limits
\nthat the integral seeker can cease from his ascension or confine the widening
\nof his nature. For, if it were so, knowledge would still remain a working of
\nthe mind, liberated, universalised, spiritualised, but still, as all mind must
\nbe, comparatively restricted, relative, imperfect in the very essence of its
\ndynamism; it would reflect luminously great constructions of Truth, but not
\nmove in the domain where Truth is authentic, direct, sovereign and native.
\nThere is an ascension still to be made from this height, by which the
\nspiritualised mind will exceed itself and transmute into a supramental power of
\nknowledge. Already in the process of spiritualisation it will have begun to
\npass out of the brilliant poverty of the human intellect; it will mount
\nsuccessively into the pure broad reaches of a higher mind, and next into the
\ngleaming belts of a still greater free Intelligence illumined with a Light from
\nabove. At this point it will begin to feel more freely, admit with a less mixed
\nresponse the radiant beginnings of an Intuition, not illumined, but luminous in
\nitself, true in itself, no longer entirely mental and therefore subjected to
\nthe abun<\/span>–<\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n

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\n<\/div>\n

dant<\/span><\/span> intrusion of error.
\nHere too is not an end, for it must rise beyond into the very domain of that
\nuntruncated Intuition, the first direct light from the self-awareness of
\nessential Being and, beyond it, attain that from which this light comes. For
\nthere is an Overmind behind Mind, a Power more original and dynamic which
\nsupports Mind, sees it as a diminished radiation from itself, uses it as a
\ntransmitting belt of passage downward or an instrument for the creations of the
\nIgnorance. The last step of the ascension would be the surpassing of Overmind
\nitself or its return into its own still greater origin, its conversion into the
\nsupramental light of the Divine Gnosis. For there in the supramental Light is
\nthe seat of a divine Truth-consciousness that has native in it, as no other
\nconsciousness below it can have, the power to organise the works of a Truth
\nwhich is no longer tarnished by the shadow of the cosmic Inconscience and
\nIgnorance. There to reach and thence to bring down a supramental dynamism that
\ncan transform the Ignorance is the distant but imperative supreme goal of the
\nintegral Yoga.<\/span><\/p>\n

As the light of each of
\nthese higher powers is turned upon the human activities of knowledge, any
\ndistinction of sacred and profane, human and divine, begins more and more to
\nfade until it is finally abolished as otiose; for whatever is touched and
\nthoroughly penetrated by the Divine Gnosis is transfigured and becomes a
\nmovement of its own Light and Power, free from the turbidity and limitations of
\nthe lower intelligence. It is not a separation of some activities, but a
\ntransformation of them all by the change of the informing consciousness that is
\nthe way of liberation, an ascent of the sacrifice of knowledge to a greater and
\never greater light and force. All the works of mind and intellect must be first
\nheightened and widened, then illumined, lifted into the domain of a higher
\nIntelligence, afterwards translated into workings of a greater non-mental
\nIntuition, these again transformed into the dynamic outpourings of the Overmind
\nradiance, and those transfigured into the full light and sovereignty of the
\nsupramental Gnosis. It is this that the evolution of consciousness in the world
\ncarries prefigured but latent in its seed and in the straining tense intention
\nof its process; nor can that process, that evolution cease till it has evolved
\nthe instruments of a <\/span>
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\n
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<\/a>perfect in place of its
\nnow imperfect manifestation of the Spirit.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/p>\n

*\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>*<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/p>\n

If knowledge is the
\nwidest power of the consciousness and its function is to free and illumine, yet
\nlove is the deepest and most intense and its privilege is to be the key to the most
\nprofound and secret recesses of the Divine Mystery. Man, because he is a mental
\nbeing, is prone to give the highest importance to the thinking mind and its
\nreason and will and to its way of approach and effectuation of Truth and, even,
\nhe is inclined to hold that there is no other. The heart with its emotions and
\nincalculable movements is to the eye of his intellect an obscure, uncertain and
\noften a perilous and misleading power which needs to be kept in control by the
\nreason and the mental will and intelligence. And yet there is in the heart or
\nbehind it a profounder mystic light which, if not what we call intuition, \u2013 for
\nthat, though not of the mind, yet descends through the mind \u2013 has yet a direct
\ntouch upon Truth and is nearer to the Divine than the human intellect in its
\npride of knowledge. According to the ancient teaching the seat of the immanent
\nDivine, the hidden Purusha, is in the mystic heart, \u2013 the secret heart-cave,
\nhŗdaye guhāyām, as the Upanishads put it, \u2013 and, according to
\nthe experience of many Yogins, it is from its depths that there comes the voice
\nor the breath of the inner oracle.<\/span><\/p>\n

This ambiguity, these
\nopposing appearances of depth and blindness are created by the double character
\nof the human emotive being. For there is in front in man a heart of vital
\nemotion similar to the animal’s, if more variously developed; its emotions are
\ngoverned by egoistic passion, blind instinctive affections and all the play of
\nthe life-impulses with their imperfections, perversions, often sordid degradations,
\n\u2013 heart besieged and given over to the lusts, desires, wraths, intense or
\nfierce demands or little greeds and mean pettinesses of an obscure and fallen
\nlife-force and debased by its slavery to any and every impulse. This mixture of
\nthe emotive heart and the sensational hungering vital creates in man a false
\nsoul of desire; it is this that is the crude and dangerous element which the
\nreason rightly dis<\/span>–<\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n

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\n<\/div>\n

trusts and feels a need to control, even though
\nthe actual control or rather coercion it succeeds in establishing over our raw
\nand insistent vital nature remains always very uncertain and deceptive. But the
\ntrue soul of man is not there; it is in the true invisible heart hidden in some
\nluminous cave of the nature: there under some infiltration of the divine Light
\nis our soul, a silent inmost being of which few are even aware; for if all have
\na soul, few are conscious of their true soul or feel its direct impulse. There
\ndwells the little spark of the Divine which supports the obscure mass of our
\nnature and around it grows the psychic being, the formed soul or the real Man
\nwithin us. It is as this psychic being in him grows and the movements of the
\nheart reflect its divinations and impulsions that man becomes more and more
\naware of his soul, ceases to be a superior animal and, awakening to glimpses of
\nthe godhead within him, admits more and more its intimations of a deeper life
\nand consciousness and an impulse towards things divine. It is one of the
\ndecisive moments of the integral Yoga when this psychic being, liberated,
\nbrought out from the veil to the front, can pour the full flood of its
\ndivinations, seeings and impulsions on the mind, life and body of man and
\nbegins to prepare the upbuilding of divinity in the earthly nature.<\/span><\/p>\n

As in the works of
\nknowledge, so in dealing with the workings of the heart, we are obliged to make
\na preliminary distinction between two categories of movements, those that are
\neither moved by the true soul or aid towards its liberation and rule in the
\nnature and those that are turned to the satisfaction of the unpurified vital
\nnature. But the distinctions ordinarily laid down in this sense are of little
\nuse for the deeper spiritual purpose of Yoga. Thus a division can be made
\nbetween religious emotions and mundane feelings and it can be laid down as a
\nrule of spiritual life that the religious emotions alone should be cultivated
\nand all worldly feelings and passions must be rejected and fall away from our
\nexistence. This in practice would mean the religious life of the saint or
\ndevotee, alone within with the Divine or linked only to others in a common
\nGod-love or at the most pouring out the fountains of a sacred, religious or
\npietistic love on the world outside. But religious emotion itself is too cons-<\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n

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tantly<\/span><\/span> invaded by the turmoil
\nand obscurity of the vital movements and it is often either crude or narrow or
\nfanatical or mixed with movements that are not signs of the spirit’s
\nperfection. It is evident besides that even at the best an intense figure of
\nsainthood clamped in rigid hieratic lines is quite other than the wide ideal of
\nan integral Yoga. A larger psychic and emotional relation with God and the
\nworld, more deep and plastic in its essence, more wide and embracing in its
\nmovements, more capable of taking up in its sweep the whole of life, is
\nimperative.<\/span><\/p>\n

A wider formula has been
\nprovided by the secular mind of man of which the basis is the ethical sense;
\nfor it distinguishes between the emotions sanctioned by the ethical sense and
\nthose that are egoistic and selfishly common and mundane. It is the works of
\naltruism, philanthropy, compassion, benevolence, humanitarianism, service,
\nlabour for the well-being of man and all creatures that are to be our ideal; to
\nshuffle off the coil of egoism and grow into a soul of self-abnegation that
\nlives only or mainly for others or for humanity as a whole is the way of man’s
\ninner evolution according to this doctrine. Or if this is too secular and
\nmental to satisfy the whole of our being, since there is a deeper religious and
\nspiritual note there that is left out of account by the humanitarian formula, a
\nreligio-ethical foundation can be provided for it \u2013 and such was indeed its
\noriginal basis. To the inner worship of the Divine or the Supreme by the
\ndevotion of the heart or to the pursuit of the Ineffable by the seeking of a
\nhighest knowledge can be added a worship through altruistic works or a
\npreparation through acts of love, of benevolence, of service to mankind or to
\nthose around us. It is indeed by the religio-ethical sense that the law of
\nuniversal goodwill or universal compassion or of love and service to the
\nneighbour, the Vedantic, the Buddhistic, the Christian ideal, was created; only
\nby a sort of secular refrigeration extinguishing the fervour of the religious element
\nin it could the humanitarian ideal disengage itself and become the highest
\nplane of a secular system of mental and moral ethics. For in the religious
\nsystem this law of works is a means that ceases when its object is accomplished
\nor a side issue; it is a part of the cult by which one adores and seeks the
\nDivinity or it is a penultimate step of the excision of self in the <\/span>
\n
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passage to Nirvana. In the secular ideal it is
\npromoted into an object in itself; it becomes a sign of the moral perfection of
\nthe human being, or else it is a condition for a happier state of man upon
\nearth, a better society, a more united life of the race. But none of these
\nthings satisfy the demand of the soul that is placed before us by the integral
\nYoga.<\/span><\/p>\n

Altruism, philanthropy,
\nhumanitarianism, service are flowers of the mental consciousness and are at
\nbest the mind’s cold and pale imitation of the spiritual flame of universal
\nDivine Love. Not truly liberative from ego-sense, they widen it at most and
\ngive it a higher and larger satisfaction; impotent in practice to change man’s
\nvital life and nature, they only modify and palliate its action and daub over
\nits unchanged egoistic essence. Or if they are intensely followed with an
\nentire sincerity of the will, it is by an exaggerated amplification of one side
\nof our nature; in that exaggeration there can be no clue for the full and
\nperfect divine evolution of the many sides of our individualised being towards
\nthe universal and transcendent Eternal. Nor can the religio-ethical ideal be a
\nsufficient guide, \u2013 for this is a compromise or compact of mutual concessions
\nfor mutual support between a religious urge which seeks to get a closer hold on
\nearth by taking into itself the higher turns of ordinary human nature and an ethical
\nurge which hopes to elevate itself out of its own mental hardness and dryness
\nby some touch of a religious fervour. In making this compact religion lowers
\nitself to the mental level and inherits the inherent imperfections of mind and
\nits inability to convert and transform life. The mind is the sphere of the
\ndualities and, just as it is impossible for it to achieve any absolute Truth
\nbut only truths relative or mixed with error, so it is impossible for it to
\nachieve any absolute good; for moral good exists as a counterpart and
\ncorrective to evil and has evil always for its shadow, complement, almost its
\nreason for existence. But the spiritual consciousness belongs to a higher than
\nthe mental plane and there the dualities cease; for there falsehood confronted
\nwith the truth by which it profited through a usurping falsification of it and
\nevil faced by the good of which it was a perversion or a lurid substitute, are
\nobliged to perish for want of sustenance and to cease. The integral Yoga,
\nrefusing to rely <\/span>
\n
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upon the fragile stuff of mental and moral
\nideals, puts its whole emphasis in this field on three central dynamic
\nprocesses \u2013 the development of the true soul or psychic being to take the place
\nof the false soul of desire, the sublimation of human into divine love, the
\nelevation of consciousness from its mental to its spiritual and Supramental
\nplane by whose power alone both the soul and the life-force can be utterly
\ndelivered from the veils and prevarications of the Ignorance.<\/span><\/p>\n

It is the very nature of
\nthe soul or the psychic being to turn towards the divine Truth as the sunflower
\nto the sun; it accepts and clings to all that is divine or progressing towards
\ndivinity, and draws back from all that is a perversion or a denial of it, from
\nall that is false and undivine. Yet the soul is at first but a spark and then a
\nlittle flame of godhead burning in the midst of a great darkness; for the most
\npart it is veiled in its inner sanctum and to reveal itself it has to call on
\nthe mind, the life-force and the physical consciousness and persuade them, as
\nbest they can, to express it; ordinarily, it succeeds at most in suffusing
\ntheir outwardness with its inner light and modifying with its purifying
\nfineness their dark obscurities or their coarser mixture. Even when there is a
\nformed psychic being able to express itself with some directness in life, it is
\nstill in all but a few a smaller portion of the being \u2013<\/span> \u201cno bigger in the mass
\nof the body than the thumb of a man\u201d was the image used by the ancient seers \u2013
\nand it is not always able to prevail against the obscurity or ignorant
\nsmallness of the physical consciousness, the mistaken surenesses of the mind or
\nthe arrogance and vehemence of the vital nature. This soul is obliged to accept
\nthe human mental, emotive, sensational life as it is, its relations, its
\nactivities, its cherished forms and figures; it has to labour to disengage and
\nincrease the divine element in all this relative truth mixed with a continual
\nfalsifying error, this love turned to the uses of the animal body or the
\nsatisfaction of the vital ego, this life of an average manhood shot with rare
\nand pale glimpses of godhead and the darker luridities of the demon and the
\nbrute. Unerring in the essence of its will, it is obliged often under the pressure
\nof its instruments to submit to mistakes of action, wrong placement of feeling,
\nwrong choice of person, errors in the exact form of its will, in the
\ncircumstances <\/span>
\n
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\nof its expression of the infallible inner ideal.
\nYet is there a divination within it which makes it a surer guide than the
\nreason or than even the highest desire, and through apparent errors and
\nstumblings its voice can still lead better than the precise intellect and the
\nconsidering mental judgment. This voice of the soul is not what we call
\nconscience \u2013 for that is only a mental and often conventional erring
\nsubstitute; It is a deeper and more seldom heard call; yet to follow it when
\nheard is wisest: even, it is better to wander at the call of one’s soul than to
\ngo apparently straight with the reason and the outward moral mentor. But it is
\nonly when the life turns towards the Divine that the soul can truly come
\nforward and impose its power on the outer members; for, itself a spark of the
\nDivine, to grow in flame towards the Divine is its true life and its very
\nreason of existence.<\/span><\/p>\n

At a certain stage in
\nthe Yoga when the mind is sufficiently quieted and no longer supports itself at
\nevery step on the sufficiency of its mental certitudes, when the vital has been
\nsteadied and subdued and is no longer constantly insistent on its own rash
\nwill, demand and desire, when the physical has been sufficiently altered not to
\nbury altogether the inner flame under the mass of its outwardness, obscurity or
\ninertia, an inmost being, long hidden within and felt only in its rare
\ninfluences, is able to come forward and illumine the rest and take up the lead
\nof the Sadhana. Its character is a one-pointed orientation towards the Divine
\nor the Highest, one-pointed and yet plastic<\/span><\/p>\n

in action and movement; it does not create a
\nrigidity of direction like the one-pointed intellect or a bigotry of the
\nregnant idea or impulse like the one-pointed vital force; it is at every moment
\nand with a supple sureness that it points the way to the Truth, automatically
\ndistinguishes the right step from the false, extricates the divine or Godward
\nmovement from the clinging mixture of the undivine. Its action is like a
\nsearchlight showing up all that has to be changed in the nature; it has in it a
\nflame of will insistent on perfection, on an alchemic transmutation of all the
\ninner and outer existence. It sees the divine essence everywhere but rejects
\nthe mere mask and the disguising figure. It insists on Truth, on will and
\nstrength and mastery, on Joy and Love and Beauty, but on a Truth of abiding
\nKnowledge that surpasses the mere prac<\/span>– <\/span><\/p>\n

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tical<\/span><\/span> momentary truth of the
\nIgnorance, on an inward joy and not on mere vital pleasure, \u2013 for it prefers
\nrather a purifying suffering and sorrow to degrading satisfactions, \u2013 on love
\nwinged upward and not tied to the stake of egoistic craving or with its feet
\nsunk in the mire, on beauty restored to its priesthood of interpretation of the
\nEternal, on strength and will and mastery as instruments not of the ego but of
\nthe Spirit. Its will is for the divinisation of life, the expression through it
\nof a higher Truth, its dedication to the Divine and the Eternal.<\/span><\/p>\n

But the most intimate
\ncharacter of the psychic is its pressure towards the Divine through a sacred
\nlove, joy and oneness. It is a divine Love that it seeks most, it is the love
\nof the Divine that is its spur, its goal, its star of Truth shining over the
\nluminous cave of the nascent or the still obscure cradle of the new-born
\ngodhead within us. In the first long stage of its growth and immature existence
\nit has leaned on earthly love, affection, tenderness, goodwill, compassion,
\nbenevolence, on all beauty and gentleness and fineness and light and strength
\nand courage, on all that can help to refine and purify the grossness and
\ncommonness of human nature; but it knows how mixed are these human movements at
\ntheir best and at their worst how fallen and stamped with the mark of ego and
\nself-deceptive sentimental falsehood and the lower self profiting by the
\nimitation of a soul-movement. At once, emerging, it is ready and eager to break
\nall the old ties and imperfect emotional activities and replace them by a
\ngreater spiritual Truth of love and oneness. It may still admit the human forms
\nand movements, but on condition that they are turned towards the One alone. It
\naccepts only the ties that are helpful, the heart’s and mind’s reverence for
\nthe Guru, the union of the God-seekers, a spiritual compassion for this
\nignorant human and animal world and its peoples, the joy and happiness and
\nsatisfaction of beauty that comes from the perception of the Divine everywhere.
\nIt plunges the nature inward towards its meeting with the immanent Divine in
\nthe heart’s secret centre and, while that call is there, no reproach of egoism,
\nno mere outward summons of altruism or duty or philanthropy or service will
\ndeceive or divert it from its sacred longing and its obedience to the
\nattraction of the Divinity within it. It lifts the being towards <\/span>
\n
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage
\n\u2013 146<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

a transcendent Ecstasy and is ready to shed all
\nthe downward pull of the world from its wings in its uprising to reach the One
\nHighest; but it calls down also this transcendent Love and Beatitude to deliver
\nand transform this world of hatred and strife and division and darkness and
\njarring Ignorance. It opens to a universal Divine Love, a vast compassion, an
\nintense and immense will for the good of all, for the embrace of the
\nWorld-Mother enveloping or gathering to her her children, the divine Passion
\nthat has plunged into the night for the redemption of the world from the
\nuniversal Inconscience. It is not attracted or misled by mental imitations or
\nany vital misuse of these great deep-seated Truths of existence; it exposes
\nthem with its detecting search-ray and calls down the entire truth of divine
\nLove to heal these malformations, to deliver mental, vital, physical love from
\ntheir insufficiencies or their perversions and reveal to them their true
\nabounding share of the intimacy and the oneness, the ascending ecstasy and the
\ndescending rapture.<\/span><\/p>\n

All true Truth of love
\nand of the works of love the psychic being accepts in their place: but its
\nflame mounts always upward and it is eager to push the ascent from lesser to
\nhigher degrees of Truth, since it knows that only by the ascent to a highest
\nTruth and the descent of that highest Truth can Love be delivered from the
\ncross and placed upon the throne; for the cross is the sign of the Divine
\nDescent barred and marred by the transversal line of a cosmic deformation which
\nturns it into a stake of suffering and misfortune. Only by the ascent to the
\noriginal Truth can the deformation be healed and all the works of love, as too
\nall the works of knowledge and of life, be restored to a divine significance
\nand become part of an integral spiritual existence.<\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage
\n\u2013 147<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chapter V  The Ascent of the Sacrifice \u2013 1   The Works of Knowledge \u2013 The Psychic Being    \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 THIS then is in its foundations…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-975","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-20-the-synthesis-of-yoga-volume-20","wpcat-20-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/975","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=975"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/975\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=975"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=975"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=975"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}