{"id":982,"date":"2013-07-13T01:31:44","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:31:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=982"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:31:44","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:31:44","slug":"03-life-and-yoga-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\/03-life-and-yoga-vol-20-the-synthesis-of-yoga-volume-20","title":{"rendered":"-03_Life and Yoga .htm"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n

\n
\nChapter I<\/span><\/b> <\/span><\/p>\n


\nLife and Yoga<\/font><\/span><\/b><\/p>\n


\n <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>T<\/font><\/span>HERE<\/span><\/font>
\nare two necessities of Nature’s workings which seem always to intervene in the
\ngreater forms of human activity, whether these belong to our ordinary fields of
\nmovement or seek those exceptional spheres and fulfilments which appear to us
\nhigh and divine. Every such form tends towards a harmonised complexity and
\ntotality which again breaks apart into various channels of special effort and
\ntendency, only to unite once more in a larger and more puissant synthesis.
\nSecondly, development into forms is an imperative rule of effective
\nmanifestation; yet all truth and practice too strictly formulated becomes old
\nand loses much, if not all, of its virtue; it must be constantly renovated by
\nfresh streams of the spirit revivifying the dead or dying vehicle and changing
\nit, if it is to acquire a new life. To be perpetually reborn is the condition
\nof a material immortality. We are in an age, full of the throes of travail,
\nwhen all forms of thought and activity that have in themselves any strong power
\nof utility or any secret virtue of persistence are being subjected to a supreme
\ntest and given their opportunity of rebirth. The world today presents the
\naspect of a huge cauldron of Medea in which all things are being cast, shredded
\ninto pieces, experimented on, combined and recombined either to perish and
\nprovide the scattered material of new forms or to emerge rejuvenated and
\nchanged for a fresh term of existence. Indian Yoga, in its essence a special
\naction or formulation of certain great powers of Nature, itself specialised,
\ndivided and variously formulated, is potentially one of these dynamic elements
\nof the future life of humanity. The child of immemorial ages, preserved by its
\nvitality and truth into our modern times, it is now emerging from the secret
\nschools and ascetic retreats in which it had taken refuge and is seeking its
\nplace in the future sum of living human powers and utilities. But it has first
\nto rediscover itself, bring to the<\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n

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surface the profoundest reason of its being in
\nthat general truth and that unceasing aim of Nature which it represents, and
\nfind by virtue of this new self-knowledge and self-appreciation its own
\nrecovered and larger synthesis. Reorganising itself, it will enter more easily
\nand powerfully into the reorganised life of the race which its processes claim
\nto lead within into the most secret penetralia and upward to the highest
\naltitudes of existence and personality.<\/span><\/p>\n

In the right view both
\nof life and of Yoga all life is either consciously or subconsciously a Yoga.
\nFor we mean by this term a methodised effort towards self-perfection by the
\nexpression of the secret potentialities latent in the being and \u2013 highest condition
\nof victory in that effort \u2013 a union of the human individual with the universal
\nand transcendent Existence we see partially expressed in man and in the Cosmos.
\nBut all life, when we look behind its appearances, is a vast Yoga of Nature who
\nattempts in the conscious and the subconscious to realise her perfection in an
\never-increasing expression of her yet unrealised potentialities and to unite
\nherself with her own divine reality. In man, her thinker, she for the first
\ntime upon this Earth devises self-conscious means and willed arrangements of
\nactivity by which this great purpose may be more swiftly and puissantly
\nattained. Yoga, as Swami Vivekananda has said, may be regarded as a means of compressing
\none’s evolution into a single life or a few years or even a few months of
\nbodily existence. A given system of Yoga, then, can be no more than a selection
\nor a compression, into narrower but more energetic forms of intensity, of the general
\nmethods which are already being used loosely, largely, in a leisurely movement,
\nwith a profuser apparent waste of material and energy but with a more complete
\ncombination by the great Mother in her vast upward labour. It is this view of Yoga
\nthat can alone form the basis for a sound and rational synthesis of Yogic
\nmethods. For then Yoga ceases to appear something mystic and abnormal which has
\nno relation to the ordinary processes of the World-Energy or the purpose she keeps
\nin view in her two great movements of subjective and objective self-fulfilment;
\nit reveals itself rather as an intense and exceptional use of powers that she
\nhas already manifested or is progressively organising in her less exalted but
\nmore general operations.<\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 2<\/span><\/p>\n

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 <\/span>         Yogic methods have
\nsomething of the same relation to the customary psychological workings of man
\nas has the scientific handling of the force of electricity or of steam to their
\nnormal\u00a0 <\/span>operations in Nature. And they,
\ntoo, like the operations of Science, are formed upon a knowledge developed and
\nconfirmed by regular experiment, practical analysis and constant result. All
\nRajayoga, for instance, depends on this perception and experience that our
\ninner elements, combinations, functions, forces, can be separated or dissolved,
\ncan be new-combined and set to novel and formerly impossible workings or can be
\ntransformed and resolved into a new general synthesis by fixed internal
\nprocesses. Hathayoga similarly depends on this perception and experience that
\nthe vital forces and functions to which our life is normally subjected and whose
\nordinary operations seem set and indispensable, can be mastered and the
\noperations changed or suspended with results that would otherwise be impossible
\nand that seem miraculous to those who have not seized the rationale of their
\nprocess. And if in some other of its forms this character of Yoga is less
\napparent, because they are more intuitive and less mechanical, nearer, like the
\nYoga of Devotion, to a supernal ecstasy or, like the Yoga of Knowledge, to a
\nsupernal infinity of consciousness and being, yet they too start from the use
\nof some principal faculty in us by ways and for ends not contemplated in its
\neveryday spontaneous workings. All methods grouped under the common name of
\nYoga are special psychological processes founded on a fixed truth of Nature and
\ndeveloping, out of normal functions, powers and results which were always
\nlatent but which her ordinary movements do not easily or do not often manifest.<\/span><\/p>\n

But as in physical
\nknowledge the multiplication of scientific processes has its disadvantages, as
\nthat tends, for instance, to develop a victorious artificiality which
\noverwhelms our natural human life under a load of machinery and to purchase certain
\nforms of freedom and mastery at the price of an increased servitude, so the
\npreoccupation with Yogic processes and their exceptional results may have its
\ndisadvantages and losses. The Yogin tends to draw away from the common
\nexistence and lose his hold upon it; he tends to purchase wealth of spirit by
\nan<\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n

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\n\u2013 3<\/span><\/p>\n

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\n

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\n\t
\n\t impoverishment of his human activities, the
\ninner freedom by an outer death. If he gains God, he loses life, or if he turns
\nhis efforts outward to conquer life, he is in danger of losing God. Therefore
\nwe see in <\/span>India<\/span> that a sharp
\nincompatibility has been created between life in the world and spiritual growth
\nand perfection, and although the tradition and ideal of a victorious harmony
\nbetween the inner attraction and the outer demand remains, it is little or else
\nvery imperfectly exemplified. In fact, when a man turns his vision and energy
\ninward and enters on the path of Yoga, he is popularly supposed to be lost
\ninevitably to the great stream of our collective existence and the secular
\neffort of humanity. So strongly has the idea prevailed, so much has it been
\nemphasised by prevalent philosophies and religions that to escape from life is now
\ncommonly considered as not only the necessary condition, but the general object
\nof Yoga. No synthesis of Yoga can be satisfying which does not, in its aim,
\nreunite God and Nature in a liberated and perfected human life or, in its
\nmethod, not only permit but favour the harmony of our inner and outer
\nactivities and experiences in the divine consummation of both. For man is
\nprecisely that term and symbol of a higher Existence descended into the
\nmaterial world in which it is possible for the lower to transfigure itself and
\nput on the nature of the higher and the higher to reveal itself in the forms of
\nthe lower. To avoid the life which is given him for the realisation of that
\npossibility, can never be either the indispensable condition or the whole and
\nultimate object of his supreme endeavour or of his most powerful means of
\nself-fulfilment. It can only be a temporary necessity under certain conditions
\nor a specialised extreme effort imposed on the individual so as to prepare a greater
\ngeneral possibility for the race. The true and full object and utility of Yoga
\ncan only be accomplished when the conscious Yoga in man becomes, like the
\nsubconscious Yoga in Nature, outwardly conterminous with life itself and we can
\nonce more, looking out both on the path and the achievement, say in a more
\nperfect and luminous sense: \u201cAll life is Yoga.\u201d<\/span> <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 4<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table><\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chapter I  Life and Yoga   \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 THERE are two necessities of Nature’s workings which seem always to intervene in the greater forms of human…<\/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-982","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\/982","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=982"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/982\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=982"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=982"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=982"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}