{"id":985,"date":"2013-07-13T01:31:45","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:31:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=985"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:31:45","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:31:45","slug":"13-the-ascent-of-the-sacrifice-2-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\/13-the-ascent-of-the-sacrifice-2-vol-20-the-synthesis-of-yoga-volume-20","title":{"rendered":"-13_The Ascent of the Sacrifice\u00e2\u20ac\u201c2.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
\n
\n


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

\n <\/font><\/span>The Ascent of the Sacrifice \u2013 2<\/span><\/font><\/b> <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/font><\/span>The Works of Love \u2013The Works of Life<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nI<\/font><\/span>T IS<\/span><\/font> therefore
\nthrough the sacrifice of love, works and knowledge with the psychic being as the
\nleader and priest of the sacrifice that life itself can be transformed into its
\nown true spiritual figure. If the sacrifice of knowledge rightly done is easily
\nthe largest and purest offering we can bring to the Highest, the sacrifice of
\nlove is not less demanded of us for our spiritual perfection; it is even more
\nintense and rich in its singleness and can be made not less vast and pure. This
\npure wideness is brought into the intensity of the sacrifice of love when into
\nall our activities there is poured the spirit and power of a divine infinite joy
\nand the whole atmosphere of our life is suffused with an engrossing adoration of
\nthe One who is the All and the Highest. For then does the sacrifice of love
\nattain its utter perfection when, offered to the divine All, it becomes
\nintegral, catholic and boundless, and when, uplifted to the Supreme, it ceases
\nto be the weak, superficial and transient movement men call love and becomes a
\npure and grand and deep uniting Ananda.<\/span><\/p>\n

Although it is
\na divine love for the supreme and universal Divine that must be the rule of our
\nspiritual existence, this does not exclude altogether all forms of individual
\nlove or the ties that draw soul to soul in manifested existence. A psychic
\nchange is demanded, a divestiture of the masks of the Ignorance, a purification
\nof the egoistic mental, vital and physical movements that prolong the old
\ninferior consciousness; each movement of love, spiritualised, must depend no
\nlonger on mental preference, vital passion or physical craving, but on the
\nrecognition of soul by soul, \u2013 love restored to its fundamental spiritual and
\npsychic essence with the mind, the vital, the physical as manifesting
\ninstruments and elements of that greater oneness. In this change
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 148<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

the individual love also
\nis converted by a natural heightening into a divine love for the Divine
\nInhabitant immanent in a mind and soul and body occupied by the One in all
\ncreatures.<\/span><\/p>\n

All love,
\nindeed, that is adoration has a spiritual force behind it, and even when it is
\noffered ignorantly and to a limited object, something of that splendour appears
\nthrough the poverty of the rite and the smallness of its issues. For love that
\nis worship is at once an aspiration and a preparation: it can bring even within
\nits small limits in the Ignorance a glimpse of a still more or less blind and
\npartial but surprising realisation; for there are moments when it is not we but
\nthe One who loves and is loved in us, and even a human passion can be uplifted
\nand glorified by a slight glimpse of this infinite Love and Lover. It is for
\nthis reason that the worship of the god, the worship of the idol, the human
\nmagnet or ideal are not to be despised; for these are steps through which the
\nhuman race moves towards that blissful passion and ecstasy of the Infinite
\nwhich, even in limiting it, they yet represent for our imperfect vision when we
\nhave still to use the inferior steps Nature has hewn for our feet and admit the
\nstages of our progress. Certain idolatries are indispensable for the development
\nof our emotional being, nor will the man who knows be hasty at any time to
\nshatter the image unless he can replace it in the heart of the worshipper by the
\nReality it figures. Moreover, they have this power because there is always
\nsomething in them that is greater than their forms and, even when we reach the
\nsupreme worship, that abides and becomes a prolongation of it or a part of its
\ncatholic wholeness. Our knowledge is still imperfect in us, love incomplete if
\neven when we know That which surpasses all forms and manifestations, we cannot
\nstill accept the Divine in creature and object, in man, in the kind, in the
\nanimal, in the tree, in the flower, in the work of our hands, in the
\nNature-Force which is then no longer to us the blind action of a material
\nmachinery but a face and power of the universal Shakti: for in these things too
\nis the presence of the Eternal.<\/span><\/p>\n

An ultimate
\ninexpressible adoration offered by us to the Transcendent, to the Highest,\u00b9 to
\nthe Ineffable, is yet no com- <\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/p>\n

\u00b9 <\/span>param
\nbhāvam<\/span><\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 149<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

plete<\/span><\/span> worship if it
\nis not offered to him wherever he manifests or wherever even he hides his
\ngodhead \u2013 in man\u00b9 and object and every creature. An Ignorance is there no doubt
\nwhich imprisons the heart, distorts its feelings, obscures the significance of
\nits offering; all partial worship, all religion which erects a mental or a
\nphysical idol is tempted to veil and protect the truth in it by a certain cloak
\nof ignorance and easily loses the truth in its image. But the pride of exclusive
\nknowledge is also a limitation and a barrier. For there is, concealed behind
\nindividual love, obscured by its ignorant human figure, a mystery which the mind
\ncannot seize, the mystery of the body of the Divine, the secret of a mystic form
\nof the Infinite which we can approach only through the ecstasy of the heart and
\nthe passion of the pure and sublimated sense, and its attraction which is the
\ncall of the divine Flute-player, the mastering compulsion of the All-Beautiful,
\ncan only be seized and seize us through an occult love and yearning which in the
\nend makes one the Form and the Formless, and identifies Spirit and Matter. It is
\nthat which the spirit in Love is seeking here in the darkness of the Ignorance
\nand it is that which it finds when individual human love is changed into the
\nlove of the Immanent Divine incarnate in the material universe.<\/span><\/p>\n

As with
\nindividual, so with universal Love; all that widening of the self through
\nsympathy, goodwill, universal benevolence and beneficence, love of mankind, love
\nof creatures, the attraction of all the myriad forms and presences that surround
\nus, by which mentally and emotionally man escapes from the first limits of his
\nego, has to be taken up into a unifying divine love for the universal Divine.
\nAdoration fulfilled in love, love in Ananda, \u2013 the surpassing love, the
\nself-wrapped ecstasy of transcendent delight in the Transcendent which awaits us
\nat the end of the path of Devotion, \u2013 has for its wider result a universal love
\nfor all beings, the Ananda of all that is; we perceive behind every veil the
\nDivine, spiritually embrace in all forms the All-Beautiful. A universal delight
\nin his endless manifestation flows through us, taking in its surge every form
\nand movement, but not bound or stationary in any and always reaching out to a
\ngreater and more perfect expression. This universal love is
\nliberative<\/span>
\nand dynamic <\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/p>\n

\u00b9 <\/span>mānuşīm<\/span><\/span> tanum āśritam<\/span><\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 150<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

\nor transformation; for
\nthe discord of forms and appearances ceases to affect the heart that has felt
\nthe one Truth behind them all and understood their perfect significance. The
\nimpartial equality of soul of the selfless worker and knower is transformed by
\nthe magic touch of divine Love into an all-embracing ecstasy and million-bodied
\nbeatitude. All things become bodies and all movements the
\nplayings<\/span>
\nof the divine Beloved in his infinite house of pleasure. Even pain is changed
\nand in their reaction and even in their essence things painful alter; the forms
\nof pain fall away, there are created in their place the forms of Ananda.<\/span><\/p>\n

This is in its
\nessence the nature of the change of consciousness which turns existence itself
\ninto a glorified field of a Divine Love and Ananda. In its essence it begins for
\nthe seeker when he passes from the ordinary to the spiritual level and looks
\nwith a new heart of luminous vision and feeling on the world and self and
\nothers. It reaches its height when the spiritual becomes also the supramental
\nlevel and then also it is possible not only to feel it in essence but realise it
\ndynamically as a Power for the transformation of the whole inner life and the
\nwhole outer existence.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/p>\n

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

 <\/span><\/p>\n

It is not
\naltogether difficult for the mind to envisage, even though it may be difficult
\nfor the human will with its many earth-ties to accept, this transformation of
\nthe spirit and nature of love from the character of a mixed and limited human
\nemotion to a supreme and all-embracing divine passion. It is when we come to the
\nworks of love that a certain perplexity is likely to intervene. It is possible,
\nas in a certain high exaggeration of the path of knowledge, to cut here also the
\nknot of the problem, escape the difficulty of uniting the spirit of love with
\nthe crudities of the world-action by avoiding it; it is open to us, withdrawing
\nfrom outward life and action altogether, to live alone with our adoration of the
\nDivine in the heart’s silence. It is possible too to admit only those acts that
\nare either in themselves an expression of love for the Divine, prayer, praise,
\nsymbolic acts of worship or subordinate activities that may be attached to these
\nthings and partake of their spirit, and to leave aside all else; the soul turns
\naway to
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 151<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

satisfy its inner longing
\nin the absorbed or the God-centred life of the saint and devotee. It is
\npossible, again, to open the doors of life more largely and to spend one’s love
\nof the Divine in acts of service to those around us and to the race; one can do
\nthe works of philanthropy, benevolence and beneficence, charity and succour to
\nman and beast and every creature, transfigure them by a kind of spiritual
\npassion, at least bring into their merely ethical appearance the greater power
\nof a spiritual motive. This is indeed the solution most commonly favoured by the
\nreligious mind of today and we see it confidently advanced on all sides as the
\nproper field of action of the God-seeker or of the man whose life is founded on
\ndivine love and knowledge. But the integral Yoga pushed towards a complete union
\nof the Divine with the earth-life cannot stop short in this narrow province or
\nlimit this union within the lesser dimensions of an ethical rule of philanthropy
\nand beneficence. All action must be made in it part of the God-life, our acts of
\nknowledge, our acts of power and production and creation, our acts of joy and
\nbeauty and the soul’s pleasure, our acts of will and endeavour and struggle and
\nnot our acts only of love and beneficent service. Its way to do these things
\nwill be not outward and mental, but inward and spiritual, and to that end it
\nwill bring into all activities, whatever they are, the spirit of divine love,
\nthe spirit of adoration and worship, the spirit of happiness in the Divine and
\nin the beauty of the Divine so as to make all life a sacrifice of the works of
\nthe soul’s love to the Divine, its cult of the Master of its existence.<\/span><\/p>\n

It is possible
\nso to turn life into an act of adoration to the Supreme by the spirit in one’s
\nworks; for, says the Gita, \u201cHe who gives to me with a heart of adoration a leaf,
\na flower, a fruit or a cup of water, I take and enjoy that offering of his
\ndevotion\u201d; and it is not only any dedicated external gift that can be so offered
\nwith love and devotion, but all our thoughts, all our feelings and sensations,
\nall our outward activities and their forms and objects can be such gifts to the
\nEternal. It is true that the special act or form of action has its importance,
\neven a great importance, but it is the spirit in the act that is the essential
\nfactor; the spirit of which it is the symbol or materialised expression gives it
\nits whole value and justifying significance. Or it may be said that a complete
\nact
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 152<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

of divine love and
\nworship has in it three parts that are the expressions of a single whole, \u2013 a
\npractical worship of the Divine in the act, a symbol of worship in the form of
\nthe act expressing some vision and seeking or some relation with the Divine, an
\ninner adoration and longing for oneness or feeling of oneness in the heart and
\nsoul and spirit. It is so that life can be changed into worship, \u2013 by putting
\nbehind it the spirit of a transcendent and universal love, the seeking of
\noneness, the sense of oneness; by making each act a symbol, an expression of
\nGodward emotion or a relation with the Divine; by turning all we do into an act
\nof worship, an act of the soul’s communion, the mind’s understanding, the life’s
\nobedience, the heart’s surrender. <\/span><\/p>\n

In any cult
\nthe symbol, the significant rite or expressive figure is not only a moving and
\nenriching aesthetic element, but a physical means by which the human being
\nbegins to make outwardly definite the emotion and aspiration of his heart, to
\nconfirm it and to dynamise<\/span> it. For if without a
\nspiritual aspiration worship is meaningless and vain, yet the aspiration also
\nwithout the act and the form is a disembodied and, for life, an incompletely
\neffective power. It is unhappily the fate of all forms in human life to become
\ncrystallised, purely formal and therefore effete, and although form and cult
\npreserve always their power for the man who can still enter into their meaning,
\nthe majority come to use the ceremony as a mechanical rite and the symbol as a
\nlifeless sign, and because that kills the soul of religion, cult and form have
\nin the end to be changed or thrown aside altogether. There are those even to
\nwhom all cult and form are for this reason suspect and offensive; but few can
\ndispense with the support of outward symbols and, even, a certain divine element
\nin human nature demands them always for the completeness of its spiritual
\nsatisfaction. Always the symbol is legitimate in so far as it is true, sincere,
\nbeautiful and delightful, and even one may say that a spiritual consciousness
\nwithout any aesthetic or emotional content is not entirely or at any rate not
\nintegrally spiritual. In the spiritual life the basis of the act is a spiritual
\nconsciousness perennial and renovating, moved to express itself always in new
\nforms or able to renew the truth of a form always by the flow of the spirit, and
\nto so express itself and make every action a living symbol of some
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 153<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

truth of the soul is the
\nvery nature of its creative vision and impulse. It is so that the spiritual
\nseeker must deal with life and transmute its form and glorify it in its essence.<\/span><\/p>\n

A supreme
\ndivine Love is a creative Power and, even though it can exist in itself silent
\nand unchangeable, yet rejoices in external form and expression and is not
\ncondemned to be a speechless and bodiless godhead. It has even been said that
\ncreation itself was an act of love or at least the building up of a field in
\nwhich Divine Love could devise its symbols and fulfil itself in act of mutuality
\nand self-giving, and, if not the initial nature of creation, this may well be
\nits ultimate object and motive. It does not so appear now because, even if a
\nDivine Love is there in the world upholding all this evolution of creatures, yet
\nthe stuff of life and its action is made up of an egoistic formation, a
\ndivision, a struggle of life and consciousness to exist and survive in an
\napparently indifferent, inclement or even hostile world of inanimate and
\ninconscient Matter. In the confusion and obscurity of this struggle all are
\nthrown against each other with a will in each to assert its own existence first
\nand foremost and only secondarily to assert itself in others and very partially
\nfor others; for even man’s altruism remains essentially egoistic and must be so
\ntill the soul finds the secret of the divine Oneness. It is to discover that at
\nits supreme source, to bring it from within and to radiate it out up to the
\nextreme confines of life that is turned the effort of the Yoga. All action, all
\ncreation must be turned into a form, a symbol of the cult, the adoration, the
\nsacrifice; it must carry something that makes it bear in it the stamp of a
\ndedication, a reception and translation of the Divine Consciousness, a service
\nof the Beloved, a self-giving, a surrender. This has to be done wherever
\npossible in the outward body and form of the act; it must be done always in its
\ninward emotion and an intensity that shows it to be an outflow from the soul
\ntowards the Eternal.<\/span><\/p>\n

In itself the
\nadoration in the act is a great and complete and powerful sacrifice that tends
\nby its self-multiplication to reach the discovery of the One and make the
\nradiation of the Divine possible. For devotion by its embodiment in acts not
\nonly makes its own way broad and full and dynamic, but brings at once into the
\nharder way of works in the world the divinely passionate
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 154<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

element of joy and love
\nwhich is often absent in its beginning when it is only the austere spiritual
\nWill that follows in a struggling uplifting tension the steep ascent, and the
\nheart is still asleep or bound to silence. If the spirit of divine love can
\nenter, the hardness of the way diminishes, the tension is lightened, there is a
\nsweetness and joy even in the core of difficulty and struggle. The indispensable
\nsurrender of all our will and works and activities to the Supreme is indeed only
\nperfect and perfectly effective when it is a surrender of love. All life turned
\ninto this cult, all actions done in the love of the Divine and in the love of
\nthe world and its creatures seen and felt as the Divine manifested in many
\ndisguises become by that very fact part of an integral Yoga.<\/span><\/p>\n

It is the
\ninner offering of the heart’s adoration, the soul of it in the symbol, the
\nspirit of it in the act, that is the very life of the sacrifice. If this
\noffering is to be complete and universal, then a turning of all our emotions to
\nthe Divine is imperative. This is the intensest<\/span> way of
\npurification for the human heart, more powerful than any ethical or aesthetic
\ncatharsis could ever be by its half-power and superficial pressure. A psychic
\nfire within must be lit into which all is thrown with the Divine Name upon it.
\nIn that fire all the emotions are compelled to cast off their grosser elements
\nand those that are undivine perversions are burned away and the others discard
\ntheir insufficiencies, till a spirit of largest love and a stainless divine
\ndelight arises out of the flame and smoke and frankincense. It is the divine
\nlove which so emerges that, extended in inward feeling to the Divine in man and
\nall creatures in an active universal equality, will be more potent for the
\nperfectibility of life and a more real instrument than the ineffective mental
\nideal of brotherhood can ever be. It is this poured out into acts that could
\nalone create a harmony in the world and a true unity between all its creatures;
\nall else strives in vain towards that end so long as Divine Love has not
\ndisclosed itself as the heart of the delivered manifestation in terrestrial
\nNature.<\/span><\/p>\n

It is here
\nthat the emergence of the secret psychic being in us as the leader of the
\nsacrifice is of the utmost importance; for this inmost being alone can bring
\nwith it the full power of the spirit in
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 155<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

the act, the soul in the
\nsymbol. It alone can assure, even while the spiritual consciousness is
\nincomplete, the perennial freshness and sincerity and beauty of the symbol and
\nprevent it from becoming a dead form or a corrupted and corrupting magic; it
\nalone can preserve for the act its power with its significance. All the other
\nmembers of our being, mind, life-force, physical or body consciousness are too
\nmuch under the control of the Ignorance to be a sure instrumentation and much
\nless can they be a guide or the source of an unerring impulse. Always the
\ngreater part of the motive and action of these powers clings to the old law, the
\ndeceiving tablets, the cherished inferior movements of Nature and they meet with
\nreluctance, alarm or revolt or obstructing inertia the voices and the forces
\nthat call and impel us to exceed and transform ourselves into a greater being
\nand a wider Nature. In their major part the response is either a resistance or a
\nqualified or temporising acquiescence; for even if they follow the call, they
\nyet tend \u2013 when not consciously, then by automatic habit \u2013 to bring into the
\nspiritual action their own natural disabilities and errors. At every moment they
\nare moved to take egoistic advantage of the psychic and spiritual influences and
\ncan be detected using the power, joy or light these bring into us for a lower
\nlife-motive. Afterwards too, even when the seeker has opened to the Divine Love
\ntranscendental, universal or immanent, yet if he tries to pour it into life, he
\nmeets the power of obscuration and perversion of these lower Nature-forces.
\nAlways they draw away towards pitfalls, pour into that higher intensity their
\ndiminishing elements, seek to capture the descending Power for themselves and
\ntheir interests and degrade it into an aggrandised mental, vital or physical
\ninstrumentation for desire and ego. Instead of a Divine Love creator of a new
\nheaven and a new earth of Truth and Light, they would hold it here prisoner as a
\ntremendous sanction and glorifying force of sublimation to gild the mud of the
\nold earth and colour with its rose and sapphire the old turbid unreal skies of
\nsentimentalising vital imagination and mental idealised chimera. If that
\nfalsification is permitted, the higher Light and Power and Bliss withdraw, there
\nis a fall back to a lower status; or else the realisation remains tied to an
\ninsecure half-way and mixture or is covered and even submerged by an
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 156<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

inferior exaltation that
\nis not the true Ananda. It is for this reason that Divine Love which is at the
\nheart of all creation and the most powerful of all redeeming and creative forces
\nhas yet been the least frontally present in earthly life, the least successfully
\nredemptive, the least creative. Human nature has been unable to bear it in its
\npurity for the very reason that it is the most powerful, pure, rare and intense
\nof all the divine energies; what little could be seized has been corrupted at
\nonce into a vital pietistic ardour, a defenceless religious or ethical
\nsentimentalism, a sensuous or even sensual erotic mysticism of the roseate
\ncoloured mind or passionately turbid life-impulse and with these simulations
\ncompensated its inability to house the Mystic Flame that could rebuild the world
\nwith its tongues of sacrifice. It is only the inmost psychic being unveiled and
\nemerging in its full power that can lead the pilgrim sacrifice unscathed through
\nthese ambushes and pitfalls; at each moment it catches, exposes, repels the
\nmind’s and the life’s falsehoods, seizes hold on the truth of the Divine Love
\nand Ananda and separates it from the excitement of the mind’s
\nardours<\/span> and the blind enthusiasms of the misleading life-force. But all
\nthings that are true at their core in mind and life and the physical being it
\nextricates and takes with it in the journey till they stand on the heights, new
\nin spirit and sublime in figure.<\/span><\/p>\n

And yet even
\nthe leading of the inmost psychic being is not found sufficient until it has
\nsucceeded in raising itself out of this mass of inferior Nature to the highest
\nspiritual levels and the divine spark and flame descended here have rejoined
\nthemselves to their original fiery Ether. For there is there no longer a
\nspiritual consciousness still imperfect and half lost to itself in the thick
\nsheaths of human mind, life and body, but the full spiritual consciousness in
\nits purity, freedom and intense wideness. There, as it is the eternal Knower
\nthat becomes the Knower in us and mover and user of all knowledge, so it is the
\neternal All-Blissful who is the Adored attracting to himself the eternal divine
\nportion of his being and joy that has gone out into the play of the universe,
\nthe infinite Lover pouring himself out in the multiplicity of his own manifested
\nselves in a happy Oneness. All Beauty in the world is there the beauty of the
\nBeloved, and all forms of
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 157<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

beauty have to stand
\nunder the light of that eternal Beauty and submit themselves to the sublimating
\nand transfiguring power of the unveiled Divine Perfection. All Bliss and Joy are
\nthere of the All-Blissful, and all inferior forms of enjoyment, happiness or
\npleasure are subjected to the shock of the intensity of its floods or currents
\nand either they are broken to pieces as inadequate things under its convicting
\nstress or compelled to transmute themselves into the forms of the Divine Ananda.
\nThus for the individual consciousness a Force is manifested which can deal
\nsovereignly in it with the diminutions and degradations of the values of the
\nIgnorance. At last it begins to be possible to bring down into life the immense
\nreality and intense concreteness of the love and joy that are of the Eternal. Or
\nat any rate it will be possible for our spiritual consciousness to raise itself
\nout of mind into the supramental Light and Force and Vastness; there in the
\nlight and potency of the supramental Gnosis are the splendour and joy of a power
\nof divine self-expression and self-organisation which could rescue and re-create
\neven the world of the Ignorance into a figure of the Truth of the Spirit.<\/span><\/p>\n

There in the
\nsupramental Gnosis is the fulfilment, the culminating height, the all-embracing
\nextent of the inner adoration, the profound and integral union, the flaming
\nwings of Love upbearing<\/span> the power and joy of a supreme
\nKnowledge. For supramental Love brings an active ecstasy that surpasses the void
\npassive peace and stillness which is the heaven of the liberated Mind and does
\nnot betray the deeper greater calm which is the beginning of the supramental
\nsilence. The unity of a love which is able to include in itself all differences
\nwithout being diminished or abrogated by their present limitations and apparent
\ndissonances is raised to its full potentiality on the supramental level. For
\nthere an intense oneness with all creatures founded on a profound oneness of the
\nsoul with the Divine can harmonise with a play of relations that only makes the
\noneness more perfect and absolute. The power of Love supramentalised can take
\nhold of all living relations without hesitation or danger and turn them Godwards
\ndelivered from their crude, mixed and petty human settings and sublimated into
\nthe happy material of a divine life. For it is the very nature of the
\nsupramental experience that it can
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 158<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

perpetuate the play of
\ndifference without forfeiting or in the least diminishing either the divine
\nunion or the infinite oneness. For a supramentalised consciousness it would be
\nutterly possible to embrace all contacts with men and the world in a purified
\nflame-force and with a transfigured significance, because the soul would then
\nperceive always as the object of all emotion and all seeking for love or beauty
\nthe One Eternal and could spiritually use a wide and liberated life-urge to meet
\nand join with that One Divine in all things and all creatures.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/p>\n

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

 <\/span><\/p>\n

Into the third
\nand last category of the works of sacrifice can be gathered all that is directly
\nproper to the Yoga of works; for here is its direct field of effectuation and
\nmajor province. It covers the entire range of life’s more visible activities;
\nunder it fall the multiform energies of the Will-to-Life throwing itself outward
\nto make the most of material existence. It is here that an ascetic or
\nother-worldly spirituality feels an insurmountable denial of the Truth which it
\nseeks after and is compelled to turn away from terrestrial existence, rejecting
\nit as for ever the dark playground of an incurable Ignorance. Yet it is
\nprecisely these activities that are claimed for a spiritual conquest and divine
\ntransformation by the integral Yoga. Abandoned altogether by the more ascetic
\ndisciplines, accepted by others only as a field of temporary ordeal or a
\nmomentary, superficial and ambiguous play of the concealed spirit, this
\nexistence is fully embraced and welcomed by the integral seeker as a field of
\nfulfilment, a field for divine works, a field of the total self-discovery of the
\nconcealed and indwelling spirit. A discovery of the Divinity in oneself is his
\nfirst object, but a total discovery too of the Divinity in the world behind the
\napparent denial offered by its scheme and figures and, last, a total discovery
\nof the dynamism of some transcendent Eternal; for by its descent this world and
\nself will be empowered to break their disguising envelopes and become divine in
\nrevealing form and manifesting process as they now are secretly in their hidden
\nessence.<\/span><\/p>\n

This object of
\nthe integral Yoga must be accepted wholly
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

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\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

by those who follow it,
\nbut the acceptance must not be in ignorance of the immense stumbling-blocks that
\nlie in the way of the achievement; on the contrary we must be fully aware of the
\ncompelling cause of the refusal of so many other disciplines to regard even its
\npossibility, much less its imperative character, as the true meaning of
\nterrestrial existence. For here in the works of life in the earth-nature is the
\nvery heart of the difficulty that has driven Philosophy to its heights of
\naloofness and turned away even the eager eye of Religion from the malady of
\nbirth in a mortal body to a distant Paradise or a silent peace of Nirvana. A way
\nof pure Knowledge is comparatively straightforward and easy to the tread of the
\nseeker in spite of our mental limitations and the pitfalls of the Ignorance; a
\nway of pure Love, although it has its stumbling-blocks and its sufferings and
\ntrials, can in comparison be as easy as the winging of a bird through the free
\nazure. For Knowledge and Love are pure in their essence and become mixed and
\nembarrassed, corrupted and degraded only when they enter into the ambiguous
\nmovement of the life-forces and are seized by them for the outward life’s crude
\nmovements and obstinately inferior motives. Alone of the three powers Life or at
\nleast a certain predominant Will-in-Life has the appearance of something impure,
\naccursed or fallen in its very essence. At its contact, wrapped in its dull
\nsheaths or caught in its iridescent quagmires, the divinities themselves become
\ncommon and muddy and hardly escape from being dragged downwards into its
\nperversions and disastrously assimilated to the demon and the Asura. A principle
\nof dark and dull inertia is at its base; all are tied down by the body and its
\nneeds and desires to a trivial mind, petty desires and emotions, an
\ninsignificant repetition of small worthless functionings, needs, cares,
\noccupations, pains, pleasures that lead to nothing beyond themselves and bear
\nthe stamp of an ignorance that knows not its own why and whither. This physical
\nmind of inertia believes in no divinity other than its own small earth-gods; it
\naspires perhaps to a greater comfort, order, pleasure, but asks for no uplifting
\nand no spiritual deliverance.  <\/span>At the
\ncentre we meet a stronger Will of life with a greater gusto, but it is a blinded
\nDaemon, a perverted spirit and exults in the very elements that make of life a
\nstriving turmoil and an unhappy imbroglio. It is
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

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<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

a soul of human or
\nTitanic desire clinging to the garish colour, disordered poetry, violent tragedy
\nor stirring melodrama of this mixed flux of good and evil, joy and sorrow, light
\nand darkness, heady rapture and bitter torture. It loves these things and would
\nhave more and more of them or, even when it suffers and cries out against them,
\ncan accept or joy in nothing else; it hates and revolts against higher things
\nand in its fury would trample, tear or crucify any diviner Power that has the
\npresumption to offer to make life pure, luminous and happy and snatch from its
\nlips the fiery brew of that exciting mixture. Another Will-in-Life there is that
\nis ready to follow the ameliorating ideal Mind and is allured by its offer to
\nextract some harmony, beauty, light, nobler order out of life, but this is a
\nsmaller part of the vital nature and can be easily overpowered by its more
\nviolent or darker duller yoke-comrades; nor does it readily lend itself to a
\ncall higher than that of the Mind unless that call defeats itself, as Religion
\nusually does, by lowering its demand to conditions more intelligible to our
\nobscure vital nature. All these forces the spiritual seeker grows aware of in
\nhimself and finds all around him and has to struggle and combat incessantly to
\nbe rid of their grip and dislodge the long-entrenched mastery they have
\nexercised over his own being as over the environing human existence. The
\ndifficulty is great; for their hold is so strong, so apparently invincible that
\nit justifies the disdainful dictum which compares human nature to a dog’s tail,
\n\u2013 for, straighten it never so much by force of ethics, religion, reason or any
\nother redemptive effort, it returns in the end always to the crooked curl of
\nNature. And so great is the vim, the clutch of that more agitated Life-Will, so
\nimmense the peril of its passions and errors, so subtly insistent or
\npersistently invasive, so obstinate up to the very gates of Heaven the fury of
\nits attack or the tedious obstruction of its obstacles that even the saint and
\nthe Yogin cannot be sure of their liberated purity or their trained self-mastery
\nagainst its intrigue or its violence. All labour to straighten out this native
\ncrookedness strikes the struggling will as a futility; a flight, a withdrawal to
\nhappy Heaven or peaceful dissolution easily finds credit as the only wisdom and
\nto find a way not to be born again gets established as the only remedy for the
\ndull bondage or the poor shoddy delirium or
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

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<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

the blinded and
\nprecarious happiness and achievement of earthly existence.<\/span><\/p>\n

A remedy yet
\nthere should be and is, a way of redress and a chance of transformation for this
\ntroubled vital nature; but for that the cause of deviation must be found and
\nremedied at the heart of Life itself and in its very principle, since Life too
\nis a power of the Divine and not a creation of some malignant Chance or dark
\nTitanic impulse, however obscure or perverted may be its actual appearance. In
\nLife itself there is the seed of its own salvation, it is from the Life-Energy
\nthat we must get our leverage; for though there is a saving light in Knowledge,
\na redeeming and transforming force in Love, these cannot be effective here
\nunless they secure the consent of Life and can use the instrumentation of some
\ndelivered energy at its centre for a sublimation of the erring human into a
\ndivine Life-Force. It is not possible to cut the difficulty by a splitting up of
\nthe works of sacrifice; we cannot escape it by deciding that we shall do only
\nthe works of Love and Knowledge and leave aside the works of will and power,
\npossession and acquisition, production and fruitful expense of capacity, battle
\nand victory and mastery, striking away from us the larger part of life because
\nit seems to be made of the very stuff of desire and ego and therefore doomed to
\nbe a field of disharmony and mere conflict and disorder. For the division cannot
\nreally be made; or, if attempted, it must fail in its essential purpose, since
\nit would isolate us from the total energies of the World-Power and sterilise an
\nimportant part of integral Nature, just the one force in it that is a necessary
\ninstrument in any world-creative purpose. The Life-Force is an indispensable
\nintermediary, the effectuating element in Nature here; mind needs its alliance
\nif the works of mind are not to remain shining inner formations without a body;
\nthe spirit needs it to give an outer force and form to its manifested
\npossibilities and arrive at a complete self-expression incarnated in Matter. If
\nLife refuses the aid of its intermediary energy to the spirit’s other workings
\nor is itself refused, they are likely to be reduced for all the effect they can
\nhave here to a static seclusion or a golden impotence; or if anything is done,
\nit will be a partial irradiation of our action more subjective than objective,
\nmodifying existence
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

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<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

perhaps, but without
\nforce to change it. Yet if Life brings its forces to the spirit but
\nunregenerate, a worse result may follow since it is likely to reduce the
\nspiritual action of Love or Knowledge to diminished and corrupted motions or
\nmake them accomplices of its own inferior or perverse workings. Life is
\nindispensable to the completeness of the creative spiritual realisation, but
\nlife released, transformed, uplifted, not the ordinary
\nmentalised<\/span>
\nhuman-animal life, nor the demoniac or Titanic, nor even the divine and the
\nundivine mixed together. Whatever may be done by other world-shunning or
\nheaven-seeking disciplines, this is the difficult but unavoidable task of the
\nintegral Yoga; it cannot afford to leave unsolved the problem of the outward
\nworks of Life, it must find in them their native Divinity and ally it firmly and
\nfor ever to the divinities of Love and Knowledge.<\/span><\/p>\n

It is no
\nsolution either to postpone dealing with the works of Life till Love and
\nKnowledge have been evolved to a point at which they can sovereignly and with
\nsafety lay hold on the Life-Force to regenerate it; for we have seen that they
\nhave to rise to immense heights before they can be secure from the vital
\nperversion which hampers or hamstrings their power to deliver. If once our
\nconsciousness could reach the heights of a supramental Nature, then indeed these
\ndisabilities would disappear. But here there is the dilemma that it is
\nimpossible to reach the supramental heights with the burden of an unregenerated
\nLife-Force on our shoulders and equally impossible to regenerate radically the
\nWill-in-Life without bringing down the infallible light and unconquerable power
\nthat belong to the spiritual and supramental levels. The Supramental
\nConsciousness is not only a Knowledge, a Bliss, an intimate Love and Oneness, it
\nis also a Will, a principle of Power and Force, and it cannot descend till the
\nelement of Will, of Power, of Force in this manifested Nature is sufficiently
\ndeveloped and sublimated to receive and bear it. But Will, Power, Force are the
\nnative substance of the Life-Energy, and herein lies the justification for the
\nrefusal of Life to acknowledge the supremacy of Knowledge and Love alone, \u2013 for
\nits push towards the satisfaction of something far more unreflecting, headstrong
\nand dangerous that can yet venture too in its own bold and ardent way towards
\nthe Divine and Absolute. Love and <\/span>
\nWis<\/span><\/span>–<\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 163<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

\n
\ndom<\/span><\/span> are not the
\nonly aspects of the Divine, there is also its aspect of Power. As the mind
\ngropes for Knowledge, as the heart feels out for Love, so the life-force,
\nhowever fumblingly or trepidantly<\/span>, stumbles in search
\nof Power and the control given by Power. It is a mistake of the ethical or
\nreligious mind to condemn Power as in itself a thing not to be accepted or
\nsought after because naturally corrupting and evil; in spite of its apparent
\njustification by a majority of instances, this is at its core a blind and
\nirrational prejudice. However corrupted and misused, as Love and Knowledge too
\nare corrupted and misused, Power is divine and put here for a divine use. Shakti,
\nWill, Power is the driver of the worlds and, whether it be Knowledge-Force or
\nLove-Force or Life-Force or Action-Force or Body-Force, is always spiritual in
\nits origin and divine in its native character. It is the use of it made in the
\nIgnorance by brute, man or Titan that has to be cast aside and replaced by its
\ngreater natural \u2013 even if to us supernormal \u2013 action led by the Light of an
\ninner consciousness which is in tune with the Infinite and the Eternal. The
\nintegral Yoga cannot reject the works of Life and be satisfied with an inward
\nexperience only; it has to go inward in order to change the outward, making the
\nLife-Force a part and a working of a Yoga-Energy which is in touch with the
\nDivine and divine in its guidance.<\/span><\/p>\n

All the
\ndifficulty in dealing spiritually with the works of Life arises because the
\nWill-in-Life for its purposes in the Ignorance has created a false soul of
\ndesire and substituted it for that spark of the Divine which is the true psyche.
\nAll or most of the works of life are at present or seem to be actuated and
\nvitiated by this soul of desire; even those that are ethical or religious, even
\nthose that wear the guise of altruism, philanthropy, self-sacrifice,
\nself-denial, are shot through and through with the threads of its making. This
\nsoul of desire is a separative<\/span> soul of ego and all its
\ninstincts are for a separative<\/span> self-affirmation; it
\npushes always, openly or under more or less shining masks, for its own growth,
\nfor possession, for enjoyment, for conquest and empire. If the curse of disquiet
\nand disharmony and perversion is to be lifted from Life, the true soul, the
\npsychic being, must be given its leading place and there must be a dissolution
\nof the false soul of desire and ego. But this does not mean that life itself
\nmust be
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

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\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

coerced and
\ndenied its native line of fulfilment; for behind this outer life soul of desire
\nthere is in us an inner and true vital being which has not to be dissolved but
\nbrought out into prominence and released to its true working as a power of the
\nDivine Nature. The prominence of this true vital being under the lead of the
\ntrue inmost soul within us is the condition for the divine fulfilment of the
\nobjects of the Life-Force. Those objects will even remain the same in essence,
\nbut transformed in their inner motive and outer character. The Divine Life-Power
\ntoo will be a will for growth, a force of self-affirmation, but affirmation of
\nthe Divine within us, not of the little temporary personality on the surface, \u2013
\ngrowth into the true divine Individual, the central being, the secret
\nimperishable Person who can emerge only by the subordination and disappearance
\nof the ego. This is life’s true object: growth, but a growth of the spirit in
\nNature, affirming and developing itself in mind, life and body; possession, but
\na possession by the Divine of the Divine in all things, and not of things for
\ntheir own sake by the desire of the ego; enjoyment, but an enjoyment of the
\ndivine Ananda in the universe; battle and conquest and empire in the shape of a
\nvictorious conflict with the Powers of Darkness, an entire spiritual self-rule
\nand mastery over inward and outward Nature, a conquest by Knowledge, Love and
\nDivine Will over the domains of the Ignorance.<\/span><\/p>\n

These are the
\nconditions and these must be the aims of the divine effectuation of the works of
\nLife and their progressive transformation which is the third element of the
\ntriple sacrifice. It is not a rationalisation but a supramentalisation, not a
\nmoralising but a spiritualising of life that is the object of the Yoga. It is
\nnot a handling of externals or superficial psychological motives that is its
\nmain purpose, but a refounding<\/span> of life and its action
\non their hidden divine element; for only such a refounding<\/span>
\nof life can bring about its direct government by the secret Divine Power above
\nus and its transfiguration into a manifest expression of the Divinity, not as
\nnow a disguise and a disfiguring mask of the eternal Actor. It is a spiritual
\nessential change of consciousness, not the surface manipulation which is the
\nmethod of Mind and Reason, that can alone make Life other than it now is and
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

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\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

rescue it out of its
\npresent distressed and ambiguous figure. <\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/p>\n

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

 <\/span><\/p>\n

It is then by
\na transformation of life in its very principle, not by an external manipulation
\nof its phenomena, that the integral Yoga proposes to change it from a troubled
\nand ignorant into a luminous and harmonious movement of Nature. There are three
\nconditions which are indispensable for the achievement of this central inner
\nrevolution and new formation; none of them is altogether sufficient in itself,
\nbut by their united threefold power the uplifting can be done, the conversion
\nmade and completely made. For, first, life as it is is<\/span>
\na movement of desire and it has built in us as its centre a desire-soul which
\nrefers to itself all the motions of life and puts in them its own troubled hue
\nand pain of an ignorant, half-lit, baffled endeavour: for a divine living,
\ndesire must be abolished and replaced by a purer and firmer motive-power, the
\ntormented soul of desire dissolved and in its stead there must emerge the calm,
\nstrength, happiness of a true vital being now concealed within us. Next, life as
\nit is is<\/span> driven or led partly by the impulse of the
\nlife-force, partly by a mind which is mostly a servant and abettor of the
\nignorant life-impulse, but in part also its uneasy and not too luminous or
\ncompetent guide and mentor; for a divine life the mind and the life-impulse must
\ncease to be anything but instruments and the inmost psychic being must take
\ntheir place as the leader on the path and the indicator of a divine guidance.
\nLast, life as it is is<\/span> turned towards the satisfaction
\nof the separative<\/span> ego; ego must disappear and be
\nreplaced by the true spiritual person, the central being, and life itself must
\nbe turned towards the fulfilment of the Divine in terrestrial existence; it must
\nfeel a Divine Force awaking within it and become an obedient instrumentation of
\nits purpose.<\/span><\/p>\n

There is
\nnothing that is not ancient and familiar in the first of these three
\ntransforming inner movements; for it has always been one of the principal
\nobjects of spiritual discipline. It has been best formulated in the already
\nexpressed doctrine of the Gita by which a complete renouncement of desire for
\nthe fruits
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

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\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

as the motive of action,
\na complete annulment of desire itself, the complete achievement of a perfect
\nequality are put forward as the normal status of a spiritual being. A perfect
\nspiritual equality is the one true and infallible sign of the cessation of
\ndesire, \u2013 to be equal-souled<\/span> to all things, unmoved by
\njoy and sorrow, the pleasant and the unpleasant, success or failure, to look
\nwith an equal eye on high and low, friend and enemy, the virtuous and the
\nsinner, to see in all beings the manifold manifestation of the One and in all
\nthings the multitudinous play or the slow masked evolution of the embodied
\nSpirit. It is not a mental quiet, aloofness, indifference, not an inert vital
\nquiescence, not a passivity of the physical consciousness consenting to no
\nmovement or to any movement that is the condition aimed at, though these things
\nare sometimes mistaken for this spiritual condition, but a wide comprehensive
\nunmoved universality such as that of the Witness Spirit behind Nature. For all
\nhere seems to be a mobile half-ordered half-confused organisation of forces, but
\nbehind them one can feel a supporting peace, silence, wideness, not inert but
\ncalm, not impotent but potentially omnipotent with a concentrated, stable,
\nimmobile energy in it capable of bearing all the motions of the universe. This
\nPresence behind is equal-souled<\/span> to all things: the
\nenergy it holds in it can be unloosed for any action, but no action will be
\nchosen by any desire in the Witness Spirit; a Truth acts which is beyond and
\ngreater than the action itself or its apparent forms and impulses, beyond and
\ngreater than mind or life-force or body, although it may take for the immediate
\npurpose a mental, a vital or a physical appearance. It is when there is this
\ndeath of desire and this calm equal wideness in the consciousness everywhere,
\nthat the true vital being within us comes out from the veil and reveals its own
\ncalm, intense and potent presence. For such is the true nature of the vital
\nbeing, prāņamaya<\/span> puruşa<\/span>; it
\nis a projection of the Divine Purusha into life, \u2013 tranquil, strong, luminous,
\nmany-energied, obedient to the Divine Will, egoless, yet or rather therefore
\ncapable of all action, achievement, highest or largest enterprise. The true
\nLife-Force too reveals itself as no longer this troubled harassed divided
\nstriving surface energy, but a great and radiant Divine Power, full of peace and
\nstrength and
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

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<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

bliss, a wide-wayed<\/span> Angel of Life with its wings of Might enfolding the
\nuniverse.<\/span><\/p>\n

And yet this
\ntransformation into a large strength and equality is insufficient; for if it
\nopens to us the instrumentation of a Divine Life, it does not provide its
\ngovernment and initiative. It is here that the presence of the released psychic
\nbeing intervenes; it does not give the supreme government and direction, \u2013 for
\nthat is not its function, \u2013 but it supplies during the transition from ignorance
\nto a divine Knowledge a progressive guidance for the inner and outer life and
\naction; it indicates at each moment the method, the way, the steps that will
\nlead to that fulfilled spiritual condition in which a supreme dynamic initiative
\nwill be always there directing the activities of a divinised Life-Force. The
\nlight it sheds illuminates the other parts of the nature which, for want of any
\nbetter guidance than their own confused and groping powers, have been wandering
\nin the rounds of the Ignorance; it gives to mind the intrinsic feeling of the
\nthoughts and perceptions, to life the infallible sense of the movements that are
\nmisled or misleading and those that are well-inspired; something like a quiet
\noracle from within discloses the causes of our stumblings, warns in time against
\ntheir repetition, extracts from experience and intuition the law, not rigid but
\nplastic, of a just direction for our acts, a right stepping, an accurate
\nimpulse. A will is created that becomes more in consonance with evolving Truth
\nrather than with the circling and dilatory mazes of a seeking Error. A
\ndetermined orientation towards the greater Light to be, a soul-instinct, a
\npsychic tact and insight into the true substance, motion and intention of
\nthings, coming always nearer and nearer to a spiritual vision, to a knowledge by
\ninner contact, inner sight and even identity, begin to replace the superficial
\nkeenness of mental judgment and the eager graspings of the life-force. The works
\nof Life right themselves, escape from confusion, substitute for the artificial
\nor legal order imposed by the intellect and for the arbitrary rule of desire the
\nguidance of the soul’s inner insight, enter into the profound paths of the
\nSpirit. Above all, the psychic being imposes on life the law of the sacrifice of
\nall its works as an offering to the Divine and the Eternal. Life becomes a call
\nto that which is beyond Life;
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

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\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

its every smallest act
\nenlarges with the sense of the Infinite.<\/span><\/p>\n

As an inner
\nequality increases and with it the sense of the true vital being waiting for the
\ngreater direction it has to serve, as the psychic call too increases in all the
\nmembers of our nature, That to which the call is addressed begins to reveal
\nitself, descends to take possession of the life and its energies and fills them
\nwith the height, intimacy, vastness of its presence and its purpose. In many, if
\nnot most, it manifests something of itself even before the equality and the open
\npsychic urge or guidance are there. A call of the veiled psychic element
\noppressed by the mass of the outer ignorance and crying for deliverance, a
\nstress of eager meditation and seeking for knowledge, a longing of the heart, a
\npassionate will ignorant yet but sincere may break the lid that shuts off that
\nHigher from this Lower Nature and open the floodgates. A little of the Divine
\nPerson may reveal itself or some Light, Power, Bliss, Love out of the Infinite.
\nThis may be a momentary revelation, a flash or a brief-lived gleam that soon
\nwithdraws and waits for the preparation of the nature; but also it may repeat
\nitself, grow, endure. A long and large and comprehensive working will then have
\nbegun, sometimes luminous or intense, sometimes slow and obscure. A Divine Power
\ncomes in front at times and leads and compels or instructs and enlightens; at
\nothers it withdraws into the background and seems to leave the being to its own
\nresources. All that is ignorant, obscure, perverted or simply imperfect and
\ninferior in the being is raised up, perhaps brought to its acme, dealt with,
\ncorrected, exhausted, shown its own disastrous results, compelled to call for
\nits own cessation or transformation or expelled as worthless or incorrigible
\nfrom the nature. This cannot be a smooth and even process; alternations there
\nare of day and night, illumination and darkness, calm and construction or battle
\nand upheaval, the presence of the growing Divine Consciousness and its absence,
\nheights of hope and abysses of despair, the clasp of the Beloved and the anguish
\nof its absence, the overwhelming invasion, the compelling deceit, the fierce
\nopposition, the disabling mockery of hostile Powers or the help and comfort and
\ncommunion of the Gods and the Divine Messengers. A great and long revolution and
\nchurning of the <\/span>ocean<\/span> of <\/span>
\nLife<\/span> with strong
\nemergences of
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\n

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its nectar and its poison
\nis enforced till all is ready and the increasing Descent finds a being, a nature
\nprepared and conditioned for its complete rule and its all-encompassing
\npresence. But if the equality and the psychic light and will are already there,
\nthen this process, though it cannot be dispensed with, can still be much
\nlightened and facilitated: it will be rid of its worst dangers; an inner calm,
\nhappiness, confidence will support the steps through all the difficulties and
\ntrials of the transformation and the growing Force profiting by the full assent
\nof the nature will rapidly diminish and eliminate the power of the opposing
\nforces. A sure guidance and protection will be present throughout, sometimes
\nstanding in front, sometimes working behind the veil, and the power of the end
\nwill be already there even in the beginning and in the long middle stages of the
\ngreat endeavour. For at all times the seeker will be aware of the Divine Guide
\nand Protector or the working of the supreme Mother-Force; he will know that all
\nis done for the best, the progress assured, the victory inevitable. In either
\ncase the process is the same and unavoidable, a taking up of the whole nature,
\nof the whole life, of the internal and of the external, to reveal and handle and
\ntransform its forces and their movements under the pressure of a diviner Life
\nfrom above, until all here has been possessed by greater spiritual powers and
\nmade an instrumentation of a spiritual action and a divine purpose.<\/span><\/p>\n

In this
\nprocess and at an early stage of it it<\/span> becomes evident
\nthat what we know of ourselves, our present conscious existence, is only a
\nrepresentative formation, a superficial activity, a changing external result of
\na vast mass of concealed existence. Our visible life and the actions of that
\nlife are no more than a series of significant expressions, but that which it
\ntries to express is not on the surface; our existence is something much larger
\nthan this apparent frontal being which we suppose ourselves to be and which we
\noffer to the world around us. This frontal and external being is a confused
\namalgam of mind-formations, life-movements, physical functionings of which even
\nan exhaustive analysis into its component parts and machinery fails to reveal
\nthe whole secret. It is only when we go behind, below, above into the hidden
\nstretches of our being that we can know it; the most thorough
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 170<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

and acute surface
\nscrutiny and manipulation cannot give us the true understanding or the
\ncompletely effective control of our life, its purposes, its activities; that
\ninability indeed is the cause of the failure of reason, morality and every other
\nsurface action to control and deliver and perfect the life of the human race.
\nFor below even our most obscure physical consciousness is a subconscious being
\nin which as in a covering and supporting soil are all manner of hidden seeds
\nthat sprout up, unaccountably to us, on our surface and into which we are
\nconstantly throwing fresh seeds that prolong our past and will influence our
\nfuture, \u2013 a subconscious being, obscure, small in its motions, capriciously and
\nalmost fantastically subrational<\/span>, but of an immense
\npotency for the earth-life. Again behind our mind, our life, our conscious
\nphysical there is a larger subliminal consciousness, \u2013 there are inner mental,
\ninner vital, inner more subtle physical reaches supported by an inmost psychic
\nexistence which is the animating soul of all the rest; and in these hidden
\nreaches too lie a mass of numerous pre-existent personalities which supply the
\nmaterial, the motive-forces, the impulsions of our developing surface existence.
\nFor in each one of us here there may be one central person, but also a multitude
\nof subordinate personalities created by the past history of its manifestation or
\nby expressions of it on these inner planes which support its present play in
\nthis external material cosmos. And while on our surface we are cut off from all
\naround us except through an exterior mind and sense contact which delivers but
\nlittle of us to our world or of our world to us, in these inner reaches the
\nbarrier between us and the rest of existence is thin and easily broken; there we
\ncan feel at once \u2013 not merely infer from their results, but feel directly \u2013 the
\naction of the secret world-forces, mind-forces, life-forces, subtle physical
\nforces that constitute universal and individual existence; we shall even be
\nable, if we will but train ourselves to it, to lay our hands on these
\nworld-forces that throw themselves on us or surround us and more and more to
\ncontrol or at least strongly modify their action on us and others, their
\nformations, their very movements. Yet again, above our human mind are still
\ngreater reaches superconscient to it and from there secretly descend influences,
\npowers, touches which are the original determinants of things here and,
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 171<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

i<\/a>f they
\nwere called down in their fullness, could altogether alter the whole make and
\neconomy of life in the material universe. It is all this latent experience and
\nknowledge that the Divine Force working upon  <\/span>us by our opening to it in the integral Yoga,
\nprogressively reveals to us, uses and works out the consequences as means and
\nsteps towards a transformation of our whole being and nature. Our life is
\nthenceforth no longer a little rolling wave on the surface, but interpenetrant
\nif not coincident with the cosmic life. Our spirit, our self rises not only into
\nan inner identity with some wide cosmic Self but into some contact with that
\nwhich is beyond, though aware of and dominant over the action of the universe.<\/span><\/p>\n

It is thus by
\nan integralisation of our divided being that the Divine Shakti in the Yoga will
\nproceed to its object; for liberation, perfection, mastery are dependent on this
\nintegralisation, since the little wave on the surface cannot control its own
\nmovement, much less have any true control over the vast life around it. The
\nShakti, the power of the Infinite and the Eternal descends within us, works,
\nbreaks up our present psychological formations, shatters every wall, widens,
\nliberates, presents us with always newer and greater powers of vision, ideation,
\nperception and newer and greater life-motives, enlarges and new-models
\nincreasingly the soul and its instruments, confronts us with every imperfection
\nin order to convict and destroy it, opens to a greater perfection, does in a
\nbrief period the work of many lives or ages so that new births and new vistas
\nopen constantly within us. Expansive in her action, she frees the consciousness
\nfrom confinement in the body; it can go out in trance or sleep or even waking
\nand enter into worlds or other regions of this world and act there or carry back
\nits experience. It spreads out, feeling the body only as a small part of itself,
\nand begins to contain what before contained it; it achieves the cosmic
\nconsciousness and extends itself to be commensurate with the universe. It begins
\nto know inwardly and directly and not merely by external observation and contact
\nthe forces at play in the world, feels their movement, distinguishes their
\nfunctioning and can operate immediately upon them as the scientist operates upon
\nphysical forces, accept their action and results in our mind, life, body or
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 172<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

reject them or modify,
\nchange, reshape, create immense new powers and movements in place of the old
\nsmall functionings of the nature. We begin to perceive the working of the forces
\nof universal Mind and to know how our thoughts are created by that working,
\nseparate from within the truth and falsehood of our perceptions, enlarge their
\nfield, extend and illumine their significance, become master of our own minds
\nand active to shape the movements of Mind in the world around us. We begin to
\nperceive the flow and surge of the universal life-forces, detect the origin and
\nlaw of our feelings, emotions, sensations, passions, are free to accept, reject,
\nnew-create, open to wider, rise to higher planes of Life-Power. We begin to
\nperceive too the key to the enigma of Matter, follow the interplay of Mind and
\nLife and Consciousness upon it, discover more and more its instrumental and
\nresultant function and detect ultimately the last secret of Matter as a form not
\nmerely of Energy but of involved and arrested or unstably fixed and restricted
\nconsciousness and begin to see too the possibility of its liberation and
\nplasticity of response to higher Powers, its possibilities for the conscious and
\nno longer the more than half-inconscient incarnation and self-expression of the
\nSpirit. All this and more becomes more and more possible as the working of the
\nDivine Shakti increases in us and, against much resistance or labour to respond
\nof our obscure consciousness, through much struggle and movement of progress and
\nregression and renewed progress necessitated by the work of intensive
\ntransformation of a half-inconscient into a conscious substance, moves to a
\ngreater purity, truth, height, range. All depends on the psychic awakening in
\nus, the completeness of our response to her and our growing surrender.<\/span><\/p>\n

But all this
\ncan only constitute a greater inner life with a greater possibility of the outer
\naction and is a transitional achievement; the full transformation can come only
\nby the ascent of the sacrifice to its farthest heights and its action upon life
\nwith the power and light and beatitude of the divine supramental Gnosis. For
\nthen alone all the forces that are divided and express themselves imperfectly in
\nlife and its works are raised to their original unity, harmony, single truth,
\nauthentic absoluteness and entire significance. There Knowledge and Will are
\none, Love and Force a
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 173<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

single movement; the
\nopposites that afflict us here are resolved into their reconciled unity: good
\ndevelops its absolute and evil divesting itself of its error returns to the good
\nthat was behind it; sin and virtue vanish in a divine purity and an infallible
\ntruth-movement; the dubious evanescence of pleasure disappears in a Bliss that
\nis the play of an eternal and happy spiritual certitude, and pain in perishing
\ndiscovers the touch of an Ananda which was betrayed by some dark perversion and
\nincapacity of the will of the Inconscient to receive it. These things, to the
\nMind an imagination or a mystery, become evident and capable of experience as
\nthe consciousness rises out of limited embodied Matter-mind to the freedom and
\nfullness of the higher and higher ranges of the super-intelligence; but they can
\nbecome entirely true and normal only when the supramental becomes the law of the
\nnature.<\/span><\/p>\n

It is
\ntherefore on the accomplishment of this ascent and on the possibility of a full
\ndynamism from these highest levels descending into earth-consciousness that is
\ndependent the justification of Life, its salvation, its transformation into a
\nDivine Life in a transfigured terrestrial Nature.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/p>\n

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

 <\/span><\/p>\n

The nature of
\nthe integral Yoga so conceived, so conditioned, progressing by these spiritual
\nmeans, turning upon this integral transformation of the nature, determines of
\nitself its answer to the question of the ordinary activities of life and their
\nplace in the Yoga.<\/span><\/p>\n

There is not
\nand cannot be here any ascetic or contemplative or mystic abandonment of works
\nand life altogether, any gospel of an absorbed meditation and inactivity, any
\ncutting away or condemnation of the Life-Force and its activities, any rejection
\nof the manifestation in the earth-nature. It may be necessary for the seeker at
\nany period to withdraw into himself, to remain plunged in his inner being, to
\nshut out from him the noise and turmoil of the life of the Ignorance until a
\ncertain inner change has been accomplished or something achieved without which a
\nfurther effective action on life has become difficult or impossible. But this
\ncan only be a period or an episode, a temporary necessity or
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 174<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

a preparatory spiritual
\nmanoeuvre; it cannot be the rule of his Yoga or its principle.<\/span><\/p>\n

A splitting up
\nof the activities of human existence on a religious or an ethical basis or both
\ntogether, a restriction to the works of worship only or to the works of
\nphilanthropy and beneficence only would be contrary to the spirit of the
\nintegral Yoga. Any merely mental rule or merely mental acceptance or repudiation
\nis alien to the purpose and method of its discipline. All must be taken to a
\nspiritual height and placed upon a spiritual basis; the presence of an inner
\nspiritual change and an outer transformation must be enforced upon the whole of
\nlife and not merely on a part of life; all must be accepted that is helpful
\ntowards this change or admits it, all must be rejected that is incapable or
\ninapt or refuses to submit itself to the transforming movement. There must be no
\nattachment to any form of things or of life, any object, any activity; all must
\nbe renounced if need be, all must be admitted that the Divine chooses as its
\nmaterial for the divine life. But what accepts or rejects must be neither mind
\nnor open or camouflaged vital will of desire nor ethical sense, but the
\ninsistence of the psychic being, the command of the Divine Guide of the Yoga,
\nthe vision of the higher Self or Spirit, the illumined guidance of the Master.
\nThe way of the spirit is not a mental way; a mental rule or mental consciousness
\ncannot be its determinant or its leader.<\/span><\/p>\n

Equally, a
\ncombination or a compromise between two orders of consciousness, the spiritual
\nand the mental or the spiritual and the vital or a mere sublimation from within
\nof Life outwardly unchanged cannot be the law or the aim of the Yoga. All life
\nmust be taken up but all life must be transformed; all must become a part, a
\nform, an adequate expression of a spiritual being in the supramental nature.
\nThis is the height and crowning movement of a spiritual evolution in the
\nmaterial world, and as the change from the vital animal to mental man made life
\nanother thing altogether in basic consciousness, scope, significance, so this
\nchange from the materialised mental being to the spiritual and supramental being
\nusing but not dominated by matter must take up life and make it another thing
\naltogether than the flawed, imperfect limited human, quite other in its basic
\nconsciousness,
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 175<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

scope, significance. All
\nforms of life activity that cannot bear the change must disappear, all that can
\nbear it will survive and enter into the kingdom of the spirit. A divine Force is
\nat work and will choose at each moment what has to be done or has not to be
\ndone, what has to be momentarily or permanently taken up, momentarily or
\npermanently abandoned. For provided we do not substitute for that our desire or
\nour ego, and to that end the soul must be always awake, always on guard, alive
\nto the divine guidance, resistant to the undivine misleading from within or
\nwithout us, that Force is sufficient and alone competent and she will lead us to
\nthe fulfilment along ways and by means too large, too inward, too complex for
\nthe mind to follow, much less to dictate. It is an arduous and difficult and
\ndangerous way, but there is none other.<\/span><\/p>\n

Two rules
\nalone there are that will diminish the difficulty and obviate the danger. One
\nmust reject all that comes from the ego, from vital desire, from the mere mind
\nand its presumptuous reasoning incompetence, all that ministers to these agents
\nof the Ignorance. One must learn to hear and follow the voice of the inmost
\nsoul, the direction of the Guru, the command of the Master, the working of the
\nDivine Mother. Whoever clings to the desires and weaknesses of the flesh, the
\ncravings and passions of the vital in its turbulent ignorance, the dictates of
\nhis personal mind unsilenced and unillumined by a greater knowledge, cannot find
\nthe true inner law and is heaping obstacles in the way of the divine fulfilment.
\nWhoever is able to detect and renounce those obscuring agencies and to discern
\nand follow the true Guide within and without will discover the spiritual law and
\nreach the goal of the Yoga.<\/span><\/p>\n

A radical and
\ntotal change of consciousness is not only the whole meaning but, in an
\nincreasing force and by progressive stages, the whole method of the integral
\nYoga. <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 176<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chapter VI   The Ascent of the Sacrifice \u2013 2   The Works of Love \u2013The Works of Life   IT IS therefore through the sacrifice of…<\/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-985","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\/985","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=985"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/985\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=985"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=985"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=985"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}