{"id":987,"date":"2013-07-13T01:31:46","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:31:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=987"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:31:46","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:31:46","slug":"11-the-sacrifice-the-triune-path-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\/11-the-sacrifice-the-triune-path-vol-20-the-synthesis-of-yoga-volume-20","title":{"rendered":"-11_The Sacrifice, the Triune Path.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
\n
\n


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

The
\nSacrifice, the Triune Path and the Lord of the Sacrifice<\/span><\/font><\/b> <\/font> <\/span><\/p>\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 <\/font> <\/span>T<\/font><\/span>HE<\/span><\/font> law of sacrifice is the
\ncommon divine action that was thrown out into the world in its beginning as a
\nsymbol of the solidarity of the universe. It is by the attraction of this law
\nthat a divinising principle, a saving power descends to limit and correct and
\ngradually to eliminate the errors of an egoistic and self-divided creation.
\nThis descent, this sacrifice of the Purusha, the Divine Soul submitting itself
\nto Force and Matter so that it may inform and illuminate them, is the seed of
\nredemption of this world of Inconscience and Ignorance. \u201cFor with sacrifice as
\ntheir companion,\u201d says the Gita, \u201cthe All-Father created these peoples.\u201d The
\nacceptance of the law of sacrifice is a practical recognition by the ego that
\nit is neither alone in the world nor chief in the world. It is its admission
\nthat, even in this much fragmented existence, there is beyond itself and behind
\nthat which is not its own egoistic person, something greater and completer, a
\ndiviner All which demands from it subordination and service. Indeed, sacrifice
\nis imposed and, where need be, compelled by the universal World-Force; it takes
\nit even from those who do not consciously recognise the law, \u2013 inevitably,
\nbecause this is the intrinsic nature of things. Our ignorance or our false
\negoistic view of life can make no difference to this eternal bedrock truth of
\nNature. For this is the truth in Nature, that this ego which thinks itself a
\nseparate independent being and claims to live for itself, is not and cannot be
\nindependent nor separate, nor can it live to itself even if it would, but
\nrather all are linked together by a secret Oneness. Each existence is
\ncontinually giving out perforce from its stock; out of its mental receipts from
\nNature or its vital and physical assets and acquisitions and belongings a
\nstream goes to all that is around it. And always again it receives something
\nfrom its environment gratis or in return for its voluntary or involun<\/span>–<\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage
\n\u2013 98<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

tary<\/span><\/span> tribute. For it is only
\nby this giving and receiving that it can effect its own growth while at the
\nsame time it helps the sum of things. At length, though at first slowly and
\npartially, we learn to make the conscious sacrifice; even, in the end, we take
\njoy to give ourselves and what we envisage as belonging to us in a spirit of
\nlove and devotion to That which appears for the moment other than ourselves and
\nis certainly other than our limited personalities. The sacrifice and the divine
\nreturn for our sacrifice then become a gladly accepted means towards our last
\nperfection; for it is recognised now as the road to the fulfilment in us of the
\neternal purpose.<\/span><\/p>\n

But, most often, the
\nsacrifice is done unconsciously, egoistically and without knowledge or
\nacceptance of the true meaning of the great world-rite. It is so that the vast
\nmajority of earth-creatures do it; and, when it is so done, the individual
\nderives only a mechanical minimum of natural inevitable profit, achieves by it
\nonly a slow painful progress limited and tortured by the smallness and
\nsuffering of the ego. Only when the heart, the will and the mind of knowledge
\nassociate themselves with the law and gladly follow it, can there come the deep
\njoy and the happy fruitfulness of divine sacrifice. The mind’s knowledge of the
\nlaw and the heart’s gladness in it culminate in the perception that it is to
\nour own Self and Spirit and the one Self and Spirit of all that we give. And
\nthis is true even when our self-offering is still to our fellow-creatures or to
\nlesser Powers and Principles and not yet to the Supreme. \u201cNot for the sake of
\nthe wife,\u201d says Yajnavalkya in the Upanishad, \u201cbut for the sake of the Self is
\nthe wife dear to us.\u201d This in the lower sense of the individual self is the
\nhard fact behind the coloured and passionate professions of egoistic love; but
\nin a higher sense it is the inner significance of that love too which is not
\negoistic but divine. All true love and all sacrifice are in their essence
\nNature’s contradiction of the primary egoism and its separative error; it is
\nher attempt to turn from a necessary first fragmentation towards a recovered
\noneness. All unity between creatures is in its essence a self-finding, a fusion
\nwith that from which we have separated, a discovery of one’s self in others. <\/span><\/p>\n

But it is only a divine
\nlove and unity that can possess in the <\/span>
\n
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage
\n\u2013 99<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

light what the human forms of these things seek
\nfor in the darkness. For the true unity is not merely an association and
\nagglomeration like that of physical cells joined by a life of common interests;
\nit is not even an emotional understanding, sympathy, solidarity or close
\ndrawing together. Only then are we really unified with those separated from us
\nby the divisions of Nature, when we annul the division and find ourselves in
\nthat which seemed to us not ourselves. Association is a vital and physical
\nunity; its sacrifice is that of mutual aid and concessions. Nearness, sympathy,
\nsolidarity create a mental, moral and emotional unity; theirs is a sacrifice of
\nmutual support and mutual gratifications. But the true unity is spiritual; its
\nsacrifice is a mutual self-giving, an interfusion of our inner substance. The
\nlaw of sacrifice travels in Nature towards its culmination in this complete and
\nunreserved self-giving; it awakens the consciousness of one common self in the
\ngiver and the object of the sacrifice. This culmination of sacrifice is the
\nheight even of human love and devotion when it tries to become divine; for
\nthere too the highest peak of love points into a heaven of complete mutual
\nself-giving, its summit is the rapturous fusing of two souls into one.<\/span><\/p>\n

This profounder idea of
\nthe world-wide law is at the heart of the teaching about works given in the Gita;
\na spiritual union with the Highest by sacrifice, an unreserved self-giving to
\nthe Eternal is the core of its doctrine. The vulgar conception of sacrifice is
\nan act of painful self-immolation, austere self-mortification, difficult
\nself-effacement; this kind of sacrifice may go even as far as self-mutilation
\nand self-torture. These things may be temporarily necessary in man’s hard
\nendeavour to exceed his natural self; if the egoism in his nature is violent
\nand obstinate, it has to be met sometimes by an answering strong internal
\nrepression and counterbalancing violence. But the Gita discourages any excess
\nof violence done to oneself; for the self within is really the Godhead
\nevolving, it is Krishna, it is the Divine; it has not to be troubled and tortured
\nas the Titans of the world trouble and torture it, but to be increased,
\nfostered, cherished, luminously opened to a divine light and strength and joy
\nand wideness. It is not one’s self, but the band of the spirit’s inner enemies
\nthat we have to discourage, expel, slay upon the <\/span>
\n
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage
\n\u2013 100<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

altar of the growth of the spirit; these can be
\nruthlessly excised, whose names are desire, wrath, inequality, greed,
\nattachment to outward pleasures and pains, the cohort of usurping demons that
\nare the cause of the soul’s errors and sufferings. These should be regarded not
\nas part of oneself but as intruders and perverters of our self’s real and
\ndiviner nature; these have to be sacrificed in the harsher sense of the word,
\nwhatever pain in going they may throw by reflection on the consciousness of the
\nseeker.<\/span><\/p>\n

But the true essence of
\nsacrifice is not self-immolation, it is self-giving; its object not
\nself-effacement, but self-fulfilment; its method not self-mortification, but a
\ngreater life, not self-mutilation, but a transformation of our natural human
\nparts into divine members, not self-torture, but a passage from a lesser
\nsatisfaction to a greater Ananda. There is only one thing painful in the
\nbeginning to a raw or turbid part of the surface nature; it is the indispensable
\ndiscipline demanded, the denial necessary for the merging of the incomplete
\nego. But for that there can be a speedy and enormous compensation in the
\ndiscovery of a real greater or ultimate completeness in others, in all things,
\nin the cosmic oneness, in the freedom of the transcendent Self and Spirit, in
\nthe rapture of the touch of the Divine. Our sacrifice is not a giving without
\nany return or any fruitful acceptance from the other side; it is an interchange
\nbetween the embodied soul and conscious Nature in us and the eternal Spirit.
\nFor even though no return is demanded, yet there is the knowledge deep within
\nus that a marvellous return is inevitable. The soul knows that it does not give
\nitself to God in vain; claiming nothing, it yet receives the infinite riches of
\nthe divine Power and Presence.<\/span><\/p>\n

Last, there is to be
\nconsidered the recipient of the sacrifice and the manner of the sacrifice. The
\nsacrifice may be offered to others or it may be offered to divine Powers; it may
\nbe offered to the cosmic All or it may be offered to the transcendent Supreme.
\nThe worship given may take any shape from the dedication of a leaf or flower, a
\ncup of water, a handful of rice, a loaf of bread, to consecration of all that
\nwe possess and the submission of all that we are. Whoever the recipient,
\nwhatever the gift, it is the Supreme, the Eternal in things, <\/span>
\n
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage
\n\u2013 101<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

who receives and accepts it, even if it be
\nrejected or ignored by the immediate recipient. For the Supreme who transcends the
\nuniverse, is yet here too, however veiled, in us and in the world and in its
\nhappenings; he is there as the omniscient Witness and Receiver of all our works
\nand their secret Master. All our actions, all our efforts, even our sins and
\nstumblings and sufferings and struggles are obscurely or consciously, known to
\nus and seen or else unknown and in a disguise, governed in their last result by
\nthe One. All is turned towards him in his numberless forms and offered through
\nthem to the single Omnipresence. In whatever form and with whatever spirit we
\napproach him, in that form and with that spirit he receives the sacrifice.<\/span><\/p>\n

And the fruit also of
\nthe sacrifice of works varies according to the work, according to the intention
\nin the work and according to the spirit that is behind the intention. But all
\nother sacrifices are partial, egoistic, mixed, temporal, incomplete, \u2013 even
\nthose offered to the highest Powers and Principles keep this character: the
\nresult too is partial, limited, temporal, mixed in its reactions, effective
\nonly for a minor or intermediate purpose. The one entirely acceptable sacrifice
\nis a last and highest and uttermost self-giving, \u2013 it is that surrender made
\nface to face, with devotion and knowledge, freely and without any reserve to
\nOne who is at once our immanent Self, the environing constituent All, the
\nSupreme Reality beyond this or any manifestation and, secretly, all these
\ntogether, concealed everywhere, the immanent Transcendence. For to the soul
\nthat wholly gives itself to him, God also gives himself altogether. Only the
\none who offers his whole nature, finds the<\/span><\/p>\n

Self. Only the one who can give everything,
\nenjoys the Divine All everywhere. Only a supreme self-abandonment attains to
\nthe Supreme. Only the sublimation by sacrifice of all that we are, can enable
\nus to embody the Highest and live here in the immanent consciousness of the
\ntranscendent 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

This, in short, is the
\ndemand made on us, that we should turn our whole life into a conscious
\nsacrifice. Every moment and every movement of our being is to be resolved into
\na continuous<\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage
\n\u2013 102<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

and a devoted self-giving to the Eternal. All
\nour actions, not less the smallest and most ordinary and trifling than the
\ngreatest and most uncommon and noble, must be performed as consecrated acts.
\nOur individualised nature must live in the single consciousness of an inner and
\nouter movement dedicated to Something that is beyond us and greater than our
\nego. No matter what the gift or to whom it is presented by us, there must be a
\nconsciousness in the act that we are presenting it to the one divine Being in
\nall beings. Our commonest or most grossly material actions must assume this
\nsublimated character; when we eat, we should be conscious that we are giving
\nour food to that Presence in us; it must be a sacred offering in a temple and
\nthe sense of a mere physical need or self-gratification must pass away from us.
\nIn any great labour, in any high discipline, in any difficult or noble
\nenterprise, whether undertaken for ourselves, for others or for the race, it
\nwill no longer be possible to stop short at the idea of the race, of ourselves
\nor of others. The thing we are doing must be consciously offered as a sacrifice
\nof works, not to these, but either through them or directly to the One Godhead;
\nthe Divine Inhabitant who was hidden by these figures must be no longer hidden
\nbut ever present to our soul, our mind, our sense. The workings and results of
\nour acts must be put in the hands of that One in the feeling that that Presence
\nis the Infinite and Most High by whom alone our labour and our aspiration are
\npossible. For in his being all takes place; for him all labour and aspiration
\nare taken from us by Nature and offered on his altar. Even in those things in
\nwhich Nature is herself very plainly the worker and we only the witnesses of
\nher working and its containers and supporters, there should be the same
\nconstant memory and insistent consciousness of a work and of its divine Master.
\nOur very inspiration and respiration, our very heart-beats can and must be made
\nconscious in us as the living rhythm of the universal sacrifice.<\/span><\/p>\n

It is clear that a
\nconception of this kind and its effective practice must carry in them three
\nresults that are of a central importance for our spiritual ideal. It is
\nevident, to begin with, that, even if such a discipline is begun without
\ndevotion, it leads straight and inevitably towards the highest devotion
\npossible;<\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage
\n\u2013 103<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

for it must deepen naturally into the completest
\nadoration imaginable, the most profound God-love. There is bound up with it a
\ngrowing sense of the Divine in all things, a deepening communion with the
\nDivine in all our thought, will and action and at every moment of our lives, a
\nmore and more moved consecration to the Divine of the totality of our being.
\nNow these implications of the Yoga of works are also of the very essence of an
\nintegral and absolute Bhakti. The seeker who puts them into living practice
\nmakes in himself continually a constant, active and effective representation of
\nthe very spirit of self-devotion, and it is inevitable that out of it there
\nshould emerge the most engrossing worship of the Highest to whom is given this
\nservice. An absorbing love for the Divine Presence to whom he feels an always
\nmore intimate closeness, grows upon the consecrated worker. And with it is born
\nor in it is contained a universal love too for all these beings, living forms
\nand creatures that are habitations of the Divine \u2013 not the brief restless
\ngrasping emotions of division, but the settled selfless love that is the deeper
\nvibration of oneness. In all the seeker begins to meet the one Object of his
\nadoration and service. The way of works turns by this road of sacrifice to meet
\nthe path of Devotion; it can be itself a devotion as complete, as absorbing, as
\nintegral as any the desire of the heart can ask for or the passion of the mind
\ncan imagine.<\/span><\/p>\n

Next, the practice of
\nthis Yoga demands a constant inward remembrance of the one central liberating
\nknowledge, and a constant active externalising of it in works comes in too to
\nintensify the remembrance. In all is the one Self, the one Divine is all; all
\nare in the Divine, all are the Divine and there is nothing else in the
\nuniverse, \u2013 this thought or this faith is the whole background until it becomes
\nthe whole substance of the consciousness of the worker. A memory, a
\nself-dynamising meditation of this kind, must and does in its end turn into a
\nprofound and uninterrupted vision and a vivid and all-embracing consciousness
\nof that which we so powerfully remember or on which we so constantly meditate.
\nFor it compels a constant reference at each moment to the Origin of all being
\nand will and action and there is at once an embracing and exceeding of all
\nparticular forms and appearances in That which is their cause and upholder.
\nThis way<\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage
\n\u2013 104<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

cannot go to its end without a seeing vivid and
\nvital, as concrete in its way as physical sight, of the works of the universal
\nSpirit everywhere. On its summits it rises into a constant living and thinking
\nand willing and acting in the presence of the Supramental, the Transcendent.
\nWhatever we see and hear, whatever we touch and sense, all of which we are
\nconscious, has to be known and felt by us as That which we worship and serve;
\nall has to be turned into an image of the Divinity, perceived as a
\ndwelling-place of his Godhead, enveloped with the eternal Omnipresence. In its
\nclose, if not long<\/span><\/p>\n

before it, this way of works turns by communion
\nwith the Divine Presence, Will and Force into a way of Knowledge more complete
\nand integral than any the mere creature intelligence can construct or the
\nsearch of the intellect can discover.<\/span><\/p>\n

Lastly, the practice of
\nthis Yoga of sacrifice compels us to renounce all the inner supports of egoism,
\ncasting them out of our mind and will and actions, and to eliminate its seed,
\nits presence, its influence out of our nature. All must be done for the Divine;
\nall must be directed towards the Divine. Nothing must be attempted for
\nourselves as a separate existence; nothing done for others, whether neighbours,
\nfriends, family, country or mankind or other creatures merely because they are<\/span><\/p>\n

connected with our personal life and thought and
\nsentiment or because the ego takes a preferential interest in their welfare. In
\nthis way of doing and seeing all works and all life become only a daily dynamic
\nworship and service of the Divine in the unbounded temple of his own vast
\ncosmic existence. Life becomes more and more the sacrifice of the eternal in
\nthe individual constantly self-offered to the eternal Transcendence. It is
\noffered in the wide sacrificial ground of the field of the eternal cosmic
\nSpirit; and the Force too that offers it is the eternal Force, the omnipresent
\nMother. Therefore is this way a way of union and communion by acts and by the
\nspirit and knowledge in the act as complete and integral as any our Godward
\nwill can hope for or our soul’s strength execute.<\/span><\/p>\n

It has all the power of
\na way of works integral and absolute, but because of its law of sacrifice and
\nself-giving to the Divine Self and Master, it is accompanied on its one side by
\nthe whole power of the path of Love and on the other by the whole <\/span>
\n
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage
\n\u2013 105 <\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

power of the path of Knowledge. At its end all
\nthese three divine Powers work together, fused, united, completed, perfected by
\neach other.<\/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>*<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/p>\n

The Divine, the Eternal
\nis the Lord of our sacrifice of works and union with him in all our being and
\nconsciousness and in its expressive instruments is the one object of the
\nsacrifice; the steps of the sacrifice of works must therefore be measured,
\nfirst, by the growth in our nature of something that brings us nearer to divine
\nNature, but secondly also by an experience of the Divine, his presence, his
\nmanifestation to us, an increasing closeness and union with that Presence. But
\nthe Divine is in his essence infinite and his manifestation too is
\nmultitudinously infinite. If that is so, it is not likely that our true
\nintegral perfection in being and in nature can come by one kind of realisation
\nalone; it must combine many different strands of divine experience. It cannot
\nbe reached by the exclusive pursuit of a single line of identity till that is
\nraised to its absolute; it must harmonise many aspects of the Infinite. An
\nintegral consciousness with a multiform dynamic experience is essential for the
\ncomplete transformation of our nature.<\/span><\/p>\n

There is one fundamental
\nperception indispensable towards any integral knowledge or many-sided
\nexperience of this Infinite. It is to realise the Divine in its essential self
\nand truth unaltered by forms and phenomena. Otherwise we are likely to remain
\ncaught in the net of appearances or wander confusedly in a chaotic multitude of
\ncosmic or particular aspects, and if we avoid this confusion, it will be at the
\nprice of getting chained to some mental formula or shut up in a limited
\npersonal experience. The one secure and all-reconciling truth which is the very
\nfoundation of the universe is this that life is the manifestation of an
\nuncreated Self and Spirit, and the key to life’s hidden secret is the true relation
\nof this Spirit with its own created existences. There is behind all this life
\nthe look of an eternal Being upon its multitudinous becomings; there is around
\nand everywhere in it the envelopment and penetration of a manifestation in time
\nby an unmani<\/span>–<\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage
\n\u2013 106<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

fested<\/span><\/span> timeless Eternal. But
\nthis knowledge is valueless for Yoga if it is only an intellectual and
\nmetaphysical notion void of life and barren of consequence; a mental
\nrealisation alone cannot be sufficient for the seeker. For what Yoga searches
\nafter is not truth of thought alone or truth of mind alone, but the dynamic
\ntruth of a living and revealing spiritual experience. There must awake in us a
\nconstant indwelling and enveloping nearness, a vivid perception, a close
\nfeeling and communion, a concrete sense and contact of a true and infinite
\nPresence always and everywhere. That Presence must remain with us as the
\nliving, pervading Reality in which we and all things exist and move and act,
\nand we must feel it always and everywhere, concrete, visible, inhabiting all
\nthings; it must be patent to us as their true Self, tangible as their
\nimperishable Essence, met by us closely as their inmost Spirit. To see, to
\nfeel, to sense, to contact in every way and not merely to conceive this Self
\nand Spirit here in all existences and to feel with the same vividness all
\nexistences in this Self and Spirit, is the fundamental experience which must
\nenglobe all other knowledge.<\/span><\/p>\n

This infinite and
\neternal Self of things is an omnipresent Reality, one existence everywhere; it
\nis a single unifying presence and not different in different creatures; it can
\nbe met, seen or felt in its completeness in each soul or each form in the
\nuniverse. For its infinity is spiritual and essential and not merely a
\nboundlessness in Space or an endlessness in Time; the Infinite can be felt in
\nan infinitesimal atom or in a second of time as convincingly as in the stretch
\nof the aeons or the stupendous enormity of the intersolar spaces. The knowledge
\nor experience of it can begin anywhere and express itself through anything; for
\nthe Divine is in all, and all is the Divine.<\/span><\/p>\n

This fundamental
\nexperience will yet begin differently for different natures and take long to
\ndevelop all the Truth that it conceals in its thousand aspects. I see perhaps or
\nfeel in myself or as myself first the eternal Presence and afterwards only can
\nextend the vision or sense of this greater self of mine to all creatures. I
\nthen see the world in me or as one with me. I perceive the universe as a scene
\nin my being, the play of its processes as a movement of forms and souls and
\nforces in my cosmic spirit; <\/span>
\n
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage
\n\u2013 107<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

I meet myself and none else everywhere. Not, be
\nit well noted, with the error of the Asura, the Titan, who lives in his own
\ninordinately magnified shadow, mistakes ego for the self and spirit and tries
\nto impose his fragmentary personality as the one dominant existence upon all
\nhis surroundings. For, having the knowledge, I have already seized this reality
\nthat my true self is the non-ego, so always my greater Self is felt by me
\neither as an impersonal vastness or an essential Person containing yet beyond
\nall personalities or as both these together; but in any case, whether
\nImpersonal or illimitable Personal or both together, it is an ego-exceeding
\nInfinite. If I have sought it out and found it first in the form of it I call
\nmyself rather than in others, it is only because there it is easiest for me,
\nowing to the subjectivity of my consciousness, to find it, to know it at once
\nand to realise it. But if the narrow instrumental ego does not begin to merge
\nin this Self as soon as it is seen, if the smaller external mind-constructed I
\nrefuses to disappear into that greater permanent uncreated spiritual I, then my
\nrealisation is either not genuine or radically imperfect. There is somewhere in
\nme an egoistic obstacle; some part of my nature has opposed a self-regarding
\nand self-preserving denial to the all-swallowing truth of the Spirit. <\/span><\/p>\n

On the other hand \u2013 and
\nto some this is an easier way \u2013 I may see the Divinity first in the world
\noutside me, not in myself but in others. I meet it there from the beginning as
\nan indwelling and all-containing Infinite that is not bound up with\u00a0 <\/span>all these forms, creatures and forces which
\nit bears on its surface. Or else I see and feel it as a pure solitary Self and
\nSpirit which contains all these powers and existences, and I lose my sense of
\nego in the silent Omnipresence around me. Afterwards it is this that begins to
\npervade and possess my instrumental being and out of it seem to proceed all my
\nimpulsions to action, all my light of thought and speech, all the formations of
\nmy consciousness and all its relations and impacts with other soul-forms of
\nthis one world-wide Existence. I am already no longer this little personal
\nself, but That with something of itself put forward which sustains a selected
\nform of its workings in the universe.<\/span><\/p>\n

There is another basic
\nrealisation, the most extreme of all, <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage
\n\u2013 108<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

that yet comes sometimes as the first decisive
\nopening or an early turn of the Yoga. It is the awakening to an ineffable high
\ntranscendent Unknowable above myself and above this world in which I seem to
\nmove, a timeless and spaceless condition or entity which is at once, in some
\nway compelling and convincing to an essential consciousness in me, the one
\nthing that is to it overwhelmingly real. This experience is usually accompanied
\nby an equally compelling sense either of the dreamlike or shadowy illusoriness
\nof all things here or else of their temporary, derivative and only half-real
\ncharacter. For a time at least all around me may seem to be a moving of
\ncinematographic shadow forms or surface figures and my own action may appear as
\na fluid formulation from some Source ungrasped as yet and perhaps unseizable
\nabove or outside me. To remain in this consciousness, to carry out this
\ninitiation or follow out this first suggestion of the character of things would
\nbe to proceed towards the goal of dissolution of self and world in the
\nUnknowable, \u2013 Moksha, Nirvana. But this is not the only line of issue; it is
\npossible, on the contrary, for me to wait till through the silence of this
\ntimeless unfilled liberation I begin to enter into relations with that yet
\nungrasped Source of myself and my actions; then the void begins to fill, there
\nemerges out of it or there rushes into it all the manifold Truth of the Divine,
\nall the aspects and manifestations and many levels of a dynamic Infinite. At
\nfirst this experience imposes on the mind and then on all our being an
\nabsolute, a fathomless, almost an abysmal peace and silence. Overpowered and
\nsubjugated, stilled, liberated from itself, the mind accepts the Silence itself
\nas the Supreme. But afterwards the seeker discovers that all is there for him
\ncontained or new-made in that silence or through it descends upon him from a
\ngreater concealed transcendent Existence. For this Transcendent, this Absolute
\nis not a mere peace of signless emptiness; it has its own infinite contents and
\nriches of which ours are debased and diminished values. If there were not that
\nSource of all things, there could be no universe; all powers, all works and
\nactivities would be an illusion, all creation and manifestation would be
\nimpossible.<\/span><\/p>\n

These are the three
\nfundamental realisations, so fundamental that to the Yogin of the way of
\nKnowledge they seem ultimate, <\/span>
\n
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

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\n\u2013 109<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

sufficient in themselves, destined to overtop
\nand replace all others. And yet for the integral seeker, whether accorded to
\nhim at an early stage suddenly and easily by a miraculous grace or achieved
\nwith difficulty after a long progress and endeavour, they are neither the sole
\ntruth nor the full and only clues to the integral truth of the Eternal, but
\nrather the unfilled beginning, the vast foundation of a greater divine
\nKnowledge. Other realisations there are that are imperatively needed and must
\nbe explored to the full limit of their possibilities; and if some of them
\nappear to a first sight to cover only Divine Aspects that are instrumental to
\nthe activity of existence but not inherent in its essence, yet, when followed
\nto their end through that activity to its everlasting Source, it is found that
\nthey lead to a disclosure of the Divine without which our knowledge of the
\nTruth behind things would be left bare and incomplete. These seeming Instrumentals
\nare the key to a secret without which the Fundamentals themselves would not
\nunveil all their mystery. All the revelatory aspects of the Divine must be
\ncaught in the wide net of the integral Yoga.<\/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 a departure from the
\nworld and its activities, a supreme release and quietude were the sole aim of
\nthe seeker, the three great fundamental realisations would be sufficient for
\nthe fulfilment of his spiritual life: concentrated in them alone he could
\nsuffer all other divine or mundane knowledge to fall away from him and himself
\nunencumbered, depart into the eternal Silence. But he has to take account of
\nthe world and its activities, learn what divine truth there may be behind them
\nand reconcile that apparent opposition between the Divine Truth and the
\nmanifest creation which is the starting-point of most spiritual experience.
\nHere, on each line of approach that he can take, he is confronted with a
\nconstant Duality, a separation between two terms of existence that seem to be
\nopposites and their opposition to be the very root of the riddle of the
\nuniverse. Later, he may and does discover that these are the two poles of One
\nBeing, connected by two simultaneous currents of energy negative and positive
\nin relation to each other, their interaction the very condition for the mani<\/span>–<\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage
\n\u2013 110<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

festation<\/span><\/span> of what is within the
\nBeing, their reunion the appointed means for the reconciliation of life’s
\ndiscords and for the discovery of the integral truth of which he is the seeker.<\/span><\/p>\n

For on one side he is aware
\nof this Self everywhere, this everlasting Spirit-Substance \u2013 Brahman, the
\nEternal \u2013 the same self-existence here in time behind each appearance he sees
\nor senses and timeless beyond the universe. He has this strong overpowering
\nexperience of a Self that is neither our limited ego nor our mind, life or
\nbody, world-wide but not outwardly phenomenal, yet to some spirit-sense in him
\nmore concrete than any form or phenomenon, universal yet not dependent for its
\nbeing on anything in the universe or on the whole totality of the universe; if
\nall this were to disappear, its extinction would make no difference to this
\nEternal of his constant intimate experience. He is sure of an inexpressible
\nSelf-Existence which is the essence of himself and all things; he is intimately
\naware of an essential Consciousness of which thinking mind and life-sense and
\nbody-sense are only partial and diminished figures, a Consciousness with an
\nillimitable Force in it of which all energies are the outcome, but which is yet
\nnot explained or accounted for by the sum or power or nature of all these
\nenergies together; he feels, he lives in an inalienable self-existent Bliss
\nwhich is not this lesser transient joy or happiness or pleasure. A changeless
\nimperishable infinity, a timeless eternity, a self-awareness which is not this
\nreceptive and reactive or tentacular mental consciousness, but is behind and
\nabove it and present too below it, even in what we call Inconscience, a oneness
\nin which there is no possibility of any other existence, are the fourfold
\ncharacter of this settled experience. Yet this eternal Self-Existence is seen
\nby him also as a conscious Time-Spirit bearing the stream of happenings, a
\nself-extended spiritual Space containing all things and beings, a
\nSpirit-Substance which is the very form and material of all that seems
\nnon-spiritual, temporary and finite. For all that is transitory, temporal,
\nspatial, bounded, is yet felt by him to be in its substance and energy and
\npower no other than the One, the Eternal, the Infinite.<\/span><\/p>\n

And yet there is not
\nonly in him or before him this eternal self-aware Existence, this spiritual
\nConsciousness, this infinity<\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage
\n\u2013 111<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

of self-illumined Force, this timeless and
\nendless Beatitude. There is too, constant also to his experience, this universe
\nin measurable Space and Time, some kind perhaps of boundless finite, and in it
\nall is transient, limited, fragmentary, plural, ignorant, exposed to disharmony
\nand suffering, seeking vaguely for some unrealised yet inherent harmony of
\noneness, unconscious or half-conscious or, even when most conscious, still tied
\nto the original Ignorance and Inconscience. He is not always in a trance of
\npeace or bliss and, even if he were, it would be no solution, for he knows that
\nthis would still be going on outside him and yet within some larger self of him
\nas if for ever. At times these two states of his spirit seem to exist for him
\nalternately according to his state of consciousness; at others they are there
\nas two parts of his being, disparate and to be reconciled, two halves, an upper
\nand a lower or an inner and an outer half of his existence. He finds soon that
\nthis separation in his consciousness has an immense liberative power; for by it
\nhe is no longer bound to the Ignorance, the Inconscience; it no longer appears
\nto him the very nature of himself and things but an illusion which can be
\novercome or at least a temporary wrong self-experience, Maya. It is tempting to
\nregard it as only a contradiction of the Divine, an incomprehensible
\nmystery-play, masque or travesty of the Infinite \u2013 and so it irresistibly seems
\nto his experience at times, on one side the luminous verity of Brahman, on the
\nother a dark illusion of Maya. But something in him will not allow him to cut
\nexistence thus permanently in two and, looking more closely, he discovers that
\nin this half-light or darkness too is the Eternal \u2013 it is the Brahman who is
\nhere with this face of Maya.<\/span><\/p>\n

This is the beginning of
\na growing spiritual experience which reveals to him more and more that what
\nseemed to him dark incomprehensible Maya was all the time no other than the
\nConsciousness-Puissance of the Eternal, timeless and illimitable beyond the
\nuniverse, but spread out here under a mask of bright and dark opposites for the
\nmiracle of the slow manifestation of the Divine in Mind and Life and Matter.
\nAll the Timeless presses towards the play in Time; all in Time<\/span><\/p>\n

turns upon and around the timeless Spirit. If
\nthe separate experience was liberative, this unitive experience is dynamic and
\neffective. For he now not only
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

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\n\u2013 112<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

 feels himself to be in his soul-substance part
\nof the Eternal, in his essential self and spirit entirely one with the Eternal,
\nbut in his active nature an instrumentation of its omniscient and omnipotent
\nConsciousness-Puissance. However bounded and relative its present play in him,
\nhe can open to a greater and greater consciousness and power of it and to that
\nexpansion there seems to be no assignable limit. A level spiritual and
\nSupramental of that Consciousness-Puissance seems even to reveal itself above
\nhim and lean to enter into contact, where there are not these trammels and
\nlimits, and its powers too are pressing upon the play in Time with the promise
\nof a greater descent and a less disguised or no longer disguised manifestation
\nof the Eternal. The once conflicting but now biune duality of Brahman-Maya
\nstands revealed to him as the first great dynamic aspect of the Self of all
\nselves, the Master of existence, the Lord of the world-sacrifice and of his
\nsacrifice.<\/span><\/p>\n

On another line of
\napproach another Duality presents itself to the experience of the seeker. On
\none side he becomes aware of a witness recipient observing experiencing
\nConsciousness which does not appear to act but for which all these activities
\ninside and outside us seem to be undertaken and continue. On the other side he
\nis aware at the same time of an executive Force or an energy of Process which
\nis seen to constitute, drive and guide all conceivable activities and to create
\na myriad forms visible to us and invisible and use them as stable supports for
\nits incessant flux of action and creation. Entering exclusively into the
\nwitness consciousness he becomes silent, untouched, immobile; he sees that he
\nhas till now passively reflected and appropriated to himself the movements of
\nNature and it is by this reflection that they acquired from the witness soul
\nwithin him what seemed a spiritual value and significance. But now he has
\nwithdrawn that ascription or mirroring identification; he is conscious only of
\nhis silent self and aloof from all that is in motion around it; all activities
\nare outside him and at once they cease to be intimately real; they appear now
\nmechanical, detachable, endable. Entering exclusively into the kinetic
\nmovement, he has an opposite self-awareness; he seems to his own perception a
\nmass of activities, a formation and result<\/span><\/p>\n

of forces; if there
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

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\n\u2013 113<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

is an active consciousness, even some kind of
\nkinetic being in the midst of it all, yet there is no longer a free soul in it
\nanywhere. These two different and opposite states of being alternate in him or
\nelse stand simultaneously over against each other; one silent in the inner
\nbeing observes but is unmoved and does not participate; the other active in
\nsome outer or surface self pursues its habitual movements. He has entered into
\nan intense separative perception of the great duality, Soul-Nature,
\nPurusha-Prakriti.<\/span><\/p>\n

But as the consciousness
\ndeepens, he becomes aware that this is only a first frontal appearance. For he
\nfinds that it is by the silent support, permission or sanction of this witness
\nsoul in him that this executive nature can work intimately or persistently upon
\nhis being; if the soul withdraws its sanction, the movements of Nature in their
\naction upon and within him become a wholly mechanical repetition, vehement at
\nfirst as if seeking still to enforce their hold, but afterwards less and less
\ndynamic and real. More actively using this power of sanction or refusal, he
\nperceives that he can, slowly and uncertainly at first, more decisively
\nafterwards, change the movements of Nature. Eventually in this witness soul or
\nbehind it is revealed to him the presence of a Knower and master Will in
\nNature, and all her activities more and more appear as an expression of what is
\nknown and either actively willed or passively permitted by this Lord of her
\nexistence. Prakriti herself now seems to be mechanical only in the carefully
\nregulated appearance of her workings, but in fact a conscious Force with a soul
\nwithin her, a self-aware significance in her turns, a revelation of a secret
\nWill and Knowledge in her steps and figures. This Duality, in aspect separate,
\nis inseparable. Wherever there is Prakriti, there is Purusha; wherever there is
\nPurusha, there is Prakriti. Even in his inactivity he holds in himself all her
\nforce and energies ready for projection; even in the drive of her action she
\ncarries with her all his observing and mandatory consciousness as the whole
\nsupport and sense of her creative purpose. Once more the seeker discovers in
\nhis experience the two poles of existence of One Being and the two lines or
\ncurrents of their energy negative and positive in relation to each other which
\neffect by their simultaneity the manifestation<\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n

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\n\u2013 114<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

of all that is within it. Here too he finds that
\nthe separative aspect is liberative; for it releases him from the bondage of
\nidentification with the inadequate workings of Nature in the Ignorance. The
\nunitive aspect is dynamic and effective; for it enables him to arrive at
\nmastery and perfection; while rejecting what is less divine or seemingly
\nundivine in her, he can rebuild her forms and movements in himself according to
\na nobler pattern and the law and rhythm of a greater existence. At a certain
\nspiritual and supramental level the Duality becomes still more perfectly
\nTwo-in-one, the Master Soul with the Conscious Force within it, and its
\npotentiality disowns all barriers and breaks through every limit. Thus this
\nonce separate, now biune Duality of Purusha-Prakriti is revealed to him in all
\nits truth as the second great instrumental and effective aspect of the Soul of
\nall souls, the Master of existence, the Lord of the Sacrifice.<\/span><\/p>\n

On yet another line of
\napproach the seeker meets another corresponding but in aspect distinct Duality
\nin which the biune character is more immediately apparent, \u2013 the dynamic
\nDuality of Ishwara-Shakti. On one side he is aware of an infinite and
\nself-existent Godhead in being who contains all things in an ineffable
\npotentiality of existence, a Self of all selves, a Soul of all souls, a
\nspiritual Substance of all substances, an impersonal inexpressible Existence,
\nbut at the same time an illimitable Person who is here self-represented in
\nnumberless personality, a Master of Knowledge, a Master of Forces, a Lord of
\nlove and bliss and beauty, a single Origin of the worlds, a self-manifester and
\nself-creator, a Cosmic Spirit, a universal Mind, a universal Life, the
\nconscious and living Reality supporting the appearance which we sense as
\nunconscious inanimate Matter. On the other side he becomes aware of the same
\nGodhead in effectuating consciousness and power put forth as a self-aware Force
\nthat contains and carries all within her and is charged to manifest it in
\nuniversal Time and Space. It is evident to him that here there is one supreme
\nand infinite Being represented to us in two different sides of itself, obverse
\nand reverse in relation to each other. All is either prepared or pre-existent
\nin the Godhead in Being and issues from it and is upheld by its Will and
\nPresence; all is brought out, carried in movement by the Godhead in power; all <\/span>
\n
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

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\n\u2013 115<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

becomes and acts and develops by her and in her
\nits individual or its cosmic purpose. It is again a Duality necessary for the
\nmanifestation, creating and enabling that double current of energy which seems
\nalways necessary for the world-workings, two poles of the same Being, but here
\ncloser to each other and always very evidently carrying each the powers of the
\nother in its essence and its dynamic nature. At the same time by the fact that
\nthe two great elements of the divine Mystery, the Personal and the Impersonal,
\nare here fused together, the seeker of the integral Truth feels in the duality
\nof Ishwara-Shakti his closeness to a more intimate and ultimate secret of the
\ndivine Transcendence and the Manifestation than that offered to him by any
\nother experience.<\/span><\/p>\n

For the Ishwari Shakti,
\ndivine Conscious-Force and World-Mother, becomes a mediatrix between the
\neternal One and the manifested Many. On one side, by the play of the energies
\nwhich she brings from the One, she manifests the multiple Divine in the
\nuniverse, involving and evolving its endless appearances out of her revealing
\nsubstance; on the other by the reascending current of the same energies she
\nleads back all towards That from which they have issued so that the soul in its
\nevolutionary manifestation may more and more return towards the Divinity there
\nor here put on its divine character. There is not in her, although she devises
\na cosmic mechanism, the character of an inconscient mechanical Executrix which
\nwe find in the first physiognomy of Prakriti, the Nature-Force; neither is
\nthere that sense of an Unreality, creatrix of illusions or semi-illusions,
\nwhich is attached to our first view of Maya. It is at once clear to the
\nexperiencing soul that here is a conscious Power of one substance and nature
\nwith the Supreme from whom she came. If she seems to have plunged us into the
\nIgnorance and Inconscience in pursuance of a plan we cannot yet interpret, if
\nher forces present themselves as all these ambiguous forces of the universe,
\nyet it becomes visible before long that she is working for the development of
\nthe Divine Consciousness in us and that she stands above drawing us to her own
\nhigher entity, revealing to us more and more the very essence of the Divine
\nKnowledge, Will and Ananda. Even in the movements of the Ignorance the soul of
\nthe seeker becomes aware of her conscious guidance supporting his steps and
\nleading <\/span>
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

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\n\u2013 116<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

them slowly or swiftly, straight or by many
\ndetours out of the darkness into the light of a greater consciousness, out of
\nmortality into immortality, out of evil and suffering towards a highest good
\nand felicity of which as yet his human mind can form only a faint image. Thus
\nher power is at once liberative and dynamic, creative, effective, \u2013 creative
\nnot only of things as they are, but of things that are to be; for, eliminating
\nthe twisted and tangled movements of his lower consciousness made of the stuff
\nof the Ignorance, it rebuilds and new-makes his soul and nature into the
\nsubstance and forces of a higher divine Nature.<\/span><\/p>\n

In this Duality too
\nthere is possible a separative experience. At one pole of it the seeker may be
\nconscious only of the Master of Existence putting forth on him His energies of
\nknowledge, power and bliss to liberate and divinise; the Shakti may appear to
\nhim only an impersonal Force expressive of these things or an attribute of the
\nIshwara. At the other pole he may encounter the World-Mother, creatrix of the
\nuniverse, putting forth the Gods and the worlds and all things and existences
\nout of her spirit-substance. Or even if he sees both aspects, it may be with an
\nunequal separating vision, subordinating one to the other, regarding the Shakti
\nonly as a means for approaching the Ishwara. There results a one-sided tendency
\nor a lack of balance, a power of effectuation not perfectly supported or a
\nlight of revelation not perfectly dynamic. It is when a complete union of the
\ntwo sides of the Duality is effected and rules his consciousness that he begins
\nto open to a fuller power that will draw him altogether out of the confused
\nclash of Ideas and Forces here into a higher Truth and enable the descent of
\nthat Truth to illumine and deliver and act sovereignly upon this world of
\nIgnorance. He has begun to lay his hand on the integral secret which in its
\nfullness can be grasped only when he overpasses the double term that reigns
\nhere of Knowledge inextricably intertwined with an original Ignorance and
\ncrosses the border where spiritual mind disappears into supramental Gnosis. It
\nis through this third and most dynamic dual aspect of the One that the seeker
\nbegins with the most integral completeness to enter into the deepest secret of
\nthe being of the Lord of the Sacrifice.<\/span><\/p>\n

For it is behind the
\nmystery of the presence of personality<\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n

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\n\u2013 117<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

in an apparently impersonal universe \u2013 as in
\nthat of consciousness manifesting out of the Inconscient, life out of the
\ninanimate, soul out of brute Matter \u2013 that is hidden the solution of the riddle
\nof existence. Here again is another dynamic Duality more pervading than appears
\nat first view and deeply necessary to the play of the slowly self-revealing
\nPower. It is possible for the seeker in his spiritual experience, standing at
\none pole of the Duality, to follow Mind in seeing a fundamental Impersonality
\neverywhere. The evolving soul in the material world begins from a vast
\nimpersonal Inconscience in which our inner sight yet perceives the presence of
\na veiled infinite Spirit; it proceeds with the emergence of a precarious
\nconsciousness and personality that even at their fullest have the look of an
\nepisode, but an episode that repeats itself in a constant series; it arises
\nthrough experience of life out of mind into an infinite, impersonal and
\nabsolute Superconscience in which personality, mind-consciousness,
\nlife-consciousness seem all to disappear by a liberating annihilation, Nirvana.
\nAt a lower pitch he still experiences this fundamental impersonality as an
\nimmense liberating force everywhere. It releases his knowledge from the
\nnarrowness of personal mind, his will from the clutch of personal desire, his
\nheart from the bondage of petty mutable emotions, his life from its petty
\npersonal groove, his soul from ego, and it allows them to embrace calm,
\nequality, wideness, universality, infinity. A Yoga of works would seem to
\nrequire Personality as its mainstay, almost its source, but here too the
\nimpersonal is found to be the most direct liberating force; it is through a
\nwide egoless impersonality that one can become a free worker and a divine
\ncreator. It is not surprising that the overwhelming power of this experience
\nfrom the impersonal pole of the Duality should have moved the sages to declare
\nthis to be the one way and an impersonal Superconscience to be the sole truth of
\nthe Eternal.<\/span><\/p>\n

But still to the seeker
\nstanding at the opposite pole of the Duality another line of experience appears
\nwhich justifies an intuition deeply-seated behind the heart and in our very
\nlife-force, that personality, like consciousness, life, soul, is not a
\nbrief-lived stranger in an impersonal Eternity, but contains the very meaning
\nof existence. This fine flower of the cosmic Energy carries in it <\/span>
\n
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

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\n\u2013 118<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

a forecast of the aim and a hint of the very
\nmotive of the universal labour. As an occult vision opens in him, he becomes
\naware of worlds behind in which consciousness and personality hold an enormous
\nplace and assume a premier value; even here in the material world to this
\noccult vision the inconscience of Matter fills with a secret pervading
\nconsciousness, its inanimation harbours a vibrant life, its mechanism is the
\ndevice of an indwelling Intelligence, God and soul are everywhere. Above all
\nstands an infinite conscious Being who is variously self-expressed in all these
\nworlds; impersonality is only a first means of that expression. It is a field
\nof principles and forces, an equal basis of manifestation; but these forces
\nexpress themselves through beings, have conscious spirits at their head and are
\nthe emanation of a One Conscious Being who is their source. A multiple
\ninnumerable personality expressing that One is the very sense and central aim
\nof the manifestation and if now personality seems to be narrow, fragmentary,
\nrestrictive, it is only because it has not opened to its source or flowered
\ninto its own divine truth and fullness packing itself with the universal and
\nthe infinite. Thus the world-creation is no more an illusion, a fortuitous
\nmechanism, a play that need not have happened, a flux without consequence; it
\nis an intimate dynamism of the conscious and living Eternal.<\/span><\/p>\n

This extreme opposition
\nof view from the two poles of one Existence creates no fundamental difficulty
\nfor the seeker of the integral Yoga; for his whole experience has shown him the
\nnecessity of these double terms and their currents of Energy, negative and
\npositive in relation to each other, for the manifestation of what is within the
\none Existence. For himself Personality and Impersonality have been the two
\nwings of his spiritual ascension and he has the prevision that he will reach a
\nheight where their helpful interaction will pass into a fusion of their powers
\nand disclose the integral Reality and release into action the original force of
\nthe Divine. Not only in the fundamental Aspects but in all the working of his
\nsadhana he has felt their double truth and mutually complementary working. An
\nimpersonal Presence has dominated from above or penetrated and occupied his
\nnature; a Light descending has suffused his mind, life-power, the very cells of
\nhis body, illumined them with knowledge, revealed him <\/span>
\n
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

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\n\u2013 119<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

to himself down to his most disguised and
\nunsuspected movements, exposing, purifying, destroying or brilliantly changing
\nall that belonged to the Ignorance. A Force has poured into him in currents or
\nlike a sea, worked in his being and all its members, dissolved, new-made,
\nreshaped, transfigured everywhere. A Bliss has invaded him and shown that it
\ncan make suffering and sorrow impossible and turn pain itself into divine pleasure.
\nA Love without limits has joined him to all creatures or revealed to him a
\nworld of inseparable intimacy and unspeakable sweetness and beauty and begun to
\nimpose its law of perfection and its ecstasy even amidst the disharmony of
\nterrestrial life. A spiritual Truth and Right have convicted the good and evil
\nof this world of imperfection or of falsehood and unveiled a supreme good and
\nits clue of subtle harmony and its sublimation of action and feeling and
\nknowledge. But behind all these and in them he has felt a Divinity who is all
\nthese things, a Bringer of Light, a Guide and All-Knower, a Master of Force, a
\nGiver of Bliss, Friend, Helper, Father, Mother, Playmate in the world-game, an
\nabsolute Master of his being, his soul’s Beloved and Lover. All relations known
\nto human personality are there in the soul’s contact with the Divine; but they
\nrise towards superhuman levels and compel him towards a divine nature.<\/span><\/p>\n

It is an integral
\nknowledge that is being sought, an integral force, a total amplitude of union
\nwith the All and Infinite behind existence. For the seeker of the integral Yoga
\nno single experience, no one Divine Aspect, \u2013<\/span> however overwhelming to the human mind,
\nsufficient for its capacity, easily accepted as the sole or the ultimate
\nreality, \u2013 can figure as the exclusive truth of the Eternal. For him the
\nexperience of the Divine Oneness carried to its extreme is more deeply embraced
\nand amply fathomed by following out to the full the experience of the Divine
\nMultiplicity. All that is true behind polytheism as well as behind monotheism
\nfalls within the scope of his seeking; but he passes beyond their superficial
\nsense to human mind to grasp their mystic truth in the Divine. He sees what is
\naimed at by the jarring sects and philosophies and accepts each facet of the
\nReality in its own place, but rejects their narrownesses and errors and
\nproceeds farther till he discovers the One Truth that binds them <\/span>
\n
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

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\n\u2013 120<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

together. The reproach of anthropomorphism and
\nanthropolatry cannot deter him, \u2013 for he sees them to be prejudices of the
\nignorant and arrogant reasoning intelligence, the abstracting mind turning on
\nitself in its own cramped circle. If human relations as practised now by man
\nare full of smallness and perversity and ignorance, yet are they disfigured
\nshadows of something in the Divine and by turning them to the Divine he finds
\nthat of which they are a shadow and brings it down for manifestation in life.
\nIt is through the human exceeding itself and opening itself to a supreme
\nplenitude that the Divine must manifest itself here, since that comes
\ninevitably in the course and process of the spiritual evolution, and therefore
\nhe will not despise or blind himself to the Godhead because it is lodged in a
\nhuman body, mānuşīm tanum āśritam. Beyond the limited
\nhuman conception of God, he will pass to the one divine Eternal, but also he
\nwill meet him in the faces of the Gods, his cosmic personalities supporting the
\nWorld-Play, detect him behind the mask of the Vibhutis, embodied World-Forces
\nor human Leaders, reverence and obey him in the Guru, worship him in the
\nAvatar. This will be to him his exceeding good fortune if he can meet one who
\nhas realised or is becoming That which he seeks for and can by opening to it in
\nthis vessel of its manifestation himself realise it. For that is the most
\npalpable sign of the growing fulfilment, the promise of the great mystery of
\nthe progressive Descent into Matter which is the secret sense of the material
\ncreation and the justification of terrestrial existence.<\/span><\/p>\n

Thus reveals himself to
\nthe seeker in the progress of the sacrifice the Lord of the sacrifice. At any
\npoint this revelation can begin; in any aspect the Master of the Work can take
\nup the work in him and more and more press upon him and it for the unfolding of
\nhis presence. In time all the Aspects disclose themselves, separate, combine,
\nfuse, are unified together. At the end there shines through it all the supreme
\nintegral Reality, unknowable to Mind which is part of the Ignorance, but<\/span><\/p>\n

knowable because self-aware in the light of a
\nspiritual consciousness and a supramental knowledge.<\/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> <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage
\n\u2013 121<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

 <\/span>     This revelation of a
\nhighest Truth or a highest Being, Consciousness, Power, Bliss and Love,
\nimpersonal and personal at once and so taking up both sides of our own being, \u2013
\nsince in us also is the ambiguous meeting of a Person and a mass of impersonal
\nprinciples and forces, \u2013 is at once the first aim and the condition of the
\nultimate achievement of the sacrifice. The achievement itself takes the shape
\nof a union of our own existence with That which is thus made manifest to our
\nvision and experience, and the union has a threefold character. There is a
\nunion in spiritual essence, by identity; there is a union by the indwelling of
\nour soul in this highest Being and Consciousness; there is a dynamic union of
\nlikeness or oneness of nature between That and our instrumental being here. The
\nfirst is the liberation from the Ignorance and identification with the Real and
\nEternal, mokşa, sāyujya, which is the characteristic aim of the Yoga
\nof Knowledge. The second, the dwelling of the soul with or in the Divine,
\nsāmīpya, sālokya, is the intense hope of all Yoga of love and
\nbeatitude. The third, identity in nature, likeness to the Divine, to be perfect
\nas That is perfect, is the high intention of all Yoga of power and perfection
\nor of divine works and service. The combined completeness of the three
\ntogether, founded here on a multiple Unity of the self-manifesting Divine, is
\nthe complete result of the integral Yoga, the goal of its triple Path and the
\nfruit of its triple sacrifice.<\/span><\/p>\n

A union by identity may
\nbe ours, a liberation and change of our substance of being into that supreme
\nSpirit-substance, of our consciousness into that divine Consciousness, of our
\nsoul-state into that ecstasy of spiritual beatitude or that calm eternal bliss
\nof existence. A luminous indwelling in the Divine can be attained by us secure
\nagainst any fall or exile into this lower consciousness of the darkness and the
\nIgnorance, the soul ranging freely and firmly in its own natural world of light
\nand joy and freedom and oneness. And since this is not merely to be attained in
\nsome other existence beyond but pursued and discovered here also, it can only
\nbe by a descent, by a bringing down of the Divine Truth, by the establishment
\nhere of the soul’s native world of light, joy, freedom, oneness. A union of our
\ninstrumental being no less than of our soul and spirit must change our
\nimperfect <\/span>
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage
\n\u2013 122<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

nature into the very likeness and image of
\nDivine Nature; it must put off the blind, marred, mutilated, discordant
\nmovements of the Ignorance and put on the inherence of that light, peace,
\nbliss, harmony, universality, mastery, purity, perfection; it must convert
\nitself into a receptacle of divine knowledge, an instrument of divine
\nWill-Power and Force of Being, a channel of divine Love, Joy and Beauty. This
\nis the transformation to be effected, an integral transformation of all that we
\nnow are or seem to be, by the joining \u2013 Yoga \u2013 of the finite being in Time with
\nthe Eternal and Infinite.<\/span><\/p>\n

All this difficult
\nresult can become possible only if there is an immense conversion, a total
\nreversal of our consciousness, a supernormal entire transfiguration of the nature.
\nThere must be an ascension of the whole being, an ascension of spirit chained
\nhere and trammelled by its instruments and its environment to sheer Spirit free
\nabove, an ascension of soul towards some blissful Super-soul, an ascension of
\nmind towards some luminous Supermind, an ascension of life towards some vast
\nSuper-life, an ascension of our very physicality to join its origin in some
\npure and plastic spirit-substance. And this cannot be a single swift upsoaring
\nbut, like the ascent of the sacrifice described in the Veda, a climbing from
\npeak to peak in which from each summit one looks up to the much more that has
\nstill to be done. At the same time there must be a descent too to affirm below
\nwhat we have gained above: on each height we conquer we have to turn to bring
\ndown its power and its illumination into the lower mortal movement; the
\ndiscovery of the Light for ever radiant on high must correspond with the
\nrelease of the same Light secret below in every part down to the deepest caves
\nof subconscient Nature. And this pilgrimage of ascension and this descent for
\nthe labour of transformation must be inevitably a battle, a long war with
\nourselves and with opposing forces around us which, while it lasts, may well
\nseem interminable. For all our old obscure and ignorant nature will contend
\nrepeatedly and obstinately with the transforming Influence, supported in its
\nlagging unwillingness or its stark resistance by most of the established forces
\nof environing universal Nature; the powers and principalities and the ruling <\/span>
\n
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage
\n\u2013 123<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

beings of the Ignorance will not easily give up
\ntheir empire.<\/span><\/p>\n

At first there may have
\nto be a prolonged, often tedious and painful period of preparation and
\npurification of all our being till it is ready and fit for an opening to a
\ngreater Truth and Light or to the Divine Influence and Presence. Even when
\ncentrally fitted, prepared, open already, it will still be long before all our
\nmovements of mind, life and body, all the multiple and conflicting members and
\nelements of our personality consent or, consenting, are able to bear the
\ndifficult and exacting process of the transformation. And hardest of all, even
\nif all in us is willing, is the struggle we shall have to carry through against
\nthe universal forces attached to the present unstable creation when we seek to
\nmake the final supramental conversion and reversal of consciousness by which
\nthe Divine Truth must be established in us in its plenitude and not merely what
\nthey would more readily permit, an illumined Ignorance. <\/span><\/p>\n

It is for this that a
\nsurrender and submission to That which is beyond us enabling the full and free
\nworking of its Power is indispensable. As that self-giving progresses, the work
\nof the sacrifice becomes easier and more powerful and the prevention of the opposing
\nForces loses much of its strength, impulsion and substance. Two inner changes
\nhelp most to convert what now seems difficult or impracticable into a thing
\npossible and even sure. There takes place a coming to the front of some secret
\ninmost soul within which was veiled by the restless activity of the mind, by
\nthe turbulence of our vital impulses and by the obscurity of the physical
\nconsciousness, the three powers which in their confused combination we now call
\nour self. There will come about as a result a less impeded growth of a Divine
\nPresence at the centre with its liberating Light and effective Force and an
\nirradiation of it into all the conscious and subconscious ranges of our nature.
\nThese are the two signs, one marking our completed conversion and consecration
\nto the great Quest, the other the final acceptance by the Divine of our
\nsacrifice. <\/span>
\n
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage
\n\u2013 124<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chapter IV  The Sacrifice, the Triune Path and the Lord of the Sacrifice   \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 THE law of sacrifice is the common divine action that…<\/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-987","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\/987","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=987"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/987\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=987"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=987"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=987"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}