The Sun and The Rainbow

THE INTEGRAL YOGA, WORK

AND LIFE-ACTIVITY

SOME NOTES FOR AN AMERICAN SEEKER

Q: Please define Sadhana and Integral Yoga. What is their relationship to each other?

What is the Mother's and Sri Aurobindo's attitude toward work and what part do work and life-activity play in the life of one who undertakes Integral Yoga?

Sadhana is the practice, system, method by which one tries to attain spiritual perfection. It may be called also the process of Yoga — Yoga meaning the union of the human consciousness with the Divine.

The Integral Yoga sets before the sadhak, the doer of sadhana, a full and complete aim. The fullness and completeness may be viewed from several standpoints.

Not only one part of us — the mental intelligence, the emotional being, the vital force, the physical organism — is taken up according to the specific turn of our nature, as in the old Yogas, but our whole self in all its parts is set towards the Divine. Of course, our starting-point can be anywhere, but with its help we have gradually to open all of ourselves.

Every part of us has an inner and an outer aspect. Both have to be taken into account. There should be a movement inward to concentrate on the Divine in a quiet isolation or absorption. But the movement outward must not be

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neglected. The world without no less than the world within is the field of our sadhana.

The ultimate goal is not only to rise above the ordinary world to some supreme Existence, Consciousness and Bliss, some infinite and eternal Oneness in which everything gets merged, or else some sovereign Being beyond with whose light and love we unite. The ultimate goal is also to bring all that is above into the world below and to manifest it in our own humanity and put it in relation to the ordinary life around us.

The manifestation in ourselves and the channelling out to the world have to be of a Divine Presence and Power that can utterly transform into perfection all the terms of our being and nature, all the terms of the world's life, leaving nothing untouched. There is a supreme original, an eternal truth, a perfect model, as it were, of all that is here partial, broken, groping and discordant. That luminous "archetype" has to be evolved here and now.

The evolution of this "archetype" needs the operation of what Sri Aurobindo and the Mother call the Supermind, the creative Truth-Consciousness, which has never been brought into play in its direct form. The Supermind can divinise the mental and vital and physical being of man and bring about a collective spiritual life on the basis of an inner unity and take up all the fields of activity and give them a divine value, direction and fulfilment.

Thus the Intergral Yoga sweeps everything into its scope. Its sadhana is not a fixed one-dimensional discipline as in the older Yogas. It is a plastic movement, varying in its turns, suiting each individual and depending ultimately on the working of the Supramental Godhead, the Will and the Grace of the transcendent Mother who is also universal and individual.

The central process of this Yoga, therefore, is a constant aspiration to that Godhead and that Mother, a surrender of the whole self and nature into their hands and a consecration of all activity to them so that they may take it up and make

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us their perfect instruments. In more concrete terms we may say that our entire self and nature have to flow towards the Avatar of that Godhead — Sri Aurobindo — and the incarnation of that Mother — the radiant personality who has been Sri Aurobindo's co-worker.

"Co-worker" — the word is apposite in a special sense, for it points to the importance of work in the Integral Yoga. It is by work that our outer being, with its manifold dynamic turns, can be dedicated to the Divine.

Every kind of work, all life-activity, is embraced by the Integral Yoga. But it has to be offered to the Supreme, launched upon for Sri Aurobindo, carried out for the Mother. Thus it cannot be accepted in any crude shape. Not that one has to be finicky and over-choosy. The Integral Yogi should be ready to take up whatever work falls to his lot and feel himself fit to do it. But nothing should be done crudely, all should be made as perfect as possible and the whole effort has to be charged with a new attitude. The new attitude is the indispensable thing. For our aim is not just to be refined and efficient: our aim is to do everything for the Divine and there must be at all moments the sense of self-offering, the calling of the Divine to take up our work and do the Supreme Will through it. We must cultivate a non-attachment to the results: success we must try to achieve but if we do not get it there must be no inner upset. The failure itself has to be offered up to the Divine to make use of for His own purposes. Shakespeare has hit the mark with his phrase:

There's a divinity that shapes our ends,

Rough-hew them how we may.

It could even happen that a depth-churning failure is of greater use ultimately to the Divine than a superficial success. So, upset is out of place in any case.

By continued self-offering and inner detachment from the results and by aspiration to be the Supreme's instruments we

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shall grow gradually into the feeling that a Power beyond our own takes up all our works and directly acts through us. When this experience begins, we are on the way to the state Dante attributes to the blessed at every level of Paradise — the state in which there is no ambition, no discontent, no lack of self-completion but a constant acceptance and reception of God's Will that is all-sufficient and leaves nothing more to be desired:

His Will alone is our tranquillity.

Indeed it is natural that this should be so, for the Divine's dynamism comes out of an infinite peace: it is, as Sri Aurobindo says,

Force one with unimaginable rest.

And because it is such, it is not only inexhaustible, not only possessed of a vast and happy patience but also free from rigidity and one-sidedness and capable of meeting every demand, every change of circumstance and leading assuredly to the previsioned goal. That is why Sri Aurobindo has said:

All can be done if the god-touch is there.

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