The Practice of the Integral Yoga

XI

SADHANA THROUGH WORK (Karma-sādhanā)

Karma-sadhana is a very essential part of the Integral Yoga. Our ultimate goal being the establishment of divine life upon earth and our intermediate goal being the achievement of victory of the Di-vine in the totality of our embodied human existence, a consecration of the thinking mind and its knowledge alone or the consecration of the heart and its emotions will not serve our purpose. The entire consecration of the pragmatic will in works is absolutely necessary. Otherwise, as Sri Aurobindo has pointed out, although one may find God in otherwise, one will not be able to fulfil the Divine in life. As a result the true victory that shall be the key to the riddle of our unhappy and transient and ignorant terrestrial existence will ever evade us.

The Mother also on her part has alluded to the essentiality of Karma-yoga for the fulfilment of the Integral Yoga and that at many places in her writings. Here is for example the substance of what she spoke in her conversation of 28 April 1929:

'In the integral Yoga, the integral life down even to the smallest detail has to be transformed, to be divinised. Otherwise one will always remain divided. For although certain experiences and realisations may come to the aspirant in meditation or in his inner consciousness, his outer life will remain unchanged. An ideal of this mutilated kind may be good for those who want it, but it is not our Yoga. For we want the divine conquest of this world, the conquest of all its movements and the realisation of the Divine here. It will not do to think that anything is unimportant or that the external life and its activities are no part of the Divine Life. If we do, I we shall remain where we have always been and there will be no conquest of the external world; nothing abiding there will have been done.'

Now the central question is: How to do Karma-sadhana in the

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Integral Yoga? How to turn the execution of any action, karma, into Karma-yoga, yoga of action? For is it not an obvious fact than everybody without exception has been doing actions all the time?! After all, what is the definition of an action? Surely it is not merely! the overt activity done with the exercise of the external organs of action. Any energising of will is an action. Thus all our thoughts, feelings, willings, and imaginations, and what not, are so main actions or karmas done by us.

If such is the comprehensive definition of the¹ term 'karma', it follows that everybody is a karma or worker at all times but for that matter is not surely a karmayogi from the spiritual point of view.

For it is not action as action which determines whether someone is doing Karma-sadhana or not: it is the spirit behind the action and the motive behind it which will settle the question. Bu what is the basic change in spirit and motive which transmutes someone's ordinary action into an element of Karma-sadhana? The answer can be briefly stated as follows: the elimination of the ego-idea from all the limbs of an action, and the complete and unreserved consecration of this action to the Divine and his service?! are the twin elements which impart to an ordinary activity the character of Karma-sadhana. Here is a very short extract from Sri Aurobindo's The Life Divine which sums up in a nutshell the whole course of Karma-sadhana:

"This consecration of the will in works proceeds by a gradual elimination of the ego-will and its motive-power of desire; the ego subjects itself to some higher law and finally effaces itself, seems not to exist or exists only to serve a higher Power or a higher Truth or to offer its will and acts to the Divine Being as an instrument.... In the end by this way one arrives at a consciousness in which one feels the Force or Presence acting within and moving or governing all the actions and the personal will is entirely surrendered or identified with that greater Truth-Will, Truth-Power or Truth-Presence," (The Life Divine, p. 903)

While distinguishing the ordinary activities, both inner and outer,

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indulged in by a normal worldly man from the actions to be undertaken by an aspirant when he seriously considers taking up a spiritual life, Sri Aurobindo speaks in a very simple but forthright manner:

"Men usually work and carry on their affairs from the ordinary motives of the vital being, need, desire of wealth or success or position or power or fame or the push to activity and the pleasure of manifesting their capacities,... When one takes up the yoga and wishes to consecrate one's life to the Divine, these ordinary motives of the Vital being have no longer their full and free play; they have to be replaced by another, a mainly psychic and spiritual motive, which will enable the sadhak to work with the same force as before, no longer for himself, but for the Divine." (Letters on Yoga, p. 669)

It is of course well understood that this "no longer for himself, but for the Divine" is easier said than done in practice; It cannot be achieved by any man in a day. A painstaking progressive sadhana is heeded on the part of the sadhaka to eliminate altogether his ego-will and desire from all the five component elements of his actions. And therein lies the process of Karma-yoga. Let us elaborate this point somewhat more fully.

To start with, even if the sadhaka of the Karma-yoga fails to achieve in practice from the very beginning all that is expected of him, he has to adopt from the very outset the appropriate right attitude in his mind and heart and at least intellectually know with clarity the nature of the Successive stages of the sadhana he has to 'pass through, so that he may not be inadvertently sidetracked but rather measure with precision the progress he has been making on his long way to the final attainment, siddhi. Sri Aurobindo has [delineated in a brief outline the successive stages in the sadhana of the Karma-yoga in the fifth chapter of his book, The Mother. Here is a synopsis of what has been written there:

"If you want to be a true doer of divine works, your first aim must be to be totally free from all desire and self-regarding ego.

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All your life must be an offering and a sacrifice to the Supreme your only object in action shall be to serve, to receive, to fulfil, to become a manifesting instrument of the Divine Shakti in her works You must grow in the divine consciousness till there is no difference between your will and hers, no motive except her impulsion in you, no action that is not her conscious action in you and through you.

"Until you are capable of this complete dynamic identification, you have to regard yourself as a soul and body created for her service, one who does all for her sake.... All stress of egoistic choice, all hankering after personal profit, all stipulation of self-regarding desire must be extirpated from the nature. There must be no demand for fruit and no seeking for reward...

"... keep yourself free from all taint of the perversions of the ego. Let no demand or insistence creep in to stain the purity of the self-giving and the sacrifice. There must be no attachment to the work or the result, no laying down of conditions, no claim to possess the Power that should possess you, no pride of the instrument, no vanity or arrogance....

"Let your faith, your sincerity, your purity of aspiration be absolute and pervasive of all the planes and layers of the being....

"The last stage of this perfection will come when you are cod pletely identified with the Divine Mother and feel yourself to be no longer another and separate being, instrument, servant or worker but truly a child and eternal portion of her consciousness and force....

"You will know and see and feel that you are a person and power formed by her out of herself, put out from her for the play and yet always safe in her, being of her being, consciousness^ her consciousness, force of her force, Ananda of her Ananda.

"When this condition is entire... then you will be perfect in divine works..." (The Mother, Cent. Ed., pp. 15-18. Paragraphing ours.)

Such then is the whole programme set before the sadhaka of the Karma-yoga, his course of sadhana, and the nature of the ultimate attainment, siddhi. When resolved into their component elements, they amount to:

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1.A total elimination of all sorts of desires from the consciousness of the sadhaka, 'hrdayāt samparityajya sarvavāsanā-panktayah';

2.an abolition of all sense of I-ness and My-ness, 'niraham nirmamo bhūtvā';

3.to do all actions in one's dairy life as self-consecrated offerings to the Divine, 'tadeva tava pūjanam;

4.to give up all hankering after the fruits of one's actions, fruits outer or inner, gross or subtle, ^"nirāśī bhūtvā';

5.to learn to see the Divine in every object and being and behind every event or situation of life\ and conduct all one's actions as a service to his manifestation; and

6.to establish absolute equality in one's heart and mind under all the stresses and strains of life, 'samatvatm yoga ucyate^'.

Now we come to the actual elaboration of Karma-sadhana, of the sadhana through works. Let us not forget that the basic goal set before himself by the Karma-sadhaka of the Integral Yoga is to achieve union with the Divine through the proper performance of works. Of course, there is no gainsaying of the obvious fact that all of us have been doing some action or other all the tithe. The crucial question is: How to turn the normal way of doing works into an effective means of Karma-yoga? But before we can adequately and satisfactorily answer this question, we have first to analyse the process of action itself. '

Now, if we clairvoyantly observe the physiognomy of our actions, we shall perceive that every single action big or small, noble or ignoble, high or low, inner or outer, has five distinctly separate limbs:

1.Who is initiating the action and what is the motive or impulsion behind it?

2.Who is executing the action, its karta.7

3.With whose help and instruments the work is being done?

4.For whom and in whose interest is the action being undertaken? And finally

5.Who is expecting any fruit out of this particular action and what is the nature of this expectation?

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Now a thoroughgoing examination of any action done by a sadhaka in the present state of his impure and unregenerate consciousness will reveal that it is ego-idea and ego-will which are reigning supreme in all the five components of the action.

Thus, it is / who have initiated the action through my own inspiration or impulsion; it is / who am the doer of this action, and this sense of my being the kartā is quite strong in me; and, of course, the work is being done through my instrumental capabilities such as my intelligence, my linguistic or artistic capacities, and surely with my organs of action, karmendriyāni; and the work is done for me and for those in whom / am interested; and, finally, surely it is / who am seeking some benefit or fruit from the accomplishment of this action. And this is so in everybody's case for every one of his actions.

It is thus found that all our actions in our normal nonspiritual way of living are shot through and through with the dominant sense of ego and propelled by the motion of desire.

Now, the ultimate attainment, siddhi, of a sadhaka of the Karma-yoga will come when in all the five areas of every single Action done by him, it is the Divine who will be the governing principle and not in any way his ego and its progeny, desire. But this supreme consummating realisation can come within the reach of the sadhaka only after a very long and arduous sadhana comprising of many stages of successive advancement. Knot after knot has to be loosened; difficulty after difficulty has to be faced and conquered; the Divine Mother's help has to be invoked at every stage of the ascension. One cannot hope to bypass any stages of¹ get a double or a triple promotion. One must hasten slowly and start from the very first stage of this sadhana of Karma-yoga. The' successful completion of any one stage of progress will greatly help the sadhaka to tackle the next stage. Let us begin with the very first step in the sadhana of the Karma-yoga.

1. How to choose and initiate any action?

Since we are sadhakas of the Karma-yoga and not just ordinary men interested in the building up of their worldly careers, the

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only aim in our works at all moments of our daily life should be to choose that action which is in total conformity with the Will of the Divine. But we are just novices on the Path of sadhana. We are not aware of the Presence of the Divine near us nor do we have even the faintest idea about what the Divine's Will may be at this moment. Yet this is our resolve and aspiration that we must do only that action which is not only sanctioned but entirely governed by the Will of the Divine. Thus we face a dilemma at every moment of our life. How to get at the solution?

The solution is easy to find. Before initiating any action whatsoever, the sadhaka of the Karma-yoga has to examine his heart and mind and see if he has been able to make them as blank sheets of paper where no personal preferences or antipathies or biases are inscribed. For it is these dispositions and related urges and desires which ordinarily propel someone to action. And the sadhaka has to be strict in his resolution that he will on no account act or react under the drive of any impulsion but do so only after due deliberation in a calm and totally detached way. He should never seek to justify or rationalise any choice of action if it is made under the push of any personal desire. But how should he then act at all?

He will act according to the best light available to him at that moment regarding the crucial question of what he should do then, this kartavyam karma. Here he has to be very very sincere and not take to any clever subterfuges to deceive himself and others.

Now this 'best light' may not absolutely be the 'best' but that does not matter at all. If the sadhaka is sincere, the Divine will surely look after this deficiency and make the light grow more and more in the consciousness of the sadhaka so that his discrimination of his 'duty' of the moment will gain in clarity and progressively approach the Will of the Divine.

Before deciding on any action, the sadhaka has to turn to the Divine and address him in this way: "O Lord, I want to do your Will but your Will is not yet revealed to my ignorance. And it is only because of that that I am taking recourse to my honest sense of 'duty' as determined by the 'best light' available to me. I am going to do my 'duty' but psychologically I am keeping myself ever ready to drop this one without any delay or reservation if and

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as soon as you make me know that this action is not in conformity with your Will. I divest myself of all attachment to this particular action and any and every action is welcome to me if it originates in your Will."

This freedom from preference for any action whatsoever and keeping the consciousness absolutely ready to obey the Divine's! Will at every moment of one's life is what constitutes the siddhi of the first step in Karma-yoga.

But what is this "best light" we referred to above and which should guide the sadhaka in the choice of his action? Let us listen to Sri Aurobindo:

"The work itself is at first determined by the best light we can command in our ignorance. It is that which we conceive as the thing that should be done. And ...it [may] be shaped by our sense of duty, by our feeling for our fellow-creatures, by our idea of what is for the good of others or the good of the world or by the direction of one whom we accept as a human Master, wiser than ourselves and for us the representative of that Lord of all works in whom we believe but whom we do not yet know..." (The Synthesis of Yoga, p. 209)

Let us repeat: Whatever be the nature of the "best light," available to a particular sadhaka and whatever be the action chosen by him, the principle of sadhana at this stage remains the same. It is to be completely free from any attachment to any action and remain ever ready to follow the Divine's Will whenever and in which ever way it comes.

2. What to do after the action is chosen?

Now the sadhaka has to proceed to the doing of the action: He has to do it as a really consecrated act, solely for the pleasure of the Divine. The ego with its own expectations should not be allowed to peep in there. The sadhaka has to try to feel as concretely as possible that the Divine is standing nearby and watching him acting. Here the principle is: "Always behave as if the Mother was

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looking at you; because she is, indeed, always present." (Sri Aurobindo) While doing the action the sadhaka has to maintain in ; an uninterrupted way this sense of awareness of the Divine's Presence. This will impart sanctity to the action however slight and commonplace the work may be. Also, as the sadhaka is doing 1!heM action in the presence of the Divine as a work entirely consecrated to him, he should try to do it as perfectly as possible, with as much attention as he can command. For is he not going to offer the work;' to the Divine as a beautiful bouquet of flowers? So how can he be slipshod in any of his actions?

3. Renunciation of all desire for fruit

Perfection is not the only thing the sadhaka should aim at in his action. What he has to carefully attend to is that no egoistic desire however slight or elevated it may be should be allowed to intervene and spoil the spirit of the work being done. An absolute renunciation of all desire for the fruit of action should be the principle the sadhaka has to scrupulously follow. For he has "a right to the action and not to the fruit thereof — "karmanyevādhikāraste mā phalesu kadācana". (Gita, 11.47.1)

But it is not so easy for the sadhaka to detect if any desire for fruit has sneaked in or not. As a matter of fact, our vital self's craving or seeking after the fruit can take many forms some of which are so camouflaged in their disguises that it becomes highly difficult to discern them in their true nature. Sri Aurobindo has mentioned a few of these diverse forms in which the craving for the fruit of one's action may appear. Here is the passage from his writing:

"The fruit we covet may be a reward of internal pleasure; it may be the accomplishment of some preferred idea or some cherished will or the satisfaction of the egoistic emotions, or else the pride of success of our highest hopes and ambitions. Or it may be an external reward, a recompense entirely material, — wealth, position, honour, victory, good fortune or any other fulfilment of vital or physical desire." (The Synthesis of Yoga, pp. 94-95)

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But Sri Aurobindo has reminded us that all, alike are lures by! which egoism holds us prisoners to it. "Always these satisfactions^ delude us with the sense of mastery and the idea of freedom, while really we are harnessed and guided or ridden and whipped by some gross or subtle, some noble or ignoble, figure of the blind Desire that drives the world." {Ibid., p. 95)

But, in that case, should not the sadhaka ask for anything whatsoever from his actions? How could he then act at all? What should be the driving force behind? Sri Aurobindo has answered! these nagging questions in one short sentence:

"... your only object in action shall be to serve, to receive, to fulfil, to become a manifesting instrument of the Divine Shakti in her works." (The Mother, Cent. Ed., p. 15)

But suppose a sadhaka thinks that he has. indeed reached this ideal state and doing all his actions following the prescription given by Sri Aurobindo. How should he know whether he is deluding himself or not? Herein/the test offered by Sri Aurobindo:

"The test... is an absolute equality of the mind and the heart to\ all results, to all reactions, to all happenings.... The tiniest reaction is a proof that the discipline is imperfect and that some part of us accepts ignorance and bondage as its law and clings still to the old nature." (The Synthesis of Yoga, p. 95)

Sri Aurobindo has further elucidated the position. Every sincere sadhaka of the Karma-yoga has to ponder over the following words of the Master:

"... so long as we work with attachment to the result, the sacrifice [yajna] is offered not to the Divine, but to our ego . We may think otherwise, but we are deceiving ourselves ; we are making our idea of the Divine, our sense of duty, our feeling for our fellow- creatures, our idea of what is good for the world or others, eve n our obedience to the Master a mask for our egoistic satisfactions and preferences and a specious shield against the demand

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made on us to root all desire out of our nature." (Ibid., pp. 209-10)

To do every action as a consecrated offering to the Divine without any desire for any conceivable fruit from the action is the siddhi of this stage of the Karma-sadhana.

4. Renunciation of all attachment to any specific work

It is often found that although a particular sadhaka, in course of his advancement on the Path, has reached a state where he can do an action without any desire for fruit out of it, yet he still retains some preference for some particular types of work: the execution of these actions give him some special satisfaction. This attachment to work too has to be utterly renounced.

After all, the spiritual benefit of an action does not derive from the nature of the action but from the spirit in which the work is done. As the Mother has pointed out:

"The yogic life does not depend on what one does but on how one does it; ...it is not so much the action which counts but the attitude, the spirit in which one acts. To know how to give yourself entirely and without egoism while washing dishes or serving a meal brings you much nearer the Divine than doing what men call 'great things' in a spirit of vanity and pride." (Words of the Mother, Cent. Vol. 16, pp. 181-82)

Thus, to consider all actions equally and renounce all attachment to any specific action but to do every single action of our daily life as a perfectly desireless consecrated offering to the Divine is the siddhi of this stage of Karma-yoga.

5. Actions initiated by spiritual inspiration

All our normal actions are vitiated by the presence of some personal desire behind them. In fact it is this desire overtly or covertly lying within us which propels us to any activity. And, that it is really so can be easily tested if we apply the following procedure indicated by the Mother:

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"There is a very simple way of knowing. One has only to imagine that the thing one wants to do will not be done, and if this imagination creates the least uneasiness, then one can be sure of the presence of personal desire." (Some Answers from the Mother,, Vol. 16, p. 343. Italics ours.)

If any sadhaka ever fails in this test and comes to detect the presence of some egoistic desire mixing itself up with his sacrifice of action to the Divine, he has to critically re-examine his consciousness and take remedial measures to purify his mind and heart.

Now Suppose for a moment that a particular sadhaka has reached a state where he does every single action of his daily life as a consecrated service to the Divine without seeking for any fruit¹ out of it nor being particularly attached to any specific action. If this becomes the habitual poise of his consciousness, the sadhaka will by and by come across a new spiritual phenomenon. He will no longer have to choose an action with the help of his imperfect and fallible "best light" but .will rather be guided in his choice directly by the divine inspiration.

Of course, this achievement has got many stages of progress. Thus, at first the personal will of the sadhaka may be occasionally or frequently enlightened or moved by a supreme Will or conscious Force beyond it; then, constantly replaced; and, last, identified and merged in that divine Power-Action. There are two separate passages, one in The Life Divine and the other in The Synthesis of Yoga, where Sri Aurobindo has described in sufficient detail this complex process of progressive taking over of the initiation of action by the divine Will from the inept hand of the sadhaka's personal will. Those two passages are worth quoting here:

"This consecration of the will in works proceeds by a gradual elimination of the ego-will and its motive-power of desire;... The law of being and action or the light of Truth which then guides the seeker, may be a clarity or power or principle which he perceives on the highest height of which his mind is capable; or it may be a truth of the divine Will which he feels present and working within him or guiding him by a Light or a Voice or a Force or a divine

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person or Presence." (The Life Divine, p. 903)

"... something of the supreme Will can manifest in us as an imperative impulsion, a God-driven action; we then act by a spontaneous self-determining Force but a fuller knowledge of meaning and aim arises only afterwards. Or the impulse to action may come as an inspiration or intuition, but rather in the heart and body than in the mind; here an effective sight enters in but the complete and exact knowledge is still deferred and comes, if at all, later. But the divine Will may descend too as a luminous single command or a total perception or a continuous current of perception of what is to be done into the will or into the thought or as a direction from above spontaneously fulfilled by the lower members. When the Yoga is imperfect, only some actions can be done in this way, or else a general action may so proceed but only during periods of exaltation and illumination." (The Synthesis of Yoga, p. 207)

So the siddhi of this stage of Karma-sadhana can be summed up as follows: By the force of his devotion and constant self-consecration, the sadhaka's contact with the Divine will become so intimate that at all times he will have only to concentrate and to put everything into his hands to have his present guidance, his direct command or impulse, the sure indication of the thing to be done and the way to do it and the result. (Vide The Mother, p. 16.)

6. Annulment of the sense of "I" as the worker

So long the sadhaka was under the strong impression that although he was receiving the inspiration for his actions from the supernal sources above and within, it was he himself after all who ^was in charge of executing the actions. Now even this sense of "I ^am the worker" will be abrogated from his consciousness. He will concretely feel that it is the divine Shakti herself who is carrying ^0ut all his works; all his movements are originated by her; all his Powers are hers, and his mind and life and body are only conscious and joyful instruments of her action, means for her play, Moulds for her manifestation in the physical universe. (Vide p. 16

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of Sri Aurobindo's The Mother.) In The Life Divine Sri Aurobindo describes the experience as follows:

"In the end by this way one arrives at a consciousness in which one feels the Force or Presence acting within and moving or governing all the actions and the personal will is entirely surrendered or identified with that greater Truth-Will, Truth-Power or Truth- Presence". (p. 903)

Thus, the Divine being the actor of all one's actions and one-self being the joyously interested witness of this divine play, is the nature of the siddhi of this stage of Yoga.

7. Experience of identity with the Divine

After the annulment of the sense of 'I' being the actor, after the abrogation of even the sense of oneself being an instrument of divine action, the sadhaka will arrive at the last stage of Karmayoga in which he will feel himself completely identified with the divine consciousness. Sri Aurobindo has described this summit realisation in this way:

"[In] the last stage of this perfection... you... feel yourself to be no longer another and separate being, instrument, servant or worker but truly a child and eternal portion of her [the Divine Mother's] consciousness and force. Always she* will be in you and you in her; it will be your constant, simple and natural experience that all your thought and seeing and action, your very breathing or moving come from her and are hers.... When this condition is en-tire and her supramental energies can freely move you, then you will be perfect in divine works; knowledge, will, action will become sure, simple, luminous, spontaneous, flawless, an outflow from the Supreme, a divine movement of the Eternal." (The Mother, : pp. 17-18)

Here lies the consummating realisation of Karma-sadhana in the Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo.

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