This book for sadhaks or seekers of Integral Yoga is based on the writings of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. It is a practical guide for sadhana of Integral Yoga.
On Yoga
THEME/S
II
It is often seen that although many of us would like to lead a spiritual life and have for our Goal the union with the Divine, yet days and months and years pass without contributing in any way to our progress on the chosen Path. To our utter dismay we discover that we have been almost stagnating at the same spot, if not actually regressing. But what is the reason behind this bizarre but nearly universal phenomenon?
The only reason is that our seeking for the Divine and for spiritual life lacks in genuine commitment and sufficient intensity. It is not supported by any ardent will; it arises out of a tepid wish and an easily dispensable thirst for the attainment. The normal attitude of an average sadhaka takes this regrettable form: 'If the spiritual life comes to me, well and good; but for whatever reason if it does not come, it does not matter very much. I can be quite content with offering lip-homage to my aspiration; the non-realisation of my aspiration in actual practice is a rather secondary matter and will not disturb my peace at all.'
With such a fervourless anaemic wishing none should expect to build up the life of sadhana: that is well-nigh impossible. So the very first thing a sadhaka should attend to, if he seriously yearns to make any perceptible progress, is to create and maintain in his consciousness in an uninterrupted way a very sincere and living impetus towards the Divine and divine Manifestation. The following words of the Mother should open our eyes and help us shake off any mood of easy-going complacency:
"Is the Divine the supreme fact of your life, so much so that it is simply impossible for you to do without it? Do you feel that your very raison d'être is the Divine and without it there is no meaning in your existence? If so, then only can it be said that you have a call for the Path." (MCW Vol. 3, p. 1)
In his The Synthesis of Yoga Sri Aurobindo too has fixed the same pre-condition: "The ideal Sadhaka should be able to say in the Biblical phrase, 'My zeal for the Lord has eaten me up.' " (p. 52)
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Thus the building up of this "zeal for the Lord", "the zeal of the whole nature for divine realisation, the heart's and the mind's total eagerness for the attainment of the Divine", should be the constant pre-occupation of the sadhaka throughout the daily round of his life. And for this he has to adopt a ninefold daily sadhana.
1. "To Be Conscious"
Our present unregenerate nature is full of defects and foibles and imperfections of many a sort, known and indulged in, or unknown and hidden behind the veils in the subconscient. In a successful sadhana we have to become conscious of all these failings and eradicate their manifestation, constantly and assiduously, if we would make our sadhana really effective. When the Mother was once asked what one is to do to prepare oneself for the Yoga, she replied thus:
"To be conscious, first of all. We are conscious of only an insignificant portion of our being; for the most part we are unconscious. It is this unconsciousness that keeps us down to our unregenerate nature and prevents change and transformation in it. It is through unconsciousness that the undivine forces enter into us and make us their slaves. You are to be conscious of yourself, you must awake to your nature and movements, you must know why and how you do things or feel or think them; you must understand your motives and impulses, the forces, hidden and apparent, that move you; in fact, you must, as it were, take to pieces the entire machinery of your being.
"Once you are conscious, it means that you can distinguish and sift things, you can see which are the forces that pull you down and which help you on.
"And when you know the right from the wrong, the true from the false, the divine from the undivine, you are to act strictly up to your knowledge; that is to say, resolutely reject one and accept the other.
"The duality will present itself at every step and at every step you will have to make your choice. You will have to be patient and persistent and vigilant — 'sleepless', as the adepts say; you
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must always refuse to give any chance whatever to the undivine against the divine." (M C W Vol. 3, p. 2)
2. "To Be Vigilant"
But rejecting the undivine forces and accepting the divine ones at every step requires a constant vigilance on the part of the sadhaka throughout the entire period of his waking daily life. And this vigilance has to act in two different ways both of which are equally essential for maintaining a steady progress on the path of the Integral Yoga. These two ways are: (i) to check the temptations and never to fall; and (ii) to be on the look-out for opportunities to register an advance forward. Let the Mother elucidate this twofold sadhana procedure:
"When you want to do sadhana, at each moment of your life, there is a choice between taking a step that leads to the goal and falling asleep or sometimes even going backwards, telling yourself, LOh, later on, not immediately' — sitting down on the way.
"To be vigilant is not merely to resist what pulls you downward, but above all to be alert in order not to lose any opportunity to progress, any opportunity to overcome a weakness, to resist a temptation, any opportunity to learn something, to correct something, to master something. If you are vigilant, you can do in a few days what would otherwise take years. If you are vigilant, you change each circumstance of your life, each action, each movement into an occasion for coming nearer the goal.
"There are two kinds of vigilance, active and passive. There is a vigilance that gives you a warning if you are about to make a mistake, if you are making a wrong choice, if you are being weak or allowing yourself to be tempted, and there is the active vigilance which seeks an opportunity to progress, seeks to utilise every circumstance to advance more quickly.
"There is a difference between preventing yourself from falling and advancing more quickly.
"And both are absolutely necessary." (Questions and Answers, MCW Vol. 3, pp. 202-03)
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3. "Stepping Back"
Vigilance will make the sadhaka aware of the situation facing him. But that is not enough. For, after being aware, how one is going to evaluate the situation and decide on his course of action and reaction, that is the most important element and will be determinative of the sadhaka' s spiritual destiny. Therefore, along with exercising a spirit of constant vigilance, the sadhaka of the Integral Yoga will have to conduct another psychological sadhana at every moment of his daily life. This is what the Mother has picturesquely called "stepping back". In practice it comes to never acting or reacting on the spur of the moment whenever one is confronted with any event, situation or circumstance. Rather, one must learn how to allow a sufficient time interval between the stimulus received at any moment and the response to it to be offered by him. One must acquire the capacity of going deep within, of 'stepping back' into oneself, and watching and judging in a perfectly dispassionate and impersonal way what is really helpful for sadhana and what not. No rationalisation or legitimisation should be permitted here so far as one's weaknesses and preferences are concerned. Here are the Mother's words concerning what a sadhaka should do:
"Do not lend yourself to the superficial forces which move in the outside world. Even if you are in a hurry to do something, step back for a while... Always keep your peace, resist all temptation to lose it. Never decide anything without stepping back, never speak a word without stepping back, never throw yourself into action without stepping back." (Ibid., p. 160)
One other important point needs to be mentioned here: the sadhaka has to develop at the same time the sense of proportion and of proper perspective. He should not unduly magnify the irnporance or gravity of the present happening overtaking him. He should evaluate it in the background of infinity of Space and of eternity in Time. This will have a most salutary effect on his consciousness and attitude. For, the present will then lose all its acuity and insistence and will fail to loom large before his perception. After all, as the Mother has so trenchantly put it,
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"All that belongs to the ordinary world is impermanent and fugitive, so there is nothing in it worth getting upset about. What is lasting, eternal, immortal and infinite — that indeed is worth having, worth conquering, worth possessing. It is Divine Light, Divine Love, Divine Life — it is also Supreme Peace, Perfect Joy and All-Mastery upon earth with the Complete Manifestation as the Crowning. When you get the sense of relativity of things, then whatever happens, you can step back and look; you can remain quiet and call on the Divine Force and wait for an answer. Then you will know exactly what to do." (Ibid., p. 160)
Now comes another daily sadhana which a sadhaka should never be negligent about. It is 'not to manifest in action'.
4. "Not to Manifest in Action"
Let us try to explain the technique of this sadhana. All of us know that a sadhaka of the Integral Yoga accepts life in its entirety but only in order to transform it altogether. He does not follow the escapist path of traditional sadhanas which advise the spiritual aspirant to quarantine himself as far as feasible in order to escape the impact of the temptations and difficulties that are bound to overwhelm the sadhaka because of his unavoidable contact with other persons and confrontation with diverse events and situations of life.
But, so far as our sadhana is concerned, we have fixed for our goal the divine transformation of our present human nature and a victory over the forces of life. For, as Sri Aurobindo has reminded us:
"The Divine that we adore is not only a remote extracosmic Reality, but a half-veiled Manifestation present and near to us here in the universe. Life is the field of a divine manifestation not yet complete: here, in life, on earth, in the body ... we have to unveil the Godhead; here we must make its transcendent greatness, light and sweetness real to our consciousness, here possess and, as far as may be, express it." (The Synthesis of Yoga, p. 68)
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Such being the purpose of our sadhana, we have to plunge headlong without any fear or hesitation into the fields of activities of life. But this will have its negative consequences: this acceptance of life cannot but immensely add to our struggle. For our nature with all its failings, and impulses and instincts, known and unknown, overt or covert, will be provoked almost at every step to act and react in unspiritual way, for that is its present svadharma. All the dark elements inherent in present human nature will come out of their lairs at the contact of life and surge up and invade our outer dynamic existence seeking an unbridled manifestation there.
At any point of time, especially in moments of critical decision, the sadhaka of the Integral Path will discover that his-psychological field is turning into the jostling ground for many different forces and influences past or present, inner or outer, one's own or imported from others. They create by their combined operation a psychological resultant which forcefully pushes the sadhaka to a particular course of action or reaction. The sadhaka loses for the time being all freedom of choice and rests incapable of thinking, feeling, willing, acting and reacting except in the particular way dictated by the resultant. What should he do then in such a precarious situation?
Let the worldly-minded people succumb to the resultant push and give it a free expression. But the sadhaka being a sadhaka cannot mortgage his freedom in such an ignoble way. He has to reject without exception all the pushes which are incompatible with his avowed aim of leading a spiritual life. But rejection is never an easy affair. It inevitably encounters a very serious resistance from ingrained habits and the promptings of the instincts. At these moments the sadhaka may feel tempted to give vent to the overwhelming impulse, vainly hoping that working it out in experience may perhaps exhaust its power of recurrence in future. But the result will be just the opposite. The weakness in question will thereby get intensified, receive a further lease of life and continue to trouble the sadhaka more and more. Sri Aurobindo once admonished a sadhaka against such false theorising. This is what he wrote:
"... you have always had an idea that to give expression to an impulse or a movement is the best way or even the only way to get
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rid of it. But that is a mistaken idea. If you give expression to anger, you prolong or confirm the habit of the recurrence of anger; you do not diminish or get rid of the habit. The very first step towards weakening the power of anger in the nature and afterwards getting rid of it altogether is to refuse all expression to it in act or speech. Afterwards one can go on with more likelihood of success to throw it out from the thought and feeling also. And so with all other wrong movements." (Letters on Yoga, p. 1410)
The method of scoring victory over wrong impulses, as suggested above by Sri Aurobindo, is what the Mother has termed as "Ne pas manifester dans Vacation" — "not to give expression in act." In one of her class talks of 1953, she expounded in detail the technique of this sadhana. What follows below draws its inspiration from what she said to the Ashramites on that occasion. (Vide pp. 212-15 of Questions and Answers 1953, M C W Vol. 5)
Whenever faced with a surging wrong impulse in oneself, which is strongly seeking an outlet of expression, one often offers a lame excuse whose form is somewhat like this: "Well, if I do it this time, I shall be convinced that it is after all bad and I shall do it no longer. As a matter of fact this is the last time I am allowing myself to to it, and that with the laudable intention of being convinced of its undesirability through actual experience which will surely purify me by effective purging."
But this method does not work at all; for the theory is not based on psychological facts of human nature. Instead of being purified, one gets still more engrossed in the impulse and weakness, making a future deliverance much more difficult.
No, instead of indulging in the weakness even for once, what the sadhaka has to do is to take a very firm resolve on the very first occasion itself and say to oneself:
"Well, this time itself, I shall not do it; I shall apply all my strength to prevent its expression in speech and action."
Yes, one must concentrate only on scoring this first stage of victory over the impulse. Whatever outlet the moment's impulse is seeking from the sadhaka for its expression, has to be blocked altogether: one need not for the time being waste one's energy or
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effort in tackling its inner turmoil in the sadhaka' s consciousness.
Of course, the urge, the desire, the passion will still be there in the sadhaka' s heart producing churnings and whirls there, but outside one does resist its manifestation. This is not suppression; it is only a stratagem of battle. One should stand like a rock and resolve not to carry out the dictate in action suggested by the impulse.
If the sadhaka can do this every time the resultant impulse becomes strong, it will be found that the insistent urge is gradually losing its intensity; also, the frequency of its appearance will progressively diminish. For, as the Mother has pointed out,
"All forces upon earth tend towards expressing themselves. These forces come with the object of manifesting themselves, and if you place a barrier and refuse expression, they may try to beat against the barrier for a time, but in the end, they will tire themselves out and not being manifested, they will withdraw..." (M C W Vol. 5, p. 214)
The sadhaka will then proceed to the next stage of the operation of clearing. He will now try to rid his consciousness of the turbulence of desire. There will still be many battles to wage on the psychological plane, but if the sadhaka seriously and sincerely practises being detached from the disturbance, little by little there is bound to come a time when the negative vibration will return no longer.
The Mother concludes her elaboration with these words of advice:
"The effective order is to begin from the outside: 'The very first thing is that I do not do it, and afterwards, I desire it no longer and next I close my doors completely to all impulses: they no longer exist for me, I am now outside all that.' This is the true order, the order that is effective. First, not to do it. And then you will no longer desire and after that it will go out of your consciousness completely." (Ibid., pp. 214-15).
This "ne pas manifester dans I 'action" — "not to manifest in action" — should be a practice with the sadhaka not once in a blue
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moon or on infrequent occasions but constantly, many times a day, through his entire sadhana-career.
5. "To Integrate the Being"
One of the great tragedies compromising the spiritual progress of many sadhakas is that they do not take sufficient care to harmonies the different members of their being. In their sadhana-life they function as self-divided personalities who are being pulled and pushed at the same time along contrary directions by widely divergent forces and influences.
As a matter of fact, every human being, as Sri Aurobindo has pointed out, is in his normal constitution a compound not of one but many personalities; and each of these has its own demands and differing nature. The same situation prevails in the case of a sadhaka too when he first begins his sadhana and for a long time thereafter. His being presents the appearance of a roughly constituted chaos: every part of the sadhaka's subjective being — his intellect, will, sense-mind, desire-self, the heart, the body — has each, as it were, its own complex individuality independent of the rest; it neither agrees with itself nor with the others. As a result the habitual surface consciousness of a sadhaka acts as a discordant heterogeneous mixture, not a single harmonious and homogeneous whole. And "this is the reason why there is a constant confusion and even a conflict in our members which our mental reason and will are moved to control and harmonise and have often much difficulty in creating out of their confusion or conflict some kind of order and guidance; even so, ordinarily, we drift too much or are driven by the stream of our nature and act from whatever in it comes uppermost at the time and seizes the instruments of thought and action,... even our seemingly deliberate choice is more of an automatism than we imagine..." (Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, p. 897)
The sadhaka has to mend this state of affairs with all the perspicacity he can command. Otherwise, so far as his sadhana is concerned, he will be liable to demolish constantly by one hand what his other hand has built up. "Integration of the being" should
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be his watchword. He should not act like a weathercock changing its orientation with every passing breeze. His heart and mind and will should not have separate contrary fascinations: 'All his members should worship the same Sun'. The 'Sun' here is of course the Divine and the divine life. This should be the sadhaka 's constant and conscious effort in course of his conduct of daily life.
6. "To Observe, to Watch Over, to Control, to Master"
As a part of his regular daily sadhana the sadhaka of the Integral Yoga has to learn to develop in himself the witness consciousness which constantly observes in a detached and dispassionate way all that occurs in his Nature part. This witness consciousness has to grow in time into an anumantā consciousness which has a double role of giving the consent to the movement of nature or withdrawing this consent from it depending on the free choice of the Witness. It is a very helpful stage in our sadhana of transformation; for in this way the detached inner being of the sadhaka can bring the force of the higher consciousness to act to change the nature wholly, observing all the time the action of nature without being in any way affected by it, putting the force for change wherever needed and setting the whole being right as one does with a machine.
The sadhaka of our Path has to do this psychological exercise constantly in course of his daily life. He should not act or react mechanically, being involuntarily carried away by the stream of his nature with which he gets completely identified. He must keep an observant eye always fixed on the movements of nature and actively intervene each time the need arises. Sri Aurobindo has explained the rationale of this sadhana-procedure in one of his letters on Yoga. Here is a relevant passage from that important letter:
"The Purusha above is not only a Witness, he is the giver (or withholder) of the sanction; if he persistently refuses the sanction to a movement of Prakriti, keeping himself detached, then, even if it goes on for a time by its past momentum, it usually loses its hold after a time, becomes more feeble, less persistent, less concrete
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and in the end fades away.... This refusal of sanction need not mean a struggle with the lower Prakriti; it should be a quiet, persistent, detached refusal leaving unsupported, unassented to, without meaning or justification, the contrary action of the nature." (Letters on Yoga, p.1009)
The Mother too has in a very simple way expounded this fourfold sadhana which she has christened as the method of "observing, watching over, controlling and mastering." The Mother's exposition was purposely made very simple because she addresses her words to the Green Group children of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram who were less than twelve years in age. All that follows below is a free adaptation of the procedure delineated by her:
'There are four movements which are usually consecutive, but which in the end may be simultaneous: to observe one's thoughts and feelings is the first, to watch over one's thoughts and feelings is the second, to control one's thoughts and feelings is the third, and to master one's thoughts and feelings is the fourth. To observe, to watch over, to control, to master. All that to get rid of an evil mind.
'A purified mind is naturally a mind that does not admit any wrong thought and feeling, and the complete mastery to gain this result is the last achievement in the four stages.
'The very first stage, to observe one's thoughts and feelings, is not such an easy thing. For to observe your thoughts and feelings, you must first of all separate yourself from them. The first movement then is to step back and look at them, so that the movement of the observing consciousness and that of thoughts and feelings may not be confused.
'Now comes the second stage of watching over one's thoughts and feelings. Learn to look them as an enlightened judge so that you may distinguish between the good and the bad, between those thoughts and feelings that are useful and those that are harmful, between constructive movements that lead to victory and defeatist ones which turn us away from it. It is this power of discernment that we must acquire at this second stage.
'Now comes the stage of control; this is the third step of our
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psychological discipline. Once the enlightened judge of our consciousness has distinguished between useful and harmful thoughts and feelings, the inner guard will come and allow to pass only approved thoughts and feelings, strictly refusing admission to all undesirable elements. It is this movement of admission and refusal that we call control and this constitutes the third stage of the discipline.
'The fourth stage, that of mastery over the wrong movements, follows almost automatically upon the successful completion of the three previous stages. For, a total sincerity on the part of the sadhaka will make him immune for all practical purposes from the attacks of the undesirable forces.'
An authentic sadhaka has to put into operation at all times this fourfold discipline of 'observing, watching over, controlling, and mastering'. He must shun at all costs being insincere in his profession. For insincerity is, as the Mother has pointed out, "to pretend that you want to live the spiritual life and not to do it, to pretend that you want to seek the truth and not to do it, to display the external signs of consecration to the divine life... but within to be concerned only with oneself, one's selfishness and one's own needs." {Questions and Answers, M C W Vol. 3, p. 190)
7. "To Take Life Seriously"
Wishing to wake up certain sadhakas of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram from their accustomed torpor and lethargy, the Mother once administered them a stern warning in these words:
"You must make haste to do your work here, for it is here that you can truly do it.
"Expect nothing from death. Life is your salvation.
"It is in life that you must transform yourself. It is upon earth that you progress and it is upon earth that you realise. It is in the body that you win the Victory." {Questions and Answers, M C W Vol. 3, p. 198)
Such being the importance of human life upon earth in a material body, the question arises: Are the sadhakas in general aware of this importance? Do they utilise every moment of their
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life to fulfi their responsibility? Or do they simply pass their days as most other ordinary human beings do?
The answers to these questions are not very gratifying. For the fact is that most of us who have deliberately taken to the path of spiritual sadhana forget about our goal after some time or, losing all ardour in our will, we become prone to relegate the fulfillment of our primary aim to a later old age of our life. We start living a routine existence and fail to remember for all practical purposes why we are here upon earth and what is expected of us as sadhakas of the Integral Path.
As a matter of fact there are three classes of people among human beings. Most men are well content to lead an ordinary material and animal life. A few, may be ten per cent of all men, try to lead a more mental but still a highly limited way of living. And there is a negligible minority which aspires after a greater spiritual life, a life divine.
What distinguishes man from other subhuman species is a consciously felt ideal of perfection that one can hopefully yearn after and attain to with adequate and proper personal efforts.
But what is the exact nature of this perfection? — There is no universal agreement amongst men; they differ widely in their view. Most seek after an adequate mundane change; some yearn after a religious conversion and fix for their goal a sufficient self-preparation in this life for another existence after death; only a few dare to envisage as their life's goal the leading of a spiritual way of life having for its ultimate consummation the union with the Divine. Amongst these spiritually-minded people we, the sadhakas of the Integral Yoga, are specially distinguished by our bold aim of achieving divine perfection of the human being here upon earth itself. After all, that is the real purpose of life, for that is the secret goal set before herself by the terrestrial Nature since the time she started operating her life evolution upon this planet. To quote Sri Aurobindo:
"All life is a secret Yoga, an obscure growth of Nature towards the discovery and fulfillment of the divine principle hidden in her which becomes progressively less obscure, more self-
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conscient and luminous, more self-possessed in the human being by the opening of all his instruments of knowledge, will, action, life to the Spirit within him and in the world." (The Synthesis of Yoga, p. 591)
We who have deliberately chosen the Integral Yoga as the way of our life should not forget that the goal of human life is not just to lead a sumptuously laid glorious animal existence but to hasten the advent of the supreme divine object of existence upon earth. It is true most men are totally unaware of this deeper meaning and essence of human existence. So let them lead their life in the way they think best. But what about us who have declared ourselves to be practitioners of the synthetic Yoga of integral divine perfection? As sadhakas, are we discharging our responsibility in right earnest? Alas, no. Many of us while away our time in vain mundane activities in the spirit of the common run of self-forgetful beings. We keep our spiritual undertaking almost marginalized, relegating it to the status of a mere foot-note of our life.
But this will not do. We have to take life more seriously and fulfil the real purpose of our human embodiment. We must learn what the Mother has termed as "Science of Life" and apply its tenets to every hour of our daily existence so that our pilgrimage upon earth does not get frustrated. We have to take life with the seriousness it deserves if we would call ourselves sadhakas of the Integral Path.
8. "Remember and Offer"
Karma Yoga, sadhana through works, is an absolutely essential part of the Integral Yoga. Our goal being the entire transformation of our nature in all its details, mere sedentary meditation or an outpouring of ecstatic devotion will not help us in the fulfilment of our goal. In that way we may gather some inner experiences but our outer nature will mostly remain untransformed as before. For the entire transformation we have to achieve dynamic union with the Divine. And this can be effected only through our self-offering to the Supreme through the medium of actions. And
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not a few actions big and momentous but all the actions of our daily life, trivial or important, covering the whole of our existence have to be offered to the Divine in a spirit of utter self-consecration. All works have to be done for the Divine and for the Divine alone.
Sadhana of the Integral Yoga cannot be done in a slipshod way or in a spirit of levity. There is no such thing as a part-time sadhana: it has to be entire and encompass the whole of life. As Sri Aurobindo so trenchantly put it: "The secret of success in Yoga is to regard it not as one of the aims to be pursued in life, but as the whole of life." {The Synthesis of Yoga, p. 65)
So this is the attitude the sadhaka has to grow into: 'The whole of my life shall be absolutely given to the Divine. All my efforts will be devoted to the realisation of a truly spiritual life. I must feel at every step that I belong to the Divine and to none or nothing else. 1 have no longer anything that I can call my own. I should know and feel that everything is coming to me from the Divine and I have to offer it back to its unique Source. All I am, all I have, and all I do must be offered to the Divine in a spirit of utter dedication.'
If the sadhaka can remember this resolution at every moment of his daily life and can carry that in practice in an uninterrupted way, his whole life will turn into a dynamic living sadhana, and even the smallest thing to which he used to pay not much attention before will cease to be trivial and insignificant; it will become full of meaning and open up a vast horizon beyond.
To make his life sadhana wise vibrant and fruitful the sadhaka has to dedicate all his actions to the Divine through the entire period of his waking existence. He must offer all his movements to the Supreme, not only every mental action, every thought and feeling but even the most ordinary and external actions. Walking on the road, talking with friends, reading and writing, taking one's bath, having one's meals, brushing one's teeth, preparing one's bed, all, all, without exception have to be consciously consecrated to the Divine, doing them with the constant remembrance that his supreme Beloved is always looking at him: he has to perform every action, even the most trivial one, as perfectly as he can, with as
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much conscious attention as he can command, for he is going to offer it to the Divine as a flawless bouquet of flowers fragrant and beauteous. It is worth recalling here what Sri Aurobindo has said in connection with the daily duty of a sadhaka of the Integral Yoga:
"This, in short, is the demand made on us, that we should turn our whole life into a conscious sacrifice. Every moment and every movement of our being is to be resolved into a continuous and a devoted self-giving to the Eternal. All our actions, not less the smallest and most ordinary and trifling than the greatest and most uncommon and noble, must be performed as consecrated acts. Our individualised nature must live in the single consciousness of an inner and outer movement dedicated to Something that is beyond us and greater than our ego. No matter what the gift and to whom it is presented by us, there must be a consciousness in the act that we are presenting it to the one divine Being in all beings." (The Synthesis of Yoga, pp. 102-03)
9. "Pray and Pray and Pray"
The life of a sadhaka should be a life of constant prayer. Call it a 'prayer', call it an 'aspiration', call it even a 'call'; that does not matter much. What matters most is an earnest and persistent appeal to the Supreme on behalf of the sadhaka for the Divine's help and intervention.
After all, from the spiritual point of view, it is not what the Divine gives us in response to our call, which is of cardinal importance. What is of essential value is the establishment of a loving and intimate relationship with the divine Beloved. As Sri Aurobindo has put it:
"It is not ... the giving of the thing asked for that matters, but the relation itself, the contact of man's life with God, the conscious interchange. In spiritual matters and in the seeking of spiritual gains, this conscious relation is a great power; it is a much greater power than our own entirely self-reliant straggle and effort and it brings a fuller spiritual growth and experience." (The Synthesis of Yoga, p. 543)
This should be the aspiration of every sadhaka that he should
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reach sooner or later a state of consciousness in which he will seek the Divine not for any possible gifts, however great or noble, which the Supreme can possibly offer him, but purely and simply for the sake of the Divine himself and not for anything else, and this because such is the intrinsic call of his being, the deepest truth of his Spirit.
But this entirely motiveless seeking for the Divine is a distant possibility for most sadhakas, accessible only to very advanced Yogis. At a somewhat less advanced level a sadhaka can surely pray for the purity, force, light, love, wisdom and calm of the divine consciousness and its insistence to transform and perfect his mind and life and body. He can surely call for the Supreme Peace, Perfect Joy, and the All-mastery over his nature.
At a still lower level it is perfectly permissible for the sadhaka to formulate his prayers in the following way:
"O Divine, guide me on the path of rectitude at every step of my life. Take charge of my entire existence and remould it in the spiritual way. Grant that my psychic being be brought to the front and govern luminously all the movements of my nature. Fulfil my prayer that I may be enabled to keep the right spiritual attitude before every circumstance of my life. Envelop me, O Divine, with Thy transforming Presence and change my heart and mind and body so that they may act as perfect instruments for Thy manifestation."
We may also formulate some specific prayers to the Divine; there is no harm in that. These prayers may take the form of:
"Teach me always more and more; give me more and more of light; dispel my darkness. Grant that I may be equal to my spiritual task, that nothing in me, conscious or unconscious, may betray Thee by neglecting to serve Thy sacred mission. Grant that I may be an efficient and clear-sighted collaborator in Thy Work, and that everything within me may foster the plenitude of Thy manifestation. O my Beloved, fill my heart with the delight of Thy love, and flood my mind with the splendour of Thy light."
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If we want to pray more impersonally, we may formulate our call in this way: "Grant that Thy sovereign Power may manifest upon earth and Thy Work be accomplished; let everything become resplendent and transfigured by the knowledge of the Truth." [We may mention here that some of the prayers cited above have been taken from the Mother's Prayers and Meditations.)
The point is that there is no dearth of prayers to engage the consciousness of the sadhaka if he is eager to search for them. Let the whole course of his daily life take the form of an uninterrupted canticle of prayers ardently rising to the Divine Beloved, while the sadhaka may remain occupied with various outward activities.
One other point: Even if some of the objects sought after by the sadhaka in different situations of his life concern his mundane interests and possess no more than a passing value, there is no special objection to their being placed before the Divine. The only point the sadhaka should be careful about is that he should not, in his prayers, insist on their fulfilment, only to gratify his personal egoistic desires. His attitude should rather be: "O Divine, I am asking for this in my ignorance; I place my problem before Thee with the innocence and candour of a child. Now you are free to do whatever you will to do in your divine wisdom. I shall in all cases accept your decision with a joyous heart." The sadhaka will remain always spiritually safe with this attitude.
To conclude: Prayers are very important elements in the life of a sadhaka. If tendered with love and a trustful simplicity, they help the aspirant to develop a close intimacy with the Divine. Through the instrumentality of sincere prayers the sadhaka will by and by come to feel the supreme Beloved enveloping him all the time with the warm ambience of a most rapturous love.
We have come to the end of our rather long chapter on the eightfold daily sadhana a sadhaka should put into practice in an unremitting way if he would wish that his progress on the spiritual path advance steadily with a solid foundation. The eight limbs of this ceaseless sadhana are, as we have seen above:
(1) "To be conscious of oneself; (2) "to be always vigilant"; (3) "to step back and examine"; (4) "not to manifest in action";
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(5) "to observe, to watch over, to control, to master"; (6) "to take life seriously"; (7) "to remember and offer"; and (8) "always to pray". A faithful observance of this eightfold sadhana in one's daily life cannot but change the whole tenor of the sadhaka' s existence both inner and outer and turn him into an aspirant worth the name.
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