The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo - Part 8

THE YOGA

OF

SRI AUROBINDO

I

TO THE CHILDREN OF THE ASHRAM

Choosing to do Yoga

To do Sri Aurobindo's Yoga means to seek to transform oneself integrally, to have this single aim in one's life: that alone exists, nothing else. You feel it in yourself whether you want it or not. If you do not, you can have a life of good will, service, understanding; you can work in many other ways. But between that and doing Yoga there is a great difference.

To do Yoga you must want it consciously, you must know first of all what it is,—know what it is and then take the resolution. And once the resolution is taken you must waver no more. When you go to it, you must take it up fully conscious of what you are doing. When you say "I want to do Yoga", you must know what you are deciding about. That is why when I have spoken to you I have not laid much stress upon this aspect of the thing. I have surely spoken about it and even perhaps a good deal—I am here to speak, and you to listen; but what I mean is that whatever I may have said generally, it is only when individually one comes to me and says that he wants to do Yoga, that I say "yes" (or "no", if necessary). For such persons things become different, the conditions of life become different, particularly inner things and conditions.

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Always there is a Consciousness here and it acts constantly to rectify your position: all the while it puts you in the face of obstacles that prevent you from progressing, it makes you dash your nose against your own errors and blindnesses. But this happens only in the case of those who have decided to do Yoga. For others the Consciousness acts as a light, a knowledge, a force for progress, so that you may reach the maximum of your capacities, develop yourself as far as possible in an atmosphere as favourable as it may be, leaving you, however, completely free to choose.

The decision must come from within. All who come consciously for Yoga, knowing what Yoga is, have to accept conditions of life very different from those that others enjoy—externally perhaps there may not be any difference, but internally there is a wide gulf. There is a kind of absoluteness in the Consciousness that does not allow any deviation from the Path: errors committed become immediately visible with such consequences that one cannot deceive oneself any longer and things take a very serious aspect.

You all, my children, I may tell you,—I have already told you many times and I still repeat, you live in an uncommon freedom. Externally there are a few small restrictions, for, as we are many and have not the whole earth at our disposal, we have to submit ourselves to some discipline to a certain extent, so that there may not be too much disorder; but internally you live in wonderful liberty, no social restraint, no moral restraint, no intellectual

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restraint, no fixed principle, nothing is there, save and except a light. If you wish to profit by it, you get the profit; if you do not want, you are free not to profit by it.

But the day you make a choice, and when you do it with all sincerity and you feel within you a radical decision, things become, as I say, quite different. There is the light and there is the way to follow, straight on, one must not turn aside. It deceives none and none can deceive it. Yoga, you must know, is not just a play. When you choose, you must know what you have done. And when you have chosen your way, you must stick to it. You have no more right to hesitate. You have to go ahead. That is all.

The least, however, that I expect from you is the will to do things well, an effort towards progress, the desire to be in life something better than oridnary humanity. You are brought up, you have grown up under conditions that are unusually luminous, conscious, harmonious, full of good will. And in answer to that it is proper that you should be upon earth in some way an expression of that light and harmony and good-will. That would be something fair.

One can do the Yoga, the Yoga of Transformation—of all things the most difficult—only when one feels that one is here, upon earth, for this alone and has nothing else to do, that this is the sole reason of one's existence. Even if you have to toil hard, suffer, struggle, it is of no consequence: "This alone and nothing else",—then it

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is a different matter. Otherwise I tell you: Be always happy, be always good; be good, meaning, be more understanding, know that you are growing up under exceptional conditions, try to live a life higher, nobler and truer than the ordinary life and let a little of this Consciousness, this light and this benevolence express itself in the world.

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It is not for a personal and egoistic aim that you seek perfection, it is for the sake of manifesting the Divine, it is to put all at the service of the Divine. You do not do Yoga with the intention of perfecting yourself personally, for your own sake, but for the divine work that has to be done, for the fulfilment of the Divine Will

So long as a personal aspiration is there, a personal desire, an egoistic will, it is a mixture, it is not the exact expression of the Divine Will. The only thing that counts is the Divine, His Will, His manifestation, His expression. You are for that, you are that, and nothing else. If there happens to be a feeling of I, of ego, of the individual person, it means that you are not yet what you ought to be. I do not say that the thing can be done forthwith, but that this is the truth of the matter.

For, on this level, on the spiritual level, too many people,—in fact, the majority of those who take up the spiritual life—do Yoga for personal reasons, all kinds of personal reasons: some because they are disgusted with

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life, others because they are unhappy, some others because they wish to have more knowledge, others again because they want to be spiritually great, yet others because they want to learn things so that they may teach them to others, and so on, there are a thousand personal reasons to do the Yoga. But there are not many to do the simple act of giving oneself to the Divine — this act in all its purity and consistency — so that the Divine may take one up and do with one what He wants. With that you go straight to your goal and never run the risk of making a mistake. But all the other motives are mixed up, tainted with ego and they can lead you hither and thither and far away from the goal.

This feeling that there is for you only one reason for existence, one single motive, the total complete perfect consecration to the Divine, to such a degree that you are unable to distinguish between yourself and the Divine, you become the Divine wholly, absolutely, without any personal reaction whatsoever intervening: this is the ideal attitude. And that is the only one with which you can progress safely in life, protected from everything, protected even from yourself—for of all dangers the greatest is that which comes from one's own self, one's egoistic self.

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