The Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo

CHAPTER XX

LOVE—ITS PLACE AND POWER

PART I

The general conception about Bhaktiyoga or the yoga of love and devotion is that it is an exclusive turning of the emotions of the human heart towards God, or a particular aspect or form of His. It is a culture of spiritual emotions. Love is its motive force—love of the Divine, not as an impersonal existence or an incommunicable Absolute, but as the supreme Being, who is the author and friend and guide of all creatures. This love may take one of the five principal forms: śānta, dāsya, sakhya, vātsalya and madhura. The bhakta or devotee of the śānta type may have a deep and intense love for the Divine, but the intensity is always firmly based on a wide and clear calm. Dāsya is the love of the servant for the Master, of which Hanuman is the legendary type. Sakhya is the love between two friends, the Divine and the human soul, of which Arjuna, Uddhava, Sudâmâ etc. are the recognised models. Vātsalya is the love of the mother for her child. In this form of bhakti God is loved as one's own child, who is dearer than life itself. Yashoda, the mother of of Sri Krishna, is regarded as the supreme example of this kind of love. But the crowning perfection of love is

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the madhurabhāva, the "self-naughting" love of the lover for his Beloved. The human soul as the lover, the bride, longs for a complete union with the divine Beloved, the All-Beautiful and All-Blissful. This is the highest, deepest and sweetest of all forms. It is, to quote ancient authority, anirvacanīyam premasvarūpam, ineffable and indefinable—ineffable like the gratification of the sense of taste felt by the dumb, mūkāsvādanavat. Râdhâ is considered the very embodiment of this madhurabhāva. A glad and unreserved self-giving is the natural movement of this love, leading to a complete union and identification of the human soul with the Divine. Though the aspect of beauty and bliss of the Divine is the one upon which all kinds of love and devotion concentrate, yet it receives the utmost prominence in madhurabhāva, sub- merging and surpassing all other aspects, and rendering the life of the bhakta a ceaseless pulse and poem of delight. Even the pain of separation, excruciating as it is, yields a distilled essence of delight. The ideal bhakta desires nothing for himself, neither knowledge, nor power, nor fame and distinction; the sole, consuming passion of his being is the pleasure of his Beloved, the joy of His presence, and the ecstasy of His embrace.

But the orthodox bhakta fights shy of a complete union with God. He does not want to abolish all his individuality in the absorbed rapture of the union, for that would not really be union but a dissolution of his being, and an eternal end to all his enjoyment of the beauty and bliss of his Beloved. Even in the highest intensity of his

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Godward passion, he keeps up a certain difference,¹ very minute and subtle, which almost reaches its vanishing point in the mahābhāva; but he never courts sāyujya the self-annihilating merger in the undifferentiated One This inexpressible difference in non-difference (acintyabhedābheda) is the summit experience of Bhaktiyoga, in which the bhakta lives, when he has emancipated himself from all lower bondage and turned all his consciousness to the Lord of Love and Bliss—saccidānandarase bhaktiyoge tisthati.

It is not that this love and devotion is one-sided and remains unrequited. All love implies the certitude of a return in kind. As the soul of man, when it is awakened to the truth of its existence, turns passionately, impetuously to the Divine, and gives all itself and all it has to Him, so does the Divine yearn after a union with the human soul and give all Himself to it. As Râdhâ loves and longs for Sri Krishna, so does Sri Krishna love and long for Râdhâ.² The love of the heart of Râdhâ mounts

¹"His being remains but in another form, in another glory, and in another power"—Suso, the mystic.

"When the soul is plunged in the fire of divine love, like iron, it first loses its blackness, and then growing to white heat, it becomes like unto the fire itself. And lastly, it grows liquid, and losing its nature is transmuted into an utterly different quality of being." —Richard of St. Victor.

²"O soul, before the world was I longed for thee: and I shall still long for thee, and thou for Me. Therefore, when our two desires unite. Love shall be fulfilled."—The Divine to Mechthild of Magdeburg.

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up like a steady flame towards the Lord of her life, and the Love of the Lord leans down to meet it in an engulfing blaze of beauty and bliss,¹ and the embrace of the two is the highest rapture imaginable in creation, and the seal of the soul's liberation and fulfilment.

The Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo accepts and incorporates into itself all that is essential in the orthodox principles and practice of Bhaktiyoga, but, because it has to widen the very bases of Yoga, and bring into life all its higher gains in order to fertilise it and fulfil its deepest aspirations, its approach to love is much more comprehensive, as we shall presently see, and it traces love to its divine origin and essence above in the creative joy of identity, and to its evolution and ascent from below. In its view. Love is the greatest power of the Divine, and the supreme Force behind the stupendous movement of evolutionary Nature. It is the soul of all our upward aspiration and our deliverer from all egoistic littleness and limitations. It is, therefore, indispensable that this supreme Force of divine Love be discovered, realised, brought down, and harnessed to the transformation and perfection of human life. Without a regular, canalised flow of the divine Love, the "fire-passion of Grace", life cannot become a perennial torrent of Light, and man a manifesting medium of the unveiled Eternal.

¹ Cf. Mirabai's first experience of the overwhelming invasion of" Love.

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"Love is, in its essence, the joy of identity: it finds its supreme expression in the bliss of union. Between the two there are all the phases of its universal manifestation.

"At the beginning of this manifestation. Love is, m the purity of its origin, composed of two movements, two complementary poles of the impulsion towards complete fusion. On one side, it is the supreme power of attraction and on the other the irresistible need of absolute self-giving. No other movement can do better in throwing a bridge over the abyss that was dug in the individual being when its consciousness separated from its origin and became in conscience.

"What was projected into space had to be brought back to itself without however destroying the universe so created. Therefore Love burst forth, the sole irresistible power of union."¹

The first movement, the crucial signal, that initiates evolution out of the involved state of inconscience, is the descent of Love into the abyss of Matter. It is a holocaust of Love,² its magnificent self-sacrifice,³ this descent into the death and darkness of the material world, so that Life and Light may emerge here, and a love seeking union with that from which it has been estranged. Love .attracting from above and love awaking and responding from below and advancing towards union by a progressive

¹ The Mother in The Bulletin of physical Education—August 1953.

² According to Plotinus the Divine is never more itself than when it "empties itself" in self-sacrificing love.

³ Described in the Purusha-Sukta of The Rigveda.

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self-giving—this is the hidden mystery, the quintessential truth of creation and evolution. All beings, all creatures, even all things which appear as inanimate, are impelled by this emergent love, consciously or subconsciously, towards this union and identity. In all our desires and lusts and longings we really seek, not the fleeting, finite forms we blindly pursue, but the infinite Beloved of our being, who has assumed all these forms. But the seeking is fickle and obscure so long as we have not evolved into a consciousness of the living unity of all existence. That is why no enjoyment of the objects of our desire gives us an abiding satisfaction—an insatiable hunger drives us on, an unquenchable discontent compels introspection, and tends to throw down the barriers of our egoistic consciousness. By continuous self-giving we grow and expand; by dying to our mortal self, we are able to live in our immortal Spirit.

Contemplated in this perspective, life appears as a play of love between the sucking souls and the Mother-Soul, brooding in infinite tenderness over them; or a game, a līlā, between the evolving Nature and the eternal Lord of Nature, Râdhâ and Krishna. The movement of love is,. therefore, the most natural movement of the human soul in its upsurging towards the Infinite. That which has released the soul from the inconscience of Matter and guided it from behind the veil in its obscure wandering from life to life, can alone lead it to the highest fulfilment of its terrestrial birth. What emerged as desire shall end in delight.

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The very beginning of the Integral Yoga is a movement of love; for, what is called aspiration is also love looking up in an expanding vision towards some high and distant fulfilment. It is true that in its incipient state it is some- what vague and indefinite, compounded of the mind's ignorant thoughts and the heart's selfish emotions; but as it grows, it develops into selfless love with a steady will flaming in its centre. It turns to the supreme Mother, the divine mahāśakti, who sums up for the sâdhaka of the Integral Yoga all the aspects of the Divine to which the aspiring human consciousness may feel a natural attraction. "From the beginning even it is possible to have this closer relation of the lover and the beloved, but it will not be as exclusive for the integral yogin as for certain purely ecstatic ways of Bhakti. It will from the beginning take into itself something of the hues of the other relations, since he follows too knowledge and works and has need of the Divine as teacher, friend and master. The growing of the love of God must carry with it in him an expansion of the knowledge of God and of the action of the divine Will in his nature and being."¹ All these and other complex needs of the sâdhaka of the Integral Yoga are fully met by the Divine Mother. In Her we embrace our eternal Father, our Friend and Lover, our Teacher and Master, and our sole Deliverer and Refuge. And beyond all these relations, deep and sweet as they are, we find something in Her which is unutterably comforting and

¹The Synthesis of Yoga or On Yoga-I by Sri Aurobindo.

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reassuring, something infallibly sustaining, succouring and healing, something which only a child feels when it looks up into the eyes of its mother. There is no other relation that can be so profound and so serenely, so confidently secure and self-sufficient; no other tenderness that can brood with such infinite solicitude, such benign, inexhaustible patience over the slow, stumbling progress of our evolving souls. Benighted and blundering, we approach Her for knowledge and guidance, and, as Maheśwari, She dispels the gloom and leads us, step by step, towards the Light supernal. Feeble and forlorn, limp and timid, we approach Her for strength and courage, and, as Mahākālī, She fills us with Her Force and energy and the fiery intensity of Her Will, and chases away from us all fear and sense of frustration. Her lightning glances steel our nerves, and strike terror into the forces of darkness that assail us. Jarred by the discords of life, repelled and afflicted by its poverty, squalor and ugliness, when we approach Her, as Mahālaksmī, She pours into our hearts and our lives the wealth and harmony, the sweet- ness and beauty of Her divine existence. Her radiant smile enfolds us in its heavenly charm, and her tenderness heals us of all grief and sorrow. And, as Mahāsaraswatī, She teaches us the arts and crafts of life, the techniques of action and execution, and turns our human incompetence and inaptitude into divine skill and efficiency. She cures us of all sloth and negligence and awkwardness, and imparts to us the deftness and delicacy of touch that characterise the products of inspiration and make for perfection.

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The four aspects of the Divine Mother comprise all that our integral being may yearn for and love. Maheśwari illumines our intelligence and gives it all the wisdom and knowledge it may seek. Mahākālī bestows upon us all the force and courage, all the ardour and intensity of will, all the lofty feelings of dignity, nobility and magnanimity and self-sacrifice that our enlightened temperament and the dynamic parts of our nature may aspire for. Mahālaksmī floods our heart and our higher vital being with love and sweetness, with harmony and happiness, and a serene peace and repose even in the midst of a thousand calls of our creative energies. Mahāsaraswatī fulfils all the high aspirations of our physical and active being. No single aspect of the Divine, even that of the All Beautiful and All-Blissful, can be so embracing and integrally satisfying and uplifting as that of the Divine Mother; for. She is the Consciousness-Force of the Divine Himself. The All-Blissful aspect alone does not meet our being's demand for strength and power and a flaming will of effectuation, indispensable for the transformation and perfection of life we aim at in the Integral Yoga. The silent, immutable Impersonal of the, orthodox Vedântin gives us no foothold on our upward march, nor reciprocates our feelings of love and devotion, The dreadful Rudra does not satisfy our heart's hankering for sweetness and tenderness, and our physical being's thirst for perfection in its life-expression. All these aspects have to be harmonised in a global sovereignty of the Godhead to which our whole being can be polarised,

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and in which it can seek and find a manifold fulfilment.

In the Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo, it is, indeed, the integral Divine who is the object of the sâdhaka's love and devotion. His transcendence is sought to be embraced in "the ecstasy of an absolute union", his universality in "infinite quality and every aspect and in all beings with a universal delight and love", and his individuality in "all human relations with Him that love creates between person and person". But when the sâdhaka turns to this integral Divine, this Purusottama or Parameśwara, he meets in Him at first the Parameśwarī, the Ādyaśakti, as constituting His Consciousness-Force, and representing at once His still, unthinkable transcendence and His infinite, creative dynamism. The Divine appears to him as the Divine Mother, the supreme Purusa as the supreme Nature or parā prakrti. He understands more and more as he advances on the path why Sri Râmakrishna remained from the very beginning of his spiritual life to the end of his earthly days such a docile and devoted child of the Divine Mother, even though he realised the ultimate truths of the Vedânta, Vaishnavism, Christianity, Islam etc. He realises, as Totapuri, the stalwart Vedântin, was made to realise, that the Brahman and His śakti are one, and that it is the bramaśakti or mahāmāya that is the sovereign power, the supreme Creatrix and the sole redeemer of creatures in the world. The Divine as the Divine śakti, Mahāśakti, becomes, then, for the sâdhaka of the Integral Yoga, the solitary object of his

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love and devotion from the very beginning of his yogic life. It is not that the Mahāśakti enfulfs or eclipses the Divine, as we see in some forms of Tantra. It is rather the Divine that fronts the sâdhaka as Mahāśakti, ,the all- loving, all-redeeming, all-transforming and all fulfilline Mother of all beings. Overflowing His fatherly solicitude it is His motherly love and tenderness that rains down upon His struggling children.

This is the divine Love towards which our human love naturally gravitates, once we open to its beatific Force. This is the mellifluous bosom upon which we learn to rest and revive our spiritual possibilities. This is the golden Fount at which we drink the immortalising draughts of delight. This is the sempiternal Fire of which our souls are inextinguishable sparks, shot here below to illumine the darkness of the material world.

The Integral Yoga fully accepts the synthesis of the Gita, of which love is the central note and the recurring refrain; but it introduces into it the Vedic and the Tantric element of the Mother-worship, and thereby makes it more powerfully dynamic for life-effectuation. In it, love for the Mother is the first and most important prerequisite; for, without that love and self-offering, even the initial sadhana would be impossible, let alone the later stages of supramental transformation and perfection. The place of love in this Yoga is, therefore, supreme and absolute. Knowledge is the light of Love, and works the outflow of its creative Force; for. Love in its eternal essence is, as

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Mother says, "the joy of identity", in which there ,c neither any play of Knowledge, nor of Force, but only the unimaginable bliss of timeless oneness. All knowledge and activity stream out of this Love and lead back into it. if our soul is made of love and delight, as Sri Aurobindo says, then all its movement towards the Divine cannot but be instinct with love and delight. An ecstatic bhakti is the very breath of its life and the secret of all its realisation and fulfilment. Sri Ramakrishna brings out the essential truth of bhakti when he says in his inimitable, homely imagery, "Knowledge is like a man and bhakti like a woman. Knowledge has entry only up to the drawing room of God, but love can enter His inner apartments." Sri Krishna winds up his luminous gospel with the supreme word, paramam vacah, which he calls the most secret truth of all, sarva-guhyatamam, "Become my- minded, my lover and adorer, a sacrificer to me, bow thyself to me, to me thou shalt come, this is my pledge and promise to thee, for dear art thou to me. Abandon all dharmas and take refuge in me alone. I will deliver thee from all sin and evil, do not grieve." Indeed, the Gita makes bhakti the crown of its synthesis and the most powerful lever of the soul's ascent to the Divine. "To make the mind one with the divine consciousness, to make the whole of our emotional nature one love of God everywhere, to make all our works one sacrifice to the Lord of the worlds and all our worship and aspiration one adoration of Him and self-surrender, to direct the whole self God wards in an entire union is the way to rise out of

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a mundane into a divine existence."¹ The Integral Yoga starts with this wide synthesis of the Gitâ, leavened and lit up by bhakti, but takes particular care from the very start to put it into the hands of the Mother and gear it to Her supramental Force, so that it may steadily progress towards the splendours of a divine Perfection. The supreme Mother will reveal to our vision and transformed consciousness the Face and Body of the supreme Divine tanum swām.

¹Essays on The Gita by Sri Aurobindo.

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