The Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo

CHAPTER XXI

LOVE—ITS PLACE AND POWER

PART II

THE love we ordinarily offer to the Divine when we turn towards Him is not always of the purest kind in the beginning. Its nature depends upon the part of our being from which it proceeds. It may be our physical being turning unintelligently, mechanically, inertly, under the dull drive of a secret impulsion, towards the Divine. Our love then takes a physical form—merely external, ritualistic or ceremonial—and partakes somewhat of the nature of our outer human relations. Or it may be our vital-emotional being turning towards the Divine. Our love is then characterised by some strength and intensity of the emotions. But these emotions are usually turbid, excited, disquieting, and often depressing. They are mixed with the desires and demands of our unpurified nature, and manifest the common symptoms ofabhimdn,¹ revolt etc., when those desires and demands are not satisfied. There is always in such forms of bhakti an "impatience for result and dissatisfaction if the result is not immediate." These symptoms indicate that the bhakti is not pure and selfless,

¹Love-wrath and petulance.

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it is tainted by egoistic cravings and insistences. Abhimān however much it may have been associated with certain legendary forms of bhakti, is a disturbing and impeding movement of the vital being. "The sooner you get rid of abhimân," writes Sri Aurobindo to a disciple, "the better. Any one who indulges abhimân puts himself under the influence of the hostile forces. Abhimân has nothing to do with true love, it is, like jealousy, a part of the vital egoism."¹ Indulgence in maudlin emotions is also a vital perversion of true bhakti. Emotions are very helpful if they are pure and deep and quiet. "The deeper the emotion, the more intense the bhakti, the greater is the force for realisation and transformation. It is oftenest through intensity of emotion that the psychic being awakes and there is an opening of the inner doors to the Divine."² But slushy emotionalism and effusive sentimentality are crudely egoistic, and suggest a weakness in the emotional being of the bhakta. They waste the energy of the vital and disturb concentration and peace, which are indispensable in sâdhanâ. The Vedic and Upanishadic ideal of a perfect calm and control in the whole being—intellectual, emotional, vital and physical—is the best condition for an unhampered progress in the Integral Yoga.

The love and bhakti which well out of the psychic are the purest and most spontaneous. But before we consider the nature and power of psychic love, let us be

¹On Yoga-II by Sri Aurobindo.

²ibid.

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sure of what we mean by bhakti. Though we have here taken love and bhakti together as two aspects of the same psychic feeling, Sri Aurobindo defines them as follows:

"The nature of bhakti is adoration, worship, self- offering to what is greater than oneself; the nature of love is a feeling or a seeking for closeness and union. Self-giving is the character of both; both are necessary in the Yoga and each gets its full force when supported by the other.'' ¹

Incidentally we can also learn the distinction between Spiritual love and psychic love:

"The love that belongs to the spiritual planes is of a different kind—the psychic has its own more personal love, bhakti, surrender. Love in the higher or spiritual mind is more universal and impersonal. The two must go together to make the highest divine love."²

Psychic love springs from a living sense of essential identity seeking to realise itself in the bliss of perfect union with the Divine. In its widest perfection, it is a yearning for an integral divine union in the context of the terrestrial existence. In fact, the psychic is the bridge between the material world and the world of Spirit. It is because of the psychic that Matter rises towards Spirit in a growing élan of love and aspiration,

¹ On Yoga II—Vol. IV, by Sri Aurobindo.

² ibid.

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and Spirit descends into Matter with its splendour of light and power and harmony and peace. The psychic or the soul is all love and devotion and aspiration, full of an irresistible yearning for the Divine. Its sole business is to rum our entire being God wards by saturating it with its own love and devotion, and prepare it for the work of divine manifestation. The psychic love is a white flame which is inextinguishable, and it mounts straight towards the Divine. A total and constant self-giving, a self-consecration through service, a progressive surrender of the whole nature, an instinctive recoil from all that is undivine or anti-divine—these are the natural movements of the psychic being, once it is awakened and comes to the front of our nature. Our mind may have its egoistic intellectual gratifications, our vital may have the satisfaction of its desires, our physical being may have its material pleasures and comforts to pursue, but the soul in us has nothing but a one-pointed tension towards the Divine, and a consuming passion for a union and communion with Him. It has no other interest and no other aim in life. Its love for God is, therefore, the purest and most disinterested, and supremely capable of bringing down the transforming light of divine Love upon earth. It is this psychic love that the sâdhaka of the Integral Yoga has to develop in himself and infuse into all parts of his being, so that his whole being may become a single flame of love rising towards the Divine. What Sri Aurobindo calls the sun-lit path is the path of the psychic leading the human being to God. It is a

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path of unflagging aspiration and spontaneous devotion, god a cheerful trust and confidence in the Divine. There is no room in it for any morbid self-pity or the excessive rigours of austerity; none at all for discouragement and despondency. The calm and serenity of the psychic repel all vital impatience and over-eagerness. Its immaculate sincerity is the guarantee of its fulfilment. It knows how to wait in patience and smiling surrender. The bhakta in whom the psychic love has awakened looks for Grace, but "he is ready to wait in perfect reliance—even if need be, all his life—knowing that it will come, never varying in his love and surrender because it does not come now or soon." His peace is impregnable, because his faith is unfathomable; and this faith is not a mere belief or trust, but a luminous certitude, an indubitable knowledge.

In fully evolved psychic love there is always an intense and invincible will to the service of the Divine, for the psychic is aware of its mission in the material world, and cannot remain content only with personal freedom and a passive union with the Divine. It has a will to fulfil the mission of its descent into Matter, which is the manifestation of the Divine here, on earth, and in the human body. It yearns to serve God by fulfilling His Will here.¹ The tendency in the individual towards the

¹ Cf. The Western mystic Ruysbroeck: "Tranquillity according to His essence, activity according to His Nature: absolute repose, absolute fecundity...for this dignity has man been made."

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peace and passivity of Nirvana, or the eternal and impersonal silence of self-extinction in the Brahman, an oblique mental movement, and argues an imperfect psychic awakening. A fully awakened psychic is an. eternal warrior, fighting life after life, if need be, for the transformation of Matter and the revelation of God's Light and Love upon earth. For a perfect illustration of this psychic love and its will and aspiration to divine service, we can only refer to some of the Mother's Prayers:

"For the plenitude of Thy Light we invoke Thee, O Lord! Awaken is us the power to express Thee."

"All is mute in the being as in a desert crypt; but in the heart of the shadow, in the bosom of the silence bums the lamp that can never be extinguished, the fire of an ardent aspiration to know Thee and totally to live Thee."¹

"O Lord, I would be a love so living that it can fill every solitude and assuage every sorrow."

"O Lord, I cry to Thee: make me a burning brazier which consumes all suffering and transforms it into a glad light pouring its rays into the hearts of all!"...

"Grant my prayer: Transform me into a brazier of love and limitless compassion."²

¹ Prayers and Meditations of the Mother—Nov. 8, 1914.

² ibid. Feb, 2, 1914.

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"Divine Master of love, eternal Teacher, Thou guidest our lives. It is in Thee alone that we would live; enlighten our consciousness, guide our steps; and grant that we may do the maximum of what we can do, utilising all our energies solely to serve Thee."¹

The power of psychic love is infinite, for when it unites with the divine Love, it can draw freely upon the latter's omnipotence. The psychic is not content to give only itself to the Divine, it aspires and endeavours to give all its nature and all its instruments of expression also to Him, so that He may transform and illumine them, and use them as perfected means of His manifestation in the material life. When psychic love is united with the divine Love and the psychic will with the divine Will, there is no limit to the possibilities of divine manifestation. All knowledge is within the reach of psychic love, and all power of effectuation. Whenever and where- ever the divine Light or the divine force has been brought down into human life, it has been invariably by the power of psychic love, and not by any other means. The mind's adoration and the heart's love and devotion are powerful aids to the development of psychic love, but in themselves they are incapable of reaching the Divine Love and bringing it down to transform human life. The mind's interest and aspiration may be damped by the frosts of life, and the heart's ardours even

¹ Prayers and Meditations of the Mother Jan. 30, 1914.

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may be quenched, but the psychic love, once awakened knows no flagging or cooling—it goes on growing in depth and intensity till it unites with the divine Love and becomes a glowing focus of its transforming force. A life of psychic love is a life of unshakable peace and immeasurable bliss, because it is essentially a life lived in the Divine, beyond the motives of the ego and the goad of desires. It is a life of perfect self-fulfilment, because it is based on unreserved self-giving. Freedom, purity, peace, happiness, power and knowledge, all flow out of the psychic to fulfil the human being who has kindled this white flame in himself and feeds it with constant sacrifice.

But for this fulfilment it is essential that the psychic should rise out of the individual moulds of human nature, and widen and heighten itself into universality and transcendence. The love of the psychic being, emancipated from the whirl of human emotions, must launch upon the Infinite, and unite with the Love of the Supreme. This union of the Divine Love and the psychic love, rendered fully dynamic in life, is the highest secret of the supramental transformation and manifestation on earth.

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