... THE THREE PATHS Corresponding to the three principal powers of the human being,—will, knowledge and love—there are three Yogas in India: Karmayoga or the Yoga of Works, Jnânayoga or the Yoga of Knowledge, and Bhaktiyoga or the Yoga of Love and Devotion. Karmayoga takes its stand upon the will of man and turning it Godwards through. a dynamic surrender of all actions and all movements... out of What it regards as the nightmare of the world. Bhaktiyoga or the Yoga of Love and Devotion makes the heart of man its principal means of fulfilment. Un- like Jnânayoga, it seeks the Lord of Love and Beauty and Bliss, and not the relationless, incommunicable Absolute. The emotions of the heart of man are turned in this Yoga towards the Divine, the supreme, eternal Lover of all creatures... towards the silent immobility of the Purusha or Brahman. Even Bhaktiyoga and ' Tantra envisage as their ultimate goal a supracosmic consummation and not the divine union and manifestation in life and on this earth, which the Vedic Yoga seems to have sought to achieve. We shall see in our cursory review of some of the principal Yogas of India how the large unitary end of the Vedic discipline has ...
... 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 ... 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... 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 tisthati. It is not that this love and devotion is one-sided and remains unrequited. All love implies the certitude of a return ...
... disappear into the path of Knowledge. The last step is Bhaktiyoga, adoration and seeking of the supreme Self as the Divine Being, and here the insistence is on devotion; but the knowledge is not subordinated, only raised, vitalised and fulfilled, and still the sacrifice of works continues; the double path becomes the triune way of knowledge, works and devotion. And the fruit of the sacrifice, the one fruit... The Gita and its Synthesis of Yoga Preface In his immortal book 'Essays on the Gita’, Sri Aurobindo has explained the fundamental value of the yoga of the Gita and the contribution it can make to the new age of development in the following words: "We of the coming day stand at the head of a new age of development which must lead to such a new and larger synthesis... synthesis of yoga in which spiritual disciplines of the past can all be reconciled and in which a path is opened up for an actual and living synthesis of Spirit and Matter. It is in the context of this great need that we need to turn to the great synthetic spirit that we find in the Gita and also to the "message of union with Para Prakriti, which is one of the master-concepts of the Gita. Yoga is both ...
... aspiration. Prayer is only a joy of relationship with the Divine. At higher and higher reaches of Yoga, one can reach the highest motiveless devotion, which is that of Divine love pure and simple without any other demand or longing. * * * In the process of spiritual education, all the methods of Bhaktiyoga have a place, provided two important conditions are fulfilled : one, external formalities... Moreover, in Yoga, there is constant insistence on consecration, discipline and purification, renunciation and concentration of consciousness, and there is a constant freedom to utilize methods of Yoga of Knowledge, Yoga of Divine Will and Rajayoga and Hathayoga, in accordance with the needs of each individual's temperament and complexity of consciousness. Even as a part of Bhaktiyoga, where faith... becomes service and worship. It is this new soul-tendency which is the heart of Yoga. Outward worship may not necessarily be dispensed with, but it will increasingly become only a physical expression or outflowing of devotion and adoration, the wave of the soul throwing itself out in speech and symbolic act. In Yoga, there must be accompaniment of self-purification and this purification will be much ...
... fanatics of Bhaktiyoga, who believe that to be always singing and ¹On Yoga—II Page 305 dancing and weeping with uncontrolled emotions is the best form of sādhanā, so there are fanatics of Karmayoga who think that to be always in a flutter and bustle is the best way of progressing in spiritual life. What they have to remember is that Karmayoga is a yoga; and that no yoga is possible... Power as the sole support, the sâdhaka of the Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo advances ¹ On Yoga-II by Sri Aurobindo. Page 313 on the difficult path of liberating and transforming his whole being, and rendering it a fit instrument for the manifestation of the Divine upon earth. His Karmayoga is instinct with love and devotion and more and more illumined with the light of knowledge... Divine. Here love for the Divine plays a very effective part. A spontaneous love for the Divine makes the concentration not only easy but natural—none can cease thinking of the object of his love. Bhaktiyoga thus reveals itself as the throbbing heart of Karmayoga, and supplies the most quickening Page 310 force to the Godward élan of our active being. We can then remain concentrated ...
... The Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo CHAPTER XIX KARMAYOGA AND ITS INDISPENSABILITY PART III THE PERFECTION OF KARMAYOGA We have seen that man being essentially a composite organism and not a mere sum-total of heterogeneous parts and powers,—which is only a superficial aspect of him —neither Karmayoga, nor Bhaktiyoga, nor Jnânayoga... Jnânayoga can become perfect in itself without the others also becoming perfect and complete at the same time. A certain insular perfection can be attained, as we have already conceded, by Bhaktiyoga, without much direct help from Jnânayoga and Karmayoga, or by Jnânayoga without bringing in much of the elements of karma and bhakti; but the perfection, thus attained, would always betray its imperfection... between the Divine and the individual soul; sālokya will keep up, even in the midst of this identity, a mysterious, ineffable difference without division, which will permit of a relation of love and devotion and a free transmission of the divine Will, and sādharmya will ensure a likeness or sameness between the nature of the Divine and that of the individual being, enabling an unhindered and unflawed ...
... is Karma yoga, the selfless sacrifice of works, and here the Gita's insistence is on action. The second is Jnana yoga, the self-realisation and knowledge of the true nature of the self and the world, and here the insistence is on knowledge; but the sacrifice of works continues and the path of Works becomes one with but does not disappear into the path of Knowledge. The last step is Bhaktiyoga, adoration... knots and problems of all our activities of life. This is the knowledge by which the cognitive, affective and co native powers of our psychology can be perfected and synthesis of karma yoga, jñanayoga and bhaktiyoga can be effected. But there is still a Page 40 culmination of this deeper secret; there is still the deepest secret, guhyatamam rahasyam. This secret is that of the possibility... adoration and seeking of the supreme Self as the Divine Being, and here the insistence is on devotion; but the knowledge is not subordinated, only raised, vitalised and fulfilled, and still the sacrifice of works continues; the double path becomes the triune way of knowledge, works and devotion. And the fruit of the sacrifice, the one fruit still placed before the seeker, is attained, union with the divine ...
... very wide sense and that by Yoga is meant the selfless devotion of all the inner as well as the outer activities as a sacrifice to the Lord of all works, offered to the Eternal as Master of all the soul's energies and austerities. Yoga is the practice of the Truth of which knowledge gives the vision, and its practice has for its motor-power a spirit of illumined devotion, of calm or fervent consecration... rahasyam , by which the Gita founds its synthesis of Vedanta, Sankhya and Yoga, its synthesis of knowledge, works and devotion. By the pure Sankhya alone the combining of works and liberation is contradictory and impossible. By pure Monism alone the permanent continuation of works as a part of Yoga and the indulgence of devotion after perfect knowledge and liberation and union are attained, become impossible... the ideas of the Sankhya and the Yoga way of thinking and it derives from this colouring the peculiar synthetic character of its philosophy. It is in fact primarily a practical system of Yoga that it teaches and it brings in metaphysical ideas only as explanatory of its practical system; nor does it merely declare Vedantic knowledge, but it founds knowledge and devotion upon works, even as it uplifts ...
... disappear into the path of Knowledge. The last step is Bhaktiyoga, adoration and seeking of the supreme Self as the Divine Being, and here the insistence is on devotion; but the knowledge is not subordinated, only raised, vitalised and fulfilled, and still the sacrifice of works continues; the double path becomes the triune way of knowledge, works and devotion. And the fruit of the sacrifice, the one fruit... the giving up of works to the supreme Purusha. Others again speak of the Gita as if the doctrine of devotion were its whole teaching and put in the background its monistic elements and the high place it gives to quietistic immergence in the one self of all. And undoubtedly its emphasis on devotion, its insistence on the aspect of the Divine as Lord and Purusha and its doctrine of the Purushottama... in whom all knowledge culminates and the Master of sacrifice to whom all works lead as well as the Lord of Love into whose being the heart of devotion enters, and the Gita preserves a perfectly equal balance, emphasising now knowledge, now works, now devotion, but for the purposes of the immediate trend of the thought, not with any absolute separate preference of one over the others. He in whom all ...
... . Jnânayoga aims at a union with the Infinite and Eternal in Its ineffable transcendence; Bhaktiyoga with the infinite and eternal Lord of Love and Bliss and Beauty; and Tantra, first with the infinite and eternal Mother of the universe as the supreme Shakti, and, as the culminating movement of its Yoga, with the infinite and eternal Brahman beyond all names and forms. The difference in the conception... conception of the Infinite and Eternal determines the difference in the conception of the methods of Yoga and their practice. The one distinctive feature of the Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo is that its conception of the Infinite and Eternal is different from that of all the schools of Yoga in India, except of the Vedas, the Upanishads and the Gitâ. The Infinite and Eternal to whom it claims... imaging of the various aspects of truth. The descent of the Supermind into the human heart will transform all emotions into gleaming waves of bliss, and all feelings into feelings of love and devotion for the Divine in all beings and all things. The relations of life will not be abolished, but become widened and illumined figures of our infinite relations with the Divine, the diverse ways of ...
... all it is and all it has to the All and Beyond-All. In the Integral Yoga this surrender tends to be integral, that is to say, it becomes the surrender of the mind with its thoughts and ideas, of life with its will and emotions and desires, and of the body with its movements and activities,—a synthetic progress in Jnanayoga, Bhaktiyoga and Karmayoga, though the start may be only with one of these, or... power of self-transcendence, which necessitates a surrender to the infinite divine Force of the Mother. In the Integral Yoga, the mind is not sought to be forcibly silenced or suppressed, as is done in some of the other Yogas, notably in Raja Yoga. The aim of the Integral Yoga being a dynamic union, not only of the soul but of every part of its terrestrial nature, with the Divine, and a resultant... of the manifest Divine. Work which, in the beginning of the Yoga, is a prayer of the body to the Divine, becomes in the end the prism of His Victorious Power. What the Integral Yoga aims to achieve, is not only the surrender of the being of man, but also of his entire temporal becoming; and that makes all the difference between this Yoga and all the others. In it, it is not enough that man's actions ...
... is Karma yoga, the selfless sacrifice of works, and here the Gita's insistence is on action. The second is Jnana yoga, the self-realisation and knowledge of the true nature of the self and the world; and here the insistence is on knowledge; but the sacrifice of works continues and the path of Works becomes one with but does not disappear into the path of Knowledge. The last step is Bhaktiyoga, adoration... habitual and normal nature of man as he is now to a supreme and divine spiritual nature. There will be needed in a word a Yoga which shall be at once a Yoga of integral knowledge, a Yoga of the integral will and its works, a Yoga of integral love, adoration and devotion and a Yoga of an integral spiritual perfection of the whole being and of all its parts and states and powers and motions. "What... its elements of knowledge and devotion, to take advantage of its continual insistence on action and to find in it a scripture of the Karma yoga, a Light leading us on the path of action, a Gospel of Works. Undoubtedly, the Gita is a Gospel of Works, but of works which culminate in knowledge, that is, in spiritual realisation and quietude, and of works motived by devotion, that is, a conscious surrender ...
... love and devotion, a man of undeviating will and power, and, as the world knows only too well, a creator of probably the greatest paradoxical personality—a Jnânayogi-cum-Karmayogi— of modern times. He was an Adwaitin, a Vishishtâ dwaitin, even a Dwaitin, a Christian of Christians, and a devout Moslem—all these and many things more rolled into one. His successive practice of the different Yogas was an... vast and powerful attempt at a synthesis, at a mighty gathering up of the distinct and divergent elements of human nature into a living and fruitful unity. Sânkhyayoga, Karmayoga, Jnânayoga, Bhaktiyoga, Hathayoga, Râjayoga, Mantrayoga, each was given a place and a definite function in that manifold synthesis, and an Page 30 integrated system of spiritual culture, not indeed apparent... creative Light, and to no other. Page 50 No post-Vedic Yoga except Tantra has ever had this ideal of the integration and transformation of human nature in view. The adventure of the Tantric Yoga was large and amazingly bold, but less profound,—its union with Light was not so sure as its polarity to Force. The other Yogas did not bother about this ideal. Their object being to help the soul ...
... repeatable by others as tried out by generations of practitioners in India. For man the active being there is the yoga of the will or of works, karmayoga; for man the emotional being there is the yoga of devotion or love, bhaktiyoga ; for man the thinking, reflective being there is the yoga of knowledge, jnanayoga. These are the three main procedures by which the human being can use its fundamental... positive evaluation of her creation — Sri Aurobindo’s yoga could in fact be considered as a kind of super-tantra.) Sri Aurobindo’s Integral Yoga ‘Sri Aurobindo has always told that his yoga begins where the others’ end,’ said the Mother, ‘and that to be able to realize his yoga, one first has to attain the extreme limit of what the other yogas have realized.’ 13 This is no small prerequisite... eventually must lead to the foundation of the Kingdom of God on Earth. ‘Yoga is nothing but practical psychology,’ wrote Sri Aurobindo in The Synthesis of Yoga, the literary formulation of his experiments, experiences and realizations from 1912 till 1921, cryptically noted down in his Record of Yoga. ‘Essentially, Yoga is a generic name for the processes and the results of processes by which ...
... in India as Bhaktiyoga. By this Yoga and the experience of the saints and Sadhus who have practised it, much more than by Puranic legend and outward devotion,—though these also have helped,—our religious systems have done much to preserve the thoughts and experiences of the early Rishis to their distant posterity. This vitalising core of philosophy, this saving essence of religion, Yoga, has itself... certain external causes, from the persistence of certain external suggestions, but much more because of the constant practice of Yoga by a large number of typical and central souls who act, overtly or silently, upon the general mass of Indian humanity. The discipline of Yoga renders a man much more sensible to the surrounding mental Page 89 atmosphere, than in his ordinary state. He becomes... characteristic Indian discipline has been successfully acquired as a part of their enlightenment by educated Indians, there is a tendency to identify Yoga with the Rajayogic system of Patanjali, because that alone is known to the European scholar. But Yoga cannot be confined to a single school or a single system. Patanjali’s Yogashastra is concerned only with Rajayoga and only with one system of Rajayoga; ...
... your questions." "The Gita is a book of the science of Yoga. But is seems to contain three sciences, science of Yoga of Works, Karma Yoga, science of Yoga of Knowledge, Jnanayoga, and science of Yoga of Divine Love, Bhaktiyoga. Why are these yogas so-called? Why, for instance, is Karmayoga so called?" I answered as follows: "Yoga of Works is so called because it employs a method of utilising... path of knowledge. The last step is Bhaktiyoga, and this: consists of adoration and seeking of the highest Reality, the supreme impersonal Person. But in this step the knowledge Page 41 is not subordinated, only raised, vitalised and fulfilled, and still the sacrifice of Works continues. The double path becomes the triple path of knowledge, works and devotion. And, at the end, the goal is a... Krishna says that action is far inferior to the Yoga of intelligence. He does not say that the Yoga of action is far inferior to the Yoga of intelligence. Actually, Krishna explains that both these Yogas are, in a sense, optional; but Page 42 even then the Yoga of action is superior to the Yoga of intelligence. "Why? "For Yoga of intelligence demands complete renunciation of ...
... reason why in Sri Aurobindo’s voluminous correspondence one cannot find a cut and dried method of the Integral Yoga. The three established main yogas were the path of love ( bhaktiyoga ), the path of knowledge ( jnanayoga ) and the path of works or action (karmayoga ). Those three methods of yoga are clearly based on the three fundamental qualities every human being has in himself: feeling, thinking and... the sadhak is ready for the Integral Yoga. For we know that the Integral Yoga begins where the traditional paths end. In this way the fully developed soul reaching the threshold of the Integral Yoga has at its command all necessary means to follow the new way discovered and cleared by Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. It is by their labour that the Integral Yoga has become a possibility at this critical... cautioning that spiritual commitment is like fire, which one had better refrain from touching if one is not sufficiently purified. About the Integral Yoga Sri Aurobindo had warned in a chapter in his Synthesis of Yoga that, ‘This is not a Yoga in which abnormality of any kind, even if it be an exalted abnormality, can be admitted as a way to self-fulfilment or spiritual realisation. Even when one ...
... and bhaktiyoga. Sadhana issuing in efficient work, and work in its turn awakening the soul within and charging it with power and purpose: integral progress is the result of this zigzag reversible reaction between inner life and outer activity. The whole Ashram, then, has been a theatre of action with a push towards perfection; and the whole Ashram is also a laboratory of research in Yoga where the... appeared, and then most of the letters pertaining to Yoga were brought out in two omnibus volumes, Tomes One and Two of On Yoga - Book Two (1958). Tome One comprises letters on 'The Supramental Evolution', Integral Yoga and the Other Paths', 'The Purpose of Avatarhood', 'The Foundations of the Sadhana', Sadhana through Work, Meditation, Love and Devotion, and similar topics; and Tome Two comprises letters... In all Yoga, and more so in the integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo, the Guru's role is of supreme importance. No doubt the ultimate Guru, like the ultimate Shastra, is lodged within, but at least till that advanced stage of the Yoga is reached - no easy matter at all - the reliance on the Guru has to be absolute. The sadhak could profitably read The Life Divine, The Synthesis of Yoga, The Mother ...
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