... The Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo CHAPTER XVIII KARMA YOGA AND ITS INDISPENSABILITY PART II THE PRINCIPLES AND PRACTICE OF KARMAYOGA KARMAYOGA consists in offering all the movements of our physical being, particularly the works done by our body, to the omnipresent Master of our being. Its primary rule, as the Gitâ... value is concerned.² The essential thing is the spirit and the attitude with which he works. A work becomes yogic only either when there is an aspiration for union with the Divine inspiring and impelling it, or when it is an expression of the union itself—the former is Karma yoga for union, and the latter Karmayoga in union. The common denominator between the two is the union; and any work that leads... 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 without a firm basis of quietude and calm self-mastery. Whatever work is done from the inner silence and serenity of the being, and offered ...
... union with the Divine. The Integral Yoga aims at union with the Divine not only in His Consciousness but also in His Nature. There is another conception of Karmayoga which regards works only as a means of psychological purification, cittaśuddhi, and sees no further spiritual utility in it. When the purification is achieved, works are either rigorously clipped and curtailed, or... the very outpouring of love. If knowledge is the very state of oneness and the love its bliss, divine works are the living power of its light and sweet- ness." Recognising, adoring and seeking union with the Transcendent and universal Master of all works, it regards Karmayoga as an indispensable part of itself, and the most effective medium of manifesting God's Power and greatness upon earth. It... The Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo CHAPTER XVII KARMA YOGA AND ITS INDISPENSABILITY PART I THE BASIS OF KARMA YOGA KARMA YOGA or the yoga of divine works starts from the foundation of a faith or inner perception that the Divine is not only the incommunicable, featureless Absolute with whom one can be united by the abolition ...
... 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... individual. The perfection of Karmayoga is attained when the sâdhaka of the Integral Yoga has been liberated and Page 317 transformed in all the parts of his being including his body and when his separative ego has disappeared for ever leaving his consciousness in full and constant possession of the unity of universal existence. Perfect Karmayoga is a radiant blossom of a dynamic... consecrated action. But the Integral Yoga raises this synthesis from the mind to the Supermind, and endeavours to achieve, not a mental or even a spiritualmental, but a supramental or divine perfection. If the mind, even the enlightened mind, remains the dominant and directing agent of life's activities, the perfection we aim at cannot be realised. The perfection of Karmayoga, as Sri Aurobindo understands ...
... into life—for that, Yoga by works is indispensable. It seems to me that there is no mystery about that or anything to perplex anybody—it is rational and inevitable. Only you say that the thing is impossible; but that is what is said about everything before it is done. I may point out that Karmayoga is not a new but a very old Yoga: the Gita was not written yesterday and Karmayoga existed before the... which is the essence of this Karmayoga are essentially a movement of bhakti. Only it does exclude a life-fleeing exclusive meditation or an emotional bhakti shut up in its own inner dream taken as the whole movement of the Yoga. One may have hours of pure absorbed meditation or of the inner motionless adoration and ecstasy, but they are not the whole of the integral Yoga. To say that one enters... The Synthetic Method of the Integral Yoga The Synthetic Method of the Integral Yoga A Yoga of Knowledge, Works, Bhakti and Self-Perfection Letters on Yoga - II Chapter II Combining Work, Meditation and Bhakti The Place of Work in Sadhana There is no stage of the sadhana in which works are impossible, no passage in the path where there is no foothold ...
... (1909-1910) Essays in Philosophy and Yoga Karmayoga 19-June-1909 We have spoken of Karmayoga as the application of Vedanta and Yoga to life. To many who take their knowledge of Hinduism second-hand this may seem a doubtful definition. It is ordinarily supposed by "practical" minds that Vedanta as a guide to life and Yoga as a method of spiritual communion... impress of the deed, though he slay the whole world yet he slays not and is not bound." The Charioteer of Kurukshetra driving the car of Arjuna over that field of ruin is the image and description of Karmayoga; for the body is the chariot and the senses are the horses of the driving and it is through the bloodstained and mire-sunk ways of the world that Sri Krishna pilots the soul of man to Vaicuntha. ... Lover and Helper of mankind, he dwells permanently in Him and becomes incapable of grief, disquiet or false excitement,—that is Yoga. Pranayam and Asans, concentration, worship, ceremonies, religious practice are not themselves Yoga but only a means towards Yoga. Nor is Yoga a difficult or dangerous path, it is safe and easy to all who take refuge with the Inner Guide and Teacher. All men are potentially ...
... When I wrote about the absolute newness of your Yoga, you swore at me in German. Not my Yoga—Karmayo! The Karmayoga element in my Yoga is not new. Yes, in the "Gita" it is there, to be sure, but has it been done through timber-cutting, bread-kneading, cooking, etc., etc.? There is nothing new in that either. It has always been a rule of Karmayoga that one must be ready to do any work for the... is the very essence of this karmayoga are essentially a movement of bhakti. Only it does exclude a life-fleeing exclusive meditation or an involved Bhakti shut up in its own inner dream taken as the whole movement of the Yoga. One may have hours of pure absorbed meditation or of the inner motionless adoration and ecstasy, but they are not the whole of the integral Yoga. December 22, 1934 ... n of the ego and in the drive of rajasic desire. There can be no karmayoga without the will to get rid of ego, rajas and desire which are the seals of ignorance. Another thing, I do not mean philanthropy or the service of humanity or all the rest of the things—moral or idealistic—which men substitute for the deeper truth of works. I mean by work action done for the Divine and more and more in ...
... dissatisfaction (vairagya) its maimed creation. 142 To do works in a close union and deep communion with the Divine in us, the Universal around us and the Transcendent above us, not to be shut up any longer in the imprisoned and separative human mind, the slave of its ignorant dictates and narrow suggestions, this is Karmayoga. To work in obedience to a divine command, an eternal Will, a... ion of our human personal will, then its merger in a greater divine or greatest supreme Will is the central secret and core of intention of the Karmayoga. But this cannot be entirely done by our mental consciousness in its little human boundaries. Our Yoga must help us to leave it and enter into a greater consciousness enlightened by a truer radiance of knowledge, armed with a mightier unerring strength... being absolute and one with the Transcendent. Karma Yoga: The Yoga of Works 138 All spiritual paths lead to a higher consciousness and union with the Divine and among the many paths one of the greatest is the Page 348 Way of Works: it is as great as the Way of Bhakti or the Way of Knowledge. Do not imagine that works are in their nature nothing but a bondage, they can be a ...
... a Page 467 Volume 5. Translations Anandamath Some Aphorisms of Bhartrihari Volume 13. Essays in Philosophy and Yoga The Ideal of the Karmayogin Karmayoga Man—Slave or Free? Yoga and Human Evolution Yoga and Hypnotism The Greatness of the Individual The Process of Evolution Stead and the Spirits Stead and Maskelyne Fate and Free-Will... Appendix Appendix Karmayogin Karmayogin Writings in Other Volumes of the Complete Works Non-political writings from the Karmayogin are published in other volumes of THE COMPLETE WORKS OF SRI AUROBINDO. In the table below, the items included in each volume are listed in the order of their appearance in the Karmayogin . The original titles are given. ...
... present preoccupation is with a Yoga, integral in its aim and complete movement, but starting from works and proceeding by works although at each step more and more moved by a vivifying divine love and more and more illumined by a helping divine knowledge. The greatest gospel of spiritual works ever yet given to the race, the most perfect system of Karmayoga known to man in the past, is to be... the whole fundamental means and the ultimate aim of an integral Karmayoga. Even for those whose first natural movement is a consecration, a surrender and a resultant entire transformation of the thinking mind and its knowledge, or a total consecration, surrender and transformation of the heart and its emotions, the consecration of works is a needed element in that change. Otherwise, although they may... and the sole originator of its initiative. Page 104 Equality, renunciation of all desire for the fruit of our works, action done as a sacrifice to the supreme Lord of our nature and of all nature,—these are the three first Godward approaches in the Gita's way of Karmayoga. Page 105 × rahasyam uttamam ...
... the ego and in the drive of Rajasic desire. There can be no Karmayoga without the will to get rid of ego, Rajas and desire, which are the seals of ignorance. * I do not mean philanthropy or the service of humanity or all the rest of the things - moral or idealistic - which the mind of man substitutes for the deeper truth of works. I mean by work action done for the Divine and more and... knowledge. Finally, works, Bhakti and knowledge go together and self-perfection becomes possible - what we call the transformation of the nature. These results certainly do not come all at once; they come more or less slowly, more or less completely according to the condition and growth of the being. There is no royal road to the divine realisation. This is the Karmayoga laid down in the Gita... either at any time. I have stressed both Bhakti and knowledge in my Yoga as Page 46 well as works, even if I have not given any of them an exclusive importance like Shankara or Chaitanya. The difficulty you feel or any Sadhak feels about Sadhana is not really a question of meditation versus Bhakti versus works. It is a difficulty of the attitude to be taken, the approach or whatever ...
... 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 of... adventure. There is a mightier, a more comprehensive beginning in the Tântric Yoga, which has much in common with-Karmayoga; and the Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo absorbs some of its cardinal principles as it proceeds to lay the foundation of an integral divine fulfilment upon earth. The end of the Gitâ's synthetic Yoga has been left wrapped in a mysterious hint of a total divine living for man;... effective method of Karmayoga. As most men live in their vital-physical being, predominantly concerned with the satisfaction of their desires and wants, the practice of Karmayoga is usually attended with rapid and remarkable results in the general purification of the nature, Page 23 and the opening and orientation of the being to the Divine. It is a dynamic Yoga, which has to be ...
... throughout a profound philosophy; it is throbbing with the luminous life of a prophet's message, it is instinct with something of the Gita's own mantrashakti. Page 38 Works by the Author The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo (in five parts) The Coming Race Towards a New Society The Malady of the Century The Approach to Mysticism The World War (1939-45)—Its Inner... reality of Brahman and the world, is the master of action, who acts but in actionlessness, the Lord in whom and through whom the universes and their creatures live and move and have their being. Karmayoga is union in mind and soul and body with the Lord of action in the execution of his cosmic purpose. And this union is effected through a transformation of the human nature, through the revelation of... of the Divine Prakriti and its descent upon and possession of the inferior human vehicle. Arrived so far, we now find, if we look back, a change in the whole perspective. Karma and even Karmayoga, which hitherto seemed to be the pivot of the Gita's teaching, Page 37 retire somewhat into the background and present a diminished stature and value. The centre of gravity has shifted ...
... are bound to disappear if they are met by a settled faith, will and patience. The Karmayoga of the Gita I do not usually undertake the guidance of any except those who accept my own way of Yoga and show some signs of having a special call to it. All I can suggest to him is to practise some kind of Karmayoga—remembering the Supreme in all his actions from the smallest to the greatest, doing... I gather from X 's letter to you that he has been following a very sound method in his practice and has attained some good results. The first step in Karmayoga of this kind is to diminish and finally get rid of the ego-centric position in works, the lower vital reactions and the principle of desire. He must certainly go on on this road until he reaches something like its end. I would not wish to... wholly and put your whole will into it—with a divided and wavering will you cannot hope for success in anything, neither in life nor in Yoga. That is the ordinary Karmayoga in which the sadhak chooses his own work but offers it to the Divine—it is given to him in the sense that he is moved to it through some impulsion of his mind or heart or vital and feels that there is some cosmic power or ...
... spiritual liberty. The first step is Karmayoga, the selfless sacrifice of works, and here the Gita's insistence is on action. The second is Jnanayoga, 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... a new method of yoga, —the method of all-embracing self- surrender to the Divine. This method has been expounded in the last chapter of the Gita, and it is significant that it is this method, as applied fully, has been instrumental in the development of the new knowledge that we find in the works of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother and in the development of the new synthesis of yoga, which has come... equality works have to be done as a sacrifice by man as the doer, a sacrifice to a deity who is the supreme and only Self though by him not yet realised in his own being. This is the initial step. Secondly, not only the desire of the fruit, but the claim to be the doer of works has to be renounced in the realisation of the Self as the equal, the inactive, the immutable principle and of all works as simply ...
... controlling the works of the mind and the senses and body in the power of self-knowledge and the pure objectless self-delight of spiritual realisation, niyataṁ karma . 2 Buddhiyoga is fulfilled by karmayoga ; the Yoga of the self-liberating intelligent will finds its full meaning by the Yoga of desireless works. Thus the Gita founds its teaching of the necessity of desireless works, niṣkāma karma... organs of action must be used for their proper office, for action, but for action done as Yoga. But what is the essence of this self-control, what is meant by action done as Yoga, Karmayoga ? It is non-attachment, it is to do works without clinging with the mind to the objects of sense and the fruit of the works. Not complete inaction, which is an error, a confusion, a self-delusion, an impossibility... more clearly its positive and imperative doctrine of Works. The Teacher first makes a distinction between the two means of salvation on which in this world men can concentrate separately, the Yoga of knowledge, the Yoga of works, the one implying, it is usually supposed, renunciation of works as an obstacle to salvation, the other accepting works as a means of salvation. He does not yet insist strongly ...
... have not told me how the gunas work, and unless I know that, it will be difficult for me to detect and rise above them. Besides, you have spoken of bhakti as the greatest element in Yoga, yet you have talked much of works and knowledge, but very little or nothing of bhakti. And to whom is bhakti, this greatest thing, to be offered? Not to the still impersonal Self, certainly, but to you, the Lord. Tell... gained. And since we have still to live and act in the world and our nature in works is to seek for the fruits of our works, we must change that nature and do works without attachment to their fruits, otherwise desire and all its results remain. But how can we change this nature of the doer of works in us? By dissociating works from ego and personality, by seeing through the reason that all this is only... First Series First Series Essays on the Gita XXIV The Gist of the Karmayoga The first six chapters of the Gita form a sort of preliminary block of the teaching; all the rest, all the other twelve chapters are the working out of certain unfinished figures in this block which here are seen only as hints behind the large-size execution of the main motives ...
... 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 all the elements of works for Page 39... psychological being, the Yoga of the Gita is called the integral and synthetic Yoga." The Princess asked: "Can you just outline very briefly the main thread of the argument of the Gita?" I replied : "The argument of the Gita resolves itself into three great steps." "The first step is Karmayoga; in one word, this Yoga consists of selfless sacrifice of works. The second step is... with your exposition." I began : "Let me recapitulate a little. And let me clarify the basic premise of Karmayoga. This will require me to bring in elements from the entire text of the Gita. "Karmayoga is the Yoga of Works. So its basic question is : 'What is the nature of works?' "The peculiarity of the Work is that it always produces a result. "And behind every work there is ...
... sadhaka of the Karmayoga will abandon this also to the Lord of works. After he has made this surrender, his social impulses and judgments will, Page 210 like his desires, only be used for their exhaustion or, it may be, so far as they are still necessary for a time to enable him to identify his lower mental nature with mankind in general or with any grouping of mankind in its works and hopes... word was manhood and this is a much larger and deeper thing than the moral mind and its structures. The culmination of Karmayoga is a yet higher and deeper state that may perhaps be called "soulhood",—for the soul is greater than the man; a free soulhood spontaneously welling out in works of a supreme Truth and Love will replace human virtue. But this supreme Truth cannot be forced to inhabit the petty... end of Karmayoga. But what is this divine supreme Will and how can it be recognised by our deluded instruments and our blind prisoned intelligence? Ordinarily, we conceive of ourselves as a separate "I" in the universe that governs a separate body and mental and moral nature, chooses in full liberty its own self-determined actions and is independent and therefore sole master of its works and responsible ...
... went up from each of us that we may be blessed with a healthy body. Such a great way of doing karmayoga and sadhana simultaneously (in the guise of sports!). This was taking place for the first time, not just in the Ashram, but on the whole earth! To have children doing the sadhana! And the Integral Yoga on top of it! And this agni-tapasya started with work on the body. The Playground became the... broke the confines of that rigid life and society in order to take up the path of Integral Yoga. And they deserve all our respect. On the Mother’s instruction these grown-up women let go instantaneously of all of their social habits and traditions. These grown-up women were proof of how easily the Mother’s Force works with women. In a second the Mother broke the age-old shackles that had bound women so... were in fairyland. As if a festival of ananda was on. The solemn seriousness of the elderly was removed by the Mother. And the elderly with new-found eagerness also joined joyfully in the Mother’s karmayoga, this sadhana of the transformation of the body. They began mixing with the children as friends. Nolini-da, Pavitra-da, Amrita-da, Dyuman-bhai, Purani-ji, Nirod-da and many others became our best ...
... the Ashram The work here is not intended for showing one's capacity or having a position or as a means of physical nearness to the Mother, but as a field and an opportunity for the Karmayoga part of the integral Yoga—for learning to work in the true Yogic way—dedication through service, practical selflessness, obedience, scrupulousness, discipline, setting the Divine and the Divine's work first and... should not be done. To set up an open competition or a closed one between works and meditation is a trick of the dividing mind and belongs to the old Yoga. Please remember that I have been declaring all along an integral Yoga in which knowledge, Bhakti, works—light of consciousness, Ananda and love, will and power in works—meditation, adoration, service of the Divine have all their place. Have I written... written seven volumes of the Arya all in vain? Meditation is not greater than Yoga of works nor works greater than Yoga by knowledge—both are equal. Page 746 Another thing—it is a mistake to argue from one's own very limited experience, ignoring that of others, and build on it large generalisations about Yoga. This is what many do, but the method has obvious demerits. You have no experience ...
... of the practice of this Yoga Page ix have been thoroughly laid bare, awl the besetting snags spotlighted, and it has been shown how they can be most effectively overcome by a constant and conscientious pursuit of the Integral Yoga. The distinctive elements of Karmayoga, Bhaktiyoga and Jnanayoga, as woven into the composite texture of the Integral Yoga, and constituting the basis... which defy all mental formulas and clear-cui systematisation. It works according to the inner needs and potentialities of each individual, and pro- poses to bring about a full outflowering of his svabhava w essential self-law in his life. In the first nine chapters of this book, I have dwelt with the bases and preliminaries of the Yoga—the initial way the aspirant has to tread, his personal effort... features of Sri Aurobindo's Yoga, and I have tried, as best I could within the limited scope of the present book, to give a clear and comprehensive idea of what is meant by them, and how they can be realised in the aspirant's life. Particularly, the three chapters on Liberation, Transformation, and Perfection contain revolutionary departures from the traditional paths of Yoga and the original contribution ...
... place; the most significant portion of the Gita is its eulogy of Karmayoga and inspired exposition of its nature & principles. Jnana, of course, is indispensable; Jnana is first & best. Works without knowledge will not save a man but only plunge him deeper & deeper into bondage. The Upanishad, before it speaks of the necessity of works, takes care first to insist that you must realise the presence of... on the other hand, be increased to hundreds of years by Yoga. But the Karmayogin will neither desire to increase his term of life nor to diminish it. To increase his term of life would show a desire for and clinging to phenomenal existence quite inconsistent with that abandonment of desire which we have seen to be the fundamental law of Karmayoga. A few great Yogis have prolonged their lives without... already explained. It lays down for us those first principles of Karmayoga which must govern the mental state and actions of the Karmamargin in his upward progress to his ideal. In the next five verses we shall find the Upanishad enunciating the final goal of the Karmamargin and the ideal state of his mind and emotional part when his Yoga is perfected and he becomes a Yogin in very truth, the Siddha or ...
... Aurobindo's yoga and philosophy. He also wrote books on the Tantra and the Vedas. 313A rhetorical device. The Sanskrit word means decoration, beautification, ornamentation. 314 Karmayoga is the dedication of all one's actions to the Divine, by practicing equality and renunciation of desire and motivation in works. Renunciation of the fruits of one's works is the essence of karmayoga - nishkama... back to the early thirties, 1933 to be exact, when I made the Ashram my permanent home ... Sri Aurobindo explained to me in this letter how the outer life can be made a field of yoga and how work done as a part of Karmayoga, 314 with the right attitude, can be a very good training for the completely yogic life. But very little of this advice was put into ptactice: the flicker of light kindled in... every word! ... meant living dangerously, no amount of puncturing of your skull with words... (Laughter) ... will give you that simple perception. And as to yoga, you yourself were perorating at the top of your voice about its awful, horrible, pathetic and tragic dangers, so ... 317Ibid., 757-8. 318Ibid., 101-2. Page 280 ...
... been described in the Gita. As Sri Aurobindo points out: "The greatest gospel of spiritual works ever yet given to the race, the most perfect system of Karmayoga known to man in the past, is to be found in the Bhagavad Gita. In that famous episode of the Mahabharata the great basic lines of Karmayoga are laid down for all time with an incomparable mastery and the infallible eye of an assured experience... teachings upon divine love and the high emphasis of the Veda upon divine works." 56 The Synthesis of Yoga in the Gita There came to be developed, in the later history of Indian yoga, the great synthesis of yoga in the Gita, which is the greatest gospel of divine works. The quintessential aims and methods of Karma yoga that were greatly emphasized in the Veda and also in the earlier Upanishads... aims of its synthetic yoga. The Gita also brought into the forefront the yoga of divine love and discovered the principle of self-surrender which is essential Page 73 for the right relationship between the human soul and the Divine Lover; this principle of self-surrender was found to be the sovereign means of the fulfillment of divine knowledge and divine works. The supreme secrets ...
... When the Yogin has had spiritual experience of this universality, then only is he fit for Karmayoga; for not till then can he sink the constant feeling of I and thou and he in a single higher and wider Existence; not till then can he escape from apparent self to true Self, and without such escape Karmayoga cannot really begin. To clothe all things with the Supreme, to be conscious of Him in all you... you say, do, think, feel or are sensible of,—this experience is the beginning of Karmayoga. The transformation of this experience into the habitual condition of the soul, is the consummation of Karmayoga; for it leads straight to the knowledge of Brahman and the ecstasy of union with Him, Karma melting into and becoming one with Jnana and Bhakti. Karma, Bhakti, Jnana,—Action, Love, Knowledge, are the... disillusionized, but yet using the illusions of Maya as the materials of his Yoga; he seeks to free himself from phenomena while yet living among phenomena; it is therefore Isha, Maheshwara, the Lord of the Illusion, the Master of multiple phenomenal life whom he must seek and in whom he must lose his lower self. Since he works through actions, it is the Master of actions whom he must worship with the ...
... individually and collectively, realising our larger Self in others. These two laws of action together make what is called Karmayoga or the putting of ourselves into relation with that which is Eternal by means of and in our works. Before, then, we can understand what Karmayoga is, we must understand entirely and utterly what is this Eternal Being with whom we must put ourselves in relation and what... phenomenal world and consciousness in matter would not be intelligible or conceivable? To whom does the Bhakti of the Bhakta, to whom do the works of the Karmayogin direct themselves? Why and Whom do men worship? What is it to which the human self rises in Yoga? The answer is that this also is Brahman,—Brahman not in His absolute Self but in relation to the infinite play of multiplicity, mobility, mortality... through a certain manner of action and a certain spirit in action which is the essence of Karmamarga, the Way of Works, one of the three ways by which the spirit of man may see, embrace & become God. The first law of Karmamarga is to give up the natural desire for the fruits of our works and surrender all we do, think, feel and are into the keeping of the Eternal, and the second is to identify ourself ...
... scripture of the Karmayoga, 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 of one's whole self first into the hands and then into the being of the Supreme, and not at all of works as they are... of Nature and of His works and act in a perfect spiritual liberty. The first step is Karmayoga, the selfless sacrifice of works, and here the Gita's insistence is on action. The second is Jnanayoga, 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... word governing the first state of the disciple when he begins ascending the hill of Yoga. It is practically superseded at a subsequent stage. For the Gita goes on to affirm emphatically that the man is not the doer of the action; it is Prakriti, it is Nature, it is the great Force with its three modes of action that works through him, and he must learn to see that it is not he who does the work. Therefore ...
... of the act is more and more consciously left to this supreme Will and this universal Energy. To That our works as well as the results of our works are finally abandoned. The object is the release of the soul from its bondage to appearances and to the reaction of phenomenal activities. Karmayoga is used, like the other paths, to lead to liberation from phenomenal existence and a departure into the Supreme... be no Yoga of knowledge without a human seeker of the knowledge, the supreme subject of knowledge and the divine use by the individual of the universal faculties of knowledge; no Yoga of devotion without the human God-lover, the supreme object of love and delight and the divine use by the individual of the universal faculties of spiritual, emotional and aesthetic enjoyment; no Yoga of works without... Will, Master of all works and sacrifices, and the divine use by the individual of the universal faculties of power and action. However Monistic may be our intellectual conception of the highest truth of things, in practice we are compelled to accept this omnipresent Trinity. For the contact of the human and individual consciousness with the divine is the very essence of Yoga. Yoga is the union of that ...
... . Karmayoga . Published in the first issue of the Karmayogin , 19 June 1909, and later in The Ideal of the Karmayogin. Man — Slave or Free? Published in the Karmayogin , 26 June 1909, and later in Man — Slave or Free? and The Need in Nationalism. Yoga and Human Evolution . Published in the Karmayogin , 3 July 1909, and later in Man — Slave or Free? Yoga and Hypnotism... Divine and Human , volume 12 of THE COMPLETE WORKS OF SRI AUROBINDO . Short prose writings published between 1910 and 1950 on certain specialised subjects — the Vedas, the Upanishads, Indian culture, political theory, education, poetics — are included in the volumes of THE COMPLETE WORKS dealing with those subjects. Essays in Philosophy and Yoga is divided into five parts according to the date... appeared above the title of the first essay in 1920 and 1922, has been used as the title of this section in the present volume. On Ideals . Published in the Arya in June 1916. Yoga and Skill in Works . Published in the Arya in July 1916. Conservation and Progress . Published in the Arya in May 1916. The Conservative Mind and Eastern Progress . Published in the Arya in ...
... who lights not the sacrificial fire and does not the works. What they have called renunciation (Sannyasa), know to be in truth Yoga; for none becomes a Yogin who has not renounced the desire-will in the mind." Works are to be done, but with what purpose and in what order? They are first to be done while ascending the hill of Yoga, for then works are the cause, kāraṇam . The cause of what? The cause... the understanding, the sage devoted to liberation, from whom desire and wrath and fear have passed away is ever free." Here we have a process of Yoga that brings in an element which seems quite other than the Yoga of works and other even than the pure Yoga of knowledge by discrimination and contemplation; it belongs in all its characteristic features to the system, introduces the psycho-physical askesis... sness and of the perfect equality in which the divine works of the liberated man are done. "For when one does not get attached to the objects of sense or to works and has renounced all will of desire in the mind, then is he said to have ascended to the top of Yoga." That, as we know already, is the spirit in which the liberated man does works; he does them without desire and attachment, without the ...
... in the truth of her Force which transcends this lower Prakriti that we can be perfect instruments of her power and knowledge. Not only liberation but perfection must be the aim of the Karmayoga. The Divine works through our nature and according to our nature; if our nature is imperfect, the work also will be imperfect, mixed, inadequate. Even it may be marred by gross errors, falsehoods, moral weaknesses... The Yoga of Divine Works The Synthesis of Yoga Chapter XI The Master of the Work The master and Mover of our works is the One, the Universal and Supreme, the Eternal and Infinite. He is the transcendent unknown or unknowable Absolute, the unexpressed and unmanifested Ineffable above us; but he is also the Self of all beings, the Master of all worlds... too, will his works in us assume the flawless movement of his unfailing supramental purpose. But that is the end of a long and difficult journey, and the Master of works does not wait till then to meet the seeker on the path of Yoga and put his secret or half-shown Hand upon him and upon his life and actions. Already he was there in the world as the Originator and Receiver of works behind the dense ...
... existences, acts and yet is not affected by his works, is not caught in them, receives from them no soul-ensnaring reaction, kurvann api na lipyate . Therefore, it says, the Yoga of works is better than the physical renunciation of works, because, while Sannyasa is difficult for embodied beings who must do works so long as they are in the body, Yoga of works is entirely sufficient and it rapidly and easily... its fuel, so the fire of knowledge turns all works to ashes." By this it is not at all meant that when knowledge is complete, there is cessation from works. What is meant is made clear by the Gita when it says that he who has destroyed all doubt by knowledge and has by Yoga given up all works and is in possession of the Self is not bound by his works, yoga-sannyasta-karmāṇam ātmavantaṁ na karmāṇi n... easily brings the soul to Brahman. That Yoga of works is, we have seen, the offering of all action to the Lord, which induces as its culmination an inner and not an outer, a spiritual, not a physical giving up of works into the Brahman, into the being of the Lord, brahmaṇi ādhāya karmāṇi, mayi sannyasya . When works are thus "reposed on the Brahman," the personality of the instrumental doer ceases; ...
... present life or my Yoga. As for the ground put forward that there is no precedent for progress during work or for such a method, nor have people in the past been able to do it, it amounts to a statement that there has never been any such thing as Karmayoga or a Karmayogi, that the Gita was never written or was not founded on any truth of experience and that no Yogi ever did works as part of his sadhana... beloved one, come to woe." Gita 6.40.—Ed. × Sri Aurobindo , Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, volume 13 of THE COMPLETE WORKS OF SRI AUROBINDO, p. 199 . ... 1 There is no reason why your present condition should be more than a passing phase, unless you yourself choose that it should be otherwise. If it is the "imposition" of the rule of Karmayoga on you that is the cause of your doubts, it is unjustified, because there is no imposition or compulsion, and you need only work if you wish to do so; if you think that by sitting in meditation only ...
... lotus as it ascends until it meets the Purusha in brahmarandhra, with the aid of various stages of concentration, in a deep samadhi of union marked with knowledge. In Karmayoga, works fulfil themselves in knowledge; all totality of works, says the Gita, finds its rounded culmination in Knowledge, sarvam Page 251 karmakhilam jnane parisamapyate. l In Bhaktiyoga, where love is fulfilled... Knowledge The starting-point of the method and techniques that Yoga has developed and perfected to attain to the status of integral knowledge is the purification of our faculty of understanding, buddhi. Buddhi is the true reason of human beings which is not subservient to the senses, to desire or to the blind force of habit, but works in its own right for mastery and for knowledge. It at once... Philosophy and Yoga of Sri Aurobindo and Other Essays Yoga and Knowledge Knowledge may be regarded as the most fundamental aim of Yoga. Even Hathayoga, which utilises the body as its instrument and aims at its perfection, lays down that the enjoyment of knowledge of our liberated being which brings us into unity or union with the Supreme, is its consummation. A ...
... the Impersonal may exist even in the yoga of works, in Karmayoga, and that impersonal force, impersonal action is always considered as the liberating aspect which frees you from the narrowness of the person. And that is why there is nothing surprising in the overwhelming strength of this experience.... Till today this is what has always been considered as yoga: to abandon the personal and enter into... clash of Ideas and Forces here into a higher Truth and enable the descent of that Truth to illumine and deliver and act sovereignly upon this world of Ignorance. " Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis of Yoga, SABCL, Vol. 20, p. 117 Yes, if he sees the two aspects―that is to say, the Master of Existence and the World-Mother―he may see them with an unequal vision, which would mean that he still separates... of the cosmic Energy" of which he speaks here: "This fine flower of the cosmic Energy carries in it a forecast of the aim and a hint of the very motive of the universal labour"? The Synthesis of Yoga, pp. 118-19 It is the soul which he calls this fine flower of the cosmic Energy. (Mother reads:) "...that personality, like consciousness, life, soul, is not a brief-lived stranger in an ...
... in their method and starting-point. The Sankhya also is a Yoga, but it proceeds by knowledge; it starts, that is to say, by intellectual discrimination and analysis of the principles of our being and attains its aim through the vision and possession of the Truth. Yoga, on the other hand, proceeds by works; it is in its first principle Karmayoga; but it is evident from the whole teaching of the Gita and... Nature, uttamaṁ 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... 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 works to knowledge ...
... attain to the divine birth,—a divinising new birth of the soul into a higher consciousness,—and to do divine works both as a means towards that before it is attained and as an expression of it after it is attained, is then all the Karmayoga of the Gita. The Gita does not try to define works by any outward signs through which it can be recognisable to an external gaze, measurable by the criticism of... who judges life and works by the external, uncertain and impermanent distinctions of the lower reason. Therefore the liberated man is not afraid of action, he is a large and universal doer of all works, kṛtsna-karma-kṛt ; not as others do them in subjection to Nature, but poised in the silent calm of the soul, tranquilly in Yoga with the Divine. The Divine is the lord of his works, he is only their... to ends: on the contrary a perfect working is easier to action done tranquilly in Yoga than to action done in the blindness of hopes and fears, lamed by the judgments of the stumbling reason, running about amidst the eager trepidations of the hasty human will: Yoga, says the Gita elsewhere, is the true skill in works, yogaḥ karmasu kauśalam . But all this is done impersonally by the action of a great ...
... of this divine play, is the nature of the siddhi of this stage of Yoga. 7. Experience of identity with the Divine After the annulment of the sense of 'I' being the actor, after the abrogation of even the sense of oneself being an instrument of divine action, the sadhaka will arrive at the last stage of Karmayoga in which he will feel himself completely identified with the divine... under all the stresses and strains of life, 'samatvatm yoga ucyate ' . Now we come to the actual elaboration of Karma-sadhana, of the sadhana through works. Let us not forget that the basic goal set before himself by the Karma-sadhaka of the Integral Yoga is to achieve union with the Divine through the proper performance of works. Of course, there is no gainsaying of the obvious fact that... attainment, siddhi. Sri Aurobindo has [delineated in a brief outline the successive stages in the sadhana of the Karma-yoga in the fifth chapter of his book, The Mother. Here is a synopsis of what has been written there: "If you want to be a true doer of divine works, your first aim must be to be totally free from all desire and self-regarding ego. Page 141 All your ...
... and principles of its manifested being. Therefore this Yoga of the Gita is not, as some contend, only the Karmayoga, one and the lowest, according to them, of the three paths, but a highest Yoga synthetic and integral directing Godward all the powers of our being. Page 145 Arjuna takes the declaration about the transmission of the Yoga in its most physical sense,—there is another significance... XV The Possibility and Purpose of Avatarhood In speaking of this Yoga in which action and knowledge become one, the Yoga of the sacrifice of works with knowledge, in which works are fulfilled in knowledge, knowledge supports, changes and enlightens works, and both are offered to the Purushottama, the supreme Divinity who becomes manifest within us as Narayana... highest secret,—thus claiming for it a superiority to all other forms of Yoga, because those others lead to the impersonal Brahman or to a personal Deity, to a liberation in actionless knowledge or a liberation in absorbed beatitude, but this gives the highest secret and the whole secret; it brings us to divine peace and divine works, to divine knowledge, action and ecstasy unified in a perfect freedom; ...
... Upanishadic times and fostered and developed by later extremist spirituality, and envisaged the turīya or the transcendent Unthinkable as the ultimate goal of the being of man. Jnânayoga, Bhakti yoga, Karmayoga, Râjayoga,. Page 45 Hathayoga, Tantra, all have fixed upon the supracosmic consummation, whether it is Moksha or Nirvana, or a permanent proximity to the Supreme Beloved in a world... as His turīya or absolute status. This synthesis is an epoch-making contribution to Yoga and Philosophy. Since the synthesis of the Gitâ, which, by the way, has hardly ever been practised in the mediaeval and modem times except in a fragmentary way, either by the exclusive pursuit of knowledge or love or works, no spiritual culture has based itself with any steady vision and firm faith upon the fourfold... has there ever been such a 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 ...
... The Path of the Integral Yoga The Path of the Integral Yoga The Divine Response Letters on Yoga - II Chapter I The Divine Grace and Guidance The Divine Grace The Divine Will works in all things—it may work out anything whatever. The Divine Grace comes in to help and save. If you would know what is the Divine Grace, it is necessary first to... one wishes to escape from life altogether, it can only be by the way of complete inner renunciation and merging oneself in the Silence of the Absolute or by a bhakti that becomes absolute or by a karmayoga that gives up one's own will and desires to the will of the Divine. I have said also that the Grace can at any moment act suddenly, but over that one has no control, because it comes by an i... too long a story, so I do not tell it here. It is not indispensable that the Grace should work in a way that the human mind can understand, it generally doesn't: it works in its own "mysterious" way. At first usually it works behind the veil, preparing things, not manifesting. Afterwards it may manifest, but the sadhak does not understand very well what is happening. Finally, when he is capable ...
... gather from Munshi’s letter to you that he has been following a very sound method in his practice and has attained some good results. The first step in Karmayoga of this kind is to diminish and finally get rid of the ego-centric position in works, the lower vital reactions and the principle of desire. He must certainly go on on this road until he reaches something like its end. I would not wish... not an imagination; what he describes as the radio are the communications or inspirations which usually come to the inner mind in one way or another in Yoga. Page 178 The line that seems to be natural to him is the Karmayoga and he is therefore right in trying to live according to the teaching of the Gita; for the Gita is the great guide on this path. Purification from egoistic... ess on which they exercise their influence. Page 188 It is natural for man who sees only his own consciousness individual, national or racial at work and does not see what works upon it and shapes it, to think that all is created by him and there is nothing cosmic and greater behind it. The Krishna consciousness is a reality, but if there were no Krishna, there could be ...
... principle of the untransformed nature, to be governed by its likes and dislikes. To be able to do anything with equanimity is the principle of Karmayoga and to do with joy because it is done for the Mother is the true psychic and vital condition in this yoga. Sri Aurobindo Welcoming criticism But learn to welcome criticism and the pointing out of imperfections - the more you do so, the more... Vagabonding thoughts That is why work is a good means of discipline, for if you want to do the work properly, you must become the work instead of being someone who works, otherwise you will never do it well. If you remain "someone who works" and, besides, if your thoughts go vagabonding, then you may be sure that if you are handling fragile things they will break, if you are cooking, you will burn something... Knowing and doing Before acting, know what you have to do. The Mother Knowledge ...the work is not the sole thing that matters; the knowledge in which we do works makes an immense spiritual difference. Sri Aurobindo Equanimity and joy It is not that you have to do what you dislike, but that you have to cease to dislike. To do only what you like is ...
... of immortality, Gitā's concept of sādharmya in connection with the perfection of Karmayoga, and the Tantric view of siddhis including those of mental, vital and physical being, we are obliged to bring out full value of the idea of perfection as distinguished from that of liberation. The Vedic Yoga may be looked upon as an earliest synthesis of the psychological being of man in its... Integral Yoga coincides with the Yoga of knowledge, works, and devotion. Since human life is accepted as a self-expression of the realised Divine in man, the Integral Yoga insists on action of the entire divine nature in life. It is here that by a new effort of research and development of new Yogic methods, as also by bringing all the relevant materials from the synthetic yogas of the Vedas... . In the Yoga of Buddhism, the process of yoga consists of the eightfold path, namely, of right beliefs, right aspirations, right speech, right conduct, right mode of livelihood, right effort, right mindedness and right rapture. There are also many other systems of yoga which emphasise disciplines of the body, or of life-force and mind or else they combine various systems of yoga in some kind ...
... used to often hear him say, "I shall ask the Mother." We were reminded of Sri Ramakrishna who always said, "I shall ask the Mother." If you want to know about Karmayoga, sit for a while in Amrita's room. I am talking not of Karma, but Karmayoga. Without any fatigue or strain and without any relaxation he would untiringly maintain a warm friendliness with all, listening patiently to their innumerable... houses on rent for the Ashramites, listening to innumerable complaints of the sadhaks, placing those Page 72 before the Mother and bringing her answers orally or through letters were his works. If ever you had seen him at work, you would have had a lot of fun. One after another, persons would enter his room and come out of it. His room was rather a small one filled with almirahs and tables... MEMORY OF AMRITA S PEAKING about Amrita, the first picture that comes to one's mind is his sense of humour, even at the age of 70 years, his wisdom, experience and the intense responsibility of yoga, instead of blunting his sense of humour only enhanced it as time passed. Here I could not draw a similarity between him and Sri Aurobindo. I once asked Sri Aurobindo about the source of his tremendous ...
... Jnanayoga, Karmayoga and Bhaktiyoga (Ref. The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda, Advaita Ashram, Almora, 1958) have explained that the word Yoga has a very wide connotation, and it cannot be identified with Hathayoga alone or with Rajayoga alone. Sri Aurobindo's two volumes on the Synthesis of Yoga (SABLC, 1971, Vol. 20-21) have provided detailed exposition of various systems of yoga and shown... Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda, Advaita Ashram, 1958, Calcutta, Vol. II. 32 Vide., Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis of Yoga, SABCL, 1971, Pondicherry, Vol. 20, pp. 506 20. 33 Vide., Dayakrishna, Mukund Lath, Francine E. (Eds.), Krishna Bhakti: A contemporary discussion, Indian Council of Philosophical Research, 2000, New Delhi. 34 Vide., Swami Vivekananda, The Complete Works of Swami... Swami Vivekananda, Advaita Ashram, 1958, Calcutta, Jnana Yoga, Vol. I. Page 135 35 Vide., Bhagavad Gita; vide also, Sri Aurobindo, Essays on the Gita, SABCL, 1971, Pondicherry, Vol. 13; vide also. Ibid, The Yoga of Di vine Works, Vol. 20, pp. 47 270. 36 Vide., Cottingham, John, The Spiritual Dimension, Cambridge University Press, 2005, particularly Ch. 8 (Religion and ...
... divine nature; there must be not only sāyujya or sālokya but sādṛśya or, as it is called in the Gita, sādharmya . The full Yoga, Purna Yoga, means a fourfold path, a Yoga of knowledge for the mind, a Yoga of bhakti for the heart, a Yoga of works for the will and a Yoga of perfection for the whole nature. But, ordinarily, if one can follow wholeheartedly any one of these lines, one arrives at the... the Truth and the Reality; by knowing Him, says the Upanishads, one comes to know all. By bhakti also the will is led into the road of the works of love and the service of the Divine and the government of the nature and its acts by the Divine, and that is Karmayoga. By bhakti also comes spiritual change of the consciousness and the action of the nature which is the first step towards its transformation... the Yoga force works, in so many contrary ways, open or subterranean, slow or swift, volcanic or coralline,—passing even from one to the other—and he does not use the surface reason but the eye of inner knowledge and Yogic experience. There is no contradiction between my former statements about the sunlit path and what I have said about the difficult and unpleasant passages which the Yoga has ...
... Meditations of the Mother —Dec. 2,1912 2 ibid., Nov. 3, 1912 Page 17 self, desires to be Thy willing servant." 1 This service, as the Mother understands it, is not a mere Karmayoga, a discipline of desireless and disinterested action, for the purification and liberation of the being; it has a double purpose and significance: I) the canalising of the supreme Love and Light... fulfillment of all. The same idea is expressed by Sri Aurobindo in The Synthesis of Yoga, Book I: "Accepting life, he (the sadhaka of the integral Yoga) has to bear not only his own burden, but a great part of the world's burden too along with it, as a continuation of his own sufficiently heavy load. Therefore his Yoga has much more of the nature of a battle than others'; but this is not only an... integral divine perfection of the human being." 1 The three highest forms of union aimed at respectively by the three great schools of Indian Yoga, Jnanayoga, Bhakti- 1 Letters of Sri Aurobindo, Vol. IV Page 11 yoga and Tantra,—Sayujya, Samipya and Sarupya—are fused into one all-comprehending union which combines the rapt ecstasy of the embrace of the Eternal with ...
... December 2, 1912. ² ibid., November 3, 1912. Page 346” which, being Thyself, desires to be Thy willing servant.”¹ This service, as the Mother understands it, is not a mere Karmayoga, a discipline of desireless and disinterested action, for the purification and liberation of the being; it has a double purpose and significance : 1) the canalising of the supreme Love and Light into... of all. The same idea is expressed by Sri Aurobindo in The Synthesis of Yoga, (Book I: Part one, Ch. 2) "Accepting life, [the sadhaka of the integral Yoga] has to bear not only his own burden, but a great part of the world's burden too along with it, as a continuation of his own sufficiently heavy load. Therefore his Yoga has much more of the nature of a battle than others’; but this is not only... physical, fulfilling the mental, it is Nature’s aim and it should be ours to unveil in the perfected body and mind the transcendent activities of the Spirit. As the mental life does not abrogate but works for the elevation and better utilisation of the bodily, so too the spiritual should not abrogate but transfigure our intellectual, emotional, aesthetic and vital activities.”² The Mother does ...
... 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 then... perfection and freedom are won. I ask of you the action of the Jivanmukta, the works of the Siddha. Something has to be added to the Yoga already described,—for that was only a first Yoga of knowledge. There is also a Yoga of action in the illumination of God-experience; works can be made one spirit with knowledge. For works done in a total self-vision and God-vision, a vision of God in the world and... highest degree of the perfection that comes by doing works in Yoga. That done, your nature will follow its cosmic walk in a complete and constant union with the Supreme, express the highest Self, obey the Ishwara. "This way of divine works is a far better release and a more perfect way and solution than the physical renunciation of life and works. A physical abstention is not entirely possible and ...
... see that we are not the originators of action but that it is rather this Power that acts in ourselves and in all others, not I and others the doers, but the one Prakriti, which is the rule of the Karmayoga, is also the right rule here. The ego sense serves to limit, separate and sharply differentiate, to make the most of the individual form and it is there because it is indispensable to the evolution... The Yoga of Self-Perfection The Synthesis of Yoga Chapter XVII The Action of the Divine Shakti This is the nature of the divine Shakti that it is the timeless power of the Divine which manifests itself in time as a universal force creating, constituting, maintaining and directing all the movements and workings of the universe. This universal Power is... his personal existence, but it is as the Purusha supporting and observing the whole action, conscious of it in his self-knowledge and enabling by his participation the divine Shakti to do in him the works and the will of the Ishwara. The Master of the power is then sometimes hidden by the action of the power, sometimes appears governing it and compelling its workings. Here too there are three things ...
... 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, as in... g the significance of the integral surrender in the Integral Yoga. For, if there is one conscious Shakti, the transcendent and universal Mother, everywhere, in all Her self-formations, organic and inorganic, and if it is Her Will that; covertly or overtly, initiates, Page 101 inspires and influences all action, and works itself through the tangled combinations and oppositions of t... 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 ...
... regarded, and quite rightly, as the karmakanda, and although ritualists take this karmakanda in narrow sense of a systematic rituology, it is verily the gospel of works, which, in a later period, came to be formulated as the karmayoga of the Bhagavadgita. The Veda is also a book of prayers, of worship, of devotion, of secrets of self-surrender and self-sacrifice. This is also the right description... ¹ Rigveda, X.191.4 Page 106 When we come to the Bhagavadgita, we find the quintessence of the Vedas and the Upanishads, and yet something much more, the unique synthesis of knowledge, works. Divine Love, formulated in such fullness so as to resolve the crisis of the representative Man entangled in a crisis of action. Even today, when we read the Gita, we find that our own contemporary... work joyfully for Him in the world. This is Page 107 true, but at the same time, the Gita declares that can, if they will, even to the lowest and sinful among men, enter into the path of Yoga. It has been contender that what is needed is the decisive turn; there must h an abiding faith in the Spirit, a sincere and insistent will to live in the Divine, to be in self one with Him and in Nature ...
... The work here is not intended for showing one's capacity or having position or as a means of physical nearness to the Mother, but as a field and an opportunity for the Karmayoga part of the integral yoga, for learning to work in the true yogic way, dedication through service, practical selflessness, obedience, scrupulousness, discipline, setting the Divine and the Divine's work... worship, serve Her through their works, prepare themselves for receiving the new Light according to the best of their ability, so that the Light may spread and usher in a new world to take the place of the old. 7 There was also a definite 'policy' decision. Two courses had been open to Sri Aurobindo and the Mother: first, to wait till their own Yoga of supramental transformation was... governed by their spiritual advancement or intellectual brilliance: "She selects different types .... shi wants to observe how the Divine works in different types. " 27 The Ashram was, after all, a laboratory for a spiritual and supramental Yoga, and in it humanity had to be represented in all its diversity. From the very beginning, the Ashram community had a cosmopolitan cast, and ...
... 196 as it is called in the Gita, sadharmya [becoming of one law of being and nature with the Supreme]. The full yoga, Purna Yoga, means a fourfold path, a Yoga of Knowledge for the mind, a Yoga of Bhakti for the heart, a Yoga of Works for the will and a Yoga of Perfection for the whole nature. But ordinarily, if one can follow whole-heartedly any one of these lines, one arrives at... Truth and the Reality; by knowing Him, says the Upanishads, one comes to know all. By bhakti also the will is led into the road of the works of love and the service of the Divine and the government of the nature and its acts by the Divine and that is Karmayoga. By bhakti also comes spiritual change of the consciousness and the action of the nature which is the first step towards its transformation... Kshatriya. It is in his view quite possible for a man to do business and make money and earn profits and yet be a spiritual man, practise yoga, have an inner life. The Gita is constantly justifying works as a means of spiritual salvation and enjoining a Yoga of Works as well as of Bhakti and Knowledge. Krishna, however, superimposes a higher law also that work must be done without desire, without ...
... inspiration of Karmayoga. 40 Let the Hindu, let the Indian, look into the secret cavern of his heart and discover the perennial fount of spirituality. Matter needn't be denied, indeed it shouldn't be; but spirituality should be affirmed and accepted and realised as the deeper reality. "Karmayoga" was simply "the application of Vedanta and Yoga to life". Vedanta and Yoga were nothing ... "Srijut Aurobindo Ghose and others"; the cover illustration was of the Chariot, with Arjuna and Sri Krishna seated in it; and one of the three mottos of the journal was the Gita vākya, "Yoga is skill in works". It was to be a national review and not a weekly newspaper. Current events were important only in so far as they tended to help or hinder "the growth of national life and the development... ripeness was all. It was in this mood of the sthitaprajña that Sri Aurobindo made his varied contributions in verse and prose to the pages of the Karmayogin. But, first, what exactly was 'Karmayoga' ? What should be the "Ideal of the Karmayogin"? Sri Aurobindo wrote a series of ten articles on the subject, the first two appearing in the inaugural issue itself. These ten essays have since ...
... privilege of regular correspondence with Sri Aurobindo, not only on matters pertaining to Yoga, but also on art, literature and poetic composition, and even on matters political and medical. This privilege, however, was not taken advantage of by all the sadhaks, many of whom were mainly engaged in Karmayoga, doing works as an offering to the Mother. The Mother was always easily accessible, except during... great importance ... it forms part of an arranged whole which is explicable only when it is complete. But it gives a sort of strong practical assurance that the thing will be done. 12 In a Yoga that was verily a struggle and a march, the Darshan struck Sri Aurobindo as the crossing of a difficult border presaging ultimate victory. And wasn't the descent of the Supramental on 29 February ...
... science is the science of Yoga. Right from the times of the Veda up to the present day, we find extraordinary explorations of consciousness. Vedic Rishis attained, as the Vedas testify, loftiest domains and powers of consciousness. And the Yoga that we find in the Veda is the synthesis of Yoga. For this reason, Veda is known as the Book of Knowledge (jnana kanda), Book of Works {karma kanda), and Book... the extension of inborn spirituality into various experience and by the spontaneous play of an intuitive knowledge. 7 Page 277 We have also in the works of Swami Vivekananda inspiring accounts of various systems of Yoga in large catholic and synthetic terms. In Sri Aurobindo, we have still a new synthesis which is effected by negating the forms and outsides of the yogic disciplines... As we approach the philosophy and practice of Yoga, we find that there are two things that cannot be doubted. There is, first, the experience of our individual entity as an observer who observes, experiences, acts and reacts. There is, second, a field of circumstances in which the individual finds in himself or herself and in which he or she works, learns and struggles to arrive at mastery. Arrival ...
... Page 144 In his book Maharashtratil Sant Mandaliche Aitihasik Karya (The Historical Work of the Saints in Maharashtra), B.R. Sukhtankar says: “In Dnyanadeva, devotion, yoga, knowledge and karmayoga had an excellent blend. He was the philosophical Guru of the Varakari Movement…He thought that Truth is dynamic and rejected Shankaracharya’s doctrine of ‘the world is an illusion’ saying... in it but the study itself is rather restricted. If the presence of such words or such an influence is a fact, then we should also find similar instances in other works of the author, for instance, in Jnaneshwar’s Amritanubhava , or works belonging to that period. But when this comparative aspect is not presented or when the historical connection between the two languages is not established, then one... Indeed one has to ascend these upward slopes of intuition if one is to appreciate the play of intuition. Poetry and Yoga should be our approach to read Jnaneshwari . That indeed is to drink ambrosia from the crystalline stream that is ever flowing from it. But then for both Yoga and Poetry Jnaneshwari itself opens out newer dimensions of the spirit in which our growth can be interminable. It has ...
... The Synthesis of Yoga , PARTS ONE AND Two: Introduction: The Conditions of the Synthesis; Part I: The Yoga of Divine Works; Part II: The Yoga of Integral Knowledge. Volume 21 The Synthesis of Yoga , PARTS THREE AND FOUR. Part III: The Yoga of Divine Love; Part IV: The Yoga of Self-Perfection. Volume 22 Letters on Yoga, Part One: The S... SYNTHESIS OF YOGA Part I — The Yoga of Divine Works: Sri Aurobindo Library, Madras, 1948 Sri Aurobindo Library, New York, 1950 Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry, 1953 Complete in one volume as On Yoga I — The Synthesis of Yoga: Page 407 Sri Aurobindo International University Centre, Pondicherry, 1955 The Synthesis of Yoga first appeared... were revised and enlarged and published as twelve chapters in book form in 1948 as The Synthesis of Yoga (Part I: The Yoga of Divine Works). Chapters - VI to XII in their revised form first appeared serially in the quarterly Advent from August 1946 to April 1948. In 1950 The Yoga of Divine Works was published in an American edition with a glossary and an index. In 1955, under the imprint ...
... assignment and execution of work in the Ashram - The work here is not intended for showing one's capacity or having a position. .. but as a field and an opportunity for the Karmayoga part of the integral Yoga, for learning to work in the true yogic way, dedication through service, practical selflessness, obedience, scrupulousness, discipline, setting the Divine and the Divine's work first... that the tenuous new connection between the overmental gods and the disciples should be cut, and that the sadhaks Page 590 should do the yoga of transformation at the material or physical base - the emphasis now being on Karmayoga in its many forms expressive of the Ashram's variegated communal life. To build except on a supramental base would have been to repeat the familiar "old fiasco"... 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 progressive gains of the sadhana are more and more reflected in the manifold works of the Ashram. Yoga could be described as Nature intensified, concentrated, accelerated, for the invisible slow processes that may have taken ten thousand or ...
... al 2. Sri Aurobindo and the Mother 3. Others on Sri Aurobindo 4. Sri Aurobindo on other subjects 5. Works of Sri Aurobindo 1. Biographical experiences in jail 52-3, 162, 657 aim in retiring to Pondicherry 85, 102, 133, 199-200, 209, 215-6 his Yoga 85, 140-1, 201, 207, 209, 215, 247 Page 917 occult action on events and people 103, 148-50 in a French... Page 921 5. Works of Sri Aurobindo Journals: Arya 53, l00ff, 107ff, 126ff, 133, 148, 150, 191, 197-8, 201, 203, 212, 215, 281, 324, 370, 376, 385, 408-9, 615, 654, 657, 685, 830 synthesis of all knowledge 107 its intrinsic meaning 108-9 Revue de la Grande Synthèse 101, 108, 109, 127 Karmayogin 102, 508 Dharma 102 Books: The Synthesis of Yoga 14-5, 101, 110, 119... 340-1 'Soup ceremony' 287ff, 319, 341-4 (cf195) sadhana in the physical 246, 604 growth and organisation 247ff, 251, 280, 287, 339, 362-7, 373, 445, 449, 459ff, 532,569-75,636-8,678-9,691,699 Karmayoga 251-3, 258, 274, 279, 280ff, 526-7, 546, 688, 748 finances 241, 281, 432, 445, 478-9, 570, 684 union of spiritual and economic power 241, 683-5 hostile forces in 261ff, 275 'a human microcosm' ...
... 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 ...
... "otherwise they would have no true feeling and respect for me". It was with such interesting vicissitudes that Mrityunjoy learnt the secret of Karmayoga - work as an offering, work as worship and ananda, work as surest sadhana. The Yoga of Works, however, called for infinite understanding and an ... infinite patience. To feel superior, to wax censorious, to lose one's temper with one's ... companionship of sadhaks like Arjava and Amal Kiran. Ordinarily, Dilip was absorbed in music or writing, but from time to time he fell to brooding, and he had his moods. Besides, the pronounced Karmayoga aspect of the Ashram's life didn't exactly appeal to Dilip with his addiction to the old Vaishnava tradition of Bhakti. Accordingly, he was occasionally subject to fits of doubt, restiveness and... "delicate dream-like beauty", what is equally to the point is their capacity to act 'open sesame' to the symbol-worlds of the Spirit. Poetry such as Arjava's is a demonstration of what Yoga can do, and what the Integral Yoga certainly did, to help a sadhak to find his authentic voice as a poet of spiritual sensibility. Thus, for example, "The Feet of the Divine Mother": Be Her light footfall ...
... limitations and realised his higher Self. This way of Works is Karmayoga and Karmayoga therefore depends on the Hindu conception of Brahman, the Transcendent Self and its relations to the Universe. From this all Hindu ethics proceeds. 2 Chapter I. Brahman. The first four verses of the Upanishad have given the general principle of Karmayoga; the next four provide its philosophical justification... ethical Page 222 ideal or intellectual attitude towards life, takes care to preface it with that aspect of the Eternal Reality on which its value and truth depend. The first principles of Karmayoga arise from the realization of the Eternal as a great and divine Presence which pervades and surrounds all things, so that it is impossible to direct one's thought, speech or actions to thing or person... possible. As ether, the matrix, is the continent and condition of Matariswan and his works, so is Brahman the continent and condition of ether and its evolution. Matariswan is born out of ether and works in ether, but ether is itself only an intermediate evolution; in reality, Matariswan is born out of Brahman the Self and works in Brahman the Self. The materialistic theory of cosmic origins has a great ...
... blood-curdling and at once smashes your theory of Karmayoga through poetry. Napoleonic rubbish! He was the worst poet in the world before he came here and here immediately as soon as I put my force he began writing beautiful poems. Yet it was by his Napoleonic efforts that he did it? Imbecility, thy name is ego. I was not putting any Karmayoga theory—I was simply mocking at your absurd idea that... originally by the Yoga but by disappointments of the vital,—this one's behaviour, that one's refusal to be under his influence, ingratitude etc. These things had nothing to do with Yoga. But the devil once admitted turned itself upon his sadhana also. He has passed seven years here, Sir, and still he groans and groans... And why please? Because he has never practised my Yoga, he has done his... understand how a man who is supposed to be an authority on your Yogic philosophy can compare your Yoga with Ramakrishna's! In a way he is, i.e. he is an authority on his own ideas about my Yogic philosophy. But from whom can you expect more than that? Yes, but he is an authority on my philosophy, not on my Yoga. There is a difference. Why, Sir, G's reports not so clear? Judging from the pathological ...
... on the aspiration of the spiritual seeker that he, like the great Vedantin, condemned inertia unqualifiedly and held karma — works — undertaken in the spirit of the Gita as of the essence of his Integral Yoga. But he had accepted works primarily because without works not only must our nature remain unredeemed, but no real acceptance of life could follow. Also, since life must, in the end, include... to insist only on the realisation of the Supreme Being or Ishwara even in one aspect, Shiva, Krishna as Lord of the world and Master of ourselves and our works or else the Universal Sachchidananda and attain to the essential results of this Yoga and afterwards to proceed from them to the integral results if one accepted the ideal of the divine life and this material world conquered by the Spirit. It... the Ishwara, is certainly the essential thing; but to approach Him with love and devotion and bhakti, to serve Him with one's works and to know Him, not necessarily by the intellectual cognition, but in a spiritual experience is also essential in the path of Integral Yoga. If you accept Krishnaprem's insistence that this and no other must be your path, that it is this you have to attain and realise ...
... explain the ordinary karmayoga as developed in the Gita, in which the work done is the ordinary work of human life with only an inward change. There too the violence to be used is not a personal violence done from egoistic motives, but part of the ordered system of social life. Nothing can spiritually justify individual violence done in anger or passion or from any vital motive. In our yoga our object is... Objects, in Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, volume 13 of THE COMPLETE WORKS OF SRI AUROBINDO, p. 74 . × The monthly journal (1914-1921) in which The Life Divine, The Synthesis of Yoga and many other works by Sri Aurobindo first appeared. Before these works were published as separate books, they... A book giving some hints about the Yoga compiled from letters to the sadhaks is about to be published, 6 but it cannot be said to be complete. There is no complete book on the subject; for even The Synthesis of Yoga , published in the Arya but not yet republished in book form, gives only the theory of different components of the Yoga (Knowledge, Works, Devotion) and remains besides unfinished; ...
... for that, the Yoga by work is indispensable. It seems to me that there is no mystery about that or anything to perplex anybody — it is rational and inevitable. Only you say that the thing is impossible; but that is what is said about everything before it is done. "I may point out, however, that karma-yoga, is not new but a very old yoga, Gita was not written yesterday and karmayoga existed even... from the divine realisation, the divine works and speak, from the inner consciousness, of the divine world? If the last, then perhaps, in spite of the dictum, his example at least is rather in my favour. "I do not know why you drag in humanitarianism, X's activism, philanthropical service, etc. None of these are part of my Yoga or in harmony with my works, so they do not touch me. I never thought... and welcome us there. It is not the form of the work itself or mere activity but the consciousness and Godward will behind it that are the essence of karma yoga; the work is only the necessary instrumentation for the union with the Master of works, the transit to the pure will and power of Light from the will and power of the Ignorance. "Finally, why suppose that I am against meditation or bhakti ...
... difference of unlikeness and the adjusted balancings of the world can only come about by a poising of combined unequal weights. Hence the immense importance attached by the Gita in its elements of Karmayoga to equality; it is the nodus of the free spirit's free relations with the world. Self-knowledge, desirelessness, impersonality, bliss, freedom from the modes of Nature, when withdrawn into themselves... whoever has conquered his lower self, finds in his higher self his best friend and ally. He becomes satisfied with knowledge, master of his senses, a Yogin by sattwic equality,—for equality is Yoga, samatvaṁ yoga ucyate ,—regarding alike clod and stone and gold, tranquil and self-poised in heat and cold, suffering and happiness, honour and disgrace. He is equal in soul to friend and enemy and to neutral... perception of the greater existence, the truer power, the higher delight of the immutable Self above Nature. The natural turn of such a movement, however, is towards Sannyasa, the renunciation of life and works, rather Page 193 than to that union of inner renunciation of desire with continued activity in the world of Nature which the Gita advocates. The Gita, however, admits and makes room for ...
... 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... our own personality. ‘Our yoga is not for cowards; if you have no courage, better leave it.’ 35 (the Mother) The Growth of the Ashram There is nothing that is impossible to her who is the conscious Power and universal Goddess all-creative from eternity and armed with the Spirit’s omnipotence. All knowledge, all strengths, all triumph and victory, all skill and works are in her hands. 36 ... 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 ...
... Aurobindo's writings like On Yoga, "The Divine Superman" and The Mother, or from her own works. 14 On 19 April, the starting-point of the discussion was Sri Aurobindo's remark in one of his letters that his Yoga could be pursued successfully only by those who were prepared "to abolish their little human ego and its demands in order to find themselves in the Divine". The Yoga was not to be done in a... yourself, you rejoice.... 17 A few days later, arising out of a discussion on a passage from Sri Aurobindo's The Mother, there is a sudden swerve in the talk and one is taken to the heart of Karmayoga: If you want to do something well, whatever it may be, any kind of work, the least thing, play a game, write a book, do painting or music or run a race, anything at all, if you want to do it well... something magnificent. 18 Again, on 3 May, the question is whether Yoga should necessarily be done in seclusion or whether it could be done as well even right in the market-place as it were. The Mother faces the issue without mincing matters: It is the inner attitude which must be totally changed.... Now, it is true that if one does yoga in the world and in worldly circumstances, it is more difficult ...
... though that is not its proper meaning. It is not equivalent to Brahmacharya. Brahmacharya is not binding in bhaktimārga or karmayoga , but it is necessary for ascetic jñānayoga as well as for Raja and Hatha yogas. It is also not demanded from Grihastha yogis. In this Yoga the position is that one must overcome sex, otherwise there can be no transformation of the lower vital and physical nature;... It is not meant by "the sacrifice of works" that there should be no choice between different acts, no control over impulse and desire. To regard the sex-act as an offering might easily lead to the sanctification of desire. A married man can get experiences, especially if he is not gross or over-sexy by nature. But if he follows this Yoga, he will have to drop copulation or he will get... bear. The vital elements in you have partly to be met by the discipline and experience of life, while keeping the spiritual aim in view and trying to govern life by it progressively in the spirit of Karmayoga. It is for this reason that we gave our approval to your marriage. If she consents to marry, that would be the best. All these vital disturbances proceed from suppressed sex-instinct, suppressed ...
... that the Yoga I am doing is now too much difficult for her. Her coming here would be waste of time and money. If she is in earnest about Sadhana she must begin with something much more easy. The first thing for her is to study these things, understand, get her mind prepared and begin with turning herself Godward, elimination of egoistic movements and perhaps doing works in the spirit of Karmayoga. A meditation... We should not accept any man into the Yoga because he is rich, or at the same time we should not debar any man because he happens to be rich. But he must be made to understand the demands of the Yoga. There are three demands: 1st. The will (not mere inclination or desire) for a greater Truth. 2nd. Complete consecration to that Truth in doing all the works for that Life. 3rd. Transformation... individual and the community, to realize God in life. The old way of Yoga would not make the harmony or union of the Spirit and life. It dismissed the world as Maya or a transient Lila. The result has been the loss of the power of life and degeneration of India. It is said in the Gita "These people would perish if I did not do works" and in fact the people of India have truly gone down to ruin. What ...
... into life—for that. Yoga by works indispensable- II seems to me that there is no mystery about that or anything to perplex anybody—it is rational and inevitable- Only you say that the thing is impossible; but that is what is said about everything before it is done- 1 may point out that Karmayoga is not a new but a very old Yoga: the Gita was not written yesterday and Karmayoga existed before the... Highest and welcome us there. It is not the form of the work itself or mere activity but the consciousness and God ward will behind it that are the essence of Karmayoga; the work is only the necessary instrumentation for the union with the Master of works, the transit to the pure Will and power of Light from the will and power of the Ignorance. Finally, why suppose that I am against meditation or bhakti... really been asking you to take up this central method of the yoga . What I have written may help you to get some clear idea of what I mean by this process. I have written at some length but, naturally, could cover only the fundamental things. Whatever belongs to circumstance and detail must arise as one works out the method or rather as it works itself out—for the last is what usually happens when there ...
... that the Yoga I am doing is now too much difficult for her. Her coming here would be waste of time and money. If she is in earnest about Sadhana she must begin with something much more easy. The first thing for her is to study these things, understand, get her mind prepared and begin with turning herself Godward, elimination of egoistic movements and perhaps doing works in the spirit of Karmayoga. A meditation... We should not accept any man into the Yoga because he is rich, or at the same time we should not debar any man because he happens to be rich. But he must be made to understand the demands of the Yoga. There are three demands: 1st. The will (not mere inclination or desire) for a greater Truth. 2nd. Complete consecration to that Truth in doing all the works for that Life. 3rd. Transformation... still cherished and supported by your mind and will. Either you will make no progress at all here or if the power works on you it will work to break the resistance. The nature of this struggle and the consequences may be of a serious and undesirable character. The power that works in this Yoga is of a thorough-going character and tolerates in the end nothing great or small that is an obstacle to the truth ...
... Govindarāja, Kullukabhatta, Nārāyana, Rāghavānanda, Nandana and Rāmachandra. The subject of Dharma has also been dealt with in some detail in the Bhagavad Gita, which is the greatest gospel of Karmayoga and in Page 98 which we find the greatest ancient synthesis of Karma, Jnāna and Bhakti. The Bhagavad Gita recognises an evolutionary system of Dharma, by means of which the individual... Brāhmanas, Āranyakas and Upanishads is considered to be essential, and the study of Brahmasutra and Bhagvad Gita is also considered to be necessary. Vedic literature also includes six additional works which are supposed to be aids in understanding the Veda. They are: (i) Shikshā, (ii) Kalpa, (iii) Vyākarana, (iv) Nirukta, (v) Chhanda and (vi) Jyotisha. Each one of them is called Vedānga. Connected... detailed account of the differences between the mantras of the Rigveda and Yajurveda. Both Y ā jnavalkiya Shikshā and Vasishthi Shikshā are related to the Vajasaneyi Samhitā. The other important works are: Katyāyani Shikshā, Pārāshari Shikshā, Mādhyandini Shiksha, Keshavi Shiksha and Manduki Shikshā. In the Nāradiya Shikshā, which is related to Sāmaveda, there is supposed to be the knowledge of the ...
... or not depends partly upon the way of Yoga one follows, partly on one's own spiritual necessity. There are many who pursue inwardly the spiritual life and keep the family duties, not as social duties but as a field for the practice of karmayoga, others abandon everything to follow the spiritual call alone and they are justified if that is necessary for the Yoga they practise or if that is the imperative... object of Yoga is not service to others. The object of Yoga is to enter into an entirely new consciousness in which you live no longer in the mind and the ego but in the divine consciousness and grow into the true inmost truth of your being above mind and life and body. The aim in most ways of Yoga is to draw back altogether from life into this greater existence. In Sri Aurobindo's Yoga, the aim is... The Practice of Yoga in the Ashram and Outside The Practice of Yoga in the Ashram and Outside The Practice of Yoga in the Ashram (1926-1950) Letters on Himself and the Ashram Human Relations and the Ashram Right Relations between Sadhaks The sadhaks of this Asram are not perfect—they have plenty of weaknesses and wrong movements. It is blindness not ...
... acquainted himself more intimately with the Yoga of Sri Aurobindo and found that it is the path his nature accepts and can follow. The Yogic Sadhan does not give any real idea of the nature of this Yoga; he would have to read other works of a completer and deeper character. Most even Page 598 after accepting follow out the practice of the Yoga to a certain extent and communicate their ... free activity of this knowledge from above. This is important because the principle of this Yoga is not perfection of the human nature as it is but a psychic and spiritual transformation of all the parts of the being through the action of an inner consciousness and then of a higher consciousness which works on them, throws out the old movements or changes them into the image of its own and so transmutes... due to pressure of Yoga. It is not due to the pressure of Yoga, but to the pressure of something in them that negates the Yoga. If one follows one's psychic being and higher mental call, no amount of pressure of Yoga can produce such results. People talk as if the Yoga had some maleficent force in it which produces these results. It is on the contrary the resistance to Yoga that does it. 11 ...
... rooted in knowledge and in peace that "passeth understanding". Page 334 Spiritual heroism involves the practice of the Yogic method of arriving at perfection of action, the path of Karmayoga, just as the path to sagehood is the path of knowledge, jnanayoga. The methodised effort here involves a great psychological change brought about by three stages, first, of the control and abolition... objective forces of unity and diversity, and thirdly, of internal union with the highest possible source or sources of love, joy and beauty. Sainthood consists of effortless inspiration to be engaged in works of friendliness, charity and service inspired by compassion. The fourth power of the Spirit grows into universal spiritual servanthood, which is reached by the combination of the yogic processes... Philosophy and Yoga of Sri Aurobindo and Other Essays Philosophy of Spiritual Education Why do we need Spiritual Education? What does it really mean? Is it practicable? And what reforms could we propose in our educational system so as to have the right place for spiritual education in it? All these are important and difficult questions, and within the short ...
... all education can be summed up as a process of concentration. "It will now be easy to realise that other processes of Yoga, too, are identical with the processes of education, although our education system hardly employs them. Karma Yoga, the Page 275 Yoga of works, takes up the entire realm of dynamic drives of the human being. They include instincts, desires, longings, attractions, ... action itself. And at its summit, the Gita gives the secret of self-giving by which all action is seen to be proceeding from a supreme source that is at once static and dynamic. And the pinnacle of Karmayoga is reached when one raises one's cognitive, conative and affective capacities and potentialities in a great synthesis where the divine love, divine knowledge and divine action flow through the liberated... "What is the difference between the actions of the Karmayogi and the actions of the Bhakta, devotee? And Naveen Chandra had answered : "The actions of Karmayogi are, for a long time in the course of Karmayoga, of the nature or spirit of duties; but the actions of the Bhakta are spontaneous flowers of love, where nothing is a duty and nothing is felt as a sacrifice. All actions are garlands to adorn the ...
... life. He said that he had known of the failure beforehand and that he had acted only in a spirit of nishkama karma — the disinterested or desireless action which is the basis of the authentic karmayoga. But historical events, like everything else in the universe, are always complex. In a well-documented article about the Cripps-offer by Divakar and Sucharu in Mother India , from which some material... interest and constant concern encompassed the whole of humanity in all its elements, races and cultures. The Human Cycle, originally written along with The Ideal of Human Unity, presents, as few other works do, a norm for the appreciation of the historical, modern and contemporary evolution of humankind, and merits a prominent place amongst the writings on sociology and historical philosophy. Taking... × On Himself , 404 × The Synthesis of Yoga , 23 × Words of the Mother 13, 361 ...
... pushing and not over eager, he kept a closeness and happy relation with all. He used to express very often that he was more of a retiring nature and more intent on personal realisation through Bhakti. Karmayoga did not suit his temperament very well. Whatever might be his particular bent, we saw that he did his own work like a karmayogi, in a genuine spirit of service to the Master whom he always addressed... extremely careful, meticulous and very particular about details. He has no regular time for food; he takes it when he can. So it is with his sleep. That is why he cannot join the sports activities. He works with joy and devotion. He collects all our little things and keeps them with great care — our clothes, nails, hair, etc." By the very mould of his nature a bhakta, he came into our midst by his innate... showed his sense of humour, his insight into philosophy, politics and mysticism. Sri Aurobindo seemed to like his company, his quiet devotion, in spite of his constantly grumbling against the integral Yoga and the Supermind. While cleaning the Master's nails as he lay in bed, he would start his old unvarying tale about the necessity of the personal touch, his close contact with his former guru. Sri Aurobindo ...
... the nature of human life & action lived & done in the light of Vedantic knowledge & supreme realisation. It is the gospel of a divine life on earth, a consecration of works, the seed & foundation of Karmayoga. The Upanishads are works of inspiration, not of reasoning; therefore we shall not find in them the development of thought or the logical connection of the sentences managed on the system of... development of a great & liberating doctrine. Kurvanneva, says the Rishi, having his eye on the great dispute. Thou shalt do works & not abstain from doing them and the works are the works of this material world, those that are to be done iha, here, in this life & body. Doing his works in this world a man shall be joyously willing to live the full span of years allowed to the mortal body. If he grows weary... habitations. But in that case we are eternally bound by the chain of our works, nailed helplessly to the wheel of karma? Not so; for the wheel of karma is an error and the chain of our works is a grand illusion. "Action clingeth not to a man." Bondage is not the result of works, & liberation is not the result of cessation of works. Bondage is a state of the mind; liberation is another state of the mind ...
... to us; for there are two of the candidates who represent our views to a great extent, Laporte & Richard. Richard is not only a personal friend of mine and a brother in the Yoga, but he wishes, like myself, & in his own way works for a general renovation of the world by which the present European civilisation shall be replaced by a spiritual civilisation. In that change the resurrection of the Asiatic... sources here are stopped, we have to look to mere luck for going on. Of course if we were bhaktas of the old type this would be the regular course, but as our sadhan stands upon Page 180 karmayoga with jnana & bhakti, this inactive nirbhara can only continue so long as it is enjoined on us as a temporary movement of the sadhana. It cannot be permanent. I think there will have to be a change... about the future of the Tantric Yoga. Judging from what I have heard of the facts, I do not think the difficulty about S is likely to materialise—unless there are facts behind of which I do not know. Unfortunately the manner in which the Tantric Yoga has been carried on is so full of the old faults of former Tantric sadhana that a catastrophe was inevitable. The new Yoga cannot be used as a sort of sauce ...
... feel the high emotions to which it rises and to express and execute it in life is what we understand by Karmayoga. We believe that it is to make Yoga the ideal of human life that India rises today; by the Yoga she will get the strength to realise her freedom, unity and greatness; by the Yoga she will keep the strength to preserve it. It is a spiritual revolution we foresee and the material is only... processes of evolution, suited to different temperaments, he did not condemn them openly." — Reminiscences about Lokamanya Tilak By Bapat. Here was the perspicacious exponent of the Gita's Karmayoga, and a political leader who knew human psychology and had the wisdom and patience not to confuse and imperil the natural evolution of the masses by insisting on the achieve- ment of moral ideals... books, which had belonged to Sri Aurobindo have been sent to Sri Aurobindo Ashram from Baroda. They include the Complete Works of Ishwar Gupta, Sekal O Ekal by Rajnarayan Bose, Chaitanya Charitamrita, Chandidas, Jnanadas, the Dramatical Works of Amritalal Bose, the Poetical Works of Govindadas, a collection of poems by Dinabandhu Mitra, Bengali Sonnets by Michael Madhusudan Dutt, Ananda Math ...
... inclined to do a new work, but I should like you to give me one so that I can really do it as Karma Yoga." He is drawn towards Auropolyester work where his knowledge of chemistry can be used. Mother's reply, "It is not the work that you do but the spirit in which you are doing it that makes Karmayoga." * * * 6.2.73 Requests to join Auroville disposed of. In response... Mother answered questions from Dol6ac: To do the Yoga one has to quieten the mind, silence it and go beyond it. It is the ego one has to convert and transform. Page 215 28.8.72 Sadhana's letter: "... In April you sent a message that I should fix the Matrimandir Workers Camp Kirchen. The kitchen now works well...I feel that centuries ago I worked at decorating pyramids... and wrote a message: Auroville is created to realise the ideal of Sri Aurobindo who taught us the Karma Yoga. Auroville is for those who want to do the Yoga of work. To live in Auroville means to do the Yoga of work. So all Aurovilians must take up a work and do it as Yoga. She also mentioned a letter from Sri Aurobindo read yesterday about the importance of work. * ...
... Beloved. This yoga too is not a Yoga of knowledge alone — knowledge is one of its means, but its base being self-offering, surrender, bhakti, it is based in the heart and nothing can be eventually done without this base. There are plenty of people here who do or have done Japa and base themselves on bhakti, very few comparatively who have done the "head" meditation; love and bhakti and works are usually... one wishes to escape from life altogether, it can only be by the way of complete inner renunciation and merging oneself in the Silence of the Absolute or by a bhakti that becomes absolute or by a Karmayoga that gives up one's own will and desires to the will of the Divine. I have said also that Grace can at any moment act suddenly, but over that one has no control, because it comes by an incalculable... March 22,1936 There is no rule excluding emotion from the field of Yoga unless of course it is a Yoga of pure knowledge and nothing else. Emotion is necessary for Bhakti, so it must find a place in any Yoga in which Bhakti is a necessary element. So your increase of emotion does not disqualify you for Yoga. Also cold calm is not the thing aimed at by the sadhak or attained by the siddha ...
... "Well, what's the harm in telling me some of them?" "If we do the talking, then when shall we listen to you? At one point Nolinida cracked a joke; he said that the Mother once did a special Karmayoga with cats." "Why should it be a joke?" "Is it really true?" "Someday I'll tell you how a cat used to come and sit with us during the meditation." "Yes, that is what he said. At first there... can talk a little about Yoga." "Yes, but politics also is what we would like to discuss. We don't really understand it." "As if we understand Yoga any better!" piped up a small, teasing voice. But Sri Aurobindo smilingly explained: "Maybe you do not know much about Yoga, but you have heard a great deal about it. And since the soil that bore you is the land of Yoga, it is but natural that... being strictly followed in the Ashram. Isn't that so?" "Exactly." "You see, in our Yoga, we don't need them. The Mother's Yoga, which is also mine, takes up the essence of all the systems and goes beyond them; it is therefore a new and Integral Yoga. The realisations that are obtained by following other Yogas can be had in ours too without your having to perform Pranayama and Asanas. Do you think ...
... *Abhaya: Fear—Its Cause and Cure: A brilliant and insightful understanding on the causes of Fear and ways to combat and cure it. *Karmayoga: Perfection in Work: Comprehensive guide on how to work with the right attitude to achieve perfection in works and life. *Sadhana: A Guide to Self-Mastery: Ajourney into self-observation, self-organization, self-development and self-mastery. ... of perfection and harmony. A key leadership function, that of bringing harmony among several diverse groups in organization, is ideally served by the rajarshi model of leadership. The notion of Karmayoga of the Bhagavad Gita is a crystallization of the Indian model of leadership whose essence is illumined dynamism: "Change your being, be reborn into the spirit and by that new birth proceed with... ways in which these systems can benefit the modern society. Scholars from around the world are engaged in distilling the wisdom of ancient and rare Sanskrit works and applying it to contemporary contexts. Outreach Jiva Outreach works towards sustainable development of under-served communities in urban and rural India. It carries out projects that provide technology and information access ...
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