So many people have done this work earlier before us; we enter into a field called ‘yoga’. So many paths have been laid out, so many things have been discovered, so many masters, so many teachers, so many religions, so many methods and we begin to analyse and look into them. But this is a momentous moment as Sri Aurobindo says, the moment comes when you have to rise up and take a staff in your hand and set out for the journey, once for all. This is what happened to Buddha, he suddenly found it was no more tolerable for him to remain in that condition where he was, he had everything what the world can give in plenty but that was no more acceptable to him, he set out for the journey. That was the moment when Sri Aurobindo in his own lifetime, discovered the light of yoga and set out for the journey, an adventure of consciousness.
We were here now are so fortunate that we hear this call all the time all around, fortunately so much knowledge is accumulated that the moment you decide that: ‘yes, I want to know’, a great knowledge is already available. If you cannot take up the staff in your hands and set out for the journey that is where we are, the psychic being is very kind it never imposes itself, the architect within us, does not impose, it demands. The psychic being is like God himself; God also never imposes, he demands and the collaboration that we give, on that collaboration he builds up and if we agree to this mission, to collaborate then he will lead.
It is said in the very first verse of the Rig Veda, Agni is the leader. The psychic consciousness in us is the leader, ‘Purohita’, is a Sanskrit word, which means leader. He leads all the people behind him in the temple of the Divine, so our psychic being is the real priest. If you can open to that then through that the power of the Divine, the psychic being has come from the divine. So that light will be thrown through this filter of the psychic being and everything can become illumined. The sevenfold ignorance then can be turned in to sevenfold knowledge.
We become aware of what the Upanishad says, “That moves that moves not”, he perceives that state, we begin to perceive, we realise oneself in all the creatures, we see all the creatures in oneself and we see that oneself has become all the creatures. This is the loftiest realisation that we have and we realise that which is stable behind the cosmos, we realise that our small ego is a speck of dust in the huge cosmos. We realise that this, that we know as ourselves is timeless, immortal. Our soul is timeless and immortal, the psychic being, this Agni which is within us, we become aware of that Agni, we are freed from temporal ignorance. We realise our entire being, what is unconscious and is what is conscious and what is superconscious and we are cured of psychological ignorance. We become aware as to under whose leadership, you can convert yourself from where we are to the highest levels, we are cured of the constitutional ignorance and then whatever we do is always right, spontaneously right and then we become the instruments of all that is good, all that is beautiful, all that is true. So this is the story, you might say, when we meet next, perhaps, if you like, we shall put the same story philosophically. This is the language of a story; we can now put the whole thing in a philosophical way.
Next time, when we meet if you like, if you ask me to state this philosophy clearly, we shall do it, it is not necessary. We have explained how ignorance arises and how inconscience arises and how from inconscience, we arise to this present stage with the help of the psychic consciousness and where we are now in the state of ignorance. What kind of ignorance it is, how it can be removed and when it is removed, what happens? We have now a good map but this map is a very precious map.
Question: Not audible
Answer: The first thing to be understood is that the key to any development in the world lies in a personal, individual development, not selfish, not egoistic but personal that which is individual. Sri Aurobindo says individual is the key.