The Synthesis of Yoga - Super school Auroville - The Synthesis of Yoga 402

Similarly, the emotions, intensity of emotions, very often people dry up the emotions. In our yoga all emotions are purified -- not dried -- intensified, so much intensified that all emotions become divine. It is by intensity. If you have a friend, the sense of loyalty in friendship, loyalty at any cost — that is called intensity of friendship. If you love you love intensely without reserve, deeply, no bargaining at all which often happen in love -- I love you therefore you must do something for me. Not at all, no bargaining. If you love, love truly, intensely and you will find that it becomes Divine love. The human love is transformed into Divine love if you truly love. Don’t dry it away. Drying is the process by which you weaken; whereas you must develop the intensity. Purify and develop, purify and develop. In love there are lessons of jealousy, which is a horrible thing, so therefore it has to be sacrificed. Love without jealousy that calls for the intensity and purity of love. Not like Othello who is a wrong example of love.

Develop the body to the fullest extent: health, strength, and agility of the body. All these three things should be achieved. You can add also the beauty of the body. If you stand before the Divine you should be beautiful, even physically.

So these two processes: purification and development. Along with these two is the concentration. Concentration is the main thing and purity and development are the two instruments by which you can increase that concentration. Purification on the right side, development on the left side and at the center is the concentration. With this triple method you take all the instruments and apply the three methods that is the secret of Integral Yoga. Instead of only one single faculty put all the faculties together. Then you don’t need to do so many exercises as in Hatha Yoga or in Raja Yoga, all other processes can be eliminated. Keep only these three processes: purification, development and concentration. Integral purification, integral development and integral concentration are the secret of Integral Yoga. Sri Aurobindo uses the word: “all receiving concentration”. In every process of concentration whether you are studying or playing or simply watching, receive the Divine all the time. The Divine is always pouring on you, that fact you must remember all the time. The rains of heaven are already on us. Only we are closed, we have opened umbrellas, so we don’t receive the pouring of the rains of the Divine. If you remove your umbrella and become absolutely open, it will become an all receiving concentration. The Divine will come to you from all the sides. The Divine will come to you through your will, your emotions, your intellectual discrimination, your body, your mind, through everything. Whatever you do, offer it to the Divine, remember the Divine, be with the Divine. This is the simple and the very complex process of an all receiving concentration. This is Sri Aurobindo’s discovery after years. For us it is now easy because we have the advantage of Sri Aurobindo’s great labor to find out what is the essence of every yoga and what can be eliminated so that in one life we can achieve the highest results. He found out that an all receiving concentration is the one formula.

And then you get the integral Divine. The aim will be to realize the integral Divine. In the case of Karma Yoga you know only the Will of God, in Jnana Yoga you know only the being of God, Bhakti Yoga you know only the love of God but if you want to know all the three together -- the being of God, the will of God, the love of God -- then Integral Yoga is necessary. When you do Integral Yoga you know all the three together. If you don’t know all the three together it is only because your process may be half way in one case, half way in another case and half way in the third case, in different proportions. You may be a great Karma yogi but very little a Jnana yogi then you will know the will of God but not the stuff of God, or know it only partly.  But if you do Karma Yoga, Bhakti Yoga and Jnana Yoga together -- as Sri Aurobindo says, if you ride a chariot of three sets of wheels at the same time, simultaneously then you can see the speed with which the chariot will run and achieve the goal.

All that I have spoken to you is written in the Chapter 4 and 5 of the Introduction of The Synthesis of Yoga. I am reading to you a paragraph from page 37:

“The synthesis we propose cannot, then, be arrived at either by combination in mass or by successive practice.” You cannot do each yoga one by one. First you do Hatha Yoga, then you do Raja Yoga, then you do Jnana Yoga, etc. If you do them like that in succession it will be such a long process that it can never be finished. So Sri Aurobindo says that it cannot be done by successive practice nor by combination in mass. Simultaneously you do pranayama, asanas, pratyahara, dharana it won’t also be possible. Synthesis cannot be achieved either “by combination in mass or by successive practice. It must therefore be effected by neglecting the forms and outsides of the Yogic disciplines” You neglect all the details of each yoga. “…and seizing rather on some central principle common to all …” I told you the common principles are purification, development and concentration. Sri Aurobindo says if you seize “on some central principle common to all which will include and utilise in the right place and proportion their particular principles,” You seize “… and on some central dynamic force which is the common secret of their divergent methods and capable therefore of organising a natural selection and combination of their varied energies and different utilities. This was the aim which we set before ourselves at first when we entered upon our comparative examination of the methods of Nature and the methods of Yoga and we now return to it with the possibility of hazarding some definite solution.”

How to arrive at a synthesis, integration of yoga? If you can seize upon one common principle, one dynamic power which is common to all then you will solve the problem.

Now we go to page number 40. This paragraph gives you that central secret when everything can be combined together. “The method we have to pursue, then, is to put our whole conscious being…” These words whole conscious being are very important: will, intellect, body, mind emotions, everything. “…being into relation and contact with the Divine and to call Him…” The reign of the Divine should pour upon you, so call Him “… in to transform our entire being into His.” We should be drenched with the waters of the Divine. Remove all obstructions by which we close our mind and body and life. If you open completely to the Divine then you should be drench by the waters of the Divine. “…to call Him in to transform the entire being into His. Thus in a sense God Himself, the real Person in us, becomes the sadhaka of the sadhana…” If He enters into us much of our labour is gone because He will do the sadhana Himself. That is a great secret discovered, to allow the Supreme Himself to enter into us and do the sadhana. So that “in a sense God Himself, the real person in us, becomes the sadhaka of the sadhana as well as the Master of the Yoga by whom the lower personality is used as the centre of a divine transfiguration and the instrument of its own perfection.” This is polished way of saying that you become drenched by the Divine. You become a centre of a divine transfiguration. Our lower personality, our head and body, all are drenched by the Divine waters, it becomes the instrument of its own perfection. This is the answer to this question.

If you do this -- We are now coming to the end of the whole idea: what is Integral Yoga? Integral Yoga is the integration of all the aims, the instruments and the processes of the different systems of yogas, but in an integrated manner. Integrating manner is three fold: development, purification and concentration of all the faculties, of the whole being. Putting all the three into contact with the Divine, invite the waters of the Divine, be drenched then He will do everything else. If you do this on your part He will do the rest. That is the system of Integral Yoga. In one single life you can do all the processes. You can attain to the highest perfection if you follow this process.