The Synthesis of Yoga - Super school Auroville - The Synthesis of Yoga 704

If the object is the Divine Love in this process, as distinguished from what you have experienced in the process of meditation where different states of love arise one after the other, and you experienced those different states of consciousness, here you directly experience the heart of God Himself. And you enjoy merely by dwelling upon the heart of the Divine. The Divine is possessed by you.

Sri Aurobindo says further: “If this be the process followed, then subsequently the state into which we rise must still be called down to take possession of the lower being, to shed its light, power and bliss on our ordinary consciousness.” Once you have caught the Divine Himself then you allow the Divine light, Divine joy, Divine power to come down in our lower consciousness. “For otherwise we may possess it, as many do, in the elevated condition or in the inward Samadhi, but we shall lose our hold of it when we awake or descend into the context of the world; and this truncated possession is not the aim of an integral Yoga.” When you go up you can hold the Divine but when you come down the Divine is lost and you fall into the trap of the world as it is. That is a truncated experience -- one leg upward one leg downward. But here you come fully and even the lower leg is also uplifted and remains uplifted all the time.

Now Sri Aurobindo speaks of the third process. A process which is neither of concentrated meditation or of contemplation but another process.

We have only thought of contemplation but it is better to finish now all the three processes. So we know very clearly what are the three processes of concentration. Once you know all these three processes you have known all that is to be known about concentration. It is a complete science which Sri Aurobindo has given in one page. People have written books on this subject but in one page Sri Aurobindo has given a complete statement of what is concentration. Without reading so many books we just read this page again and again and you will understand it better and better as you experience more and more. Very often these words do not convey much meaning to us because we have not got the experience of it. But the more we do it the more we shall experience and the more we shall understand.

“A third process is neither at first to concentrate in a strenuous meditation on the one subject nor in a strenuous contemplation of the one object of thought-vision, but first to still the mind altogether.” There is neither a subject nor the object. You just still the mind, make it quiet. Sometime this is more difficult than the other two processes but sometime it is much easier. You don’t have to make any strenuous movement of meditation or concentration. Just be quiet and after that quietude you see that there are no ripples of thought, no waves of thought and the mind is absolutely still, and you dwell upon it -- this is also concentration.

“This may be done by various ways; one is to stand back from the mental action altogether not participating in but simply watching it until, tired of its unsanctioned leaping and running, it falls into an increasing and finally an absolute quiet.” There are three things to be considered here. You can stand back from the mental action, that is to say, there is a mental action going on and this mental action that is going on is quite a noisy market -- it is as if you are in a bazaar in which there is hustle and bustle and a tremendous amount of activities going on. So, imagine that you are in a bazaar in which a lot of currents are going on, then you stand back and you experience, even though there is the movement of the bazaar, you are only watching it. You do not participate in the movement of thinking. It is like going to a market in which you are constantly attracted by this side or that side, this shop or that shop, beautiful objects lying around, and you are attracted to buy this or to buy that. This is what we are constantly about. Our entire mind movement is like going to a market in which you are constantly being lured by various sights, calls, sounds, things and objects. And constantly we are judging: this is right this is not right, good, bad, I don’t like this, I don’t like that… all this marketing going on. Imagine however that although you are in a market you decide that you are not going to buy anything, you are only watching, you are only a witness in the market, you stand apart and you see hustle bustle, everything that is going on. This is a very important step in which you stand back from the mental activity. That is to say there is in you some person who can stand back. This whole psychology is based upon the perception that there is something in you which can withdraw from the market of the mind and which can watch without taking interest in what is going on. This is the process that Swami Vivekananda very much recommended to many people. Even Sri Aurobindo in some of his letters on yoga has recommended this process. When you do not want to meditate or to contemplate this is a very easy process. You just stand back from the mental turmoil. And then even that market in which you are engaged or even watching, you will find that even that market will fall quiet. And this will enable you to experience yourself as altogether different from the market and a great quietude will automatically enters into you. To be seated in that quietude is a state of concentration.