The Synthesis of Yoga - Super school Auroville - The Synthesis of Yoga 705

There is yet another way to arrive at the same result: “Another is to reject the thought-suggestions, to cast them away from the mind whenever they come and firmly hold to the peace of the being which really and always exists behind the trouble and riot of the mind.” There is always a peace in you but we do not see this peace because of the riot of the mind, the rush of the ideas. This was the method that Sri Aurobindo himself followed when his teacher said “thoughts come to you from the outside and before they enter you fling them back.” It is “to reject the thought-suggestions, to cast them away from the mind whenever they come and firmly hold to the peace of the being which really and always exists behind the trouble and riot of the mind. When this secret peace is unveiled, a great calm settles on the being and there comes usually with it the perception and experience of the all-pervading silent Brahman, everything else at first seeming to be mere form and eidolon. On the basis of this calm everything else may be built up in the knowledge and experience no longer of the external phenomena of things but of the deeper truth of the divine manifestation.”

This is the third method of concentration. If you ask: “What are these three methods of concentration?” One is meditation, second is contemplation and the third is the method by which peace of the mind is seized upon.

Let us read the last paragraph. It is just to complete our entire understanding.

“Ordinarily, once this state is obtained, strenuous concentration will be found no longer necessary.” You become master, you don’t need to strain even when there is all the noise going on. You are seated in the Brahman all the time. There is no strain at all. A free concentration of will using thought merely for suggestion and the giving of light to the lower members will take its place.” If there is obscurity and you want that obscurity to be cleared, a mere thought-suggestion is enough that this obscurity be cleared. The higher consciousness will come down on the obscurity and the obscurity will be cleared. There is no strain; you just will on that plane where there is a constant peace, or a constant state of experience of Divine as love, or whatever — there are many aspects of the Divine. Once you have attained to this then here is a very comfortable, a very easy process: a mere will works it out. This is called siddhi. You arrive at a great mastery. “This Will will then insist on the physical being, the vital existence, the heart and the mind remoulding themselves in the forms of the Divine which reveal themselves out of the silent Brahman. By swifter or slower degrees according to the previous preparation and purification of the members, they will be obliged with more or less struggle to obey the law of the will and its thought-suggestion, so that eventually the knowledge of the Divine takes possession of our consciousness on all its planes and the image of the Divine is formed in our human existence even as it was done by the old Vedic Sadhakas. For the integral Yoga this is the most direct and powerful discipline.” So, you can approach this by meditation or by contemplation or by quieting the mind. And when the mind is quieted you don’t need meditation or contemplation. You can simply will anything. And lower parts of the being are based in the higher consciousness. Whatever should be transformed is transformed until, at last, the human image becomes the Divine image. That is the real yoga siddhi.

Alright! This was only a comment upon a word that we have read in the chapter The Four Aids where Sri Aurobindo speaks of the shastra of the old on which we have to meditate (p. 49).

“The spiritual knowledge is then gained through meditation on the truths that are taught and it is made living and conscious by their realisation in the personal experience;” When we read this book ? Sri Aurobindo has told us how we should read this book: the truths which are mentioned here you should meditate on them either by strenuous meditation or by contemplation or by the third way of quieting the mind and listening to what is given here and then comes the realisation of the truths.

“… the Yoga proceeds by the results of prescribed methods taught in a Scripture or a tradition and reinforced and illumined by the instructions of the Master. This is a narrower practise…” It is a narrower practice because you are still moving on a beaten track. When you read this book and following it out, it is a safe movement because all this have been realised by the Master and you only repeat in your own personal experience what has been realised by the Master. Afterwards you can make an adventure, a larger process. What is not given in shastra even that you can develop. When you read The Mother’s Agenda she says: “Sri Aurobindo did not tells us the secret” -- although he has written all this. But Mother says: “Sri Aurobindo left without telling us his secret.” Therefore there is nothing to meditate upon. There was an adventure. She says: “I am walking blindfolded.” And She built a new path. So The Mother’s Agenda is another vedic shastra. What is not given by Sri Aurobindo was given then by the Mother. That is why this book is to be followed by The Mother’s Agenda. Mother herself has said: “The Agenda is the continuation of The Synthesis of Yoga.” So much of the path has been trodden for us and made easy for us, that we too can tread it.

Now Sri Aurobindo makes a very important comment: “For the sadhaka of the integral Yoga it is necessary to remember that no written Shastra, however great its authority or however large its spirit, can be more than a partial expression of the eternal Knowledge.” This applies even to this book, even to The Mother’s Agenda. That is why there is no religion possible, there is no final stop, it is an open book in which new chapters have to be added because there is no end to the eternal knowledge. “For the sadhaka of the integral Yoga it is necessary to remember that no written Shastra, however great its authority or however large its spirit, can be more than a partial expression of the eternal Knowledge. He will use, but never bind himself even by the greatest Scripture. Where the Scripture is profound, wide, catholic, it may exercise upon him an influence for the highest good and of incalculable importance. It may be associated in his experience with his awakening to crowning verities and his realisation of the highest experiences. His Yoga may be governed for a long time by one Scripture or by several successively, — if it is in the line of the great Hindu tradition, by the Gita, for example, the Upanishads, the Veda. Or it may be a good part of his development to include in its material a richly varied experience of the truths of many Scriptures and make the future opulent with all that is best in the past. But in the end he must take his station, or better still, if he can, always and from the beginning he must live in his own soul beyond the limitations of the word that he uses. The Gita itself thus declares that the Yogin in his progress must pass beyond the written Truth, — sabda brahma ativartate — beyond all that he has heard and all that he has yet to hear, — shotavasya srutasya ca. For he is not the sadhaka of a book or of many books; he is a sadhaka of the Infinite.” He is no prisoner of any word.

We should remember this last line: “For he is not the sadhaka of a book or of many books; he is a sadhaka of the Infinite.”