The Synthesis of Yoga - Super school Auroville - The Synthesis of Yoga 1103

Now this dam consists of what: exclusive concentration of consciousness. Our concentration is exclusively concentrated upon this way. If you look at your whole life you find that your whole concentration is moving outward towards all that is around you. You look at your senses. All the senses open outwards: your eyes open outwards, your ears are opened to the sounds coming from outside, the touches are all coming from outside, you feel the sense of touch only when it comes from outside and since we are bound by these senses we are all opened outward. Because we are opened outward this blockade is created. There is no consciousness at all in this way. So when consciousness is absent again and again and again a blockade is created. Therefore instead of moving outward, move inward. This is all the meaning of meditation. Instead of moving outward you withdraw and go inward. And if you do it repeatedly then this dam will be broken. And once you enter here you will see a beautiful palace of the Divine. You don’t need to create the palace of the Divine it is already here. You don’t need to fabricate anything it is all here. Only you have to turn your gaze from without to within. All yoga is turning inward. It is to stop our exclusive concentration outward by an opposite movement in which you turn inward. All yoga implies inwardisation -- turn inward, move inward. When you close your eyes and sit for meditation you strive to break this which keeps you always outward. When you sit down for meditation slightest sound coming from outside and immediately you are drawn outside. Very little time is available in our life when we can sit down very quietly and move inward. This is the entire science of yoga. All the time we are living outward. Yoga means shifting our attention from outward to attention inward and then again coming back outward.

Once you have done this very often the tendency is to go inward and remain there. Life is rejected. All the movement here is thrown out. It is another kind of ignorance. That is why the Isha Upanishad says that this is a movement of ignorance and this is a movement of knowledge. But if that movement of knowledge is only here that is also a darkness because then you lose the whole outward. You break the dam, break the boundaries, enter here, contact the Divine and then come back again but with the cancellation of the ego.

That is the only way of cancelling the ego. You can’t cancel the ego merely by thinking that you are not the doer. Simply by saying you are not the ego does not destroy it. It goes on like a cork bobbing on the sea constantly going on and on. It can’t be destroyed. If you want to destroy it you have to move here and realise it. The moment you realise it the ego goes away. And then you can come back here without it and then you become a centre but a Divine centre. The Divine Himself moves without any resistance and His power is not at all diminished, there is no dilution, it moves omnipotently. The same force of the Divine powerfully is transmitted through the centre that we are truly. We are not the ego and there is a centre which is called jivatman. That is the real individual. That centre is the Divine Himself; it is a partial manifestation of the Divine Himself. When this happens there is no personal effort at all because all the force comes from here and you know it. You are only the instrument, an instrument which is completely into the hands of the Divine.

We have once spoken of the analogy of the bow. Take a bow… How does a bow work? A bow cannot work by itself. You need an archer. Archer takes the bow in the hands, takes an arrow, fixes the arrow himself -- bow itself can’t fix it itself --  the arrow is fixed by the archer and whenever the arrow is to be shot is decided by the archer. He uses the bow only to fix the arrow and to shoot at the target. And that is all. Such is the real condition of our true being. The jivatman is of this nature. It is a bow in the hands of the Divine -- always. But because of this blockage, the ego is created, and it diminishes the force which is coming from here and then when that force is pushing forward you feel I am making an effort. That is all the meaning of personal effort. The ego stops the force but the force pushes it. This pushing is recognised by the ego as its effort because it passes through it. It is exactly like the cart and the dog. The dog moving under the moving cart. The dog feels that the cart is moving because of it moving under it. But the cart moves on its own.