The Synthesis of Yoga - Super school Auroville - The Synthesis of Yoga 1106

“But still, in the practical development, each of the three stages has its necessity and utility and must be given its time or its place. It will not do, it cannot be safe or effective to begin with the last and highest alone. It would not be the right course, either, to leap prematurely from one to another.” If from the first stage you say all is Divine even when egoism is not abolished, it will be disastrous. As long as you are egoistic, admit you are egoistic and work out step by step until the third stage arises when ego itself falls down. “For even if from the beginning we recognise in mind and heart the Supreme, there are elements of the nature which long prevent the recognition from becoming realisation.” Mere intellectual knowledge or even some spiritual knowledge is not enough. It is not realisation. Merely to say I am not the doer is not enough. It is a good step forward but you must realise that you are not the doer. “But without realisation our mental belief cannot become a dynamic reality; it is still only a figure of knowledge, not a living truth, an idea, not yet a power. And even if realisation has begun, it may be dangerous to imagine or to assume too soon that we are altogether in the hands of the Supreme or are acting as his instrument.” Many people who turn to yoga have illusions. The moment they turn to the Divine they think that they have become instruments of the Divine. And there is a vast difference, a long road to go… Once one sadhak wrote to the Mother and says: “Mother I want to do Divine’s work.” Mother answered: “First you do the work for the Divine then you will be able to do Divine’s work.” There are steps ? you cannot say immediately that you want to do Divine’s work. To be able to do the Divine’s work you must have realisation of the Divine and not only a partial realisation but a real realisation in which the Divine Himself gives you the work consciously. Not that you think that everything comes from the Divine therefore my work is also Divine’s work. That is not true, it is falsehood. But many people who start doing yoga become deluded simply because they are offering, they are now turning towards the Divine and they feel they have already become the instruments of the Divine. One should be therefore extremely cautious, extremely humble. The true humility is to see that one’s self for a long, long, long, long, long time has to be a very sincere servant offering his work to the Divine, not claiming that it is Divine’s work. His work should be an offer to the Divine, reminding that he is still an egoistic doer that he is still in the meshes of the ego but trying to get rid of it and therefore offering himself again and again until you reach a point when the Divine Himself gives you the work and says “Do it”. You can see when Sri Aurobindo was in Alipore jail then as a result of his long sadhana Sri Krishna himself said: “I have work to do and I am giving a part, a little bit of that work to you.” If you read Sri Aurobindo’s account of the Alipore jail experience, Sri Krishna says: “I have a work to do, a part of it I want to give you.” And he reveals him what is that work. So, one should be therefore very careful not to have the egoism of the instrument. This is one of the great delusions that arises in the process of yoga and one should be extremely careful. To claim, “I am the instrument of God” my Lord! don’t have this delusion. When the realisation comes that you are the instrument of the Divine you are extremely humble you don’t exist even to claim that you are the instrument of God. Only at this stage you can come to the third step, the Divine center in the world.

“But still, in the practical development, each of the three stages has its necessity and utility and must be given its time or its place. It will not do, it cannot be safe or effective to begin with the last and highest alone. It would not be the right course, either, to leap prematurely from one to another. For even if from the beginning we recognise in mind and heart the Supreme, there are elements of the nature which long prevent the recognition from becoming realisation. But without realisation our mental belief cannot become a dynamic reality; it is still only a figure of knowledge, not a living truth, an idea, not yet a power. And even if realisation has begun, it may be dangerous to imagine or to assume too soon that we are altogether in the hands of the Supreme or are acting as his instrument. That assumption may introduce a calamitous falsity; it may produce a helpless inertia or, magnifying the movements of the ego with the Divine Name, it may disastrously distort and ruin the whole course of the Yoga. There is a period, more or less prolonged, of internal effort and struggle in which the individual will has to reject the darkness and distortions of the lower nature and to put itself resolutely or vehemently on the side of the divine Light. The mental energies, the heart's emotions, the vital desires, the very physical being have to be compelled into the right attitude or trained to admit and answer to the right influences. It is only then, only when this has been truly done, that the surrender of the lower to the higher can be effected, because the sacrifice has become acceptable.

“The personal will of the sadhaka has first to seize on the egoistic energies and turn them towards the light and the right; once turned, he has still to train them to recognise that always, always to accept, always to follow that. Progressing, he learns, still using the personal will, personal effort, personal energies, to employ them as representatives of the higher Power and in conscious obedience to the higher Influence. Progressing yet farther, his will, effort, energy become no longer personal and separate, but activities of that higher Power and Influence at work in the individual. But there is still a sort of gulf or distance which necessitates an obscure process of transit, not always accurate, sometimes even very distorting, between the divine Origin and the emerging human current. At the end of the process, with the progressive disappearance of egoism and impurity and ignorance, this last separation is removed; all in the individual becomes the divine working.” This is the long process therefore the right attitude is only to be a servant and slave of God forever and ever and ever until a times comes where you do not even know that you have become the instrument of God. You are the instrument of God, you have not time even to claim that you are the instrument of God. This is the process of utsaha, the entire process of effort which will culminate into this stage.