The Synthesis of Yoga - Super school Auroville - The Synthesis of Yoga 1201

We come now to the third aid in Yoga: the aid of the teacher.

 “As the supreme Shastra of the integral Yoga is the eternal Veda secret in the heart of every man, so its supreme Guide and Teacher is the inner Guide, the World-Teacher, jagad-guru,secret within us. [jagad means world and guru means teacher: the world teacher]  It is he who destroys our darkness by the resplendent light of his knowledge; that light becomes within us the increasing glory of his own self-revelation. He discloses progressively in us his own nature of freedom, bliss, love, power, immortal being. He sets above us his divine example as our ideal and transforms the lower existence into a reflection of that which it contemplates. By the inpouring of his own influence and presence into us he enables the individual being to attain to identity with the universal and transcendent.

“What is his method and his system? He has no method and every method. His system is a natural organisation of the highest processes and movements of which the nature is capable. Applying themselves even to the pettiest details and to the actions the most insignificant in their appearance with as much care and thoroughness as to the greatest, they in the end lift all into the Light and transform all. For in his Yoga there is nothing too small to be used and nothing too great to be attempted. As the servant and disciple of the Master has no business with pride or egoism because all is done for him from above, so also he has no right to despond because of his personal deficiencies or the stumblings of his nature. For the Force that works in him is impersonal — or superpersonal — and infinite.

“The full recognition of this inner Guide, Master of the Yoga, lord, light, enjoyer and goal of all sacrifice and effort, is of the utmost importance in the path of integral perfection. It is immaterial whether he is first seen as an impersonal Wisdom, Love and Power behind all things, as an Absolute manifesting in the relative and attracting it, as one’s highest Self and the highest Self of all, as a Divine Person within us and in the world, in one of his — or her — numerous forms and names or as the ideal which the mind conceives. In the end we perceive that he is all and more than all these things together. The mind’s door of entry to the conception of him must necessarily vary according to the past evolution and the present nature.”

There are four things that I would like to point out.

First is the comparison of the guru with the supreme Shastra. As the shastra is present in the heart of every thinking being even so the teacher is in the heart of everyone. There is always the need of the teacher. This is you might say a universal law. There is always a relationship between humanity and the Supreme Lord whether we recognise him or no. This relationship is constant and whether we recognise Him or not, whether we ask him or not, he is at work. And he is constantly in the process of teaching. In other words we are already in a school presided over by the Supreme Lord. The whole world is a school in which all of us are pupils and he is the master, he is the teacher. Therefore we should never complain I have no good guide or no good teacher. There is indeed the teacher and he can be unveiled. There is first always the teacher available since all life is yoga the whole world is a school of yoga. Yoga is not one special study it is a common study for everyone. Everyone is a student of yoga whether he knows it or not, whether he likes it or not that is what we are here for -- all of us. And the Supreme Lord is the Master of Yoga and he uses the whole of life as a textbook. All that is here in the world, all that is happening here is the textbook for the Lord. He uses every event of life in training all the pupils in the world. It is a constant process.

What is his method? This is the second point. How does he teach? What are the methods by which he teaches us? And Sri Aurobindo says, he has no method and every method. It is not merely a rhetorical statement. It is not something that will startle us, it is a real literal fact. He has no method and every method. And why? Sri Aurobindo explains why he has no method and every method. No one method which he applies to everybody. Because every individual as a certain combination of psychological functioning, he will have a method appropriate to each one. We may only point out how he uses every realm, every kind of trend in the individual, how he himself combines -- he is like a Supreme Artist and he combines and recombines the colours of the world and of human beings. And by combining different kinds of colours he produces different designs and patterns and beautiful objects of the world. He wants to make each one of us a blooming flower -- every one of us. Nobody is especially a favourite, nobody is he prejudiced against. Every one of us is for him a blooming flower in his garden.