The Synthesis of Yoga - Super school Auroville - The Synthesis of Yoga 1304

There is Maheswari, who works on you with wisdom, but impartial wisdom, and reveals in you all the defects, pitilessly. Because you are working for him, open to the Divine, therefore he will not cease to reveal your defects — he will illumine you and say, here is your defect, there is your defect. When you become aware of your own defects, think that the Divine is working very well with you. The Divine is helping you because he is now impartially working with you so that you can see your defects very clearly. This is one way of the Divine working.

When necessary he works with the power of Mahakali -- impetuously, even destroys you, you might say. In one second the great obstruction is removed. Like a good doctor who wants to take out the thorn which has gone deeply into the flesh and in one second he just takes it out. It is a tremendous pain at that time but then it is over. The obstacle is gone. This is the second way in which the Divine works in you with provident effectivity. The effectivity which is marvellous. But the Mahakali’s action does not come arbitrarily. The Divine sees how much you can bear. He is a very good doctor. He knows exactly when you can bear him, and how much, what dosage to give -- therefore provident. When you are absolutely open to the Divine, when you will not misunderstand him he will come with impetuosity. It is as if, even when you are resisting, he will take you in his embrace because you are so open to him, he knows that now you have shed off all your resistances, then he works powerfully. But when it is not the case, he moves slowly. That is the meaning of provident effectivity. When this dosage is necessary he gives that dosage, according to your capacities, how much you can bear. The divine is neither in a hurry nor he is sluggish. At the right moment the right amount of energy is given and he enters into you very wisely, very impartially and providentially, according to your necessity, according to your openness to him.

He works with the power of Mahalakshmi. He pours into you the bewitching smile which is irresistible. He is extremely intimate. The contact is so magical that you melt into his presence. All the resistances are gone. Not like Mahakali’s action but your heart melts automatically when the Divine works in you through the Mahalakshmi power.

He acts through the power of Mahasaraswati. Mahasaraswati is a constant toiler, constant worker. The Divine is at work day and night. Once you have reached that state of contact with the Divine remember the Divine doesn’t see the day and night. He is constantly working. Even in your sleep when you are unconscious he is conscious; when you cannot be vigilant he is vigilant; he protects you. He does not allow you to slip down, he keeps you always aloft. That is the power of Mahasaraswati. And he toils on every defect like a goldsmith. He takes every little thing, each small amount of gold in us and makes various kinds of beautiful shapes. Everything is so chiselled, everything shines with that chiselling. And Mahasaraswati is the one who does the work so perfectly that when the work is done it is found that no defect is left, no work is left unattended, nothing is omitted and nothing is forgotten.

These are the four powers which are summarised by Sri Aurobindo as impartial wisdom and provident effectivity. These are the four powers by which the Divine works of which the ego is not at all capable, of which the eager and interested ego is not capable. That little puny thing that we call ego — myself — which is eager for this and eager for that and wants this result and that result immediately and prides himself, this eager and interested ego is not capable of this impartial wisdom and this provident effectivity.

“Always indeed it is the higher Power that acts. Our sense of personal effort and aspiration comes from the attempt of the egoistic mind to identify itself in a wrong and imperfect way with the workings of the divine Force. It persists in applying to experience on a supernormal plane the ordinary terms of mentality which it applies to its normal experiences in the world. In the world we act with the sense of egoism; we claim the universal forces that work in us as our own; we claim as the effect of our personal will, wisdom, force, virtue the selective, formative, progressive action of the Transcendent in this frame of mind, life and body. Enlightenment brings to us the knowledge that the ego is only an instrument; we begin to perceive and feel that these things are our own in the sense that they belong to our supreme and integral Self, one with the Transcendent, not to the instrumental ego. Our limitations and distortions are our contribution to the working; the true power in it is the Divine’s. When the human ego realises that its will is a tool, its wisdom ignorance and childishness, its power an infant's groping, its virtue a pretentious impurity, and learns to trust itself to that which transcends it, that is its salvation. The apparent freedom and self-assertion of our personal being to which we are so profoundly attached, conceal a most pitiable subjection to a thousand suggestions, impulsions, forces which we have made extraneous to our little person. Our ego, boasting of freedom, is at every moment the slave, toy and puppet of countless beings, powers, forces, influences in universal Nature. The self-abnegation of the ego in the Divine is its self-fulfilment; its surrender to that which transcends it is its liberation from bonds and limits and its perfect freedom.”

Just as the last paragraph that we read it is a complete statement of the Integral Yoga in one paragraph. Similarly this paragraph gives us a complete analysis of all the obstacles that are in our path. How we put obstacles in our own path because of our own egoism.