The Synthesis of Yoga - Super school Auroville - The Synthesis of Yoga 1504

“To see, know, become and fulfil this One in our inner selves and in all our outer nature, was always the secret goal and becomes now the conscious purpose of our embodied existence.” If you are now in the real presence of the Master you recognise what is the goal of your life. Your goal of life is actually nothing but to become like the master of your being. To grow into his likeness. That is the reason why without the guru you cannot have the real knowledge because what is knowledge is to be like the master, growth into the image of the master. Therefore unless you meet your master how can you be educated? The very aim of education, the very aim of life is to become like your teacher. Therefore teacher becomes indispensable.

“To be conscious of him in all parts of our being and equally in all that the dividing mind sees as outside our being, is the consummation of the individual consciousness. To be possessed by him and possess him in ourselves and in all things is the term of all empire and mastery. To enjoy him in all experience of passivity and activity, of peace and of power, of unity and of difference is the happiness which the Jiva, the individual soul manifested in the world, is obscurely seeking. This is the entire definition of the aim of integral Yoga; it is the rendering in personal experience of the truth which universal Nature has hidden in herself and which she travails to discover. It is the conversion of the human soul into the divine soul and of natural life into divine living.” This paragraph is so beautiful and so masterly that you should read it again and again. It is the entire definition of yoga, the entire aim of life, the entire thing that you are obscurely seeking can be fulfilled only when this happens. As long as this does not happen do not think that you have reached. There are many-many stages in which we are told the destination has come and if you want to be sure whether the destination has come or not read this paragraph, see whether this has happened. This is only the introduction so far of the Divine Teacher. Now we go forward and look at this Divine Teacher in our world.

“The surest way towards this integral fulfilment is to find the Master of the secret who dwells within us, open ourselves constantly to the divine Power which is also the divine Wisdom and Love and trust to it to effect the conversion. But it is difficult for the egoistic consciousness to do this at all at the beginning. And, if done at all, it is still difficult to do it perfectly and in every strand of our nature. It is difficult at first because our egoistic habits of thought, of sensation, of feeling block up the avenues by which we can arrive at the perception that is needed. It is difficult afterwards because the faith, the surrender, the courage requisite in this path are not easy to the ego-clouded soul. The divine working is not the working which the egoistic mind desires or approves; for it uses error in order to arrive at truth, suffering in order to arrive at bliss, imperfection in order to arrive at perfection. The ego cannot see where it is being led; it revolts against the leading, loses confidence, loses courage. These failings would not matter; for the divine Guide within is not offended by our revolt, not discouraged by our want of faith or repelled by our weaknesess; he has the entire love of the mother and the entire patience of the teacher. But by withdrawing our assent from the guidance we lose the consciousness, though not all the actuality — not, in any case, the eventuality — of its benefit. And we withdraw our assent because we fail to distinguish our higher Self from the lower through which he is preparing his self-revelation. As in the world, so in ourselves, we cannot see God because of his workings and, especially, because he works in us through our nature and not by a succession of arbitrary miracles. Man demands miracles that he may have faith; he wishes to be dazzled in order that he may see. And this impatience, this ignorance may turn into a great danger and disaster if, in our revolt against the divine leading, we call in another distorting Force more satisfying to our impulses and desires and ask it to guide us and give it the Divine Name.”

The difficulty of discovering the Divine Master, this is what Sri Aurobindo describes to us. Why is it that we cannot discover the Divine Master who is within us? Sri Aurobindo gives us the analysis. “It is difficult at first because our egoistic habits of thought, of sensation, of feeling block up the avenues by which we can arrive at the perception that is needed.” What are the egoistic habits of thoughts? Habit means a constant turn towards what has already been established. That is a habit. We habitually smile when we meet people who come to meet us. Similarly there are many kinds of habits. When somebody praises you, habitually we like it. It is our egoistic habit to dislike blame. If somebody blames you, habitually you withdraw. It is a habit of the ego: “I cannot have done wrong.” Because of our habitual way of thinking we cannot see when the Divine comes to us. He may come to us in a not very agreeable form, he may come to us blaming us and we may not like him so we may not recognise him -- Oh! he is my master. The master who is within us may come to us in many ways which are opposed to our egoistic ways of thinking, to our egoistic habit of thought, of sensation, of feeling. We think habitually, we sense habitually, we feel habitually and all are egoistic in our normal turn of consciousness. That is why we do not recognise the Master when he comes.