Part One

A Preliminary Note

Experience of Conversion

It is very well known that in every yogic practice that is to be found in religions as also in that which is independent of any religion, the experience of conversion marks a radical point of departure from ordinary life to a truly spiritual life. An important example of this experience of conversion, which William James has given, is that of Saint David Brainerd. The description of this experience is appended at Appendix II (p. 113).

Conversion is a movement as a result of which spiritual life becomes central to the seeker. But this centrality may be only ideative in character, in the sense that what becomes central is a cluster of ideas relating to spiritual life rather than the possession of the substance of the Spirit that makes spiritual life so very distinctive and beatific. Often conversions are temporary. At higher stages, not only the mind but also the very heart of the seeker is touched by the experience leads to conversion, and it is then that the conversion ends to become permanent and to ripen itself into mature fruits of the spirituality of religious life or of yogic life. One of these fruits is that of saintliness.

Saintliness

William James has analysed the state of saintliness and pointed out that there are four main features:

(i) A feeling of being in a wider life of the existence of an ideal power;

(ii) A sense of the friendly continuity of the ideal power with our own life, and a willing self-surrender to its control;

(iii) An immense elation and freedom, as the outlines of the confining selfhood melt down; and

(iv) A shifting of the emotional centre towards loving and harmonious affections.

William James has also described the practical consequences of the development of saintliness as (a) Asceticism, (b) Strength of Soul, (c) Purity, (d) Charity. See Appendix III (p. 116)

He has also given some concrete illustrations of saintliness. One of them is that of Saint John of the Cross. Another is that of Suso, a German mystic. Another still is that of George Fox. See Appendix IV (p. 120)

Mysticism

William James arrives at the summit of religious experiences in his chapter on Mysticism. He points out that there are basically two characteristics of Mysticism:

(i) Mystic experience is marked by ineffability, and

(ii) It has noetic quality and the mystic states are also states of knowledge. See Appendix V (p. 128)

He also points out that there are two other qualities, which are less sharply marked but are usually found. The first quality is that of transiency, since mystical states cannot be sustained for long. The second quality is that of passivity, since the mystic feels in his experience as if he were grasped and held by a superior power. He points out that this latter peculiarity connects mystical states with certain phenomena such as prophetic speech, automatic writing, or the mediumistic trance.

It may be remarked that in the strict path of yogic experience, a distinction is made between subliminal experience or experience proper to occultism, and spiritual experience, — a distinction, which William James does not offer in his book. Strictly speaking, experiences of automatic writing or mediumistic trance are experiences related to the subliminal consciousness consisting of the inner mind, inner vital force and subtle physical consciousness. Spiritual experiences relate to the realm of super-consciousness or of psychic consciousness which is the consciousness of the inmost being which governs body, life and mind and which has the power of integrating body, life and mind under its own integrating power. Super-consciousness refers to the realm of the transcendental Spirit which, in its universal aspect, provides an entry into cosmic consciousness and increasing unity of diversity which culminates in what is called in Yoga, supramental consciousness or consciousness of vijñānamaya.

Again, it is true, as William James points out, mystical states are transient. But in Yoga proper, this transiency can e gradually removed, and higher states of mysticism can be made permanent. In the yogic language, the state of permanency of the higher and higher states of Yoga is called realisation.

William James has provided in his book extremely illuminating examples of mysticism. These include those of Malwida von Meysenbug, Walt Whitman, Dr. J. Trevor, Dr. R.M. Bucke, of Raja Yoga as expounded by Swami Vivekananda, Al-Ghazzali, Saint John of the Cross, Saint Teresa, Saint Ignatius, and some others such as Sufi Gulshan-Raz and Plotinus. See Appendix VI (p. 131)

Part Two

Yoga Its Distinguishing Features

Yoga as distinguished from religion is primarily a shastra and not system of beliefs, ceremonies, rituals and moral and spiritual disciplines related to the system of beliefs and prescriptions. As a shastra, it is a growing body of knowledge of truths, principles, powers and processes that govern the discipline of the body, life and mind and other higher faculties in search and realisation of psychic, spiritual and supramental reality or realities that lie beyond the body, life and mind, as also the consequences of that search and realisation for the individual and collective existence in the cosmos. Sri Aurobindo's book The Synthesis of Yoga is related to yogic experiences that can be attained by the application of yogic shastra, independent of any religion or any spiritual practice that is tied to any religion, even though spiritual disciplines of religions may coincide with or may adopt or recognise for their own aims some or other aspects of this shastra.

Part Three

Yogic Experience of the Flame of Aspiration

In its inmost nature, yoga is, according to the yogic shastra, the expression of the flame of aspiration that rises upwards in order to bum and bum steadily, constantly and ever-increasingly, to grow in leaps of fire in order to bum away all that tends towards impurity, to build our inner being and all members of the being, — body, life, and mind and all our faculties, actual and latent, — so that all of them make an ascent in all-consuming zeal to unite with all that is or felt or conceived to be the highest, the best, the widest and intensest, the infinite, the limitless, all and beyond, — so that they can attain, consummation and ever-living sustenance of heat and light. This flame has, in its upward movement, — it is discovered, — an inherent sense of direction and discloses progressively the needed knowledge of the means and methods that are required for its constant movement and consummation; it has the Veda — not the text — but that which is recognised in the Indian tradition as the secret knowledge that is in the heart of every thinking and living being, but uncovered by the seeker through the process of the burning of aspiration itself, — and, therefore, in need of no indispensable external agencies of guidance, — teacher, book, ethics, aesthetics, philosophy, science, occultism or religion, — even though they may be utilised as and when indicated or offered on the way, but in the end transcended by the inward force of the constant need to bum and burn luminously and immortally.

Yoga is the journey of the yogic flame of aspiration, and this journey is, as reported by the seekers, difficult and even perilous, although when carried on by heroic concentration, it becomes more and more felicitous, and victories are won after victories, and even though it rises on peaks after peaks of accomplishment — yoga-siddhi, — there are still farther accomplishments that are made clearer. As an ancient record of Yoga states:

brahmāṇastvā śatakrato ud vamśam iva yemire. yat sānoḥ sānum āruhad bhūri aspaṣṭa kartvam¹

The seekers of the journey climb thee like a ladder, O hundred powered. As one ascends from peak to peak, there is made clear the much that has still to be done.

And yet in the ever-progressive movement, the individual seeker, the individual soul, discovers the stable source and foundation, the creative power of the world, and even while seated securely in that foundation, it sees luminously the progressive self-unfolding. Again, as it is stated:

abhyavasthāḥ pra jāyante pra vavrer vavriś ciketa. upasthe māturvi caṣṭe.²

States upon states are born covering over covering awakens to knowledge: in the lap of the Creative Power of the Worlds, the Mother of Creation, he wholly sees.

On account of this reason, Yoga is ever-expanding; the Book of yoga, — shastra of yoga — is not a closed book.

Part Four

Experience of the Call for Yoga

At the outset, we need to underline a very important experience that precedes one's entry into the practice of the disciplines of yoga. Sometimes, there occurs a major upheaval in the life of the seeker, which is often decisive and which brings forth a call for the pursuit of yoga with such an overwhelming force that the seeker becomes a new person, and thereafter is called twice-born (dwija). We notice this kind of upheaval in the life of Prince Siddhartha when he saw the four great scenes of the sick, the dead, the old man and the hermit, and that sight caused what is called mahābhiniśkramaṇa. We see a similar upheaval in the life of Arjuna when he underwent a sudden crisis where in search of the right action at the commencement of the great war of the Mahabharata, he found all standards of conduct which were so far his staff of the journey crashing down so as to cast him into a deep depression (vishāda) from which he felt he could come out only by escaping from the very root of responsible action. The decisiveness by which he entered into his quest through his dialogue with Sri Krishna, and his pursuit of Karma yoga is another illustration in the same category.³ There are many other illustrations such as those of Tulsidasa and Surdasa and many others. A remarkable illustration is provided by William James where Tolstoy, at the height of the glory of his literary career, began to feel that something had broken within him and that he had nothing left to hold on to, and that morally his life had stopped. The questions, Why? Wherefore? What for? could not be answered. See Appendix VII (p. 152).

In many cases, this upheaval is resolved by what is called conversion in books on psychology of religion. But often this conversion is psychologically a shift of religious ideas and beliefs from the periphery of consciousness to the centre of consciousness, and although this shift brings about a remarkable departure of the seeker from his past mode of life to a new mode of life, still the new mode of life is governed by ideas and beliefs. In the conversion that is a prelude to the life of yoga, the centre of being is moved, not merely by ideas and beliefs, but by a thirst which can be quenched only by a process that leads to the transcendence of ideas and beliefs and by knowing and possessing in concrete experience of the delivering light.

In the following passage, Sri Aurobindo describes a number of circumstances under which the call to Yoga comes to the seeker:

All Yoga is in its nature a new birth; it is a birth out of the ordinary, the mentalised material life of man into a higher spiritual consciousness and a greater and diviner being. No Yoga can be successfully undertaken and followed unless there is a strong awakening to the necessity of that larger spiritual existence. The soul that is called to this deep and vast change, may arrive in different ways to the initial departure. It may come to it by its own natural development which has been leading it unconsciously towards the awakening; it may reach it through the influence of a religion or the attraction of a philosophy; it may approach it by a slow illumination or leap to it by a sudden touch or shock; it may he pushed or led to it by the pressure of outward circumstances or by an inward necessity, by a single word that breaks the seals of the mind or by long reflection, by the distant example of one who has trod the path or by contact and daily influence. According to the nature and the circumstances the call will come.

"But in whatever way it comes, there must be a decision of the mind and the will and, as its result, a complete and effective self-consecration."⁴

Part Five

Underlying Secrets of the Methods of Attainment of Yogic Experiences

The central question of Yoga is by what means can the seeker be enabled to know that which as yet the seeker does not know. Indeed, the means must have their root in our own instruments and their present functionings, and there are three instruments in our consciousness with which the yogic processes are connected. These three instruments are our cognitive faculties, affective faculties, and conative faculties. The processes of Jñāna yoga are more easily woven into cognitive faculties, those of the yoga of bhakti or divine love are more easily woven into our affective faculties, and those of karma yoga or yoga of divine works are woven more easily into our conative faculties. This weaving is done, first, by some kind of strengthening of the concerned faculties, and secondly, by methodical efforts by which these faculties are turned with steady concentration on the highest that can be conceived by cognitive faculties, the highest that can be loved and admired and worshiped by our affective faculties and the highest from which all source of action can be seen to be proceeding. Every yoga, therefore, consists of the various processes of concentration. It may be said that in a certain sense, the entire process of yoga is fundamentally a process of concentration, the courses of which have been explored and affirmed in the yogic sciences.

The process of concentration is aided by the process of purification of all that is operating in the normal modes of the concerned faculty. This is, indeed, a long process, and a number of yogic experiences have been related to the processes of purification. Again, purification is greatly aided by a process of renunciation of all that tends to obstruct purification, tends to disturb or pollute or curb or refuse the process of purification.

These processes, — concentration, purification and renunciation — and their corresponding experiences constitute a large part of perfection in any system or path of yoga.

At a deeper level, the secret of yoga lies in fact that the limitations of our ordinary functioning of faculties and of our life are due to exclusive dwelling of our mind and heart, of our faculties of cognition, affection, and conation on the superficial layer or layers of our being of which alone we normally are aware. We are, as it were, caged into the prison of our outer being which constantly acts and reacts and which with difficulty happens to be pushed to be turned more and more inward. The more one turns inwards, the more one discovers potentialities and secrets of development. Yoga is nothing but a more radical shift from the outer to the inner, and the methods of yoga are primarily the methods by which our consciousness can be turned more and more inward. It is a reversal of our present exclusive concentration of consciousness which is normally centred on the outward; in yoga, the process is reversed, and we employ exclusive concentration of consciousness on the inward. A passage is then made in the inner realm of consciousness, and light that is inherent in consciousness discloses realities which lie hidden in our inner being. Inner realities are discovered, they are visited repeatedly, and thus they become permanently disclosed; they are then said to be realised. The simple miracle of this discovery and realisation is that these inner realities are found to be luminous and vibrating energetically and they are capable of pouring into our outer layers of being their own light and powers and thus of transforming them.

In a more philosophical language, yoga is, first, the process to become conscious of the fact that there is in us a veil of ignorance; secondly, it is a process of the employment of methods by which this veil of ignorance can be torn and destroyed. And thirdly, yoga is a process by which one can be stabilised in the states of consciousness which have been unveiled, so that they radiate unobstructed permanently.

The distinctive methods of Yoga relate to the meticulous handling of customary psychological workings based upon a knowledge developed and confirmed by regular experiments, practical analysis and constant results so as to develop out of normal functions, powers and results which are always latent but which ordinary movements do not easily or do not often manifest. These methods are based on the perception and experience that our inner elements, combinations, functions, forces can be separated or dissolved, can be newly combined and set to novel and formerly impossible workings or can be transformed and resolved into a new general synthesis by fixed internal processes. They also depend on the perception and experience that the vital forces and functionings to which our life is normally subjected and whose ordinary operations seem to be set and indispensable, can be mastered and the operations changed or suspended with results that would otherwise be impossible and that seem miraculous to those who have not seized the rationale of that process. These methods can some times be arranged in a certain order, in certain fixity of the developing process, and even in some mechanical procedure. But these methods tend to become less and less mechanical, less and less fixed in their order of procedure, and stages are reached where the required methodised effort is indicated by developing consciousness more and more spontaneously, more and more intuitively, more and more by psychic sense and tact and an inner spiritual guidance.

Yoga is, as stated by Sri Aurobindo, "a methodised effort towards self-perfection by the expression of the potentialities latent in the being and a union of the human individual with the universal and transcendent Existence we see partially expressed in man and in the Cosmos."⁵

Part Six: Yogic Experience

Yogic Experience

(a) Experiences in Hatha Yoga

Yoga has often come to be exclusively identified with physical exercises of Hatha Yoga. Actually, the entire system of Hatha Yoga is only one of the systems of yoga. It aims at a complete mastery of the body and the life and a free and effective use of them established upon purification of their workings. The methods of this yoga are those of Āsana (more than eighty in number) and Prāṇāyāma, — the methods of stabilising the bodily condition by stabilisation of various postures of the body and those of breathing and breath-control by which the movements pervading all the nervous system are controlled. The gross body begins to acquire something of the nature of the subtle body and possess something of its relations with the life-energy. Life ceases to be entirely dependent on the action of the physical organs and functionings, such as the heartbeats and breathing. Hatha Yoga is an attempt by fixed scientific processes to give to the soul in the physical body the power, the light, the purity, the freedom, the ascending scales of spiritual experience which would naturally be open to it, if it dwelt in the subtle and the developed causal vehicle.

(b) Experiences in Raja Yoga

Yoga is often identified exclusively with Raja Yoga, or the Yoga, the aphoristic formulation of which has been attributed to Patanjali, although it is only one of the specialised methods of Yoga. Raja Yoga is independent of Hatha Yoga except that it admits in its method the Hatha Yogic āsana and Prāṇāyāma in their bare minimum and simple forms. On the other hand, Hatha Yoga joins up with the psychological methods of Raja Yoga, where it begins to ascend the scales of spiritual experience.

Raja Yoga insists on moral purification of the mentality, and five yamās and five niyamās are prescribed. Yamās are rules of moral control in conduct such as truth-speaking, abstinence from injury or killing, from theft, chastity, and cultivation of minimum wants leading to renunciation of all that is not needed. Niyamās constitute self-discipline by which the rājasic egoism and its passions and desires are conquered. The object is to create a sāttwic calm, purity and preparation for meditative or contemplative concentration.

Raja Yogic concentration is divided into four stages:

(i) Pratyāhāra — drawing both the mind and the senses from outward things;

(ii) Holding of the one object of concentration to the exclusion of other ideas and mental activities — dhāranā.

(iii) Prolonged absorption of the mind in the object of concentration, — dhyāna.

(iv) Loss of all outward mentality, cessation of all mental modifications, in the oneness of Samādhi.

Samādhi or Yogic trance retires to increasing depths as it draws farther and farther away from the normal or waking state and enters into degrees of consciousness less and less communicable to waking mind, less and less ready to receive the summons from the waking world. Beyond a certain point the trance becomes complete, and it is then almost quite impossible to awaken or call back the soul that has receded into those profounder depths of consciousness. It has been said that if one remains too long a time in those supreme states of trance, one cannot return. As a matter of fact, the yogin acquires at a certain stage of development the power of abandoning his body definitively without the ordinary phenomena of death, by an act of will — icchā mṛtyu or by a process of withdrawing the prānic life-force through the gate of the upward life current — udāna, opening for it a way through the mystic centre in the head, brahmarandhra. By departing from life in the state of Samādhi, one attains directly to that higher status of being to which one aspires.

But even before one attains to the state of Samādhi, one is able to enter repeatedly into that state, and the Raja Yogic methods, during the processes of their repeated applications, lead to the attainment of all those higher states of consciousness and the powers by which the mental being rises towards superconscient as well as its ultimate and supreme possibility of union with the highest. Raja Yoga is psychic science, and it gives an account of the powers and states which are possible on the higher planes of the being. They can be acquired and fixed by certain processes and their use then becomes subject to the will; or they can be allowed to be developed of themselves and used only when they come or when the divine within moves one to use them.

Eight Accomplishments of Yogic Discipline

These powers are not peculiar to Raja Yoga alone; they are attained even by other methods, methods of Hatha Yoga, methods of Tantra and even the methods of Karma Yoga, Jñāna Yoga, Bhakti Yoga and others. In the Indian yogic language, these powers or accomplishments are famous eight accomplishments, aṣṭa siddhi. These siddhis are, first of all those of mahimā (including garimā), laghimā and animā. These three siddhis of being are distinguished from siddhis of knowledge and siddhis of power. Mahimā is an unhampered force in the mental being or in the physical power. In the physical, it shows itself by an abnormal strength which is not muscular and may even develop into the power of increasing the size and the weight of the body, etc. Laghimā is a similar power of lightness, that is to say, of freedom from all pressure or weighing down in the mental, vital, or physical being. Laghimā is the basis of the power to overcome gravitation and thus it is the basis of utthāpana. Animā is the power of freeing the atoms of subtle or gross matter from their ordinary limitations. It is by this power that yogins are supposed to make themselves invisible and invulnerable or to free the body from decay and death.

Apart from these three powers of being, there are three siddhis of power. These three are: aishwarya, ishita and vashita. Aishwarya is a power by which one is able by the use of the will to make people act or to make things happen according to what is willed. Ishita is an accomplishment where one does not even need to have a will but when one as a want or a need or a sense that something ought to be that thing comes about or happens. Vashita is a power to concentrate one's will on a person or an object so as to control him or it.

There are two other siddhis, namely, vyāpti and prākamyā. These are siddhis of knowledge. Vyāpti is obtained when the thoughts, feeling etc. of others or another kind of knowledge of things etc. are felt rising from those things or persons. Vyāpti can also be communicative when one can send or put one's own thoughts, feelings, etc. into someone else. Prākamyā is an accomplishment to look at somebody mentally or physically and perceive what is in that person. Prākamyā also relates to senses, where it is the power of perceiving smells, tastes, lights, colours and other objects of senses which are neither at all available to ordinary persons or beyond the range from one's own ordinary senses.

It is important to note that yogic science gives warning that these powers can only be entirely acquired or safely used when one has got rid of egoism and identified oneself with infinite will and infinite consciousness. It may also be mentioned that Yoga in its higher movement attains to levels of consciousness where these powers as also many others manifest spontaneously and work themselves out without the need of maintaining them by methodical processes of these siddhis.

(c) Yogic Experience of Tantra

There is a system of Yoga which is known as Tantra, which contains many elements which are founded on the knowledge relating to Kundalini. It takes into account the psychical or mental body of which the physical is a sort of reproduction in gross form and is able to discover thereby secrets of the physical body which do not appear to a purely physical inquiry. This mental or psychical body has also a subtle prānic force in it corresponding to its own subtle nature and substance, and this force is directed through a system of numerous channels, called nādi, — the subtle nervous organisation of the psychic body, — which are gathered up into six or seven centres which are technically called lotuses or circles, chakra, and which rise in an ascending scale to the summit where there is thousand-petalled lotus from which all the mental and vital energy flows. Each of these lotuses is the centre and the storing house of its own particular system of psychological powers, energies and operations, — each system corresponding to a plane of our existence, — these flow out and return in the stream of the prānic energies as they cross through the nādis.

This arrangement of psychic body is reproduced in the physical body with the spinal column as a rod and the ganglionic centres as the chakras which rise up from the bottom of the column where the lowest is attached, to the brain and find their summit in the brahmarandhra at the top of the skull. These chakras or lotuses are in the physical man closed or only partly open, with the consequence that only such powers and only so much of them are active in him as is sufficient for his ordinary physical life, and so much mind and soul only is at play as will accord with its needs. This is the reason why the whole energy of the soul does not seem to be at play in the physical body and life, and the secret powers of the mind are not awake in it. But it is recognised that all the while supreme energy is there, but asleep; it is said to be coiled up like a snake, — therefore, it is called Kundalini-shakti, — in the lowest of the chakras, in the mūlādhāra. By various processes, including those of Prāṇāyāma, this Kundalini can be awakened. It then uncoils "self and begins to rise upwards like a fiery serpent breaking up each lotus as it ascends until the shakti meets the Conscious Being (Purusha) in the brahmarandhra in a deep trance or Samādhi of union. Tantra has also discovered the power of the mantra, sacred syllable, name or mystic-formula, and with the aid of mantra, Kundalini-shakti can be awakened and new states of consciousness which rise can be stabilised and strengthened so that they can effectuate important results which are considered to be miraculous.

Tantra as a Synthesis of Yoga

Tantra is, in fact, a synthesis of yoga, which has discovered the truth and power of the highest creative energy of which the physical world and other worlds which are behind it are expressions. Tantra aims at enabling the individual soul to unite with the supreme creative energy, the Supreme Mother, who is also in her depth one with the supreme Lord, Shiva or the highest Purusha.

The Tantric Yoga, as it rises from state to state, manifests not only aṣṭa siddhis but increases and manifests higher states of cosmic and transcendental consciousness. It manifests and stabilises states and powers which are obtained through the processes and methods of karma yoga, jñāna yoga and bhakti yoga. Various cosmic forces working in different levels of manifested world come to be contacted and known; multiplicities of gods and goddesses, — cosmic in character and fixed in various layers of cosmic manifestations, become active and their powers are utilised for the increase, stabilisation and transformation of human life, and life of the world. The entire human body and the powers which are latent in the body, life and mind and even the superconscient are realised, and as one ascends the steps of Tantra, as the knowledge of them increases, as the effective work begins to become more and more fruitful, the seeker learns more and more the secret of offering and sacrificing oneself and effecting progressively more and more total surrender to the Supreme Mother, who is experienced as power of Grace that uplifts the seeker into the realms of ananda, of knowledge, of the Supreme Being.

(d) Yogic Experiences in Karma Yoga

Yoga of divine works or karma yoga, to which we can now turn our attention, is focussed on conative faculties. We notice, first, that all the ordinary principal conative activities are principally centred on a motive that is ruled by desire. Karma yoga is a process by which this motive force is eliminated from the threads of our action as a result of which highest levels of action and effectivity are attained. Karma yoga is based on the perception that desire is not a necessary element in action, that ego is not a necessary element in action, and that dualities need not encourage or disappoint us in the performance of action. It is further perceived that there is a difference between desire and will and that there can be desireless will, a will that does not seek what is already not possessed but that manifests effortlessly what is already possessed within itself. Karma yoga is, therefore, not a process of cessation of works, but utilisation of works themselves as a method, so that even while the works continue, in the very thread of works, desire is eliminated. Not renunciation of works but renunciation of desire, — this is the central principle of the method of karma yoga.

The first stage of the method of karma yoga consists of making a distinction between action, results of action, and enjoyment of the results of action or fruits of action, karmaphala. The strongest element of desire is normally centred on the enjoyment of the fruits of action. Hence, the first stage of the method of karma yoga proposes the renunciation of the enjoyment of fruits for action. At this stage, guiding wisdom lies in perceiving that one has no right to the fruits of action, — karmanyevādhikāraste mā phaleśu kadācana.

In the second stage of karma yoga, a further discipline is added. This discipline consists of perceiving the entire mechanism of the action, and of discovering that the entire world is a network of interconnected movements of energy and no action is independent of any other action, and that the egoistic belief which is normally dominant in the psychology of the agent of action that he is the independent doer of action does not correspond to the truth of the world of action. The practice of this truth, according to the karma yoga, leads to the practice of repeated perception and experience that one is not the doer of action but that one's action is a part of the totality of world-action. At this stage, therefore, the method consists in the withdrawal or renunciation of the sense of egoistic doership of action.

The practice of the method of karma yoga at this stage can be greatly strengthened if the knowledge of the world-movement, of the place of ego in the world and of the real originator of action is sought to be attained. This is the point at which two important yogic experiences can be glimpsed and developed. The first is the experience, which can be summarised in the words of the famous Indian saint, Narsi Mehta:

It is an error born of ignorance to think that I am doer of action, similar to the error that a dog commits when it thinks while running under a moving cart, that because of its own movement the cart is moving and that it is the carrier of the load of the cart.

The yogic experience one can attain is that of the vision of the vast universe and principles which are involved in the vast world movement. In Indian philosophy, this experience is recognised as that of Prakriti, the Force that can be propelled into action so as to evolve the world that surrounds us. In this vision, one notices that not only the senses, sense-mind, intellectual operations of analysis, synthesis and discrimination, but even the ego-sense are all products of the universal engine of Prakriti.

The second experience is that of the presence of a conscious being, which is in Indian philosophy called Purusha, who is other than Prakriti, but who by his cast of glance causes the propulsion of Prakriti . Even this yogic experience has several stages of development. In the first place, Purusha is seen as a mere presence or as a mere witness — sākśin; at a more developed stage, Purusha is experienced as the giver of sanction, such that Prakriti can function only if Purusha provides a sanction for its movement and that the movement of Prakriti can cease to function, if the Purusha withdraws its sanction. It is the experience of Purusha as a giver of sanction, anumantā, that provides the first authentic experience of the freedom of Purusha, as distinguished from the erroneous sense of freedom that the ego feels. For in reality ego is a product of the energies that impel it to determine its activities, and therefore, there is no real freedom in the actions that issue from the ego. At a still mature development of experience of the Purusha, a new yogic experience can be attained. This is e perception of Purusha as a poise of the individual, where the individual itself can be experienced as a portion — anśa and a portion derived from a higher creative force, parā prakriti, from a transcendental origin, Purushottama. In the philosophical language of India, this experience of the individual is that of a jiva, which has been described as a formation of Para Prakriti (parā prakritir jivabhutā) and a portion of Purushottama (mama eva anśah sanātanah).

Again, there are here the experiences of the jiva that presides over individual evolution, and its delegate, caitya purusha, (psychic being described in the Katha Upanishad as the one not bigger than the thumb) which is directly related to and involved in the evolution and formations of the body, life and mind, which are all products of Prakriti. One gets contacts with the caitya purusha, as the dynamic evolving being and consciousness that is self-aware and that is the real controller of the development of the body, life and mind. It is the caitya purusha, which is realised more and more distinguished from manomaya purusha, prānamaya purusha, and annamaya purusha (mental being, vital being and physical being). The experience of the caitya purusha is a major experience of Karma yoga, since through that experience the entire process of Karma yoga begins to be guided by direct intuition that distinguishes not only between Purusha and Prakriti but also distinguishes between the good and the evil, in the sense that it distinguishes between that which is determined by the engine of lower Prakriti and that which is demanded by the higher Prakriti or para prakritt and by the Purushottama.

With this guidance, the process of Karma yoga enters into a major line of yogic experience which illumines the evolving consciousness and enables it to discover that there is in this world a law of interchange, — a law of the action of cosmic forces, which are interrelated through their mutual change and the law of interchange between those cosmic forces and the individuals who are all involved in the cosmic work of energies, which have themselves two levels of operations, the level of Apara Prakriti, where action s are ruled by ignorance, and the level of Para Prakriti where actions are ruled by universal and transcendental knowledge. It is this knowledge issuing from Para Prakriti that provides to the method of Karma yoga that subtle process which is the heart of that sacred movement, which is called sacrifice or yajña. At this stage, the entire process of Karma yoga is elevated to a process of offering and sacrifice and surrender. All actions thenceforth are purified by the individual, by the psychic being, as an offering, as an offering to Para Prakriti and as an offering to the Purushottama. The more this process of sacrifice ripens, the more one feels that element of devotion, which can be strengthened by the practice of Bhakti yoga, and it is here that Karma yoga and Bhakti yoga converge upon each other.

At this level, the third stage of Karma yoga begins to develop, and as the individual continues to offer all actions as sacrifice, he begins to experience the secrets of worker as a servant, as a divine soldier, as a mere instrument in the hands of the Divine, who is the real and original Doer of Works. Even the instrumental consciousness begins to vanish until the individual attains such an intimate union with Para Prakriti and Purushottama that the divine worker ¹ is experienced as the enjoyer of the play of Para Prakriti and Prushottama in his entire passivity, and the works that pass through him are direct actions of Para Prakriti and Purushottama. Consequent upon this experience, the seeker is thenceforward moved to higher realms of what can be called supramental experiences of supramental action. That is the stage where the entire processes of Karma yoga are fulfilled.

During the entire process of Karma yoga, there are two major developments that take place in the yogic development of the seeker. The first is the development of the state of equality or samattvam. This is the state where all circumstances, favourable or unfavourable, success or failure, gain or loss, pleasure or pain, — all received by the inner consciousness without like or dislike, unmoved and tranquil, seated high above all happenings, detached with impartial mastery. The second is the knowledge and growth of universal and transcendental consciousness as a result of which the will of the Supreme is disclosed, and adherence to that will is effected by progressive self-surrender in works. At the height of these developments, the culminating message of Karma yoga is realised, namely, "abandon all rules of conduct and take total refuge in the Supreme" — sarva-dharmān parityajya mām ekam śarnam vraja.

In the development of attitude and experience of equality, three stages can be discerned, at the end of which the truths of the great dictum of yoga is realised, namely, samattvam yoga ucyate, "it is equality that is yoga".

The three stages of equality can be described in psychological terms, first, as the stage of Stoic equality. philosophic equality, and equality that comes by resignation to the Divine Will. It is here that we come to appreciate the rationale and usefulness of the Stoics, particularly, the Stoics of ancient Europe, such as Zeno, Seneca, Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius. The attitudes and experiences which they have described refer in varying degrees to these three stage of equality. In the first stage. Stoic equality is the equality comes by the discipline of endurance. At this stage, what is realised is that emotions manifest judgements and that these judgements are often erroneous and that consequently, they should be subordinated or eliminated by the attitude and practice of endurance. One is reminded of Epictetus who had been a slave and his leg broken. In a dialogue which he imagines, he states:

I must die. But must It die groaning? I must be imprisoned. But must I whine as well? I must suffer exile. Can any one then hinder me, from going with a smile, and good courage, and at peace? Tell the secret.' I refuse to tell, for this is in my power. 'But I will chain you.' What say you, fellow? Chain me? My leg you will chain — yes, but my will — no, not even Zeus can conquer that. 'I will behead you.' Why? When did I ever tell you that I was the only man in the world that could not be beheaded?²

An example of the second stage of equality, that of philosophical Stoicism, is to be found in a passage of Marcus Aurelius, which has been quoted by William James in his Varieties of Religious Experience:

Everything harmonises with me which is harmonious to thee, O Universe. Nothing for me is too early nor too late, which is in due time for thee. Everything is fruit to me which thy seasons bring, O Nature: from thee are all things, in thee are all things, to thee all things return.³

This philosophical Stoicism, in its psychological depth and fervour, stands at a lower level than the state in which equality arises through resignation or surrender of the will to the Supreme. William James quotes a passage from the Imitation of Christ to describe the special fervour and intensity which are inherent in the attitude of surrender:

Lord, thou knowest what is best; let this or that be according as thou wilt. Give what thou wilt, so much as thou wilt, when thou wilt. Do with me as thou knowest best, and as shall be most to thine honour. Place me where thou wilt, and freely work thy will with me in all things. ... When could it be evil when thou wert near? I had rather be poor for thy sake than rich without thee. I choose rather to be a pilgrim upon the earth with thee, than without thee to possess heaven. Where thou art, there is heaven; and where thou art not, behold there death and hell.⁴

But apart from these states of equality, more and more elevating and more and more luminous experiences of equality are attained by the perception of the interplay of the transcendental consciousness, universal- consciousness, individual consciousness and also the interplay of the action of Para Prakriti and Apara Prakriti. With these experiences, there comes about the annihilation of desire and also of ego. Sri Aurobindo in his The Synthesis of Yoga, has presented a brief but illuminating description of these higher levels of experience of equality. Appendix IX (p. 158)

It may, however, be noted that equality does not make the seeker blind to differences that are all over the world. Equality is a far deeper state of consciousness. As Sri Aurobindo explains:

"Equality does not mean a fresh ignorance or blindness; it does not call for and need not initiate a greyness of vision and a blotting out of all hues. Difference is there, variation of expression is there and this variation we shall appreciate, — far more justly than we could when the eye was clouded by a partial and erring love and hate, admiration and scorn, sympathy and antipathy, attraction and repulsion. But behind the variation we shall always see the Complete and Immutable who dwells within it and we shall feel, know or at least, if it is hidden from us, trust in the wise purpose and divine necessity of the particular manifestation, whether it appear to our human standards harmonious and perfect or crude and unfinished or even false and evil."⁵

Indeed, as one ascends in the path of sacrifice, one need more and more imperatively the knowledge of the will that issues from the Supreme. This enhances the pressure of karma yoga towards the knowledge of the Divine Will. The pressure increases to such a degree that there bursts in the seeker a vision, even of time-vision and of the divine will and action at a given epoch of time. One such vision has been described in the Bhagavad Gita in a most powerful poetic passage. In his Essays on the Gita, Sri Aurobindo describes that vision in which the Supreme form of the World-Spirit is made visible to the inner divine eyes gifted temporarily to Arjuna, the hero of the Mahabharata, where he sees God, magnificent and beautiful and terrible, and in that vision the divine will is made manifest. Appendix X (p. 162)

1. Sri Aurobindo's poem "Divine Worker" that describes the state of consciousness of the divine worker is appended at Appendix VIII (p.157) ↩

2. Quoted by Bertrand Russell in his History of Western Philosophy, paperback edition, 1996, p.270 ↩

3. William James, Varieties of Religious Experience, Barnes & Noble Books, New York, paperback edition, 2004, p.49 ↩

4. William James, Varieties of Religious Experience, Barnes & Noble Books, New York, paperback edition, 2004, p.50 ↩

5. Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis of Yoga - I: Equality and the Annihilation of Ego ↩

(e) Yogic Experiences in Jnana Yoga

Jnana yoga is primarily centred on cognitive faculties, and its first concern is with the development of the intellect so that it can arrive at discrimination between reality and appearances. It relies, therefore, on the power of thought, vicāra and on the power of discrimination, viveka. Four steps of the method of Jnana yoga are: (i) śravana, — listening to the Word which symbolises or indicates the truth that has been discovered by those who have trodden the path, (ii) manana, — reflection, discriminative conceptualisation in which the concept of reality is clarified repeatedly, contemplatively and dwelt upon by increasing concentration, (iii) nididhyāsana, — long process of dwelling on the concepts of reality in a continuous attempt to transcend the process of conceptualisation so as to grasp intuitively the object of thought and thus to prepare the ground of experience in which the subject of knowledge and the object of knowledge can be united, and (iv) sākśātkāra, state of realisation in which reality shines out self-luminously by sublation of all other lower experiences so as to attain permanent station in the Reality that is experienced.

The most important part of the process of Jnana yoga is to eliminate the error in consciousness that arises from the veil of ignorance that exists between the consciousness which is centred on shifting and confusing multiplicity, on the one hand, and the self-existent and self-luminous reality, on the other. The error consists of identification or the unreal or appearance of the phenomenal with the real. The process of Jnana yoga, therefore, proceeds to eliminate the erroneous or false identification. The process also involves a long effort of purification in which layers of confusions and impurities of the body, life, and mind are cleaned up by series of meditations, three of which are most important, namely, meditations on the formula: "I am not a body", "I am not this life" and I am not the mind". These meditations are accompanied by the external and internal purification of the body, of the relationships with the environment and of non discriminative errors, confusions and falsehoods. With increasing effort of meditation and concentration, with increasing discrimination between the real and the unreal, with increasing purification and also with increasing renunciation of the unreal, of the erroneous, of the false, there occurs a gradual liberation and also the recovery of the vastness and even the transcendence of the Self. Often in this process, works are renounced, relationships are severed, and a complete renunciation of the worldly life is effected. The important point, however, is the development of inner detachment, anāsakti, from all that is not-Self. A positive series of meditations and concentrations accompany the entire procedure and become more and more dominant which have for their object, "I am the Transcendental Self. Three great declarations of the Upanishads are proposed as formulae of meditations, viz., "I am He", "Thou art That", "All this is the Brahman: this Self is the Brahman".

The secret of the effectivity of Jnana yoga is based on the discovery that thought has a power to open up a state of consciousness which is beyond thought, a consciousness where what is thought of is also experienced, provided that thought is made pure of any confusion or error, and if thought is fixed more and more steadily without any wavering even on the long stretch of time, and if the states of quiet, tranquillity, calm, silence and peace are maintained, and if no distraction is allowed to intervene.

Yogic experiences of quiet, tranquillity, calm, silence and Peace are extremely important in the path of Jnana yoga. Quiet is a condition in which there is no restlessness or disturbance, — it is the state of acanchalatā. Calm is still an "unmoved condition in which no disturbance can affect, — it is a less negative condition than that of quiet. It is a condition of sthiratā. Quiet, calm and peace can all be described as tranquillity. Peace is the still more positive condition; it carries with it a sense of settled and harmonious rest and deliverance. It is a state of śānti. Silence is a state in which either there is no movement of the mind or vital or else a great stillness in which no-surface movement can pierce or enter. It is the state of niścala nīravatā.

There are, according to yogic experiences of Jnana yoga, four states of consciousness which come to be distinguished, and one has to rise from one that is lowest to the one that is the highest. The first is the state of wakefulness, jāgrata, which is turned outward, bahiśprajna. The second is the state of dream, swapna, in which one is inward, antahprajna. The third is the state of sleep, sushupti, a state of perfect slumber where one returns to Oneness, where wisdom is gathered into itself, and where one enjoys unrelated delight. It is also the state of the Almighty, and the Omniscient, and it is also the Inner Soul and the Womb of the Universe. And there is beyond, the fourth state, turīya, which is described in the Māndukya Upanishad as follows:

He who is neither inward-wise, nor outward-wise, nor both inward and outward-wise, nor wisdom self-gathered, nor possessed of wisdom, nor unpossessed of wisdom, He who is unseen and incommunicable, unseizable, featureless, unthinkable, and unnameable, Whose essentiality is awareness of the Self in its single existence, in Whom all phenomena dissolve, Who is Calm, Who is Good, Who is the One than Whom there is no other. Him they deem the fourth: He is the Self, He is the object of Knowledge.¹

Jnana yoga leads to the attainment of the knowledge of the Self, which is manifested or reflected as the individual soul that is identified with body, life and mind and which is, therefore, to be liberated from that identification or bondage. In that state of liberation, true knowledge of the Self is attained. (See Sri Aurobindo's description of the state in his poem: 'Liberation' in Appendix XI (p. 165)

This knowledge of the Self has been described variously. One of the most important descriptions is that of what is called the experience of Adwaita, the Self as the sole Reality, one without the second, luminous, pure sustaining the world but inactive in it, without sinews of energy, without flaw of duality, without scar of division, unique, identical, free from all appearances and relations and of multiplicity, — pure Self, Atman or Brahman. (See the description of the experience in Sri Aurobindo's poems: 'Adwaita' and 'Nirvana' in Appendix XII (p. 166)

In fact, two most important experiences and realisations of Jnana yoga are those of cosmic consciousness and of the consciousness of Oneness. Sri Aurobindo has described these experiences, and we refer to them and give below the descriptions of these two yogic experiences and realisations in Sri Aurobindo's words.

Of the cosmic consciousness, Sri Aurobindo states:

"Entering into that Consciousness, we may continue to dwell, like It, upon universal existence. Then we become aware — for all our terms of consciousness and even our sensational experience begin to change, — of Matter as one existence and of bodies as its formations in which the one existence separates itself physically in the single body from itself in all others and again by physical means establishes communication between these multitudinous points of its being. Mind we experience similarly, and Life also, as the same existence one in its multiplicity, separating and reuniting itself in each domain by means appropriate to that movement. And, if we choose, we can proceed farther and, after passing through many linking stages, become aware of a supermind whose universal operation is the key to all lesser activities. Nor do we become merely conscious of this cosmic existence, but likewise conscious in it, receiving it in sensation, but also entering into it in awareness. In it we live as we lived before in the ego-sense, active, more and more in contact, even unified more and more with other minds, other lives, other bodies than the organism we call ourselves, producing effects not only on our own moral and mental being and on the subjective being of others, but even on the physical world and its events by means nearer to the divine than those possible to our egoistic capacity."²

Cosmic Consciousness³

I have wrapped the wide world in my wider self
  And Time and Space my spirit's seeing are.
I am the god and demon, ghost and elf,
  I am the wind's speed and the blazing star.

All Nature is the nursling of my care,
  I am the struggle and the eternal rest;
The world's joy thrilling runs through me, I bear
  The sorrow of millions in my lonely breast.

I have learned a close identity with all,
  Yet am by nothing bound that I become;
Carrying in me the universe's call
  I mount to my imperishable home.

I pass beyond Time and life on measureless wings,
Yet still am one with born and unborn things.

Of the experience and realisation of Oneness, Sri Aurobindo states:

"When, then, by the withdrawal of the centre of consciousness from identification with the mind, life and body, one has discovered one's true self, discovered the oneness of that self with the pure, silent, immutable Brahman, discovered in the immutable, in the Akshara Brahman, that by which the individual being escapes from his own personality into the impersonal, the first movement of the Path of Knowledge has been completed. It is the sole that is absolutely necessary for the traditional aim of the Yoga of Knowledge, for immergence, for escape from cosmic existence, for release into the absolute and ineffable Parabrahman who is beyond all cosmic being. The seeker of this ultimate release may take other realisations on his way, may realise the Lord of the universe, the Purusha who manifests Himself in all creatures, may arrive at the cosmic consciousness, may know and feel his unity with all beings; but these are only stages or circumstances of his journey, results of the unfolding of his soul as it approaches nearer the ineffable goal. To pass beyond them all is his supreme object. When on the other hand, having attained to the freedom and the silence and the peace, we resume possession by the cosmic consciousness of the active as well as the silent Brahman and can securely live in the divine freedom as well as rest in it, we have completed the second movement of the path by which the integrality of self-knowledge becomes the station of the liberated soul.

"The soul thus possesses itself in the unity of Sachchidananda upon all the manifest planes of its own being. This is the characteristic of the integral knowledge that it unifies all in Sachchidananda because not only is Being one in itself, but it is one everywhere, in all its poises and in every aspect, in its utmost appearance of multiplicity as in its utmost appearance of oneness. The traditional knowledge while it admits this truth in theory, yet reasons practically as if the oneness were not equal everywhere or could not be equally realised in all. It finds it in the unmanifest Absolute, but not so much in the manifestation, finds it purer in the Impersonal than in the Personal, complete in the Nirguna, not so complete in the Saguna, satisfyingly present in the silent and inactive Brahman, not so satisfyingly present in the active. Therefore it places all these other terms of the Absolute below their opposites in the scale of ascent and urges their final rejection as if it were indispensable to the utter realisation. The integral knowledge makes no such division; it arrives at a different kind of absoluteness in its vision of the unity. It finds the same oneness in the Unmanifest and the Manifest, in the Impersonal and the Personal, in Nirguna and Saguna, in the infinite depths of the universal silence and the infinite largeness of the universal action. It finds the same absolute oneness in the Purusha and the Prakriti; in the divine Presence and the works of the divine Power and Knowledge; in the eternal manifestness of the one Purusha and the constant manifestation of the many Purushas; in the inalienable unity of Sachchidananda keeping constantly real to itself its own manifold oneness and in the apparent divisions of mind, life and body in which oneness is constantly, if secretly real and constantly seeks to be realised. All unity is to it an intense, pure and infinite realisation, all difference an abundant, rich and boundless realisation of the same divine and eternal Being."⁴

Nature of Jñāna in Jñāna Yoga

Knowledge that is sought to be attained through Jnana yoga has certain special characteristics; it is the light by which one grows into one's true being, not the knowledge by which one increases information and intellectual riches. It is true that scientific or psychological or philosophical or ethical or aesthetic or practical knowledge help us to grow but only in the becoming, not in the being, — even though they can enter into the definition of Yogic knowledge when they are used as aids to know the highest Being. Thus scientific knowledge can get us through the veil of processes and phenomena and enable us to see one reality behind which explains them all. Psychological knowledge can be used to know ourselves and to distinguish the lower self from the higher self in order that we may renounce the lower and grow into the higher. Philosophical knowledge can be termed as a light upon the essential principles of existence so as to enable ourselves to discover and live in that which is eternal. Ethical knowledge can aid us when having distinguished the wrong from the right, we put away the one and rise above the other into the pure innocence of the divine Nature, — Para Prakriti. Aesthetic knowledge, too, can be a part of Yogic knowledge when we discover by it the beauty of the Divine. Even knowledge of the world can be a part of Yogic knowledge when we see through it the way of the transcendent with his creatures and use it for the service of the Divine. Even then they are only aids; the real knowledge, — Jnana is that which is a secret to the mind, of which the mind only gets by reflection, but which lives in the spirit. The object distinctive of the Yogic knowledge is the union with what can be perceived, felt or conceived to be the highest truth of the being, and as the Upanishad states, when that object is attained, all becomes known, even what science as we practise it aims to know:

yasmin vijñate sarvam
  vijñātam bhavati

Knowing it is That knowing which everything becomes known.

Records of Yoga have described three movements leading up to the yogic states of knowledge or realisation. These are three successive movements, — internal vision, complete internal experience and identity.

(i) Internal vision or drishti is the direct perception of psychical things and of the Self. To begin with, we may hold firmly the conception of the Self derived from our inmost aspirations or from teachers or from luminous teachings. We may fix it by an entire and exclusive concentration; we may thus use the triple operation of Jñāna yoga, shravana, manana, nidhidhyāsana, It is only when after long and persistent concentration that the veil of the mind is rent or swept aside, and a flood of light breaks over the awakened mentality, and conception gives place to a knowledge — vision in which the Self is as present, real, concrete, as physical object to physical eye that we possess in knowledge.

This experience must become more frequent till it is constant.

(ii) In due course, there are other internal experiences so that the vision of the Self is completed by experiences of it in all our members. All this knowledge and experience are primary means of arriving at and of possessing identity.

(iii) One not only sees the Self or God, one even embraces Him and become that Reality. The Ishopanishad describes the great experience culminating in identity in the following terms:

yas tu sarvāṇi bhūtāni ātmanievānupaśyati
sarvabhūteṣu cātmānaṁ tato na vijiugupsate.
yasmin sarvāṇi bhūtaniātmaivābhūd vijānataḥ
tatra ko mohaḥ kaḥ śoka ekatvam anupaśyataḥ.⁵

But he who sees everywhere the Self in all existences and all existences in the Self, shrinks not thereafter from anything. He in whom it is the Self-being that has become all existences that are Becomings, for he has the perfect knowledge, how shall he be deluded, whence shall he have grief who sees everywhere oneness?

1. Sri Aurobindo, The Upanishads: Mandukya Upanishad ↩

2. Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine - I: The Two Negations: The Refusal of the Ascetic ↩

3. Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems: Cosmic Consciousness ↩

4. Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis of Yoga - I: Oneness ↩

5. Isha Upanishad, 6,7. ↩

(f) Experiences in Bhakti Yoga

We may now turn to yogic experiences in Bhakti yoga. This Yoga is as simple and straightforward as love moves straight towards its object. It cannot, therefore, be fixed down to any systematic methods. Bhakti yoga may employ various means of support, but since there is a human tendency towards order, process, and system, there have been attempts to methodise the movement of Bhakti or Divine love.

In a sense, numberless religions in their inmost core, have provided numberless means and methods to approach the Reality which has been viewed as worthy of worship and devotion.

There are various ways in which the path of Bhakti yoga is divided into stages of its development. There are, according to one classification, six stages of Bhakti:

(i) The first stage is known as bhaktasthala. This stage is marked by devotion inspired by faith.

(ii) The next stage is called maheshwarasthala, where the state of consciousness is that of nisthā bhakti, the state of bhakti where the seeker decides that he would be worshipping the Divine and the Divine alone.

(iii) The next stage is known as prasādasthala, where the seeker begins to feel that everything that he attains in life and every experience that he enjoys or suffers is given to him through the grace of the Divine.

(iv) The next stage is known as prāṇalingasthala, where the devotee begins to worship the Divine in any form whatsoever. At this stage, the yogic practice reaches a remarkable stage which is called anubhava bhakti, and this stage is marked with numerous mystic experiences.

(v) The next stage is known as samarpana stage, where one is able to surrender oneself totally to the Divine and the Bhakti of this stage is known as ananda bhakti.

(vi) Finally, one arrives at the aikya stage which leads to union and even identity. This stage of Bhakti is known as samarasa bhakti, where one leaves behind all ideas of differences and merges with the Supreme consciousness.

However, if we study the Yoga of Bhakti as an intimate process of the heart-yearning of the soul for the Divine, this Yoga resorts itself into four stages:

I) There is the desire of the soul when it turns to God and the straining its emotions towards Him;

II) The pain of love and the Divine return of love;

III) The delight of love possessed and the play of that delight; and

IV) The eternal enjoyment of the Divine Lover which is the heart of celestial bliss.

The Yoga of devotion concentrates on the affective aspects of human psychology. It recognises that emotions constitute a great force for the growth of human personality, and the more are the emotions refined, the more does the human personality get elevated into the scale of inner culture. Love, joy and beauty, — when they are refined and purified from their inner contradictions and from their gross seekings of satisfaction in terms of physical enjoyment, and vital play of unending demands in human relationships, there arise in human nature higher levels of sensitivity and subtlety and joy that prohibit the exploitation of the objects of love and beauty for any gross satisfaction or crude mishandling or unjust profit. The natural consequence of this purification results in the sentiments of reverence, admiration, worship, service, obedience, holiness, joy of companionship and love that does not demand but is earnest to offer, to sacrifice and even to be melted in the object of love. Based on this psychological movement of human nature. Yoga of devotion aims at refining all emotions and proposes the various methods by which emotions can be turned and concentrated on the Divine Being.

Human life is marked by pain and wants, and in search of alleviation and cure of pain and wants, a point is reached where one is drawn more and more imperatively to a Power or Being, even though they may be supraphysical, and one may have to cultivate faith. This is how many turn to God for the removal of pain and wants. But these are not the only two motives for turning towards the Divine Being. A higher motive is to be found, when the seeker, in search of the highest knowledge, discovers philosophically or spiritually, that there is in the universe and above the universe a Reality, who deserves to be known more and more perfectly and that the perfect knowledge of the Reality is accessible only when one opens one's heart and cognitive faculties to the Divine Reality. Aspiration to know the Supreme has thus been considered to be a higher motive of Devotion and for entry into the path of Bhakti yoga.

But even higher than this motive is the motive of the seeker who has reached the stage in the development of Karma yoga or Jnana yoga, or even in the pursuit of the Divine merely for the cure of pain or fulfilment of wants, where there bursts in the heart that motiveless love for the Divine which irresistibly wants to be consumed in that love. This ahaituki bhakti, the highest form of bhakti, bhakti for the sake of bhakti, the beginning of which is bhakti, the middle of which is bhakti and the end of which is also bhakti.

Even here there are two types of seekers. There are those who love the Divine and seek the Divine out of the irresistible attraction because they have heard the enchanting flute of the Divine call or have on some occasions seen with the inner eye the irresistible Form of the Divine and have fallen in the love of the Divine. But there are those who have known the Divine and known the Divine as the One Wonderful and who with this knowledge seek nothing but the Divine love for its own sake and who want to be with the Divine where he is to be found, whether in hell or heaven or on the earth, and who want to offer themselves absolutely, undeservedly and to offer every drop of blood of the body as an offering to the Divine Lover, — those seekers are of the highest category in the path of Bhakti yoga. As Sri Krishna points out in the Bhagavad Gita, all devotees are dear to the Divine, but devotees who also possess the knowledge of the Divine are dearer to the Divine.

In view of this nature of Bhakti yoga, there is one emotion which is inconsistent and which is to be dropped altogether in the path of Bhakti yoga. This is the emotion of fear. It is true that the sentiment of fear is perfectly consistent with devotion of a certain kind and up to a certain point. In the path of Karma yoga, the seeker seeks to regard God as the King and does not approach too near the glory of his throne, unless justified by righteousness or led there by a mediator who will turn away the divine wrath for sin. Even when the draws nearest, he keeps an awed distance between himself and his high object of worship. But he cannot embrace the Divine with all the fearless confidence of the child in his mother or of the lover in his beloved or with that intimate sense of oneness which perfect love brings with it. Therefore, the Yoga of Divine love has for its object not Merely the God of purity and truth and wisdom but also God as the father of all who extends his wings of benignant Protection and love over all his creatures, and from that concept of the object, the relation that is indispensable for he Yoga of the Divine love emerges, namely, the relation of father and child, a relation of love, and as a result, the relation of brotherhood with our fellow beings. Love is the real key and perfect love is inconsistent with the admission of the motive of fear. Closeness of the human soul to the Divine is the object, and gradually all other emotions disappear in the intimacy of the union of love.

It may even be said that even prayer, which is an extremely important part of the methods and experiences of Bhakti yoga, is ultimately justified not as a process by which what is asked for is granted but because prayer is an intimate expression of the relationship that the seeker seeks to build with God. In the end, prayer either ceases or remains only for the joy of the relation.

Love is a passion and it seeks for two things, eternity and intensity, and it is through Bhakti yoga that the seeker arrives at the discovery and the possession of the Divine Being in whom alone eternity and intensity of love are fulfilled. In the following passage, Sri Aurobindo describes that love for the Divine which suffuses the steps of Bhakti yoga and leads the seeker to inexpressible fulfilment, not only in knowing and possessing the Divine but also in divinising totality of our entire being and nature:

"Love is a passion and it seeks for two things, eternity and intensity, and in the relation of the Lover and Beloved the seeking for eternity and for intensity is instinctive and self-born. Love is a seeking for mutual possession, and it is here that the demand for mutual possession become absolute. Passing beyond desire of possession which means a difference, it is a seeking for oneness, and it is here that the idea of oneness, of two souls merging into each other an becoming one finds the acme of its longing and the utterness of its satisfaction. Love, too, is a yearning for beauty, and it is here that the yearning is eternally satisfied in the vision and the touch and the joy of the All-beautiful. Love is a child and a seeker of Delight, and it is here that it finds the highest possible ecstasy both of the heart-consciousness and of every fibre of the being. Moreover, this relation is that which as between human being and human being demands the most and, even while reaching the greatest intensities, is still the least-satisfied, because only in the Divine can it find its real and its utter satisfaction. Therefore it is here most that the turning of human emotion Godwards finds its full meaning and discovers all the truth of which love is the human symbol, all its essential instincts divinised, raised, satisfied in the bliss from which our life was born and towards which by oneness it returns in the Ananda of the divine existence where love is absolute, eternal and unalloyed."¹

At the highest stage of Bhakti yoga, one becomes universalised and the way of the Divine love and delight is raised to its intensities, and it gives the supreme liberation. Its highest crest is a supra-cosmic union. But for love, complete union is mukti: it includes all kinds of mukti together. In the end, these different kinds of mukti are not successive to each other or mutually exclusive. In the words of Sri Aurobindo:

We have the absolute union of the divine with the human spirit, sāyujya; in that reveals itself a content of all that depends here upon difference, — but there the difference is only a form of oneness' — Ananda too of nearness and contact and mutual presence, sāmīpya, sālokya, Ananda of and mutual reflection' the thing that we call likeness, sādṛśya, and other wonderful things too for which language has as yet no name. There is nothing which is beyond the reach of the God-lover or denied to him; for he is the favourite of the divine Lover and the self of the Beloved."²

A Note

Literature of Bhakti yoga. Eastern and Western, literature pertaining to religions, and literature pertaining to yogic path of Divine love, has provided voluminous descriptions of yogic experiences relating to the path of Divine love. In India, there has been a long line of saints who have described their yearnings for the Divine, their struggle with the lower nature so as to surmount it and to devote themselves exclusively to union with the Divine. Thousands of poems and songs describe their sādhanā, their prayers, their glimpses of the Divine Presence and their experiences of the pain of separation from the Divine, even their ecstasy in union with the Divine, and indeed it can be said that it is not possible for the tongue of human speech to tell of the utter unity and all the eternal varieties of the ānanda of Divine love.

We have appended in the Appendix XIII (p. 168) a few poems which relate to different stages of the yogic experiences of the Bhakti yoga.

One of the Tamil Alwars describes the condition of the mother of a love-stricken girl (symbolising the human soul yearning to merge into the Godhead). She complains to her friend of the sad plight of her child whom love for Krishna has rendered "mad", the ultimate spirit of the universe. (See the poem entitled, 'Love-mad' composed by Nammalwar)

Two poems are from the famous saint-poetess, Andal. They are entitled, 'I dreamed a dream' and 'Ye Others'.

Another poem is from Horu Thakur, a Bengali saint where he describes the longing of the soul for reunion with God, without whom the sweetnesses of love and life are vain. Another poem is from Vidyapati where he describes the beauty of the God whom he has seen. Another poem is from Jnanadas which describes the condition of the soul as yet divided from the Eternal, yet having caught a glimpse of his intoxicating beauty grows passionate in his remembrance and swoons with the sensuous expectation of union. Another poem, again, from Jnanadas which describes the human soul, in a moment of rapt excitement when robe of sense has fallen from it, is surprised and seized by the vision of the Eternal. A poem of Chandidas describes ocean-deep yearning of the soul for the Divine.

All the poems presented in this Appendix are translations from the original in Tamil or Bengali by Sri Aurobindo.

1. Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis of Yoga - II: The Godward Emotions ↩

2. Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis of Yoga - II: The Mystery of Love ↩

Part Seven

Recapitulation: Some Questions and Answers

What has been stated so far is only a glimpse of the varieties of yogic experience, and what is stated is far too inadequate even to serve as a preface to the descriptions of yogic experiences available in the history of relevant literature. A few broad rough strokes have been cast, and many important systems of yoga such as those of the Veda and the Upanishads, and many traditions of the East and the West have been either just mentioned or altogether unpardonably ignored.

(a) From what has been indicated here and what can be gathered, — if we make a studious and critical study of the important literature on yogic experiences, we can formulate some important general statements, and formulate also some questions which would necessitate further research, and which would also involve discussions of important issues in science, philosophy, ethics, religion and even occultism. For yoga aims at knowledge and claims validity for the knowledge acquired through yogic methods, and if this claim is sustained, it will have far-reaching consequences not only for the domains that aim at the knowledge of the truth, but also for a possible change in the climate of the contemporary civilisation which suffers from various forms of crisis, some of which are related to conflicts of culture, conflicts of religions and conflicts relating to claims regarding truth. It is in this context that the subject of varieties of yogic experiences deserves to be brought forth as one of the central subjects that must be pursued by all sincere seekers of truth and of the highest welfare of civilisation.

I) One general statement that can be made is that yogic experience runs everywhere on the same lines, even though it should be admitted that there are, not one line, but many. Still the broad lines are the same everywhere and the intuitions, revelations, inspirations, and mystic phenomena are the same in ages and countries far apart from each other and even though systems were practised quite independently from each other. The experiences of Saint Teresa, those of Andal or of Mirabai are precisely the same in substance, however, differing in names, forms, or cultural colouring. It is a fact that they were not corresponding with one another or aware of each other's experiences and results as are modern scientists in different parts of the world. This would seem to show that there is something there identical, universal, and presumably truth — however, the colour of the translation may differ because of the differences of mental language.

II) As in science, so here in this field, we are required to accumulate experience on experience, following faithfully the methods laid down by the teacher or by the systems of the past. As in science, so here, we are required to develop intuitive discrimination which compares the experiences, see what they mean, how far and in what field each is valid, what is the place of each in. the whole, how it can be reconciled or related with each other, even though at the first sight might seem to contradict each other. As in science, so here, we need to continue to conduct many related inquiries until we can move with some secure knowledge in the vast field of yogic phenomena, — and to permit even further development of fresh knowledge.

III) It is extremely important to underline the fact that yoga does not admit dogma, either in its own method of inquiry or even in the philosophical systems which can be built up on the basis of the data of yogic experiences. Yoga may not combat dogmatic assertions when they are put forward as dogmatic assertions which cannot be questioned, but if the contents of dogmatic assertions are to be admitted in the field of yoga, yoga has to test them on the anvil of the criteria of repeatable and verifiable experiences.

IV) It is also to be noted that yoga has developed a number of methods which have been tested, and which have been found justified on the ground of the knowledge gained of the truths, principles, powers and processes that govern . These methods have been developed over thousands of years and havthe realisation. These methods have something of the same relation to the cognitive, affective and conative and other psychological workings of the human apparatus as has the scientific handling of the natural force of electricity or of steam to the normal operations of steam and of electricity been formulated by regular experiments, practical analyses and constant results.

V) It is true that yogic experiences have so far remained accessible to a small minority of human race, but still there has been a host of independent witnesses to them in all times, climes and conditions, and many of them are the greatest intelligences of the past, and some of them world's most remarkable figures. These experiences must therefore, be taken into account seriously and honestly and must not be immediately dismissed simply because they are not only beyond the average man in the street but also not easily seizable even by many cultivated intellects or because their methods are more difficult than those of ordinary sense or reason.

VI) It is true that the field of yogic experience, if it is seized on by unripened minds, it lends itself to the most perilous distortions and misleading imaginations. In the past these distortions and misleading imaginations have encrusted a real nucleus of truth with such an accretion of perverting superstitions and irrationalising dogmas, that they thwarted all advance in true knowledge.

VII) It is also true that during serious debates, arguments have been advanced which rely only on sporadic intuitions or revelations or inspirations, instead of those which have been tested on the anvil of scrupulous methods of verification which are available in the vast body of knowledge that yoga possesses. Arguments based upon yogic experiences have great relevance to the search for the truth, but all seekers must examine all aspects of evidence impartially and in the pure spirit of the search of truth and truth alone.

(b) In this context, it is necessary to distinguish between occultism and yoga. It is true that occultism is concerned with occult phenomena and the laws governing those phenomena; occultism is the science of secrets that govern the phenomena that we normally experience but the underlying roots of which we do not normally experience. In a sense, even physical sciences can be regarded as occult sciences and can be grouped under occultism, considering that these sciences have also revealed and demonstrated the secrets which lie behind the truths of quantities and qualities, of the speeds and measures, of the real nature of elements, compounds and various kinds of combinations which are found in nature or which can be found by laborious effort or which can even be fabricated by the operations of the human intelligence. But what is distinctly called occultism, in the present stage of development of knowledge, is related to the phenomena and realities of supra-physical ranges of the subtle-physical, subliminal vital and subliminal mental, as they are found in human psychology or in worlds that are supra-physical but which have their own organisations and complex formations of existence and movement. These supra-physical domains are distinct from the domains of the psychic consciousness, spiritual consciousness and of supramental consciousness, — all of which are above the physical, subtle-physical, vital and mental domains of existence. In strict terms, the field which makes yoga distinctive is its field of psychic consciousness, spiritual consciousness and supramental consciousness. It is true, however, that yogic quest is often prefaced by an entry into the fields of subtle-physical, inner vital and inner mental, — even as yogic quest is often prefaced by a serious quest in philosophy, science, religion, ethics or aesthetics. But even if this prefatory quest in these fields happens to be necessary in most cases, it has to be underlined that the central field, — the distinctive field, — of yogic experiences is that of the psychic, spiritual and supramental. It is for this reason that many yogins, in order to keep their quest absolutely direct and unmixed, discourage occultism and even aṣṭa siddhis, many aspects of which are limited to attainments ofoccultism. At the same time, there are yogins, and even accomplished yogins who in a more comprehensive search of knowledge do not lay down any limitations in regard to the field of their quest, but with due discrimination, and without diluting their rigour of quest of their own specialised field, they explore occultism, even as they do explore many fields of inquiry such as those of science, philosophy, art and others. Nonetheless, many of the adverse judgements against yoga issue from indiscriminate clubbing of the occult and yogic experiences, and many of the infirmities which are found in the claims of occultists tend to be held also against the claims of yogic experiences.

There is, however, one argument which is advanced against both occult tism and yoga, and that argument is levelled against all that is supra-physical. This argument makes, first of all, a demand for physical valid proof of all that is claimed to be supra-physical. But an impartial inquiry, even at the first sight, will show that the demand for physical proof of a supra-physical fact is irrational and illogical. One may concede that what is spoken of as supra-physical may be adjudged to be unintelligible, but that does not constitute the disproof of what is unintelligible. It is only a proof of incommunicability but, if it is considered useful and important to concentrate on what is sought to be communicated through what is unintelligible, there is a good ground to investigate, and to enter into the field which is sought to be referred to in what seems to be unintelligible. A purely scientific attitude will concede this need and move forward instituting the required inquiry.

On the other hand, it may be suggested that a supraphysical fact may impinge on the physical world and produce physical results; it may even produce an physical senses and become manifest to them, but that cannot be its invariable action and character and process. Ordinarily supra-physical in fact must produce a direct effect on what is supra-physical in our consciousness, — on our mind, our life-being, our spiritual being, or other parts of us that are of the same order as itself, and can only indirectly and through them, if at all, influence the physical world and physical life.

Even if the concerned supra-physical object objectivises itself, it must be to a subtler sense in us and only derivatively to the outward physical senses. It is true that sometimes, this derivative objectivisation happens to occur, and if there is an association of action of the material body and its physical organs, then the supra-physical can become outwardly sensible to us. This is what happens, for example, in regard to the phenomena which have been studied in regard to the workings of faculties such as those of second sight. In certain occult phenomena, we seem to see and hear by the outer senses but which are not sensed inwardly through representation or interpretation of symbolical images which bear the stamp of an inner experience or an evident character of formations in a subtle substance. In the field of yoga and in the field of occultism, there are various kinds of evidences of the existence of other planes of being and communication with them. These include objectivisation to the outer sense, subtle-sense contacts, mind-contacts, life-contacts, and contacts through the subliminal in special states of consciousness existing in our ordinary range.

It is argued that the entire field of the supra-physical experience is a field of subjective experience or of subtle-sense images, and these can be easily deceptive. In regard to this argument, it may be admitted that there is a too great a tendency to grant credibility to the extraordinary and miraculous or supernatural at its face-value. Hence, it is necessary to apply greater rigour in scrutinising these phenomena and finding out strict standards and characteristic appropriate and valid means of verification. But mere liability to error cannot be a reason for shutting out a large and important domain of experience, since error is not a prerogative of the subjective experience alone; error is also an appanage of ordinary instruments of sense-organs and of the mind which relies on the evidence of the sense-organs. Error is also to be found in the domain where objective methods and standards have been erected. It may, therefore, be reasonably acknowledged that there can be and there are in the yogic field standards of judgement and criteria of verification which are appropriate to the supra-physical fields. The basic point that we need to underline is that the physical or supra-physical truths must be founded not on mental belief alone but on experience, — but in each case, experience must be of the kind, physical, subliminal or spiritual, which is appropriate to the order of the truths into which we are empowered to enter. Their validity and significance, as Sri Aurobindo points out, "must be scrutinised, but according to their own law and by a consciousness which can enter into them and not according to the law of another domain or by a consciousness which is capable only of truths of another order; so alone can we be sure of our steps and enlarge firmly our sphere of knowledge.⁶

Part Eight

Phenomena of Varieties

Phenomena of Varieties of Spiritual Experience: Synthesis in Integral Realisation

There is, however, an important problem from the phenomena of the varieties of spiritual experience. In the course of the history of yoga, there have been detailed investigations of the object of knowledge, status of yogic knowledge that has been obtained through yogic processes and the results of yogic experiences for the highest well-being of the individual and the world at all levels of existence, spiritual, mental, vital, and physical. In this course of development, the field of inquiry would have been much easier and much simpler if methods were uniform and if the knowledge of the object inquired into were also uniform. This would have rendered unanimity in this field of inquiry more easily. But the yogic field is marked by varieties of lines of development, varieties of methods and varieties of reports in regard to the truth or reality of the objects that have been pursued by yogic processes and methods. Again, the difficulty would have been not very serious, if there would have been some kind of understanding and agreement, based on verifiable truth, that all experiences in yoga are valid, even when they are varied. But when we examine the history of yoga, we find differing claims, even conflicting claims, and even denials in regard to the veracity of the rival claims.

It is this situation which necessitates the study of varieties of yogic experience with a more searching and critical sense. And even though this subject is very vast and very difficult, we need to bring forth although briefly, certain facts in regard to the varieties of yogic experience.

Let us first of all, admit that when we attempt to put ourselves into conscious relations with whatever supreme or universal Being there exists concealed or manifest in the world, we arrive at a very various experience and one or other variant term of this experience is turned by different intellectual conceptions into their fundamental idea of existence.

There is, for example, the crude experience of the Divine who is claimed to be seen quite different from and greater than ourselves, quite different from and greater than the universe in which we live; in this experience, all that is phenomenal seems a thing other than the infinity of the self-conscious spirit and all that is phenomenal seems an image of a lesser truth, if not an illusion. The question is whether this crude experience is scrutinised by yogic methods and whether this experience is the final experience of the Divine. It is true that if one dwells in this experience, we arrive at an intellectual conception, when we try to philosophise on the basis of that experience, of the divine as extra-cosmic. But we find that in the yogic field, there are other experiences also, and one of them is that in which it is found that all phenomena are contained in the Divine, and that no phenomenon is outside the Divine. Another yogic experience affirms one self of all and of all that we have consciousness and the vision. In the light of that experience, we can no longer say or think that we are entirely different from him, but that there is self and there is a phenomenon of self-existence.There is also an experience that all is one self, but all is variation in the phenomenon. There are reports of yogic experiences in which one can dwell in exclusive intensity of a union with the self as a result of which one may even come to experience the phenomenal existence as a thing dreamlike and unreal. But, again, there is a report of the yogic experience of a double intensity in which one may have the double experience of a supreme self-existent oneness with the self or the Divine and yet of oneself as living with that self or the Divine and in many relations to him in a persistent form, an actual derivation of his being. In that experience, the Phenomenal universe, as also our existence in the universe, become to us constant and real forms of the self-aware existence of the Divine.

In another yogic experience there are relations of differences between individual souls and the Divine, and there are also relations of differences between the Divine and all the other living or inanimate powers of the Eternal, and there are also relations in the dealings of the individual with the cosmic self in the nature of the universe. In philosophical terms, these relations are other than those of the supra-cosmic truth; they are derivative creations of a certain power of consciousness of the spirit. If one dwells in the yogic experience of the difference between the self and the forms of self, one may come to regard the Self as a containing an immanent reality, and one may admit the truth of omnipresent spirit, and yet the forms of the spirit, the moulds of its presence may affect us not only as something other than it, not only as transient, but as unreal images.

There is also the yogic experience of the Spirit as the divine being immutable and ever-containing in his vision the multiplicity of the universe; there is also the yogic experience of the separate, of the simultaneous or the coincident experience of the divine immanent in ourselves and in all creatures. There is also another yogic experience in which one sees all things as the very Divine, not only that Spirit which dwells immutable in the universe and its countless creatures, but all this inward and outward becomings are seen as divine Reality manifesting Himself in us and in the cosmos. If one dwells on this experience, one gets the pantheistic identity, the One that is all.

At first sight, these spiritual experiences seem vastly different from each other or even opposed to each other. Records of yogic experience show us that this situation of the variety of yogic experiences has been acknowledged, and they are-also shown to be reconcilable in some yogic experiences of synthesis of integrality. This synthesis is strikingly present in the synthesis of yoga as we find in the Veda, Upanishads and the Bhagavad Gita, and this synthesis is reflected even in short phrases as ekam sad viprā bahudhā vadanti,⁷ that reality is one but the knowers of that reality speak of it in different ways, tad ejati tannaijati⁸ that moves, and that moves not; dvāvimau puruṣau loke kṣaraś ca akṣara eva ca⁹, uttamaḥ puruṣastvanyaḥ paramātmetyudāhṛtaḥ¹⁰ — there are two purusas, one perishable and the other imperishable, but other than these two is the purushottama, called the highest self. The condition of this reconciliation or synthesis is to cease to press on one or the other exclusively, and if it is seen, as it is seen in an integral yogic experience, that the divine Reality is something greater than the universal existence, but yet that all universal and particular things are that Divine and nothing else, — significative of him, and not entirely That in part or some of their appearances but still they could not be significative of him if they were something else and not term and stuff of the divine existence. That is the Real; but they are its expressive reality.

This means that in the yogic śāstra, there is recognition not only of variety of yogic experience but also of a hierarchy of yogic experience. Indeed, the experiences from the commencement of any process of yoga and experiences related to gradual advancement in the development of yogic accomplishment, there can be understandably a hierarchy of experiences, and degrees of approximation leading up to the culminating experience in any lines of development. But if all the culminating experiences of all lines of development speak of the union with the highest, and if all the yogic experiences speak of the highest as indivisible, then there should be unanimity among these experiences. This argument is admitted in the yogic śāstra, but it is pointed out that there are certain culminating experiences. Which when they touch that mental substance in its state of utter silence or love or utter passivity overwhelms that substance with such intensity and perfection that that aspect or quality of the indivisible infinite that is in the forefront in the experience is felt to le final or ultimate. But, if the mental substance is further deepened or widened or heightened, new experiences revealing other aspects of the Infinite join the previous states of realisation, and this process can continue and the mind gives place to the supermind, where integrality of the Supreme becomes ever-manifest. It is in connection with this integral experience that the Upanishad gives us the famous description:

That is perfect, this is perfect, from the Perfect rises the perfect, if the perfect is subtracted from the perfect, the perfect is the remainder.¹¹

In the light of this integral experience, the other culminating experience or realisations are seen as penultimate realisations and that even if these penultimate realisations sublate the other lower experiences belonging to their own lines of development as also of those belonging to others, even then differences among them continue, and differences are reconciled only in an integral experience in which all the penultimate realisations are integrated in a vast integrating experience.

But even then, the question is as to why the indivisible integral reality is not experienced integrally at the level of the penultimate realisation.

The answer lies in the psychology of yogic experience where the mind as a principle plays an important role. It is admitted that since the object of yogic quest is in its reality indivisible, the experience of that object should be experienced as indivisible and integral reality. However, the object of yogic quest is not only indivisible but also infinite. And the infinite cannot be experienced as a finite form or fixed form uniform for all approaches. Moreover, the experiencing substance in the human psychology is the mind, the nature of which is to reflect, not the indivisibility and infinity but some reflection of the same, which takes the form of an aspect of the infinite and indivisible reality. Which aspect of Infinite will be reflected in the mind will depend upon the line of training that the mind receives during the course of pursuit of yogic endeavour. Hence, at the level of mind, at the level of the pure rational mind some pure concept of an aspect of reality is reflected. But if the mind is quieted by a yogic process, then what is reflected is not a concept of an aspect, but some concrete experience of an aspect. If, therefore, the indivisible infinite reality is to be reflected indivisibly and infinitely, the reflecting medium has to rise to levels higher than that of mind, such as the levels of higher mind, illumined mind, intuitive mind, overmind and supermind. It is only at the level of the supermind that the integral experience of the infinite and the indivisible is obtained in its full infinity and indivisibility. It is claimed that the Rishis of the Veda, Upanishads and of some other records of yoga, which describe the integral reality in which different aspects of the reality are experienced in an integral cognition, had attained to the level of the supermind. Sri Aurobindo has described this entire process of the experience of the indivisible and infinite reality at the level of mind, overmind and supermind, and since the subject is extremely important, it is best to present the description of the entire process in Sri Aurobindo's own words. See Appendix XVI (p. 182)

Our account of the varieties of yogic experience can not be complete without referring to the two movements of yoga which have been found in some ancient records of yoga as also in those of Sri Aurobindo. These two movements are, first the movement of the ascent of yoga so as to rise up to the supramental consciousness and secondly, the movement of the descent in yoga by which the supramental consciousness can be brought down so as to transform lower levels of consciousness, including the physical consciousness. In fact, in pursuance of these double processes; Sri Aurobindo has spoken of a new integral yoga of three transformations, psychic transformation, spiritual transformation, and supramental transformation.

In the literature relating to the integral yoga, Sri Aurobindo has presented the yoga of self-perfection and described in detail the psychology of what he calls, the Gnostic Being, a being that is thoroughly supramentalised by the consciousness and force of the supermind.

It is impossible to include in the scope of this book even an indication of this vast literature concerning the yogic experiences concerning the ascent to and the descent of the supramental consciousness into the human instrument that can enable the evolutionary nature in the human instrument so that the supramental being could be created as a first unveiled manifestation of the truth of the Self and Spirit in the material universe.

All this could be a part of another book in the future.

See also a Synoptic Note at the end of the book.

Part Nine

A Synoptic Note: Quest of Yoga

Yoga is the expression of the flame of aspiration that rises upwards in order to bum and bum steadily, constantly and ever-increasingly, to grow in leaps of fire in order to bum away all that tends towards extinction, to build our inner being and all members of the being, — body, life, and mind and all our faculties, actual and latent, — so that all of them make an ascent in all consuming zeal to unite with all that is or felt or conceived to be the highest, the best, the widest and intensest, the infinite, the limitless, all and beyond, — so that they can attain consummation and ever-living sustenance of heat and light. This flame has, in its upward movement, — it is discovered, — an inherent sense of direction and discloses progressively the needed knowledge of the means and methods that are required for its constant movement and consummation; it has the Veda — not the text — but that which is recognised in the Indian tradition as the secret knowledge that is in the heart of every thinking and living being, but uncovered by the seeker through the process of the burning of aspiration itself, — and, therefore, in need of no indispensable external agencies of guidance, — teacher, book, ethics, aesthetics, philosophy, science, occultism or religion, — even though they may be utilised as and when indicated or offered on the way, but in the end transcended by the inward force of the constant need to burn and burn luminously and immortally.

Yoga is the journey of the yogic flame of aspiration, and this journey is, as reported by the seekers, difficult and even perilous, although when carried on by heroic concentration, it becomes more and more felicitous, and victories are won after victories, and even though it rises on peaks after peaks of accomplishment — yoga-siddhi, — there are still farther accomplishments that are made clearer. As an ancient record of Yoga states:

brahmāṇastvā śatakrato

ud vamśam iva yemire.

yat sānoḥ sānum āruhad

bhūri aspaṣṭa kartvam.¹²

The seekers of the journey climb thee like a ladder, O hundred powered. As one ascends from peak to peak, there is made clear the much that has still to be done..

And yet in the ever-progressive movement, the individual seeker, the individual soul, discovers the stable source and foundation, the creative power of the world, and even while seated securely in that foundation, it sees luminously the progressive self-unfolding. Again, as it is stated:

abhyavasthāḥ pra jāyante

pra vavrer vavriś ciketa.

upasthe māturvi caṣṭe.¹³

States upon states are born; covering over covering awakens to knowledge: in the lap of the Creative Power of the Worlds, the Mother of Creation, he wholly sees.

Yoga is a quest, with its own distinctiveness of object and method, even though this distinctiveness has characters that are, in some measure or the other, shared by all the great quests of science, philosophy, ethics, aesthetics and religion. The yogic quest transcends all other quests by its insistence on attaining answers to the deepest questions that all other quests raise in some way or in some degree, and attempt to answer but remain unanswered but which at the same time must be answered. The central questions that impel yogic quest are: (i) if human life has any meaning, and if so, (ii) if that meaning can be consciously seized, (iii) if the relevant knowledge can be possessed with certainty, and (iv) if that knowledge can be applied in regard to the highest possible fulfilment of the individual in the cosmos. In the pursuit of these questions, Yoga aims at cultivating all human faculties, at purifying them and perfecting them so as to utilise them methodically. And taking advantage of the experiments that have been conducted over millennia in developing Yogic methods and Yogic knowledge, Yoga continues to discover and apply more and more refined means and instruments, not only to arrive at the union of the individual consciousness with the universal consciousness and transcendental consciousness, but also to manifest the consequences of this union for arriving at ever increasing perfection of the individual and collective life in the physical world and even to transform earthly life into what can be called divine life.

The distinctive methods of Yoga relate to the meticulous handling of customary psychological workings based upon a knowledge developed and confirmed by regular experiments, practical analysis and constant results so as to develop out of normal functions, powers and results which are always latent but which ordinary movements do not easily or do not often manifest. These methods are based on the perception and experience that our inner elements, combinations, functions, forces can be separated or dissolved, can be newly combined and set to novel and formerly impossible workings or can be transformed and resolved into a new general synthesis by fixed internal processes. They also depend on the perception and experience that the vital forces and functionings to which our life is normally subjected and whose ordinary operations seem to be set and indispensable, can be mastered and the operations changed or suspended with results that would otherwise be impossible and that seem miraculous to those who have not seized the rationale of that process. These methods can some times be arranged in a certain order, in certain fixity of the developing process, and even in some mechanical procedure. But these methods tend to become less and less mechanical, less and less fixed in their order of procedure, and stages are reached where the required methodised effort is indicated by developing consciousness more and more spontaneously, more and more intuitively, more and more by psychic sense and tact and an inner spiritual guidance.

Yoga is, as stated by Sri Aurobindo, "a methodised effort towards self-perfection by the expression of the potentialities latent in the being and a union of the human individual with the universal and transcendent Existence we see partially expressed in man and in the Cosmos."¹⁴

Object and States of Yogic Knowledge

Swami Vivekananda has stated:

"Yoga is really one of the grandest of sciences ... take up the study of this science as you would any other science of a material nature and remember there is no mystery and no danger in it."

Science is a quest of knowledge, but modem science has so far tended to concentrate on the knowledge of Matter or of life and mind as embodied in Matter. It has also tended to develop those methods, which have been successful in studies where empirical observations and measurements are feasible. Yoga goes farther in its scope and investigates also the domains which are supra-physical in character. It has, indeed, been asked as to whether there can be a science of supra-physical data, the scientific character of which can be as great as that of sciences of the physical data. The difficulties lie in the long-established habit of physical sciences to apply their established methods on all processes of scientific investigation, even when the subject matter is not physical in character. A demand is, therefore, made to provide physical proof of supra-physical facts. But it is evident that the demand for physical proof of supra-physical facts is irrational and illogical. For the method of knowledge should be proper to the object of knowledge. And we have to note that yoga has developed various kinds of evidence of supra-physical facts and of the existence of other planes of beings and communication with them. They include objectivisation of the outer sense, subtle contact, mind-contact, life-contact, and contact through the subliminal consciousness exceeding our ordinary range. It is argued that these methods are liable to error. But it can be replied that error is not the prerogative of investigations into the supra-physical. Even when the physical methods are employed, there is room for error. A mere liability to error cannot be a reason for shutting out a large and important domain of experience which is explored in Yoga. As in physical sciences, so in Yoga, it is a reason for scrutinising it and finding out in it true standards and valid means of verification. The Yogic science confirms that the supra-physical consciousness including the subliminal consciousness, psychic consciousness, spiritual consciousness and higher domains of super consciousness, — when rightly investigated, is confirmed again and again in the physical and objective field.

Knowledge that is sought to be attained through Yoga has certain special characteristics; it is the light by which one grows into one's true being, not the knowledge by which one increases information and intellectual riches. It is true that scientific or psychological or philosophical or ethical or aesthetic or practical knowledge help us to grow, but only in the becoming, not in the being, — even though they can enter into the definition of Yogic knowledge when they are used as aids to know the highest Being. Thus scientific knowledge can get us through the veil of processes and phenomena and enable us to see one reality behind which explains them all. Psychological knowledge can be used to know ourselves and to distinguish the lower self from the higher self in order that we may renounce the lower and grow into the higher. Philosophical knowledge can be termed as a light upon the essential principles of existence so as to enable ourselves to discover and live in that which is eternal. Ethical knowledge can aid us when having distinguished the wrong from the right, we put away the one and rise above the other into the pure innocence of the divine Nature, — parā prakriti. Aesthetic knowledge, too, can be a part of Yogic knowledge when we discover by it the beauty of the Divine. Even knowledge of the world can be a part of Yogic knowledge when we see through it the way of the transcendent with his creatures and use it for the service of the Divine. Even then they are only aids; the real knowledge, —jñāna is that which is a secret to the mind, of which the mind only gets by reflection, but which lives in the spirit. The object distinctive of the Yogic knowledge is the union with what can be perceived, felt or conceived to be the highest truth of the being, and as the Upanishad states, when that object is attained, all becomes known, even what science as we practise it aims to know:

yasmin vijñāte sarvam

vijñātam bhavati

Records of Yoga have described three movements leading up to the yogic states of knowledge or realisation. These are three successive movements, — internal vision, complete internal experience and identity.

• Internal vision or drishti is the direct perception of psychical things and of the Self. To begin with, we may hold firmly the conception of the Self derived from our inmost aspirations or from teachers or from luminous teachings. We may fix it by an entire and exclusive concentration; we may thus use the triple operation of Jnana yoga, shravana, manana, nidhidhyāsana. It is only when after long and persistent concentration that the veil of the mind is rent or swept aside, and a flood of light breaks over the awakened mentality, and conception gives place to a knowledge — vision in which the Self is as present, real, concrete, as physical object to physical eye that we possess in knowledge.

This experience must become more frequent till it is constant.

• In due course, there are other internal experiences so that the vision of the Self is completed by experiences of it in all our members. All this knowledge and experience are primary means of arriving at and of possessing identity.

• One not only sees the Self or God, one even embraces Him and become that Reality. The Ishopanishad describes the great experience culminating in identity in the following terms:

yas tu sarvāṇi bhūtāni ātmanievānupaśyati

sarvabhūteṣu cātmānaṁ tato na vijiugupsate.

yasmin sarvāṇi bhūtaniātmaivābhūd vijānataḥ

tatra ko mohaḥ kaḥ śoka ekatvam anupaśyataḥ¹⁵

But he who sees everywhere the Self in all existences and all existences in the Self, shrinks not thereafter from anything. He in whom it is the Self-being that has become all existences that are Becomings, for he has the perfect knowledge, how shall he be deluded, whence shall he have grief who sees everywhere oneness?

Such is the foundational knowledge that Yoga promises, and from this foundational knowledge, several practical capacities of knowledge and will can be developed which should lift us from what Sri Aurobindo calls sevenfold ignorance to sevenfold integral knowledge.

Such is the object and status of the knowledge that Yoga promises, and the result for practical life that is promised is elimination of ignorance in our thought, will, sensations, actions, and prevention from returning wrong or imperfect responses to the questionings of the world, liberation from wandering in a maze of errors and desires, strivings and failures, pain and pleasure, sin and stumbling. Our crooked road of blind groping and changing goal is turned into a sunlit path.

Religion and Yoga

In many respects Yoga may appear to be identical with religion, and yet the distinction is very vast. If Yoga is a quest, religion, too, is a quest; if yoga aims at the practice of a discipline which aims at uniting the individual and his faculties with the operation of the universal and transcendental consciousness and being, religion, too, has a similar discipline. Where then is the difference? The answer lies in the fact that although religion at its core and at its highest aspiration aims at spiritual experience and, although great religions have their origin in discipline and experience, they tend to develop systems of dogma and to prescribe belief in the dogma. Whatever spiritual discipline is proposed, it becomes encrusted and overlaid with ceremonies, rituals, and institutional prescriptions regarding conduct, both individual and collective. In this situation, religion may be seen as a first approach to yoga, but even then it may not be an indispensable gate of yoga. Yoga proceeds directly by a change of consciousness, a change from the ordinary consciousness, ignorant of true self, to a greater consciousness in which one finds one's true being and into a direct and living contact by experience and then a union with the Divine. For the yogic seeker, this change of consciousness is the one thing that matters and nothing else — belief, dogma, rituals, and ceremonies. Yoga not only aims at the total change of consciousness, but even its methods are derived from gradual increasing entry into a domain higher than body, life, and mind. In other words, Yoga is an exploration of consciousness through consciousness.

Religion is seen to be a source of moral values, and the absoluteness of the moral values is sought to be derived from some religious sanction. Thus religions have attempted to erect systems and declared God's commands through Avatar or the Prophet. Such systems have proved more dynamic and more powerful than the dry ethical idea. But quite often these systems conflict with what reason supports or else they are so ingrained in certain religious dogmas that they do not have an appeal to those who do not accept those dogmas. Besides, there is, too, a conflict among the dogmas. These systems are often framed that they prove unworkable and are, therefore, rejected by Nature. Or, sometimes, they are turned into a series of compromises and become obsolete in the march of Time. In the Yogic consciousness and in the knowledge and the effectivity that it produces the highest elements that morality in the deepest core seeks are fulfilled. But Yoga replaces the moral law by a progressive law of self-perfection, spontaneously expressing itself through individual nature. The spiritual law that yoga presents respects the individual nature, modifies and perfects it. And in this sense, it is flexible for each individual and can be known and made operative only by a gradual progression of consciousness and, more and more, by an entry into the real self. In its progressive movement, it may, if necessary, permit a short or a long period of governance by a moral law but always as a provisional device. It always looks forward to a time when one can arrive at a higher plane of consciousness in which the Right and the Good can find spontaneous expression. To the yogic consciousness, moral virtue is valuable as an expression of certain qualities which are for the time being necessary and useful for a given individual in an upward journey. Again, these qualities become modified and enriched as the higher consciousness develops higher levels of attitudes and stabilises higher states of consciousness in which the divine qualities manifest more and more spontaneously.

Yoga is not confined merely to the aspect of conduct; the conduct dealt with by ethics is only a minor aspect of the totality of works, inner no less than the external. Yogic consciousness includes all these works and strives by the method of a progressive change in consciousness in the perfect expression of all aspects of works, and in these strivings it realises also the unity of works with the highest knowledge and profoundest love.

It is true that religion too is an attempt to include all aspects of works and to arrive at some sort of unity of works with knowledge and love; but once again, its methods are largely mechanical and dogmatic, and it is only at the highest level of religion that the methods of spiritual disciplines that are prescribed are found suitable to some of the adherents, while to most adherents they remain more less mechanical. The progressive law of yogic development may approve, if necessary, a short or a long period of governance of the individual or of the race by a religion, but only as a provisional device; it always makes room for a passage beyond into the plane of a larger consciousness where distinctive religious methods melt into higher and spontaneous methods appropriate to larger consciousness. To the yogic consciousness religion is not valuable as a form, but only in so far as it may aid the ordinary consciousness of man to turn towards something that is deeper and higher and, even there, it stresses the necessity for every man to have his own distinctive spiritual discipline.

It may also be mentioned that yogic consciousness welcomes agnosticism, scepticism, atheism, positivism or free thinking and sees behind them a concern and a demand for authentic knowledge. It recognises that if these are rightly understood, respected and fulfilled, they would become a powerful complement to what lies in consciousness behind the commonly accepted religious qualities of faith and unquestioning acceptance of dogmatic teachings and injunctions.

Yoga always looks behind the form to the essence and to the living consciousness; and in doing so, it brings to the surface that which lies behind in its ultimate truth. Yoga transcends the forms and the methods of morality and religion and creates and recreates its own living and progressive forms.

Yogic methods are distinctive and must not be confused with either morality or religion. A mere learning about Yoga is not Yoga, and even the most catholic book cannot be a substitute for the direct yogic practice of an inner change of consciousness by which one can perceive and realise the inner and higher self and transform the workings of the outer instruments of Nature. Nor can Yoga be practised in a casual way or only as a part-time preoccupation. Yoga, to be properly practised, must be taken as a sovereign and central occupation and must govern and permeate every aspect of life and every pursuit.

Varieties of Yogic Experience

If experience is a means of knowledge, of growth, of ennoblement of character and personality, of expansion, deepening and heightening of consciousness and will-force, then yoga stands out, — considering the methods that it has developed for attaining objectivity and certainty, — as a human endeavour of the highest value. For, yoga is at all levels of its stages, based on experience and it develops by accumulation of experience, and its highest peaks consist of experience. To understand yoga, therefore, we need to enter into the realm of yogic experiences.

In the literature relating to this realm, two works stand out, and we may turn to them to derive from them some insights relevant to our purpose here. The first book that was published in 1902 is William James' The Varieties of Religious Experience, and the second book, that was written during 1914-21, is Sri Aurobindo's The Synthesis of Yoga. William James uses the phrase Religious Experience, but it is clear that most of the accounts of the experiences given in the book such as those of conversion, Presence of the Unseen, saintliness and mysticism, can be regarded as yogic, considering that (i) they are not related to institutional aspects of religion, (ii) they are related to individual's inner lives, and (iii) they mark important stages of the discipline of spiritual ¹⁶ practice, even though most of them are tied to Christianity, a few to other religions, and others that are independent of any religion. If we maintain that every religion has a spiritual core which is its most important component, and if yoga is primarily concerned with spirituality and with methodical and conscious effort directed towards spiritual development and realisation, then, a large number of experiences described in the book can be legitimately called yogic.

(a) awakening to the inner reality of our being, to a spirit, Self, Soul, which is other than our mind, life and body; (b) an inner aspiration to know, to feel, to be that, (c) a quest for entering into the greater Reality beyond and pervading the universe which inhabits also our being, to be in communion with It and union with It, (d) a turning, a conversion, a transformation of our whole being into a new becoming, or being, a new Self, a new nature.

One of the major experiences that is common at a certain stage of yogic development is that of Ineffable Presence, whether we may call it God's Presence or the Presence that seems vibrating in Nature. If we read the poems in which Wordsworth expressed his realisation of Nature, you may acquire some distant idea of what yogic realisation is. First of all, we see that Wordsworth had the vision of something in the world which is the very Self of all things that it contains, a conscious force and presence other than its forms, yet cause of its forms and manifested in them. We perceive that he had not only the vision of this and the joy and peace and universality which its Presence brings but the very sense of it, mental, aesthetic, vital, physical; not only this sense and vision of it in its own being but in the nearest flower and simplest man and the immobile rock; and, finally, that he even occasionally attained to that unity, that becoming the object of his dedication, one phase of which is powerfully and profoundly expressed in the poem, "A slumber did my spirit seal" where he described himself as become one in his being with earth,"rolled round in its diurnal course with rocks and stones and trees." If we exalt this realisation to a profounder Self than physical Nature, we shall have the elements of the yogic knowledge. It is true that a mere sense of the Presence can only be a beginning, but by entering into the superconscious and by merging all other experience into a supernal unity with the Ineffable Yoga promises that suprasensuous, supramental realisation of the Transcendent who is beyond all its aspects and the final summit of yogic knowledge which is also the source of all Divine delight and Divine living.

William James, in the experiences that he has presented in his book, bring us certain vivid descriptions of certain stages and aspects of the inner yogic life and yogic state and succeeds in inviting us to some kind of proof of the spiritual reality, its mystery, its wonder, and its vividity of the reality of the Unseen. One experience, which is very vivid, and describes the Presence of the Unseen, is from a Swiss writer and it is being appended at Appendix I (p. III)

It is very well known that in every yogic practice that is to be found in religions and in that which is independent of any religion, the experience of conversion marks a radical point of departure from ordinary life to a truly spiritual life. An important example of this experience of conversion, which William James has given, is that of Saint David Brainerd. The description of this experience is appended at Appendix II (p.113)

Conversion may very often be a movement as a result of which spiritual life becomes central to the seeker. But this centrality may be only ideative in character, in the sense that what becomes central is a cluster of ideas relating to spiritual life rather than the possession of the substance of the Spirit that makes spiritual life so very distinctive and beatific. Often conversions are temporary. At higher stages, not only the mind but also the very heart of the seeker is touched by the experience that leads to conversion, and it is then that the conversion tends to become permanent and to ripen itself into mature fruits of the spirituality of religious life or of yogic life. One of these fruits is that of saintliness. William James has analysed the state of saintliness and pointed out that there are four main features:

I) A feeling of being in a wider life of the existence of an ideal power;

II) A sense of the friendly continuity of the ideal power with our own life, and a willing self-surrender to its control;

III) An immense elation and freedom, as the outlines of the confining selfhood melt down; and

IV) A shifting of the emotional centre towards loving and harmonious affections.

William James has also described the following practical consequences of the development of saintliness:

(a) Asceticism

(b) Strength of Soul

(c) Purity

(d) Charity See Appendix III (p. 116)

He has also given some concrete illustrations of saintliness. One of them is that of Saint John of the Cross. Another is that of Suso, a German mystic.

Another still is that of George Fox. See Appendix IV (p.120)

William James arrives at the summit of religious experiences in his chapter on Mysticism. He points out (See Appendix V. p. 128) that there are basically two characteristics of Mysticism, — (i) mystic experience is marked by ineffability, and (ii) it has noetic quality and the mystic states are also states of knowledge. He also points out that there are two other qualities, which are less sharply marked but are usually found. The first quality is that of transiency, since mystical states cannot be sustained for long. The second quality is that of passivity, since the mystic feels in his experience as if he were grasped and held by a superior power. He points out that this latter peculiarity connects mystical states with certain phenomena such as prophetic speech, automatic writing, or the mediumistic trance.¹⁷

William James has provided in his book extremely illuminating examples of mysticism. These include those of Malwida von Meysenbug, Walt Whitman, Dr. J. Trevor Dr. R.M. Bucke, of Raja Yoga as expounded by Swami Vivekananda, Al-Ghazzali, Saint John of the Cross, Saint Teresa, Saint Ignatius, and some others such as Sufi Gulshan-Raz and Plotinus. See Appendix VI (p. 131)

But Yoga, as distinguished from religion, is primarily a śāstra and not a system of beliefs, ceremonies, rituals and a moral and spiritual discipline related to the system of beliefs and prescriptions. As a shastra, it is a growing body of knowledge of truths, principles, powers and processes that govern the discipline of the body, life and mind and other higher faculties in search and realisation of psychic, spiritual and supramental reality or realities that lie beyond the body, life and mind, and the consequences of that search and realisation for the individual and collective existence in the cosmos. Sri Aurobindo's book The Synthesis of Yoga is related to yogic experiences that can be attained by the application of yogic shastra, independent of any religion or any spiritual practice that is tied to any religion, even though spiritual disciplines of religions may coincide with or may adopt or recognise for their own aims some or other aspects of this shastra. It is these yogic experiences which are central to our purpose here.

Yoga has often come to be exclusively identified with physical exercises of Hatha Yoga. Actually, the entire system of Hatha Yoga, which is only one of the systems of yoga, aims at a complete mastery of the body and the life and a free and effective use of them established upon purification of their workings. The methods of this yoga are those of āsana (more than eighty in number) and prānāyāma, — the methods of stabilising the bodily condition by stabilisation of various postures of the body and those of breathing and breath-control by which the movements pervading all the nervous system are controlled. The gross body begins to acquire something of the nature of the subtle body and possess something of its relations with the life-energy. Life ceases to be entirely dependent on the action of the physical organs and functionings, such as the heart-beats and breathing. Hatha Yoga is an attempt by fixed scientific processes to give to the soul in the physical body the power, the light, the purity, the freedom, the ascending scales of spiritual experience which would naturally be open to it, if it dwelt in the subtle and the developed causal vehicle.

Yoga is often identified exclusively with Raja Yoga, or the Yoga, the aphoristic formulation of which has been attributed to Patanjali, although it is only one of the specialised methods of Yoga. Raja Yoga is independent of Hatha Yoga except that it admits in its method the Hatha Yogic āsana and prānāyāma in their bare minimum and simple forms. On the other hand, Hatha Yoga joins up with the psychological methods of Raja Yoga, where it begins to ascend the scales of spiritual experience.

Raja Yoga insists on moral purification of the mentality, and five yamās and five niyamās are prescribed. Yamas are rules of moral control in conduct such as truth-speaking, abstinence from injury or killing, from theft, chastity, and cultivation of minimum wants leading to renunciation of all that is not needed. Niyamas constitute self-discipline by which the rajasic egoism and its passions and desires are conquered. The object is to create a sattwic calm, purity and preparation for meditative or contemplative concentration.

Raja Yogic concentration is divided into four stages:

(i) Pratyāhāra — drawing both the mind and the senses from outward things;

(ii) Dhāranā — Holding of the one object of concentration to the exclusion of other ideas and mental activities.

(iii) Dhyāna — Prolonged absorption of the mind in the object of concentration.

(iv) Loss of all outward mentality, cessation of all mental modifications, in the oneness of Samādhi.

Samadhi or Yogic trance retires to increasing depths as it draws farther and farther away from the normal or waking state and enters into degrees of consciousness less and less communicable to waking mind, less and less ready to receive the summons from the waking world. Beyond a certain point, the trance becomes complete, and it is then almost quite impossible to awaken or call back the soul that has receded into those profounder depths of consciousness. It has been said that if one remains too long a time in those supreme states of trance, one cannot return. As a matter of fact, the yogin acquires at a certain stage of development the power of abandoning his body definitively without the ordinary phenomena of death, by an act of will icchā mṛtyū or by a process of withdrawing the prānic life-force through the gate of the upward life current — udāna, opening for it a way through the mystic centre in the head, brahmarandhra. By departing from life in the state of Samadhi, one attains directly to that higher status of being to which one aspires.

But even before one attains to the state of Samadhi, one is able to enter repeatedly into that state, and the Raja Yogic methods, during the processes of their repeated applications, lead to the attainment of all those higher states of consciousness and the powers by which the mental being rises towards superconscient as well as its ultimate and supreme possibility of union with the highest. Raja Yoga is psychic science, and it gives an account of the powers and states which are possible on the higher planes of the being. They can be acquired and fixed by certain processes and their use then becomes subject to the will; or they can be allowed to be developed of themselves and use only when they come or when the divine within moves one to use them.

These powers are not peculiar to Raja Yoga alone; they are attained even by other methods, methods of Hatha Yoga, methods of Tantra, and even the methods of Karma Yoga, Jnana Yoga, Bhakti Yoga and others. In the Indian yogic language, these powers or accomplishments are famous eight accomplishments, aṣṭa siddhi. These siddhis are, first of all, those of mahimā (including garimā), laghimā and animā. These three siddhis of being are distinguished from siddhis of knowledge and siddhis of power. Mahimā is an unhampered force in the mental being or in the physical power. In the physical, it shows itself by an abnormal strength which is not muscular and may even develop into the power of increasing the size and the weight of the body, etc. Laghimā is a similar power of lightness, that is to say, of freedom from all pressure or weighing down in the mental, body, or physical being. Laghimā is the basis of the power to overcome gravitation and thus it is the basis of utthāpana. Animā is the power of freeing the atoms of subtle or gross matter from their ordinary limitations. It is by this power that yogins are supposed to make themselves invisible and invulnerable or to free the body from decay and death.

Apart from these three powers of being, there are three siddhis of power. These three are: aishwarya, ishita and vashista. Aishwarya is a power by which one is able by the use of the will to make people act or to make things happen according to what is willed. Ishita is an accomplishment where one does not even need to have a will but when one has a want or a need or a sense that something ought to be and that thing comes about or happens. Vashita is a power to concentrate one's will on a person or an object so as to control him or it.

There are two other siddhis, namely, vyāpti and prākāmya. These are siddhis of knowledge. Vyāpti is obtained when the thoughts, feeling, etc., of others or another kind of knowledge of things etc., are felt rising from those things or persons. Vyāpti can also be communicative when one can send or put one's own thought, feelings, etc. into someone else's. Prākāmya is an accomplishment to look at somebody mentally or physically and perceive what is in that person. Prākāmya also relates to senses, where it is the power of perceiving smells, tastes, lights, colours and other objects of senses which are neither at all available to ordinary persons or beyond the range from one's own ordinary senses.

It is important to note that yogic science gives warning that these powers can only be entirely acquired or safely used when one has got rid of egoism and identified oneself with infinite will and infinite consciousness. It may also be mentioned that Yoga in its higher movement attains to levels of consciousness where these powers as also many others manifest spontaneously and work themselves out without the need of maintaining by methodical processes of these siddhis.

There is a system of Yoga which is known as Tantra, which contains many elements which are founded on the knowledge relating to Kundalini. It takes into account the psychical or mental body of which the physical is a sort of reproduction in gross form and is able to discover thereby secrets of the physical body which do not appear to a purely physical inquiry. This mental or psychical body has also a subtle prānic force in it corresponding to its own subtle nature and substance, and this force is directed through a system of numerous channels, called nadi, — the subtle nervous organisation of the psychic body, — which are gathered up into six or seven centers which are technically called lotuses or circles, chakras, and which rise in an ascending scale to the summit where there is thousand-petalled lotus from which all the mental and vital energy flows. Each of these lotuses is the centre and the storing house of its own particular system of psychological powers, energies and operations, — each system corresponding to a plane of our existence, — these flow out and return in the stream of the pranic energies as they cross through the nadis.

This arrangement of psychic body is reproduced in the physical body with the spinal column as a rod and the ganglionic centers as the chakras which rise up from the bottom of the column where the lowest is attached, to the brain and find their summit in the brahmarandhra at the top of the skull. These chakras or lotuses are in the physical man closed or only partly open, with the consequence that only such powers and only so much of them are active in him as is sufficient for his ordinary physical life, and so much mind and soul only is at play as will accord with its needs. This is the reason why the whole energy of the soul does not seem to be at play in the physical body and life, and the secret powers of the mind are not awake in it. But it is recognised that all the while supreme energy is there, but asleep; it is said to be coiled up like a snake, — therefore, it is called Kundalini-shakti, — in the lowest of the chakras, in the mūlādhāra. By various processes, including those of prānāyāma, this Kundalini can be awakened. It then uncoils itself and begins to rise upwards like a fiery serpent breaking up each lotus as it ascends until the shakti meets the Conscious Being (Purusha) in the brahmarandhra in a deep trance or Samadhi of union. Tantra also has discovered the power of the mantra, sacred syllable, name or mystic-formula, and with the aid of mantra, Kundalini-shakti can be awakened and new states of consciousness which rise can be stabilised and strengthened so that they can effectuate important results which are considered to be miraculous.

Tantra is, in fact, a synthesis of yoga, which has discovered the truth and power of the highest creative energy of which the physical world and other worlds which are behind it are expressions. Tantra aims. at enabling the individual soul to unite with the supreme creative energy, the Supreme Mother, who is also in her depth one with the supreme Lord, Shiva or the highest Purusha.

The Tantric Yoga, as it rises from state to state, manifests not only aṣṭa siddhis but increases and manifests higher states of cosmic and transcendental consciousness. It manifests and stabilises states and powers which are obtained through the processes and methods of Karma yoga, Jnana yoga and Bhakti yoga. Various cosmic forces working in different levels of manifested world come to be contacted and known; multiplicities of gods and goddesses, — cosmic in character and fixed in various layers of cosmic manifestations, become active and their powers are utilised for the increase, stabilisation and transformation of human life, and life of the world. The entire human body and the powers which are latent in the body, life and mind and even the superconscient are realised, and as one ascends the steps of Tantra, as the knowledge of them increases, as the effective works begins to become more and more fruitful, the seeker learns more and more the secret of offering and sacrificing oneself and effecting progressively more and more total surrender to the Supreme Mother, who is experienced as power of Grace that uplifts the seeker into the realms of ananda, of knowledge, of the Supreme Being.

As we turn to three major systems of yoga and yogic experiences that attend upon these systems of yoga, namely, Karma yoga, Jnana yoga and Bhakti yoga we need to underline a very important experience that normally precedes one's entry into the practice of the disciplines of these systems of yoga. This kind of precedent experience may also be precedent to the entry of other systems of yoga. There occurs major upheaval in the life of the seeker, which is often decisive and which brings forth a call for the pursuit of yoga with such an overwhelming force that the seeker becomes a new person, and thereafter is called twice-born (dwija). We notice this kind of upheaval in the life of Prince Siddhartha when he saw the four great scenes of the sick, dead, the old man and the hermit, and this sight caused what is called mahābhiniśkramana. We see a similar upheaval in the life of Arjuna when he underwent a sudden crisis where in search of the right at the commencement of the great war of the Mahabharata, he found all standards of conduct which were so far his staff of the journey crashing down so as to cast him into a deep depression (vishāda) from which he felt he could come out only by escaping from the very root of responsible action. The decisiveness by which he entered into his quest through his dialogue with Sri Krishna, and his pursuit of Karma yoga is another illumination in the same category. There are many other illustrations such as those of Tulasidasa and Surdasa and many others. A remarkable illustration is provided by William James where Tolstoy, at the height of the glory of his literary career, began to feel that something had broken within him and that he had nothing left to hold on to, and that morally his life had stopped. The questions, Why? Wherefore? What for? could not be answered. See Appendix VII (p. 152)

In many cases, this upheaval is resolved by what is called conversion in books on psychology of religion. But often this conversion is psychologically a shift of religious ideas and beliefs from the periphery of consciousness to the centre of consciousness, and although this shift brings about a remarkable departure of the seeker from his past mode of life to a new mode of life, still the new mode of life is governed by ideas and beliefs. In the conversion that is a prelude to the life of yoga, the centre of being is moved, not merely by ideas and beliefs, but by a thirst which can be quenched only by a process that leads to the transcendence of ideas and beliefs and by knowing, and possessing in concrete experience of the delivering light.

In the following passage, Sri Aurobindo describes a number of circumstances under which the call to Yoga comes to the seeker:

All Yoga is in its nature a new birth; it is a birth out of the ordinary, the mentalised material life of man into a higher spiritual consciousness and a greater and diviner being. No yoga can be successfully undertaken and followed unless there is a strong awakening to the necessity of that larger spiritual existence. The soul that is called to this deep and vast change, may arrive in different ways to the initial departure. It may come to it by its own natural development which has been leading it unconsciously towards the awakening; it may reach it through the influence of a religion or the attraction of a philosophy; it may approach it by a slow illumination or leap to it by a sudden touch or shock; it may be pushed or led to it by the pressure of outward circumstances or by an inward necessity, by a single word that breaks the seals of the mind or by long reflection, by the distant example of one who has trod the path or by contact and daily influence. According to the nature and the circumstances the call will come.

"But in whatever way it comes, there must be a decision of the mind and the will and, as its result, a complete and effective self-consecration."¹⁸

The central question of Yoga is by what means can the seeker be enabled to know that which as yet the seeker does not know. Indeed, the means must have their root in our own instruments and their present functionings, and there are three instruments in our consciousness with which the yogic processes are connected. These three instruments are our cognitive faculties, affective faculties, and conative faculties. The processes of Jnana yoga are more easily woven into cognitive faculties, those of the yoga of Bhakti or divine love are more easily woven into our affective faculties, and those of Karma yoga or yoga of divine works are woven more easily into our conative faculties. This weaving is done, first, by some kind of strengthening of the concerned faculties, and secondly, by methodical efforts by which these faculties are turned with steady concentration on the highest that can be conceived by cognitive faculties, the highest that can be loved and admired and worshiped by our affective faculties and the highest from which all source of action can be seen to be proceeding. Every yoga, therefore, consists of the various processes of concentration. It may be said that in a certain sense, the entire process of yoga is fundamentally a process of concentration, the courses of which have been explored and affirmed in the yogic sciences.

The process of concentration is aided by the process of purification of all that is operating in the normal modes of the concerned faculty. This is, indeed, a long process, and a number of yogic experiences have been related to the processes of the purification. Again, purification is greatly aided by a process of renunciation of all that tends to obstruct purification, tends to disturb or pollute or curb or refuse the process of purification.

These processes, — concentration, purification and renunciation, — and their corresponding experiences constitute a larger part of perfection in any system or path of yoga.

At a deeper level, the secret of yoga lies in fact that the limitations of our ordinary functioning of faculties and of our life are due to exclusive dwelling of our mind and heart, of our faculties of cognition, affectation, and conation on the superficial layer or layers of our being of which alone we normally are aware. We are as it were caged into the prison of our outer being which constantly acts and reacts and which with difficulty happens to be pushed to be turned more and more inward. The more one turns inwards, the more one discovers potentialities and secrets of development. Yoga is nothing but a more radical shift from the outer to the inner, and the methods of yoga are primarily the methods by which our consciousness can be turned more and more inward. It is a reversal of our present exclusive concentration of consciousness which is normally centered on the outward; in yoga, the process is reversed, and we employ exclusive concentration of consciousness on the inward. A passage is then made in the inner realm of consciousness, and light that is inherent in consciousness discloses realities which lie hidden in our inner being. Inner realities are to be discovered, they are visited repeatedly, and thus they become permanently disclosed; they are then said to be realised. The simple miracle of this discovery and realisation is that these inner realities are found to be luminous and vibrating energetically and they are capable of pouring into our layers of being their own light and powers and thus transforming them.

In a more philosophical language, yoga is, first, the process to become conscious of the fact that there is in us a veil of ignorance; secondly, it is a process of the employment of methods by which this veil of ignorance can be torn and destroyed. And thirdly, yoga is a process by which one can be stabilised in the states of consciousness which have been unveiled, so that they radiate unobstructed permanently.

The important event in the Yoga is the awakening that comes by the removal of the veil of ignorance. A consequence of this major event is the dissolution of the consciousness which kept one within the boundaries of a small unifying centre that we call the ego. And with the removal of the ego comes about the liberation from dualities of pain and pleasure, honour and dishonour, success and failure and host of other dualities.

We can see this secret truth in all the yogic processes Yoga of divine works or Karma yoga to which we can now turn our attention, is focused on conative faculties. We notice first that all principal conative activities are principally centered on a motive that is ruled by desire. Karma yoga is a process by which this motive force is eliminated from the threads of our action. Karma yoga is based on the perception that desire is not necessary element in action, that ego is not a necessary element in action, and that dualities need not encourage or disappoint us in the performance of action. It is further perceived that there is a difference between desire and will and that there can be desireless will, a will that does not seek what is already not possessed but that manifests effortlessly what is already possessed within itself. Karma yoga is, therefore, not a process of cessation of works, but utilisation of works themselves as a method, so that even while the works continue, in the very threads of works, desire is eliminated. Not renunciation of works but renunciation of desire, — this is the central principle of the method of Karma yoga.

The first stage of the method of Karma yoga consists of making a distinction between action, results of action, and enjoyment of the results of action or fruits of action, karmaphala. The strongest element of desire is normally centered on the enjoyment of the fruits of action. Hence, the first stage of the method of Karma yoga proposes the renunciation of the enjoyment of fruits of action. At this stage, guiding wisdom lies in perceiving that one has no right to the fruits of action.

In the second stage of Karma yoga, a further discipline is added. This discipline consists of perceiving the entire mechanism of the action and of discovering that the entire world is a network of interconnected movements of energy, and no action is independent of any other action, and that the egoistic belief which is normally dominant in the psychology of the agent of action that he is the doer of action does not correspond to the truth of the world of action. The practice of this truth, according to the Karma yoga leads to the practice of repeated perception and experience that one is not the doer of action but that one's action is a part of the totality of world action. At this stage, therefore, the method consists in the withdrawal or renunciation of the sense of egoistic doership of action.

The practice of the method of Karma yoga at this stage can be greatly strengthened if the knowledge of the world movement, of the place of ego in the world and of the real originator of action is sought to be attained. This is the point at which two important yogic experiences can be glimpsed and developed. The first is the experience, which can be summarised in the words of the famous Indian saint, Narsi Mehta:

It is ignorance to think or to feel that I am doer of action, similar to the ignorance that a dog has when it moves under a moving cart, that cart is moving because of its own movement (dog's movement).

The yogic experience one can attain is that of the vision of the vast universe and principles which are involved in the vast world movement. In Indian philosophy, this experience is that of the vast and universal movement of Prakriti, a force can be propelled into action. In this vision, one notices a not only the senses, sense-mind, intellectual operations of analysis, synthesis and discrimination, but even the ego-sense are all products of the engine of Prakriti.

The second experience is that of the presence of a conscious being, which is in Indian philosophy called Purusha, is at the root of the propulsion of Prakriti. Even this yogic experience has several stages of development. In the first place, Purusha is seer as a mere presence or as a mere witness — sākṣin; at a more developed stage, Purusha is experienced as the giver of sanction, such that Prakriti can function only if Purusha provides a sanction for its movement and that the movement of Prakriti can cease to function, if the Purusha withdraws its sanction. It is the experience of Purusha as a giver of sanction, anumantah, that provides the first authentic experience of the freedom of Purusha, as distinguished form the erroneous sense of freedom that the ego feels in regard to the energies that impel it to determine its activities. At a still mature development of experience of the Purusha, a new yogic experience can be attained. This is the perception of Purusha as a poise of the individual, where the individual itself can be experienced as a portion - anśa and a formation derived from a higher engine of action and of a transcendental source of that higher knowledge of action. In the philosophical language of India, this experience of the individual is that of a jiva, which has been described as a formation of Para Prakriti and a portion of Purushottama. Again, the experience of Jiva is preceded by the experience of its delegate, which is directly related to the formations of the body, life and mind, which are all products of Prakriti, and which the dynamic evolving consciousness that is self-aware and that is the real controller of the development of the body, life and mind. It is chaitya purusha, as distinguished from manomaya purusha, prānamaya purusha, and annamaya purusha. The experience of the chaitya purusha or what has been called the psychic being is a major experience of Karma yoga, since through that experience the entire process of Karma yoga begins to be guided by direct intuition that distinguishes not only between Purusha and Prakriti but also distinguishes between the good and the evil in the sense that it distinguishes between that which is determined by the engine of lower Prakriti and that which is demanded by the higher Prakriti or Para Prakriti. With this guidance, the process of Karma yoga enters into a major line of yogic experience which illumines the consciousness and enables it to discover that there is in this world a law of interchange, a law of the action of cosmic forces, which are interrelated through their mutual interchange and the law of interchange between those cosmic forces and the individuals which are all involved in the cosmic network of energies, which has itself two levels of operations, the level of Apara Prakriti, where actions are ruled by ignorance and the level of Para Prakriti where actions are ruled by universal transcendental knowledge. It is this knowledge that provides to the method of Karma yoga that subtle process which is the heart of that sacred movement, which is called sacrifice or yajña. At this stage, the entire process of karma yoga is elevated to a process of offering and sacrifice and surrender. All actions thenceforth is purified by the individual, by the psychic being, as an offering, as an offering to Para Prakriti and as an offering to the Purushottama. The more this process of sacrifice ripens, the more one feels that element of division, which can be strengthened by the practice of Bhakti yoga, and it is here that Karma yoga and Bhakti yoga converge upon each other.

At this level, the third stage of Karma yoga begins to develop, and that psychology of the individual, continues to offer all actions as sacrifice, begins to experience himself the secrets of a worker who is a servant, of a worker who is divine soldier, and of a worker who is a mere instrument in the hands of the divine. Even the instrumentality begins to vanish until the individual attains such a intimate union with Para Prakriti and Purushottama that a divine worker is a mere enjoyer of the play of Para Prakriti and Purushottama in its entire passivity, and that passes through him is the action of Para Prakriti and Purushottama. Consequent upon this experience, the seeker thenceforward is moved to higher realms of what can be called supramental experiences of supramental action. That is the stage where the entire process of Karma yoga is fulfilled.

During the entire process of Karma yoga, there are two major developments that take place in the yogic development of the seeker. The first is the development of the state of equality or samattvam. The second is the knowledge and growth of universal and transcendental consciousness in heart of which the will of the Supreme is disclosed and adherence to that will is effected by' progressive self-surrendering in works, in which the culminating message of Karma yoga is realised, namely, "abandon all rules of conduct and take total refuge in the supreme" — sarva dharmān parityajya mām ekaṁ śarṇaṁ vraja.

In the development of attitude and experience of equality, three stages can be discerned, at the end of which the truths of the great dictum of yoga is realised, namely, samattvam yoga ucyate, "it is equality that is yoga".

The three stages of equality can be described in psychological terms, first, as the stage of Stoic equality, philosophic equality, and equality that comes with resignation. It is here that we come to appreciate the rationale and usefulness of the stoics, particularly the Stoics of ancient philosophers of Greece and Rome, such as Zeno, Seneca, Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius. The attitudes and experiences which they have described refer in varying degrees to these three stages. In the first stage, Stoic equality is the equality of that comes by the discipline of endurance. At this stage, what is realised is that emotions manifest judgements and that these judgements are often erroneous and that consequently, they should be subordinated or eliminated by the attitude and practice of endurance. One is the reminded of Epictetus who had been a slave and his leg broken. In a dialogue which he imagines, he states:

"I will fetter you?"

"What did you say man?"

"Fetter me?"

"You fetter my leg, but my will not even Zeus can conquer."¹⁹

This sense of endurance is expressed even more explicitly in one writings of the Stoics:

I must die. But must I die groaning? I must be imprisoned. But must I whine as well? I must suffer exile. Can anyone then hinder me, from going with a smile, and good courage, and at peace? 'Tell the secret.' I refuse to tell, for this is in my power. 'But I will chain you.' What say you, fellow? Chain me? My leg you will chain - yes, but my will - no, not even Zeus can conquer that. 'I will behead you.' Why? When did I ever tell you that I was the only man in the world that could not be beheaded?²⁰

A similar philosophical Stoicism is to be found in a passage of Marcus Aurelius, which has been quoted by William James in his Varieties of Religious Experience:

"Everything harmonizes wit me which is harmonious to thee, O Universe. Nothing for me is too early nor too late, which is in due time for thee. Everything is fruit to me which thy seasons bring, O Nature: from thee are all things, in thee are all things, to thee all things return. The poet says, Dear City of Cecrops; and wilt thou not say, Dear City of Zeus?" ²¹

This philosophical Stoicism, in its psychological depth and fervour, stands at a lower level than the state in which equality arises through resignation or surrender of the will to the Supreme. William James quotes a passage from the Imitation of Christ to describe their special fervour and intensity which are inherent in the attitude of surrender:

"Lord, thou knowest what is best; let this or that be according as thou wilt. Give what thou wilt, so much as thou wilt, when thou wilt. Do with me as thou knowest best, and as shall be most to thine honour. Place me where thou wilt, and freely work thy will with me in all things. ...When could it be evil when thou wert near? I had rather be poor for thy sake than rich without thee. I choose rather to be a pilgrim upon the earth with thee, than without thee to possess heaven. Where thou art, there is heaven; and where thou art not, behold there death and hell." ²²

But apart from these states of equality, more and more elevating and more and more luminous experiences of equality is attained by the perception of the interplay of the transcendental consciousness, universal consciousness, individual consciousness and also the interplay of the action of Para Prakriti and Apara Prakriti. With the increasing experience of Karma yoga, there comes about the annihilation of desire and also of ego. Sri Aurobindo in his The Synthesis of Yoga, has presented a brief but illuminating description of these higher levels of experience of equality. Appendix IX (p. 158)

Indeed, as one ascends in the path of sacrifice, and as one needs more and more imperatively the knowledge of the will that issues from the Supreme, the pressure of Karma yoga towards the divine knowledge increases to such a degree that one bursts into a vision, even of time-vision and of the divine action at a given epoch of time. One such vision has been described in the Bhagavad Gita in one of its most powerful poetic passages, in his Essays on the Gita, Sri Aurobindo describes the Supreme form of the world spirit in which Arjuna, the hero of the Mahabharata sees God magnificence and beautiful and terrible, and in that vision the divine will is made manifest. Appendix X (p. 162)

Notes

1. Rig Veda, 1.10.1,2

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2. Rig Veda, V.19.1

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3. The nature of the crisis that Arjuna underwent is described vividly in Chapters I &. II of the Bhagavad Gita, and the relevant portions are appended in Appendix XV (p. 192)

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4. Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis of Yoga - I: Self-Consecration

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5. Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis of Yoga - I: Life and Yoga

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6. Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine - II: The Order of the Worlds

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7. Rig Veda, I.164.46.

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8. Isha Upanishad, 5.

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9. Bhagavad Gita, XV.16.

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10. Ibid., XV.17.

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11. Bṛhadaranyaka Upanishad, V.I

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12. Rig Veda. 1.10.I,2

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13. Rig Veda, V.15

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14. Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis of Yoga - I: Life and Yoga

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15. Isha Upanishad, 6,7

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16. Distinguishing features of spirituality are the following:

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17. In the strict path of yogic experience, a distinction is made between subliminal experience and spiritual experience, — a distinction which William James does not offer in his book. Strictly speaking, experience of automatic writing, or mediumistic trance are experiences related the subliminal consciousness consisting of the inner mind, inner vital force and certain physical consciousness. Spiritual experiences relate to the realm of super-consciousness or of psychic consciousness which is the consciousness of the inmost being which governs body, life and mind and which has the power of integrating body, life and mind under its own integrating power. Superconsciousness refers to the realm of the transcendental Spirits which, in its universal aspects, provides an entry into cosmic consciousness and increasing unity of diversity which culminates in what is called in Yoga, supramental consciousness or consciousness of Vijñānamaya. Again, it is true. as William James points out, mystical states are transient. But in Yoga proper, this transiency can be gradually removed, and higher states of mysticism can be made permanent. In the yogic language, the state of permanency of the higher and higher states of Yoga is called realisation.

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18. Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis of Yoga - I: Self-Consecration

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19. Epictetus 1.1.23

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20. Bertrand Russell, History of Western Philosophy, paperback edition, 1996, p.270

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21. William James: Varieties of Religious Experience, Barnes & Noble Books, New York, paperback edition, 2004, p.49

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22. William James: Varieties of Religious Experience, Barnes & Noble Books, New York, paperback edition, 2004, p. 50

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