All Life Is Yoga: The Four Aids in Integral Yoga
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The Four Aids
in Integral Yoga
Selections from the Works of
Sri Aurobindo and The Mother
All
Life
Is
Yoga
„All life is Yoga.” - Sri Aurobindo
Imprint
Publisher‘s Note
The Four Aids
Śāstra – The Knowledge of the Truths
Utsāha – The Force of Personal Effort
Guru – The Influence of the Teacher
Kāla – The Instrumentality of Time
Sri Aurobindo‘s Teaching and Method of Practice
Inner Self-development
References
Sri Aurobindo Digital Edition
Imprint
ALL LIFE IS YOGA
The Four Aids in Integral Yoga
Selections from the Works of
Sri Aurobindo and The Mother
First edition 2018
ISBN 978-3-937701-97-4
© 2018 AURO MEDIA
Verlag und Fachbuchhandel Wilfried Schuh
Berchtesgaden, Germany
www.auro.media
verlag@auro.media
© Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust, Puducherry, India
***
Flower on the cover:
Acer, Maple
Spiritual significance and explanation given by the Mother:
Flame of aspiration
A flame that illumines but does not burn.
Publisher‘s Note
This is one in a series of some e-books published by Sri Aurobindo Digital Edition under the title ALL LIFE IS YOGA. Our effort is to bring together, from Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, simple passages with a practical orientation on specific subjects, so that everyone may feel free to choose a book according to his inner need. The topics cover the whole field of human activity, because true spirituality is not the rejection of life but the art of perfecting life.
While the passages from Sri Aurobindo are in the original English, most of the passages from the Mother (selections from her talks and writings) are translations from the original French. We must also bear in mind that the excerpts have been taken out of their original context and that a compilation, in its very nature, is likely to have a personal and subjective approach. A sincere attempt, however, has been made to be faithful to the vision of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother.
The excerpts from the writings of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother carry titles and captions chosen by the editor, highlighting the theme of the excerpts and, whenever possible, borrowing a phrase from the text itself. The sources of the excerpts are given at the end of each issue.
We hope these e-books will inspire the readers to go to the complete works and will help them to mould their lives and their environments towards an ever greater perfection.
***
The Yoga-siddhi, the perfection that comes from the practice of Yoga, can be best attained by the combined working of four great instruments. There is, first, the knowledge of the truths, principles, powers and processes that govern the realisation – śāstra. Next comes a patient and persistent action on the lines laid down by this knowledge, the force of our personal effort – utsāha. There intervenes, third, uplifting our knowledge and effort into the domain of spiritual experience, the direct suggestion, example and influence of the Teacher – guru. Last comes the instrumentality of Time – kāla; for in all things there is a cycle of their action and a period of the divine movement. – Sri Aurobindo
The Four Aids
Śāstra – The Knowledge of the Truths
Words of Sri Aurobindo
The supreme Shastra of the integral Yoga is the eternal Veda secret in the heart of every thinking and living being. The lotus of the eternal knowledge and the eternal perfection is a bud closed and folded up within us. It opens swiftly or gradually, petal by petal, through successive realisations, once the mind of man begins to turn towards the Eternal, once his heart, no longer compressed and confined by attachment to finite appearances, becomes enamoured, in whatever degree, of the Infinite. All life, all thought, all energising of the faculties, all experiences passive or active, become thenceforward so many shocks which disintegrate the teguments of the soul and remove the obstacles to the inevitable efflorescence. He who chooses the Infinite has been chosen by the Infinite. He has received the divine touch without which there is no awakening, no opening of the spirit; but once it is received, attainment is sure, whether conquered swiftly in the course of one human life or pursued patiently through many stadia of the cycle of existence in the manifested universe.
Nothing can be taught to the mind which is not already concealed as potential knowledge in the unfolding soul of the creature. So also all perfection of which the outer man is capable, is only a realising of the eternal perfection of the Spirit within him. We know the Divine and become the Divine, because we are That already in our secret nature. All teaching is a revealing, all becoming is an unfolding. Self-attainment is the secret; self-knowledge and an increasing consciousness are the means and the process....
Utsāha – The Force of Personal Effort
The development of the experience in its rapidity, its amplitude, the intensity and power of its results, depends primarily, in the beginning of the path and long after, on the aspiration and personal effort of the sadhaka. The process of Yoga is a turning of the human soul from the egoistic state of consciousness absorbed in the outward appearances and attractions of things to a higher state in which the Transcendent and Universal can pour itself into the individual mould and transform it. The first determining element of the siddhi is, therefore, the intensity of the turning, the force which directs the soul inward. The power of aspiration of the heart, the force of the will, the concentration of the mind, the perseverance and determination of the applied energy are the measure of that intensity. The ideal sadhaka should be able to say in the Biblical phrase, “My zeal for the Lord has eaten me up.” It is this zeal for the Lord, – utsaha, the zeal of the whole nature for its divine results, vyakulata, the heart’s eagerness for the attainment of the Divine, – that devours the ego and breaks up the limitations of its petty and narrow mould for the full and wide reception of that which it seeks, that which, being universal, exceeds and, being transcendent, surpasses even the largest and highest individual self and nature....
Guru – The Influence of the Teacher
As the supreme Shastra of the integral Yoga is the eternal Veda secret in the heart of every man, so its supreme Guide and Teacher is the inner Guide, the World-Teacher, jagad-guru, secret within us. It is he who destroys our darkness by the resplendent light of his knowledge; that light becomes within us the increasing glory of his own self-revelation. He discloses progressively in us his own nature of freedom, bliss, love, power, immortal being. He sets above us his divine example as our ideal and transforms the lower existence into a reflection of that which it contemplates. By the inpouring of his own influence and presence into us he enables the individual being to attain to identity with the universal and transcendent....
Kāla – The Instrumentality of Time
The sadhaka who has all these aids is sure of his goal. Even a fall will be for him only a means of rising and death a passage towards fulfilment. For once on this path, birth and death become only processes in the development of his being and the stages of his journey....
Sri Aurobindo‘s Teaching and Method of Practice
Words of Sri Aurobindo
The teaching of Sri Aurobindo starts from that of the ancient sages of India that behind the appearances of the universe there is the Reality of a Being and Consciousness, a Self of all things one and eternal. All beings are united in that One Self and Spirit but divided by a certain separativity of consciousness, an ignorance of their true Self and Reality in the mind, life and body. It is possible by a certain psychological discipline to remove this veil of separative consciousness and become aware of the true Self, the Divinity within us and all....
Inner Self-development
Words of Sri Aurobindo
There are, we might say, two beings in us, one on the surface, our ordinary exterior mind, life, body consciousness, another behind the veil, an inner mind, an inner life, an inner physical consciousness constituting another or inner self. This inner self once awake opens in its turn to our true real and eternal self. It opens inwardly to the soul, called in the language of this Yoga the psychic being which supports our successive births and at each birth assumes a new mind, life and body. It opens above to the Self or spirit which is unborn and by conscious recovery of it we transcend the changing personality and achieve freedom and full mastery over our nature.
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References
Sri Aurobindo‘s Quote
CWSA Vol 23, p. 53
Śāstra – The Knowledge of the Truths
CWSA Vol 23, pp. 53-58
Utsāha – The Force of Personal Effort
CWSA Vol 23, pp. 58-61
Guru – The Influence of the Teacher
CWSA Vol 23, pp. 61-68
Kāla – The Instrumentality of Time
CWSA Vol 23, pp. 68
Sri Aurobindo‘s Teaching and Method of Practice
CWSA Vol 36, pp. 547-50
Inner Self-development
CWSA Vol 30, p. 257
CWSA Vol 36, p. 548
CWSA Vol 36, pp. 379-81
CWM Vol 16, pp. 221-22
***
CWM: Collected Works of the Mother. 2nd ed., Vols. 1-17
CWSA: Collected Works of Sri Aurobindo Vols. 1-37
Sri Aurobindo Digital Edition
All Life Is Yoga
Compilations from the works of
Sri Aurobindo and the Mother
1. What is Yoga
ISBN 978-3-937701-56-1 / € 5,99 (EPUB)
2. Fear and Its Overcoming
ISBN 978-3-937701-74-5 152103.08 / € 5,99 (EPUB)
3. New Birth
ISBN 978-3-937701-94-3 / € 5,99 (EPUB)
4. Depression
ISBN 978-3-937701-95-0 / € 5,99 (EPUB)
5. The Soul and How to find It
ISBN 978-3-937701-96-7 / € 5,99 (EPUB)
6. The Four Aids in Integral Yoga
ISBN 978-3-937701-97-4 / € 5,99 (EPUB)
7. Numbers and Astrology
ISBN 978-3-937701-98-1 / € 5,99 (EPUB)
8. True Leadership
ISBN 978-3-937701-99-8 152103.07 / € 5,99 (EPUB)
***
AURO MEDIA
Sri Aurobindo Digital Edition
Verlag und Fachbuchhandel
Wilfried Schuh
Email verlag@auro.media
www.auro.media
***
Contents
1 Imprint
2 Publisher‘s Note
3 The Four Aids Śāstra – The Knowledge of the Truths Utsāha – The Force of Personal Effort Guru – The Influence of the Teacher Kāla – The Instrumentality of Time
4 Sri Aurobindo‘s Teaching and Method of Practice
5 Inner Self-development
6 References
7 Sri Aurobindo Digital Edition
Landmarks
1 Cover
2 Title-Page
3 Start of Content
4 Table of Contents