EWS #94 Seven Steps of the Integral Yoga + Q&A (35) on Spiritual life

Nov 27, 2021

Alina (0:00:00):
Namaste. Good evening, everyone. Namaste Joel.

[Joel] Namaste Alina. Namaste Shadaloo.

[Alina] Namaste Shadaloo.

[Sraddhalu] Namaste.

Welcome back to our continuing series, Evenings with Sraddhalu. Today we are happy to continue our series on the same topics, spiritual life, practices, and today we will begin a new topic on the seven steps of the Integral yoga. We will include some questions on the practices that we studied last time about the Sunlit path and today we will continue the study of the overall scheme of the Integral yoga of Sri Aurobindo. We will answer first a few questions received from our viewers and then continue on the next topic. Vaibhav wrote, “My question is partially intellectual juggle and partially faith-based. Who am I as this individuality? The question arises the way we always talk about the psychic being as something we need to realise. Some don't even have that. A psychic being can even leave the person. I'm not this body, I'm not the vital, I'm not even the mind. Psychic being is some other entity. Atman, Self, is something universal, undivided One. Then who am I - this individuality? We invite Sraddhalu to answer this question.

Sraddhalu (0:02:34):
Yes, it's a very very interesting question and It deserves a much more detailed response, but in brief just to give a broad sense of it. When the Divine, I will use the word seed, spark of the Divine enters into this manifestation to experience it and manifest its potentiality and grow, it needs to take on material that corresponds to the range of worlds in which it wants to act. So if it wants to enter the mental world and experience things of the mental world, it gathers around itself mental substance and through the mental substance can then interact with the things of the mental world. Similarly, substance of the vital is gathered and using that material, it can act. If this substance is dense and rigid then its action is also sticky. It is as if you wear gloves which are extremely rigid. Perhaps if those of you who have used gloves, if the gloves are of very thick material then you find you can't move your fingers freely and yet you need thick gloves in order to hold an object that's very hot. If you have put something for baking in the oven, you take it out, you wear thick gloves, but you can't move the fingers with the skill that you would have when the fingers are bare. So the material of each domain that it takes on limits its capacity to express itself. But it can work on the material over time by sustaining its will, it can refine the material, make it more conscious, more plastic, more responsive and in that way by its engagement with that substance, it forces evolution of that substance. Now the same thing happens entering the physical world with physical matter. The only difference is, while the mental and vital worlds, it can gather material around around itself simply by willing it, physical matter is resistant because this is remember, the world of form and form which is persistent, rigid, so that it can collide and so it resists and the direct influence of the psychic on the physical matter is not enough to be able to shape it for it to build a body directly. Therefore it has to use the biological processes waiting for a body to form into which it enters in order to engage with experiences of the physical world. The problem there is the physical body is so dull, so clouded, I will use the word dark, rigid, blind in consciousness that at the point where the psychic enters to identify with the physical body, it finds itself stunned into the dullness of matter, forgetting, and feels identified with the body and the body's personality and tendencies and instincts.

Still, to the extent that the psychic spark is still there behind or as an evolving being it has evolved a personality, it can infuse an influence, a nudge, a push and this is how it nudges the biologically formed frame which it is inhabiting. Nudging it to become more and more refined, to become more and more conscious until at some point it can turn to directly receive, even open directly to the psychic influence. And that's when the psychic influence can come forward and experience a free action in the physical body. Now, this is just to explain the relationship between the two. On the other side, that's where your question comes: This personality which feels itself formed of the body, having a mind, it asks, what is this psychic? In fact, this personality itself was formed across centuries of evolution in which the psychic influence has nudged and nudged and nudged and formed habitual grooves in the material of the biology. You will see in animals, every time an animal faces a situation that it has never faced, it hesitates and its instinct fails. And that's when there is a nudge from the psychic influence, this way, this way, this way. And after hundreds, perhaps thousands of failure and thousands of nudges, the nudge forms a groove in nature which becomes the habit, which becomes the instinct of the species. So in a sense it is the psychic or the divine will secret which is nudging to form and shape the patterns of habit and instincts in the biological realm which forms, for example, the bird and its behaviour, the dogs, the animals, even the plants and stones to that extent extent are nudged into the form and the rhythms or habits of nature.

A dog for example, and this is something which is still fresh in my mind so I share, one of my friend's dogs gave birth and it's fascinating this is a female who's barely a year old. She has no idea what's happening logically. She has no school to tell her she's going to give birth to puppies but when she gives birth to the puppies, she knows exactly what she should do to cut off the cord which links the puppies to her, to eat up all that material and lick the puppies clean and then to feed them. And she does not eat them, she eats only the material which surrounds them. How does she know all that? There is no formal mental knowledge, there is only an instinct which feels, which knows, this is what it is, this is what I have to do and it enjoys that experience as it does it. And this instinct has been shaped by the psychic and the divine will, nudging, nudging, nudging, which forms a personality which is almost on a very crude level, almost like an automaton. You see that in very small insects and as it evolves, the personality itself grows more complex because into the physical body is infused the vital and the mental substance which also is guided by the psychic.

Sraddhalu (0:09:18):

In the human being, it evolves to a point where the mind itself is able not only to question but come into full self-awareness of mind and take charge of its own process of evolution. And that's where the psychic influence has achieved a great breakthrough that not only it has formed a personality but it has allowed an experience of freedom in the personality which allows the personality to go its own way, including the freedom to go against the psychic choice. And that's where the struggle also begins. Now this personality can be led astray, it can lose the spontaneous influence of the psychic, which in the animals and the less developed animals would have been there, not very lit up, not very clear in its expression, but as the primary push behind all the instinctive forms it has created. In the human being, the freedom of the mind allows it to create its own sense of identity that can conflict with the psychic. Or if that same identity turns to say, what gives me the sense of I, what gives me the sense of higher values or aspiration? Why is it that I do not degenerate into purely mechanical instinctive drives? Because there is something deeper, some higher values, some deeper truth, which is because it's present, reflecting in me. This recognition allows you to turn back to see the source and enter in relation with it directly and then realise even actually I am that source but so far I was the reflection of that source and now I can become truly what I am.

And so this is the difference we have between the psychic being and then this mind, vital body complex and the complex itself as a mixed functioning with the centre of choice and relative freedom, we would call the ego personality or the desire personality. Because left to itself, if the psychic influence withdraws completely, it's just a bundle of habits driven by its passions and desires which have been programmed in nature through centuries and just keeps going mechanically serving no purpose but also experiencing great sense of frustration and loss of sense of purpose. The psychic influence brings back the sense of purpose and the sense of deeper meaning and joy. But when you turn directly to the source, that is the psychic, then you experience that joy and sense of fulfilment as you truly, more completely. So this is the distinction between the surface personality and the psychic. And yes, it is possible for the psychic to be cut off completely or even to withdraw to a point where only a mechanical surface personality remains and generally it's not a very interesting personality. It would have no sense of higher values or purpose, it would just live its life mechanically and somewhat pointlessly like a robot, just a sophisticated robot. The Self is the reality which supports the psychic being, but free from change, free of space and time, which leans into a special focus of individuality and projects its consciousness into space and time, which is what we experience as the psychic being. Having entered space and time, it can experience change and growth, and so the Self, in its projection, experiences change and growth, increasingly developing the capacity to manifest the full potential of the Self. So the psychic is Self but entering space-time in a limitation, as a projection, and therefore it has all the potential of the Self but all the limitation of its current evolution. This now if you merge with the rest of the substance of mind, life, body, would form for the Self, a complete vehicle to enter the worlds and across all the planes of consciousness, to experience all of them as an individual. The only problem is the physical substance is the one that is the most rigid. All other planes can develop substance as we call the subtle body, which the psychic can actually hold across lives. It's only the physical being so rigid it cannot. But one day, when this personality grows enough and can actually manifest the freedom of the Supramental consciousness and act with that freedom on matter, it will be able to shape matter at will, the way it shapes the mental substance and then it could form a body as it wants or change it or reshape it without needing to drop it and take a new form.

This would represent what Sri Aurobindo calls the physical transformation of matter. But that means matter itself has been made plastic enough to manifest the divine potential which the psychic brings. If not for this effort of the psychic being in evolution, matter would remain what it is. Just as the psychic intervention has made grades of mind and vital substance more open, more refined, more responsive to the Divine, so it is working now in matter to make matter itself more responsive to the Divine, to divinise matter in the process and that's really the biggest story of the evolution. That's when the full Divine revelation in the cosmos can take place and at that point the Self which is otherwise one with all things will be able to experience itself in several focal points of individuals, each manifesting a certain potential of the Self and playing, creating with the delight of this Divine creative delight but now through individual centres. So this gives you the big picture of why this whole game to allow for centres of the Divine play in a universe which is evolutionary with all potential but now bound in all kinds of limitations and emerging from those limitations to realise the full freedom of the Satchitananda. We are the focal point, the front end of that edge of the evolutionary awakening with the psychic being as the true person and the surface desire personality as the temporary surface formation to create possibility of an individuality through which the psychic and the Self can manifest and play in this evolution. I think this would be the true story of our individuality in all its layers.

Alina (0:16:23):
It was a very complex answer, almost in totality explaining the whole integral of yoga. We will move to another question received from our viewer, Maurice: “A couple years ago during about six weeks I felt a strong inner change. I felt very happy and my intuition was very strong and even my body made some gestures in certain situations that were not directed by my ego but manifested spontaneously. It was a feeling as if I was born again, but sometimes I felt also a little anxious because it felt as if losing my ego. So, after many years of aspiration for surrender, when surrender came, I felt anxious because I felt as losing myself. Probably some part of my being was touched by the psychic being, but my fear indicates that I'm not yet ready for this fundamental shift. Isn't it? This is a reason for not wanting to rush but accept daily life in equanimity. Can you please comment on this?

Sraddhalu (0:17:44):
Yes it's an interesting experience. Normally I would have asked a few more questions to get the full sense of the experience, but it seems as if there was a state of opening and a spontaneous alignment with a deeper or higher presence, consciousness, which then was flowing. Your own consciousness perhaps was feeling itself more detached, not directly engaged, but things happening spontaneously in a state of an inspired alignment, but the part which felt free is what we would call the Purusha, the consciousness of the witness, probably more in the mind as it was. But then at the same time, in the vital part, in the emotions, life energies, there is a sense of losing my control, my life, my freedom and so with that comes a certain disquiet, it gets restless, it wants to act to take back its sense of control. This is what I would confirm normally if this is how it was the experience. In that case it was a good experience, but the conclusion you draw is wrong. It is not that you are not ready, rather the experience came because you are ready. And for you to not want to rush and accept and wait passively would be the wrong response. Rather you should try to recall that experience, recall that state, because it was so beautiful, you will enjoy that. And this time once again as you recall, using what we have described as the direct method. You lean back into the memory of the state, into the vividness of the experience and then allow it to return, inviting it very slowly, very gently, allow it to refill you and lead you back into something of that state. Anyway, if you feel 10% of it, that's good. Maybe you will get much more in the very first effort that you make. But recall it and consciously relive as far as you can. Allow it to stay as long as it can and then if it fades of its own you can allow it to settle for a while and then again and again if possible every day a little bit. Eventually you will find maybe you don't get 50% of it but 10% of it stays much of the time and then that keeps growing and so on.

So the point is the experience given to you, you have to then work to develop, deepen and make it stable eventually as a normal state. This will be greatly assisted by the other practices that we have spoken of, which would involve an inward concentration on the aspiration within or the Divine presence within, or an upward opening above head and an opening to receive the descent of the peace. These would help greatly to recreate or draw you back into this kind of an experience. The sense of losing myself is only in the very superficial parts of the ego, the narrow parts which fear that they will lose, they will dissolve, they will cease to exist. What will happen? It may happen in other variations sometimes when one has a more intense experience as in inward or upward meditation. You are on the brink of something which is vast and briefly the fear comes, what if I die? What if I can't come back? And these are typically the narrow part of you, which we will call the narrow ego, the separative part, which says, I am going to lose my boundaries. Sri Aurobindo's response to that is very simple, and you should remind yourself of this whenever this thought or fear comes. He says, consciousness is never lost. It is the boundaries which are lost. So when you are on the edge of a breakthrough and opening to something vast, deep, free and this question comes, remind yourself, ah it's only the boundaries which are being lost, I will never be lost. The true sense of I will rather be discovered, be awakened The false sense of I thinning out, the true I will fill. And remind yourself. If you feel still the fear is strong, stay on the edge of what you can comfortably, don't push too far beyond that, but habituate yourself to that edge. And after a while you will find the fear will fade away because of familiarity and you will spontaneously go deeper or be free to choose to go deeper. This would be the trajectory of the practice which could be suggested. But don't make the error to say that you are not ready or that you have to wait. These are the biggest mistakes you could make. Catch that. It's a gift. Build on it.

Alina (0:23:05):
I will proceed and ask the question received from Shankaran: “Once I was travelling in a train, suddenly I felt an intense vibration in the mid-chest region and then felt the mantra Om Namo Bhagavate emanating and repeating from there many times of its own. This experience lasted for about three or four minutes. After that I experienced a great peace. Now my question is what should I do? Should I do the japa of Om Namo Bhagavate or just leave it? Don't know what the Divine is conveying.

Sraddhalu (0:24:09):
Yes, interesting experience here also. But you know, as with the earlier question, the understanding is wrong. You have to see these experiences as gifts given to you of a state that you are now ready for. And that must become permanent in you. The experience passes because not all in you is ready. There are other parts which are not ready and so eventually the experience has to drop. But the parts which are ready are there, waiting for the experience to grow. So, the message is not in repeating the mantra. The message is in the experience you had. And the experience was an opening in the centre of the chest, which was obviously from the Divine Presence within or to the Divine Presence within and the second was the great peace which you then felt and which settled in you. The state is important, not the form in which, well you felt the mantra or heard it or any other forms that took place. The forms can pass, the state is what you have to catch. If you feel the need to repeat that, to re-enter the state, perhaps that's helpful. But as I understand it, the mantra came spontaneously from the heart, so feel the state of the mantra emerging. What was it like? It was an aspiration glowing out. That is what you catch. And if you feel in that spontaneously the call of the name of the Divine in some form, let it happen. But that's not the way to do it. The way to do it is to recall the experience and relive it and catch the aspect of the peace also. So there was an opening within and there was also the peace which settled from above. Even if you did not feel it settling from above, it's because it descended within and from within came out. But still it descended. Both these are the primary efforts in this yoga, and so you were as if given a touch of an experience that you have to now work on, and similar to the previous question, I will say recall, relive, re-enter, deepen the experience and eventually stabilise it. This is the way you have to proceed.

And what is the Divine conveying? Well, the Divine is giving you the gift of the step you have to take next and with that will prepare you for the next step which also will be given to you as a gift, as an experience which then you will build and develop and you will be led into the fullness of the yoga. So all three questions, you see, we have sequenced them so that there is a natural logic to it, but also that they prepare us for the discussion of today. There are many questions which are pending, as I mentioned last time, but I am holding them off because this may not be the best time to raise them and we will come back, be assured that we will take up your questions, they will come back a little later. Right now our focus is on the integral yoga itself, understanding the forms and the practice of the integral yoga of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. And the last time we dwelt on the theme of the Sunlit path, we saw the struggle that Sri Aurobindo and the Mother had to go through personally in order to go through all possible experiences and all possible problems of human nature to forge the path and in the process in forging the path they have taken upon themselves the burden, which means when we follow the path in the Sunlit way, we don't have to go through that struggle. And you will recall Sri Aurobindo's, I will even use the word appeal, he says, “It is because of our experience won at a tremendous price that we can urge upon you and others, take the psychic attitude, follow the straight Sunlit path, with the Divine openly or secretly upbearing you. Do not insist on the hard, hampered, roundabout and difficult journey”.

And now this way itself, he has discussed, the structure, the framework he has described in great detail. The bulk of it is in the Synthesis of Yoga, there are elaborations in the last few chapters of the Life Divine and in his Letters on Yoga. But this framework was revealed to him as his yoga entered a deep intense phase and particularly after he came to Pondicherry for a full immersion in the yoga itself. He describes how the Divine, the Lord of the Yoga, Master of the Yoga revealed to him the framework, which he himself practised, which he formulated also in the Synthesis of Yoga, in fact, using exactly the same words of what was shown to him and which he practised, there is no difference at all between his practice and what he has taught. And this is what I want to share today and it is useful for us to understand not only as a broad framework but also how we have to begin to practise it immediately.

Sraddhalu (0:29:35):

The framework is sevenfold. In Sanskrit, he writes it as Sapta Chatushtaya, seven fours, the four things on each of the seven steps. This is in a sense the, let’s say the new revelation or expression of the yoga in comparison to what is currently called the classical yoga of Patanjali where you have the yoga sutras which give a broad framework for the practice of yoga and as a sutra they are very essential. In fact they have permanent value, you can read them today with a fresh mind and you can understand them as they are relevant to you today. What Sri Aurobindo offers goes beyond, although it includes the framework of classical yoga of Patanjali, it goes beyond, because the goals are also greater. The goals not only include Pratanjali's yoga, not only includes the goals of various religions, not only of the Tantra which brought in many new elements of a collective dimension as well as a joyous participation in the Divine creation and manifestation, all those elements are there. It includes the framework set by the Bhagavad Gita, but goes beyond them. The elements in which it goes beyond them maybe I will touch upon as we proceed or another time. But the framework itself now offers a comprehensive practice and if you have heard the last 10 or so sessions where we have been building up towards this, it will be useful to review some of that to fully appreciate what we now take up. So the seven, he has used in fact the Sanskrit keywords, they are sutras, as it was revealed to him. He has noted them in his diary and he has practised them. As he practised them, he has kept daily notes of his practices. All of this is available in the form of this book called the Record of Yoga. They are in two big volumes. This is the size <shows a copy of the book>, two big volumes like this. And I don't think it's even complete. There are things which have not been published or which have been edited out. But we will just look at the framework of the seven steps. These he has discussed also in the Synthesis of Yoga. There is an entire chapter dedicated to this framework, which is called the elements of perfection. What Sri Aurobindo does is, he takes these seven steps. The first of these steps he makes the overall base for the practice of the integral yoga. It's the base of purification and a basic freedom. The other six he treats as the elements of perfection. So there is a six-fold perfection on the base which comes from the prior preparation of the triple path. So you will see the structure of the Synthesis of Yoga: there is the yoga of works, yoga of knowledge, yoga of love and devotion and then the yoga of self-perfection. So the first three in a sense broadly cover the base of purification and liberation. It means putting your mind, your heart and your will of works in relation to the Divine and in consecration. Broadly, simply, as completely, as thoroughly as possible. And through that, generally purifying the whole of your nature, because everything is now turned to the Divine and everything as a result undergoes a purification under that influence, which prepares you for the actual Integral yoga or the yoga of self-perfection, which is sixfold. And the point he makes, which is very important for us to appreciate, that when you aim for perfection, you cannot even begin to speak of perfection until this purification and basic freedom are set.

But when you aim for perfection, all depends on your conception of the divine perfection, which depends on the conception of the divine. If for you, the divine is the absolute, impersonal, impassive, as for the Mayavadin, then well that's all you will aim at, that will be your perfection. And of course then there is nothing to manifest. Or as in certain other traditions, the whole sense of impermanence and suffering in the world is the reality out of which you have to free yourself. Well again there is nothing to perfect here of these parts. There is only a perfection of immersion in the Divine. But if our idea is that this whole world is a manifestation of the Divine, then to grow in the likeness of the Divine in perfection of Divinity also includes the manifestation. This is extremely important. It means the whole of our nature is to be perfected and divinized. And that means the perfection is huge, complex, multifaceted movement. So now we come to the process itself and the stages. So the preparatory purification is for all of our mind, emotions, life energies and the body and the willpower to be generally purified and turned towards the Divine. But this need not be practised separately. It can be actually merged along with the sixfold perfection to be practised. So I will be describing this in a form of merging.

Sraddhalu (0:35:30):

First perfection or first step in the perfection. And I will read from Sri Aurobindo, “The first necessity is some fundamental poise of the soul, both in its essential and its natural being, regarding and meeting the things, impacts and workings of nature. The poise, this poise we shall arrive at by growing into a perfect equality, samatha”. You see, he explains the nature of the Brahman, the Self, the Divine, is equal to all, because it is equally in all, it powers itself equally in all, relates equally to all, although uniquely, but equally. And so approaching the Divine perfection means you must have the same base of equality. So this equality becomes now essential. There are many ways in which we can practise it. I will review the form in which we can practise which is the most direct, the most comprehensive. But simply for now, just as a quick indication, the true equalities of the Self and it is increasingly as the presence of the Self dawns in you, as the light of the Self or the presence is felt in you more and more that you have the true equality. Before that you have a bit of a struggle to pretend a form of equality. I restrain myself and try to create an equality. All that forms part of that initial first phase of purification. If you have got a basic sense of freedom, then you are able to lean back into a sense of equality and that has to become the base, a deep peace of the Self, which becomes the base of equality. And in that equality, then you look at all circumstances, and there is a kind of an equal delight. This happens, this does not happen. Okay, let's see how the game works. You're able to play with an equality, which gives you a sense of delight of the play, irrespective of what happens and somewhere deep inside is the poise of the psychic being that says, wow what an interesting experience in this world, what a fantastic challenge, I lost everything and I'm going to have to rebuild from scratch, what an interesting experience and so whatever the values of your mind may be of good or bad, to the psychic it's all an experience of play, of learning, of growth and it is something of this attitude which now begins to fill more and more.

So Sri Aurobindo in his Sutra style or the way it was revealed to him has four words - Samatha, Shanti, Sukham, Hasyam. I won't elaborate on this, it's not important for us now but just we get the drift of it. For those of you follow Sanskrit you may get an idea, but I have already described what they mean. “The next necessity of perfection”, he says, “is to raise all the active parts of our nature to their highest condition and working pitch, to the highest power and capacity that they are capable of”. You see, the goal is to manifest the Divine potential and if your instruments are defective, incapable, partial, dark, clouded, fatigued, it's not going to happen. All your instruments should be in their Divine potential. So, possibility to manifest infinitely, of course they can't. But what's the highest you can take closest to the power and capacity of the Divine energy? Well, that would be the first step. Later that will be perfected by something even more.

But this turning to the full capacity of all your instruments is then the next perfection. This has also four steps. The words in Sanskrit, Veerya, Shakti, Deivi prakriti and Shraddha. And I will summarise how that works. First is the full power of all instruments amplified with the divine potential as it organize itself in the human. And how does it organise as the four soul powers? You have heard the terms, the power of the brahmana, kshatriya, vaishya and shudra - the aspect of knowledge, the aspect of heroism, the aspect of interchange, exchange and growth of plenitude, abundance and the aspect of consecrated service in love, perfection in detail. All of these are part of our soul potential, powers of the soul. They have all to be amplified fully. And a delight and joy in their full working. So, unlike an ascetic yoga, where the goal is to lose interest in the world, to withdraw, to become less interested, that's the measure of your Spiritual progress, here it will be the reverse. The joy of manifesting, the joy of growing in your capacity to manifest is the outcome of this second aspect of the perfection. In fact you should grow in intelligence and power of knowledge not only to realise knowledge but to express it and to express with precision and perfection. You should be able to pour out vitality and energy for action to break through barriers, to overcome difficulties and generally rise above all problems, master your circumstances, become a king in your own right in that sense. You should be able to enter in exchange in interaction with all potentials. Catch occasions that come. Seize a moment. Seize an opportunity. Utilise it and expand it, to give more than you take and through a series of exchanges and arrangements of harmony with all possibilities around you, you create an increase of abundance, not only in yourself but in all things around you that you come in contact with. And finally everything you do is done with the perfection and precision in detail, nothing left out in the way the Divine carves a mountain down to the tiniest atom in precision, held in perfect harmony with the whole universe. Nothing is out of place. That's the kind of precision and beauty and perfection we should be able to bring, and with the same intensity and completeness. So this is the aspect of the Veerya. But then there is the Divine energy, the Shakti, which has to pour into you to now be able to utilise or amplify all these into a Divine potential. And with it, the whole of your nature begins to acquire a character of the Divine nature. And there is the free play of the Divine energy working through all your instruments. And all of this naturally grows in the measure in which we can open ourselves and surrender ourselves to the Divine Shakti and so the state of faith in the Divine, in the divine Shakti, in the Divine’s working in you and through you, all these form the four elements of this perfection.

Sraddhalu (0:43:10):

This naturally leads us to the next step of the perfection, because whatever you may have achieved till now at best it will be able to express the highest level of consciousness from which you live, whatever that may be, but that's not the highest in the image of the Divine. So you have to now be able to rise beyond your mind and the highest of your mind's capacity into the Divine consciousness or the highest Divine consciousness to possess the Divine perfection in its highest term in order to be able to manifest that and that is the Supramental knowledge consciousness into which you have to rise; from mind to Supermind through whatever gradations we pass through. With each grade awakened to realized, stabilised, a greater power, a greater action should be able to pour through you. But this is now the movement of the ascent of consciousness, which has also the four facets, Jnanam, Trikala Drishti, Ashta Siddhi and Samadhi. And all of these you will see are really powers of the Supramental consciousness. The first is the perfected knowledge, not mind's knowledge which takes up little pieces, but knowledge which is infinite, which can embrace the full power of omniscience and the omnipotence which comes with it, which is the nature of the Supermind, Supramental consciousness, and of course omnipresence is implied. But with it, Trikala Drishti represents the perception of all things. With the awakening of the supramental consciousness, all knowledge should be available to you. Not only knowledge of the higher planes, but all knowledge of the lower planes, including sensory knowledge of all that happens and all that exists in the cosmos, which includes on a very material level, on a mundane level, things happening in the physical plane anywhere in the universe. You should be able to turn your attention and perceive directly through all your senses. So these are the siddhis, the siddhis of time, that across space and across time, all knowledge, all events are available to you. And with it the eight siddhis, which are siddhis of knowledge, siddhis of action, because you should be able to impact those things irrespective of where they are or how they are and this must go all the way down into a physical body which should be able to express those powers freely, because they are truly powers of the Supramental of the Divine consciousness which must be manifested fully. Now I'm not going to the details of the powers. That's not important but you have to get the idea of what this represents. And the fourth of these the Samadhi that he speaks of here is the ability to immerse your consciousness in anything, any state, any object, any event, any knowledge with full access to be able to shape it, wield it, create, modify, act on it in the power of the Divine creative freedom. And this is the nature of the third perfection of the six, or the fourth step in the Integral yoga. Now you can see it's huge as a potential. And we will see it's not something that you have to wait for, it's something you have to begin now. All these have to be begun now and we will see how to do it later.

Sraddhalu (0:46:40):

We come now to the fourth perfection and you see the logic of it. All these things realised, all these things attained, even access to the higher worlds. We are not meant to lose ourselves there. We are meant to manifest all these in the most material parts of the cosmos. Meaning you manifest everywhere, on all planes. But it is the possession in the physical body and the action in the physical body which is the challenge, where the Divinization has to be fully acquired. The physical body is the basis of our action, especially of action and form. And not only it's included in the Spiritual evolution, but the body itself has to be perfected. So much of what we have discussed before can be achieved by perfection of the mind and a partial perfection of the vital. But a perfection of the physical body is what will make it permanent and allow for a full action in the physical world. So perfection of the body now is the fourth perfection and the Divine freedom, the law of the Divine consciousness, of the Satchitananda itself is to be manifested in the freedom of the body. So here comes a very interesting suggestion he makes, to divinise the body, he says, “behind the gross physical sheath of this materially visible and sensible frame, there is subliminally supporting it and discoverable by a finer subtle consciousness, a subtle body of the mental being and a Spiritual or causal body of the Gnostic and Bliss Soul in which all the perfection of a spiritual embodiment is to be found. A yet unmanifested divine law of the body”. So the potential of all those higher ranges of our bodies have to be fused into the physical body. And so this has four facets also: Arogyam, which is perfect health, literally immunity not only from disease but from injury and from accident which should be the highest form of it but a practical initial immunity would be a step. Uttapana, the complete freedom, so literally uttapana means levitation but in this context the complete freedom from all inertia which in its highest actually frees your body from even compulsion of gravitation. Saundarya, which is a perfection of beauty in the body. The body itself should glow out a perfect beauty. And Vividhananda is the fourth which is the ability to experience the divine delight as if the contact with the Satchitananda through all the senses, through all the experiences possible in the physical body on all points of contact with everything in the universe. And there are many gradations through the emotions, through the thoughts, through the perceptions, through the very basic sense perception, for example, of contact and even touch of sight, of light or of hearing. In each of these points of contact we should be able to experience the delight of the Satchitananda in our physical experience. That would be the fourth perfection. And you can see now these first four perfections are all perfections of the individual in a Divine perfection, in a Divine transformation, in a Divine life. The next two perfections he describes as more general. They are of a consciousness, not specific to the individual and they represent a participation in the larger cosmic play and the perfection in cosmic participation.

Sraddhalu (0:50:35):

So the next, fifth perfection he says is perfect action and enjoyment of being on the Gnostic basis. In this Divinised consciousness, all your action should not only be a perfect expression of the Divine creative power, but also a perfect enjoyment in everything that the action expresses. Even what we have as a desire is replaced by the equivalent of the Divine desire, if it can be called that. soul, enjoying his freedom and perfection in the action, while experiencing in the perfected nature, a Divine nature, the possibility of its expression. So there are four keywords here, Krishna, Kali, Kama, Karma. I don't go into detail, but it's broadly summarised in what I described.

Finally, the sixth perfection, which is the sense of the Divine oneness in all. So such a being living in this perfection, in this divinization, will be conscious in the Brahman, that is the all, but different aspects of the one that is all, are described here, but essentially it is the perception and the experience of the pure Satchitananda in everything, in all things and so all is Brahman in the first - Sarvam Brahma, the second is the infinity of the Brahman in unlimited unending possibilities of its potential and variety and diversity, the knowledge, so that is Anantam Brahma and then Jnanam Brahma, the complete knowledge of the Brahma and then the delight of the Brahman, of the Satchitananda in its completeness. So this becomes the sixth perfection. Now you can see the last two particularly would be a consequence of the first four. And yet we can begin to take steps in that direction and we will see how. And steps on all four, first four also, with very simple basic practices. And this is what I want to focus upon now. Because finally, understanding this framework, yes, it's wonderful, it frees the mind, it gives a completely different vision of why we are here or the nature of the yoga itself. It deeply satisfies the heart because you say yes, this is worth it. Any of the religious goals and ideals you will find always fall short. They don't give you the deep satisfaction. They are an escape or they are a comfort, a convenience or a partial awakening of knowledge but not strength or strength but not love or something missing. But this would be the greatest completeness one could envisage. And that's why there is nothing existent so far in any of the traditions which even approaches this kind of a completeness of the vision. But a very clear framework of practice also in the way he formulates. So let's now review the seven steps of the yoga. Remember they are not steps necessarily in sequence and time. Unlike other systems, all seven are simultaneous. Each is interdependent, each assists the other in the growth. But you begin with what little you can in each of these seven directions. And as a little bit grows here, it helps the rest, as a little bit grows there, it helps the first and the rest, and so on. So it's a multi-dimensional growth.

Sraddhalu (0:54:26):

We come back now to the same list but now I will just use the English keywords and even in a more summarised form than what we've been through:

First, is purification which is the base for a greater liberation. It is this purification and liberation of your whole nature generally and of your consciousness generally, that's your consciousness stepping back from nature and its habits, which should be the outcome of Karma Yoga, Bhakti Yoga, Dhyana Yoga or a combination of all these or even not taking up these consciously but including them in a general turn of your whole being towards the Divine. Just that is enough to start this process. Purification, he explains in a different discussion, has two components: One is to bring stillness and because of the stillness now that part is no more agitated and therefore not bound to nature and her habits. And the second is separating it from mixture of other parts. So your mind, if it is going to be a servant of your emotions, is not pure, is not free. And this is how most of humanity lives. We use our logic to justify our passions. We make a mistake, somebody points it out, instantly the mind kicks in, weaves a new story to justify what you did and offers this. You expose this, again the mind jumps and weaves a new story to justify and we are not even conscious of how we deceive ourselves. But when the mind is freed from the mix with emotions, it can see things for what they are, it can even say, ah yes I made a mistake, what do I do now to correct it? And it can act. Similarly the emotions have to be freed from the life energies, which have to be freed from our senses, which have to be freed from the body and its needs and so on. So the purification involves separating each of these so that they can function for what they are truly meant to do and then bring into them a stillness which frees them from habitual nature instincts and prepares them for receiving a higher influence. Effectively the culmination of purification will be to turn to the Divine and to respond to the Divine alone. Now, this can be to the Divine from above as the mind or it can be to the Divine within you as in the influence of the psychic presence in the mind, in the emotions, even in your will, actions. So this would be a broad sense of the word purification which you have to do then consciously by turning all the parts of your being towards the Divine and bringing stillness. Stillness into all these parts and then becoming conscious in each separately, not in a mishmash of the ego-desire bundle that we spoke of earlier today, in which everything is mixed and you don't know what is what. How does one do this? The easiest, the simplest way would be to turn to the presence above, invoke the peace to settle in all these parts, but consciously take it all the way down to the most physical parts, down to the feet, and then hold the peace. As a result, there is an automatic stilling. Then into that peace, you turn in your aspiration to the Divine with an intention to receive only the Divine will, to respond only to the Divine influence and to give yourself to the Divine and to belong only to the Divine and stay in this for as long as you can until all the members, all the parts of your being feel this infused and then try to sustain something of this influence through the day. Or into this you bring the psychic aspiration, filling it, and that's what makes the turn to this wanting to belong to the Divine and give oneself to the Divine. So in this, the essential process of purification is held, the liberation that comes by this telling and the separating comes naturally as a result of this and the psychosisation and the descent of peace are the primary means. This is step one.

Sraddhalu (0:59:00):

Step two, which is the first perfection, is the equality which has to become our base. Remember equality finally is of the Self and so every time there is a descent of an influence of the self, a vast equality forms or at least the begins to form. So how do you bring equality? The easiest way is by the descent of the peace. But you should not stop with just a mere descent. Each time successively the opening should become wider and wider until the descent itself is of a wide peace. Wideness has to descend with the peace. And with that wideness, automatically your mind becomes wide, your heart, your emotions, your energies, they feel the sense of wideness, even the touch of the infinity is felt. And with that spontaneously, effortlessly, everything becomes well small, or loses its exaggerated place and is seen in its right place. And there is an equality that comes as long as the peace is there. In the mind there is spontaneously a silence and at that point your mind can lean back to its own sense of wideness as if leading back into a vast backdrop, which opens it now to a wider sphere of knowledge and prepares for the higher knowledge to descend and for a freedom in a higher grade of consciousness which is above mind. So the base for the practice of equality, the easiest starting point would be with the peace and then with that peace if it is infused with the psychic presence or the touch of the psychic aspiration, there is a deep inner joy from the growing psychic influence and you will recall the third and fourth facets of this perfection are the joy of this play, of participation in the play. And you see how these two movements combine to make for this possible.

The next perfection, the second perfection which is the third step, is Shakti, the amplification of all our powers, the surrender and the faith. And again you see how it is the descending Shakti which can fill all these instruments and amplify them. But if you have done the first two steps then already you are able to feel these tendencies in you, distinguish between them and put your will to consciously amplify a certain capacity. And if this is opened to the divine Shakti above, it fills you, it amplifies, it does the work, or rather She does. Your effort then is to open, to give yourself and slowly cultivate the faith, the sense of familiarity with the Divine presence and sense that the divine will do, will succeed, will fulfil, then there is nothing which can ultimately oppose or prevent that. Because there is nothing other than the Divine. Even the thing which opposes or resists is formed of substance, formed by the Divine will and therefore the Divine can overcome everything. That faith grows in all these parts down to the most physical parts eventually. And this would make for the perfection, the third perfection. Remember again here the primary means is opening to the Mother's force, to the Divine energy, to the Divine Shakti filling you.

Comes now the fourth step, which is the third perfection, which is the ascent from mind to Supermind. And we don't have to worry about the goal. We have to only go in the direction of the goal. So don't think of these things as difficult or complicated or I am not ready, this is for great people. No it's not true. Each one of us is ready to begin. How long it takes, not your concern. Take the first step, move forward and enjoy the way. That is yours to enjoy, isn't it? And it's worth the joy. So the evolution from mind to the Gnostic Supramental consciousness by an ascent, rising above head as a first step and a descent of a higher consciousness filling you and slowly purifying, filling with light, eventually filling with a higher substance and transforming. Now all of this sounds complicated, actually it's the movement is very simple. You open, allow yourself to be raised into this wideness above, stay immersed as long as you like and then slowly return, inviting, invoking the Presence to come down to fill your head and all the way down to fill your whole body and Increasingly not only the peace, but also invoke the presence as light, as knowledge, and all else that comes with it, the Divine energy the Divine Shakti, the Mother's Force to fill you. At first you will feel it much more intensely in the head and subsequently much more in the chest and all the way down to the feet. It will happen as you begin this movement. So there are two movements here. There is a movement of ascent which frees your consciousness and allows it to rise higher in small steps, don't worry, just enjoy each step. And then the descent of the higher into the lower and as it happens it brings the light, it brings the substance and you will experience these things spontaneously, effortlessly, as you open and receive. The guided practice which we had put up last week will be of great help if you want to do this. And those of you who have already done it may have felt what it feels like when I say there is a substance which descends and you can feel it as a substance and it fills your mind with light. And when your mind is full of this light and however initially dim the light may be, just that, suddenly your power of perception is so much deeper. You understand more deeply, you perceive more deeply. Intuition becomes more and more spontaneous, effortless, until eventually you will find yourself experiencing the consciousness of intuition and feeling it settling and shaping your mind more and more. Your mind will undergo a change that it's earlier used to think out things where now it will just turn and see and catch, seize insights and eventually even know by a series of points of contact of insight and it will happen automatically.

Sraddhalu (1:05:56):

Key necessity though is training your mind to become completely still, even silent, for which the previous training of the equality by descent of peace is one of the best means. In fact, in the measure that your mind becomes more and more quiet, less restless, less mechanical, you will find the opening above and also the influence becoming spontaneous and rapid. So this is the aspect of the evolution of consciousness, the third perfection.

We go to the next perfection which is of the body. All of this which we are developing above must come down into the physical consciousness. And so what can you do to make your physical consciousness more receptive, more conscious, more turning and self-giving to receive and to participate? Think about it. Perhaps certain exercises like asanas or even other more routine exercises that you may do, including if you are doing weights or stretches or anything, aerobic exercises, if you do with that intention can be made a means for this for developing the body consciousness to make it more receptive to the higher influence. Now how high that influence is, is not our concern. Even if it becomes an influence to the mind, it's a great step. If it receives the influence of your psychic aspiration, that is the wonderful step. And of course if you have opened to higher intuitions, that will come and that would be even better. But the opening of the body consciousness is our first step. Use asanas, use exercises, but it's not enough that you do a stretch. Into the stretch you bring awareness, feel the awareness in the body, amplify the awareness, feel it becoming more and more open and turning in aspiration to the Divine presence. And then if you can, if you receive the peace descending or the light descending, you hold in your body, contain it, literally treat your body like a receptacle, a jar, a vessel into which the peace and presence fill, the consciousness grows to be more lit and you contain that, consciously infusing into the body consciousness. This would be the way. That's the first step and all the rest will follow as the other things fill. You see, each thing we are doing a simple first step which allows then everything else to follow automatically.

The next perfection, remember that is the one of the participation in the divine delight. And yes, if you look at, if you read the text of what it means, well you can't have it unless you live in a Gnostic consciousness. But you can take the first step in the direction. Think about what it means. A perfect action and enjoyment of being on a Gnostic basis. Fine, we don't have a Gnostic basis. But what would it represent in our consciousness today? The perfect action and enjoyment of being when we consecrate our work. All the work you do, if not during the work, you start before the work with the idea of consecrating this. This I will do as an offering to you, to the Divine. And in that is this great joy, I am able to offer this. This is my gift, this is my offering. So the action and the joy of the action, you open and give. And then at the end of the work or at the end of the day, you look back, all this that I have done, I offer to you. Later gradually in the work itself, you will have this sense of consecration and the psychic influence will bring into this the delight that I am able to do all this, I am able to grow in my capacities, I am able to develop my capacities as an offering, as an awakening to the Divine, as growing and perfecting my instruments in service of the Divine, to make this a worthy vehicle for the Divine action and in the heart, the intimacy, the joy of belonging to the Divine Mother, giving yourself to her as a child. All of these would set the base in you for a perfect action and a perfect enjoyment that as the higher consciousness grows, would become Gnostic in character. But now you set the base which is primarily from the psychic influence and the consecration in the actions itself.

Sraddhalu (1:10:52):

And finally, the last perfection which was living in the one that is the all, in the very many aspects of the Brahman consciousness and the Satchitananda. Well the first step in that direction is the perception of the Divine Mother in all things or the Divine Presence in all things. And that's our immediate step we are able to take. If nothing else as a mere idea, you will recall Sri Aurobindo describing this in his little booklet, Tales of Prison Life, where when he came out of jail, he shared some of his experiences. And he says how he walked from one end to the other, when he was allowed out of solitary confinement, from one end of the courtyard to the other, and he would look at all things, the trees, the walls, the other prisoners, the jailers, the sky, with the idea that behind all this, supporting all this is the same Divine presence. And he says with the mind imprinting this idea, after a while, in a few days, it began to be felt vividly. Until the presence was so strong, it was overwhelming everything else. And that's when he began to feel himself as if held in the arms of the Divine and the certainty given to him that everything will be fine. And from everything he felt this love oozing out towards him. From his own heart the oozing love poured out and he said his nature which was primarily Rajasic became more and more Satvik and purified, in days, with this simple exercise - the perception of the presence of the Divine or the Divine Mother in all things, which is one of the fundamental realisations of the Integral Yoga. And this is a practice you can do as you are.

Now all seven steps of the Yoga support each other. All have an initial step that you can already take. Primarily they boil down to three things, an opening upward in which there is an ascent and a descent, a freedom and a transforming influence, an opening inward through which the psychic influence can grow more and more, through which consecration, self-giving and surrender and a quiet joy and delight grows more and more, the aspiration intensifies and the third which is the perception of the Divine presence not only within you, not only above you, but in all things around you. And these you will see become the three central realisations of the Integral Yoga. Work on these three, all these other things are implied. And you can see how although such a great goal has been set of a Divine perfection, the immediate means available to us are within our reach, the steps we can take we can begin now and they boil down to some very basic simple processes, which we have in fact been discussing the last few times and which now you can appreciate for their value much more.

I think this is the broad framework I wanted to share with this emphasis. As we are today, this is all doable. Start with whatever is possible with whatever little you are able to do of whatever is possible and then allow it to deepen, widen and grow, knowing that it's not your effort which will give you the success, it is your opening which will allow the Divine energy, the Divine shakti to work through you which will bring the success. So your weakness, your incapacity is not important, what is important is your opening and your faith. You open yourself with your faith, invoking Her presence, Her help, all the rest will happen. But these are the seven directions or the seven steps we have to consciously take for the complete perfection in this yoga. I think this would be a good point for us to close today's discussion. I have titled it, ‘The Seven Steps of the Integral Yoga’, as you know that parallel steps also, although there is a natural sequence, but they represent a foundation with six aspects of perfection. That's how Sri Aurobindo presents it.

We can take a moment to review or simply assimilate whatever we have gone through in our study, whatever we have felt in this exploration, hold ourselves in a state of aspiration for a few minutes all together wherever we are in the world.

Namaste and thank you.

Alina (1:16:55)
Thank you, very much.

Joel (1:16:59)
Thank you.