The Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo - Christian Piaget

Dr. ShuddhanandaBharati

The IntegralYoga

ofSri Aurobindo

ASSAEditions

Sri Aurobindo

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Editor’s Notes

The Integral Yoga ofSri Aurobindo

The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo by Kavi YogiMaharishi Dr.Shuddhananda Bharati is arare volume of Dr. Shuddhananda Bharatiwritten about Sri Aurobindo.

There is a growing demand for yogabooks now. This Integral Yoga is anabridged edition of the above book. We

have extracted in this volume only por-tions relating to Sri Aurobindo’s NewYoga of Transformed Life; other thingscome in just to show the distinct featureof the Integral Yoga.

The style has been made simpler andclearer and the substance more interesting.

A warm thank you to Daye Craddock forher help in careful editing of this book.

It is a real pleasure for me to present TheIntegral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo to you. Thankyou, Dr. Shuddhananda Bharati for havingtransmitted The Integral Yoga of SriAurobindo to us. With the blessing of AumShuddha Shakti Aum.

Christian Piaget

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Song of Unity

Unite. Unite, Unite, Oh SoulsUnite and play your rolesUnite in mind, unite in heartUnite in whole, unite in partLike words and tunes and sense in songLet East and West unite and live longTrees are many; the grove is oneBranches are many: tree is oneShores are many; sea is oneLimbs are many; body is oneBodies are many; self is oneStars are many; sky is oneFlowers are many; honey is onePages are many; book is oneThoughts are many; thinker is oneTastes are many; taster is oneActors are many; the drama is oneNations are many; the world is oneReligions are many; Truth is oneThe wise are many; Wisdom is oneBeings are many; breath is oneClasses are many; college is oneFind out this One behind the manyThen life shall enjoy peaceful harmony

Peace Anthem

Peace for all, peace for allFor all the countries peaceJoy for all, joy for allFor all the nations joyA rosy morning peaceA smiling summer joy (Peace for all)

All for each and each for allThis is the golden ruleLife and Light and Love for allFor all that live our love (Peace for all)

Work and food and clothes for allEqual status for allHealth and home and school for allA happy world for all (Peace for all)

No idle rich, no more beggarsAll are equal workersNo more tears, no more fearsThe heart is full of cheers (Peace for all)

No atom scare, no fat mammonNo room for war demonLike leaves in trees, like rays in the sunWe are one communion,One Divine communion (Peace for all)

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The good in you is good for allYour life is life for allThe God in you is God for allYour love is love for all (Peace for all)

For he or she or it or restThis collective life is bestThis Universal Life is bestNorth or South, or East or West (Peace for all)

Peace for plants and birds and beastsFor hills and streams and woodsPeace in Home − land and air and seaDynamic peace we see

Peace for all, peace for all

Immortal Peace for All

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Courage!

The night is through,The chain of slaveryIt is already broken -I am full of courage!

Peace in the morning,A golden sun risesLike a lion superhumanTo accomplish my dream.

A hopeful smile,Docile as a childWho plays in the infiniteWith a fiery star.

My journey is over;I enjoy time;The universe is my nest;Of eternal spring.

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Presentation ofDr. Shuddhananda Bharati

11th May 1897 – 7th March 1990

The wise one to the cosmic ageAlthough more than 90 years old, in hisschool in the south of India, Kavi YogiMaharishi (great divine visionary, wisepoet), Dr. Shuddhananda Bharati workedlike a young man of twenty. When he wasasked his age, he answered: “My age isCourage!”

The Yogi wrote several hundred works inEnglish, French, Tamil, Hindi, Telugu andSanskrit; five thousand songs, and fifteenhundred poems in French. The magnumopus of the man conscious of the presenceof God in him, Bharata Shakti, (in 50,000verses) described his ideal: only OneHumanity living in communion with onlyOne God in a transformed world! BharataShakti is a monumental and unique work.The Yogi depicts the essence of all the reli-gions, of all the prophets and saints, all theapproaches of Yoga and all the cultures on

an allegorical fabric. It is a book for anyage which all spiritual researchers and allnations should read and meditate on.

His commitment is summarized in hisbook celebrating his life, Pilgrim Soul.

The two poems mentioned in the openingexpress perfectly his ideal.

His mantra, Aum Shuddha Shakti Aum,nourishes our souls and guides our stepstoward the inner joy Ananda. It means: thelight of Grace and power of the puresupreme Almighty bless us with peace,happiness and prosperity!

Let the beauty and greatness of soul of Dr.Shuddhananda Bharati blooms and scentsthe entire Earth with its divine messageand spiritual and unifying benefactor!

Editions ASSA

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The Integral Yoga

I. The Integral Yogin

A dynamic message rose from the battle-field of Kurukshetra, fifty centuries ago:“Be a yogin, live in yoga with the Divine,act in the Divine Consciousness.” That wasthe message of Sri Krishna to the progres-sive humanity, through the medium of theheroic Arjuna. Through the thick maze ofheadlong Time, the word Yoga was strug-gling for a perfect expression. Its voice wasalmost drowned by the hell-cries of thebattling vital movements.

Here and there, some ascetics added attrib-utes to it according to individual predilec-tions and sought through yoga to still orkill the mind in featureless trance. Bookswere written on yogas; but yoga was still amystery or monopoly or a thing dreadedby family men. Humanity was still gropingthrough the blind alleys of ignorance with-out knowing the saving virtue of yoga.

A soothing harmony of hope and blisssweeps through the groans of the war-torn world:

Live in Yoga with the Divine, a Life Divine!

This is the message of Sri Aurobindo, themodern Superman, the yogin of an inte-gral vision of existence. He saved theword Yoga for humanity as a mantra ofthe living harmony of life. He explainedto us the integral sense of yoga as a meansof gaining God in the Spirit without los-ing the reality of actual life in the world.The word and its full virtue was actuallyre-discovered by him. It was he whocame like an Oedipus to solve the riddleof Existence.

He was the prophet of Indian Nationalism.Singular among all the prophets of nation-alism, Sri Aurobindo sought victorythrough God-Force, which is the bed-rockof Indian civilisation. Even amidst thepolitical tornado of those days, his inspiredgenius distinctly spoke out:

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“The new movement is essentially a spiri-tual movement. Its key-note is the essen-tial unity of God and Man. The divinity ofman is its highest gospel. To evolve Godout of man is its highest aim. It seeks tobring the Kingdom of Heaven on earth.”

God’s voice, His help, His Power, His Willin humanity and His Manifestationthrough the human instrumentality − thisis what he sought even during the BandeMataram days. He felt that yoga alonecould give that God-force, the DivineEnergy indispensable for the collectiveexistence of man in the freedom of theequal Spirit. Long before his name came tothe lime-light of public recognition, SriAurobindo began to practise yoga. Ini-tially he got some hints from the Gita, theUpanishads and one or two reliable Yogins.All the hints he got, he made his own fol-lowed the Inner Teacher who kindled thelatent fire ablaze and steeped him inserene meditation. Day by day, he felt theDivine touch and lived in His Conscious-ness. He made an utter surrender of hisego-personality to the Cosmic Lord of

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existence and followed His voice and lead.He put his whole conscious being intocontact with the Divine through peacefulinner communion. His devotion was notof the emotional sing-and-dance type. Itwas the sublime peace-attitude of theVedic seers.

“Even as I am appointed by Thee, O Lordseated in my heart, so I act.” This was thekey to his inner sadhana. Such was hisfaith and surrender. Perfectly equal to all,in all happenings, never yearning for anyindividual gift, always calling ferventlyfor the Divine Will to be done in him, SriAurobindo made his life a rhythm ofdynamic activity. Whatever he thought,wrote or spoke was a natural outfloweringof his God-Consciousness. He was notgoverned by the judgments of men but healways obeyed the unseen Power whichmoved him from within. He lived fromwithin out. The purity of his life and thedivinity of his voice drew the highestrespect and adoration from the heart of hiscountrymen. When the entire man wassubmitted to the sovereignty of the Divine

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Will, when the inner instrument was cleanand pure as a ready channel of Grace,when the heart was soaked in Divine loveand the head steeped in meditation, whenthe nature was in constant communionwith the Supreme, then He revealed Hisomnipresence and possessed the choseninstrument. The great aspiration of SriAurobindo to see the Divine in and outwas fulfilled one day, during his oneyear’s meditation in the Alipore jail:

“His strength entered into me, and I wasable to do the sadhana of the Gita, to dowork for Him without the demand forfruit. He made me realise the central truthof the Hindu Religion. His strengthentered into me. It was Vasudeva that sur-rounded me. I felt the arm of Sri Krishnaaround me.”

(Uttarpara Speech)

“Rare is that great soul who has realisedthe omnipresence of the Divine,” says theGita, and Sri Aurobindo came out of Ali-pore with such a realisation. He pouredout his inspired message through the

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columns of the Dharma and the KarmaYogin, showing the country how to liveand act in the Gita spirit. After two monthsof concentrated tapasya at Chandernagore,the Divine Will safely brought him toPondicherry, the chosen centre of his spir-itual work. After four years of silence, weheard his voice again.

The Arya revealed to us the Superman inSri Aurobindo. It is the Gospel of IntegralYoga replete with the Spirit’s highestpromises and eloquent with divine opti-mism. The Essays on the Gita, The Synthesisof Yoga and the Life Divine are the threeworks of deep spiritual vision that can becalled the Gospel of Sri Aurobindo, theIntegral Yogin. The Arya stopped in 1921.

Sri Aurobindo retired into inner silenceand solitude to explore still farther into thehigher planes of Supermind and to bringdown the Supramental Force that alonecan transform and divinise human life.Life is divinised and integralised throughthe yoga of living in conscious surrenderto the Divine.

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“The Integral Yoga is that which havingfound the Transcendent, can turn uponthe universe and possess it.”

I. What is Integral Yoga?

In the ordinary sense, Yoga means union,combination, contact, touch, connection.In the technical sense, the word means apsychological attempt to arrive at unitywith the Divine centred in the heart ofcreatures. The Divine in man is his quin-tessence. That is otherwise called the Selfor the Spirit. The realisation of the Spiri-tual Self is yoga. The old systems of yogawhich we shall briefly review later on,leave the mental man self-immersed andcall that the sole consummation of humanliving. Or it conceives of an extra-cosmicentity, a god in the Vaikuntha or Kailasaand tries a sudden high-jump to theunknown heaven, deserting the joy andbeauty of the existence here. The veryword samsara or life in the world andamong things that promote it is a taboo.This other-worldly tendency and this love

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of life-extinction have told heavily uponour national progress for ages. Man is notborn to be a lotus-eater. He cannot beindifferent to the planet which homes hisdestiny. He cannot shut his eyes to the sur-roundings and the onward march ofnations, saying “What if Rama rules orRavana rules?” Yoga should make man asage within and a brave hero in the battleof life. Yoga is not ascetic bareness. It is nota dry simplification of life; it is a richamplification of life in the Divine Spirit. Itis dynamic spiritual living.

This new meaning of yoga was given to usby Sri Aurobindo. He has completely revo-lutionised the spiritual and the materialview of life by his new interpretation of theword Yoga. He is the only yogin after SriKrishna who has boldly come forward asthe champion of life declaring that yoga isnot life-exclusion, but the fullness of life inthe Divine Spirit. Yoga is not runawayasceticism nor snake in the rope pessimism!

Sri Aurobindo defines yoga as life in unionor communion with the Divine. He calls it

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Integral Yoga. Integral means entire,whole, not partial but complete and per-fect. There are two entities of existence,the Spirit and Matter. The old systemscould not harmonise these two truths.Their idea of liberation was actually aseparation from Matter; a mutual divorceof the two fundamental co-ordinates oflife was the result and much was the lossthereby to humanity.

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