A Yoga of the Art of Lift 

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WHEN Sri Aurobindo said, "Our Yoga is not for ourselves but for humanity," many heaved a sigh of relief and thought that the great soul was after all not entirely lost to the world, his was not one more name added to the long list of Sannyasins that India has been producing age after age without much profit either to herself or to the human society (or even perhaps to their own selves). People understood his Yoga to be a modern one, dedicated to the service of humanity. If service to humanity was not the very sum and substance of his spiritual­ity, it was, at least, the fruitful end and consummation. His Yoga was a sort of art to explore and harness certain unseen powers that can better and ameliorate human life in a more suc­cessful way than mere rational scientific methods can hope to do.

Sri Aurobindo saw that the very core of his teaching was being missed by this common interpretation of his saying. So he changed his words and said, "Our Yoga is not for humanity but for the Divine." But I am afraid this change of front, this volte-face, as it seemed, was not welcomed in many quarters; for thereby all hope of having him back for the work of the country or the world appeared to be totally lost and he came to be looked upon again as an irrevocable "metaphysical" dreamer, aloof from physical things and barren, even like the Immutable Brahman.

 

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In order to get a nearer approach to the ideal for which Sri Aurobindo has been labouring, we may combine with

advantage the two mottoes he has given us and say that his mission is to find and express the Divine in humanity. This is the service he means to render to humanity, viz, to manifest and embody in it the Divine: his goal is not merely an amelio­ration, but a total change and transformation, the divinisation of human life.

Here also one must guard against certain misconceptions that are likely to occur. The transformation of human life does not necessarily mean that the entire humanity will be changed into a race of gods or divine beings; it means the evolution or appearance on earth of a superior type of human­ity, even as man evolved out of animality as a superior type of animality, not that the entire animal kingdom was changed into humanity.

As regards the possibility of such a consummation, – Sri Aurobindo says it is not a possibility but an inevitability – ­one must remember that the force that will bring about the result and is already at work is not any individual human power, however great it may be, but the Divine himself, it is the Divine's own Shakti that is labouring for the destined end.

of the past efforts and achievements. Furthermore, the descent spoken of here is the descent, not of a divine consciousness – ­for there are many varieties of divine consciousness – but of the Divine's own consciousness, of the Divine himself with his Shakti. For it is that that is directly working out this evolu­tionary transformation of the age.

            It is not my purpose here to enter into details as to the exact meaning of the descent, how it happens and what are its lines of activity and the results brought about. For it is indeed an actual descent that happens: the Divine Light leans down first into the mind and begins its purificatory work there­ although it is always the inner heart which first recognises the Divine Presence and gives its assent to the Divine action-for the mind, the higher mind that is to say, is the summit of the ordinary human consciousness and receives more easily and readily the Radiances that descend. From the Mind the Light filters into the denser regions of the emotions and desires, of life activity and vital dynamism; finally, it gets into brute Matter itself, the hard and obscure rock of the physical body, for that too has to be illumined and made the very form and figure of the Light supernal. The Divine in his descending Grace is the Master-Architect who is building slowly and surely the many-chambered and many-storeyed edifice that is human nature and human life into the mould of the Divine Truth in its perfect play and supreme expression. But this is a matter which can be closely considered when one is already well within the mystery of the path and has acquired the elementary essentials of an initiate.

            Another question that troubles and perplexes the ordinary human mind is as to the time when the thing will be done. Is it now or a millennium hence or at some astronomical distance in future, like the cooling of the sun, as someone has suggested for an analogy. In view of the magnitude of the work one might with reason say that the whole eternity is there before us, and a century or even a millennium should not be grudged to such a labour – for it is nothing less than an undoing of untold millenniums in the past and the building of a far-flung futurity. However, as we have said, since it is the Divine's own work and since Yoga means a concentrated and involved process of action, effectuating in a minute what 

would perhaps take years to accomplish in the natural course, one can expect the work to be done sooner rather than later. Indeed, the ideal is one of here and now – here upon this earth of material existence and now in this life, in this very body – not hereafter or elsewhere. How long exactly that will mean, depends on many factors, but a few decades on this side or the other do not matter very much.

As to the extent of realisation, we say again that that is not a matter of primary consideration. It is not the quantity but the substance that counts. Even if it were a small nucleus it would be sufficient, at least for the beginning, provided it is the real, the genuine thing­

 

Swalpamapyasya dharmasya trayate mahato bhayat¹ 

 

Now, if it is asked what is the proof of it all, how can one be sure that one is not running after a mirage, a chimera? We can only answer with the adage; the proof of the pudding is in the eating thereof. 

 

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I have a word to add finally in justification of the title of this essay. For, it may be asked, how can spirituality be con­sidered as one of the Arts or given an honourable place in their domain?

From a certain point of view, from the point of view of essentials and inner realities, it would appear that spirituality is, at least, the basis of the arts, if not the highest art. If art is meant to express the soul of things, and since the true soul of things is the divine element in them, then certainly spiritual­ity, the discipline of coming in conscious contact with the Spirit, the Divine, must be accorded the regal seat in the hierarchy of the arts. Also, spirituality is the greatest and the most difficult of the arts; for it is the art of life. To make of life a perfect work of beauty, pure in its lines, faultless in its rhythm, replete with strength, iridescent: with light, vibrant with delight-an embodiment of the Divine, in a word-is       

 

¹ The Gita, II. 40

the highest ideal of spirituality; viewed – the spirituality that Sri Aurobindo practises – is the ne plus ultra of artistic creation.