18 Integral Yoga
7 Nolini Kanta Gupta
6 Satprem
5 Sri Aurobindo
4 The Mother
4 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03
3 On the Way to Supermanhood
3 Letters On Yoga IV
2 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04
01.08 - Walter Hilton: The Scale of Perfection, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The conception of original sin is a cardinal factor in Christian discipline. The conception, of sinfulness is the very motive-power that drives the aspirant. "Seek tensely," it is said, "sorrow and sigh deep, mourn still, and stoop low till thine eye water for anguish and for pain." Remorse and grief are necessary attendants; the way of the cross is naturally the calvary strewn with pain and sorrow. It is the very opposite of what is termed the "sunlit path" in spiritual ascension. Christian mystics have made a glorious spectacle of the process of "dying to the world." Evidently, all do not go the whole length. There are less gloomy and happier temperaments, like the present one, for example, who show an unusual balance, a sturdy common sense even in the midst of their darkest nights, who have chalked out as much of The Sunlit Path as is possible in this line. Thus this old-world mystic says: it is true one must see and admit one's sinfulness, the grosser and apparent and more violent ones as well as all the subtle varieties of it that are in you or rise up in you or come from the Enemy. They pursue you till the very end of your journey. Still you need not feel overwhelmed or completely desperate. Once you recognise the sin in you, even the bare fact of recognition means for you half the victory. The mystic says, "It is no sin as thou feelest them." The day Jesus gave himself away on the Cross, since that very day you are free, potentially free from the bondage of sin. Once you give your adherence to Him, the Enemies are rendered powerless. "They tease the soul, but they harm not the soul". Or again, as the mystic graphically phrases it: "This soul is not borne in this image of sin as a sick man, though he feel it; but he beareth it." The best way of dealing with one's enemies is not to struggle and "strive with them." The aspirant, the lover of Jesus, must remember: "He is through grace reformed to the likeness of God ('in the privy substance of his soul within') though he neither feel it nor see it."
If you are told you are still full of sins and you are not worthy to follow the path, that you must go and work out your sins first, here is your answer: "Go shrive thee better: trow not this saying, for it is false, for thou art shriven. Trust securely that thou art on the way, and thee needeth no ransacking of shrift for that that is passed, hold forth thy way and think on Jerusalem." That is to say, do not be too busy with the difficulties of the moment, but look ahead, as far as possible, fix your attention upon the goal, the intermediate steps will become easy. Jerusalem is another name of the Love of Jesus or the Bliss in Heaven. Grow in this love, your sins will fade away of themselves. "Though thou be thrust in an house with thy body, nevertheless in thine heart, where the stead of love is, thou shouldst be able to have part of that love... " What exquisite utterance, what a deep truth!
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0.11 - Letters to a Sadhak, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But few are they who tread The Sunlit Path;
Only the pure in soul can walk in light."7
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0 1961-09-30, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I had a clear vision of the two kinds of opposites in nature (not only in nature but in life) which almost everyone carries within himself: one is the possibility of realization, the other is the path chosen to attain it. There is always (its probably inevitable) the stormy path of struggle, and then there is The Sunlit Path. After much study and observation, I have had a sort of spiritual ambition (if it can be called that) to bring to the world a sunlit path, to eliminate the necessity for struggle and suffering: something that aspires to replace this present phase of universal evolution with a less painful phase.
It greatly interested me when I read your letter. I was looking at why you have so many difficulties; twice in your note you wrote that it [writing] is a suffering. You have very often written this word, very often spoken it, and it seems dominant in one aspect of your beingwhile in the other is the glory of a supreme joy, the very stuff of the future realization.
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0 1970-10-17, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(Then Satprem reads the third chapter of Supermanhood: The Sunlit Path. Afterwards, Mother remains looking at him for a long time, with a charming smile.)
Youve entered a new world. For those who can follow you, it will be good!
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0 1971-04-17, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
His yoga is integral because, instead of confining the quest to the spiritual heights, he has told us repeatedly that our body too must participate and we must bring the Spiritual Truth down into our body and our life. The path of ascent and all the other paths, the other planes of consciousness, are part of an integral development for those who have the time and the special capacities that are required. But it is no longer the time for those excursions, since everything can be found heresince, in fact, Sri Aurobindo and Mother opened the way HERE. Please recall Mothers statement: Sri Aurobindo came to tell us: one need not leave the earth to find the Truth, one need not leave life to find ones soul, one need not abandon the world or have limited beliefs to enter into relation with the Divine. The Divine is everywhere, in everything, and if he is hidden, it is because we do not take the trouble to find him. (Questions and Answers, 8.13.1958) And again this: For many, spiritual life is meditation. As long as that nonsense is not uprooted from human consciousness, the supramental force will always find it very difficult not to be swallowed up in the obscurity of an uncomprehending human mind. (Questions and Answers, 4.17.1957) And if you know how to read Sri Aurobindo and Mother, you will see that they have completely described this road of here and The Sunlit PathOn the Way to Supermanhood only puts an intentionally exclusive accent on the here, because there is no time to lose, because everyone does not have the special capacities for making large-scale explorations, and finally because we are at the Hour of Godwe are right there! It has come. Because there really is something different in the world since 1969.
It is not a change in Sri Aurobindos yoga, it is the flowering of Sri Aurobindos yoga, I dare say. I do not think that the flower of the flame tree contradicts in any way the flame tree.
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03.06 - Here or Otherwhere, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Some Conceptions and Misconceptions The Sunlit Path
Other Authors Nolini Kanta Gupta Part ThreeHere or Otherwhere
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Some Conceptions and Misconceptions The Sunlit Path
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03.07 - The Sunlit Path, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
object:03.07 - The Sunlit Path
author class:Nolini Kanta Gupta
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The Sunlit Path
Sri Aurobindo speaks of The Sunlit Path in Yoga. It is the path of happy progress where dangers and difficulties, violent ups and downs are reduced to a minimum, if not altogether obviated. In ideal conditions it is as it were a smooth and fair-weather sailing, as much of course as it is humanly possible. What are then these conditions? It is when the sadhaka keeps touch with his inmost being, his psychic consciousness, when this inner Guide and Helmsman is given the charge; for then he will be able to pass sovereignly by all shoals and rocks and storm-racks, through all vicissitudes, gliding onslow or swift as needed Inevitably towards the goal. A doubting mind, an impetuous vital urge, an inert physical consciousness, though they may be there in any strength, cannot disturb or upset the even tenor of the forward march. Even outward circumstances bow down to the pressure of the psychic temperament and bring to it their happy collaboration.
This may not always mean that all is easy and difficulty is simply not, once the psychic is there. It becomes so when the psychic is there fully in front; even otherwise when the inner being is in the background, still sensed and, on the whole, obeyed, although there are battles, hard battles to be fought and won, then even a little of this Consciousness saves from a great fear. For, then, in all circumstances, you will have found a secret joy and cheer and strength that buoy you up and carry you through.
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If the present war has any meaning, as we all declare it has, then we must never lose sight of that meaning. And our true victory will come only in the process of the realisation of that meaning. That is The Sunlit Path we refer to here which the nations have to follow in their mutual dealings. It is the path of the evolutionary call to which we say we have responded and to which we must remain loyal and faithful in thought, in speech and in deed. If we see dark and ominous clouds gathering round us, dangers and difficulties suddenly raising their heads, then we must look about and try honestly to find out whether we have not strayed away from The Sunlit Path.
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03.08 - The Spiritual Outlook, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The Sunlit Path Sectarianism or Loyalty
Other Authors Nolini Kanta Gupta Part ThreeThe Spiritual Outlook
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The Sunlit Path Sectarianism or Loyalty
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06.02 - The Way of Fate and the Problem of Pain, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
But few are they who tread The Sunlit Path;
Only the pure in soul can walk in light.
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06.07 - Total Transformation Demands Total Rejection, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Indeed, the experience of joy in the very process of suffering is a common experience with the saint and the martyr. We know of innumerable instances where the fierce torture of the flesh was drowned, overwhelmed in the ecstasy of the inner aspiration; the vital enthusiasm drawn from the inner flame suffuses, courses through the nerves and tissues with such energy and impetus that it effectively blocks out the invading reaction of pain. It is a discipline that has its value even for the sadhak of The Sunlit Path.
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1.03 - The Sunlit Path, #On the Way to Supermanhood, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
object:1.03 - The Sunlit Path
author class:Satprem
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3. The Sunlit Path
There are two paths, Sri Aurobindo used to say, the path of effort and The Sunlit Path. The path of effort is well known. It is the one that has presided over our entire mental life, because we try to reach for something we do not have or think we do not have. We are full of wants, of painful holes, of voids to be filled. But the void never gets filled. No sooner is it filled that another one opens up, drawing us into yet another pursuit. We are like an absence of something that can never find its presence, except in rare flashes, which vanish immediately and seem to leave an even greater void. We may say that we lack this or that, but we really lack one thing, and that is self: There is an absence of self. For what is really self is full, since it is. Everything else comes and goes, but is not. How could what is ever be in need of anything else? An animal is perfectly in its animal self, and once its immediate needs are satisfied, it is in equilibrium, in harmony with the universe. Mental man is not in his self, though he believes he is he even believes in the greatness of his self, because it must have size, like everything else, and there must be bigger and lesser selves, more or less voracious or talented or saintly or successful selves; but by doing so, man avows his own weakness, because how could what is self be more or less self? It is, or it is not. Mental man is not in his self: he is in his inventory, like a mole or a squirrel.
But then, where is that elusive self?... To ask the question is to knock at the door of the next circle, to engage in the movement of introspection of the second kind. And here, too, it is pointless to theorize on the nature of the self; it must be sought and discovered experientially. Now, we did say that the method had to take place in life and matter, because we can very well shut ourselves up in a room, keep out the sounds of the world, keep out its desires, tensions and countless tentacles; we can hold all these things at arm's length and, maybe, from within our little inner circle catch a glimpse of self, some ineffable transcendence, but the minute we open the door of our room and let go of our grip, everything will fall back on us again, like a mantle of seaweed over a diver, and we will find ourselves exactly as before, only less capable of putting up with the noise and swarm of little cravings awaiting their hour. It is not by the grip of our virtues or exceptional meditations that we shall clear away that mantle, but by something else altogether. We will therefore start with what we are and as we are, at the physical level of everyday life.
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Then the vain walker discovers something else. He notices that those scattered little drops of light (is it light? it is rather like a sudden eruption into something else, a vibration so swift it escapes our habitual perceptions and colorful translations; it vibrates, it is something vibrating, like a note of another music for which we have no ear yet, colored brush strokes of another country for which we have no eyes yet), those tiny little landmarks of a blind geography, are indestructible, as it were. They live and go on living long after they have passed by, as if they never passed away. And indeed they never pass away; they are the only thing that does not pass. It seems as if that little tear there, in front of that poster or park bench, that sudden stare before nothing, maintains its own intensity; that drop of something else, that sudden little cry for nothing, goes on being, as if it had settled into a secret cleft in us and kept on vibrating and vibrating, one drop added to another without ever dissipating, without ever being lost; and it keeps building up and building up like an unfailing reservoir in us, a haven in the making, a set of batteries gradually being charged with another intensity, and which is like a beginning of being. We begin to set out upon The Sunlit Path.
We are no longer quite in the machine, although it may still snag us from time to time, but only to make us feel its crushing tension, its dark rotation in a nothing which connects with nothing which connects with nothing we have felt another air, even if it seems like nothing, and we can no longer put up with this nonexistence, which rambles from one end of the planet to the other, from one phone call to another, one appointment to another, which goes up and down the endless grind where nothing ever happens, except the same sempiternal story with different faces and different names and different words, on this boulevard or another it has to be! Between this lamppost and that one, this third floor and the fourth, this 9 a.m. and 9:30 a.m. of a clock that times nothing, something has to be, to live, this footstep has to have its eternal meaning as if it were unique in the millions of hours on the dial, this gesture has to be borne by someone, this newspaper stand we pass, this rip in the carpet, this doorbell we ring, this second this second has to have its own unique and irreplaceable wholeness of existence as if it alone were to shine till the end of time oh, not this nothingness walking in nothingness! Let it be, be, be!... We want to remember, remember all the time, and not just drift down the boulevard like a jellyfish. But remember what? We don't even know what has to be remembered to be sure, not I or the machine, or anything that again connects one thing to another. A pure recall, which ends up becoming like a call, a fire burning for nothing, a little vibration of being that accompanies us everywhere and permeates everything, fills everything, each step, each gesture, each second, and which even extends behind us, as if we moved within another space, with that little fellow in the foreground who keeps going on, but who is no longer totally in it, who has already absconded, filled his lungs with another air, who hearkens to another song, runs to another rhythm and it is almost like an eternal rhythm, very vast and soft. And all of a sudden, he raises his head in the middle of that boulevard; he pokes his head above the frenzy; and it is such a clear look, so luminous, almost joyful, sparkling, wide and sunny, taking everything in at a glance, so triumphant and sure and crystalline instant royalty. We are! It is!
We are on The Sunlit Path, as if carried by that growing little vibration of being.
We had no need of silence, of a well-insulated room, of keeping life's tentacles at a distance. On the contrary, the tighter they grasp and try to suffocate us, the more deafened we are by all that racket of life, and the more it burns inside, the hotter it is, the greater the need to be that and only that, that other vibrating thing without which we cannot live or brea the forgetting it even for a second is to fall into total suffocation. We are treading The Sunlit Path amidst the world's darkness inside, outside, it's all the same, alone or in a crowd we are forever safe, nothing and nobody can take that away from us! We carry our secret royalty everywhere we go, moving ahead gropingly within another geography, which gradually reveals secret harbors and unexpected fjords and continents of peace and glimpses of unknown seas reverberating with the echo of a vaster life. There is no more wanting or not wanting in us, no more compulsion to acquire this or that, no struggle to live or become or know: we are borne by another rhythm that has its spontaneous knowledge, its clear life, its unforeseeable will and lightning effectiveness. A different kingdom begins to open up to us; we cast another look at the world, still a little blind and unknowing, but insightful, as if pregnant with a reality yet unborn, made wide by a knowledge still unformulated, a still shy wonderment. Perhaps we are like that brother ape of not so long ago who looked at his forest with a strange look, at his mates who ran and climbed and hunted so well but were not aware of the clear little vibration, the odd marvel, the sudden stillness that seemed to sunder the dark clouds and stretch far, far away, into a vastness vibrating with creative possibilities.
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1.09 - The Greater Self, #On the Way to Supermanhood, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
Gradually, he entered an all, but, oh, quite an odd all, which had nothing to do with a cosmic or transcendent or dazzling consciousness yet which was like a million little bursts of gold, fleeting, elusive, almost mocking. Perhaps we should say a microscopic consciousness? and warm: a sudden sweetness of recognition, an eruption of gratefulness, an incomprehensible flush of tenderness, as if it were living, vibrating, responding in every corner and every direction. Strangely, when a question arose, or a doubt, or an uncertainty about something or someone, a problem about a course of action, an anxiety about what to do or not to do, it seemed as if the answer came to him as living facts not as an illumination or inspiration, a revelation or thought, nothing of that sort: a material answer in external circumstances, as though the earth itself, like itself, supplied the answer. As if the very circumstances came and took his hand and said, Here, you see? And not great circumstances, not sensational flashes: very little facts, while going from one end of the street to the other. All of a sudden the thing came to him, the person or the encounter, the money, the book, or the unexpected development the living answer. Or, on the contrary, when he was so much hoping for certain news (if he had not yet been cured of the disease of hope), when he was looking forward to some arrangement, a peaceful retreat, a clear-cut solution, he was suddenly engulfed in a still greater chaos, as if everything turned against him people, things, circumstances or he fell ill, met with an accident, opened the door to an old weakness and seemed to be treading the old road of suffering again. Then, two hours or two days or two months after, he realized that that adversity was exactly what was needed, which led, by a circuitous route, to a goal larger than he had foreseen; that that illness had purified his substance, cut him off from a wrong course, and brought him back, lighter, onto The Sunlit Path; that that fall had exposed old hiding places in himself and clarified his heart; that that unfortunate encounter was a perfection of exactness to bring forth a whole new network of possibilities or impossibilities to overcome; and that everything concurred meticulously to prepare his strength, his breadth, his extreme swiftness, through a thousand and one detours the all prepared him for the all. He then begins to experience a succession of unbelievable little miracles, of strange happenings, bewildering coincidences... as if, really, everything knew, each thing knew what it had to do and went straight to its microscopic goal amidst millions of passersby and trifling events. At first, the seeker does not believe it; he shrugs his shoulders and dismisses it, then he opens one eye, then the other, and doubts his own amazement. It is of such microscopic exactness, such fabulously unbelievable precision in the midst of this gigantic crisscrossing of lives and things and circumstances, that it is simply impossible it is like an explosion of total knowledge embracing in one fell swoop this ant walking down Main Street and the thousands of passersby and all their possible itineraries, all their particular circumstances past, present and future to create this unique conjunction, this incredible perfect little second in which everything accords and agrees, is inevitably, and provides the unique answer to a unique question.
And the same thing happens again and again; the coincidences multiply. Chance gradually reveals an innumerable smile or, perhaps, another self, a great self, which knows its totality, and each fragment of its totality and each second of its world, as much as our body knows the least quiver of its cells, and the passing fly, and the rhythm of its heart. With eyes wide open, the seeker begins to enter an innumerable wonder. The world is a single body, the earth, a single consciousness in motion. But not a body whose consciousness is centered in a few gray cells upstairs: an innumerable consciousness centered everywhere and as total in a little ephemeral cell as in the gesture that will alter the destiny of nations. In each point consciousness answers consciousness. The seeker has left the cutting little truths of the mind, the dogmatic and geometric lines of thought. He enters an inexpressible fullness of view, a comprehensive truth in which each fragment has its meaning and each second, its smile, each darkness, its light, each harshness, its awaiting sweetness. He gropingly discovers the honeycombs covered by the rock.22 Each fall is a degree of widening, each footstep, a blossoming of the inevitable efflorescence, each adversity, a lever of the future. Being wrong is a crack in our armor through which a flame of pure love shines which understands everything.
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1.15 - The Transformed Being, #On the Way to Supermanhood, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
But this is still a negative way of saying things, for the traveler of The Sunlit Path seeks neither hells nor Night, nor the tiny flash-deaths, though they sometimes befall him in a cry of suffocation. He seeks to remain always tuned in to the great flow of Harmony and Light and Truth, in everything he does, his every function, every breath of air he takes, every heartbeat. He is a meticulous colonizer of the Light. He pushes it into every nook and cranny of his body, into his sleep as well as his waking, into every activity, every movement, every dark alley of the body, as in the past on the boulevards outside, and he gains ground step by step, cell by cell. He lights the fire of need need for truth, need for light, need for space in every one of those infinitesimal fortresses and pushes back ever farther the line of unconsciousness. Illnesses befall him, his strength declines,49 death smirks for an instant, but this is no longer even a trap or a fall, for he has his eyes wide open and sees that an infallible Hand has led him into this abyss so he can light a fire of truth there, too, a cry for help, a need of space and infinity and the second the true cry bursts out, everything vanishes; illness, death, all are gone in a split second, like an unreal dream. He learns the unreality of death. It is the supreme unreality; it crumbles in the twinkling of an eye under a single little breath of truth. But if we believe in it, it is instantaneous death. The implacable flow of basalt swallows us up into its nothingness which is nothing really, nonexistent; the cry of a child pierces it effortlessly! There is but one reality, which is the immortal Truth, the eternal Sun, the great and soft flowing that moves the worlds and bodies if we want to believe in it, want to let ourselves be carried by It; if we consent to The Sunlit Path. It is the only Reality. Death does not exist; it is only the forgetting of That. A second of recall, and everything sparkles in the sun again everything has never ceased sparkling in the sun. There was never any shadow, never any death; there was that false look. Death is a false look. The world is growing toward its true Look, which will change everything into what it really is; it is growing toward its Fire, which will transmute everything into what it really is. The Truth of one point will unveil the Truth of all points; the Truth of matter will act on every fragment of matter and death and the shadow and the NO buried in the heart of the world will reveal their immortal face, their eternal light, their consenting and glorious YES, because they will have touched their supreme bottom and completed their mission, which was to take us to the gates of the Sun, in our body and upon an earth of truth.
But tracking down falsehood and unconsciousness in the body would still not bring us immortality. It would only prolong life at will. And who would care to wear one coat for a hundred years or be confined in one narrow and changeless lodging unto a long eternity, said Sri Aurobindo.50 To perpetuate life in its present, coarse functioning would indeed be a dreadful burden, which we would soon wish to be rid of. Thus, this prolongation of life at will is only a first operational step to give us the time to build the supramental being in our body. Doing it takes time; it is a race between the swiftness of death and the speed of the transformation. Sri Aurobindo estimated that it would take three hundred years to form that being. But it does seem that the movement is accelerating more and more, and perhaps that supreme transformation does not depend so much on the length of time of individual preparation as it does on the preparation of the earth body as a whole and on its ability to accept the new world. And the Force of the New World is pounding the earth mercilessly; it is advancing with giant strides. The seams are cracking, and what seemed like a distant peal is becoming a thunderous death knell, which hides the next resurrection. We are touching rock bottom; we are before the gate of the deep Night which veils the unexpected.
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12.09 - The Story of Dr. Faustus Retold, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Notes on Freedom The Sunlit Path
Other Authors Nolini Kanta Gupta Part Twelve The Story of Dr. Faustus Retold
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Notes on Freedom The Sunlit Path
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12.10 - The Sunlit Path, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
object:12.10 - The Sunlit Path
author class:Nolini Kanta Gupta
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Other Authors Nolini Kanta Gupta Part Twelve The Sunlit Path
The Sunlit Path
The modern, particularly the western mind captured by the rational or scientific spirit cannot but pursue the same line even in the domain of other and higher realities. The father and the great representative of the movement was Descartes, the very famous French thinker. To find the pure and unalloyed truth, he taught, one must keep away all possibility of error: so to dispel all doubt one must begin by doubting everything, to avoid being the dupe of imagination, delusion or hallucination it is always safe to doubt everything. A second reflection, however, raises the question, but who doubts: it is I who doubt, the one who doubts is I; the doubter cannot be doubted, so he exists. Thus we arrive at the first undoubtable reality. But the irony of the argument is that even the doubter came to be doubted in the end: there is no guarantee that even the doubter is not an illusion. Thus we wander into a blind lane, a cul de sac: we knock our head against a dead wall.
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This is, we may say, the left-handed path towards the spirit, the path of the bar-sinister, that leads into, at least, through the dark night: this is usually, as I have said, the western, the rational mind's way, the way of scientism; but there is also the very ancient eastern or the Indian way, the way of the bar-dexter, the right-hand path. Sri Aurobindo often spoke of The Sunlit Path the Upanishadic surya ynaor the golden pathhiramaya vartma. Here the very first thing needed the first and the mustis Faith; here you start by faith and not doubt, doubt inevitably heads towards perditionsaaytm vinayati, as the Gita says: it disperses and dissipates the consciousness, dissolves it like scattered clouds. Indeed you are not to try to prove the existence of God and reality; the kind of proofs collected by the theologians of Europe and which to them appear to be final and definitive the fivefold proofs, scholastically named ontological, teleological etc., etc.do not carry conviction to any sane and sincere inquirer. On the contrary, one should go the other way the boot is on the other leg: it is the ultimate truth and reality that proves all other proofs and realities, we recall the famous Upanishadic phrase: "all other lights shine by that light"tasya bhs sarvamidam vibhti. You cannot by your own will and strength and endeavour attain the spiritual reality. When that chooses to unveil itself, then only your eyes have the vision of its own body.
The rational mind scoffs at faith and calls it blind. Yes, blind to the unrealities, open to the reality. In fact faith can be called blind only when the faith is in darkness and ignorance, faith is open-eyed when the faith is in the light.
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2.3.1 - Ego and Its Forms, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
If the ego is gone and the full surrender is there, then there should be no obstacles [to following The Sunlit Path of sadhana]. If however the rajas of the vital is only quiescent, then its quiescence may bring up the tamas in its place, and that would be the obstacle.
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3.2.08 - Bhakti Yoga and Vaishnavism, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
At any rate Ramakrishna told the story of Narada and the ascetic Yogi and the Vaishnava Bhakta with approval of its moral. I put it in my own language but keep the substance. Narada on his way to Vaikuntha met a Yogi practising hard tapasya on the hills. O Narada, cried the Yogi, you are going to Vaikuntha and will see Vishnu. I have been practising terrific austerities all my life and yet I have not even now attained to Him. Ask Him at least for me when I shall reach Him. Then Narada met a Vaishnava, a Bhakta who was singing songs to Hari and dancing to his own singing, and he cried also, O Narada, you will see my Lord, Hari. Ask my Lord when I shall reach Him and see His face. On his way back Narada came first to the Yogi. I have asked Vishnu; you will realise Him after six more lives. The Yogi raised a cry of loud lamentation, What, so many austerities! such gigantic endeavours! and my reward is realisation after six long lives! O how hard to me is the Lord Vishnu. Next Narada met again the Bhakta and said to him, I have no good news for you. You will see the Lord, but only after a lakh of lives. But the Bhakta leapt up with a great cry of rapture, Oh, I shall see my Lord Hari! after a lakh of lives I shall see my Lord Hari! How great is the grace of the Lord. And he began dancing and singing in a renewed ecstasy. Then Narada said, Thou hast attained. Today thou shalt see the Lord! Well, you may say, What an extravagant story and how contrary to human nature! Not so contrary as all that and in any case hardly more extravagant than the stories of Harishchandra and Shivi. Still I do not hold up the Bhakta as an example, for I myself insist on the realisation in this life and not after six or a lakh of births more. But the point of these stories is in the moral and surely when Ramakrishna told it, he was not ignorant that there was a sunlit path of Yoga! He even seems to say that it is the quicker way as well as the better! You are quite mistaken in thinking that the possibility of The Sunlit Path is a discovery or original invention of mine. The very first books on Yoga I read more than thirty years ago spoke of the dark and sunlit way and emphasised the superiority of the second over the other.
It is not either because I have myself trod the sunlit way or flinched from difficulty and suffering and danger. I have had my full share of these things and the Mother has had ten times her full share. But that was because the finders of the Way had to face these things in order to conquer. No difficulty that can come on the sadhak but has faced us on the path; against many we have had to struggle hundreds of times (in fact that is an understatement) before we could overcome; many still remain protesting that they have a right until the perfect perfection is there. But we have never consented to admit their inevitable necessity for others. It is in fact to ensure an easier path to others hereafter that we have borne that burden. It was with that object that the Mother once prayed to the Divine that whatever difficulties, dangers, sufferings were necessary for the path might be laid on her rather than on others. It has been so far heard that as a result of daily and terrible struggles for years those who put an entire and sincere confidence in her are able to follow The Sunlit Path and even those who cannot, yet when they do put the trust find their path suddenly easy and, if it becomes difficult again, it is only when distrust, revolt, abhiman, or other darknesses come upon them. The Sunlit Path is not altogether a fable.
But you will ask what of those who cannot? Well, it is for them I am putting forth all my efforts to bring down the supramental Force within a measurable time. I know that it will descend but I am seeking its near descent and, with whatever dark obstruction of the earth-nature or furious inroads of the Asuric forces seeking to prevent it, it is approaching the terrestrial soil. The supramental is not, as you imagine, something cold, hard and rocklike. It bears within it the presence of the Divine Love as well as the Divine Truth and its reign here means for those who accept it the straight and thornless path on which there is no wall or obstacle of which the ancient Rishis saw the far-off promise.
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3.4.2 - The Inconscient and the Integral Yoga, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
I have explained to you why so many people (not by any means all) are in this gloomy condition, dull and despondent. It is the tamas, the inertia of the Inconscient, that has got hold of them. But also it is the small physical vital which takes only an interest in the small and trivial things of the ordinary daily and social life and nothing else. When formerly the sadhana was going on on higher levels (mind, higher vital etc.), there was plenty of vigour and verve and interest in the details of the Asram work and life as well as in an inner life; the physical vital was carried in the stream. But for many this has dropped; they live in the unsatisfied vital physical and find everything desperately dull, gloomy and without interest or issue. In their inner life the tamas from the Inconscient has created a block or a bottleneck and they do not find any way out. If one can keep the right condition and attitude, a strong interest in work or a strong interest in sadhana, then this becomes quiescent. That is the malady. Its remedy is to keep the right condition and to bring gradually or, if one can, swiftly the light of the higher aspiration into this part of the being also, so that whatever the conditions of the environment, it may keep also the right poise. Then The Sunlit Path should be less impossible.
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4.2.1 - The Right Attitude towards Difficulties, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
There is no contradiction between my former statements about The Sunlit Path and what I have said about the difficult and unpleasant passages which the Yoga has to pass through in its normal development in the way of human nature. The Sunlit Path can be followed by those who are able to practise surrender, first a central surrender and afterwards a more complete self-giving in all the parts of the being. If they can achieve and preserve the attitude of the central surrender, if they can rely wholly on the Divine and accept cheerfully whatever comes to them from the Divine, then their path becomes sunlit and may even be straightforward and easy. They will not escape all difficulties, no seeker can, but they will be able to meet them without pain and despondency,as indeed the Gita recommends that Yoga should be practised, anirviacetas,trusting in the inner guidance and perceiving it more and more or else in the outer guidance of the Guru. It can also be followed even when one feels no light and no guidance if there is or if one can acquire a bright settled faith and happy bhakti or has the nature of the spiritual optimist and the firm belief or feeling that all that is done by the Divine is done for the best even when we cannot understand his action. But all have not this nature, most are very far from it, and the complete or even the central surrender is not easy to get and to keep it always is hard enough for our human nature. When these things are not there, the liberty of the soul is not attained and we have instead to undergo the law or fulfil a hard and difficult discipline.
That law is imposed on us by the Ignorance which is the nature of all our parts; our physical being is obviously a mass of ignorance, the vital is full of ignorant desires and passions, the mind is also an instrument of Ignorance struggling towards some kind of imperfect and mostly inferior and external knowledge. The path of the seeker proceeds through this ignorance; for a long time he can find no light of solid experience or realisation, only the hopes and ideas and beliefs of the mind which do not give the true spiritual seeing; or he gets glimpses of light or periods of light but the light often goes out and the luminous periods are followed by frequent or long periods of darkness. There are constant fluctuations, persistent disappointments, innumerable falls and failures. No path of Yoga is really easy or free from these difficulties or fluctuations; the way of bhakti is supposed to be the easiest, but still we find constant complaints that one is always seeking but never finding and even at the best there is a constant ebb and tide, milana and viraha, joy and weeping, ecstasy and despair. If one has the faith or in the absence of faith the will to go through, one passes on and enters into the joy and light of the divine realisation. If one gets some habit of true surrender, then all this is not necessary; one can enter into the sunlit way. Or if one can get some touch of what is called pure bhakti, uddh bhakti, then whatever happens that is enough; the way becomes easy, or if it does not, still this is a sufficient start to support us to the end without the sufferings and falls that happen so often to the ignorant seeker.
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