Finding Auroville

Even though this blog is only a few posts old, it is already apparent that there is a focus on the importance of Integral Yoga in the context of Auroville. I did not know in which direction this blog would evolve, but at least at this early stage, it seems that the emphasis of the posts is on Integral Yoga. This is not too surprising, because even in Auroville I keep stressing on the importance of Integral Yoga like a broken record.

It is also becoming apparent, especially in the posts that I am currently writing and thinking about, that I keep referring to the “core Truth” of Integral Yoga. Therefore in this post I am describing very briefly what my understanding of this core Truth is. I can then link to this post whenever I need to mention this Truth in other posts.

In an earlier post I had quoted Sri Aurobindo a bit more extensively to elaborate on this core Truth. For this post I will be using sections of the same quotes, but in a more condensed manner, so as to convey the idea more concisely.

The Core Truth of Integral Yoga

We can describe Integral Yoga simply in a short sentence as: “Integral Yoga is action in the material world without material attachments.” If we want to add another sentence to complete the description, we can say: “Integral Yoga is action in the material world without material attachments, with the intent of moving the world towards the Divine.” Sri Aurobindo has described Integral Yoga at various levels. What I am referring to here is a description of Integral Yoga at a present, material, currently actionable level, i.e. at a level that is currently implementable in the lives of individual people.

In the final chapters of The Human Cycle, Sri Aurobindo writes about the one essential thing in Integral Yoga:

The one thing essential must take precedence, the conversion of the whole life of the human being to the lead of the spirit …

The secret of the transformation lies in the transference of our centre of living to a higher consciousness and in a change of our main power of living …

The central will implicit in life must be no longer the vital will in the life and the body, but the spiritual will of which we have now only rare and dim intimations and glimpses. For now it comes to us hardly disclosed, weakened, disguised in the mental Idea; but it is in its own nature supramental and it is its supramental power and truth that we have somehow to discover. The main power of our living must be no longer the inferior vital urge of Nature which is already accomplished in us and can only whirl upon its rounds about the ego-centre, but that spiritual force of which we sometimes hear and speak but have not yet its inmost secret …

To transfer from the vital being, the instrumental reality in us, to the spirit, the central reality, to elevate to that height our will to be and our power of living is the secret which our nature is seeking to discover …

This upward transference of our will to be and our power of life we have, then, to make the very principle of our perfection. That will, that power must choose between the domination of the vital part in us and the domination of the spirit …

For it is into the Divine within them that men and mankind have to grow; it is not an external idea or rule that has to be imposed on them from without …

Quotes taken from the last three chapters of The Human Cycle by Sri Aurobindo

Here Sri Aurobindo is stating the central current actionable principle of Integral Yoga. This is the same Truth that has been described in Vedanta, in the Upanishads, the Bhagvad Gita and has been a signal pulsing down the ages ever since. It is the movement away from identifying with our material selves and the material world, and towards the Divine in us and all around us. This is the central action we can enact in Integral Yoga today. Then, with this movement away from the material, away from our ego-self and towards the Divine, we simultaneously stay in the material world and act to transform humanity and the world itself, without any attachment to it. This is the core Truth of Integral Yoga that I will be referring to in coming posts.