Yoga – An Evolution Through Union – An Unabridged Self

योगश्चित्तवृत्तिनिरोधः – मन अर्थात् चित्त की वृत्तियों का सर्वथा रुक जाना योग है । 

yogaścittavṛttinirodhaḥ – Yoga is hindering the Chitta from taking various forms(Vrittis).

Scientific development may help us in materialistic achievement but it may not be able to achieve the eternal peace. The ancient yoga may help to get rid of turmoil, hazards, and so. Practicing yoga is very much helpful to maintain peace, to lead and to uplift the human being. But the so called types of yoga may not help alone in evolution. Sri Aurobindo integrated all sorts of yoga to achieve the ultimate aim. He believed that the integration of all yogas mentioned in the Gita helps the human life to be transformed into a celestial one. For the total development of an individual he stressed on integration among all the areas of yoga, not on any one. He formulated three main stages, a ‘Triple transformation’, in the progression of the Integral Yoga: the Psychic, the Spiritual, and the Supra- mental. Therefore, the Integral yoga i.e. the synthesis of physical, vital, mental and spiritual being takes us from lower level of existence to higher level and to the highest level.

Yoga means union. It integrates our body, mind and thought process. Yoga is both – a path and the destination to a superior consciousness. This unifying power differentiates the human being from an inferior animal. Yoga is the exchange of an egoistic for a cosmic consciousness lifted towards or informed by the supra-cosmic, transcendent un-namable who is the source and support of all things. Yoga is the passage of the human thinking animal towards the Cosmic-consciousness from which he has descended.

Yoga is the union of that which has become separated in the play of the universe with its own true self, origin and universality’ and ‘the union of the soul with the immortal being’. The essence of yoga is the contact between the human being with the divinity.

The integral yoga is the way of a complete Self-realisation, a complete fulfilment of our being and consciousness, a complete transformation of our nature-and this implies a complete perfection of life here and not only a return to an eternal perfection elsewhere. The object of this Yoga is not to liberate the soul from Nature, but to liberate both soul and nature by sublimation into the Cosmic-  Consciousness from whom they came. 

Evolution is the process of liberation. Consciousness is the basic element to be transformed into higher and wider level and at last greater perfection occurs. Life is the first step of this release of consciousness; mind is the second; but the evolution does not finish with mind, it awaits a release into something greater, a consciousness which is spiritual and supra-mental. The next step of the evolution must be towards the development of Super-mind and Spirit as the dominant power in the conscious being. For only then will the involved cosmic activity in things release itself entirely and it become possible for life to manifest perfection.

The truth of existence is it’s ‘becoming’ and evolution gradually unfolds the truth. Evolution is not the evolution of ‘matter’ but evolution of ‘consciousness’. Consciousness is the life force, the energy, the motion that creates everything in the universe, from the ‘microcosm’ to the ‘macrocosm’; evolution step by step from mind, higher mind, intuitive mind, over-mind, and super mind.

The method we have to pursue, then, is to put our whole conscious being into relation and contact with the cosmos and to call Him in to transform our entire being into His. Thus in a sense cosmic force, the real Person in us, becomes the sadhaka of the sadhana as well as the Master of the Yoga by whom the lower personality is used as the centre of a cosmic transfiguration and the instrument of its own perfection. In effect, the pressure of the Tapas, the force of consciousness in us dwelling in the Idea of the cosmic Nature upon that which we are in our entirety, produces its own realisation. The cosmos and all-knowing and all-effecting descends upon the limited and obscure, progressively illumines and energises the whole lower nature and substitutes its own action for all the terms of the inferior human light and mortal activity.

The supreme truths are neither the rigid conclusions of logical reasoning nor the affirmations of creedal statement, but fruits of the soul’s inner experience.