December 1, 2010 – THE ENTIRE PURPOSE OF YOGA

Because God has willed and foreseen everything,
thou shouldst not therefore sit inactive and wait upon His providence,
for thy action is one of His chief effective forces.
Up then and be doing, not with egoism,
but as the circumstance,
instrument and apparent cause of the event that He has predetermined.

Sri Aurobindo

(Thoughts and Aphorisms 131)

THE ENTIRE PURPOSE OF YOGA

By YOGA we can rise out of falsehood into truth, out of weakness into force, out of pain and grief into bliss, out of bondage into freedom, out of death into immortality, out of darkness into light, out of confusion into purity, out of imperfection into perfection, out of self-division into unity, out of Maya into God. All other utilisation of Yoga is for special and fragmentary advantages not always worth pursuing. Only that which aims at possessing the fullness of God is Purna Yoga; the Sadhaka of the Divine Perfection is the Purna Yogin.

Our aim must be to be perfect as God in His being and bliss is perfect, pure as He is pure, blissful as He is blissful, and, when we are ourselves siddhas in Purna Yoga, to bring all mankind to the same divine perfection. It does not matter if for the present we fall short of our aim, so long as we give ourselves whole- heartedly to the attempt and by living constantly in it and for it move forward even two inches upon the road; even that will help to lead humanity out of struggle and twilight in which it now dwells into the luminous joy which God intends for us. But whatever our immediate success, our unvarying aim must be to perform the whole journey and not lie down content in any wayside stage or imperfect resting place.

All Yoga which takes us entirely away from the world, is a high but narrow specialisation of divine tapasyai. God in His perfection embraces everything;we also must become all-emracing.

God in His ultimate existence beyond all manifestation and all knowledge, is the Absolute Parabrahman; in relation to the world He is that which transcends all universal existence while regarding it or in turning away from it; He is that which contains and upholds the universe, He is that which becomes the universe and He is the universe and everything which it contains…..

Sri Aurobindo

SABCL Vol.17, page 61