All Life Is Yoga: The Soul and How to Find It ebook

The Souland How to Find It

Selections from the Works ofSri Aurobindo and The Mother

All

Life

Is

Yoga

„All life is Yoga.” - Sri Aurobindo

Content

Imprint

Publisher‘s Note

I. Preliminary

Soul – A Vaguely Used Word

What is “Myself”

False Soul and the True Soul

Unique Role of the Psychic Being

II. What is Soul?

Brahman – The Absolute

Atman – The Self (The Spirit)

Jivatman – The Individual Self (The Central Being)

Antaratman – The Psychic and Chaitya Purusha – The Psychic Being

III. How to Find the Soul

Importance of the Finding of the Soul

How to Find the Soul

Help of Images

To Catch the End of the Guiding Thread

Two Levers to Touch the Soul

Reaching the Soul by Listening to It

Perception of the Soul – Various Methods

Questions and Answers

Mother‘s Advice to the Aspirants

Discovery of the Soul – Its Purpose

Discovery of the Soul – Its Base

Discovery of the Soul – Its Discipline

Resistances to the Soul‘s Emergence

Next Step in Our Evolutionary Destiny

Meditations on the Soul

References

Sri Aurobindo Digital Edition

Imprint

ALL LIFE IS YOGA

The Soul and How to Find It

Selections from the Works ofSri Aurobindo and The Mother

First edition 2018

ISBN 978-3-937701-96-7

© 2018 AURO MEDIAVerlag und Fachbuchhandel Wilfried SchuhBerchtesgaden, Germany

[email protected]

© Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust, Puducherry, India

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Flower on the cover:Plumeria obtusa. White

Spiritual significance and explanation given by the Mother:Perfect psychological perfectionPsychological perfection in all the parts of the being.

Publisher‘s Note

This is one in a series of some e-books published by Sri Aurobindo Digital Edition under the title ALL LIFE IS YOGA. Our effort is to bring together, from Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, simple passages with a practical orientation on specific subjects, so that everyone may feel free to choose a book according to his inner need. The topics cover the whole field of human activity, because true spirituality is not the rejection of life but the art of perfecting life.

While the passages from Sri Aurobindo are in the original English, most of the passages from the Mother (selections from her talks and writings) are translations from the original French. We must also bear in mind that the excerpts have been taken out of their original context and that a compilation, in its very nature, is likely to have a personal and subjective approach. A sincere attempt, however, has been made to be faithful to the vision of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother.

The excerpts from the writings of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother carry titles and captions chosen by the editor, highlighting the theme of the excerpts and, whenever possible, borrowing a phrase from the text itself. The sources of the excerpts are given at the end of each issue.

We hope these e-books will inspire the readers to go to the complete works and will help them to mould their lives and their environments towards an ever greater perfection.

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The soul is something of the Divine that descends into the evolution as a divine Principle within it to support the evolution of the individual out of the Ignorance into the Light. It develops in the course of the evolution a psychic individual or soul individuality which grows from life to life, using the evolving mind, vital and body as its instruments. It is the soul that is immortal while the rest disintegrates; it passes from life to life carrying its experience in essence and the continuity of the evolution of the individual. – Sri Aurobindo

I. Preliminary

Soul – A Vaguely Used Word

Words of Sri Aurobindo

The word soul is very vaguely used in English – as it often refers to the whole non-physical consciousness including even the vital with all its desires and passions. That is why the word psychic being has to be used so as to distinguish this divine portion from the instrumental parts of the nature.

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Words of Sri Aurobindo

[The word] psychic is ordinarily used in the sense of anything relating to the inner movements of the consciousness or anything phenomenal in the psychology; in this case I have made a special use of it, relating it to the Greek word psyche meaning soul; but ordinarily people make no distinction between the soul and the mental-vital consciousness; for them it is all the same.

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What is “Myself”

Words of the Mother

...if the contact [with the soul] has been conscious and complete enough, it liberates you from the bondage of outer form; you no longer feel that you live only because you have a body. That is usually the ordinary sensation of the being, to be so tied to this outer form that when one thinks of “myself” one thinks of the body. That is the usual thing. The personal reality is the body’s reality. It is only when one has made an effort for inner development and tried to find something that is a little more stable in one’s being, that one can begin to feel that this “something” which is permanently conscious throughout all ages and all change, this something must be “myself”. But that already requires a study that is rather deep. Otherwise if you think “I am going to do this”, “I need that”, it is always your body, a small kind of will which is a mixture of sensations, of more or less confused sentimental reactions, and still more confused thoughts which form a mixture and are animated by an impulse, an attraction, a desire, some sort of a will; and all that momentarily becomes “myself” – but not directly, for one does not conceive this “myself” as independent of the head, the trunk, the arms and legs and all that moves – it is very closely linked.

It is only after having thought much, seen much, studied much, observed much that you begin to realise that the one is more or less independent of the other and that the will behind can make it either act or not act, and you begin not to be completely identified with the movement, the action, the realisation – that something is floating. But you have to observe much to see that.

And then you must observe much more still to see that this, the second thing that is there, this kind of active conscious will, is set in motion by “something else” which watches, judges, decides and tries to found its decisions on knowledge – that happens even much later. And so, when you begin to see this “something else”, you begin to see that it has the power to set in motion the second thing, which is an active will; and not only that, but that it has a very direct and very important action on the reactions, the feelings, the sensations, and that finally it can have control over all the movements of the being – this part which watches, observes, judges and decides.

That is the beginning of control.

When one becomes conscious of that, one has seized the thread, and when one speaks of control, one can know, “Ah! Yes, this is what has the power of control.”

This is how one learns to look at oneself.

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Words of the Mother

In truth, the only thing that is truly tragic is not to become conscious of one’s soul, the psychic being, and not to be entirely guided by it in one’s life.

To die before having found one’s soul and lived according to its law, that is the true failure.

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False Soul and the True Soul

Words of Sri Aurobindo

The soul is a spark of the Divine Spirit which supports the individual nature; mind, life, body are the instruments for the manifestation of the nature. In most men the soul is hidden and covered over by the action of the external nature; they mistake the vital being for the soul, because it is the vital which animates and moves the body. But this vital being is a thing made up of desires and executive forces good and bad; it is the desire-soul, not the true thing. It is when the true soul (psyche) comes forward and begins first to influence and then govern the actions of the instrumental nature that man begins to overcome vital desire and grow towards a greater divine nature.

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Words of Sri Aurobindo