All Life Is Yoga: What is Yoga ebook

What is Yoga

Selections from the Works ofSri Aurobindo and The Mother

All

Life

Is

Yoga

„All life is Yoga.” - Sri Aurobindo

CONTENTS

Imprint

Publisher‘s Note

This We Call as Ourselves

What is Yoga

The Systems of Yoga

The Integral Yoga

This is the Aim of Thy Being

The Way

Difficulties and Yoga

Yoga in Everyday Life

References

Sri Aurobindo Digital Edition

Imprint

ALL LIFE IS YOGA

What is Yoga

Selections from the Works ofSri Aurobindo and The Mother

First edition May 2017

ISBN 978-3-937701-56-1

© 2017 AURO MEDIAVerlag und Fachbuchhandel Wilfried SchuhBerchtesgaden, Germany

www.auro.media verlag@auro.media

© Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust, Puducherry, India

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Flower on the cover:

Helianthus (Sunflower)

Spiritual significance and explanation given by the Mother: Consciousness turned towards the Light It thirsts for the light and cannot live without it.

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 life of a man is unfulfilled unless he has found the Divine. – The Mother

To fulfil God in life is man’s manhood. – Sri Aurobindo

This We Call as Ourselves

Words of Sri Aurobindo

All Yoga starts from the perception that what we are now or rather what we perceive as ourselves and so call is only an ignorant partial and superficial formulation of our nature. It is not our whole self, it is not even our real self; it is a little representative personality put forward by the true and persistent being in us for the experience of this brief life; we not only have been in the past and can be in the future but we are much more than that in the present secret totality of our being and nature. Especially, there is a secret soul in us that is our true person; there is a secret self that is our true impersonal being and spirit. To unveil that soul and that self is one of the most important movements of Yoga.

***

What is Yoga

Words of Sri Aurobindo

Yoga is in its essence a passage from the ordinary consciousness in which we are aware only of appearances into a higher wider deeper consciousness in which we become aware of realities and of the one Reality. Not only do we become aware of it, but we can live in it and act from it and according to it instead of living in and according to the appearance of things. Yoga is a passage from ignorance to self-knowledge, from our apparent to our true being, from an outer phenomenal mental vital material life-existence to an inner spiritual existence and a spiritualised nature.

By Yoga we pass from the phenomenal to the real Man, from the consciousness of our own apparent outer nature to the consciousness of our real self, Atman, an inner and inmost man, Purusha, that which we truly and eternally are. This self or true being remains constant through all the changes of our phenomenal being, changes of the mind, life or body or changes of our apparent personality; it is permanent, perpetual and immortal, a portion or manifestation of the Eternal.

By Yoga we pass also from our consciousness of the phenomenal appearance or appearances of the cosmos or world around us to a consciousness of its truth and reality. We become aware of the world as a manifestation of or in universal being who is the true truth of all that we see, hear, experience. We become aware of a cosmic Consciousness which is the secret of the cosmic Energy, a cosmic Self or Spirit, the cosmic Divine, the universal Godhead.

But by Yoga we become aware also that our own Self or true being is one with the cosmic Self and Spirit, our nature a play of the cosmic Nature; the wall between ourselves and the universe begins to disappear and vanishes altogether. We realise the selfsame Pantheos in ourselves, in others and in all universal existence.

But also by Yoga we become aware of something that is more than our individual being and more than the cosmic being, a transcendent Being or Existence which is not dependent on ours or the existence of the universe. Our existence is a manifestation of and in that Being, the cosmos also is a manifestation of and in that one Supreme Existence.

This then is the Truth or Reality to which we arrive by Yoga, a one and supreme Being or Existence and Power of Being which manifests as a cosmic Self or Spirit and a cosmic Energy or Nature and in that again as our own self or spirit which becomes aware of itself as an individual being and nature.

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Words of Sri Aurobindo