ESSENTIALS OF INTEGRAL YOGA
Larry Seidlitz
One of the first things necessary to practice Sri Aurobindo’s yoga is faith in the Divine. The Divine is the whole aim, which is the method of this yoga, so we need faith in the Divine. The Divine is what we are seeking, what we wish to unite with. The Divine is our true Self, our whole Self, which we have forgotten. Our true Self is the Self of all. There is only one Self, the Divine. He alone is: He is all the beings and things we see around us in the universe. We are all one, though in appearance we are many.
But the Divine is greater than even all the wonders of the universe: He is an unfathomable mystery which even the universe in its totality cannot reveal or express. He is also the transcendent beyond the universe; He is the Absolute. But at the same time, He is not incapable of personality or of having a personal relationship with us. He is a being as well as an impersonal existence or Absolute. He has become all these personalities we meet in the world, and He can express Himself to us through any personality or form that we may be receptive to. He leads us to Himself through many different personalities and forms.
Faith comes from something in our soul that knows its unity or connection with a greater Reality, with something else that we may not understand but that we feel exists and is an imperative towards which we must move. Faith is a glimpse or a touch of our unity with the Divine. Because in essence we are That; when we come into some conscious contact with our essence, even though only vaguely or for a moment, we develop faith. This faith is not born of reason, but of the soul’s experience. Reason is very unreliable — it can give marvelous arguments that the Divine exists, and it can also give just as marvelous arguments that He does not exist. But when we have faith, once we have a contact with our soul that knows or experiences that it is part of a greater existence and truth, reason’s arguments lose their force and value.
Beyond the faith that the Divine does indeed exist, we need to develop a faith that the Divine is interested in us, He loves us, it is his will that we should become conscious of Him in all our being, and finally, that He has the power to effect the necessary change in us so that we may consciously unite with Him. The development of this further faith grows with the growth of our contact with our soul and with the Divine, and we begin to have experiences which confirm these things. We find that when we turn to Him in sincerity He responds. We find that when we call the Divine to support us in our efforts towards Him we are supported. The Divine is the true power in the practice of the yoga, just as He is the true power behind all the appearances of the universe. At first our faith in this respect is limited — we feel that it is we ourselves who practice the yoga and discipline ourselves and progress in consciousness. Until our faith and vision are changed, we must indeed make all our sincere efforts. But as we progress, our faith grows and we begin to see more and more that it is the Divine Force behind us that is driving us and we learn more and more to align ourselves with that Force and surge forward in its rhythmic movement. I say ‘rhythmic movement’ because usually the Divine does not drive us straightforward in the path of yoga,
but rather in a cyclic movement in which there are thrusts forward followed by periods of assimilation and temporary regressions.
