“The object of spiritual knowledge is the Supreme, theDivine, the Infinite and Absolute. This Supreme has its relations to our individual being and its relations to the universe and it transcends both the soul and the universe. Neither the universe nor the individual are what they seem to be, for the report of them which our mind and our senses give us is, so long as they are unenlightened by a faculty of higher supramental and suprasensuous knowledge, a false report, an imperfect construction, an attenuated and erroneous figure. And yet that which the universe and the individual seem to be is still a figure of what they really are, a figure that points beyond itself to the reality behind it. Truth proceeds by a correction of the values our mind and senses give us, and first by the action of a higher intelligence that enlightens and sets right as far as may be the conclusions of the ignorant sense-mind and limited physical intelligence; that is the method of all human knowledge and science. But beyond it there is a knowledge, a Truth-consciousness, that exceeds our intellect and brings us into the true light of which it is a refracted ray.”
Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis of Yoga,
CWSA, vol 23-24, p. 293
SOME GENERAL DISCUSSION
Comment and Clarification by Course Facilitator LS to Class
You all seem to have correctly grasped the main distinctions between Sri Aurobindo's object of knowledge and that of traditional yogas. Most traditional yogas aim at a realization of the transcendent divine, beyond the cosmic and the individual. Sri Aurobindo's yoga aims at a realization in which the transcendent, the cosmic, and the individual are different aspects, and the relations among these aspects are given full play. Thus the individual being remains in the cosmos, in relation to other individuals within that cosmos, and in relation to the transcendent. At the same time he is aware of the cosmic spirit, the conscious self of the cosmos, and experiences the cosmos as his greater being. Even when in relation with other individuals, there is the awareness that these others are other aspects of the Self, and not really separate. All the cosmos and these individualities are seen as expressions of the transcendent Divine, and that transcendent forms the background of all experience in the cosmos, and the individual is even able to enter into that transcendence and lose all awareness of individual and cosmos.
Sri Aurobindo's yoga avoids culminating in the exclusive result of the traditional yogas by its more integral method which from the first aims to find the Divine in all things and in one's own life and being and not only in an inner experience of the transcendent Divine. While an inner concentration on the Divine and the experience of the transcendence is a part of this yoga also, there is not this heavy reliance on inner concentration, meditation and samadhi, but rather these are to be balanced by action in the world, and by a growing experience of and reliance on the Divine Shakti, which is the Divine's dynamic aspect and energy that rules the worlds and does the sadhana. This reliance on the Shakti aspect is not there in most of the traditional yogas.
In addition, most yogas get an experience of the transcendent through the mind, through a process of excluding everything but the Self, the experiencer. In Sri Aurobindo's yoga this also is used as a method but it is a preliminary step only, and this experience of the Self is to be combined with other experiences such as the cosmic consciousness (the cosmic self and nature) and as part of this, a full realization of the planes of spiritual mind between the rational mind and the supramental consciousness (higher mind, illumined mind, intuition, and overmind). These are the higher ranges of mind which enable a more and more integral experience of the Divine, rather than one which is divided between Self and Nature, and
