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New Race Archives

August 2008
Volume IX, Issue 3

Contents

• From the editor's desk

• Excerpts from
  Sri Aurobindo's message
  

• Integral Yoga Psychology:
  Equality
  
  
• Integral Yoga Psychology:
  Object of Knowledge
  
  
• Integral Yoga Psychology:
  Concentration
  
  
• News and Events

TOPIC FOR WEEK 8

CONCENTRATION AND RENUNCIATION IN INTEGRAL YOGA

DISCUSSION QUESTION 1

What is Divine Tapas and how is it related to yogic concentration?

Response by Learner MD

Divine Tapas is Divine Concentration. Sri Aurobindo defines it as “Being dwelling in consciousness upon itself for bliss. A Knowledge-Will dwelling in force of consciousness on itself and its manifestations is the essence of the divine concentration, the Yoga of the Lord of Yoga.” It is the process by which the Self withdraws from all else and dwells gathered in itself and upon itself as Oneness, without a second, without division, without any dissipation of the completest focus and intensity.

All yogic concentration is an image of this Divine Tapas. It is the means by which the individual soul enters into full identification with a particular form, aspect or psychological state of the Divine Self in manifestation. To gather up all the scattered strands of energy, consciousness, will, thought and emotion and focus them intensely on one single point is what is meant by concentration. The heat or the power generated in that process of intense concentration is the tapas. When the divine does this it is for Bliss and for the multiplicity that is born out of that Bliss and when the individual soul does it, it is for uniting with the Divine again.

In the case of the individual the concentration begins with an idea or a thought or even a name that is held in the consciousness and dwelled upon so as to become a means to lead to the state of Being, the state of consciousness or Bliss that it symbolizes and conceals. Thought itself becomes the vehicle to exceed thought and come to the source of all thought, to the oneness that holds all within it, the Self, the Transcendent, making possible the yoga of Knowledge. It is the intensity of force generated in the process of concentration that makes the crossover effective and enables the purification culminating in the unification with the object of knowledge.