Our concentration is only an image of that Divine Tapas (p. 320). Through tapas he created objects, light, matter. A physicist concentrating on a falling apple, a botanist on a stem of flower, a metal expert on microstructure of metal, or a Yogi concentrating on an image, on word, a thought formula or on his own thoughts – all are doing this in their own way to imitate what He has done and is doing on the canvas of the existence. Concentration can be used to know, acquire or become anything. But it should be used for The Self, the Lord who alone is worthy of knowing, having or becoming.
Yoga needs many supports as cited above but those supports should be used to reach beyond the supports. To break barrier of our mentality to reach beyond it.
Similar idea is seen in some of the chapters from The Human Cycle: Reason as the governor of Life: “Apart from the general downward activity, intellect can also be turned upward and inward …Yet by constant enlargement, opening, purification reason can arrive at even that which is hidden from it.”
General Comment by Course Facilitator LS to Class
I understand tapas to be not only the force of consciousness concentrated inwards upon itself, but also consciousness concentrated outwards upon objects. So through tapas, through the force of concentration, the divine consciousness becomes matter, becomes light, becomes each force and form in the universe.
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“The human being on earth is God playing at humanity in a world of matter under the conditions of a hampered density with the ulterior intention of imposing law of spirit on matter & nature of deity upon human nature. Evolution is nothing but the progressive unfolding of Spirit out of the density of material consciousness and the gradual self-revelation of God out of this apparent animal being.
Yoga is the application, for this process of divine self-revelation, of the supreme force
of tapas by which God created the world, supports it & will destroy it. It substitutes
always some direct action of an infinite divine force for the limited workings of ou
r fettered animal humanity. It uses divine means in order to rise to divinity.
All Yoga is tapasya and all siddhi of Yoga is accomplishment of godhead either by
identity or by relation with the Divine Being in its principles or its personality or in both or simultaneously by identity and relation.
Identity is the principle of Adwaita, relation of Dwaita, relation in a qualified identity of Visishtadwaita. But entire perfection comes by identity with God in essential experience & relation of difference with Him in experience of manifestation.”
Sri Aurobindo, Essays Divine and Human
CWSA, vol 12, p. 334