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<font face="Times New Roman"><i><b>Nature's Own Yoga</b></i><b> </b> </font>
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&nbsp;<p align="center" style="line-height: 150%; margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0">
		<b>I</b></p>
		<p align="center" style="line-height: 150%; margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0">&nbsp;</p>
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<font face="Times New Roman">SRI Aurobindo's Yoga is in the direct line of Nature's own
Yoga. Nature has a Yoga which she follows unfailingly and
inevitably—for it is her innermost law of being. Yoga means,
in essence, a change or transformation of consciousness, a
heightening and broadening of consciousness which is effected&nbsp; . by communion or union or identification with&quot; a higher and
vaster consciousness. </font>

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<font face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; This process of a developing consciousness in Nature is
precisely what is known as Evolution. It is the bringing out
and fixing of a higher and higher principle of consciousness,
hitherto involved and concealed behind the veil, in the earth
consciousness as a dynamic factor in Nature's manifest working.
Thus, the first stage of evolution is the status of inconscient
Matter, of the lifeless physical elements; the second stage is
that of the semi-conscious life in the plant, the third that of
the conscious life in the animal, and finally the fourth stage, where we stand 
at present, is that of the embodied self-conscious life in man. </font>

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<font face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The course of evolution has not come to a stop with man
and the next stage, Sri Aurobindo says, which Nature envisages and is labouring to bring out and establish is the life
now superconscious to us, embodied in a still higher type of
created being, that of the superman or god-man. The principle
of consciousness which will determine the nature and build of
this new being is a spiritual principle beyond the mental
principle which man now incarnates: it may be called the
Supermind or Gnosis. </font>

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<font face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; For, till now Mind has been the last term of the evolutionary </font>
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<font face="Times New Roman">Page 16</font><hr align="justify">

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<font face="Times New Roman">consciousness—Mind as developed in man is the highest
instrument built up and organised by Nature through which
the self-conscious being can express itself. That is why the
Buddha said: Mind is the first of all principles, Mind is the
highest of all principles: indeed Mind is the constituent of
all principles—<i>mano puvvangama dhamma<sup>1</sup> </i>The consciousness
beyond mind has not yet been made a patent and dynamic
element in the life upon earth; it has been glimpsed or entered
into in varying degrees and modes by saints and seers; it has
cast its derivative illuminations in the creative activities of
poets and artists, in the finer and nobler urges of heroes and
great men of action. But the utmost that has been achieved,
the summit reached in that direction, as exampled in spiritual
disciplines, involves a withdrawal from the evolutionary
cycle, a merging and an absorption into the static status that
is altogether beyond it, that lies, as it were, at the other ex-<br>
treme—the Spirit in itself, Atman, Brahman, Sachchidananda, Nirvana, the One without a second, the Zero without
a first. </font>

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<font face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The first contact that one has with this static supra-reality
is through the higher ranges of the mind: a direct and closer
communion is established through a plane which is just above
the mind—the Overmind, as Sri Aurobindo calls it. The
Overmind dissolves or transcends the ego-consciousness which
limits the being to its individualised formation bounded by
an outward and narrow frame or sheath of mind, life and
body; it reveals the universal Self and Spirit, the cosmic
godhead and its myriad forces throwing up myriad forms; the
world-existence there appears as a play of ever-shifting veils
upon the face of one ineffable reality, as a mysterious cycle of
perpetual creation and destruction—it is the overwhelming
vision given by Sri Krishna to Arjuna in the Gita. At the
same time, the initial and most intense experience which this cosmic 
consciousness brings is the extreme relativity, contingency and transitoriness of the whole flux, and a necessity
seems logically and psychologically imperative to escape into
the abiding substratum, the ineffable Absoluteness. </font>

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<font face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; This has been the highest consummation, the supreme goal 
which the purest spiritual experience and the deepest aspiration of the human consciousness generally sought to attain. </font>
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<font face="Times New Roman" size="2">1 <i>The Dhammapada,</i> I. 1 </font>
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<font face="Times New Roman">Page 17</font><hr align="justify">

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<font face="Times New Roman">But in this view, the world or creation or Nature came in the end
to be looked upon as fundamentally a product of Ignorance:&nbsp; ignorance and suffering and incapacity and death were declared
to be the very hallmark of things terrestrial. The Light that
dwells above and beyond can be made to shed for a while
some kind of lustre upon the mortal darkness but never altogether to remove or change it—to live in the full light, to be
in and of the Light means to pass beyond. Not that there have
not been other strands and types of spiritual experiences and
aspirations, but the one we are considering has always struck
the major chord and dominated and drowned all the rest. </font>

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<font face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; But the initial illusory consciousness of the Overmind need
not at all lead to the static Brahmic consciousness or Sunyam
alone. As a matter of fact, there is in this particular processus
of consciousness a hiatus between the two, between Maya and
Brahman, as though one has to leap from the one into the
other <i>somehow.</i> This hiatus is filled up in Sri Aurobindo's Yoga
by the principle of Supermind, not synthetic-analytic<sup>1</sup> in
knowledge like Overmind and the highest mental intelligence,
but inescapably unitarian even in the utmost diversity.
Supermind is the Truth-consciousness at once static and
dynamic, self-existent and creative: in Supermind the Brahmic
Consciousness—Sachchidananda—is ever self-aware and ever
manifested and embodied in fundamental truth-powers and
truth-forms for the play of creation; it is the plane where the
One breaks out into the Many and the' Many still remain
one, being and knowing themselves to be but various self-expressions of the One; it develops the spiritual archetypes,
the divine names and forms of all individualisations of an
evolving existence. </font>

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<font face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The Upanishads speak of a solar and a lunar Path in the
Spiritual consciousness. Perhaps they have some reference to
these two lines—one through the Mayic consciousness of the
Overmind enters into the static Bliss, ecstatic Nihil, and the </font>
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<font face="Times New Roman"><sup>1</sup> <font size="2">The Supermind is not merely synthetic. &quot;The Supermind is synthetic only on the lowest spaces of itself, where it has to prepare the principles of Overmind,<br>
—synthesis is necessary only where analysis has taken place, one has dissected
everything, put in pieces (analysis), so one has to piece together. But Supermind<br>
is unitarian, has never divided up, so it does not need to add and piece together the parts and fragments. It has always held the conscious Many together in the<br>
conscious<b> </b> One<b>.&quot;</b> </font> </font>

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<font face="Times New Roman"><font size="2">SRI AUROBINDO</font> </font>
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<font face="Times New Roman">Page 18</font><hr align="justify">

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<font face="Times New Roman">other mounts still farther to the solar status which is a mass,
a sea, an infinity of that light and ecstasy but which can at
the same time express and embody itself as the creative Truth-
consciousness <i>(surya savitri).</i> </font>

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<font face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; In the Supermind things exist in their perfect spiritual
reality; each is consciously the divine reality in its transcendent
essence, its cosmic extension, its spiritual individuality; the
diversity of a manifested existence is there, but the mutually
exclusive separativeness has not yet arisen. The ego, the knot
of separativity, appears at a later and lower stage of involution ; what is here is indivisible nexus of individualising centres
of the one eternal truth of being. Where Supermind and
Overmind meet, one can see the multiple godheads, each
distinct in his own truth and beauty and power and yet all
together forming the one supreme consciousness infinitely
composite and inalienably integral. But stepping back into
Supermind one sees something more—Oneness gathering into itself all diversity, 
not destroying it, but annulling and forbidding the separative consciousness that is the beginning of
Ignorance. The first shadow of the Illusory Consciousness,
the initial possibility of the movement of Ignorance comes in
when the supramental light enters the penumbra of the
mental sphere. The movement of Supermind is the movement
of light without obscurity, straight, unwavering, unswerving,
absolute. The Force here contains and holds in their oneness
of Reality the manifold but not separated lines of essential
and unalloyed truth: its march is the inevitable progression
of each one assured truth entering into and upholding every
other and therefore its creation, play or action admits of no
trial or stumble or groping or deviation; for each truth rests
on all others and on that which harmonises them all and does
not act as a Power diverging from and even competing with
other Powers of being. In the Overmind commences the play
of divergent possibilities—the simple, direct, united and
absolute certainties of the supramental consciousness retire,
as it were, a step behind and begin to work themselves out
through the interaction first of separately individualised and
then of contrary and contradictory forces. In the Overmind
there is a conscious underlying Unity but yet each Power,
Truth, Aspect of that Unity is encouraged to work out its </font>
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<font face="Times New Roman">Page 19</font><hr align="justify">

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<font face="Times New Roman">possibilities as if it were sufficient to itself and the others are
used by it for its own enhancement until in the denser and
darker reaches below Overmind this turns out a thing of
blind conflict and battle and, as it would appear, of chance survival. Creation 
or manifestation originally means the concretisation or devolution of the powers of Conscious Being
into a play of united diversity; but on the line which ends in
Matter it enters into more and more obscure forms and forces
and finally the virtual eclipse of the supreme light of the
Divine Consciousness. Creation as it descends towards the
Ignorance becomes an involution of the Spirit through
Mind and Life into Matter; evolution is a movement backward, a return journey from Matter towards the Spirit: it is
the unravelling, the gradual disclosure and deliverance of the
Spirit, the ascension and revelation of the involved consciousness through a series of awakenings—Matter awakening
into Life, Life awakening into Mind and Mind now seeking to
awaken into something beyond the Mind, into a power of
conscious Spirit. </font>

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<font face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The apparent or actual result of the movement of Nescience&nbsp;
—of Involution—has been an increasing negation of the
Spirit, but its hidden purpose is ultimately to embody the
Spirit in Matter, to express here below in cosmic Time-Space
the splendours of the timeless Reality. The material body
came into existence bringing with it inevitably, as it seemed,
mortality; it appeared even to be fashioned out of mortality,
in order that in this very frame and field of mortality, Immortality, the eternal Spirit Consciousness which is the secret
truth and reality in Time itself as well as behind it, might be
established and that the Divine might be possessed, or rather,
possess itself not in one unvarying mode of the static consciousness, as it does even now behind the cosmic play, but in the
play itself and in the multiple mode of the terrestrial existence. </font>
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<b>
<font face="Times New Roman">2</font></b><p style="line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0" align="center">
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<font face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The secret of evolution, I have said, is an urge towards the
release and unfoldment of consciousness out of an apparent
unconsciousness. In the early stages the movement is very </font>
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<font face="Times New Roman">Page 20</font><hr align="justify">

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<font face="Times New Roman">slow and gradual; there it is Nature's original unconscious
process. In man it acquires the possibility of a conscious and
therefore swifter and concentrated process. And this is in
fact the function of Yoga proper, viz, to bring about the
evolution of consciousness by hastening the process of Nature
through the self-conscious will of man. </font>

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<font face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; An organ in the human being has been especially developed
to become the effective instrument of this accelerated Yogic
process—the self-consciousness which I referred to as being
the distinctive characteristic of man is a function of this organ.
It is his soul, his &quot;psychic being&quot;; originally it is the spark
of the Divine Consciousness which came down and became
involved in Matter and has been endeavouring ever since to
release itself through the upward march of evolution. It is
this which presses on continually as the stimulus to the evolutionary movement; and in man it has attained sufficient
growth and power and has come so far to the front from
behind the veil that it can now lead and mould his external
consciousness. It is also the channel through which the Divine
Consciousness can flow down into the inferior levels of human
nature. It is the &quot;being no bigger than the thumb ever seated
within the heart&quot;, spoken of in the Upanishads. It is likewise
the basis of true individuality and personal identity. It is
again the reflection or expression in evolutionary Nature of
one's essential self<i>—jivatman—</i>that is above, an eternal portion
of the Divine, one with the Divine and yet not dissolved and
lost in it. The psychic being is thus on the one hand in direct
contact with the Divine and the higher consciousness, and on
the other it is the secret upholder and controller <i>(bharta,
antaryamin)</i> of the inferior consciousness, the hidden nucleus<br>
round which the body and the life and the mind of the individual are built up and organised. </font>

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<font face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The first decisive step in Yoga is taken when one becomes
conscious of the psychic being, or, looked at from the other side, when the 
psychic being comes forward and takes possession of the external being, begins to initiate and influence the
movements of the mind and life and body and gradually free them from the 
ordinary round of ignorant nature. The awakening of the psychic being means, as I have said, not only a
deepening and heightening of the consciousness and its release </font>
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<font face="Times New Roman">Page 21</font><hr align="justify">

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<font face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;from the obscurity and limitation of the inferior Prakriti,
confined to the lower threefold status, into what is behind
and beyond; it means also a return of the deeper and higher
consciousness upon the lower hemisphere and a consequent
purification and illumination and regeneration of the latter. Fin ally, when the psychic being is in full self-possession and
power, it can be the vehicle of the direct supramental consciousness—which will then be able to act freely and absolutely&nbsp;
for the entire transformation of the external nature, its transfiguration into a perfect body of the Truth-consciousness—in
a word, its divinisation. </font>

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<font face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; This then is the supreme secret, not the renunciation and annulment, but the transformation of the ordinary human
nature:—first of all, its <i>psychicisation,</i> that is to say, making
it move and live and be in communion' and identification
with the light of the psychic being, and, secondly, through
the soul and the ensouled mind and life and body, to open
out into the supramental consciousness and let it come down
here below and work and achieve. </font>

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<font face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The soul or the true being in man uplifted in the supramental consciousness and at the same time coming forward
to possess a divinised mind and life and body as an instrument
and channel of its self-expression and an embodiment of the
Divine Will and Purpose—such is the goal that Nature is
seeking to realise at present through her evolutionary <i>elan. </i>It is to this labour that man has been called so that in and
through him the destined transcendence and transformation
can take place. </font>

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<font face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; It is not easy, however, nor is it necessary for the moment
to envisage in detail what this divinised man would be like,
externally—his mode of outward being and living, <i>kim asita
vrajeta kim,</i> as Arjuna queried—or how the collective life of
the new humanity would function or what would be the composition of its social fabric. For what is happening is a living
process, an organic growth; it is being elaborated through the
actions and reactions of multitudinous forces and conditions,<br>
known and unknown; the precise configuration of the final
outcome cannot be predicted with exactitude. But the Power that is at work is 
omniscient; it is selecting, rejecting, correcting, fashioning, creating, co-ordinating elements in accordance </font>
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<font face="Times New Roman">Page 22</font><hr align="justify">

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<font face="Times New Roman">with and by the drive of the inviolable law of Truth and
Harmony that reigns in Light's &quot;own home&quot;—<i>swe dame—</i>the
Supermind. </font>

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<font face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; It is also to be noted that as mind is not the last limit of
the march of evolution, even so the progress of evolution will
not stop with the manifestation and embodiment of the Supermind. There are other still higher principles beyond
and they too presumably await manifestation and embodiment on earth. Creation has no beginning in time
<i>(anadi)</i> nor
has it an end <i>(ananta).</i> It is an eternal process of the unravelling
of the mysteries of the Infinite. Only, it may be said that with<br>
the Supermind the creation here enters into a different order
of existence. Before it there was .the domain of Ignorance,
after it will come the reign of Light and Knowledge. Mortality
has been the governing principle of life on earth till now; it
will be replaced by the consciousness of immortality. Evolution
has proceeded through struggle and pain; hereafter it will be
a spontaneous, harmonious and happy flowering. </font>

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<font face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Now, with regard to the time that the present stage of
evolution is likely to take for its fulfilment, one can presume
that since or if the specific urge and stress has manifested and
come up to the front, this very fact would show that the
problem has become a problem of actuality, and even that
it can be dealt with as if it had to be solved now or never.
We have said that in man, with man's self-consciousness or the
consciousness of the psychic being as the instrument, evolution<br>
has attained the capacity of a swift and concentrated process,
which is the process of Yoga; the process will become swifter
and more concentrated, the more that instrument grows and
gathers power and is infused with the divine afflatus. In fact,
evolution has been such a process of gradual acceleration in
tempo from the very beginning. The earliest stage, for example, the stage of dead Matter, of the play of the mere
chemical forces was a very, very long one; it took millions<br>
and millions of years to come to the point when the manifestation of life became possible. But the period of elementary life,
as manifested in the plant world that followed, although it
too lasted a good many millions of years, was much briefer
than the preceding period—it ended with the advent of the
first animal form. The age of animal life, again, has been very </font>
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<font face="Times New Roman">Page 23</font><hr align="justify">

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<font face="Times New Roman">much shorter than that of the plant life before man came
upon earth. And man is already more than a million or two
years old—it is fully time that a higher order of being should
be created out of him. </font>
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<font face="Times New Roman">Page 24</font><hr align="justify">

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