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<p class="paracenter">THE YOGA OF SRI 
AUROBINDO
</p>
<p class="paracenter"></p><hr></p>
<p class="paracenter"></p>
<p class="paracenter"><b><i>Section One</i></b>
</p>
<br>
<hr>
<p class="paracenter">REALISATION, PAST AND FUTURE
</p>
<p class="paracenter"></p>
<p class="para"> The whole material and physical 
world, the whole earth—I mention earth, because we are concerned directly and 
much more with it than other regions—has been till now governed by forces of 
consciousness that come from what Sri Aurobindo calls the Overmind. Even the 
thing man has named God is a force, a power in the Overmind. The entire universe 
has been, so to say, under the domination of this status of consciousness. Even 
then, you have to pass through many intermediary grades or levels to arrive at 
the Overmind and when you reach there the first impression is that of a dazzling 
light that almost blinds you. But one can and has to press on and go beyond. Sri 
Aurobindo says, the rule of the Overmind is precisely coming to its end and the 
rule of the Supermind will replace it. All the past spiritual experiences were 
concerned with the Overmind: so it is a thing known to all who have found the 
Divine and are identified with Him. What Sri Aurobindo says is this that there 
is something more than the Overmind, something that lies a step higher and that 
it is now the turn of this higher status to come down and reign. We need not 
talk much of Overmind, because all the saints and seers, all religions and 
spiritual disciplines, scriptures and philosophies have spoken about it at 
length. All the gods known and familiar to men are there in its
</p>
<br><p class="pageno">Page-3</p>
<hr>
<p class="para">Pantheon. What we want, what is needed at present is a new 
revelation, a manifestation in a new manner of which very few were conscious in 
the past. We are not here merely to repeat the past.
</p>
<br>
<p class="para"> But it is so difficult. It is 
difficult for people to come out of experiences they have had, of what they have 
heard and read about always and everywhere. It is difficult for them not to 
think of the Supermind in terms of the Overmind, not to confuse the Supermind 
with the Overmind. They are unable to conceive of anything beyond or different. 
Sri Aurobindo used to say always that his Yoga began where all the past Yogas 
ended: in order to realise his Yoga one must have already arrived at the extreme 
limit of what the ancients realised. In other words, one must have had already 
the perception of the Divine, the union and identification with the Divine. This 
divinity, Sri Aurobindo says, is the Divine of the Overmind which is itself 
something quite unthinkable for the human consciousness, and even to reach there 
one has to rise through many planes of consciousness and, as I said, one gets 
dazzled and dazed even at this level.
</p>
<br>
<p class="para"> There are beings of the vital 
who, whenever they appear to man, are taken by him for the supreme godhead. You 
may call it a disguise, but it is a very successful disguise, for people who see 
it most often get thoroughly convinced that what they see is indeed God himself. 
And yet such a god is only a vital being. Even so, the beings of the Overmind 
are stupendous in comparison
</p>
<br><p class="pageno">Page-4</p>
<hr>
<p class="para">with us, human beings, who are truly bewildered whenever we come 
in contact with such entities. And Supermind and supramental beings are yet 
beyond. So you realise the distance to be covered.
</p>
<br>
<p class="para"> But there is a kind of Grace that 
comes to your help. If the scientist had again to go over all the experiments 
that have been done, all what others have found in the past in his line in order 
to make a further progress, to come to a new discovery, then he will have to 
pass his whole life in repeating the past and will have no time for anything 
else. The scientist just opens instead a book or consults another person who is 
conversant with the past and gets all the knowledge he requires of it. Sri 
Aurobindo wanted to do something like that in the spiritual domain. He asks you 
to gather the experience of the past,—it is all there recorded in earth's 
history, and pass on; basing yourself upon that, you rise up to still higher 
ranges.
</p>
<br>
<p class="para"> You may pertinently ask, however, 
why we have not started with overmental beings, we should have had here, say, 
Vivekanandas only and not ordinary frail human creatures.
</p>
<br>
<p class="para"> You think the work would have 
been easier? Such beings, on the contrary, would have been less manageable and 
malleable. For what is most difficult is to convince someone who has had already 
a realisation. He believes he has reached the goal and no further progress is 
necessary for him. It generally happens especially to men who have made effort 
and realised the object of the
</p>
<br><p class="pageno">Page-5</p>
<hr>
<p class="para">effort that they stop with that, because they feel they have 
reached their final goal. They get settled and fixed there. It was their 
personal goal and they have got it. Their brain gets crystallised and their 
consciousness fossilised. They will live there all their life and will never 
know how to move. So I say, those who have had an experience or a realisation in 
themselves are not necessarily the most advanced. Such a person lacks an element 
of simplicity, modesty, plasticity that spontaneously come to one who feels that 
he has not grown fully and has to develop further.
</p>
<br>
<p class="para"> A &quot;realised person&quot;, if I may say 
so graphically and somewhat strongly, is a finished product to be kept in a 
glass-case for show in a museum. He is a sample showing what has been done and 
what could be done. But you do not have there the stuff to do more. I would 
prefer for my work to have someone who may have little knowledge, but who has 
much good will, a great aspiration, who feels within him this flame, this need 
to go on. I say, he may know little, he may have realised even less, but here is 
good material with which one can go far, very far. Besides, there is another 
point to note. As in mountain-climbing a guide is very useful, even 
indispensable, who can show you the proper way and make it easy for you to climb 
higher and higher altitudes, so in spiritual ascension, a guide, if you have the 
good fortune to meet one, will help you to rise much higher than you could do 
yourself with your own personal strength and your own personal view of a fixed 
goal—
</p>
<br><p class="pageno">Page-6</p>
<hr>
<p class="para">you are not proud of your discovery and you do not waste time or 
energy in useless searches and enquiries.
</p>
<br>
<p class="para"> That is why
I prefer children-children in body or
in soul-and fear grown-ups steeped in 
erudition and realisation.</p> 
<br><p class="pageno">Page-7</p>
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