The Practitioner of the Integral Yoga Will Face Difficulties, Obstructions and Challenges With the Support of the Divine Force to Meet Them and Overcome Them

In Savitri: A Legend and a Symbol, Sri Aurobindo poses the question: ‘How shall he cure the ills he never felt’, in reference to the world redeemer’s task. There is a truth here that impacts every disciple and devotee of the integral yoga. Sri Aurobnido has set the objective as the transformation of all of human nature through the descent and integration of the next stage of evolution beyond the mental level. This power of consciousness cannot simply accept the ways of body, life and mind, as previously developed, without addressing the deformations, weaknesses, and resistance that they bring with them based on millennia-long habits and developed ways of seeing, thinking, acting and reacting.

First, the process implies that everyone, including of course all seekers, carry this legacy mode of acting within themselves, and thus, they will be faced with all kinds of obstructions, difficulties and limitations. Second, since the process of the yoga is intended to speed up the normally slower pace of Nature, it requires the conscious participation of the yogic practitioner. This in turn implies that the sadhak of the yoga will be confronted with all these pre-existing conditions and will need to work through them to reorient the entire ways of responding at each level of consciousness, down to the physical and even the subconscient levels.

It is therefore not realistic to assume that the sadhak is not faced with difficulties and challenges all along the way as the divine Force works through the mental obstructions, the emotional knots, the vital deformations and the physical resistance, tackles then the embedded reactions in the subconscient and then carries out the transformation while withstanding the impact of the unreformed general nature of humanity.

Sri Aurobindo encourages the sadhak by pointing out elsewhere that “He who chooses the Infinite has been chosen by the Infinite.” Any soul that is moved to take up this work has the support and aid of the evolutionary consciousness that is in the process of manifesting. Human doubts and fears are a result of the sadhak still responding from the ego-consciousness, which is doubtless going to occur for quite some time along the way.

Sri Aurobindo notes: “The existence of imperfections, even many and serious imperfections, cannot be a permanent bar to progress in the Yoga. (I do not speak of a recovery of the former opening, for according to my experience, what comes after a period of obstruction or struggle is usually a new and wider opening, some larger consciousness and an advance on what had been gained before and seems — but only seems — to be lost for the moment.) The only bar that can be permanent — but need not be, for this too can change — is insincerity, and tis does not exist in you. If imperfection were a bar, then no man could succeed in Yoga; for all are imperfect, and I am not sure, from what I have seen, that it is not those who have the greatest power for Yoga who have too, very often, or have had the greatest imperfections. You know, I suppose, the comment of Socrates on his own character; that could be said by many great Yogins of their own initial human nature. In Yoga the one thing that counts in the end is sincerity and with it the patience to persist in the path — many even without this patience go through, for in spite of revolt, impatience, depression, despondency, fatigue, temporary loss of faith, a force greater than one’s outer self, the force of the Spirit, the drive of the soul’s need, pushes them through the cloud and the mist to the goal before them. Imperfections can be stumbling-blocks and give one a bad fall for the moment, but not a permanent bar. Obstructions due to some resistance in the nature can be more serious causes of delay, but they too do not last for ever.”

Sri Aurobindo, Bases of Yoga, Chapter 3, In Difficulty, pg. 45