The Principle Thing in the Practice of Integral Yoga

In his book The Mother, Sri Aurobindo provides a detailed roadmap for understanding the relatively simple idea that one must have the ‘will to overcome all attachments’, etc. In order to do this, we need to be able to appreciate what is meant by ‘attachments’. Most people would associate this with exte
al things or with exte
al relationships, and they of course need to be looked at. But Sri Aurobindo goes much deeper into the psychological web of the mind, the emotions, the vital being and even the physical body as he describes the issue of what needs to be “rejected” to create the needed psychological framework for the higher force to be received and to act with power in the being: “rejection of the movements of the lower nature — rejection of the mind’s ideas, opinions, preferences, habits, constructions, so that the true knowledge may find free room in a silent mind, — rejection of the viital nature’s desires, demands, cravings, sensations, passions, selfishness, pride, arrogance, lust, greed, jealousy, envy, hostility to the Truth, so that the true power and joy may pour from above into a calm, large, strong and consecrated vital being, — rejection of the physical nature’s stupidity, doubt, disbelief, obscurity, obstinacy, pettiness, laziness, unwillingness to change, tamas, so taht the true stability of Light, Power, Ananda may establish itself in a body growing always more divine…”

Eventually, through tuning of the being through aspiration, the removal of the static from the connection that is thus formed through rejection of those things which distract and create static, and the subsequent acceptance of the higher Power as it begins to act, there comes a time when the experience of that higher Force working within the being and carrying out the practice takes over from the sense of the limited individual struggling to make the needed changes.

Sri Aurobindo notes: “To practice Yoga implies the will to overcome all attachments and turn to the Divine alone. The principal thing in the Yoga is to trust in the Divine Grace at every step, to direct the thought continually to the Divine and to offer oneself till the being opens and the Mother’s force can be felt working in the Adhar.”

Sri Aurobindo, Bases of Yoga, Chapter 2, Faith — Aspiration — Surrender, pg. 32