FOUNDATIONAL PRACTICES IN THE INTEGRAL YOGA OF SRI AUROBINDO AND MIRRA ALFASSA

PART 1: INTIMATIONS OF OUR ESSENTIAL NATURE

(NOTE – This is part of a series I’m writing on “Integral Yoga in Everyday Language.” While this is somewhat more complex than the previous essays, the practice, “Space of Awareness,” is easily accessible even to those with no prior familiarity with yogic philosophy or practice. Please read it very slowly, with long pauses between sentences – and allow the experience to which it is pointing to unfold slowly, easefully and with much quiet, peace and deep stillness)

THE VIEW FROM INFINITY

Intimations of Infinity

While India – the home of yogic psychology – has always placed great value on intellectual understanding, the yogic tradition takes direct spiritual experience to be the foundation for any valid intellectual view. the spiritual experience at the core of the Indian tradition has been described as the experience of an infinite Consciousness, an infinite Being in whom the entire universe has its existence.i But it is important to remember that the description of the vision is not itself a “view from infinity” – that is, the direct “knowing” of that Reality. It is meant only to be a pointer to an experience or way of knowing which cannot be captured in words.

This experience – perhaps more correctly referred to as a recognition – provides a means of a radical transformation in our own body and mind, and potentially, a transformation in the very root of how we understand the universe. Having “attained” this recognition, we can learn to bring attention to the various workings of the Infinite Being throughout the universe, and to provide intimations of Its Presence here and now, in our every thought, feeling and sensation, every rock, plant and animal in our environment, and each person we encounter. The various streams of the yoga tradition are one in their agreement that the ordinary human mind is not capable of perceiving the Infinite. However, yogis of all traditions have always made use of words to evoke something beyond the mind, to open a window onto the richness, beauty and vastness of that Reality which is the very substance of all we experience.

While the Indian spiritual tradition has perhaps been the one to speak most openly of the all- pervasive, all-embracing nature of the Infinite Divine Being, all spiritual teachigns have – at least at their mystic core – pointers to this experience.

In the New Testament, St. Paul describes God at that “in whom we live and move and have our being.”ii In the Koran, Allah is referred to as being closer to us than life itself, closer than “the jugular vein.” In the Hebrew Bible, God, speaking to Moses, gives His name as “I Am That I Am.”iii Native American and other indigenous peoples recognize Spirit to be present and active throughout the universe.

Jewish scholar Abraham Heschel describes a state of mind that can make the experience of this greater Reality more accessible. He suggests cultivating an attitude of awe which is “itself an act of insight into a meaning greater than ourselves... [enabling] us to perceive in the world intimations of the Divine... to sense the ultimate in the common and the simple; to feel in the rush of the passing the stillness of the eternal.”iv

But how can we cultivate an attitude of awe? For some, a “thinning of the veil” which opens us to the sense of awe can occur in communion with the power and beauty of nature: listening to the gentle, unearthly silence of a large metropolis blanketed in snow... watching the play of light dancing on the wind-swept surface of Lake Geneva... walking down Fifth Avenue in the hush of twilight, lost in thought, suddenly catching sight of the deep orange sunlight setting fire to skyscraper windows. The awesome quality of these experiences tends, to some extent, to calm the disjointed play of our ordinary thought, bringing about an openness and tranquility that allows for something deeper to emerge from within.

Literature, painting, dance, theatre, cinema, and religious ritual have all, since prehistoric times, been at heart, a means of softening the boundaries of our ordinary awareness, thus helping us to experience something that transcends our limited selves. In the solemn intonation of a priest’s chanting of a sacred text, our hearts softened, our minds stilled, we feel a mysterious Presence spreading throughout the cathedral... we are transported with Sri Aurobindo’s Savitri, as she voyages “through worlds of splendor and of calm”v ... in a darkened theater, we face death with Sir Thomas More, at peace in the noble equanimity of a high ideal.

The various practices of the yoga tradition are designed to make it possible for us to enter into this deeper experience at will, without need for external triggers. Ultimately these practices can help to dissolve the filmy screen altogether so that the “stillness of the eternal,” the soft and luminous presence of the Infinite is always and everywhere present in our experience. All yogic practice calls upon us to shift our attention – to step back from the familiar round of thoughts, feelings and sensations that tend to absorb us, and to gently redirect our attention inward. We invite you to join us in doing just that.

Shifting Attention: The Space of Awareness

Bring your attention to the sensations of your body. Let your eyes remain open, taking in the words of the text with a gentle, non-grasping awareness. Move your attention to different parts of the body, noticing the different sensations that arise...

As you attend to various sensations, notice that there is no clear boundary in your awareness between the sensations that make up the body and the space around the body...

As you release the sense of a clear boundary, begin to notice the larger space in which these sensations move...

Allow the sense of this larger space to continue to expand until you lose the sense of it having a beginning or ending, just open space...

As your sense of this space expands, see if you can notice a quality of stillness and calm associated with the unchanging nature of the space, the feeling of simply being which remains unchanged while the sensations continue to move and change in various ways...

Notice any sounds which are occurring, notice that they all occur within this larger space... notice whether near or far, the sounds all exist within the same open space ...

Notice images arising in the mind... these too are moving and changing in various ways, all within this larger space ...

Thoughts arise in space, move through it, dissolve back into it, the space remains, unchanged by whatever moves through it...

Feelings come and go – whether feelings of happiness, sadness, anger, joy, liking or disliking – constantly changing, leaving the space untouched, unchanged...

Staying aware of sensations, images, thoughts and feelings arising and passing away, notice the tendency of the mind to hold on to them, to harden them into solid objects... Releasing this tendency, see if you can become aware of a sense of ease and calm that may emerge as the sense of spaciousness expands... As the feeling of wide open space continues to expand, a feeling of quiet joy may enter into awareness...

Notice how everything moves, changes constantly within this space – sensations, thoughts, feelings – all patterns of moving energy, contained within the space, but not disturbing it...

The Field and the Knower of the Field

Within various spiritual traditions, there are many words to describe these two aspects of experience – the changing, shifting field of sensations, thoughts and images, and the still space of Consciousness in which they exist. The sacred yogic text, The Bhagavad Gita (literally “The Song of God”) refers to these, respectively, as the “Field” and “Knower of the Field.”vi

The Knower (or “Conscious-Being”) refers to that Infinite Being which holds the entire universe within Its Awareness. It is also That which, at this very moment, is seeing through our eyes, but which – in the words of the Kena Upanishad – “our eyes cannot see... which hears through our ears, but our ears cannot hear.”vii It is seeing and hearing equally through all eyes and ears – those of an ant as well as those of a cat or human being. It remains aware whether we are awake or asleep. We can get a sense of it by looking for that in us which is unchanging from infancy through all the changes of life, that core feeling of “I am” in the depths of our psyches.

This Infinite Conscious-Being is frequently referred to as “God,” but that word has so many images and associations attached to it, it rarely serves as a portal to experience. Describing the advantage of a simple word like “Being,” Ekhart Tolle writes:

The word ‘Being’ explains nothing, but nor does ‘God’. Being, however, has the advantage that it is an open concept. It does not reduce the infinite invisible to a finite

entity. It is impossible to form a mental image of it. Nobody can claim exclusive possession of Being. It is your very essence, and it is immediately accessible to you as the feeling of your own presence, the realization “I am” that is prior to “I am this” or “I am that.” So it is only a small step from the word “Being” to the experience of Being.viii

The Field (or “Conscious-Energy”) includes all that we sense – sights, sounds, physical sensations, tastes and smells; all that we feel – pleasure and pain, liking and disliking, anger, joy, love, sadness; and all that we think – our beliefs, memories, plans, worries, ideas, and the images passing through our minds; everything that exists within space and time. All are forms of Conscious-Energy, movements of Conscious-Energy arising out of the Being of the Knower – over billions of years of evolution, throughout our lifetimes, and in this moment and every moment of experience.

All that exists is the interaction of the Knower and the Field. Every atom, every tree, bird, rock and mountain range are movements of Conscious-Energy within the Consciousness of the Being at the center of all things. But these two – the Knower and the Field, Conscious-Being and Conscious-Energy – are not actually two. They are inseparable aspects of one unbroken Infinite Reality – one aspect being the still, changeless, witnessing Consciousness, the other an ever-moving, ever-changing Consciousness – outside of which nothing exists.

i Regarding postmodernists’ concerns about “totalizing” systems: the “view from infinity” is neither a system nor a view.

ii Acts 17:26-28.
iii Exodus, 3:14
iv Heschel, A., God in Search of Man.

v Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, Book I, Canto II, Verse 37.
vi The Bhagavad Gita, Chapter 13, Verse 2. For translation, see Sri Aurobindo, Essays on the Gita.
vii Kena Upanishad, Part I, Verses 6 and 7.
viii Tolle, E., The Power of Now, p. 14.