Latest / Sri Aurobindo Studies / The True Foundation of the Yoga

Transcript

The True Foundation of the Yoga · Sri Aurobindo Studies

• 0:00
  We are generally so tied to our external ego personality that we
• 0:06
  identify with it as what we consider to be our self.
• 0:10
  We then refer to this body, life, mind complex as our
• 0:13
  reality and we say that we have a soul.
• 0:18
  The reality is far different. The reality is that the soul,
• 0:23
  the psychic being, takes on a particular existence for its own
• 0:27
  purposes of experience and growth.
• 0:31
  The difference in viewpoint is profound and has far reaching
• 0:35
  implications. If we identify with the external
• 0:38
  personality, we believe that the thoughts, emotions, feelings,
• 0:43
  reactions, responses, moods and physical action belongs to us,
• 0:50
  is an essential part of who we are, and thus we neither have
• 0:55
  the needed distance from it to see it clearly and
• 0:58
  dispassionately, nor do we realistically have the power to
• 1:02
  excise the movements that we recognize need to be changed or
• 1:06
  eliminated. Pretend then to try to suppress
• 1:11
  these reactions, which only makes them stronger through the
• 1:14
  factor of compression, or else we acknowledge our failure and
• 1:20
  fall into depression because we cannot succeed in our yogic
• 1:24
  endeavour. On the other hand, if we look at
• 1:29
  the external body, life, mind complex as something that the
• 1:32
  soul chooses to inhabit for its own purposes in the divine
• 1:36
  manifestation, similar to putting on a suit of clothes, it
• 1:41
  is much easier to gain perspective and to reject or
• 1:46
  change reactions or habits as not belonging to anything
• 1:50
  essential to oneself. Srioro Bindo writes quote.
• 1:56
  In your dealing with your difficulties and the wrong
• 1:59
  movements that assail you, you are probably making the mistake
• 2:03
  of identifying yourself with them too much and regarding them
• 2:08
  as part of your own nature. You should rather draw back from
• 2:12
  them, detach and dissociate yourself from them, regard them
• 2:17
  as movements of the universal, lower, imperfect and impure
• 2:20
  nature forces that enter into you and try to make you their
• 2:25
  instrument for their self-expression.
• 2:28
  By so detaching and dissociating yourself, it will be more
• 2:33
  possible for you to discover and to live more and more in a part
• 2:37
  of yourself. Your inner or your psychic being
• 2:41
  which is not attacked or troubled by these movements,
• 2:45
  finds them foreign to itself and automatically refuses assent to
• 2:50
  them and feels itself always turn to or in contact with the
• 2:55
  divine forces and the higher planes of consciousness.
• 3:00
  Find that part of your being and live in it.
• 3:04
  To be able to do so is the true foundation of the yoga.
• 3:08
  End Quote reference. Srioro Bindo, Bases of Yoga,
• 3:14
  Chapter 3 in difficulty, pages 43 to 44.