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Looking from Within -- Summary and Conclusions · Sri Aurobindo Studies

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  There is a deeply embedded aspiration within humanity to
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  discover some purpose or significance to our lives and to
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  the very existence of the creation within which we live
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  and act. Our training and education from
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  our earliest childhood is fixated on achieving our
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  standing within the external reality of the society within
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  which we live. We are asked to learn a trade,
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  have a career, marry and raise a family.
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  We are then told that we should seek for enjoyment and we search
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  for happiness through external actions and material
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  gratifications. For many people this seems to be
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  sufficient. Yet at times, almost everyone
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  suffers from the inner struggle as to whether there is more to
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  life than a seemingly mindless round of eating, sleeping,
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  working and enjoying ourselves through some form of
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  entertainment. Occasionally someone concludes
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  that there must be something more, something deeper,
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  something significant to make this entire immeasurable
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  creation and energy worth the effort.
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  In some cases there is a traumatic event, a near death
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  experience, a catastrophic failure in the outer life, grief
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  from loss of loved ones, pressures to succeed at what
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  appears to be a meaningless life.
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  This causes a period of soul searching and people look into
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  various directions to find the meaning of their lives.
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  They explore religions, they investigate philosophies of
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  life, they try out various entheogenic substances and
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  experience the temporary dissolution of the ego core.
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  They may take up life challenging activities,
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  adventures, and explorations, or they may immerse themselves in
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  some science or art or skill that helps them reach beyond
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  their limits. Eventually they recognize that
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  they have only received partial answers, incomplete solutions,
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  and third hand recitations about the reality.
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  At that point they are ready to take up their own practice of
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  inner growth and development, which is called yoga.
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  When an individual takes up yoga, he begins to experience
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  the shift from an externally focused life to an inner
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  developed life. He begins looking from within.
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  This leads to A2 pronged effort in Trioro Bindo's Yoga.
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  First, the liberation of the awareness, the consciousness as
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  a separate witness of the nature and the illusory forms and
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  results that are achieved in the external world.
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  This liberation can lead the seeker away from the life as in
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  the way of the ascetic, or it may become a foundation for the
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  second prong of the effort which Ryorobindo calls the Yoga of
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  Self Perfection. This yoga seeks to bring the
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  Divine reality into full and conscious manifestation here by
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  bringing a next level of consciousness into manifestation
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  to create the harmony and balance that the current
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  accommodation of the physical vital mental being has not yet
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  worked out. Doctor de Lal writes quote 3
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  chief categories of seekers have been kept in view in selecting
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  passages for this compilation. Those who wish to obtain a
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  greater life mastery and self mastery.
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  Those who, while pursuing the common goals of life, also aim
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  at something beyond the ordinary life and seek to grow towards a
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  higher or spiritual state of being.
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  Those for whom spiritual growth is the primary purpose and
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  preoccupation of life. All of the many approaches for
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  the attainment of mastery and inner growth involve the
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  cultivation of certain attitudes which are related to inner or
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  psychological states from which we look at and react to
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  everything in life, both within us and outside us.
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  This book deals with such basic attitudes in the light of Srioro
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  Bindo's yoga. End Quote Reference.
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  Srioro Bindo and the Mother. Looking from within.
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  Summary and conclusions, with citations from the preface and
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  back cover.