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Increasing Awareness, Detachment and Mastery Are the Requirements for the Practitioner of the Integral Yoga · Sri Aurobindo Studies

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  We have something of a conflict in the way we tend to view the
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  development of consciousness. On the one side, we generally
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  try to minimize the distractions and reactions to sensations,
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  impulses, feelings, thoughts from outside while we attend to
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  our meditation or deep spiritual concentration.
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  The stories abound of sages who were so immersed in their
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  internal meditation that they did not react to anything
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  external, in some cases having anthills grow up around their
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  bodies. While awareness at the level of
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  the spiritual consciousness, increased, awareness of the
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  body, vital energies and the mind were put in abeyance.
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  If followed to the logical conclusion, we wind up with the
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  ascetic call to abandon the body and the external life to follow
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  the way of the spirit. On the other side, we have those
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  who believe that the spiritual consciousness is unreal and we
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  should focus on attending more perfectly and completely to the
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  needs of the external life. These individuals may go to
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  great lengths to improve their ability to experience and
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  respond to sensations, and they undertake in many instances very
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  intensive training regiments to enhance their capacities to
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  increase their coordination of the incoming sense perception
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  and the responsiveness of the mind and the rest of the being.
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  Practitioners of the Integral Yoga have an entirely different
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  object in view. They neither seek to abandon the
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  external life nor become immersed in it to the exclusion
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  of their spiritual growth and development.
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  Thus, they cannot simply walk away from the sensations,
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  impulses, feelings, suggestions, emotions, and thoughts that come
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  with involvement in the external life.
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  They're actually asked to become more aware, more conscious, more
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  sensitive to the forces and energies at work that impinge
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  upon them and provoke them to respond.
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  The issue then is not to become less aware, less sensitive, less
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  conscious, but to find a way to gain a greater awareness while
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  simultaneously stepping back to avoid being pulled in and
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  immersed in these impressions and sensations without doability
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  to filter them, accepting those that are helpful, rejecting
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  those that are not, modifying where possible for anything that
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  can be made useful. Srioro Bindo writes quote.
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  This is due to an acute consciousness and sensitiveness
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  of the physical being, especially the vital physical.
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  It is good for the physical to be more and more conscious, but
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  it should not be overpowered by these ordinary human reactions
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  of which it becomes aware or badly affected or upset by them.
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  A strong equality and mastery and detachment must come in the
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  nerves and body as in the mind, which will enable the physical
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  to know and contact these things without feeling any disturbance.
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  It should know and be conscious and reject and throw away the
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  pressure of the movements in the atmosphere, not merely feel them
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  and suffer. End Quote.
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  Reference Sri Aurobindo, Bases of Yoga, chapter 1.
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  Calm, Peace and Equality, page 12.