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    All Life Is Yoga: The Soul and How to Find It
    All Life Is Yoga: The Soul and How to Find It
    All Life Is Yoga: The Soul and How to Find It
    Ebook95 pages1 hour

    All Life Is Yoga: The Soul and How to Find It

    By Sri Aurobindo and The (d.i. Mira Alfassa) Mother

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    "The soul, the psychic being, is in direct touch with the divine Truth, but it is hidden in man by the mind, the vital being and the physical nature (manas, prana, anna of the Taittiriya Upanishad). One may practise Yoga and get illuminations in the mind and the reason; one may conquer power and luxuriate in all kinds of experiences in the vital; one may establish even surprising physical siddhis; but if the true soul-power behind does not manifest, if the psychic nature does not come into the front, nothing genuine has been done. In this Yoga, the psychic being is that which opens the rest of the nature to the true supramental light and finally to the supreme Ananda." – Sri Aurobindo

    "In truth, the only thing that is truly tragic is not to become conscious of one’s soul, the psychic being, and not to be entirely guided by it in one’s life.
    To die before having found one’s soul and lived according to its law, that is the true failure." – The Mother
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSri Aurobindo Digital Edition
    Release dateFeb 27, 2018
    ISBN9783937701967
    All Life Is Yoga: The Soul and How to Find It

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      Book preview

      All Life Is Yoga - Sri Aurobindo

      I.

      PRELIMINARY

      Chapter 1

      Soul – A Vaguely Used Word

      Words of Sri Aurobindo

      The word soul is very vaguely used in English – as it often refers to the whole non-physical consciousness including even the vital with all its desires and passions. That is why the word psychic being has to be used so as to distinguish this divine portion from the instrumental parts of the nature.

      *

      Words of Sri Aurobindo

      [The word] psychic is ordinarily used in the sense of anything relating to the inner movements of the consciousness or anything phenomenal in the psychology; in this case I have made a special use of it, relating it to the Greek word psyche meaning soul; but ordinarily people make no distinction between the soul and the mental-vital consciousness; for them it is all the same.

      * * *

      Chapter 2

      What is Myself

      Words of the Mother

      ...if the contact [with the soul] has been conscious and complete enough, it liberates you from the bondage of outer form; you no longer feel that you live only because you have a body. That is usually the ordinary sensation of the being, to be so tied to this outer form that when one thinks of myself one thinks of the body. That is the usual thing. The personal reality is the body’s reality. It is only when one has made an effort for inner development and tried to find something that is a little more stable in one’s being, that one can begin to feel that this something which is permanently conscious throughout all ages and all change, this something must be myself. But that already requires a study that is rather deep. Otherwise if you think I am going to do this, I need that, it is always your body, a small kind of will which is a mixture of sensations, of more or less confused sentimental reactions, and still more confused thoughts which form a mixture and are animated by an impulse, an attraction, a desire, some sort of a will; and all that momentarily becomes myself – but not directly, for one does not conceive this myself as independent of the head, the trunk, the arms and legs and all that moves – it is very closely linked.

      It is only after having thought much, seen much, studied much, observed much that you begin to realise that the one is more or less independent of the other and that the will behind can make it either act or not act, and you begin not to be completely identified with the movement, the action, the realisation – that something is floating. But you have to observe much to see that.

      And then you must observe much more still to see that this, the second thing that is there, this kind of active conscious will, is set in motion by something else which watches, judges, decides and tries to found its decisions on knowledge – that happens even much later. And so, when you begin to see this something else, you begin to see that it has the power to set in motion the second thing, which is an active will; and not only that, but that it has a very direct and very important action on the reactions, the feelings, the sensations, and that finally it can have control over all the movements of the being – this part which watches, observes, judges and decides.

      That is the beginning of control.

      When one becomes conscious of that, one has seized the thread, and when one speaks of control, one can know, Ah! Yes, this is what has the power of control.

      This is how one learns to look at oneself.

      *

      Words of the Mother

      In truth, the only thing that is truly tragic is not to become conscious of one’s soul, the psychic being, and not to be entirely guided by it in one’s life.

      To die before having found one’s soul and lived according to its law, that is the true failure.

      * * *

      Chapter 3

      False Soul and the True Soul

      Words of Sri Aurobindo

      The soul is a spark of the Divine Spirit which supports the individual nature; mind, life, body are the instruments for the manifestation of the nature. In most men the soul is hidden and covered over by the action of the external nature; they mistake the vital being for the soul, because it is the vital which animates and moves the body. But this vital being is a thing made up of desires and executive forces good and bad; it is the desire-soul, not the true thing. It is when the true soul (psyche) comes forward and begins first to influence and then govern the actions of the instrumental nature that man begins to overcome vital desire and grow towards a greater divine

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