The Synthesis of Yoga - Sri Aurobindo Ashram

170 The Yoga of Divine Works
playground of an incurable Ignorance. Yet it is precisely these
activities that are claimed for a spiritual conquest and divine
transformation by the integral Yoga. Abandoned altogether by
the more ascetic disciplines, accepted by others only as a field of
temporary ordeal or a momentary, superficial and ambiguous
play of the concealed spirit, this existence is fully embraced
and welcomed by the integral seeker as a field of fulfilment, a
field for divine works, a field of the total self-discovery of the
concealed and indwelling spirit. A discovery of the Divinity in
oneself is his first object, but a total discovery too of the Divinity
in the world behind the apparent denial offered by its scheme
and figures and, last, a total discovery of the dynamism of some
transcendent Eternal; for by its descent this world and self will
be empowered to break their disguising envelopes and become
divine in revealing form and manifesting process as they now
are secretly in their hidden essence.
This object of the integral Yoga must be accepted wholly
by those who follow it, but the acceptance must not be in ignorance
of the immense stumbling-blocks that lie in the way of
the achievement; on the contrary we must be fully aware of the
compelling cause of the refusal of so many other disciplines to
regard even its possibility, much less its imperative character, as
the true meaning of terrestrial existence. For here in the works of
life in the earth-nature is the very heart of the difficulty that has
driven Philosophy to its heights of aloofness and turned away
even the eager eye of Religion from the malady of birth in a
mortal body to a distant Paradise or a silent peace of Nirvana.
A way of pure Knowledge is comparatively straightforward and
easy to the tread of the seeker in spite of our mental limitations
and the pitfalls of the Ignorance; a way of pure Love, although
it has its stumbling-blocks and its sufferings and trials, can in
comparison be as easy as the winging of a bird through the free
azure. For Knowledge and Love are pure in their essence and
become mixed and embarrassed, corrupted and degraded only
when they enter into the ambiguous movement of the life-forces
and are seized by them for the outward life’s crude movements
and obstinately inferior motives. Alone of the three powers Life