SAIEN

To teach or not to teach is a key question for an integral yoga practitioner. There are several statements from The Mother that insist on practice and inner experience being primary; intellectual discussion, explanations, teaching of Sri Aurobindo’s works as detrimental to true understanding. At the same time, there is also the Mother’s caution about not making a dogma out of her words as they are meant for a specific context, a specific person even. Where does that leave us? Personally, it is this aspect of freedom and flexibility that I find most attractive in the Integral Yoga. Sri Aurobindo encourages us to question instead of accepting even his words blindly. However, at the core of that questioning is a deep-seated faith in the Lord, and an aspiration to understand. It is from an inner poise of consciousness that one questions, not from the surface mind. And still, there is an important role the mind has to play in this yoga – to help one organize one’s understanding, to help one...

As I walk on the wet by-lanes of Mumbai sheltered by my umbrella, the rains stab the streets with a million transparent swords that melt and disappear into an infinitely absorbent earth. “But ma’am, why should I go through pain at all?” asks Sandeep, his youthful forehead wrinkling into frowns. “If God exists why does He always make things so difficult?” he persists. “Isn’t it natural to want revenge if someone has hurt and harmed me so much?” His questions continued to pelt, much like the unrelenting rains in the background. I return home after a long chat with Sandeep over his existential dilemmas. His questions bring a sense of   deja vu   to me; they are questions which had stormed through my adolescent mind a couple of decades ago. I recall those days when I had raised angry fists at the unyielding skies and then dropped them helplessly. Those days when my starry eyes had shone with dreams of fame and glamour and my mind had told me that becoming a doctor was the shortest...

It is a somewhat difficult concept for most people to accept: that each individual has his own spiritual path and realisation before him, and that it is therefore neither appropriate nor fruitful to spend time trying to either criticise or convert others to one’s own path or view, or to attempt to adopt or copy the methods or focus of another individual. Each individual comes into the world with a set of issues and difficulties that represent the challenges that individual is to face in this lifetime. The idea of uniqueness is, at the same time, combined with the complexity of what we call ‘synchronicity’ which brings together each of the unique individuals and circumstances into a web of interactions which help us to understand our own role, and our relation to the wider collectivity by reflecting back to us exactly what it is our energy and direction call for. A specific set of practices, or a specific mind-set may be helpful to one individual, while at the same time, being counter-p...

Let us remind ourselves about Mother’s method for training the vital. It is two-fold: ‘This vital education has two principal aspects, very different in their aims and methods, but both e qually important. The first concerns the development and use of the sense organs. The second the progressing awareness and control of the character, culminating in its transformation.’ (CWM 12)  I’ve mentioned what I do for the training of the senses in part 1 ( My Integral Yoga to Develop the Senses, blog post 26 Jan 2023 ). In this second part, I will share what I do for the development of the character. Overall, in working with my vital being and its character development, I have a positive attitude based on Mother’s way of educating the vital. She says,  ‘Generally, all disciplines dealing with the vital being, its purification and its control, proceed by coercion, suppression, abstinence, and asceticism. This procedure is certainly easier and quicker, although less deeply enduring and ef...