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Namah Yogic insights into human psychology

but they are not the same thing. It is limited vision of the mental consciousness
important to dwell upon these fundamental that man embodies. It climbs towards higher
truths of Yoga since they determine our summits than the natural man at present,
approach towards it and also the goal of releasing thereby greater possibilities of vision,
this journey. understanding and action. Sri Aurobindo
summarises it beautifully thus:
Yoga, the self-exceeding of man
“The Yogin’s aim in the sciences that make
When looked at this way, yoga ceases to for knowledge should be to discover and
be something disconnected from life or understand the workings of the Divine
another kind of religious activity. It is one Consciousness-Puissance in man and creatures
of the fundamental quests of man inbuilt and things and forces, her creative significances,
within us. Science, art, humanities, religion, her execution of the mysteries, the symbols in
ideology, philosophy are nothing but kind which she arranges the manifestation. The
of unconscious efforts at yoga. Or to put Yogin’s aim in the practical sciences, whether
it in another way, Yoga is at once science mental and physical or occult and psychic,
and art and humanities and religion and should be to enter into the ways of the Divine
philosophy and yet something beyond it. In and his processes, to know the materials and
essence yoga is a self-exceeding of man to means for the work given to us so that we
beyond his manhood. It is an inner science may use that knowledge for a conscious and
through which man ascends out of his zone faultless expression of the spirit’s mastery, joy
of ignorance into some plenary Truth. and self-fulfilment. The Yogin’s aim in the Arts
should not be a mere aesthetic, mental or vital
It is an art that reveals to us the formless gratification, but, seeing the Divine everywhere,
Beauty and causeless Delight that exists in all worshipping it with a revelation of the meaning
things. It is a religion, but a vast and catholic of its own works, to express that One Divine
and all-inclusive religion, that worships the in ideal forms, the One Divine in principles
eternal with or without Form since it knows and forces, the One Divine in gods and men
that these are two sides of the same Truth. It and creatures and objects. The theory that sees
is a philosophy, but a philosophy of life born an intimate connection between religious
out of a living truth experienced within the aspiration and the truest and greatest Art is
inner spaces of our soul. It is a sublime idea in essence right; but we must substitute for the
and ideology that looks upon man and bird mixed and doubtful religious motive a spiritual
and beast and plant and dust, all as part of a aspiration, vision, interpreting experience. For
single plan and sees these different seeming the wider and more comprehensive the seeing,
objects and forms as images of the One and the more it contains in itself the sense of the
the Infinite. hidden Divine in humanity and in all things
and rises beyond a superficial religiosity into
Thus seen, yoga completes science and art, the spiritual life, the more luminous, flexible,
taking them to their zenith of possibilities. It deep and powerful will the Art be that springs
fulfils these and other human actitvities so to from that high motive. The Yogin’s distinction
say. Yoga does so by ascending beyond the from other men is this that he lives in a higher

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