Page 27 - NAMAH-Jul-2025

Namah Sacrifice and the Mystery of Love and Evolution

inertia, habits and limitations. It involves greater oneness. When love is restored to its
bringing conscious awareness into the spiritual and psychic essence, the mind, vital,
physical processes, overcoming physical and physical become instrumental channels
resistances to higher forces and making the of its expression in the world. Individual
body a receptive and capable instrument relationships are transmuted, becoming
for the Divine manifestation. channels for the divine Love that sees the
Divine Inhabitant in the other, bound no
longer by mere human needs or karmic ties,
but by a shared aspiration and a recognition
of the one Reality in all.

The struggle, suffering and potential
perishing, that Sri Aurobindo mentions as
the fate of those who refuse or go against
the law of sacrifice, is the consequence of
clinging to the lower, limited modes of
This integral offering is not a one-time event but receiving and giving. It is the resistance
a continuous process. It is the core discipline of to the evolutionary imperative which is
Integral Yoga — a constant bringing forward moving towards greater consciousness,
of the different parts of the being, recognising unity, and love. Ignorance, suffering,
their imperfections and limitations and offering and death are the results of this refusal
them into the divine Fire for purification and to participate consciously and fully in the
transformation. It is giving up our lower, great cosmic process of Sacrifice.
limited ways of functioning for the sake of
allowing a higher, diviner way to inhabit and The mystery of Love is birthed as an
act through us. evolutionary outcome precisely because
it was always there involved in the very
Love as the Outcome and the Goal bedrock of our existence and it is the force
that enables and is enabled by process. Love
The outcome of this conscious, integral dissolves the ego’s boundaries, making
sacrifice, led by the Psychic Being, is the self-giving not only expansive but joyous.
blossoming of a deeper, purer divine Love. It is the attraction of the parts to the Whole,
Sri Aurobindo highlights that while the the pull of the lower nature towards the
sacrifice of knowledge brings vastness, the higher, the aspiration for union. When our
sacrifice of love brings profound depth, fragmented will aligns with the Divine Will
intensity and richness. This divine Love through conscious offering, when our limited
for the Supreme and universal Divine does love expands to embrace the All, when our
not negate individual love but transforms ignorant vital becomes a channel for divine
it, heightening it into an expression of a power, then the mystery reveals itself.

Manoj Pavithran, an Integral Yoga practitioner and educator, is co-founder of Purnam Centre for
Integrality in Auroville, India.

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