The Call in Brief

            Arjuna of the Gita received a seven-fold Divine Call, in order to ascend in the stairs of Divine Consciousness. And the Lord demands from him 'nothing more in life than his instrument'⁷⁶ through 'subordination and service,'⁷⁷ nimittamatram bhava savyasachin.

 

1.   In the preliminary stage of his Sadhana, Arjuna’s tamasic recoil from the terrible action of war field by the declaration ‘better the life of the beggar than to taste these blood-stained enjoyments’⁴³ and entry into dejection, fear, aversion, disgust and discouragement are much more injurious and destructive than the rajasic principles of strife, struggle and dissociation. A weak and cowardly tamasic shudra devotee, arta, cannot climb towards God, but by service and obedience  can pacify his problem of lower nature or 'tame the brute in his being.'⁶⁹

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2.   So, the Lord discourages the tendency of outer renunciation of life and action and insists Arjuna to ascend from the state of tamasic devotee, arta, to rajasic devotee, artharthi, by activation of the Kshetriya Soul force and asks inner renunciation of attachment by slaying³ the human unenlightened Teacher Dronacharya, who represents ego and divisible Consciousness. This indicates that for a secured Spiritual life, one should constantly slay²⁵ the inner enemy of desire, ego and ignorance and in collective living he should continuously wage outer war against the powers of Adharma to establish truth and wisdom in objective life. The Gita’s jahi kamam durasadam,⁶³ ‘slay this enemy in the form of desire, who is so hard to assail’ is identified as the keyword⁶⁴ of integral Yoga. The nature of the Kshetriya Soul force is 'courage, strength, unconquerable tenacity and self-devotion to a great task.'⁶⁹ 'Every individual Jivatman must become the perfect Kshatriya before he can become the Brahmin'⁶⁹ or Sattwic devotee.

3.   Then the Lord asks Arjuna to become a Sattwic devotee, jijnasu, and begin Yoga by renouncing Prakriti Yajna of active mind, which includes renunciation of all types of physical asceticism,⁷⁵ external worship, and ceremonies and insists him to pursue only Purusha Yajna of passive mind and inner askesis⁷⁵ which will establish him in the trigunatita state.⁴ Then He asks him to adore only  the  highest  embodied  Divine personality,  here  represented  by  Him  as Purushottama, and discourages him to adore other gods which is meant to satisfy ‘various outer desires of the devotees.’⁵ So the Gita asks the above three bound Souls to become desireless and adore the One, representing the highest Consciousness and discourages though does not ban adoration of other godheads representing the distortion of the highest comprehensive Consciousness.⁶ Then the Lord points out that even the devotees who worship other Gods, their sacrifice is also received by Him though not according to the true law, avidhipurbakam.⁷ If one adores and offers sacrifice to the Divine in tamasic Ignorance, then that sacrifice goes to elemental powers and grosser spirits, pretan bhutaganam;¹⁷ if he offers adoration to the Divine in rajasic state of desire-driven consciousness, then the sacrifice goes to lower godheads and perverse powers, asuras, yaksa-raksamsi;¹⁷ if he offers adoration to the Divine concealed in His manifestation in sattwic state of desireless Consciousness by renouncing the fruit of action, then that sacrifice and service is received by partial Godhead and not directly by the integral Divinity.¹⁷ A seeker of truth, Jijnasu, by virtue of pursuing Sadhana unsuccessfully in past births, takes an interest in written truth in this birth from the early part of his life. Thus, he practices sacrifice, askesis and giving which is limited, largely egoistic (sattwic ego) and mistaken in its motive and he endeavours to go beyond the written truth. A sattwic devotee or 'the true Brahmin is samo manapamanayoh, he accepts indifferently worldly honour and dishonour and cares only for the truth and the right.'⁷⁰ The message of integral Yoga to a sattwic devotee is: 'Detect first what is false or obscure in you and persistently reject it, then alone can you rightly call for the divine Power to transform you.'⁷⁴

4.   When Arjuna ascends to the stairs of the twice-born Soul, Dvija, the Lord further insists him to search Spiritual fosterer to receive care of his newborn Divinity and that is realised by ‘adoring the feet of the enlightened Guru’⁸ or ‘veneration of the Teacher’⁹ in order to realise the Divine as Kshara Purusha, Psychic Being in the heart and Akshara Purusha, Spiritual Being above the head. In the Gita, ‘the help of the Guru has always been relied upon as an indispensable aid.’⁵⁵ Integral Yoga proposes that the living Guru is indispensable for beginners of Yoga and dispensable for few rare developed Souls or ‘A strict obedience to the wise and intuitive leading of a Guide is also normal and necessary for all but a few specially gifted seekers.”⁵⁰ So a Dvija has the possibility of double evolution,⁶⁰ one that of the evolution of external life and another that of the evolution of his inner life. By activating three Gunas or by horizontal movement of Consciousness, he will experience slow mental evolution of external life. By movement of Psychic and Spiritual being or vertical movement of Consciousness, he will experience swift Spiritual evolution of inner life. Thus his slow material evolution is complemented by swift Spiritual evolution and this movement culminates in the reconciliation of perfect Spirit with imperfect Matter. A twice-born Soul 'needs yet four things before he can succeed, (1) the Sruti or recorded revelation, (2) the Sacred Teacher, (3) the practice of Yoga and (4) the Grace of God.'⁷¹

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5.   Then, after Arjuna is established as doing all objective action in the war field by the dictation of Divine Will, he becomes the developed Soul of Yantra. The Lord gives him this knowledge that all concentrated objective Divine action and sacrifice must be supported by Prakriti Yajna of ceaseless Japa¹⁰ and this habit of Japa must be maintained while in action of the war field¹⁶ and also while leaving the earthly body¹¹ in deep Samadhi where one’s Soul can take final refuge in the Param Dham. Integral Yoga proposes ceaseless Japa and action in waking trance, not utilised as a passage to param Dham, but as means of Divine descent of Force and transformation of Nature. The Gita gives the example of King Janaka, a developed Soul and Divine Instrument, who had attained liberation, perfection and Cosmic Consciousness through Prakriti Yajna of ‘ceremonial sacrifice and ritualistic works done without attachment.’⁵¹ Savitri has identified the Nature of the Divine instruments as:

"A breath comes down from a supernal air,

A Presence is born, a guiding Light awakes,

A stillness falls upon the instruments:

Fixed, motionless like a marble monument,

Stone-calm, the body is a pedestal

Supporting a figure of eternal Peace." Savitri-47

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6.   When he ascends to the status of Vibhuti, by universalisation of Psychic and Spiritual Consciousness and realisation of Divine in all His becoming, the Lord further asks Arjuna to worship His manifestation in the Sun, Moon, Star, flower, in every living creature. He has to adore the myriad Gods, Deva, superior human beings known as twice-born Dvija, a man of enlightened knowledge, Prajna, and the enlightened Teacher, Guru.¹² The Lord points out that adoration of all His manifestations equally, without distinction is the condition of becoming the greatest Yogi.²⁴ A Sadhak of integral Yoga counts all his subjective and objective Divine action as means of Divine descent of Force and through this activation of dynamic Divine does good of all creatures.

7.   When Arjuna ascends to the status of Avatar Consciousness or Purushottama Consciousness through large-scale objective Divine action of Instrument and large-scale subjective Divine action of Emanation, there triple consecration through Karma, Jnana and Bhakti Yoga becomes normal and natural. In integral Yoga, this Purushottama state of consciousness is identified as Supramental Consciousness and a Sadhak becomes ‘a child and eternal portion’⁶² of the Divine Mother and in him, the reconciliation of triple consecration gives birth to a fourth Yoga known as ‘Yoga of Self-perfection’ and there the triple poise of the Self coexists and the Psychic being, Kshara Purusha possesses the Akshara Purusha and Purushottama, in totality.

 

            Integral Yoga follows this seven-fold sequential growth of Arjuna with a more profound significance of dynamic Divine union. It stresses the adoration of the One to the exclusion of the Many for developing Souls to build a Spiritual foundation and asks the developed Souls to reconcile them in order to know and possess the Divine entirely. This adoration of superior human beings hinted in the Gita is applicable in integral Yoga for developed Soul¹³ and this adoration is even further extended to criminals, thieves, murderers and outcaste¹⁴ in order to extend the realisation of the Divine in Cosmic Consciousness. There will be even ‘certain respect’¹⁵ and reverence for physical things, a worship of the Divine, the Brahman in what one uses, ordered harmony and beauty in the life of Matter in order to complete the realisation of Divine in all things.

            Thus, as ceaseless renouncer of lower Nature, nitya sannyasi,⁴⁵ a Sadhak’s scope of consecration becomes wide²⁶ and all-pervasive. When this consecrated action becomes absolute, constant and without rest, nitya yajna,³⁸ he experiences constant Divine union, nitya yukta,³⁹ and in this ceaseless waking trance, nitya-sattvasthah,⁴⁶ he can repeat Divine’s name ceaselessly, nitya Japa⁴⁰ or remembers Divine’s name continuously, nitya smarati⁴⁴ and this is one of the ways of experiencing  ceaseless Divine Grace, tat prasadat;⁵²  thus one experiences supreme peace, param shanti,⁵² supreme state of Consciousness, sthanam saswatam,⁵² and cellular transformation, prakritijairmuktam.⁴⁷ The above experience is restated in the Mother’s language: "A vital like a warrior, with an absolute self-control (the vital of this present incarnation was sexless—a warrior), an absolutely calm and imperturbable warrior—no desires, no attachments...Since my earliest childhood,...And with that preparation... It is eighty-six years since I came here, mon petit! For thirty years I worked with Sri Aurobindo consciously, without letup, night and day... We shouldn’t be in a hurry.”⁷² “Well, this movement (gesture of a rising flame) towards That must be constant – constant, total. All the rest is none of our business, and the less we meddle with it mentally, the better. But THAT, that Flame, is indispensable. And when it goes out, light it again; when it falters, rekindle it – all the time, all the time, ALL THE TIME – when sleeping, walking, reading, moving around, speaking ... all the time. ...that is the Japa I do now—I do it all the time, while sleeping, while walking, while eating, while working, all the time.”⁵⁶ The Mother further proposes that “There is nothing other than He! This should be repeated from morning to night, from night to morning, because we forget it every minute.”⁶¹

            A Sadhak of traditional schools of Yoga initially moves his consciousness between  Kshara  Purusha  (sarvabhutani  chatmani)  and  Akshara  Purusha (sarvabhutastha chatmanam) and he can gather together the race, lokasamgraha, by all possible external aids or by Psycho-physical means. After long years of movement of Consciousness between Kshara and Akshara Purusha, finally, his 
consciousness arrives at Purushottama Consciousness and from there he finds an exit⁴⁸ to the supreme Abode of Paramdham. Thus, he emerges as a precious distinguished World Teacher and he can wander around the world in order to uplift the human race. The Gita warns that ‘the askesis which is undertaken to get honour and worship from men, for the sake of outward glory and greatness and for ostentation is said to be rajasic tapasya, unstable and fleeting.’⁵³

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            A Sadhak of integral Yoga initially moves his consciousness between Psychic being in the heart and Spiritual being above the head superseding his earlier movement of Consciousness between three Gunas. After being established in the waking trance of the Psychic plane and the non-waking trance of the Spiritual plane, he universalises the two Selves and does the good of all creatures. For the perfection of two Selves and perfection of untransformed Nature he finally after long years of preparation, ascends to the Supramental plane and Supramentalises and Spiritualises the Psychic Self. Thus, he emerges as a precious Nameless⁴⁹ World Teacher. His inner wandering of Consciousness from Inconscient Self to supreme Bliss Self can be pursued in secrecy and silence and he can drag the human race ahead in its destined upward journey.

            It may be noted that all-inclusive integral Yoga does not exclude the self-disciplines of traditional Yoga and all the perfections/siddhis of the latter are recognised as a sojourn of the former Yoga and for a Sadhak of integral Yoga there can be ‘no clinging to resting-places on the road or to half-way houses; he cannot be satisfied till he has laid down all the great enduring bases of his perfection and broken out into its large and free infinities, and even there he has to be constantly filling himself with more experiences of the Infinite.’⁵⁴.

Om Tat Sat

 

References are available in the Manuscript ‘The Bhagavad Gita and Integral Yoga’ (page-198).