8 Phenomena of Varieties of Spiritual Experience: Synthesis in Integral Realisation There is, however, an important problem from the phenomena of the varieties of spiritual experience. In the course of the history of yoga, there have been detailed investigations of the object of knowledge, status of yogic knowledge that has been obtained through yogic processes and the results of yogic experiences for the highest well- being of the individual and the world at all levels of existence, spiritual, mental, vital, and physical. In this course of development, the field of inquiry would have been much easier and much simpler if methods were uniform and if th

Appendix I Here is another document, even more definite in character, which, the writer being a Swiss, I translate from the French original.¹ "I was in perfect health: we were on our sixth day of tramping, and in good training. We had come the day before from Sixt to Trient by Buet. I felt neither fatigue, hunger, nor thirst, and my state of mind was equally healthy. I had had at Forlaz good news from home; I was subject to no anxiety, either near or remote, for we had a good guide, and there was not a shadow of uncertainty about the road we should follow. I can best describe the condition in which I was by calling it a state of equilibrium. When all at once I experienced a

Notes and References 1. Rig Veda, 1.10.1,2 2. Rig Veda, V.19.1 3 The nature of the crisis that Arjuna underwent is described vividly in Chapters I &. II of the Bhagavad Gita, and the relevant portions are appended in Appendix XV (p. 192) 4. Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis of Yoga, Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library (SABCL), 1971, Pondicherry, Vol.20, p.63 5. Ibid., p.2 6. Sri Aurobindo's poem "Divine Worker" that describes the state of consciousness of the divine worker is appended at Appendix VIII (p.157) 7. Quoted by Bertrand Russell in his History of Western Philosophy, paperback edition, 1996

7 Recapitulation: Some Questions and Answers What has been stated so far is only a glimpse of the varieties of yogic experience, and what is stated is far too inadequate even to serve as a preface to the descriptions of yogic experiences available in the history of relevant literature. A few broad rough strokes have been cast, and many important systems of yoga such as those of the Veda and the Upanishads, and many traditions of the East and the West have been either just mentioned or altogether unpardonably ignored. (a) From what has been indicated here and what can be gathered, — if we make a studious and critical study of the important literature on yogic expe

I A Preliminary Note If experience is a means of knowledge, and even of higher and the highest degrees and kinds of knowledge by identity in which the subject and the object of knowledge are united, and if such experiences are a means of growth, of ennoblement of character and personality, of expansion, deepening and heightening of consciousness and will-force, then yoga stands out, — considering the methods that it has developed for attaining depths, heights and widenesses as also objectivity and certainty, — as a human endeavour of the highest value. For yoga is, at all levels of its stages, based on experience and it develops by accumulation of experience, and its

A Synoptic Note Quest of Yoga Yoga is the expression of the flame of aspiration that rises upwards in order to bum and bum steadily, constantly and ever-increasingly, to grow in leaps of fire in order to bum away all that tends towards extinction, to build our inner being and all members of the being, — body, life, and mind and all our faculties, actual and latent, — so that all of them make an ascent in all consuming zeal to unite with all that is or felt or conceived to be the highest, the best, the widest and intensest, the infinite, the limitless, all and beyond, — so that they can attain consummation and ever-living sustenance of heat and light. This flame has, in it

2 Yoga: Its Distinguishing Features Yoga as distinguished from religion is primarily a shastra and not system of beliefs, ceremonies, rituals and moral and spiritual disciplines related to the system of beliefs and prescriptions. As a shastra, it is a growing body of knowledge of truths, principles, powers and processes that govern the discipline of the body, life and mind and other higher faculties in search and realisation of psychic, spiritual and supramental reality or realities that lie beyond the body, life and mind, as also the consequences of that search and realisation for the individual and collective existence in the cosmos. Sri Aurobind

Preface If the Spirit is One, why do the reports of the experience of the Spirit differ so widely? The fact is that there is a variety of spiritual experience, and this phenomenon has to be understood and explained. Spiritual experiences can be sporadic, or they can be attained by pursuing a methodised effort leading to the union of the individual with the universal and the transcendental spiritual reality. When the experience is attained by methodised effort, it can be called yogic experience. When we study the records of the experiences of those who have practised yoga, we find that they give different and even conflicting accounts of their experiences of the Spirit. T

Varieties of Yogic Experience and integral Realisation This book is addressed to all young people who, I urge, will study and respond to the following message of Sri Aurobindo: "It is the young who must be the builders of the new world, — not those who accept the competitive individualism, the capitalism or the materialistic communism of the West as India's future ideal, nor those who are enslaved to old religious formulas and cannot believe in the acceptance and transformation of life by the spirit, but all those who are free in mind and heart to accept a completer

6 Yogic Experience (a) Experiences in Hatha Yoga Yoga has often come to be exclusively identified with physical exercises of Hatha Yoga. Actually, the entire system of Hatha Yoga is only one of the systems of yoga. It aims at a complete mastery of the body and the life and a free and effective use of them established upon purification of their workings. The methods of this yoga are those of Āsana (more than eighty in number) and Prāṇāyāma, — the methods of stabilising the bodily condition by stabilisation of various postures of the body and those of breathing and breath- control by which the movements pervading all the nervous system are controlled. The gross