Chapter XVI The Divine Shakti THE relation between the Purusha and Prakriti which emerges as one advances in the Yoga of self-perfection is the next thing that we have to understand carefully in this part of the Yoga. In the spiritual truth of our being the power which we call Nature is the power of being, consciousness and will and therefore the power of self-expression and self-creation of the self, soul or Purusha. But to our ordinary mind in the ignorance and to its experience of things the force of Prakriti has a different appearance. When we look at it in its universal action outside ourselves, we see it first as a mechanical energy in the cosmos which acts upon

Chapter XXII The Supramental Thought and Knowledge THE transition from mind to supermind is not only the substitution of a greater instrument of thought and knowledge, but a change and conversion of the whole consciousness. There is evolved not only a supramental thought, but a supramental will, sense, feeling, a supramental substitute for all the activities that are now accomplished by the mind. All these higher activities are first manifested in the mind itself as descents, irruptions, messages or revelations of a superior power. Mostly they are mixed up with the more ordinary action of the mind and not easily distinguishable from them in our fi

Chapter XIX The Nature of the Supermind THE object of Yoga is to raise the human being from the consciousness of the ordinary mind subject to the control of vital and material Nature and limited wholly by birth and death and Time and the needs and desires of the mind, life and body to the consciousness of the spirit free in its self and using the circumstances of mind, life and body as admitted or self-chosen and self-figuring determinations of the spirit, using them in a free self-knowledge, a free will and power of being, a free delight of being. This is the essential difference between the ordinary mortal mind in which we live and the spiritual c

Chapter X The Elements of Perfection WHEN the self is purified of the wrong and confused action of the instrumental Nature and liberated into its self-existent being, consciousness, power and bliss and the Nature itself liberated from the tangle of this lower action of the struggling gunas and the dualities into the high truth of the divine calm and the divine action, then spiritual perfection becomes possible. Purification and freedom are the indispensable antecedents of perfection. A spiritual self-perfection can only mean a growing into oneness with the nature of divine being, and therefore according to our conception of divine being will be the aim, effort

Chapter XV Soul-Force and the Fourfold Personality THE perfecting of the normal mind, heart, prana and body gives us only the perfection of the psycho-physical machine we have to use and creates certain right instrumental conditions for a divine life and works lived and done with a purer, greater, clearer power and knowledge. The next question is that of the Force which is poured into the instruments, karaņa, and the One who works it for his universal ends. The force at work in us must be the manifest divine Shakti, the supreme or the universal Force unveiled in the liberated individual being, parā prakŗtir jīvabhūtā, who will be the doer of all t

Chapter VIII The Liberation of the Spirit THE purification of the mental being and the psychic Prana, – we will leave aside for the time the question of the physical purification, that of the body and physical prana, though that too is necessary to an integral perfection, – prepares the ground for a spiritual liberation. Śuddhi is the condition for mukti. All purification is a release, a delivery; for it is a throwing away of limiting, binding, obscuring imperfections and confusions: purification from desire brings the freedom of the psychic prana, purification from wrong emotions and troubling reactions the freedom of the heart, purification from the obscur

Chapter I The Principle of the Integral Yoga THE principle of Yoga is the turning of one or of all powers of our human existence into a means of reaching divine Being. In an ordinary Yoga one main power of being or one group of its powers is made the means, vehicle, path. In a synthetic Yoga all powers will be combined and included in the transmuting instrumentation. In Hathayoga the instrument is the body and life. All the power of the body is stilled, collected, purified, heightened, concentrated to its utmost limits or beyond any limits by Asana and other physical processes; the power of the life too is similarly purified, heightened, concentrat

Chapter VI Purification —The Lower Mentality WE HAVE to deal with the complex action of all these instruments and set about their purification. And the simplest way will be to fasten on the two kinds of radical defect in each, distinguish clearly in what they consist and set them right. But there is also the question where we are to begin. For the entanglement is great, the complete purification of one instrument depends on the complete purification too of all the others, and that is a great source of difficulty, disappointment and perplexity,– as when we think we have got the intelligence purified, only to find that it is still subject to attack and ov

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE THE SYNTHESIS OF YOGA first appeared serially in the Arya from August, 1914 to January, 1921 in four parts, preceded by an extensive Introduction in five chapters.  Subsequently the first twelve chapters of Part One, “The Yoga of Divine Works”, were thoroughly revised and enlarged. With the Introduction excluded they were brought out in book from in 1948 by the Sri Aurobindo Library, Madras. In 1950 the Sri Aurobindo Library, New York, published them with a Glossary and an Index. The Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry, issued these chapters in 1953. In 1955 a complete edition of THE SYNTHESIS OF YOGA was published under the imprint of the Sri Au