Sri Aurobindo’s Integral Yoga is indeed a life-embracing Yoga but it embraces life with the view of transforming it. It does not advocate perpetuating the life of ignorance as that would defeat its own purpose. Nor does it regard life as an incorrigible error or illusion leaving no other option except continuing in the ignorance with its pleasures and pain or shunning it as an ascetic does, keeping only that much active contact as is necessary for the basic framework and for the sadhana.
But here, since the goal is self-transformation as well as eventually world transformation, all fields and activities have to be taken up so that they can be offered to the Divine Mother and the transformation effected. It means shifting the ground of being from the ego to the Divine, and exchanging the fuel of desire and its seeking for selfish gains and pleasures with the working of the Divine Mother’s Force fulfilling the Divine Will in our life.
The logic of transformation is that we have a double nature. Our present nature is full of ignorance (and hence called lower nature) which yet wants somewhere to build an ideal life for oneself and for humanity. But the lower nature neither understands what that ideal really is and how it can be created here. It is like a child misreading the intent of the parent or the teacher. But behind and beyond this present limited human nature there is a higher Divine Supernature which pushes and presses upon the lower nature to give birth to higher possibilities. This leads to a kind of inner struggle between the forces of lower nature that habitually try to prolong their reign and the forces of higher nature pressing upon and eventually prevailing over them. In this process that can be somewhat difficult and prolonged the sadhak has to keep giving consent to the higher by putting his will and faith and surrender to the Divine Mother.
It is understood that this takes time and the will slips and faith gets clouded again and again but in the end victory comes to the most persevering. This struggle and persistence is perhaps most seen with the sexual impulse that is rooted so deeply in the very biology with its tentacles all around. But since the goal is transformation one does not avoid all contact with woman as that only pushes it down in the subconscient waiting to leap at the first unsuspecting moment. Besides doing this would mean that a woman is only a snare as some medieval ascetics foolishly believed in which case there is no possibility of a divine life upon earth. The only woman or man the sadhak avoids is someone who excites deliberately the sexual impulse, triggering a cascade of wild impulses and fantasies. That there are such men and women is simply a plainspeak. Some of these contacts can be definitively detrimental and even dangerous to the budding spiritual life and it is best even for an inwardly developed being not to tempt the animal within until it is transformed. That takes time. Until then one keeps a healthy relation between man and a woman which may include friendship without laying too much stress upon biological differences. If one slips, – well one gets up and starts walking again rather than lamenting and rolling in the mud.
Eventually with the growth of the psychic flame and with it sincerity and surrender, as a basic purity of motives and a cleaner consciousness grows, the sexual impulses loses its sting and spur, becomes weak and eventually leaves for good. The relation or the equation between a man and a woman also changes accordingly leading to a happy harmonious togetherness in thought and feelings and a common aspiration, strengthening and supporting each other’s journey towards the goal rather than impeding it. Sex loses its hold completely and the togetherness becomes luminous and beautiful joining them together not in common animal instinct and pleasure but in common uplifting ideal and harmony and delight.
Affectionately,
Alok Da
