The first part of the Aphorism refers to the period in Sri Aurobindo’s Yoga when he had primarily taken and perfected the path of the Gita under the direct guidance of Sri Krishna. It led him to the Vedantic experience of Mukti and the realisation of the one Divine everywhere and in everything, as we see in the Alipore Jail.
But always he saw Kali, the Divine Mother, with Sri Krishna. After coming to Pondicherry, this recognition of the Divine Mother and identification with Her, which we see prominently in the Shakti sadhana or the Tantras, became more and more prominent. There was, in fact, a time when Sri Aurobindo would sign his letters as Kali. It is during this time that The Mother came to Pondicherry and the integral yoga took this form of Synthesis, as he himself wrote.
‘In the method of synthesis which we have been following, another clue of principle has been pursued which is derived from another view of the possibilities of Yoga. This starts from the method of Vedanta to arrive at the aim of the Tantra. In the Tantric method Shakti is all-important, becomes the key to the finding of spirit; in this synthesis spirit, soul is all-important, becomes the secret of the taking up of Shakti.’
(Ref. https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/24/the-principle-of-the-integral-yoga#p8)
In a letter of 1916, he writes.
‘When the Unity has been well founded, the static half of our work is done, but the active half remains. It is then that in the One we must see the Master and His Power,—Krishna and Kali as I name them using the terms of our Indian religions; the Power occupying the whole of myself and my nature which becomes Kali and ceases to be anything else, the Master using, directing, enjoying the Power to his ends, not mine, with that which I call myself only as a centre of his universal existence and responding to its workings as a soul to the Soul, taking upon itself his image until there is nothing left but Krishna and Kali.’
(Ref. https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/36/to-the-mother-and-paul-richard#p36)
Love
Alok da
