A God’s Yoga

On Record of Yoga by Sri Aurobindo

Courtesy Priti Ghosh

Author’s Note:
The history of man is replete with many thinkers, great lives and hearts, that have poured their distilled thoughts into this or that book. A handful of these books attain a status and permanency and relevance to the evolving needs of the mental man.

For example, the Veda, our repository of great soul attempts and self-development. Or the Gita, delivered on the battle-field and relevant to all those who find their within and without in conflict. All great works. But yet, hidden and not even hinted at is the process that led them there. Beyond hagiographical accounts, one knows not how the Siddhartha became the Buddha. We know little beyond the comical caricature of his sudden discovery under a bodhi tree. Or of Shankara, they say he attained savikalpa samadhi at a tender age.

In short, we are seldom shown how a mortal becomes the immortal. What do we know of what they felt? We echo Arjuna’s query, what does a muktha do, how does he act and sleep? How do we identify him? Sri Krishna does not answer these, for the signs are all inner, subjective and mystic.

In Record of Yoga by Sri Aurobindo, a set of private diary notes he maintained, and published post his withdrawal, we have perhaps for the first time ever, an almost daily breakdown of the progress of his sadhana, which high as it was, was yet priming for the next leap, the types of which are seldom known or accomplished at the level documented here. We see the Vedic discoveries and processes, manifesting itself in the living body of Sri Aurobindo, we meet most of the pantheon — Agni, Indra, Ila, Saraswati…all the various powers and the maze of their action, manoeuvred and recorded. Of course this record, though it spans many years, is only a fraction of what Sri Aurobindo did during this time and until the time of his withdrawal.

By this series of poems we shall aim to outline the context and essence of Sri Aurobindo’s Record of Yoga. May She lead us all.

In Alipore’s jails dim by a cell of an oppressor’s den,
Hatched the golden scheme to marry earth and heaven.
A scouting Transcendent eye watched a lone forerunner
Rise above cloud and stars and every fated gate;
Swift as an arrow and wider than space,
A joy inhabited his stillness, an embrace equal as He.

Aspirations have glimmered on earth’s firmament,
Lonely toilers, giant hearts and minds keen.
But nature tired of specialties synthesised once more.
All the Veda he held and the fruit of that battle-song,
Unflinching brows outlining eyes that could gaze at god.
A scribe earth-born who would pen the limits of lesser gods,
And enlarge the fate of man and beast.
A dreamer of the impossible and a maker of the way.

In his vast consciousness a rendezvous once more
With that Friend of man, our only counsel in war of life.
Greater dangers loomed beside the squabble of men and nations.
Nature tired of her last steps pressed for relief,
Perhaps she erred in her recklessness.
For man defiled every norm, her best sunk to depths she knew not.
A call had to be made, to sink an illustrious line
That began with a cry by Saraswati’s shores,
Or to turn the tide of earth’s march by a lone will’s tapas.

Here was one, the forerunner who alone could match
Every godward impulse ever born in time.
Who could bind every contrary crisscrossing time and space.

In that rendezvous a sun met its supernal Sun.
A god and God communed of the new scheme.
In seven tetrads distilled an incalculable alchemy’s mystic art.
A scheme and plan and prophecy of the future to be.
A labour akin to that which made the world and all within.
Seven gates of that impossible ascent,
Each gate of four facets, each impinging on all others.

End of Part 1

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A God’s Yoga