Synthesis of Yoga
The Synthesis of Yoga, Sri Aurobindo’s principle work on yoga, continuing in Part Two, The Yoga of Integral knowledge, Chapter 20 The Lower Triple Purusha picking up on page 461; this reading will go through the chapter’s end on page 464.
” … entire subjection of the mind and the life to the body is the characteristic of an undeveloped humanity … the undeveloped physical soul is entirely dominated by material nature and its impressions and has to work them out to a better advantage before it can rise in the scale of being. … we act without definite consciousness of the worlds or planes which are the sources of our actions. We are indeed aware of the life-plane and mind-plane of the physical being, but not of … the superior and larger vital and mental being which we are behind the veil of our ordinary consciousness. … It is only at a high stage of development that we become aware … by yoga this power of transcending the physical self and taking possession of the higher selves may … be acquired through a heightened and widened self-consciousness and self-mastery.
To achieve real freedom and mastery we have to ascend to a yet higher level of the many-plateaued
mountain of our being.”