Sri Aurobindo (vegetarian): Integral Yoga for Divine Awakening, Part 1 of 2

Sri Aurobindo was a 20th-century enlightened Master, poet, and writer. He founded Integral Yoga, a spiritual system that conceptualizes “all life is Yoga.” In His “Letters on Yoga,” Sri Aurobindo wrote about the practice: “[It] does not proceed through any set mental teaching or prescribed forms of meditation, mantras or others, but by aspiration, by a self-concentration inwards or upwards, by self-opening to an Influence, to the Divine Power above us and its workings, to the Divine Presence in the heart and by the rejection of all that is foreign to these things. It is only by faith, aspiration and surrender that this self-opening can come.” Sri Aurobindo presented all living creatures in the world as manifestations of God in different stages of evolution. Therefore, to progress spiritually, one must realize God while living in the world. According to Sri Aurobindo, one’s task is not only to realize God consciousness, but to exhibit it and to transform one’s entire life in God consciousness. We must experience God and express God in daily life. Therefore, in Integral Yoga, all facets of life are incorporated into one’s spiritual practice and in the realization of the Inner Master. In a lecture on March 21, 1989, Supreme Master Ching Hai spoke of Sri Aurobindo’s enlightenment. “In the past, there was a great enlightened Master in India. When He was imprisoned, He just meditated. He continued with His spiritual practice and didn’t feel any lack of freedom. That’s because when we have a good meditation method, our spirits can go out during meditation. At night, we can leave our body sleeping in bed while our spirit visits Buddha’s Land or Heaven, so we don’t feel any lack of freedom. This Master’s name was Aurobindo. When the government released Him, He became an Enlightened Master immediately afterwards. And, of course, He had many disciples. He is very famous, internationally famous, not just in India. So sometimes, even when we are in such a situation, we can still turn the bad things into good ones.”