Arin Basu

These are my rough notes on Integral Yoga, or how I have dealt with a toxic world.

Here I am. First thing in the morning was to lie in bed, close eyes, focus on the spot between the eyebrows and pay attention. At once other thoughts crowded in, did not resist, was trying to be curious where they arose and watched them arise and recede. I have now even forgotten what they were. But it stuck with me that I need to write down somewhere this feeling.

The idea of integral yoga is a unification of five pr seven processes together. Let’s get to them first.

First of all, start with losing your ego, or better term, egolessness. Egolessness is that principle where you do not self-refer, you do not boast about yourself, but you still maintain a sense of self esteem. This is the hard part. A personal practice that was found helpful was to not refer to “I”, “me”, or in any way talk about myself for about a week. At first it felt awkward and I have turned back the dial a little, but over time the sense of “ego” has receded and that has helped a lot. Particularly in dealing with violent toxic people, this is a fantastic practice because they cannot find a Segway to attack you.

Second, train yourself to see the world in a different light than now; again, where you tune yourself to the beauty and sense you are as much part of everything as everything is as much part of you. Starting with inanimate objects to everyone around you, you feel as part of a giant unified whole.

Third, start separating yourself from your body and train yourself to visualise this. This part is a bit difficult to explain, so here is an example. I started treadmill run, but soon I was exhausted and was wondering when will it stop, I kept looking at the timer, I felt a sense of breathing discomfort as I trained. I started to put this idea of Sri Aurobindo that you visualise your body running staying apart. In a few days’ time, I realised that the sense of exhaustion receded, running was a lot more relaxing. Over time, I have used this visualisation in other aspects of my life, including here where I can visualise myself writing this piece as I type. A slow deliberate typing but that nevertheless I can watch myself “doing a thing”. Actions become more deliberate and relaxing.

Fourth, keep a calm heart at all times. Life throws challenges. The way to keep calmness as I have found is to go silent and go deep inside. In times of stress and in the presence of toxic people and toxic conversations, close your eyes, go deep inside and feel the presence of your inner self, then detach your inner self and watch the interaction. As if you are controlling your own mind from outside. This is not easy, nor intuitive but the practice helps to overcome challenges.

Fifth, start recognising the attack of lower vitals. In Sri Aurobindo’s letters and writings, the word “vital” refer to emotions and think of them as motivational forces for action. In Sri Aurobindonian perspective of Integral Yoga, vitals are tiered lower, middle, upper vitals. The lower vitals are the emotions of fear, greed, hatred, jealousy, intention to do harm. These are part of Nature, prakriti, that visits us from time to time in the path of Integral Yoga, inevitably. There is a struggle between these base feelings and our strife to get on the path of Integral Yoga. The first rule is to recognise the play of lower vitals, then reject them. On the path of progress towards integral yoga, Sri Aurobindo talked about three aspects: aspiration, the state of recognition and yearning to move to the next stage, rejection of these base sentiments that bring in divisiveness and despair, and surrender. The word surrender here refer to the sentiment that we leave the results with the Divine Mother and continue with our lives doing what we do, putting our best efforts in the process. Philosophers like Banerji and others who have studied Integral Yoga has described this as concentric and vertical aspect of consciousness. The concentric state are defined metaphorically by three concentric circles — the deepest circle is the inner psychic. The inner psychic is our true “self”, the reflection of the “Brahman”, in the Vedic concepts according to Sri Aurobindo, and we can focus on this heart centre (this does not refer to the anatomical or physiological cardiac centres) in our meditation and feel the inner calm. Just outside of this circle is another metaphorical concentric ring that refers to the “mental being”, the mind that perceives the world and makes sense of it. Outside of that metaphorical circle is our outer body, the senses and the part that interacts with the world. Sri Aurobindo in Synthesis of Yoga has emphasised in focusing on the inner psychic and that spiritual centre as the guiding spirit. As I write this, the daily practices to deeply focus on that calm inner self is critical for facing the toxic outer world. The philosophers and scholars who have commented on SrinAurobindo’s viewpoints have also commented on the vertical ascent of the consciousness from a lower base. Sri Aurobindo called that mind to a state of Overmind, a state of being that “descends” into the open mental state and prepares one for the “descent” of the Supermind, a “gnostic” state of Omniscience. I do not understand this aspect well enough to write here, but for most practical applications of Integral Yoga, to combat a toxic world, most of us may use most of Integral Yoga without a completely understanding either. This brings us to the sixth aspect of regular daily practices (TBC)

I was reading this book on inner excellence and was thinking of Sri Aurobindo’s principles of Integral Yoga. In Integral Yoga, there are seven principles

1. There is no Ego or egolessness. You give up your false sense of separate existence
2. Complete surrender to the Divine. You do that because there is no separate ego and you strive to be one with the Truth, Consciousness, and Bliss that pervades the Universe
3. A system of physical balance, so be physically balanced. Sri Aurobindo’s talked about “hatha yoga”, the yogic posture. But it seems reading Sri Aurobindo’s writing the precise nature does not matter as long as you have a system of practice.
4. A system of mental balance, or Rajayoga, where the idea is to focus and concentrate the mind sonmewhere in between two eyebrows. Pay attention to your thoughts but do not be attached. Let them come and go
5. Knowledge focused ideas where you realise that you are part of an evolutionary process and play of Sacchidananda everywhere
6. Your work. The work does not focus on outcomes and you remain unfazed at all times. The work is a surrender to the Divine Forces. Interestingly, this is a point of convergence between Inner Exprience and Integral Yoga.
7. A process of Love to the Divinre. Again, another overlapping theme between inner excellence where Jim Murphy writes about the power of knowledge, courage, and love and talks about surrender.

Sri Aurobindo’ derived these themes from his reading of the Vedas and Western text and canons but also his personal experiences. His was a very much here and now practical point of spirituality not just for personal inner growth but for a population perspective.