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Synthesis of Yoga, US Edition

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Of the many books available on Yoga in book stores today, very few deal with the subject in any real depth. Most cater to the popular image of Yoga as yoga postures for physical well-being. Few challenge the reader to a deeper vision of Yoga or of their own inner nature. The Synthesis of Yoga stands apart from the available literature on Yoga, expressing the soul of Yoga to the deepest intelligence within us.
In fact, there are few works of such magnitude and comprehensiveness about Yoga ever written, and probably nothing comparable in the English language. Yet more importantly, this profound compendium on Yoga was not written from an academic or scholarly perspective, or from the view of those who work primarily with the physical yoga. It is a study of Yoga written by one of the greatest yogis of modern India, Sri Aurobindo, who has a reputation of spiritual greatness in India that exceeds Mahatma Gandhi, Tagore and other more well known figures in the West. There is probably no work of such scope and grandeur on Yoga available, and none by an author who was speaking from his own direct experience and realization.
The Synthesis of Yoga deals with Yoga as a means of Self-realization, God-realization and the transformation of humanity. It addresses all the classical yogic paths of knowledge, devotion, works and meditation, including Raja Yoga in all of its aspects. In this book, the term "Integral Yoga," first arises, combining all aspects of Yoga into a comprehensive system for the full development of all of our potentials on all levels of our being. The book shows the relevance of Yoga to all that we are, do, or are meant to become.
As a student, teacher and writer on Yoga and related teachings for more than thirty years, I cannot emphasize enough the importance at looking at Yoga the deeper and integral manner that is so eloquently expressed in the Synthesis of Yoga. It is recommended reading to all those who want to approach deeper or inner aspects of Yoga. The book will transform your idea of Yoga and open many new dimensions of practice and realization for you that you had not previously considered possible. I don't think anyone can seriously read the book and not come away without a sense of the vastness of real Yoga practice. The book will provide you with a deep understanding of the essence of Yoga, far beyond the common stereotypes of yoga as a physical or psychological practice for personal enhancement. The Synthesis of Yoga contains the keys for restoring Yoga as a deep spiritual practice with both an ancient and a futuristic vision.
In these days in which Yoga has largely been reduced to an exercise or fitness system, it is important to remember the spiritual orientation and purpose that classical Yoga was all about. The Synthesis of Yoga does this and much more, not from the ancient past or a poorly translated foreign language, but from a master teacher of the modern world, an eloquent poet and profound philosopher.

In this monumental work, Sri Aurobindo explains in depth how the different aspects of the ancient practice of yoga combine to enhance and promote our spiritual evolution. Speaking from a knowledge that is clearly the product of experience, Aurobindo explores and explains every facet of our human journey as we move toward conscious unification with our Source. One can get the most from this definitive work by moving through it slowly, giving oneself the time needed to understand and absorb its contents, for its scope is both broad and deep, thus making it a perennial reference for the serious seeker.

Sri Aurobindo provides an overview of the field of yoga. This is not a series of physical exercises, but the practices that allow an individual to understand the complex inner psychology and begin to move it toward union with the Divine. After a brief overview, Sri Aurobindo goes into great depth on the paths of knowledge, love and works, and concludes with his own unique contribution to the yoga of self perfection, where he reveals the evolutionary purpose of our human existence and puts the entire struggle we face into context.

While bowing to the Venerable David Frawley's excellent review, I thought I'd add my two cents from an experiential perspective.

Many consider Sri Aurobindo's Life Divine - U.S. Edition to be his magnum opus, but for me, Synthesis of Yoga has consistently intersected my sadhana (spiritual practice) in seemingly miraculous ways.

Along about summer of 1995, I'd lost all desire to maintain an existence on Earth, and was spending about ten hours daily in meditation. Needless to say, my landlord was running out of patience. Deep down inside, I'd made a deal with myself that said, "I'm not dealing with the world until my spiritual activation is initiated." This meant that I was ready for homelessness if it came to that.

Things opened up in the nick of time. While I'd met a few people who'd experience a classic "bottom-up" ascent of the kundalini energy -- with all the difficulties that typically accompany that divine experience -- the onset of shakti in my system started in and around the head, spreading outwards and downwards, which was all very pleasant but unexplainable to myself or anyone else. I was ecstatic to have witnessed the rise of these phenomena... though I had absolutely no way of processing them from a place of authority, and I found myself desperate in search of guidance.

My future wife happened to work in a metaphysical bookstore at that time, and she intuitively guided me to this book. She had not read it, but had flipped through it a time or two, and she thought there may be something there for me.

I started on the first page and read all 900 within the space of a couple weeks, barely emerging from my bedroom the entire time. Aurobindo's teaching actually encourages a top-down movement of the divine energy, asserting that, by purifying the higher chakras in descending order, a clear pathway is created for the kundalini serpent, which is then able to ascend to the 7th chakra with relative ease. There are three chapters in the last section of Synthesis of Yoga that spell this out in great detail, terming the process "descent of Shakti."

So, at my moment of worldly bottoming-out, which coincided with a spiritual crisis for which I was receiving no guidance or encouragement, Sri Aurobindo reached across the years to not only validate my experiences, but place an entire practice system around it. He continues to do so to this day.

This one is on my very short desert island booklist.

This is the sort of book that is an automatic meditation as it is read. Read slowly it might take a year or more to get through. But you get enough each day to satisfy. When done with it, start over. But then, Aurobindo has so many writtings, maybe best to move on to another. What a genius! I can't get over how clearly he writes about such ineffable things. "All life is yoga".

A letter that Sri Aurobindo wrote in 1936 gives some idea of his purpose in writing The Synthesis of Yoga and his overall plan for the work:

"The Synthesis of Yoga was not meant to give a method for all to follow. Each side of the Yoga was dealt with separately with all its possibilities, and an indication was given as to how they meet so that one starting from knowledge could realise Karma and Bhakti also and so with each path. It was intended when the Self-Perfection was finished, to suggest a way in which all could be combined, but this was never written."

The Synthesis of Yoga is a reorganization and continuation of The Life Divine, richer in detail and potential. The Method is found in The Mother and the lETTERS ON YOGA

The style is the ususl opulence. Midway through we find:

"But even if this difficult thing were perfectly accomplished, still the intuition would not be the gnosis; it would only be its thin prolongation into mind or its sharp edge of first entrance. The difference, not easy to define except by symbols, may be expressed if we take the Vedic image in which the Sun represents the gnosis and the sky, mid-air and earth, the mentality, vitality, physicality of man and of the universe. Living on the earth, climbing into the mid-air or even winging in the sky, the mental being, the manomya purusa, would still live in the rays of the sun and not in its bodily light. And in those rays he would see things not as they are but as reflected in his organ of vision, deformed by its faults or limited in their truth by its restrictions. But the vijnanamaya purusa lives in the Sun itself, in the very body and blaze of the true light; he knows this light to be his own self-luminous being and he sees the whole truth of the lower triplicity and each thing that is in it. He sees it not by reflection in a mental organ of vision, but with the Sun of gnosis itself as his eye, -- for the Sun, says the Veda, is the eye of the gods. The mental being, even in the intuitive mind, can perceive the truth only by a brilliant reflection or limited communication and subject to the restrictions and the inferior capacity of the mental vision; but the supramental being sees it by the gnosis itself, from the very centre and outwelling fount of the truth, in its very form and by its own spontaneous and self-illumining process. For the Vijnana is a direct and divine as opposed to an indirect and human knowledge. ~ Sri Aurobindo, SY. 481"

One will note his use of the elements of poetry in the passage; and no study of Aurobindo can be satisfying or complete without a copy of Savitri at hand.