The problem of man in his total being and the meaning of his existence on the earth

But as I have said, ultimately these two paths and these two revelations are complementary, and non-exclusive. And while Sri Aurobindo did instruct his devotees to follow the path of devotion centered on The Mother (as they were having difficulty with the pure path of gnosis and ascent to Supermind), his opus Synthesis of Yoga follows the Gita in integrating all three yogas and margas - Karma, Bhakti, and Jnana, These are reconciled in the fourth, the Integral or Purna (full or complete) Yoga.

There is another thing worth mentioning. According to Sri Aurobindo, his yoga ends where all the other yogas begin. I never truly realised what this meant until now. Anyway here's a relevant passage from the Life Divine (here I tried to break the quote from LD into thematic threads).

Experiencing both the revelation of Sri Aurobindo and that of Sri Ramana in a non-contradictory way, feeling the two blending, realising the two Teachers as great Enlighteneed masters and avatars, a true Integral and Integrative Spirituality, is nothing new. In an email, Rick Lipschutz provides an invaluable historical anecdote and quotation:

Sri Kapali Sastry (1886-1953), a noted Sanskritist of the twentieth century, born Tantric and a noted Vedic scholar, was a disciple of Sri Ramana before becoming a disciple of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother and following their sadhana. Sri Kapali composed among many other works the Siddhanjana, a commentary on the first ashtaka of the Rig-Veda where he differs considerably from Sayana and provides a solid scholarly underpinning for Sri Aurobindo's interpretation of the Veda. Yet even after becoming an ashramite Sastry continued to produce commentaries of considerable interpretative merit on Sri Ramana's teachings. Kapali's student, the prolific and peripatetic M.P. Pandit, writes, in a diary containing spoken observations of his longtime mentor published on p.238 in Volume III of the 12-volume collected works of T.V. Kapali Sastri (available from Sri Aurobindo Ashram):

"Sri Maharshi's path and the path of Sri Aurobindo differ in this way. In the former, apparently, it is you who are to work out your sadhana. In the latter, you count for little; you cannot do anything much; it is they [Sri Aurobindo and The Mother] to whom you have to surrender yourself completely who can and will work out the sadhana.

"But we must also note that when the Maharshi says, 'It is you who have to look within yourself and work out your sadhana,' he puts in the needed influence, anugraha, to help you proceed and do the sadhana.

"Similarly, here, when Sri Aurobindo and the Mother say, 'Surrender everything of you to the Divine and be free,' they put in you the necessary force which enables you to carry out your indispensable individual effort for surrendering all that you have and are.

"In the Maharshi's teaching, as indeed in all yogas of ancient India, the problem to be solved is the problem of the individual. In Sri Aurobindo's teaching, it is the problem of man in his total being and the meaning of his existence on the earth that is sought to be discovered and worked out. The problems are different and so are the solutions. 17-11-48."

For more on subject, see my posting on Open Integral on the need to go beyond literal interpretations to the inner esoteric understanding and revelation. It is on that level that the teachings of Ramana and Sri Aurobindo are seen and appreciated as non-contradictory. posted by m alan kazlev at 3:56 PM