Chapter 1Work and Yoga · Work as Part of Sadhana
Book 6. Part Two: The Synthetic Method of the Integral Yoga · Section Two: Sadhana through Work
Work alone is not the object; work is a means of sadhana.
* Certainly; work done in the right way and with the consciousness open to the Force is sadhana.
* Without sadhana the object of Yoga cannot be attained. Work itself must be taken as part of sadhana. But naturally when you are working, you must think of the work, which you will learn to do from the Yogic consciousness as an instrument and with the memory of the Divine.
* Sadhana and work done disinterestedly as part of the sadhana cannot be incompatible with each other — provided the work is attended to, sadhana can go on very well at the same time.
* By disinterested work is usually meant work done for the sake of the work or for the sake of others without asking for return, reward or personal fruit or recompense; but in Yoga it means desireless work done for the Divine as an offering without condition or claim — only because it is the Divine’s Will or out of love for the Divine.
* Your object is not only to practise Yoga for your own internal progress and perfection, but also to do a work for the Divine.
* This is not an Asram like others — the members are not Sannya-sis; it is not moks.a that is the sole aim of the Yoga here. What is being done here is a preparation for a work — a work which will be founded on Yogic consciousness and Yoga-Shakti, and can have no other foundation. Meanwhile every member here is expected to do some work in the Asram as part of his spiritual preparation.
* Recommendation to X not to take you away but to let you realise the Divine first has no meaning. Must one realise the Divine before one can serve him or is not service of the Divine a step on the way to realisation and a help towards it? In any case, the service and the realisation are both necessary for a complete Yoga and one cannot fix an unalterable rule of precedence between the two.
* X has to learn to consecrate his work and feel the Mother’s power working through it. A purely sedentary subjective reali-sation is only a half realisation.