Integral Yoga or purna yoga (Sanskrit for full or complete yoga) refers in Sri Aurobindo's teachings to the union of all the parts of one's being with the Divine, and the transmutation of all of their jarring elements into a harmonious state of higher divine consciousness and existence.

The yoga of synthesis

Sri Aurobindo describes the nature and practice of integral yoga in his opus "The Synthesis of Yoga." As the title of that work indicates, his Integral Yoga is a yoga of synthesis, intended to harmonize the paths of Karma, Jnana, and Bhakti Yoga as described in the Bhagavad Gita. It can also be considered a synthesis between Vedanta and Tantra, and even between Eastern and Western approaches to spirituality.

The aim of integral yoga

Most yogas only develop a single aspect of the being, and have as their aim a state of liberation or transcendence. But the aim of integral yoga is the transformation of the entire being. Because of this, the various elements of one's make-up - Physical, Vital, Mental, Psychic, and Spiritual, and the means of their transformation, are described in great detail by Sri Aurobindo, who in this way formulates an entire integral psychology. The goal is then the transformation of the entire nature of one's being. Nothing is left behind.

  ..."the process...accepts our nature...and compels all to undergo a divine change...In that ever progressive experience, we begin to perceive how this lower manifestation is constituted and that everything in it, however seemingly deformed or petty or vile, is the imperfect figure of some element in the divine nature." (Synthesis of Yoga p.47)

Also distinguishing Sri Aurobindo's teaching from most other mystical paths is the need for transformation of the personal and relative nature. So the integral yoga is two-fold; both a spiritual realisation of God or Transcendence or Enlightenment, and, through this, a complete change and transformation of both the inner and the outer nature. Through this double action, one is thus made able and fit to manifest a divine consciousness, and in this way becomes part of a divine work.

Other Integral Yogas

Swami Satchidananda refers to his own teachings as Integral yoga. His Integral Yoga is quite distinct from Sri Aurobindo's, although the Satchidananda is thought to have briefly met Sri Aurobindo, and there are some similarities in their respective teachings.

Satchidananda's group successfully trademarked the term "Integral Yoga" in the United States

Quotes

"The movement of nature is twofold: divine and undivine. The distinction is only for practical purposes since there is nothing that is not divine. The undivine nature, that which we are and must remain so long as the faith in us is not changed, acts through limitation and ignorance and culminates in the life of the ego; but the divine nature acts by unification and knowledge, and culminates in life divine. The passage from the lower to the higher may effect itself by the transformation of the lower and its elevation to the higher nature. It is this that must be the aim of an integral yoga."

  -- The Synthesis of Yoga

What is the integral yoga?

"It is a way of complete God-realisation, a complete Self-realisation, a complete fulfillment of our being and consciousness, a complete transformation of our nature - and this implies a complete perfection of life here and not only a return to an eternal perfection elsewhere."

  -- Sri Aurobindo Archives and Research, Dec 1982, p.197

"The method we have to pursue, then, is to put our whole conscious being into contact with the divine and to call him in to transform our entire being into his, so that in a sense god himself, the real person in us, becomes the sadhaka of the sadhana as well as the master of the yoga by whom the lower personality is used."

  -- The Synthesis of Yoga

"All life is a Yoga of Nature seeking to manifest God within itself. Yoga marks the stage at which this effort becomes capable of self-awareness and therefore of right completion in the individual. It is a gathering up and concentration of the movements dispersed and loosely combined in the lower evolution."

  -- The Synthesis of Yoga p. 47

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Integral Yoga".