"ALL LIFE IS YOGA."
Sri Aurobindo was an Indian philosopher, yogi, guru, poet. He developed a spiritual practice he called Integral Yoga. In this masterful study of Yoga, Sri Aurobindo explained the spiritual realization that not only liberated but transformed human nature, enabling a divine life on earth. The main objective of his teachings was to increase the level of consciousness of people and to aware people of their true selves. This book is a synthesis of many of the most important Indian spiritual philosophies, and is by far the most relevant to modern humanity and the most inspiring to westerners. If you've done some yoga, then move along to Sri Aurobindo and see what you can learn from one of the most fascinating minds of the past hundred years. This essay is plenty of very profound thought, and you will not leave this fantastic work without spiritual growth.
EXCERPT: "WILL, KNOWLEDGE and LOVE are the three divine powers in human nature and the life of man, and they point to the three paths by which the human soul rises to the divine. The integrality of them, the union of man with God in all the three, must therefore, as we have seen, be the foundation of an integral Yoga.
Action is the first power of life. Nature begins with force and its works which, once conscious in man, become will and its achievements; therefore it is that by turning his action Godwards the life of man best and most surely begins to become divine. It is the door of first access, the starting-point of the initiation. When the will in him is made one with the divine will and the whole action of the being proceeds from the Divine and is directed towards the Divine, the union in works is perfectly accomplished. But works fulfil themselves in knowledge; all the totality of works, says the Gita, finds its rounded culmination in knowledge, sarvaṁ karmākhilaṁ jāne parisamāpyate. By union in will and works we become one in the omnipresent conscious being from whom all our will and works have their rise and draw their power and in whom they fulfil the round of their energies. And the crown of this union is love; for love is the delight of conscious union with the Being in whom we live, act and move, by whom we exist, for whom alone we learn in the end to act and to be. That is the trinity of our powers, the union of all three in God to which we arrive when we start from works as our way of access and our line of contact."