“All life is Yoga”

Sri Aurobindo: It is true that the Supramental yoga accepts life but that does not mean life as it is at present, because the Supramental wants perfection and at present life is not perfect. Many fields of life are at present dominated by Ignorance. We want to change the whole mould of life. We want to gain the Supramental state in human evolution as the next higher step from the Mind. Now that there are signs of its coming we must try to bring it down into the physical being.

Purani, Evening Talks with Sri Aurobindo, 9.04.1923

Question: There is acceptance of life in this yoga, is there not?

Sri Aurobindo: Yes, there is no rejection of life; you can say, life is accepted in this yoga. But we regard the inner life as more important, the outer only as an expression, a form, of it.
External action can also be taken up in this yoga but it must be in keeping with the inner life.

Purani, Evening Talks with Sri Aurobindo, 25.01.1925

Sri Aurobindo: Activity is not incompatible with our yoga. The action to be done should proceed on the basis of peace and knowledge. It must be deliberate and calm. One can take up action in which many men are not concerned — which depends upon one’s own self for its performance. For instance, intellectual work and physical work can be done in this yoga. There may come a time when all action has to be abandoned — such a stage has a temporary utility. In that period one has to do intensive concentrated Sadhana.
Secondly, when one raises to another plane of consciousness, one finds the whole viewpoint about things has completely changed. In that condition one cannot continue the same intellectual activity as before. One has to wait till the heigher consciousness begins to act. Of course, when the entire being is transformed then one has to accept all the planes of life and manifest the higher consciousness in life.

Purani, Evening Talks with Sri Aurobindo, 11.10.1925

All this insistence on action is absurd if one has not the light by which to act. “Yoga must include life and not exclude it” does not mean that we are bound to accept life as it is with all its stumbling ignorance and misery and the obscure confusione of the human will and reason and impulse and instinct which it expresses. The advocates of action think that by human intellect and energy making an always new rush, everything can be put right; the present state of the world after a development of the intellect and a stupendous output of energy for which there is no historical parallel is a signal proof of the emptiness of the illusion under which they labour. Yoga takes the stand that it is only by a change of consciousness that the true basis of life can be discovered; from within outward is indeed the rule.

Sri Aurobindo to Dilip, 16.06.1932

Question: In our yoga we accept life as real.

Sri Aurobindo: That is to say, you have to give life a place in the Real.

Purani, Evening Talks with Sri Aurobindo, 27.01.1939