This yoga demands a full ascension of the lower or ordinary consciousness to join the spiritual above it and full descent of the spiritual (eventually the supramental) into the mind, life and body to transform it. The total ascent is impossible so long as sex-desire blocks the way; the descent is dangerous so long as sex-desire is powerful in the vital. For at any moment an unexercised or latent sex-desire may be the cause of a mixture which throws back the true descent and uses the energy acquired for other purposes or turns all the action of the consciousness towards wrong experience, turbid and delusive. One must, therefore, clear this obstacle out of the way; otherwise there is no safety or no free movement towards finality in the sadhana.SRI AUROBINDO
Stage by stage one climbs towards the Consciousness.
Leonotis nepetifolia
Small velvety orange bilabiate flowers set in a ring around balls of spiny green bracts that are borne in ascending tiers on tall erect four-sided stems. An annual wayside herb with toothed leaves.
Photo Courtesy: Forest & Kim StarrSpiritual Ascension
Fearless, regular, uninterrupted.
Citharexylum
Fiddle-wood, Zitherwood
Tiny highly fragrant white five-petalled flowers in slender pendulous racemes. A small to medium-sized tree with four-angled stems and opposite leaves.
Photo Courtesy: Dinesh Valke
Spiritual Ascension in the Vital
It is more fanciful and less regular.
Stachytarpheta jamaicensis
Blue snakeweed, Common snakeweed, Jamaican vervain
Tiny light lavender blue salverform flowers with a white centre, sparsely arranged on long thin spikes. A medium to large perennial herb or subshrub.
