Life and Yoga

Life and Yoga Shrikant Vasudeo
Notes Divine and Human Notes on Yoga Solely and Exclusively based on Sri Aurobindo’s Synthesis of Yoga
There are two necessities of Nature’s workings. It seems that they always intervene in the greater form of human activity. The activity may belong to our ordinary fields of movement or seek those exceptional spheres and fulfillments which appear to us high and divine.
First Necessity : Every such form tends towards a harmonised complexity and totality. This again breaks apart into various channels of special effort and tendency. And once more it unites, but this time in a larger and more puissant synthesis than the earlier one.
Second Necessity : Development into forms is an imperative rule of effective manifestation. On the other hand, all truth and practice too strictly formulated becomes old. It then loses much, if not all, of its virtue. It must therefore be constantly renovated by fresh streams of the spirit. This stream revivifies the dead or dying vehicle and changes it in order to acquire a new life.

To be perpetually reborn is a condition of material immortality. We are in an age full of the throes of travail. All forms of thought and activity that have in themselves any strong power of utility or any secret virtue of persistence are being subjected to a supreme test. They are given their opportunity of rebirth. The world to-day presents the aspect of a huge cauldron of Medea. Here all things are being cast, shredded into pieces, experimented on, combined and recombined. This is done in order to perish and provide the scattered material of new forms. Alternatively, it provides an opportunity to emerge rejuvenated and changed for a fresh term of existence.

Indian Yoga is in its essence a special action or formulation of certain great powers of Nature. The Yoga is itself specialized, divided and variously formulated. It is potentially one of these dynamic elements of the future life of humanity. This Yogic system of India is a child of immemorial ages. It is preserved by its vitality and truth into our modern times. It is now emerging from the secret schools and ascetic retreats in which it had earlier taken refuge. It is now seeking its place in the future sum of living human powers and utilities. However, it has first to rediscover itself. It has to bring to the surface the profoundest reason of its being in that general truth and that uncasing aim of Nature which it represents. It has then to find its own recovered and larger synthesis. This is to be achieved by virtue of this new self-knowledge and self-appreciation. This reorganisation will help it to enter more easily and powerfully into the reorganized life of the race. It is similar to the inner truth of the Indian Yoga which claim to lead within the most secret penetralia. It also leads upward to the highest altitudes of its known existence and personality.

If we take the right view both of life and of Yoga, we discover that all life is either consciously or subconsciously a Yoga. By Yoga we mean a methodised effort towards self-perfection by the expression of the potentialities which are latent in the being. It leads us towards the union of the human individual with the universal and transcendent Existence. This transcendent Existence we see partially expressed in man and in the Cosmos. But all life is a vast Yoga of Nature. This is evident when we look behind its appearances. It is attempting to realize her perfection in an ever increasing expression of her potentialities. It is leading to unite herself with her own divine reality. Her thinker is Man. In him she for the first time upon this Earth devises self-conscious means and willed arrangements of activity. This results in this great purpose more swiftly and puissantly being attained. Swami Vivekananda has said that Yoga may be regarded as a means of compressing one’s evolution into a single life or a few years or even a few months of bodily existence. Therefore, a given system of Yoga can be no more than a selection or a compression into narrower but more energetic forms of intensity. This compression is of the general methods which are already being used loosely and largely in a leisurely movement. It is done with a profounder apparent waste of material and energy. Yogic System achieves a more complete combination by the great Mother in her vast upward labour. It is this view of Yoga that can alone form the basis for a sound and rational synthesis of Yogic methods. In such a case Yoga ceases to appear something mystic and abnormal which has no relation to the ordinary processes of the World-Energy. It brings into relevance the purpose which great Mother keeps in view in her two great movements of subjective and objective self-fulfillment. Rather, it reveals itself as an intense and exceptional use of powers that she has already manifested or is progressively organizing in her less exalted but more general operations.

Yogic and Scientific methods have some similarity. There is a relation between scientific handling of the natural force of electricity or of steam to the normal operations of electricity and of steam. The similar relation exists in Yogic method when it handles the customary psychological workings of man. The Yogic methods too are formed upon a knowledge developed and confirmed by regular experiment, practical analysis and constant result. For instance, all Rajayoga depends on this perception and experience that our inner elements, combinations, functions and forces can be separated or dissolved. They can be new-combined and set to novel and formerly impossible workings. They can be transformed and resolved into a new general synthesis by fixed internal processes. On similar lines, Hathayoga depends on this perception and experience that the vital forces and functions can be mastered, its operations changed or suspended. To these vital forces our life is normally subjected. Their ordinary operations seem set and indispensable. This can be done with results that would otherwise be impossible. They may seem miraculous to those who have not seized the rationale of their process. It is likely that in some other of its forms this character of Yoga is less apparent. This is due to these systems being more intuitive and less mechanical. Even in such cases they start from the use of some principal faculty in us. This is done by ways and for ends not contemplated in its everyday spontaneous workings. This happens in the case of Yoga of Devotion which is nearer to the supernal ecstasy. In the case of Yoga of Knowledge it is nearer to the supernal infinity of consciousness and being. All methods grouped under the common name of Yoga are special psychological processes. They are founded on a fixed truth of Nature. They develop out of normal functions, powers and results. These are always latent in man. But the ordinary movements of Nature do not easily or frequently manifest these psychological processes in him.

In physical knowledge the multiplication of scientific processes has its disadvantages. For instance, it tends to develop a victorious artificiality which overwhelms our natural human life under a load of machinery. It tempts us to purchase certain forms of freedom and mastery at the price of an increased servitude. Similarly, the preoccupation of man with Yogic processes and their exceptional results may have its disadvantages and losses. The Yogin tends to draw away from the common existence and lose his hold upon it. He tend to purchase wealth of spirit by paying impoverishment of his human activities. Purchase inner freedom by causing an outer death. If he gains God, he loses life. On the other hand, if he turns his efforts outward to conquer life, he is in danger of losing God. Therefore we see in India that a sharp incompatibility has been created between life in the world and spiritual growth and perfection. And although the tradition and ideal of a victorious harmony between the inner attraction and the outer demand remains, it is little exemplified. In fact, when a man turns his vision and energy inward and enters on the path of Yoga, he is supposed to be lost inevitably to the great stream of our collective existence and the secular effort of humanity. This idea has strongly prevailed. Prevalent philosophies and religions have greatly emphasized this idea. This has its inevitable result in a general perception that escape form life is commonly considered as not only the necessary condition, but the general object of Yoga.

No synthesis of Yoga can be satisfying which does not, in its aim, reunite God and Nature in a liberated and perfected human life. Its method not only permit but should favour the harmony of our inner and outer activities and experiences in the divine consummation of both. Man is precisely the term and symbol of a higher Existence descended into the material world for some hidden purpose. In this symbol it should be possible to for the lower to transfigure itself and put on the nature of the higher. At the same time, Man is also the term in which the higher should be able to reveal itself in the forms of the lower. The life has given man the possibility of the realisation of that possibility.
To avoid this life can never be
The indispensable condition, or
The whole and ultimate object
of his supreme endeavour, or
of his most powerful means of self-fulfillment.
It can only be a temporary necessity under certain conditions. It can be specialized extreme effort imposed on the individual so as to prepare a greater general possibility for the race.

The true and full object and utility of Yoga can only be accomplished when the conscious Yoga in man becomes like the subconscious Yoga in Nature. It is outwardly conterminous with life itself. It is accomplished when looking out both on the path and the achievement we can say once more, say in a more perfect and luminous sense : “All life is Yoga”.


Nature and Her Triple Aspects

(Chapter II : The Three Steps of Nature)

We have seen that in the past developments of Yoga, a specializing and separative tendency. Like all the other things in Nature, this tendency had its justifying and even imperative utility. We seek a synthesis of the specialized aims and methods which have come into being as a consequence of this tendency.
In order that we may be wisely guided in our effort, we must know :
First, the general principle and purpose underlying this separative impulse, and
Second, the particular utilities upon which the method of each school of Yoga is founded.
For the general principle, we must interrogate the universal workings of Nature herself. We need to recognise in her not just the specious and illusive activity of a distorting Maya (illusion). We also need to understand in the workings of Nature, the cosmic energy and workings of God Himself in His universal being. He does the action of formulating. He is inspired by a vast, an infinite and yet a minutely selective Wisdom. It is prajna prasrta purani of the Gita. It is the Wisdom that went forth from the Eternal since the beginning. For the particular utilities we must cast a penetrative eye on the different methods of Yoga. We need to distinguish among the mass of their details the governing idea which they serve and the radical force. This force gives birth and energy to their processes of effectuation.
This will facilitate us to more easily find the one common principle and the one common power :
From which all derive their being and tendency
Towards which all subconsciously move, and
In which, therefore, it is possible for all consciously to unite.

The progressive self-manifestation of Nature in man must necessarily depend upon three successive elements. This self manifestation of Nature is called Man’s evolution in the language of modern thought.
These three elements are :
That which is already evolved
That which is persistently in the stage of conscious evolution, and
That which is to be evolved.

We have to note that in the case of the third element of future evolution, it may perhaps be already displayed in primary formations. It may or may not be happening continuously, but certainly on occasional basis or with some regularity of recurrence. It may be displayed in others more developed realisations of our present humanity. It may well be in cases that are near to the highest possible realisation of our present humanity. However, this is possible in some rare cases.

The reason for above phenomena is that the march of Nature is not drilled to a regular and mechanical forward stepping. She reaches constantly beyond herself even at the cost of subsequent deplorable retreats. She has rushes. She has splendid and mighty outbursts. She has immense realisations. She storms sometimes passionately forward hoping to take the kingdom of heaven by violence. These self-exceedings are the revelation of that in her which is most divine. It may be most diabolical. But in either case they are most puissant to bring her rapidly forward towards her goal.

That which Nature has evolved for us and has firmly founded is the bodily life. She has effected a certain combination and harmony of the two inferior but most fundamentally necessary elements of our action and progress upon earth.
They are :
First, the Matter.
Second, the Life-Energy

Matter is our foundation and the first condition of all our energies and realisations. This is irrespective of the fact that matter may be despised by the too ethereally spiritual persons.
Life Energy is our means of existence in a material body and the basis there even of our mental and spiritual activities.

Nature has successfully achieved a certain stability of her constant material movement.
This movement is at once
Sufficiently steady and durable; while at the same time
Sufficiently pliable and mutable
to provide a fit dwelling-place and instrument for the progressively manifesting god in humanity.

This is what is meant by the fable in the Aitareya Upanishad. It tells that the gods rejected the animal forms successively offered to them by the Divine Self and only when a man was produced, cried out, “This indeed is perfectly made”. They then consented to enter in that vehicle.

Similarly, the Nature has effected a working compromise between
The inertia of matter, and
The active Life that lives and feeds on it. It enables the sustenance of vital existence. It also renders possible the fullest developments of mentality.

This equilibrium constitutes the basic status of Nature in man. It is termed in the language of Yoga his gross body composed of the material or food sheath (anna kosha) and the nervous system (prana kosha) of vital vehicle.

We have now seen that
This inferior equilibrium is the basis and first means of the higher movements which the universal Power contemplates
The body constitutes the vehicle in which the Divine here seeks to reveal Itself
Indian saying is true that the body is the instrument provided for the fulfilment of the right law of our nature.
This leads us towards the inevitable conclusion that any final recoil from the physical life must be a turning away from the completeness of the divine Wisdom and a renunciation of its aim in earthly manifestation. For certain individuals, owing to some secret law of their development, such a refusal may be the right attitude. But it can never be the aim intended for the mankind. Integral Yoga can not afford to ignore the body. It can not make its annulment or its rejection indispensable to a perfect spirituality. On the other hand, the perfecting of the body also should be the last triumph of the Spirit. To make the bodily life also divine must be God’s final seal upon His work in the universe. The obstacle which the physical presents to the spiritual is no argument for the rejection of the physical. It is interesting to note that in the unseen providence of things, our greatest difficulties are our best opportunities. A supreme difficulty is Nature’s indication to us of a supreme conquest to be won and an ultimate problem to be solved. It is not a warning of an inextricable snare to be shunned or of an enemy too strong for us from whom we must flee.

On an equal ground, the vital and nervous energies in us are there for a great utility. They also demand the divine realisation of their possibilities in our ultimate fulfilment. The catholic wisdom of he Upanishads has powerfully emphasized the great part assigned to this element in the universal scheme. “As the spokes of a wheel in its nave, so in the Life-energy is all established, the triple knowledge and the Sacrifice and the power of the strong and the purity of the wise. Under the control of the Life-Energy is all this that is established in the triple heaven”. Integral Yoga therefore does not and can not kill these nervous energies, force them into a nerveless quiescence or root them out as the source of noxious activities. The transformation, control and utilization of these energies, their purification and not their destruction is the aim in view with which they have been created and developed in us.

As a first step, the Nature has firmly evolved the bodily life for us as her base and first instrument. It is our mental life that she is evolving as her immediate next aim and superior instrument. In her ordinary exaltations this is the Nature’s lofty preoccupying thought. The exception is her periods of exhaustion and recoil into a reposeful and recuperating obscurity. Otherwise, it is her constant pursuit wherever she can get free from the trammels of her first vital and physical realisations. For here in man we have a distinction which is of the utmost importance. He has in him not a single mentality. He has a double and a triple mentality.
Material and nervous mind
Pure intellectual mind which liberates itself from the illusions of the body and the senses
Divine mind above intellect which in its turn liberates itself from the imperfect modes of the logically discriminative and imaginative reason.

Mind in man is first enmeshed in the life of the body. Whereas in the plant it is entirely involved. In animals it is always imprisoned. It accepts this life as not only the first but the whole condition of its activities. It serves its needs as if they were the entire aim of existence. We have to remember that the bodily life in man is a base, NOT the aim. It is his first condition and not his last determinant. In the just idea of the ancients man is essentially the thinker, the Manu, the mental being. He leads the life and the body. He is not the animal who is led by them.

Therefore, the true human existence only begins when
The intellectual mentality emerges out of the material, and
We begin more and more to live in the mind independent of the nervous and physical obsession, and
In the measure of that liberty are able to accept rightly and to use rightly the life of the body.
For freedom and not a skilful subjection is the true means of mastery. The high human ideal is a free and not a compulsory acceptance of the conditions and also not the enlarged and sub-limited conditions of our physical being.

The mental life thus evolving in man is not, indeed, a common possession. In actual appearance it would seem as if it were only developed to the fullest in individuals as against the majority in whom it is not evolved. It may appear that there were great numbers and even the majority in whom it is either a small and ill-organised part of their normal nature or not evolved a tall. Or may be in majority it is latent and not easily made active. Certainly, the mental life is not a finished evolution of Nature. It is not yet firmly founded in the human animal.
We get the sign in this world from actual observation that
the fine and full equilibrium of vitality and matter, the sane, robust, long-lived human body
is ordinarily found
only in races or classes of men who reject the effort of thought, its disturbances, its tensions,
or think only with the material mind.
As a further progression of Nature, the civilised man has yet to establish a equilibrium between the fully active mind and the body. He does not yet normally possess it. Indeed, the increasing effort towards a more intense mental life seems to frequently create an increasing dis-equilibrium of the human elements. This has resulted in a situation wherein eminent scientists have described genius as a form of insanity, a result of degeneration, a pathological morbidity of Nature. However we have to take all the phenomena which are used to justify this exaggeration in connection with all other relevant data. We should not take it separately. We then come to a different conclusion. Genius is one attempt of the universal Energy to quicken and intensify our intellectual powers. This is done with the sole purpose that these powers shall be prepared for more puissant, direct and rapid faculties. This will lead towards the constitution of the play of the supra-intellectual or divine mind. Genius is not then a freak, ad inexplicable phenomenon. It is a perfectly natural next step in the right life of her evolution.

The Nature has already harmonised the bodily mind with the material mind. Currently she is in the process of harmonizing it with the play of the intellectual mentality. No doubt it tends to depress the full animal and vital vigour. But it does not and need not produce active disturbances. And she is shooting yet beyond in the attempt to reach a still higher level.

Even the occasional disturbances created by her process are NOT as great as is often represented. Some of them are the crude beginnings of new manifestations. Others are an easily corrected movement of disintegration. It is often fruitful of fresh activities and always a small price to pay for the far-reaching results that she has in view.


Life Wanderer