YOGIC SADHAN

AUM
I
The proper course of the Sadhan is just the opposite of the
thing most people do and you have also done. People begin with
the body and the prana, go on to the chitta and the manas, and
finish up with the buddhi and the will. The real course is to start
with the will and finish with the body. There is no need of Asana,
Pranayama, Kumbhaka, Chittasuddhi, or anything else preparatory
or preliminary if one starts with the will. That was what Sri Ramakrishna
came to show so far as Yoga is concerned. “Do the Shakti
Upasana first,” he said, “get Shakti and she will give you Sat.”Will
and Shakti are the first means necessary to the Yogin. That was
why he said always, “Remember you are Brahman,” and he gave
that as a central message to Swami Vivekananda. You are Ishwara.
If you choose, you can be shuddha, siddha and everything else, or,
if you choose, you can be just the opposite. The first necessity is
to believe in yourself, the second in God and the third to believe
in Kali; for these things make up the world. Educate the Will first,
through the Will educate the Jnanam, through the Jnanam purify
the Chitta, control the Prana and calm the Manas. Through all
these instruments immortalise the body. That is the real yoga, the
Mahapantha, that is the true and only Tantra. The Vedanta starts
with Buddhi, the Tantra with Shakti.
What the Will is you have heard. It is Shakti, it is not Vasana,
it is not Cheshta. Vasana and Cheshta are the negation of will. If
you have desire, that means you doubt the power of your Will.
Brahman has no desire. He wills and all things happen according
to his Will. If you have Cheshta, that means you doubt your Will.
Only those who feel or think they are not strong, struggle and
labour to produce an effect. Brahman has no cheshta. He wills
and His Will spontaneously produces its effect. But it produces
it in time, space and causality. To demand a result now here and
under given conditions is Ajnanam. The time, space and causality
of every event and its development have been fixed ages ago by
yourself and Parameswara, when the Kalpa began. It is ignorance
to struggle and try to alter what you have yourself decreed. Care
not about time, space or conditions, but will, and leave the result
to God who is your omnipotent, omnipresent and omniscient self.
You are the individual God and He is the universal God. Nothing
but God exists. Ekam evadwitiyam. ThereforeWill implies Samata,
absence of Vasana and Cheshta. Absence of Vasana and Cheshta
implies knowledge. Until you have knowledge, you can never be
safe against the return of Vasana and Cheshta.
The question is how to start. The Shakti is in you. Let her
work and assist her by taking the right attitude. You are the Sakshi,
Anumanta, Bhokta, and Bharta. As Anumanta, give the command,
as Sakshi watch her work out the result, as Bhokta enjoy the result
and as Bharta help her by maintaining the Adhar. Do not ruin it
by tamasic udasinata or rajasic revolt. Be sure your Will can never
fail to act. You are the Jnata: receive all knowledge that presents
itself to you. Adopt the attitude I have described here and apply it
to every individual act of the sadhana or of life. You have nothing
else to do. Kali will do the rest. Be not troubled, be not anxious,
be not in haste, you have all eternity before you, why be in haste?
Only do not be tamasic or idly waste your time.
II
I shall speak to-day of the Shakti or Will, since that is the
foundation of Yoga. The Shakti is situated in the Sahasradala
just above the crown of the head and from that seat of activity
it works. Below it at the top of the brain is the higher Buddhi and
below that, occupying the middle level of the brain, is the reason
or lower buddhi, and below that, at the bottom of the brain, is the
organ of communication with the Manas. We may call this organ
the understanding. Knowledge, reason and understanding are the
three parts of the brain. These functions are in the subtle body, but
they are connected with the corresponding portions of the material
brain.
In the chest just above the heart is the Manas, that is, the organ
of sensation with its five subordinate Indriyas. Below the Manas,
from the heart to midway between the heart and the navel, is the
Chitta. From that point up to the navel and below it is the psychic
or sukshma prana. All these are in the sukshma deha but connected
at these points with the sthula deha. In the sthula deha itself two
functions are situated, the physical prana or the nervous system
and the annam or the material body.
Now the will is the organ of the Ishwara or living master of
the body. It works through all these functions, through the Buddhi
for thought and knowledge, through the Manas for sensations,
through the Chitta for emotions and through the Prana for enjoyment.
When it functions perfectly, working in each organ according
to the capacities of the organ, then the work of the Shakti becomes
perfect and infallible. But there are two causes of weakness, error
and failure. First, the confusion of the organs. If the Prana
interferes in sensation, emotion and thought, then a man becomes
anisha, the slave of the Prana, that is to say, of the desires. If the
Chitta interferes with sensation and thought, then the sensations
and thoughts are falsified by the emotions and their corresponding
wishes. For instance if love interferes with the Buddhi, the man
becomes blind to the truth about the person he loves, he is unable
to distinguish between right and wrong, kartavya and akartavya,
where the person is concerned. He becomes to a greater or lesser
extent the slave of the emotions, love, anger, hatred, pity, revenge
etc. So, if the Manas interferes with the reason, the man mistakes
his sensations for just ideas or true arguments. He judges by what
he sees or hears instead of judging what he sees or hears. If again the
reason, imagination, memory and logic interfere with knowledge,
the man is debarred from higher knowledge and wanders in the
interminable circle of probabilities and possibilities. Finally, if even
the Buddhi interferes with the Will, then the man is limited by
the power of his limited knowledge, instead of moving nearer to
Omnipotence. In brief, if a machine or instrument is used for a
work for which it is unfit, for which it was not made or originally
adapted, then it either cannot do that work at all or it does it
badly; dharma-sankara is created. Now what I have described is
the ordinary state of men before they gain knowledge. It is all
dharma-sankara, confusion of functions, bad administration and
incompetent and ignorant government. The Will, the true minister,
is rendered a puppet of the lower officials who work each for his
own selfish ends, interfering with and hampering each other or
dishonestly playing into each other’s hands, for their own benefit
and to the detriment of the Ishwara, the master. He ceases to be
Ishwara, he becomes Anisha, the puppet and dupe of his servants.
Why does he allow it? Because of Ajnanam.He does not know,
he does not realise what the ministers and officials and their million
and one hangers-on are doing with him. What is this Ajnanam? It
is inability to recognise his own true nature, position and authority.
He began by being deeply interested in a small portion of his royal
activity, the body. He thought “That is my kingdom.” He became
the tool of his bodily functions. Sowith the nervous, the sensational,
the emotional and the mental, he identifies himself with each of
them. He forgets that he is different from them and much greater
and stronger. What he must do is to resume the reins of power, to
remember that he is Ishwara, the king, the master and God himself.
He must on this understanding remember that he is all-powerful.
He has a mighty minister, the Will. Let him support and direct the
Will and the Will will introduce order into the government and
compel the officials each to do obediently and perfectly his own
duty. Not of course all at once. It will take time. The officials have
become so much used to confused work and misgovernment that
at first they will not be willing to work properly and, secondly,
even when they wish, they will find it difficult. They hardly know
even how to begin. For instance, when you begin to use your will,
what is likely to happen? First you will try to use it through the
Prana, through desire, wish, hope, or you will use it through the
Chitta, with emotion, eagerness and expectation, or you will use it
through the Manas using Cheshta, struggle, effort, as if you were
physically wrestling with the thing you want to control; or you will
use it through the Buddhi, trying to dominate the subject of your
interest by thought, by thinking “Let this be”, “Let that happen”
etc. All these methods are used by Yogins to recover the power of
the Will. The Hatha-yogin uses the Prana and the body, the Rajayogin
the heart, Manas and Buddhi, but the best method is none
of these. Even the last of them is a second-best means and must entail
struggle, failure and frequent disappointment. The Will is only
perfect in its action when it works apart from all these, straight on
the subject from the sahasradala, without effort, without emotion
and eagerness and without desire. Each function to itself and Will
is its own function. It always obeys the Ishwara but it acts in itself
and by itself. It uses the rest, it must not be used by them.
It uses the Buddhi for knowledge, not for command; it uses the
Manas for sensation, not for either command or knowledge; it uses
the heart for emotion, not for sensation, knowledge or command;
it uses the Prana for enjoyment, not for any other function; it uses
the body for motion and action, not as a thing that can limit or determine
either knowledge, feeling, sensation, power or enjoyment.
Therefore it must keep itself apart and command all these things
as a thing separate from all of them. These are merely a yantra, a
machine, the Purusha is the yantri or master of the machine, the
Will is the electricity or motor-power.
This is the right knowledge. How to use it I shall tell you afterwards.
That is a matter of practice, not of mere instruction. The
man who has dhairyam, calm steadfastness, even in a small degree,
can gradually accustom himself to the mastery of his machine by the
Will. But he must first know: he must know the machine, he must
know themotor-power, hemust know himself. The knowledge need
not be perfect in order to begin, but the elementary knowledge at
least he must have. That is what I am trying to give you. I am
explaining to you the different parts of the machine, their nature
and functions, the nature of theWill and the nature of the Ishwara.
III
The Will when it begins to act, will be hampered by the Swabhava;
therefore until you are able to act on the Swabhava, you
will not, should not bring your Will to bear upon life. In other
words while you are a sadhak of the Shakti marga, be a sadhak
only; when you have got Siddhi of theWill, then first use the Siddhi
to get perfection of the adhar, and when you have got perfection of
the adhar, then use the siddha adhar for Karma, for life.
The Swabhava opposes the perfect action of the Will. Why?
Because the nature of humanity is imperfect, only partly evolved,
asiddha, and being in all its dharmas asiddha, the tamasic force of
habit, tamasi dhriti, makes it resist any attempt to make it siddha.
Humanity is evolving. Yoga is a means of carrying that evolution
forward with great and victorious rapidity. But the imperfect
Swabhava says, “I do not wish to be perfect, I am accustomed to
imperfection and find it easy and comfortable.” First, then, theWill
seizes hold of the Swabhava and removes the obstacles in the way
of its own perfect development and action.
As I have said, it first gets rid of the old samskaras of impossibility,
the samskara, the ajnanam that I am man, not God, limited,
not illimitable, helpless, not omnipotent. The Will has first to say,
“I am omnipotent, that which the Purusha commands, I can act”.
For the Will is the Shakti in action, and there is only one Shakti,
Kali herself, who is God manifesting as Divine Energy.
Next the Will seizes the adhar and makes it shuddha in order
that theWill may itself be shuddha. I have explained that if there is
confusion and disorder among the functions, then the Will cannot
act omnipotently. Therefore you must first develop Jnanam and by
Jnanam effect the shuddhi of the adhar. When the adhar becomes
shuddha, the Will being entirely free from wrong samskaras and
wrong action, is what I call shuddha. It works perfectly. Working
perfectly it makes the adhar siddha, that is the adhar rids itself
of all doshas, deficiencies and weaknesses and works perfectly. It
becomes a perfect instrument for the Purushottama, the Purusha
and Shakti to carry on their Lila.
Knowledge, therefore, jnanam is the next stage to be considered.
But before I come to that, let me finish about the obstacles
in the Swabhava. There are not only the wrong Samskaras and the
ashuddhi of the adhar, but the general nature of things has certain
tendencies or laws in it which oppose the development of the Yoga
as well as certain tendencies which help the development of the
Yoga. There are three laws which oppose the law of persistence,
the law of resistance and the law of recurrence: there are three laws
which assist the law of gradual processes, the law of concentrated
processes and the law of involved processes.
The law of persistence is this, that a rule, habit or tendency
once established has a right to survive, a natural unwillingness to be
changed or annulled. The longer it has been established, the longer
it takes to root out. If a man has been yielding to the shadripus for
many lives without any serious effort to dominate them or purify
himself, then he cannot by mere wish or a mere rapid effort get rid
of them and become pure and calm. They refuse to be so cavalierly
treated. They say “You have given us rights in this adhar, and we
persist”. Still more hard to deal with are those dharmas of the body
which men call the laws of physical nature.
But the Will is omnipotent and if patiently, calmly and heroically
exercised, will prevail. For the Will, I repeat, is Kali herself.
Therefore in the end it establishes by its action new rules, habits
or tendencies which fight with and gradually overcome the old.
What then happens is that the old, though put down, weakened
and no longer a real part of the nature, resist eviction from the
adhar. They are supported by an army of forces or spiritual beings
who surround you and live upon your experiences and enjoyments.
This law of resistance marks the second period of the Yoga and,
unless the Will has already become siddha and the adhar shuddha,
is very trying and troublesome to the sadhak. For there seems to be
no end to the capacity of resistance.
Here again the Will is bound to triumph, if it is supported by
faith or knowledge. Even then the evicted habits and tendencies
strive continually to re-enter the system and recover their lost seats
of power and enjoyment. This is called recurrence. In proportion as
the Will is siddha and the Adhar shuddha, the recurrence becomes
weaker and less frequent or, when it comes, less prolonged. But in
an impure adhar, or with an imperfect Will, the recurrence is often
as prolonged and troublesome as the resistance.
On the other hand there are the three favourable laws. When a
new habit or tendency is once established, it is the law that it shall
develop towards strength and perfection. So long as it is struggling
to establish itself, the Yogin may at any time become bhrashta, that
is he may from error, weakness or impatience give up the struggle.
That is the only fall for the Yogin. Failure, temporary defeat, is not
bhramsa, so long as he refuses to give up the struggle. But once
the right tendency is established, no man can destroy it, until it has
enjoyed supremacy and its bhoga.
Still at first, while the Will is comparatively weak or unpractised,
the progress must be slow. In proportion as the perfection of
the Will brings purity of the Adhar, the progress becomes rapid.
Everything in this world is done by a process; a process means
a series of actions leading to a particular result by certain recognised
stages. These stages may be passed through slowly or swiftly,
but so long as the law of gradual processes obtains, all the stages
must be successively and consciously passed through. You have so
many milestones to pass; but you may pass them walking, in a
carriage, in a railway train, but pass them you must. Still by the
growing strength of theWill, you can replace slow process by swift
process.
Then a time comes when Kali begins to transcend the ordinary
human limits and becomes no longer the Shakti of a man, but the
Shakti of God in man. It is then that gradual processes are replaced
by concentrated processes. It is as if, instead of travelling from
milestone to milestone you could leap from the first milestone to
the third and so on to your journey’s end. In other words the process
remains the same but some of the stages seem to be dispensed with.
In reality they are passed over so lightly as to escape notice and
occupy little time. Therefore it is called a concentrated or contracted
process.
Lastly, when the man himself becomes God, either in a part of
his actions or in the whole, then the law of concentrated processes
gives place to the involved processes, when no process at all seems
to be used, when the result follows the action instantaneously, inevitably
and miraculously. In reality there is no miracle, the process
is used but so rapidly, with such a sovereign ease, that all the stages
become involved or hidden in what seems a moment’s action.
To most men it is enough, if they can reach the second stage;
it is only the Avatar or the great Vibhuti who can reach the third.
Therefore do not be discouraged by any failure or delay. It is
purely a question of force and purity of the Will. By purity I mean
freedom from desire, from effort, from misplacement. It is best to
begin by concentrating effort on the self-purification of the Will,
towards which the first necessity is passivity of desire for the fruit,
the second the passivity of the Chitta and the Buddhi, while the
will is being applied; the third the development of self-knowledge
in the use of the Will. It will be found that by this process of
educating the Will, ˆatmˆanam ˆatmanˆa, purity of the adhar will also
be automatically prepared and knowledge will begin to develop
and act.
IV
What is knowledge? In what does it consist? We must distinguish
between knowledge in itself and the means of knowledge.
Again, among the means we must distinguish between the instruments
and the operations performed with the instruments.
By Knowledge we mean awareness, taking a thing into active
consciousness, into our Chaitanyam. But when we say, taking it
into our Chaitanyam, what do we imply? Whence do we take
it? The European says from outside, we say from inside, from
Chaitanyam itself. In other words, all knowledge is an act of consciousness
operating on something in the consciousness itself. In
the first place everything we know exists in Parabrahman, that
is, in our indivisible, universal self-existence. It is there, but not
yet expressed, not vyakta. Then it exists in pure Chit, which is
the womb of things as an idea of form, name and quality. It has
name, form and quality in the Karana or Mahat, the causal, typal
and ideal state of consciousness. Then it gets the possibility of
change, development or modification in the Sukshma, the subtle,
mental or plastic state of consciousness. Finally it gets the actual
change, development, modification or evolution in the Sthula, the
material or evolutionary state of consciousness. In the Karana there
is no evolution, nothing ever changes, all is eternal. The Karana is
Satyam. In the Sukshma all is preparation of change; it is full of
imagination or anritam, therefore it is Swapna, not really false,
but not immediately applicable to the Karana or Sthula. In the
Sthula all evolves. It is partial satyam developing by the turning
of old satyam into anritam, which is called destruction, and the
turning of new anritam into new satyam, which is called creation.
In the Karana there is no creation, no birth, no death, all exists
for ever the only change is from type to type, from fulfilment to
fulfilment.
Therefore to know is really to be conscious of the thing in
any or all of these three states. The knowledge of the Sthula is
science. The knowledge of the Sukshma is philosophy, religion and
metaphysics. The knowledge of the Karana is Yoga. When a man
knows the Sthula, he knows it with his senses, that is, with the
Manas, he knows the Sukshma with reason or the inspired intellect,
he knows the Karana with the Jnanam or spiritual realisation.
Therefore complete knowledge consists of three operations, first,
objective Upalabdhi or experience, secondly, intellectual statement
of your understanding of the thing, thirdly, subjective Upalabdhi
or spiritual experience. The scientist begins from the bottom and
climbs if he can, to the top. The Yogin begins from the top and
descends for perfect proof to the bottom. You are not scientists, you
are sadhaks. Therefore, when you speak of knowledge you must
understand the process; you realise a thing by subjective experience,
Bhava, then, think about it and formulate your experience in Artha
and Vak, the combination which forms thought; you verify or test
your experience by physical or objective experience.
For instance you see a man. You want to know what he is,
what he thinks and what he does. How does the scientist or the
material man do it? He watches the man, he notes what he says,
what are his expressions of speech and face, what are his actions,
what sort of people he lives with, etc. All this is objective. Then he
reasons from his objective experience. He says “The man says this
or that, so he must think so and so or he must have such and such a
character; his actions show the same, his face shows the same,” and
so he goes on reasoning. If he does not get all the necessary facts,
he fills them up from his imagination or from his memory, that is
his experience of other men, of himself or of human life as read of
in books or heard of from other people. He perceives, he observes,
contrasts, compares, deduces, infers, imagines, remembers and the
composite result he calls reason, knowledge, fact. In reality he has
arrived at a probability, for it is impossible for him to be sure that his
conclusions are correct or anything indeed correct in his thought,
except the actual observation, perceptions of his eye, ear, nose,
touch, and taste. Anything beyond this the material man distrusts.
Nothing is true to him except what he observes with his senses or
what agrees with his sensory perceptions.
Now what does the Yogin do? He simply puts himself into
relation with the thing itself. Not with its form, name or quality,
but with itself. He may never have seen the form, heard the name
or had experience of the quality, but still he can know the thing.
Because it is the thing itself and it is in himself and one with himself,
that is in the Mahakarana in a man. There all meet the Atman and
are so entirely one with the Atman that by merely being in contact
with it, I can know everything about it. Few Yogins reach that state.
But all the same, even in the Karana I can put myself in relation
with the thing and know it by Bhava. I put myself, my soul, into
relation with the soul of the man I study or the thing I study; Prajna
in me becomes one with the Prajna in him or it. How do I do this?
Simply by becoming passive and facing him or it in my Buddhi. If
my Buddhi is quite pure or fairly purified, if my Manas is shanta,
then I get the truth about him. I get it by Bhava, by spiritual or
subjective realisation.
Then I have to make the thing I have got clear and precise.
To do that I must state it intellectually to my mind, that is, I must
think about it. I have these ideas I am telling you in myself as
unexpressed knowledge; they shape themselves in words, Vak, and
take on a precise meaning, Artha. That is thought. Most people
think vaguely, half expressing the thing in an imperfect Vak and
a partial Artha. The Yogin must not do that. His thoughts must
express themselves in clear and perfect sentences. He may know a
thing without thinking it out, but if he thinks, he must think clearly
and perfectly.
The Yogin reasons when necessary, but not like the man of
science. He sees the thing with his prophetic power interpreting
the truth into thought; the pratyaksha gives him the Artha, the
inspiration gives him the Vak, the intuition gives him the right conclusion
about it, the right siddhanta, the Viveka guards him from
error. Behold the truth by these four simple operations perfectly
thought out. If he has to argue, then the intuitions give him the right
arguments. He has not to proceed painfully from one syllogism to
another as the logician does.
Finally, he verifies his knowledge by the facts of the objective
world. He has seen the truth about the man by merely looking at
him or at the idea of him; he has thought it out clearly and now
he compares his idea with the man’s action, speech etc. Not to
test his truth; for he knows that a man’s action, speech etc. only
partially express the man and mislead the student; but in order to
see how the truth he knows from the Karana is being worked out
in the Sthula. He trusts the man’s objective life only so far as it is
in agreement with the deeper truth he has gained by Yoga.
You see the immense difference. The only difficulty is that
you have been accustomed to use the senses and the reason to
the subordination and almost to the exclusion of the higher faculties.
Therefore you find it difficult to make the higher faculties
active.
If only you could start from the beginning, with the Bhava,
the Atmajnana, how easy it would be! That will yet happen. But
first, you have to get rid of the lower Buddhi, of the Indriyas in the
manas, and awaken the activity of the higher faculties. They will
see for you, hear for you, as well as think for you.
First, then, get your sanskaras right. Understand intellectually
what I have told you and will yet tell you. Then by use of the
Will, keep the reason, imagination, memory, thought, sensations
sufficiently quiet for the higher Buddhi to know itself as separate
and different from these lower qualities. As the higher separates
itself and becomes more and more active, the lower, already discouraged,
will become less and less active and finally trouble you
no more.
Therefore Will first, then by Will, by Shakti, the Jnanam. First
Kali, then Surya. I shall explain the various faculties when I have
finished with the rest of the system.
V
If men were satisfied with indulging in reason, memory and
imagination, the purification of the Buddhi and the development
of the higher faculties would be an easy matter. But there is another
means of thought which they habitually indulge in and that
is Manas. The Manas is a receptive organ; it receives the images
expressed on the eye, the ear etc., and turns them into what the
Europeans call the percepts, that is, things perceived. Besides, it
receives the ideas, images etc., sent down from the Vijnana into the
Chitta and passes them on to the latter organ. In this passage these
things become what are called concepts, that is, things conceived
or thought of. For instance, when the mind sees the image of a
book and says “A book”, it has hold of a percept the name of
which it conceives; that is sensational thought. When it says “A
book contains language” that is a remoter concept, intellectual
thought. One merely puts things sensed into words, the other puts
things thought into words. Percept and concept togethermakewhat
is called understanding. Reason, according to the European idea,
merely arranges percepts and concepts and draws from this arrangement
fresh and more elaborate concepts. Many believe that
concepts are merely percepts put together and converted into what
is called thought. According to this idea, all thought is merely the
arrangement of sensation in the terms of language. Even when I
imagine an angel, I merely put a human figure and the wings of a
bird together and give the combination a name, angel. Even when I
talk of abstract qualities, for example, virtue, courage etc., I am not
thinking of anything beyond sensation, but merely a classification
of virtuous and courageous sensations and actions put together and
labelled with the name virtue or courage.
All these ideas are correct so far as the Manas or understanding
is concerned. The Manas is an organ of sensation, not of thought.
It catches thoughts on their way from the Buddhi to the Chitta,
but in catching them it turns them into the stuff of sensations, as
described above.
It regards them from the point of view of sensations. Animals
think with their Manas and animals are not able to form ideas
that do not relate themselves to some image, form, sound, smell,
touch, taste, etc. They are bound by their sensations. That is why
in animals the Buddhi is dormant; so far as it acts, it acts behind
the veil.
But man can become aware of things which the senses cannot
grasp, buddhigrˆahyam atˆındriyam. The proof of that you can get
daily, when the Yogic power is developed. This single fact that man
can see with his Buddhi the truth about a thing he has never seen
or known before, is enough to destroy the materialistic idea of
thought.
That idea is only true of the Manas. The Manas responds
to the senses and is always forming percepts and concepts about
the sensations it receives. These ideas it sometimes gets from the
outside world, sometimes from the passive memory in the Chitta,
sometimes from the Buddhi. But it tries to impose them all on the
Buddhi. It tests everything which it does not take for granted by
reference to the senses. “I saw that”, “I heard that”, therefore it is
true, that is the reasoning of the Manas. That is why people who
have a poorly developed Buddhi, attach so much importance to
what they have seen or read. “I have seen it in print” says the just
literate man, and he thinks he has closed the argument.
What are we to do with the Manas? Get it to be still, says
the Yogin. While it is busy, knowledge is impossible. You can get
only fragments of knowledge. That is true and the quiet mind is
no doubt essential to the Yogin. But what of the senses? Concepts
in the Manas you may get rid of, but what are you to do with the
percepts? You cannot stop seeing, hearing etc., except when you are
in Samadhi. That is why the Vedantin attaches so much importance
to samadhi. It is the only condition in which he is safe from the
persistent siege of the percepts of the senses.
But if you can only exercise knowledge when you are in
Samadhi, then you will have to become an ascetic or recluse, a man
who gives up life or thought. That is a necessity which cuts the unity
of God’s world into two and makes an unnatural division in what
should be indivisible. The Tantric knows that this is not necessary,
that Samadhi is a great instrument, but not the only instrument. He
so arranges his antahkarana that he can know when he is walking,
talking, acting, sleeping, whatever he is doing. How? By not only
stilling the conceptual activity of the Manas but by transferring to
the Buddhi its perceptual activity.
In other words he sees, hears etc., not with the senses in the
manas, but with the Indriya in the Buddhi. You will find what a
difference this makes. Not only do you see much more perfectly,
minutely, accurately than before, but you are able to appreciate
colours, forms, sounds etc., in a way you never did before. And
besides you are able to catch the soul, the Guna, the essential quality
and emotion of a thing, the moment you are aware of it. This is
part of what the Yoga calls Prakamya, the absolute and sovereign
activity of the Indriya.
Therefore when the Yoga is perfect, you will not be troubled
by the Manas. It will cease to perceive. It will be merely a passage,
a channel for things from the Buddhi to the Chitta. There are many
ways of bringing this about, but most of them suffer from this
defect, that you get the thinking part of the Manas still, but the
perceiving part retains its inferior and hampering activity. The best
way is to use the Will simultaneously for awaking the Jnanam and
for stilling the Manas. This method has two advantages. First, you
do not, as in the ordinary method, have to make your mind a
blank. That is a powerful but very difficult and trying discipline or
Tapasya. You simply replace by degrees the activity of the lower
reason by the activity of the higher thought, the activity of the
mind by the activity of the same organ and the sense-perceptions
by the activity of the Prakamya. This process is less painful and
more easy. Secondly, you cannot stop perceiving so long as you
are not in Sushupti, you only stop thinking. So you cannot make
your mind blank. Unless you wake the Jnanam first, how are you
going to get rid of this intrusive element? The Prakamya must
be there already active before the ordinary perceptions can stop
work.
This then is the third operation of the Tantric method. You
develop the Will, you use the Will to awaken the Jnanam, you use
the Will to still the mind and the lower Buddhi and you use the
Jnanam to replace them
VI
I come next to Chitta. There are two layers in the Chitta, one
for the emotions, the other for passive memory. In the lower layer
of the Chitta, the impressions of all things seen, thought, sensed,
felt are recorded and remain until the Jiva leaves this body. Even afterwards
all these impressions are taken up with the Sukshma body
and go with the Jiva into the other worlds. When he is born again,
they are brought with him as latent samskaras in the Muladhara;
that is why people do not remember their past births, but can get
back the memory by awakening the Kundalini in the Muladhara.
These impressions are latent in the Chitta until the active memory in
the Buddhi calls for them. Those which are continually brought to
the Buddhi have a habit of recurring even when not wanted, habitual
thoughts, ideas, sentiments, opinions etc., which are the Yogin’s
chief trouble until the Manas in which they occur becomes quiet.
The second and the upper layer is that of emotion. The emotions
are the acts of Will sent down into the Chitta and there
assuming the form of impulses. There are three divisions, thoughtimpulses,
impulses of feeling, and impulses of action. The first are
called by various names, instincts, inspirations, insights, intuitions
etc. They are really messages sent down by the Jiva from the Sahasradala
into the Chitta, they pass unobserved through the Buddhi,
lodge in the Chitta and, whenever excited by any contact external
or internal, start up suddenly and strike the Buddhi with the same
force as the real inspirations etc., which come down direct from the
Vijnana to the Buddhi. But they come up coloured by emotions,
distorted by associations and memories in the Chitta, perverted by
the imagination which brings them up. Much of what is called faith,
Bhakti, genius, poetic inspiration etc., comes from this source. It
is useful to the ordinary man, all important to the animal, but a
hindrance to the Yogin.
The impulses of feeling are what are ordinarily called emotions.
The emotions are of two kinds, natural or eternal, artificial
or Vikaras. Love is natural, it proceeds from Jnanam and tends to
endure in the evolution; hatred is a Vikara from love, a distortion or
reaction caused by Ajnanam. So courage is eternal, fear is Vikara;
compassion is eternal, ghrina or weak pity, repulsion, disgust etc.,
are Vikaras. Those which are natural and eternal, love, courage,
pity, truth, noble aspirations, are Dharma; the others are Adharma.
But this is from the eternal standpoint and has nothing to do with
Samajic or Laukic or temporary Dharma or Adharma. Moreover,
Adharma is often necessary as a passage or preparation for passing
from an undeveloped to a developed, a lower to a higher Dharma.
The Yogin has to get rid of Vikaras, but not of Sanatana Dharmas.
The third kind of impulse is the impulse to action. Its presence
in the Chitta is a temporary arrangement due to the rajasic development
of the human being. The asuddha rajasicman cannot easily be
stirred into action, except through two forces, desire or emotion.
Love, hatred, ambition, rage etc., must stir in him or he cannot
act, or acts feebly. He cannot understand shuddha pravritti, action
without desire and independent of emotion. Emotion should only
give a colour to the man’s swabhava or temperament. He should be
habitually full of feelings of love, courage, honour, true ambition,
self-reliance etc., but he should not act from any individual impulse
of however noble a character. He should act in obedience to the
impulse from the Will in direct communication with the Purusha
in the Vijnana, understanding with the Buddhi why the Will acts
in that particular way and colouring the act with the emotion appropriate
to his Swabhava. But neither the Buddhi nor the emotion
should directly interfere with or try to determine his action. The
Buddhi is for thought and the Chitta for emotion. Neither of them
have anything to do with action in the shuddha state. The intellectual
Asura determines his actions by his reason or his ideal, the
emotional Asura by his feelings. But the shuddha determines them
by the higher inspiration proceeding from the divine existence in
the Vijnana. That is what people often call the Adesha. Only the
shuddha can safely rely on having this kind of Adesha, the asuddha
Yogin often mistakes his own ideas, imaginations, emotions or even
desires for the Adesha.
Therefore what the Yogin must aim at, is to get rid of the
activity of his lower Chitta or the old impressions by stilling the
Manas as described in my last lecture; get rid of his instinctive
thought or thought-impulses by the same means; get rid of the
habit of acting on his emotions by allowing the will to silence his
impulses and purify his emotions. He should prohibit and inhibit
by theWill all action or speech that starts blindly from the passions
or emotions surging in his heart. The emotions will then become
quiet and must be habituated to come as a sort of wave falling into
a sea, instead of surging furiously into action. These quiet waves
which are satisfied with existing and do not demand satisfaction
in action or seek to dominate the life or the ideas, are the purified
emotions. Those which rise upward into the Buddhi and try to
shape the thought or opinion, those which move outward into
speech or action, are asuddha emotions. What I mean is that the
emotions in the Chitta are for enjoyment only; the action must be
dominated by a higher principle.
There again it is the Will that must purify, govern and renew
the heart. Only, it has the best chance of doing it if the knowledge
has first become active and the mind is still. A still mind means a
heart easily purified.
VII
I come next to Prana, the nervous or vital element in man
which is centralised below the Manas and Chitta in the subtle
body and connected with the navel in the Sthula Deha. Here I
must distinguish between the Sukshma Prana and the Sthula Prana,
the former moving in the nervous system of the subtle body as
described in the Yogic books, the latter in the nervous system of the
gross body. The two are closely connected and almost always act
upon each other. The prana forms the link between the physical and
the mental man. I must here warn you against stumbling into the
error of those who try to harmonise Yogic Science with the physical
science of the Europeans and search for the Yogic Nadis and
Chakras in the physical body. You will not find them there. There
are certain centres in the physical nervous system with which the
Chakras correspond, otherwise Hathayoga would be impossible.
But the Chakras are not these centres. The Europeans are masters
in their own province of knowledge and there you need not hesitate
to learn from them, but for God’s sake do not subject your higher
knowledge to their lower; you will only create a most horrible
confusion. Develop your higher knowledge first, then study their
sciences and the latter will at once fall into their place.
It is with the Sukshma Prana that I am principally concerned;
for the Sthula Prana belongs to the Annam rather than to the Antahkarana
and I will speak of it in connection with the Annam. The
Sukshma Prana is the seat of desire and its purification is of the
utmost importance to the Yogin. Until you have got rid of desire,
you have accomplished nothing permanent. When you have got rid
of desire, you are sure of everything else. That is why the Gita says
“Get rid of desire first”. Only until you have got knowledge and can
learn to use your will to still the mind and purify the emotions, you
cannot utterly get rid of desire. You may drive it out by Samyama,
you may hold it down by Nigraha but eventually it is of no use, for
it will return. “Prakritim yˆ anti bhˆ utˆ ani nigrahah kim karishyati.”
Creatures follow after nature; what is the use of coercion? That
is to say, it has a temporary result and the coerced desires come
back ravening and more furious than before. That was what Christ
meant by the parable of the devil, the unclean spirit who is driven
out of a man only to return with seven spirits worse than himself.
For it is the nature of things, the unalterable nature of things, that
unpurified emotion must clamour after desire, an unstilled Manas
give it harbourage whenever it returns, an unilluminated Buddhi
contain the seed of it ready to sprout up at the first opportunity.
Therefore unless the whole Antahkarana is purified, unless you get
a new heart and a new mind, desire cannot be got rid of; it returns
or it remains. When however an illuminated understanding lighting
up the action of a strengthenedWill and supported by a pure heart,
casts desire into the Sukshma Prana and attacks it there in its native
place, it can be utterly destroyed. When you have a visuddha Buddhi
you will be able to distinguish these various organs and locate all
your mental activities. Desire can then be isolated in the Prana and
the heart and mind kept pure of its insistent inroads. For desire
is only effective when it can get hold of the Chitta and Buddhi,
generating Vikaras of emotion and perversions of knowledge which
give it strength to impose itself on theWill and so influence internal
and external action. It is most powerful in the higher kind of human
being when it masks itself as a principle or ideal or as a justifiable
emotion.
Remember moreover that all desires have to be got rid of,
those which are called good, as well as those which are called bad.
Some people will tell you, keep the good desires and drive out
the bad. Do not listen to that specious piece of ignorance. You
can use the good desires to drive out the bad on condition that
immediately after you drive out the good also by the one desire of
Mumukshutwa, liberation and union with God. And even that last
desire finally you must renounce and give yourself up wholly to
God’s will, even in that last and greatest matter, becoming utterly
desireless, nishkˆama nihspriha. Otherwise you will find yourself
travelling in a vicious circle. For if you keep desire at all, he is such
a born traitor that he will eventually open the door to your enemies.
When the unclean spirit returned to his house, he found it swept
and garnished, that is, purified of bad thoughts and adorned with
good desires, and immediately he got in and made the last state of
that man worse than his first. So get rid of all desires utterly, good,
bad and indifferent. Get beyond virtue as well as beyond vice. Be
satisfied with no bondage even though the fetters be of pure gold.
Admit no guide or master but God, even though they be gods or
angels who claim your homage.
Desire is composed of three elements, attachment or Asakti,
longing or Kamana, and preference or Ragadwesha. Get rid of
attachment first. Use your will and purified Antahkarana to throw
out that clinging and insistence on things, which says “I must have
that, I cannot do without that,” and returns on the idea of it, even
when it is persistently denied. When the emotions are quiet, this
Asakti will of itself die away, but for a time it will rage a great deal
and try to get the emotions active again. Apply theWill steadily and
patiently and do not get disturbed by failure; for desire is a terrible
thing, as difficult to get rid of as a leech. It is indeed the daughter of
the horse-leech crying “Give, give.” Do not violently silence the cry;
ignore it and use yourWill to get rid of the clamourer. When Asakti
becomes weak, Kamana loses nine tenths of its force and you can
easily throw it off. Still for some time, out of sheer habit, the longing
for certain things will come, not in the heart or Buddhi, but in the
Prana; only if Asakti is gone, the refusal of the thing craved will not
leave behind it a permanent grief or continual hunger. There will
only be temporary disturbance of the peace of the heart. When you
have got rid of the Kamana, even then Raga may remain, and if
Raga is there, Dwesha is sure to come in. You will not ask or crave
for anything; for Kamana is gone; but when some things come, you
will not like them; when other things come, you will feel glad and
exultant. You will not rebel or cling to what you have, but you will
not like the coming of the evil, you will not like the loss of your
joy, even though you say “Very good” and submit. Get rid of that
Raga and Dwesha and have perfect Samata.
When you have perfect Samata, then either you will have
perfect Shanti, divine peace, or else perfect or Shuddha Bhoga,
divine enjoyment. Shanti is the negative Ananda and those have it
who rest in the Nirguna Brahman. Shuddha Bhoga is the positive
Ananda and those have it who rest in the Trigunatita Ananta Brahman.
You can have both and it is best to have both. God enjoys
the world with Shuddha Bhoga based on the perfect Shanti. Most
people cannot imagine Bhoga without Kama, enjoyment without
desire. It is a foolish notion, none the less foolish because it is
natural and almost universal. It is Ajnanam, a fundamental part
of ignorance. Enjoyment does not really begin until you get rid
of desire. That which you get as the result of satisfied desire is
troubled, unsafe, feverish, or limited, but Shuddha Bhoga is calm,
self-possessed, victorious, unlimited, without satiety and Vairagya,
immortally blissful. It is in a word, not Harsha, not Sukha, but
Ananda. It is Amrita, it is divinity and immortality, it is becoming
of one nature with God. The soul has then no kama, but it has pure
lipsa, an infinite readiness to take and enjoy whatever God gives
it. Grief, pain, disgrace, everything that is to rajasic men a torture,
changes then to bliss. Even if such a soul were to be cast into hell,
it would not feel hell, but heaven. It would not only say with the
Bhakta “This is from the beloved” but with the perfect Jnani “This
is the Beloved; this is the Anandam Brahman: this is the Kantam,
the Shivam, Shubham, Sundaram.”
I need not repeat the process by which this purification is
effected. I have indicated it sufficiently. This Tantric process is the
same throughout, the reliance on the Shakti, the divine Will working
in the Adhar, without any effort on the part of the Purusha,
who remains Akarta throughout the sadhana, but still Ishwara, the
source of the command and the sanction, the ruler dispossessed by
his subjects and gradually recovering control of his rebellious and
disordered kingdom.
VIII
There remains the Sthula, the gross part of man which is composed
of the Sthula Prana or physical nervous system and the annam
or body in which the prana operates. The prana is the principle of
life, death is brought about by the dissolution of the tie between
the sukshma deha and the sthula deha. That tie is the prana. The
sukshma deha takes the prana into itself and departs; the little that
is left in the gross body is of the nature of apana with a tendency
to that species of dissolution which we call corruption. The prana
part of it, which can alone hold the body together, evaporates and
the apana leads to swift disintegration. In some animals, however,
the prana is so abundant that the body shows signs of life even after
the sukshma deha has departed.
I have been dealing throughout with the purification of the
sukshma part ofman, the Antahkarana or mind, the subject of the
body is a little foreign to my purpose. Nevertheless a few words are
necessary. The principle upon which this Yoga I am explaining to
you stands, is that the gross body is merely the shadow or creation
of the subtle. Body is a mould into which mind pours itself, but the
mould itself has been prepared by the mind and can be changed
by the mind. A mind purified, liberated and perfected (siddha) can
do whatever it likes with the body. It may leave it as it is, allowing
the past karma to do its will with the physical part in the form of
disease, suffering, misfortune and death, without the mind being
in the least affected. All that is impurity and bondage, which is the
physical translation and result of mental impurity and bondage.
With the cessation of the cause, the effect ceases; but not at once. It
is again like the steam and the locomotive. The habits, the results
created by past lives, are expelled from the mind and precipitated
entirely into the body. You may allow them to work themselves out
there, many do that. On the other hand, you may pursue them into
the body and drive them out from there as well. In that case you
get the Kayashuddhi and the Kayasiddhi. They are usually sought
after by the Hathayogic or Rajayogic processes, but these are not
necessary. It is even better and certainly much easier and surer to
follow the process I have been indicating.
The very fact of having a purified mind makes for purity of the
body, a liberated mind for liberation of the body, a perfected mind
for perfection of the body, and to a certain extent as you go on with
the yoga in the Antahkarana, the body will automatically begin to
respond to the new influences. But you should not consciously
meddle with the body until you have finished with the mind. Let
nature do its work. Detach yourself as much as possible from the
body, think of it as a mere case, leave it to the care of God and
His Shakti. Many sadhaks are frightened by illness in the course of
the Yoga. You need not be frightened, for you have put yourself in
God’s hands and He will see to it. It will come to you only as a part
of the necessary process for purification of the body, work itself
out, fade and return no more. Other disturbances of the body will
come which are incidental to the turning of an unfit physical adhar
into a fit one. Profound alterations are necessary in your braincells,
your nervous system, your digestive and secretive processes
and they cannot be effected without some physical disturbance,
but it will never be more than is necessary for the process. Do no
violence of any kind to the body; if you use physical remedies, let
them be of the simplest and purest kind; above all dismiss anxiety
and fear. You cannot care more for yourself than God cares for
you. Only your care is likely to be ignorant and unwise; His is with
knowledge and uses the right means to the right end.
Impurities in the body show themselves chiefly as disease, as
pain, as the discomfort of heat and cold, as the necessity of the
excretive processes. The first sign of Kayashuddhi is the disappearance
of all tendency to disease; the second is liberation from
the dwandwa of heat and cold, which will either go altogether
or change to pleasurable sensations often marked by electrical phenomena;
and the third, the diminution or disappearance of excretive
activity. Pain also can be entirely eliminated from the body, but
even before the reaction called pain is got rid of, or even without
its being got rid of, the discomfort of pain can be removed and
replaced by a sort of bodily Ananda. Finally, the craving of hunger
and thirst disappears from the prana to which it belongs and the
dependence on food diminishes or ceases. The perfection of all this
is the basis of Kayasiddhi. But perfect Kayasiddhi includes other
developments such as the siddhis of Mahima, Laghima, Anima
and the invulnerability and incorruptibility of the body, powers
hitherto attained in the Kaliyuga only by very advanced Siddhas.
They depend primarily on the replacement of the ordinary fivefold
processes of prana, apana, vyana, samana and udana by the single
simplified action of the original or elemental force of prana, the
infinite vital energy surcharged with electricity, vaidyutam.
All these are important elements of Tantric Yoga, but I have
mentioned them only cursorily because they are foreign to my purpose.
They can all be developed if the mental siddhi is perfected and
it is on this perfection that I wish you to concentrate your energy
and attention. When you get that, you get everything. The centres of
man’s activity, at present, are the buddhi, the heart and the manas,
and the body, though extremely important, is a dependent and
subordinate function. It has not to be despised on that account, but
most people give it an undue importance. When the Jiva is Ishwara
of his mind, his body falls into its proper place and instead of
interfering and often domineering over the mind and will, it obeys
and takes its stamp from them. The Europeans are obsessed with
the idea of the physical as the master of the mental. I would have
you hold fast to the opposite standpoint and always remember that
for the body to impose its conditions on the mind is an abnormal
state of man’s being, which has to be got rid of; it is the mind that
must command, condition and modify the body.
IX
CONCLUSION
I have finished what I had to say. I will only add a word in
conclusion. You must not think that what I have given you, is all
the knowledge you need about yourself or about the Yoga. On the
contrary, these are only certain indications necessary at a particular
stage; they are chiefly important for purification, which is the first
part of the Yoga. After the shuddhi is complete one has to perfect
the mukti, to get liberation, a thing easy after shuddhi, impossible
before it. By mukti I do not mean laya, which is a thing not to
be pursued or desired, but waited for whenever God wills, but
liberation from ignorance, Ahankara and all dualities. With the
progress of the purification, there will be a natural tendency towards
liberation and the farther stages of yoga, bhukti and siddhi,
liberated enjoyment and perfection. As you go forward you will
have to change your attitude, not radically but in certain important
points. That, however, I will not meddle with. It is well to do one
thing at a time.
In all that I have written, I have taken one standpoint to which
many of you have not been accustomed. If you regard Vairagyam
as the beginning of all wisdom, you will not be satisfied with me.
Vairagyam is to me merely a useful temporary state of mind which
God uses to enforce rejection of that to which the old samskaras
cling too obstinately to be unseated from it by mere abhyasa.
Jnanam is essential to shuddhi and mukti; but Jnanam must be
assisted either by abhyasa or by vairagya until the mind is still and
lets knowledge do its own work. As soon as the mind is still and
not susceptible to resuscitation of its old energies from outside, the
Jnanam develops, the Shakti pursues its task unhampered; there is
then no sadhan for you, only a progressive siddhi without any deliberately
adopted method, increasing by the mere easy and natural
process of Nature as a man breathes or sees or walks. All necessity
for either abhyasa or vairagya ceases. Attachment to vairagya is as
harmful as attachment to lobha itself.
Again if you think with the Buddhists that all life is a misery
and extinction of some kind the highest good, or if you think with
the Mayavadin that we came into this world with no other object
but to get out of it again as soon as possible, like the famous
general whose greatest military exploit was to march up a hill
in order to march back again, you had better pass me by. I am
a Tantric. I regard the world as born of Ananda and living by
Ananda, wheeling from Ananda to Ananda. Ananda and Shakti,
these are the two real terms of existence. Sorrow and weakness
are vikaras born of ajnanam, of the forgetfulness of the high and
true self. These are not universal or eternal things, but local and
temporary, local mainly of this earth, temporary in the brief periods
of the Kali yuga. Our business is to bring down heaven on earth for
ourselves and mankind, to eliminate sorrow and weakness from the
little corners of existence and time, where they are allowed to exist.
I do not give any assent to the gloomy doctrine which preaches
a world of sorrow and inaction and withdrawal from it as the
sole condition of bliss and freedom, which thinks, contrary to all
reason and knowledge, that God in himself is blessed, but God in
manifestation accursed. I will not admit that the Brahman is a fool
or a drunkard dreaming bad dreams, self-hypnotised into miserable
illusions. I do not find that teaching in the Veda; it does not agree
with my realisations which are of the actuality of unalterable bliss
and strength and knowledge in the midst of desireless phenomenal
action. I amof the mind of Sri Krishna in the Mahabharata when he
says, “Some preach action in this world and some preach inaction;
but as for those who preach inaction, I am not of the opinion of
those weaklings.” Na me matam tasya durbalasya.
But the action he holds up as an example, is the action of
the great Gods, even as Goethe speaks of the action of the great
natural forces, disinterested, unwearying, self-poised in bliss, not
inert with the tamas, not fretful with the rajas, not limited even
by the sattwic ahankara action made one in difference with the
Purushottama, my being in His being, my shakti only a particular
action of His infinite shakti, of Kali. I am not ignorant, I am not
bound, I am not sorrowful: I only play at being ignorant, I only
pretend to be bound; like an actor or like an audience I only take
the rasa of sorrow. I can throw it off when I please. Who calls me
degraded and sinful, a worm crawling upon the earth among other
worms? I am Brahman, I am He; sin cannot touch me. Who calls
me miserable? I am God, all blissful. Who calls me weak? I am one
with the Omnipotent. He, being One, has chosen to be Many. He,
being infinite, localises himself in many centres and in each centre
He is still infinite. That is the mystery of existence, the uttamam
rahasyam, God’s great, wonderful and blissful secret, a secret logic
rejects, but knowledge grasps at, a knowledge not to be argued out
but realised, but proved by experience, by the purified, liberated,
all-enjoying, all-perfect soul.