|
Man ― Slave or Free?
THE
exclusive pursuit of Yoga by men who
seclude themselves either physically or mentally from the contact of the world
has led to an erroneous view of this science as something mystic, far-off and unreal. The secrecy which has been
observed with regard to Yogic practices, a necessary secrecy in
the former stages of human evolution — has stereotyped this
error. Practices followed by men who form secret circles and confine the instruction in the mysteries strictly to those who have a
certain preparatory fitness, inevitably bear the stamp to the outside world of occultism. In reality there is nothing intrinsically
hidden, occult or mystic about Yoga. Yoga is based upon certain laws of human psychology, a certain knowledge about the
power of the mind over the body and the inner spirit over the
mind which are not generally realised and have hitherto been
considered by those in the secret too momentous in their consequences for disclosure until men should be trained to use them
aright. Just as a set of men who had discovered and tested the uttermost possibilities of mesmerism and hypnotism might hesitate
to divulge them freely to the world lest the hypnotic power should
be misused by ignorance or perversity or abused in the interests
of selfishness and crime, so the Yogins have usually preserved
the knowledge of these much greater forces within us in a secrecy
broken only when they were sure of the previous ethical and
spiritual training of the neophyte and his physical and moral fitness for the yogic practices. It became therefore an established
rule for the learner to observe strict reserve as to the inner experience of Yoga and for the developed Yogin as far as possible to
conceal himself. This has not prevented treatises and manuals
from being published dealing with the physical or with the moral
and intellectual sides of Yoga. Nor has it prevented great spirits
who have gained their Yoga not by the ordinary careful and scientific methods but by their own strength and the special grace of
God, from revealing themselves and their spiritual knowledge
Page
– 374
to mankind and in their intense love for humanity imparting
something of their power to the world. Such were Buddha,
Christ, Mahomed, Chaitanya, such have been Ramakrishna and
Vivekananda. It is still the orthodox view that the experiences
of Yoga must not be revealed to the uninitiated. But a new era
dawns upon us in which the old laws must be modified. Already
the West is beginning to discover the secrets of Yoga. Some of
its laws have revealed themselves however dimly and imperfectly
to the scientists of Europe while others through Spiritualism,
Christian Science, clairvoyance, telepathy and other modern
forms of occultism are being almost discovered by accident
as if by men groping in the dark and stumbling over truths
they cannot understand. The time has almost come when India
can no longer keep her light to herself but must pour it out
upon the world. Yoga must be revealed to mankind because
without it mankind cannot take the next step in the human
evolution.
The psychology of the human race has not yet been discovered by science. All creation is essentially the same and proceeds by similar though not identical laws. If therefore we see
in the outside material world that all phenomena proceed
from and can be reduced to a single causal substance from
which they were born, in which they move and to which they
return, the same truth is likely to hold good in the psychical
world. The unity of the material universe has now been acknowledged by the scientific intellect of Europe and the high
priests of atheism and materialism in Germany have declared
the ekamevādvitīyam, in matter with no uncertain voice. In
so doing they have merely re-affirmed the discovery made by
Indian masters of the yogic science thousands of years ago. But
the European scientists have not discovered any sure and certain
methods, such as they have in dealing with gross matter, for investigating psychical phenomena. They can only observe the
most external manifestations of mind in action. But in these
manifestations the mind is so much enveloped in the action of the
outer objects and seems so dependent on them that it is very difficult for the observer to find out the springs of its action or any
regularity in its workings. The European scientists have there-
Page
– 375
fore come to the conclusion that it is the stimulations of outside
objects which are the cause of psychical phenomena, and that
even when the mind seems to act of itself and on its own material,
it is only associating, grouping together and manipulating the
recorded experiences from outside objects. The very nature of
mind is, according to them, a creation of past material experience
transmitted by heredity with such persistence that we have grown
steadily from the savage with his rudimentary mind to the
civilised man of the twentieth century. As a natural result of these
materialistic theories, science has found it difficult to discover
any true psychical centre for the multifarious phenomena of mind
and has therefore fixed upon the brain, the material organ of
thought, as the only real centre. From this materialistic philosophy have resulted certain theories very dangerous to the moral
future of mankind. First, man is a creation and slave of matter.
He can only master matter by obeying it. Secondly, the mind
itself is a form of gross matter and not independent of and master
of the senses. Thirdly, there is no real free will, because all our
action is determined by two great forces, heredity and environment. We are the slaves of our nature, and where we seem to be
free from its mastery, it is because we are yet worse slaves of our
environment, worked on by the forces that surround and manipulate us.
It is from these false and dangerous doctrines of materialism
which tend to subvert man's future and hamper his evolution
that Yoga gives us a means of escape. It asserts on the contrary
man's freedom from matter and gives him a means of asserting
that freedom. The first great fundamental discovery of the
Yogins was a means of analysing the experiences of the mind and
the heart. By Yoga one can isolate mind, watch its workings as
under a microscope, separate every minute function of the various parts of antahkarana, the inner organ, every mental and
moral faculty, test its isolated workings as well as its relations to
other functions and faculties and trace backwards the operations
of mind to subtler and ever subtler sources until just as material
analysis arrives at a primal entity from which all proceeds, so
Yoga-analysis arrives at a primal spiritual entity from which all
proceeds. It is also able to locate and distinguish the psychical
Page
– 376
centre to which all psychical phenomena gather and so to fix
the roots of personality. In this analysis its first discovery is that
mind can entirely isolate itself from external objects and work
in itself and of itself. This does not, it is true, carry us very far,
because it may be that it is merely using the material already
stored up by its past experiences. But the next discovery is that
the farther it removes itself from objects, the more powerfully,
surely, rapidly can the mind work, with a swifter clarity, with
a victorious and sovereign detachment. This is an experience
which tends to contradict the scientific theory, that mind can withdraw the senses into itself and bring them to bear on a mass of
phenomena of which it is quite unaware when it is occupied with
external phenomena. Science will naturally challenge these as
hallucinations. The answer is that these phenomena are related
to each other by regular, simple and intelligible laws and form
a world of their own, independent of thought acting on the
material world. Here, too, Science has this possible answer that
this supposed world is merely an imaginative reflex in the brain
of the material world and to any arguments drawn from the definiteness and unexpectedness of these subtle phenomena and their
independence of our own will and imagination, it can always
oppose its theory of unconscious cerebration and we suppose
unconscious imagination. The fourth discovery is that mind is
not only independent of external matter, but its master; it can
not only reject and control external stimuli, but can defy such
apparently universal material laws as that of gravitation and
ignore, put aside and make nought of what are called laws of
nature and are really only the laws of material nature, inferior
and subject to the psychical laws because matter is a product of
mind and not mind a product of matter. This is the decisive
discovery of Yoga, its final contradiction of materialism. It is
followed by the crowning realisation that there is within us a
source of immeasurable force, immeasurable intelligence, immeasurable joy far above the possibility of weakness, above
the possibility of ignorance, above the possibility of grief which
we can bring into touch with ourselves and, under arduous but
not impossible conditions, habitually utilize or enjoy. This is
what the Upanishads call the Brahman and the primal entity
Page
– 377
from which all things were born, in which they live and to which
they return. This is God and communion with Him is the
highest aim of Yoga — a communion which works for knowledge, for work, for delight.
Page
– 378
HOME
|