|
The Web
of Yoga
TO
BE
one in all ways of thy being with that which
is
the Highest, this is Yoga.
To
be one in all ways of thy being with that which is the All, that
is Yoga.
To
be one in thy spirit and with thy understanding and thy heart
and in all thy members with the God in humanity, this is Yoga.
To
be
one with all Nature and all beings, this is Yoga.
All
this is to be one with God in his transcendence and his cosmos and all that he
has created in his being. Because from him all is and all is in him and he is
all and in all and because he is thy highest Self and thou art one with him in
thy spirit and a portion of him in thy soul and at play with him in thy nature,
and because this world is a scene in his being in which he is thy secret Master
and lover and friend and the lord and sustainer of all thou art, therefore is
oneness with him the perfect way of thy being.
THE
EVOLUTIONARY
AIM OF
YOGA
The
human being on earth is God playing at humanity in a world of matter under the
conditions of a hampered density with the ulterior intention of imposing law of
spirit on matter and nature of deity upon human nature. Evolution is nothing but
the progressive unfolding of Spirit out of the density of material consciousness
and the gradual self-revelation of God out of this apparent animal being.
Yoga
is the application, for this process of divine self-revelation, of the supreme
force of Tapas by which God created the world, supports it and will destroy it.
It substitutes always some direct action of an infinite divine force for the
limited workings of our fettered animal humanity. It uses divine means in
order to rise to divinity.
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All
Yoga is Tapasya and all Siddhi of Yoga is accomplishment of godhead
either by identity or by relation with the Divine Being — in its
principle or by identity or its personality or in both — or simultaneously by
identity and relation.
Identity
is the principle of Adwaita, relation of Dwaita, relation in a qualified
identity of Vishishtadwaita. But entire perfection comes by identity
with God in essential experience and relation of difference with Him in
experience of manifestatation.
The
Infinite Being in rest aware of its own eternal oneness. There is the
everlasting silence of the Absolute.
The
infinite Conscious Power in movement aware of its own
eternal
many-ness — the everlasting movement and creation of the
Supreme.
As
in the immobile ether arises, first sign of the creative impulse of Nature,
vibration, Shabda, and this vibration is a line of etheric movement, is ether
contacting ether in its own field of mobile self-force and that primal stir is
sufficient to initiate all forms and forces, even such is the original movement
of the Infinite.
But
this vibration is not the stir of any material force or substance and this
contact is not material contact. This is a vibration of consciousness in
spiritual essence; this is the contact of consciousness with itself in
spiritual substance.
This
original movement, not original or first in time, for it was from ever and
continues for ever, but original in that action of consciousness which is an
eternal repetition of all things in an eternal present, or, if you will, an
eternal past-present-future, the three simultaneous times of that ever packed
Time of the Infinite that translates to our blind finite conception as the vast
timelessness of the Absolute.
Matter
is but a form of consciousness; nevertheless solve not the object entirely into
its subjectivity. Reject not the body of God, O God lover, but keep it for thy
joy; for His body too is delightful even as His spirit.
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Perishable
and transitory delight is always the symbol of the eternal Ananda, revealed and
rapidly concealed, which seeks by increasng
recurrence to attach itself to some typal form of experience in material consciousness. When the particular form has
been
perfected
to express God in the type, its delight will no longer be perishable, but an
eternally recurrent possession of man and
beings in matter manifest in their periods and often in their movements of
felicity.
II
All
existence is Brahman, Atman and Ishwara, three names for one unnameable reality
which alone exists. We shall give to this sole real existence the general name
of God, because we find it ultimately to be not an abstract state of Existence,
not conscious of itself, but a supreme and self-aware One who exists —
absolutely in Himself, infinitely in the world with an appearance of the
finite in His various manifestations in the world.
God
in Himself apart from all world manifestation or realisable relation to
world-manifestation is called the Paratpara Brahman, and is not knowable either
to the knowledge that analyses or the knowledge that synthetically conceives.
We can neither say of Him that He is personal or impersonal, existence or
non-existence, pure or impure, Atman or un-Atman. We can only say to every
attempt to define Him positively or negatively, neti neti not this, not this. We can pass into the Paratpara Brahman,
but we cannot know the Paratpara Brahman.
God
in the world is Brahman-Ishwara-Atman, Prakriti or
Shakti and Jiva. These are the three terms of His world-manifestation.
INITIAL
DEFINITIONS AND
DESCRIPTIONS
Yoga
has four powers and objects, purity, liberty, beatitude and perfection.
Whosoever has consummated these four mightinesses in the being of the
transcendental, universal, līlāmaya and
individual God is the complete and absolute Yogin.
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All
manifestations of God are manifestations of the absolute Parabrahman.
The
Absolute Parabrahman is unknowable to us, not because It is the nothingness of
all that we are, for rather whatever we are in truth or in seeming is nothing
but Parabrahman, but because It is pre-existent and supra-existent to even the
highest and purest methods and the most potent and illimitable instruments of
which soul in the body is capable.
In
Parabrahman knowledge ceases to be knowledge and becomes an inexpressible
identity. Become Parabrahman, if thou wilt and if That will suffer thee, but
strive not to know It; for thou shalt not succeed with these instruments and in
this body.
In
reality thou art Parabrahman already and ever wast and ever wilt be. To become
Parabrahman in any other sense, thou must depart utterly out of
world-manifestation and out even of world-transcendence.
Why
shouldst thou hunger after departure from manifestation as if the world were
an evil? Has not That manifested itself in thee and in the world and art thou
wiser and purer and better than the Absolute, 0 mind-deceived soul in the
mortal? When That withdraws thee, then thy going hence is inevitable; until Its
force is laid in thee, thy going is impossible, cry thy mind never so fiercely
and wailingly for departure. Therefore neither desire nor shun thy world, but
seek the bliss and purity and freedom and greatness of God in whatsoever state
or experience or environment.
So
long as thou hast any desire, be it the desire of non-birth or the desire of
liberation, thou canst not attain to Parabrahman. For That has no desires,
neither of birth nor of non-birth, nor of world, nor of departure from world.
The Absolute is unlimited by thy desire as It is inaccessible to thy knowledge.
If
thou wouldst know Paratpara Brahman, then know It as It chooses to manifest
Itself in world and transcending it, — for transcendence also is a relation to
world and not the sheer Absolute, — since otherwise It is unknowable. This is
the simultaneous knowing and not knowing spoken of in the Vedanta.
Of
Parabrahman we should not say that “It” is world
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transcendent
or world-immanent or related or non-related to the world; for all these ideas of
world and not-world, of transcendence and immanence and relation are
expressions of thought by
which mind
puts its own values on the self-manifestation of Parabrahman to its own
principle of knowledge and we cannot assert any, even the highest of them to be
the real reality of that which is at once all and beyond all, nothing and beyond
nothing. A profound and unthinking silence is the only attitude which the soul
manifested in world should adopt towards the Absolute.
We
know of Parabrahman that It Is, in a way in which no object is and shall be in
the world, because whenever and in whatever direction we go to the farthest
limits of soul-experience or
thought-experience
or body-experience or any essential experience whatsoever, we come to the
brink of That and perceive It to be unknowable, without any capacity of
experiencing about it any further truth whatsoever.
When
thy soul retiring within from depth to depth and widening without from vastness
to vastness stands in the silence of
its being
before an unknown and unknowable from which and towards which world is seen to
exist as a thing neither materially real nor mentally real and yet not to be
described as a dream or a falseehood, then know that thou art standing in the
Holy of Holies, before the Veil that shall not be rent. In this mortal body thou
canst not rend it,
nor in any
other body, nor in the state of self in body nor in the state of pure self, nor
in waking nor in sleep nor in trance, nor in any state or circumstances
whatsoever; for thou must be beyond state before thou canst enter into the
Paratpara Brahman.
That
is the unknown God to whom no altar can be raised and no worship offered;
universe is His only altar, Existence is His only worship. That we are, feel,
think, act or are but do not feel, do not think, do not act is for That enough.
To That, the saint is equal with the sinner, activity with inactivity, man with
the mollusc, since All are equally Its manifestations. These things at least are
here of the Parabrahman and Para Purusha, which is the Highest that we know and
the nearest to the Absolute. But what That is behind the veil or how behind
the veil It regards Itself and its manifestation is a thing no mind can assume
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to tell or know; and he is
equally ignorant and presumptuous who raises and inscribes to It an altar or
who pretends to declare the Unknown to those who know that they can know It
not. Confuse not thought, bewilder not the soul of man in its forward march,
but turn to the universe and know That
in this, tadeva etat, for so only and in these terms It has set itself out
to be known to those who are in the universe. Be not deceived by Ignorance, be
not deceived by Knowledge; there is none bound and none free and none seeking
freedom but only God playing at these things in the extended might of His
self-conscious being, parā māyā, mahimānam asya, which we call the
universe.
III
The boon that we have asked from
the Supreme is the greatest that the Earth can ask from the Highest, the change
that is most difficult to realise, the most exacting in its conditions. It is
nothing less than the descent of the supreme Truth and Power into Matter, the
supramental established in the material plane and consciousness and the material
world and an integral trans- formation down to the very principle of Matter.
Only a supreme Grace can effect this miracle.
The supreme Power has
descended into the most material consciousness but it has stood there behind
the density .of the physical veil, demanding before manifestation, before its
great open workings can begin, that the conditions of the supreme Grace shall
be there, real and effective.
A total surrender, an
exclusive self-opening to the divine influence, a constant and integral choice
of the Truth and rejection of the falsehood, these are the only conditions
made. But these must be fulfilled entirely, without reserve, without any
evasion or pretence, simply and sincerely down to the most physical
consciousness and its workings.
To be one with the Eternal is the object of Yoga; there is no other object. All
other aims are included in this one divine perfection.
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To be one with the Eternal is to be one with
him in being, consciousness, power and delight. All that is is
summed in these four terms of the infinite, for all else are but their
workings.
To be one with the Eternal is also
to live in the Eternal and from him and in his presence and from his infinite
nature, - sāyujya, sālokya,
sāmīpya, sādrśya. These four together
are one way of being and one perfection.
To live in the Eternal is also to
live with the Eternal within us. Whosoever consciously inhabits his being, his
conscious presence inhabits. God lives and moves and acts in us when we live
and move and act in him.
One that is Two that are Many, -
this is the formula of the eternal and timeless manifestation in the worlds of
Sachchidananda.
One who is Two and becomes the
Two who become Many, - this is the formula of the perpetual manifestation in
time in the three worlds of Mind, Life and Matter.
One who is in himself for ever
the Two and for ever innumerably All and Eternal and Infinite, this is the
indication of the Supreme who is beyond Time and Timelessness in the highest
Absolute.
The One is Four for ever in his supramental quaternary of Being, Consciousness,
Force and Ananda.
Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva, Krishna,
these are the eternal Four, the quadruple Infinite.
Brahma is the Eternal's Personality of
Existence, from him all is created, by his presence, by his power, by his
impulse.
Vishnu is the Eternal's Personality of
Consciousness; in him
all is supported, in his wideness, in his stability, in his substance.
Shiva is the Eternal's Personality of
Force; through him all is created, through his passion, through his rhythm,
through his concentration.
Krishna is
the Eternal's Personality of Ananda; because of him all creation is possible,
because of his play, because of his delight, because of his sweetness:
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Brahma is Immortality, Vishnu is Eternity,
Shiva is Infinity; Krishna is the Supreme's eternal, infinite, immortal Self-play-
self-issuing, self-manifestation, self-finding.
Nothing can arise from Nothing. Asat, nothingness, is a creation of our mind;
where it cannot see or conceive, where its object is something beyond its
grasp, too much beyond to give even the sense of a vague intangible, then it
cries out, "Here there is nothing." Out of its own incapacity it has
created the conception of a zero. But what in truth is this zero? It is an
incalculable Infinite.
Our sense by its incapacity has
invented darkness. In truth there is nothing but Light, only it is a power of
light either above or below our poor human vision's limited range.
For do not imagine that light is
created by the Suns. The Suns are only physical concentrations of Light, but
the splendour they concentrate for us is self-born and everywhere.
God is everywhere and wherever God is, there
is Light. Jñānam caitanyarh jyotir brahma.
Of all that we know we know only the outside; even when we imagine that we have
intimately seized the Innermost thing, we have touched only an inner external.
It is still a sheath of the covering, only it is a second or third or even a
seventh sheath, not the most outward and visible.
It is the same when we think we know
God or have possession of our highest inmost Self or have entered intimately
into the inmost and supreme Spirit. What we know and possess is a power or some
powers of God, an aspect or appearance or formulation of the Self; what we have
entered into is only one wideness and one depth of the Spirit.
This is because we know and possess by
the mind or even what is below the mind, and when we find ourselves most
spiritual, it is the mind spiritualised that conceives of itself as Spirit.
Imagining that we have left mind behind us, we take it with us into its own
spiritual realms and cover with it the Supramental
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Mystery. The result is something to us wonderful and intense; but compared with
That Intensity and Wonder, it is something thin and inadequate.
IV
TWO AIMS OF OUR SADHANA
That Yoga is full or perfect which
enables to fulfil entirely God's purpose in us in this universe.
All Yoga which takes the soul entirely
out of world-existence, is a high but narrow specialization of divine Tapasya.
God’s purpose in us is that we
should fulfil His divine being in world-consciousness under the conditions of
the Lila.
With regard
to the universe God manifests Himself triply, in the individual, in the
universe, in that which transcends the universe.
In order to
fulfil God in the individual, we must exceed the individual. The removal of
limited ego and the possession of cosmic consciousness is the first aim of our
Sadhana.
In order to
fulfil God in the cosmos, individually, we must transcend the universe. The
ascension into transcendent consciousness is the second aim of our Sadhana.
THE
OBJECT OF OUR YOGA
The object of our Yoga is
self-perfection, not self.- annulment.
There are two
paths set for the feet of the Yogin, withdrawal from the universe and
perfection in the universe; the first comes by asceticism, the second is
effected by Tapasya; the first receives us when we lose God in Existence, the
second is attained when we fulfil Existence in God. Let ours be the path of
perfection, not of abandonment; let our aim be victory in the battle, not the
escape from all conflict.
Buddha and Shankara supposed the
world to be radically false and miserable; therefore escape from the world was
to them the only wisdom. But this world is Brahman, the world is God, the world
is Sat yam, the world is Ananda; it is our misreading .
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of the world through mental egoism that is a falsehood and our wrong relation
with God in the world that is a misery. There is no other falsity and no other
cause of sorrow.
God created the world in Himself through
Maya; but the Vedic meaning of Maya is not illusion, it is wisdom, knowledge,
capacity, wide extension in consciousness, prajna prasrtd purani. Omnipotent
Wisdom created the world, it is not the organised blunder of some Infinite Dreamer;
omniscient Power manifests or conceals it in Itself for Its own delight, it is
not a bondage imposed by His own ignorance on the free and absolute Brahman.
If the world were Brahman's self-imposed
nightmare, to awake from it would be the natural and only goal of our supreme
endeavour; or if life in the world were irrevocably bound to misery, a means of
escape from this bondage would be the sole secret worth discovering. But
perfect truth in world-existence is possible; for God here sees all things with
the eye of truth; and perfect bliss in the world is possible; for God enjoys
all things with the sense of unalloyed freedom. We also can enjoy this truth
and bliss, called by the Veda amrtam. Immortality, if by casting away our
egoistic existence into perfect unity with His being we consent to receive the
divine perception and the divine freedom.
The world is a movement of God in His
own being; we are the centres and knots of divine consciousness which sum up
and support the processes of His movement. The world is His play with His own
self-conscious delight, He who alone exists, infinite, free and perfect; we are
the self-multiplications of that conscious delight, thrown out into being to be
His playmates. The world is a formula, a rhythm, a symbol-system expressing God
to Himself in His own consciousness, — it has no material existence but exists
only in His consciousness and self-expression; we, like God, are in our inward
being That which is expressed, but in our outward being terms of that formula,
notes of that rhythm, symbols of that system. Let us lead forward God's
movement, play out His play, work out His formula, execute His harmony, express
Him through our selves in His system. This is our joy and our self-fulfilment;
to this end we who transcend and exceed the universe, have entered into
universe-existence.
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Perfection
has to be worked out, harmony has to be accomplished. Imperfection,
limitation, death, grief, ignorance, matter, are only the first terms of the
formula — unintelligible till we have worked out the wider terms and
reinterpreted the formulary; they are the initial discords of the musician's
tuning. Out of imperfection we have to construct perfection, out of limitation
to discover infinity, out of death to find immortality, out of grief to recover
divine bliss, out of ignorance to rescue divine self-knowledge, out of matter
to reveal spirit. To work out this end for ourselves and for humanity is the
object of our Yogic practice.
PURUSHA AND PRAKRITI
The self
which we have to perfect, is neither the Jivatman which is ever perfect nor the
ego which is the cause of imperfection, but the divine self manifested in the
shifting stream of Nature.
Existence is composed of Prakriti
and Purusha, the consciousness that sees and the consciousness that executes
and formalises what we see. The one we call Soul, the other Nature. These are
the first double terms from which our Yoga has to start. When we come to look
in at our selves instead of out at the world and begin to analyse our
subjective experience, we find that there are two parts of our being which can
be, to all appearance, entirely separated from each other, one a consciousness
which is still and passive and supports, and the other a consciousness which
is busy and creative and is supported. The passive and fundamental
consciousness is the Soul, the Purusha, Witness or sāksī, the active and
superstructural consciousness is Nature, Prakriti, processive or creative
energy of the sāksī. But the two seem at first to stand apart and distinct as
if they had no share in each other.
The Purusha, still and silent witness
of whatever Prakriti chooses to create, not interfering with her works, but reflecting
only whatever forms, names and movements she casts on the pure mirror of
his eternal existence and the Prakriti restlessly creating, acting, forming and
effecting things for the delight of the Puru-
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sha, compose the double system of the Sankhyas. But as we
continue analysing their relations and accumulate more and more experience of
our subjective life, we find that this seeing of the Purusha is in effect a
command. Whatever Prakriti perceives it to be the pleasure of the Purusha to
see, she tends to preserve in his subjective experience or to establish;
whatever she perceives it to be his pleasure to cease to see, she tends to
renounce and abolish. Whatever he consents to in her, she forces on him and is
glad of her mastery and his submission but whenever he insists, she is bound
eventually to obey. Early found to be true in our subjective experience, this
ultimate principle of things is eventually discovered by the Yogin to determine
even objective phenomena. The Purusha and Prakriti are the t only the
Witness and the Activity witnessed, but the Lord and his executive energy. The
Purusha is Ishwara, the Prakriti is His Shakti. Their play with each other is
both the motive and the executive force of all existence in the universe.
V
The aim put before itself by
Yoga is God; its method is tapasya. God is the All and that which exceeds,
transcends the All; there is nothing in existence which is not God but God is
not anything in that existence, except symbolically, in image to His own
consciousness. Humanity also is symbol or eidolon of God, we are made in His
image; and by that is meant, not a formal image, but in the image of His being
and personality, the essence of divinity, its quality, the divine being and
divine knowledge.
There are in everything
existing phenomenally or, as we shall say, symbolically, two parts, the thing
in itself and the symbol, Self and Nature, res (thing that is) and factum
(thing that is made), immutable being and mutable becoming, that which is
supernatural in it and that which is natural.
Everything in existence has
something in it which seeks to transcend itself; Matter moves towards becoming
Life, Life moves towards becoming Mind, Mind moves towards becoming ideal
Truth, ideal Truth rises to become divine and infinite Spirit.
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The reason is that every symbol, being a partial expression of God, reaches out
to and seeks to become its own entire reality; it aspires to become its real
self by transcending its apparent self. Thing that is made is attracted towards
thing that is, becoming towards being, the natural to the supernatural, symbol
towards thing in itself, Nature towards God.
The upward movement is the means
towards fulfilment of existence in the world; downward movement is destruction,
Hell, perdition. Everything tends (moves) upward; once it is assured of its actual
existence it seeks the supernatural. Every nature is a step towards some supernature,
something natural to itself but supernatural to what is below it. Life is
supernatural to Matter, Mind supernatural to Life, ideal being supernatural to
mental being, infinite being supernatural to ideal being. So too man is
supernatural to the animal, God is supernatural to man. Man too as soon as he
has assured his natural existence, must insist on his upward movement towards
God. The upward movement is towards Heaven, the downward movement towards Hell.
The animal soul fulfils itself
when it transcends animality and becomes human. Humanity also fulfils itself
when it transcends humanity and becomes God.
By yielding to Nature, we fall
away both from Nature and from God; by transcending Nature we at once fulfil
all the possibilities of Nature and rise towards God. The human touches first
the divine and then becomes divine.
There are those who seek to kill
Nature in order to become the self; but that is not God's intention in
humanity. We have to transcend Nature, not to kill it.
Every movement of humanity which seeks to deny Nature however religious,
lofty, austere, of whatever dazzling purity or etheriality, is doomed to
failure, sick disappointment, disillusion or perversion. It is in its nature
transient, because it contradicts God's condition for us. He has set Nature
there as a condition of His self-fulfilment in the world.
Every movement of humanity which
bids us be satisfied with Nature, dwell upon the earth and cease to look
upwards, however rational, clear-sighted, practical, effective, comfortable
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it may be is doomed to weariness, prettification and cessation. It is in its
nature transient because it contradicts God's intention in us. He dwells secret
in Nature and compels us towards Him by His irresistible attraction.
Materialistic movements are as
unnatural and abnormal as ascetic and negatory religions and philosophy. Under
the pretence of bringing us back to Nature, they take us away from her
entirely; for they forget that Nature is only phenomenally Nature but in
reality she is God. The divine element in her is that which she most really is;
the rest is only condition, process and stage in her development of the secret
divinity.
Not to be immersed, emmeshed and
bound by Nature, not to hate and destroy her, is the first thing we must learn
if we would be complete Yogins and proceed towards our divine perfection.
Being still
natural in the world to transcend Nature internally, so that both internally
and externally we may master and use her as free and lord, svarat samrat, is
our fulfilment.
Being still the symbol to reach
through it the being that symbolises itself, to realise the symbol, is our
fulfilment.
Being still a figure of humanity,
man among men, a living body among living bodies, though housed in life and
matter yet a mental being among mental beings, being and remaining all this
that we are apparently, yet to exceed all this apparent manhood and become in
the body what we are really, God, Spirit supreme and infinite, pure Bliss, pure
Force, pure Light, this is our fulfilment.
Our whole apparent life is a
becoming, but all becoming has for its goal and fulfilment being - and God is
the only being; to become divine in the nature of the world, in the symbol of
our humanity is our fulfilment.
Yoga practised may be in its aim
either perfect or partial, either selective or comprehensive. Perfect and
comprehensive Yoga avoids limitation by aspects and leads to entire divinity.
In order to
exceed our Nature and become divine, we must first get God; for we are the
lower imperfect term of our being, He its higher perfect term. The finite, to
become infinite, must know, love and touch infinity; the symbol being in order
to become its own reality, must know, love and perceive that Reality.
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This necessarily is the imperative justification of religion; not of a church,
creed or theology, - for all these things are religiosity, not religion, - but
that personal and intimate religious temper and spirit which moves man to
worship, to aspire to or to pant after his own idea of the Supreme; for without
such worship in the heart or such aspiration . In the will or such thirst in
the emotions, we shall not have he impulse or the strength for this great difficult
and supreme effort of human nature to transcend itself and climb to its super
-nature. Therefore have the prophets spoken and the Avatars co to inspire man
to that great call upon his upward straining energies. The aim of rationalism
and Science is to make man content with his humanity and thus contradict
Nature, baffling her evolution; the aim of religion, - but not unhappily of the
creeds and churches, - is to further the great aim of Nature by pushing man
towards his evolution.
The attainment
of God is the true object of all human effort for which all the other efforts
political, social, literary,- intellectual, are only a necessary condition and
preparation of the race; but there are both differences in the state of the
attainment, differences in its range and effectivity. These states of divine
attainment may usefully be distinguished: touch with God, in- dwelling in Him,
and becoming He. The first is initial and elementary; unless passing the veil
of our ordinary nature we touch the divine Being or He leaning down imposes His
touch on us, unless we come first into contact with Him either in our heart,
our mind, our works or our being, we cannot go into (indwell in) Him. If we are strong in
spirit, the touch may indeed be rapid and summary, we may wake at once and
stride forward to the state of divine indwelling, soul of man in the Soul of
God, the individual in the universal; but the touch must be there. To enforce
this preliminary step, to bring man into some kind of contact with God, is the
common and... the sole preoccupation of human religions. It does not matter
greatly for its purpose how it is done; in however crude and elementary a way,
through whatever intellectual errors and emotional blunders or ethical out-
rages, the touch must be established; this imperatively and above all things
the religious spirit demands. Nature, as always
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her way, presses on to her all-important, immediate steps and is willing to
purchase a single great and general gain by any number of particular losses.
Man, besides, is so various in the arrangement of his human qualities; the
master spring as well as the peculiar temperament differs so greatly or so
subtly in each individual that there can never be for this purpose of nature's,
too many sects, disciplines or different religions. Swami Vivekananda has well
seen the consummation of religion in a stage when each human individual has his
own religion dictated by his own spiritual needs and nature; for collective
creeds, churches and theologies, in spite of their temporary necessity and some
undeniable permanent advantages, help to formalise the upward effort and
deprive it of its adaptability, freedom and perfect individual sincerity. The
priest and dogma will seldom leave God and the soul free to reach each other in
that solitude and spontaneity which gives the union its highest force and
delight. They are always pressing in to control and preside at the marriage and
legitimise it with formulas, Riks and official registration.
Moreover the intellect of natural
man is narrow, his effort soon exhausted and easily satisfied with
imperfection. If he is led to think that his way of contact with the Divine is
the only way, his own freedom of higher development is fettered or entirely taken
away from him and in his intellectual and religious egoism he militates against
the freedom of others. Most religions tend easily to believe that the contact
with God once established, no matter with what limitations or of what kind, all
is done that needs to be done, all fulfilled that God demands of us. Popular
religions tend naturally to be dualistic and to preserve trenchant distinction
between man and God dividing the symbol being from that which expresses itself
in him; while with one hand they raise man towards his super-nature, with the
other they hold him down to his ordinary nature. The lower is suffused with the
glow of the heights and touched with its power and rapture, but it does not
itself rise into and dwell within it. At its lowest the dualistic soul keeps(mainatains)
the taint of its imperfections; at its highest, unless in rare
self-transcending moments, keeps itself distinct in awe and reverence from the
divine Lover; worships
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at His feet but cannot hide itself in His bosom.
Therefore Nature still
following his upward surge, has provided a mightier rank of human souls who are
capable of going forward beyond this preliminary effort and, having entered
into the very being of God, of dwelling there in beatitude. Entering into the
consciousness of the Infinite, feeling it all around them and in them, ever
thrilling with its touch, aware of identity with it in nature, joy and inner
awareness, they yet preserve a constant separateness of their special being in
that identity. They do not plunge themselves wholly into that divine ocean or,
if they go slowly into it they keep hold on a fathom line which will preserve
their touch with the surface. In nature such men are Vishishtadwaitins, souls
not drawn towards entire oneness. But unless man plunges himself wholly into
God caring not whether he reemerge, unless the human sacrifices himself wholly
to the divinity, keeping back no particle of his being, not even the last
particle of separateness of the individual ego, the divine purpose in man
cannot be utterly accomplished. Therefore Nature or the Will of God - for
Nature is nothing but the Will of God in action - has provided that some having
indwelt in God, human soul in divine soul, shall be irresistibly called immediately,
with brief respite or at long last to the utter immersion. They go inward and
throwaway the last trace of ego into God. Some of them, it has been said by a
great teacher, are jivakotis, human beings leaning so pre-eminently to the
symbol-nature, that, if they had lost it albeit for a while in the Reality,
they lose themselves; once immersed, they cannot return; they are lost in God
to humanity; others are isvarakotis, human beings whose centre has already been
shifted upwards or from the beginning elevated in the superior planes of
conscious existence, was established in God rather than Nature. Such men are
already leaning down from God to Nature; they therefore may, in losing
themselves in Him yet keep themselves and live in Man-God; they do not depart
from their centre but rather go through it; arrived they are able to lean down
again to humanity. Those who can thus emerge from their truth of God are the
final helpers of humanity and are chosen by God and Nature to prepare the type
of super natural men to which our humanity is rising.
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There are, then, these three
divine conditions, states separately conceived of humanity's God-attainment.
Man being limited in energy and discrimination rather than catholic in
intellect, fastens usually on this separate conception and limits himself to
one or other of these conditions Yogic method, also, being careful of the
different natures of men, suits itself to their limitations, becomes selective
and concentrates upon one of these conditions or another. Or even it becomes
partial as well as selective; for in its contact with God, it relates itself to
a part of divine quality rather than the perfect divinity, to a God of mercy, a
God of justice, the Divine Master, the Divine Friend, or else with some aspect
of divine impersonal being, to Infinite Rapture, to Infinite Force or to
Infinite Calm and Purity. In the indwelling there may be the same limitations,
in the becoming also they may persist. There is no fault to be found with this
selective process or with this partiality. They are necessary; human
limitations demand this device; human perfectibility itself finds its account
in these concessions. Nature knows her task and she proceeds to it with a wide,
flexible and perfect wisdom which smiles at our impatient logical narrowness
and rigid, one-sighted consistencies. She knows she has an infinitely complex
and variable material to deal with and must be infinitely complex and variable
in her methods. We only consider precise method and ultimate fulfilment; she
has to reckon on her way with thousand-armed struggles and infinite
possibilities.
Nevertheless, the ultimate aim
and the perfect and comprehensive Yoga is that which embraces rather than
selects. We are meant to be within the symbol of humanity what God is in
Himself and Universally. Now God is free, absolute from these limitations and
all-comprehensive. He is always one in his being, yet both one with and
separate from his symbols and in that differentiated oneness able to stand quite
apart from them. So we too in our ultimate divine realisation when we have
become one with our divine Self, may and should be able also to stand out as
the self at once of all things and beings, yet differentiated in the symbol, so
as to enjoy a blissful divided closeness such as that of the Lover and Beloved
mingling yet separate in their rapture; and may and should even be able to
stand away from God
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with a sort of entire separateness holding His hand still, unlike the pure
dualist, but still standing away from Him so that we may enjoy that infinity of
human relation with God which is the wonder and beauty and joy of dualistic
religions. To accomplish this is the full or the Purna Yoga and the Sadhak who
can attain to it is in his condition the cornplete Yogin.
Is such a triune condition of
the possible? Logically, it would seem impossible; logically, all trinities are
chimeras and a thing must be one thing at a time and cannot combine three such
divergent states as oneness, differentiated oneness and effective duality. But
.in these matters an inch of experience goes farther than a yard of logic, and
experience, you will find, affirms that the triune God-state is perfectly
possible and simple once you have attained God's fullness. We must not apply to
the soul a logic which is based on the peculiarities of matter. It is true of a
clod that it cannot be at the same time a clod hanging up or posted on some
bough, a clod protruding from the earth or a shapeless mass trodden into the mother
soil. But this is because the clod is divided from the earthly form. The soul
is not divided from God by these barriers of material dimension. What is true
of matter is not true of spirit, nor do the standards of form apply to the
formless. For matter is conscious being confined in form, the spirit is
conscious being using form but not confined in it; and it is the privilege of
spirit that though indivisible in its pure being, it is freely self-divisible
in its conscious experience and can concentrate itself in many states at a
time. It is by this Tapas, by this varied concentration of self-knowledge that
Divine Existence creates and supports the world and is at once the same God and
Nature and World, Personal and Impersonal, Pure and Varied, Qualitied and
without Qualities, Krishna and Kali, and Shiva and Brahma and Vishnu, man and
animal and vegetable and stone, all aspects of Himself and all symbols. We need
not doubt therefore that we, recovering our divine reality, shall not be bound
to a single condition or aspect but can command a triune or even a multiple
soul-experience. We, becoming God, become that which is the All and exceeds and
transcends the All, sarvabhūtāni āttmaivābhūd vijānatah. The soul of the
perfect knower
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becomes all existent things and That transcendental in which all things have
their existence, ihaiva, without ceasing to possess a human centre of
separate experience. For this is the entire divinity that is the result of the
perfect and comprehensive Yoga.
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