SAPTA-CHATUSHTAYA

I. SHANTI-CHATUSHTAYA

Samatā sāntih sukham hāsyam iti śānticatusţayam.

Samata

The basis of internal peace is samatā, the capacity of receiving with a calm and equal mind all the attacks and appearances of outward things, whether pleasant or unpleasant, ill-fortune and good-fortune, pleasure and pain, honour and ill-repute, praise and blame, friendship and enmity, sinner and saint, or, physically, heat and cold etc. There are two forms of samatā, passive and active, samatā in reception of the things of the outward world and samatā in reaction to them.

1. PASSIVE

        Passive samatā consists of three things:

Titikşā, udāsinatā, natih iti samatā.

TITIKSHA

Titikşā is the bearing firmly of all contacts pleasant or unpleasant, not being overpowered by that which is painful, not being carried away by that which is pleasant. Calmly and firmly to receive both and hold and bear them as one who is stronger, greater, vaster than any attack of the world, is the attitude of titikşā.

UDASINATA

Udāsīnatā is indifference to the dvandvas or dualities; it means literally being seated above, superior to all physical and mental touches. The udāsīna, free from desire, either does not feel the touch of joy and grief, pleasure and pain, liking and disliking, or he feels them as touching his mind and body, but not himself,

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he being different from mind and body and seated above them.

NATI

Nati is the submission of the soul to the will of God; its  acceptance of all touches as His touches, of all experience as His play with the soul of man. Nati may be with titikşā, feeling the sorrow but accepting it as God's will, or with udāsinatā, rising superior to it and regarding joy and sorrow equally as God's working in the lower instruments, or with ānanda, receiving everything as the play of Krishna, and therefore in itself delightful. The last is the state of the complete Yogin, for by this continual joyous or ānandamaya namaskāra to God constantly practised, we arrive eventually at the entire elimination of grief, pain, etc., the entire freedom from the dvandvas, and find Brahmananda in every smallest, most trivial, most apparently discordant detail of life and experience in this human body. We get rid entirely of fear and suffering; ānandam brahmaņo vidvān  na bibheti kutaścana. We may have to begin with titiksā and udāsinatā, but it is in this Ananda that we must consummate siddhi of sarmatā. The Yogin receives victory and defeat, success, and ill-success, pleasure and pain, honour and disgrace with an equal, a sarma ānanda, - first by buddhi-yoga, separating himself from his habitual mental and nervous reactions and insisting by vicāra on the true nature of the experience itself and of his own soul, which is secretly ānandamaya, - full of sarma ānanda in all things. He comes to change all the ordinary values of experience; amangala reveals itself to him as mangala, defeat ill-success as the fulfilment of God's immediate purpose and a step towards ultimate victory, grief and pain as concealed and perverse forms of pleasure. A stage arrives even, when physical tin itself, the hardest thing for material man to bear, changes its nature in experience and becomes physical Ananda; but this is only at the end, when this human being, imprisoned in matter, subjected to mind, emerges from his subjection, conquers his mind and delivers himself utterly in his body, realising his true    ānāndamaya self in every part of the ādhāra.  

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2. ACTIVE

               It is this universal or sama ānanda in all experiences which
constitutes active samara, and it has three parts or stages,-

Rasah, prītih, ānandah...

        Rasa is the appreciative perception of that Guna, that āsavāda, taste and quality, which the Ishwara of the Lila perceives in each different object of experience (visaya) and for the enjoyment of which He creates it in the Lila. Prītih is the pleasure of the mind in all Rasa, pleasant or unpleasant, sweet or bitter. Ananda is the divine bhoga superior to all mental pleasure, with which God enjoys the rasa; in Ananda the opposition of the dualities entirely ceases.

Shanti

        Only when samatā is accomplished, can śānti be perfect in the system. If there is the least disturbance or trouble in the mentality, we may be perfectly sure that there is a disturbance, or defect in the samatā. For the mind of man is complex and even when in the buddhi we have fixed ourselves entirely in udāsinatā or nati, there may be revolts, uneasinesses, repinings in other parts. The buddhi, the manas, the heart, the nerves (prāna), the very bodily case must be subjected to the law of samatā.
         Sānti may be either a vast passive calm based on udāsīnatā or a vast joyous calm based on nati. The former is apt to associate itself with a tendency to inaction and it is therefore in the latter that our Yoga must culminate.

Sukha

         Sukham is the complete relief and release from duhkha, from vişada, which comes by the fulfilment of samatā and sānti. The perfected Yogin has never in himself any touch of sorrow, any tendency of depression, cloud or internal repining and weariness, but is always full of a sattwic light and ease.

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Hasya

        Hāsyam is the active side of sukham; it consists in an active internal state of gladness and cheerfulness which no adverse experience mental or physical can trouble. Its perfection is God's stamp and seal on the Siddhi of the samatā. It is in our internal being the image of Srikrishna playing, bālavat, as the eternal bālaka and kumāra in the garden of the world.

II. SHAKTI-CHATUSHTAYA

        This may be called the Siddhi of the temperament or nature in the lower system, in the internal Triloka of mind, life and body, Manas, Prana, Annam. To put it from a higher standpoint, it is the Siddhi of the divine Shakti working in these three principles.
 

Viryam, śaktih, candībhāvah śraddhā iti śakti-catustayam.

Virya

THE CHATURVARNYA
 

        By vīrya is meant the fundamental svabhāvaśakti or the energy of the divine temperament expressing itself in the fourfold type of the cāturvarnya - in Brahmanyam, Brahmashakti, Brahmatejas, in Kshatram, Kshatrashakti, Kshatratejas, in Vaishya, Vaishyaswabhavashakti and Tejas, Shudraswabhavashakti and Tejas. We must realise that the ancient Aryan Rishis meant by the Chaturvarnya not a mere social division, but a recognition of God manifesting Himself in fundamental Swabhava, which our bodily distinctions, our social orders are merely an attempt to organise in the symbols of human life, often a confused attempt, often a mere parody and distortion of the divine thing they try to express. Every man has in himself all the four Dharmas, but one predominates, in one he is born and that strikes the note of his character and determines the type and cast of all his actions; the rest subordinated to the dominant type and helps to give it its com-

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plement. No Brahmana is a complete Brahmana unless he has the Kshatratejas in him, the Vaishyashakti and the Shudrashakti, but all these have to serve in him the fullness of his Brahmanyam. God manifests Himself as the four Prajapatis or Manus, catvāro manavah of the Gita, and each man is born in the amśa of one of the four; the first characterised by wisdom and largeness, the second by heroism and force, the third by dexterity and enjoy- ment, the fourth by work and service. The perfected man develops in himself all four capacities and contains at once the god: of wisdom and largeness, the god of heroism and force, the god of skill and enjoyment, the god of work and service. Only one stands dominant and leads and uses the others.

BRAHMATEJAS

Jñānalipsā, jñanaprakāśo brahmavarcasyam, sthairyam iti brahmatejah.
 

LIPSA

        I give only the dominant qualities of the type in these definitions: The Purna Yogin does not reduce his nature to inaction but perfects it and uplifts in order to place it at the service of the Ishwara in His Lila. He accepts the Jnanalipsa and purifying it of desire turns it into a divine reaching out towards Prakasha of knowledge; this divine desireless reaching out of Brahman in personality to Brahman in the vişaya or object, is the new sense which lipsā acquires in the language of the siddha.

JNANAPRAKASHA

Jñāna includes both the Para and the Apara Vidya; the knowledge of the Brahman in Himself and the knowledge of the world; but the Yogin, reversing the order of the worldly mind, seeks to know Brahman first and, through Brahman, the world. Scientific knowledge, worldly information and instruction are to him secondary objects, not as it is with the ordinary scholar and scientist, his primary aim. Nevertheless these too we must take into our scope and give room to God's full joy in the world. The methods of the Yogin are also different for he tends more and  

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more to the use of direct vision and the faculties of the Vijnana and less and less to intellectual means. The ordinary man studies object from outside and infers its inner nature from the results, his external study. The Yogin seeks to get inside the object, know it from within and use external study only as a means of confirming his view of the outward action resulting from an already known inner nature.

BRAHMAVARCHASYA

        Brahmavarcasya is the force of Jnana working from within man, which tends to manifest the divine light, the divine power, the divine qualities in the human being.

STHAIRYA

        Sthairyam is the capacity of fixity in Jnana; the man who is sthira is able to hold the light and power that enters into him without stumbling or being dazzled and blinded by their shock and to receive and express the divine forces in himself without being carried away by them and subjected to the blind rushing stream of Prakriti. He has the dhāranasāmarthyam and does not from incapacity of the Adhara lose or spill these things as they enter into him.

   
KSHATRATEJAS

Abhayam, sāhasam, yaśolipsā, ātmaślāghā iti ksatratejah  

 ABHAYA AND SAHASA

        Abhayam is the passive freedom from fear which with a bold calmness meets and receives every menace of danger and shock of misfortune.

        Sāhasam is the active courage and daring which shrinks from no enterprise however difficult or perilous, and cannot be dismayed or depressed either by the strength or the success of the opposing forces.

YASHAS

        By Yaśas is meant victory, success and power. Although the

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Kshatriya must be ready to face and accept defeat, disaster and suffering, yet his objective, the thing towards which he moves, is yaśas. He enters the field to conquer, not to suffer. Suffering is only a means towards victory. Here again the reaching out, the lipsā must come to be free from desire and consist in the divine reaching out of God within to His self-fulfilment as the Kshatriya. Therefore the Kshatriya must manifest in himself the nature of the Brahmin, Jñāna and sthairyam, since without knowledge in some form, desire cannot perish out of the system.

ATMASHLAGHA

         AtmaSliighii in the unpurified Kshatriya is pride, self-confidence, and the knowledge of his own might. Without these qualities the Kshatriya becomes deficient in force and fails to effect himself in type and action but with purification it becomes no longer the ślāghā of the aham, but the ślāghā of the Atman, the divine self within rejoicing in the Shakti of God and its greatness and its power as it pours itself out in battle and action through the human ādhāra.    

VAISHYASHAKTI  

Diinam, vyayab, kausalam, bhogalipsii iti vaisyasaktib.

        Dānam and pratidānam are the especial Dharma of the Vaishya; his nature is the nature of the lover who gives and seeks; he pours himself out on the world in order to get back what he has given increased a hundredfold. Vyaya is his capacity to spend freely for this purpose without any mean and self-defeating miserliness in the giving. Kauśalam is the dexterity and skill which is able so to arrange the means, the equipment, the action as to produce the greatest results possible and the best arranged results. Law, arrangement, suiting of means to ends, of expenditure to return, are the joy of the Vaishya. Bhoga is his object; possession and enjoyment, not merely of physical things, but all enjoyment, enjoyment of knowledge, of power, of self-giving, of service, comes within its scope. The Vaishya, purified and

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liberated, becomes the supreme giver and lover and enjoyer, Krishna's amśa preserving and making the most of the world. He is the Vishnushakti, as the Brahmana is the Shivashakti and the shatriya is the Rudrashakti.

SHUDRASHAKTI

               Kāmab, prema, dāsyalipsā, ātmasamarpanam iti śūdraśaktih.

        The Śūdra is God descending entirely into the lower world and its nature, giving himself up entirely for the working out of God's Lila in Matter and in the material world. From this standpoint he is the greatest of the four Shaktis, because his nature goes direct towards complete ātmasamarpana; but the Shudra bound ,has cut himself off from knowledge, power and skill and lost !himself in the tamoguna. He has to recover the Brahmana, Kshatriya and Vaishya in himself and give them up to the service of God, of man, of all bengs. The principle of kāmah or desire in him must change from the seeking after physical well-being and self indulgence to the joy of God manifest in Matter. The principle of prema must find itself and fulfil itself in dāsyalipsā and ātmasamarpana in the surrender of himself to God and to God in man and the selfless service of God and of God in man. The  Shudra is the master spirit of the Kali, as is the Vaishya of the Dwapara, the Kshatriya of the Treta and the Brahmana of the Satya.

Shakti
 

        Śakti is the perfection of the different parts of the system which enables them to do their work freely and perfectly.

DEHASHAKTI

Mahattva-bodhah, balaślāghā, laghutā, dhāranasāmarthyam iti dehasaktih.

               The body is the pratisthā in this material universe; for the working out of the divine līlā on earth it is necessary that it should

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