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Purna
Yoga
THE
ENTIRE PURPOSE OF YOGA
By
YOGA we can rise out of falsehood into
truth, out of weakness into force, out of pain and grief into bliss, out of
bondage into freedom, out of death into immortality, out of darkness into
light, out of confusion into purity, out of imperfection into perfection, out
of self-division into unity, out of Maya into God. All other utilisation of
Yoga is for special and fragmentary advantages not always worth pursuing. Only
that which aims at possessing the fullness of God is Purna Yoga; the Sadhaka of
the Divine Perfection is the Purna Yogin.
Our aim must be to
be perfect as God in His being and bliss is perfect, pure as He is pure,
blissful as He is blissful, and, when we are ourselves siddhas in Purna
Yoga, to bring all mankind to the same divine perfection. It does not matter if
for the present we fall short of our aim, so long as we give ourselves whole-
heartedly to the attempt and by living constantly in it and for it move forward
even two inches upon the road; even that will help to lead humanity out of
struggle and twilight in which it now dwells into the luminous joy which God
intends for us. But whatever our immediate success, our unvarying aim must be
to perform the whole journey and not lie down content in any wayside stage or
imperfect resting place.
All Yoga which takes
us entirely away from the world, is a high but narrow specialisation of divine tapasyai.
God in His perfection embraces everything; we also must become all-embracing.
God in His ultimate
existence beyond all manifestation and all knowledge, is the Absolute
Parabrahman; in relation to the world He is that which transcends all universal
existence while regarding it or in turning away from it; He is that which
contains and upholds the universe, He is that which becomes the universe and He
is the universe and everything which it contains.
He is also Absolute and
Supreme Personality playing in the
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universe and as the universe; in the universe He appears to be its Soul and
Lord, as the universe He appears to be the motion or process of the Will of the
Lord and to become all the subjective and objective results of the motion. All
the states of the Brahman, the transcendent, the continent, the universal, the
individual are informed and sustained by the divine Personality. He is both the
Existent and the state of existence. We call the state of existence the
Impersonal Brahman, the Existent the Personal Brahman. There is no difference
between them except to the play of our consciousness; for every impersonal
state depends upon a manifest or secret Personality and can reveal the
Personality which it holds and veils, and every Personality attaches to itself
and can plunge itself into an impersonal existence. This they can do because
Personality and Impersonality are merely different states of self-consciousness
in our Absolute Being.
Philosophies and religions dispute about the priority of different aspects of
God and different Yogins, Rishis and Saints have preferred this or that
philosophy or religion. Our business is not to dispute about any of them, but
to realise and become all of them, not to follow after any aspect to the
exclusion of the rest, but to embrace God in all His aspects and beyond aspect.
God descending into the world in various forms has con- summated on this earth
the mental and bodily form which we call humanity.
He has manifested in the world through the play of all- governing Soul with its
own formative Will or Shakti, a rhythm of existence of which Matter is the
lowest term and pure being the highest. Mind and Life stand upon Matter (manas
and prāna on annam)
and make the lower half of world-existence (aparārdha); pure Consciousness
and pure Bliss proceed out of pure Being (cit and ānanda out of sat)
and make the upper half of world-existence (parādha). Pure Idea. (vijñāna)
stands as the link between the two. These seven principles or terms of
existence are the basis of the sevenfold world of the Puranas (Satyaloka,
Tapas, Jana, Mahar, Swar, Bhuvar and Bhur).
The lower hemisphere in this arrangement of consciousness consists of the three
vyāhrtis of the Veda, "Bhur, Bhuvar, Swar"; they are states of
consciousness in which the principles of the
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upper world are
expressed or try to express themselves under different conditions. Pure in
their own homes, they are in this foreign country subject to perverse, impure
and disturbing combinations and workings. The ultimate object of life is to get
rid of the perversity, impurity and disturbance and express them perfectly in
these other conditions. Our life on this earth is a divine poem that we are
translating into earthly language or a strain of music which we are rendering into
words.
Being in Sat is
one in multiplicity, one that regards its multiplicity without being lost or
confused in it and multiplicity that knows itself as one without losing the
power of multiple play in the universe. Under the conditions of mind, life and
body, ahamkāra is born, the subjective or objective form of
consciousness is falsely taken for self-existent being, the body for an
independent reality and the ego for an independent personality; the one loses
itself in us in its multiplicity and it recovers its unity, finds it difficult,
owing to the nature of mind, to preserve its play of multiplicity. Therefore
when we are absorbed in the world, we miss God in Himself, when we see God, we
miss Him in the world. Our business is to break down and dissolve the mental
ego and get back to our divine unity without losing our power of individual and
multiple existence in the universe.
Consciousness in
Chit is luminous, free, illimitable and effective; that which it is aware of as
Chit (jñāna-śakti) it fulfils infallibly as Tapas (kriyā-śakti); for
Jnana Shakti is only the stable and comprehensive, Kriya Shakti only the
motional and intensive form of one self-luminous Conscious Being. They are one
power of conscious force of God (Chit-Shakti of Sat- Purusha). But in the lower
hemisphere, under the conditions of mind, life and body, the luminousness
becomes divided and broken up into uneven rays, the freedom trammelled by
egoism and unequal forms, the effectiveness veiled by the uneven play of
forces. We have, therefore, states of consciousness, non-consciousness and
false consciousness, knowledge and ignorance and false knowledge, effective
force and inertia and ineffective force. Our business is by renouncing our
divided and unequal8 individual force of action and thought into the one,
undivided universal Chit-Shakti of Kali to replace our egoistic activities by
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the play in our body of the universal Kali and thus exchange blindness and
ignorance for knowledge and ineffective human strength for the divine effective
Force.
Delight in Ananda is pure,
unmixed, one and yet multitudinous. Under the conditions of mind, life and body
it becomes divided, limited, confused and misdirected and owing to shocks of
unequal forces and uneven distribution of Ananda subject to the duality of
positive and negative movements, grief and joy, pain and pleasure. Our business
is to dissolve these dualities by breaking down their cause and plunge
ourselves into the, ocean of divine bliss, one, multitudinous, evenly distributed
(sama), which takes delight from all things and recoils painfully from
none.
In brief, we have to replace
dualities by unity, egoism by divine consciousness, ignorance by divine wisdom,
thought by divine knowledge, weakness, struggle and effort by self-contented
divine force, pain and false pleasure by divine bliss. This is called in the
language of Christ bringing down the kingdom of heaven on earth, or in modern
language, realising and effectuating God in the world.
Humanity is, upon earth, the form of
life chosen for this human aspiration and divine accomplishment; all other
forms of life either do not need it or are ordinarily incapable of it unless
they change into humanity. The divine fullness is therefore the sole real aim
of humanity. It has to be effected in the individual in order that it may be
effected in the race.
Humanity is a mental existence in a
living body; its basis is matter, its centre and instrument mind and its medium
life. This is the condition of average or natural humanity.
In every human being there is
concealed (avyakta) the four higher principles. Mahas, pure ideality in vijñāna,
is not a vyāhrti but the source of the vyāhrtis, the bank
upon which mental, vital and bodily action draw and turn its large and in-
finite wealth into small coin of the lower existence. Vijnana being the link
between the divine state and the human animal is the door of escape for man
into the supernatural or divine humanity.
Inferior mankind gravitates downward from mind
towards life and body; average mankind dwells constant in mind limited
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by and looking towards life and body; superior mankind levitates upward either
to idealised mentality or to pure idea, direct truth of knowledge and
spontaneous truth of existence; supreme mankind rises to divine beatitude and
from that level either goes upward to pure Sat and Parabrahman or remains to
beatify its lower members and raise to divinity in itself and others this human
existence.
The man who dwells in the higher or
divine and now hidden hemisphere of his consciousness, having rent the veil, is
the true superman and the last product of that progressive self-manifestation
of God in world, Spirit out of matter, which is now called the principle of
evolution.
To rise into divine existence,
force, light and bliss and recast in that mould all mundane existence is the
supreme aspiration of religion and the complete practical aim of Yoga. The aim
is to realise God in the universe, but it cannot be done without realising God
transcendent of the universe.
II
PARABRAHMAN,
MUKTI AND HUMAN
THOUGHT SYSTEMS
Parabrahman is the Absolute, and because It is the Absolute, it cannot be
reduced into terms of knowledge. You can know the Infinite in a way, but you
cannot know the Absolute.
All things in existence or
non-existence are symbols of the Absolute created in self-consciousness
(Chid-Atman); by its symbols the Absolute can be known so far as the symbols
reveal or hint at it, but even the knowledge of the whole sum of symbols does
not amount to real knowledge of the Absolute. You can become Parabrahman; you
cannot know Parabrahman. Becoming Parabrahman means going back through
self-consciousness into Parabrahman, for you already are That, only you have
projected yourself forward in self-consciousness into its terms or symbols,
Purusha and Prakriti through which you uphold the universe. Therefore, to
become Parabrahman void of terms or symbols you must cease out of the universe.
By becoming Parabrahman void of Its
self-symbols you do
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not become
anything you are not already, nor does the universe cease to operate. It only
means that God throws back out of the ocean of manifest consciousness one stream
or movement of Himself into that from which all consciousness proceeded.
All who go out of universe
consciousness, do not necessarily go into Parabrahman. Some go into
undifferentiated Nature (avyākrta prakrti), some lose themselves in God,
some pass into a dark state of non-recognition of universe, (asat, śūnya) some
into a luminous state of non-recognition of universe, – Pure undifferentiated
Atman, Pure Sat or Existence-Basis of universe, – some into a temporary state
of deep sleep (susupti) in the impersonal principles of Ananda, Chit or
Sat. All these are forms of release and the ego gets from God by His Maya or
Prakriti the impulse towards anyone of them to which the supreme Purusha
chooses to direct him. Those whom He wishes to liberate, yet keep in the world,
He makes jivanmuktas or sends them out again as His vibhūtis, they
consenting to wear for the divine purposes a temporary veil of Avidya, which
does not at all bind them and which they can rend or throw off very easily.
Therefore to lust after becoming
Parabrahman is a sort of luminous illusion or sattwic play of Maya; for in
reality there is none bound or none free and none needing to be freed and all
is only God’s Lila, Parabrahman’s play of manifestation. God uses this sattwic
Maya in certain egos in order to draw them upwards in the line of His special
purpose and for these egos it is the only right and possible path.
But the aim of our Yoga is
Jivanmukti in the universe; we have to live released in the world, not released
out of the world, not because we need to be freed or for any other reason, but
be- cause that is God’s will in us.
The Jivanmukta has, for perfect
knowledge and self-fulfilment, to stand on the threshold of Parabrahman, but
not to cross the threshold. The statement he brings back from the threshold is
that That is and we are That, but what That is or is not, words cannot
describe, nor mind discriminate.
Parabrahman being the Absolute is
indescribable by any name or definite conception. It is not Being or Non-Being,
but something of which Being and Non-Being are primary symbols;
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not Atman or
un-Atman or Maya; not Personality or Impersonality; not Quality or Non-Quality;
not Consciousness or Non-Consciousness; not Bliss or Non-Bliss; not Purusha or
Prakriti; not god nor man nor animal; not release nor bondage; but something of
which all these are primary or derivative, general or particular symbols.
Still, when we say Parabrahman is not this or that, we mean that It cannot in
its essentiality be limited to this or that symbol or any sum of symbols; in a
sense Para- brahman is all this and all this is Parabrahman. There is nothing
else which all this can be. Parabrahman being Absolute is not subject to logic,
for logic applies only to the determinate. We talk confusion if we say that the
Absolute cannot manifest the determinate and therefore the universe is false or
non-existent. The very nature of the Absolute is that we do not know what it is
or is not, what it can do or cannot do; we have no reason to suppose that there
is anything it cannot do or that its Absolute- ness is limited by any kind of
impotency. We experience spiritually that when we go beyond everything else we
come to something Absolute; we experience spiritually that the universe is in
the nature of a manifestation proceeding, as it were, from the Absolute; but
all these words and phrases are merely intellectual terms trying to express the
inexpressible. We must state what we see as best we can, but need not dispute
what others see or state; rather we must accept and in our own system locate
and account for what they have seen and stated. Our only dispute is with those
who deny credit to the vision or freedom and value to the statements of others;
not with those who are content with stating their own vision.
A philosophical or religious system
is only a statement of that arrangement of existence in universe which God has
revealed to us as our status of being. It is given in order that the mind may
have something to stand upon while we act in Prakriti. But our vision need not
be precisely the same in arrangement as the vision of others, nor is the form
of thought that suits our mentality bound to suit a mentality differently
constituted. Firmness, without dogmatism, in our own system, toleration,
without weakness, of all other systems should therefore be our intellectual
outlook.
You will find disputants questioning your
system on the
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ground that it is not consistent with this or that Shastra or this or that
great authority, whether philosophers, saints or Avatars. Remember then that
realisation and experience are alone of
essential importance. What Shankara argued or Vivekananda conceived
intellectually about existence or even what Ramakrishna stated from his
multitudinous and varied realisations, is only of value to you so far as you
are moved by God to accept and renew it in your own experience. The opinions of
thinkers and saints and Avatars should be accepted as hints but not as fetters.
What matters to you is what you have seen or what God in His universal
personality or impersonally or again personally in some teacher, Guru or
path-finder undertakes to show to you in the path of Yoga.
III
God or Parapurusha is Parabrahman unmanifest and inexpressible turned towards a
certain kind of manifestation or expression, of which the two eternal terms are
Atman and Jagati, Self and Universe. Atman becomes in self-symbol all
existences in the universe; so too, the universe when known, resolves all its
symbols into Atman. God being Parabrahman is Himself Absolute, neither Atman
nor Maya nor un-Atman, neither Being nor not-being, (sat, asat), neither
Becoming nor non-Becoming (sambhūti, asambhūti), neither Quality nor
non-Quality (saguna, nirguna); neither Consciousness nor
non-Consciousness (caitanya, jada); neither Soul nor Nature (purusa,
prakrti), neither Bliss nor non-Bliss; neither man, nor god nor animal; He
is beyond all these things, He maintains and contains all these things in
Himself as world; He is and becomes all these things.
The only difference between
Parabrahman and Parapurusha is that we think of the first as something beyond
our universe- existence, expressed here indeed, but still inexpressible, and of
the second as something approaching our universe-existence, inexpressible
indeed, but still here expressed. It is as if, in reading a translation of the
Ramayana or Homer’s Iliad, we were to look at the unapproachable something no
translator can seize and
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say "This is
not the Ramayana", "This is not the Iliad" and yet, looking at
the comparative adequacy of the expressions which do succeed in catching
something of the original spirit and intention, wert the same time to say
"This is Valmikie", "This is Homer". There is no other
difference except this of standpoint. The Upanishads speak of the Absolute
Parabrahman as Tat; they say Sa when they speak of the Absolute Parapurusha.
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