Education is perhaps the most important domain related to human progress.
Except, here we do not mean the kind of syllabus oriented teaching imparted
solely in school or college, but rather a form of constant learning that takes
place through the life of an individual. This kind of education is integral
and complete, leaving no area ignored within the human being. Its objective
is to forever widen itself, and by developing the right consciousness, be
able to rise from truth to higher truth.
Each one has to actively work towards this, framing one’s own agenda,
aspiring for one’s own goal. It isn’t a disciple meant only for
the chosen few but in fact if practiced consciously can transform the very
nature of every being. At the end, it all boils down to something extremely
basic but easily forgotten… in the words of The Mother, “ Of one
thing you can be sure – your future is in your hands. You will become
the man you want to be and the higher your ideal and your aspiration, the
higher will be your realization, but you must keep a firm resolution and never
forget your true aim in life.”
In our section called Integral Education, we will put forth concrete ideas
of how such a thorough form of learning can be both inculcated in oneself
as well as imparted to another.
The
Power of the Instruments
(Continued from previous issue)
THE second member
of the Yoga of self-perfection is the heightened, enlarged and rectified power
of the instruments of our normal Nature. The cultivation of this second perfection
need not wait for the security of the equal mind and spirit, but it is only
in that security that it can become complete and act in the safety of the
divine leading. The object of this cultivation is to make the nature a fit
instrument for divine works. All work is done by power, by Shakti, and since
the integral Yoga does not contemplate abandonment of works, but rather a
doing of all works from the divine consciousness and with the supreme guidance,
the characteristic powers of the instruments, mind, life and body must not
only be purified of defects, but raised to a capacity for this greater action.
In the end they must undergo a spiritual and supramental transfiguration.
There are four members of this second part of the Sadhana
or discipline of self-perfectfon and the first of them is right Shakti, the
right condition of the powers of the intelligence, heart, vital mind and body.
It will only be possible at present to suggest a preliminary perfection of
the last of these four, for the full Siddhi will have to be dealt with after
I have spoken of the supermind and its influence on the rest of the being.
The body is not only the necessary outer instrument of the physical part of
action, but for the purposes of this life a base or pedestal also for all
inner action. All working of mind or spirit has its vibration in the physical
consciousness, records itself there in a kind of subordinate corporeal notation
and communicates itself to the material world partly at least through the
physical machine. But the body of man has natural limitations in this capacity
which it imposes on the play of the higher parts of his being. And, secondly,
it has a subconscient consciousness of its own in which it keeps with an obstinate
fidelity the past habits and past nature of the mental and vital being and
which automatically opposes and obstructs any very great upward change or
at least prevents it from becoming a radical transformation of the whole nature.
It is evident that if we are to have a free divine or spiritual and supramental
action conducted by the force and fulfilling
the character of a diviner energy, some fairly complete transformation must be effected in this outward
character of the bodily nature. The physical being of man has always been
felt by the seekers of perfection to be a great impediment and it has been
the habit to turn from it with contempt, denial or aversion and a desire to
suppress altogether or as far as may be the body and the physical life. But
this cannot be the right method for the integral Yoga. The body is given us
as one instrument necessary to the totality of our works and it is to be used,
not neglected, hurt, suppressed or abolished. If it is imperfect, recalcitrant,
obstinate, so are also the other members, the vital being, heart and mind
and reason. It has like them to be changed and perfected and to undergo a
transformation. As we must get ourselves a new life? new heart, new mind,
so we have in a certain sense to build for ourselves a new body.
The first thing the will has to do with the body is to
impose on it progressively a new habit of all its being, consciousness, force
and outward and inward action. It must be taught an entire passivity in the
hands first of the higher instruments, but eventually in the hands of the
spirit and its controlling and informing Shakti. It must be accustomed not
to impose its own limits on the nobler members, but to shape its action and
its response to their demands, to develop, one might say, a higher notation,
a higher scale of responses. At present the notation of the body and the physical
consciousness has a very "large determining power on the music made by
this human harp of God; the notes we get from the spirit, from the psychic
soul, from the greater life behind our physical life cannot come in freely,
cannot develop their high, powerful and proper strain. This condition must
be reversed; the body and the physical consciousness must develop the habit
of admitting and shaping themselves to these higher strains and not they,
but the nobler parts of the nature must determine the music of our life and
being.
The control of the body and life by the mind and its
thought and will is the first step towards this change. All Yoga implies the
carrying of that control to a very high pitch. But afterwards the mind must
itself give place to the spirit, to the spiritual force, the supermind and
the supramental force. And finally the body must develop a perfect power to
hold whatever force is brought into it by the spirit and to contain its action
without spilling and wasting it or itself getting cracked. It must be capable
of being filled and powerfully used by whatever intensity of spiritual or
higher mind or life force without any part of the mechanical instrument being
agitated, upset, broken or damaged by the inrush or pressure, - as the brain,
vital health or moral nature are often injured in those who unwisely attempt
Yogic practice without preparation or by undue means or rashly invite a power
they are intellectually, vitally, morally unfit to bear, - and, thus filled,
it must have the capacity to work normally, automatically, rightly according
to the will of that spiritual or other now unusual agent without distorting,
diminishing or mistranslating its intention and stress. This faculty of holding,
dhāranaśakti, in the physical consciousness, energy and machinery
is the most important Siddhi or perfection of the body.
The result of these changes will be to make the body
a perfect instrument of the spirit. The spiritual force will be able to do
what it wills and as it wills in and through the body. It will be able to
conduct an unlimited action of the mind or, at a higher stage, of the supermind
without the body betraying the action by fatigue, incapacity, inaptitude or
falsification. It will be able too to pour a full tide of the life-force into
the body and conduct a large action and joy of the perfected vital being without
that quarrel and disparity which is the relation of the normal life-instinct
and life-impulses to the insufficient physical instrument they are obliged
to use. And it will also be able to conduct a full action of the spiritualised
psychic being not falsified, degraded or in any way marred by the lower instincts
of the body and to use physical action and expression as a free notation of
the higher psychical life. And in the body itself there will be a presence
of a greatness of sustaining force, an abounding strength, energy and puissance
of outgoing and managing force, a lightness, swiftness and adaptability of
the nervous and physical being, a holding and responsive power in the whole
physical machine and its driving springs [1] of which it is now even at its
strongest and best incapable. ...
Reference: [1] mahattva,
bala, laghut, dhrana-smarthya
