Notes On Yoga

 

--          Traditional yogis are like individuals acquiring wealth. What they earn they own and, if they choose, can extend its use to the community.  (Wealth in one generates general welfare for others.) The Integral yogi is like a public servant who quickly rises to great heights of power and is able to serve a wide cross-section of the state. He is an instrument of power and does not own the power. Once he is out of that position, he is reduced to the original value of his personality. The ideal for him would be to raise his personality to that of the position he holds.

25-06-1979

--          When the Truth in a pioneering work goes against the conscious beliefs of a population, it presents an opposition. If, on the other hand, the subconscious living is stirred hostility ensues.

31-07-1979

--          Man, inspite of a full knowledge of what he is, (a bundle of undesirable aspirations) wants to be loved, recognised, admired and attended to. When this is not forthcoming, he begins to give this attention to himself by high opinion of himself, day dreaming, etc. Lower still, he frowns on others who are above his psychological status.

In organisational life, people are work-oriented, disregarding the individual's personal attitudes. In family life we have to be more person-oriented than work-oriented.

In yoga, the sadhak on meeting people of different personalities should see in them the extent to which he should change in himself. The sadhak's only relation to another, inspite of what he is, is love. To be able to generate love towards a person in spite of his shortcomings is the effort required at the moment. All human contacts are indices of the yogic attitude necessary at the moment of contact.

27-08-1979

--          Each strand of human nature (capacity of the instruments like memory, endurance, traits like anger, impulsiveness, etc.) is independent in its constitution and functions unaware of its relation to another. It is in the central being or in the personality that such relations exist.

Illustration. A man who is angry and initiates a work detrimental to his life can control himself only by his personality. The vibration of anger by itself cannot realise the direction it takes and retreat.

--          Accommodation of temperamental differences of two individuals from the same culture is easier than the accommodation of cultural differences of two people of different cultures (or different levels of the same culture) when they are of the same temperament.

Different temperamental characteristics may have an uneasy coexistence; but different levels of culture (or different cultural traits) are mutually annihilating.

September 24, 1979

--          Self giving is the noblest of human qualities, even as selfishness is the worst of sins in human life. Primarily self-giving ennobles the giver more than it helps the receiver. It expands the being, not merely a part of the nature.

A genuine act of self giving is limited by the capacity of the receiver. To honour this limit is wise because an insistence to give more turns the act of giving sour. Also this insistence is an attachment to giving and turns the pure act of self-giving into an act of egoism.

Greater and nobler acts of self giving must be directed to greater and nobler recipients. To insist on a higher act of self giving with a smaller person, apart from other things, reveals an attachment to the smallness of the other person.

All acts of pure self-giving are directed only to the Divine or the Divine in others.

October 4,1979

--          A good strategy makes allowance for others' ignorance; that strategy which allows for one's own ignorance is the best.

--          Mother says there are three things:

a)         Cause and effect or Law of Karma;

b)         Compassion which (does not recognise the deserts of the sufferer) dissolves suffering and

c)         Grace which does not recognise the right of suffering to exist.

Can we say that:

a)         Acting from human nature (ego) man invites the effects of the causes;

b)         acting out of great humility (moments when ego is not actively there) he lets compassion come to him or flow out of him, and

c)         in moments (of freshness) when his ego has absolutely no experience to rely on, man, in utter bewilderment, finds himself for a short while in non-ego consciousness and lets the Grace of the Divine act on him.

--          Practical needs and higher ideals:

Man knows that successful living of the highest ideals enjoins on him sacrificing the lower practical needs leading to austerity or even poverty. The core of truth is, one needs to have the courage to give up the lower in pursuit of the higher each time his determination to follow the ideals is called upon for renewal. The actual sacrifice of the lower is not indispensable. Often such a sacrifice will have other causes.

A noble heart readily shifts its reliance from the security of lower practical life realities to pursue the high ideals; the smaller man, who pursues the ideals, not being able to give up the mental reliance, ends up giving them up in practice.

--          Man is either indulging or lazy.

The one thing man ought to be doing all the time is to discover the Divine and move towards its realisation. This needs every drop of energy and a will concentrated on it. Few are inclined to do it. They would rather do what they can, what they are taught, what interests them. This requires no such effort or concentration. Doing what one can, one is exercising only a little part of his energies; doing what one is taught is to express a habit; what interests one is to live at a low level, an indulgence.

--          Society in awarding rewards or punishments to individuals does so more in accordance to their social status then their desert. In other words, Society, in doing so, recognises more of itself than the issues involved. Only when the issues have wider implications society addresses the issue.

--          Coming from a wise man even common place truisms have the force of revelation.

It is wisdom that reveals through the common place and the trivial.

--          It requires the highest positive quality to handle the lowest negative quality at its evolutionary role.

A genius is required to positively help an idiot's thinking to flower. Conversely if one tries to fully honour the groupings of an idiot's mental function, he flowers into a genius.

If one relates to meanness in such a way as not to offend it but to help the latent light behind it to come out, magnanimity and nobility will be born in him.

--          The principles of growth and change that govern the evolution of selfishness and yoga (selfless Divine service) are the same with different centres.

--          When there is all the freedom one would wish, what the majority of men cherish is dissipation. Next comes assertion. Self-restraint is what he would prefer to appreciate in others.

--          Man's consciousness can be occupied at a time by only one thing. What is uppermost in his consciousness will occupy it fully and constantly. It would be better if that happens to be the Divine.

(This is true of all strong men. The minds of weak men find it very difficult to stay on anything. Everything in their world constantly flits through their minds. Nothing stays as nothing can stay.)

--          Original idea: Men of highest intelligence when confronted by an original idea -- an idea not current in the society to which they belong - find it as difficult to comprehend it as men of no intelligence, not because they are not intelligent enough, but because this fresh idea does not answer to any of their description. He who has the courage to understand it is a genius.

All ideas that stem from Mother's Consciousness are ideas that belong to this category and to comprehend it one should have his mind filled with HER consciousness. What a man of high intelligence of the present society fails to comprehend, an ordinary devotee can.

(Every original idea that defied the understanding of the cream of society is well grasped by all men in a subsequent society).

--          If dullness can be described as an inability to see the existing relation between two events, stupidity can be described as the capacity to presume a non-existing relationship between two events.

--          The right attitude is as important or more important than the effort required when a man has to progress. It is easier for a man to keep the right attitude when he is recovering a lost position than when he is making a fresh progress.

[In practice, we have seen men -- by maintaining the right attitude --recover the lost position in months, however great is the loss, whereas when called upon to make a fresh progress men take years to give the first response. In most cases the response is the final response.]

--          The process or method of perfection is the same as that of dissipation, disintegration or degeneration. Only that it is on different planes and in reverse direction. Perhaps that is why certain profligates were able to suddenly convert themselves to God-seeking, once their will has changed the direction.

--          As long as one is attracted by the thing he has consciously rejected or repelled by the thing he has worked for, he is centred in nature and not in spirit.

--          Any human relationship, to survive the first touch of clashing material interests, requires the bondage of family affection. Only organisational idealism can save a human relationship from breaking when non-material selfish interests collide. When psychological self-interests of two individuals collide, their relationship cannot be saved from breaking by any force other than deep-seated inherited culture.

--          When man takes to Mother, her expansive consciousness expands his life resulting in better health, greater happiness and material prosperity. After this stage is over man does not benefit by HER touch, unless he takes effort to change his behaviour, character, personality and finally consciousness. In this stage if a devotee prays to Mother intensely to relieve him of besetting life problems for which life has no known solutions, SHE does grant his prayer and holds off the imminent danger; but SHE does give him austere psychological circumstances in other areas of life which demand the same change in his behaviour. Mother lets the man keep that precarious balance.

--          Selfishness and Selflessness: P.97 ON EDUCATION

Psychic life is one which arises when one gives up selfishness; but the self remains. It is the universal self. It evolves in the world of forms. When selfishness is shed, ego is shed, limitation is shed, universality is acquired. The evolving part of the spirit emerges.

Spirit is not merely immortal but immutable. To live the spiritual life one cannot retain the self. It is not enough to shed the selfishness but necessary to shed the self itself so that one expands into infinity and eternity.  

Stillness of mind  :	All thoughts are there in the mind but do not make any movement
Quietude            :	In a still mind thoughts fall asleep (lose their energy or dynamism)
Calm                 :	thoughts in a still quiet mind lose their inner structure and merely retain their external form
Silence              :	That inner structure dissolves entirely outer form vanishes leaving the mind to feel its own natural boundaries which is infinite

--          Aspiration: This is the divine version of interest. Interest is the vital part of any item like thought, idealism, work, habit, etc. Being the vital part of it, it energises the whole.

--          The horizons of an idea are nebulous and intangible; whereas the four walls around the collected and computerized data are concrete.

--          To do yoga one must renounce the ego.

To do Mother's work one must renounce even the yogic attainments sometimes.

To achieve perfection in HER consciousness the attachment to Mother's work also must be renounced.

--          Aspiration is the movement of the entire being or a part of being towards the Divine in an effort to surrender.

Consecration is the effort to surrender the desire for the result of any given act.

Surrender is the effort to dissolve the structure and dynamism of the will in any act.

            Aspiration is a general movement of which consecration is a concentrated part whereas surrender breaks the limitations of consecration to consummate what aspiration began. Surrender achieves this consummation at the widest level of one's being.

--          A person who complains against others dwelling on their weaknesses is one of unpleasant manners whereas one who is consciously unappreciative of other's goodness or accomplishments harbours bad intentions and therefore will be of unreliable character.

--          Human nature is governed by physical laws and is operated by physical energy such as force and strength passing through the central nervous systems.

--          All fresh knowledge is within. What is outside is the knowledge expressed by the inner into the outer by way of manifestation.

Thinking at best can dwell on the known, the knowledge that is already available in outer manifested life or organize or reorganise the known knowledge or data. In practice 'thinking' turns out to be chewing the cud, not even the process of organising the known.

He who seeks knowledge not yet manifested in the world should cease to THINK.

--          I must understand what I do:

Man functions at one level given to him by his birth and family. His centre of existence composes of what is inherited by birth, what is acquired-inherited by upbringing and later what he acquires himself through education, ideals of the society and what he chooses by being an individual. His inheritance at the time of birth is subconscious, for all practical purposes, unconscious. What he gets from family through upbringing is 'acquired-inherited' and is half conscious, mostly sub-conscious. Only what he acquired through school, society, is conscious. In later life this conscious possession does duty for a subconscious endowment. As soon as he enters adulthood, he finds himself an individual, a person, a personality. He looks for an ideal, a way of life, something inspiring, satisfying, etc. It is at this moment he begins to feel 'I must understand what I do'. This is the prime of his life and his assertion of independence is right. It is also right that he summons his understanding, the only free instrument he has, in support of his independence. Though even this understanding is heavily limited, if he confines his assertion to this area, viz. the area where he has to choose an ideal, it can be described as a permissible blunder. But man has a way of extending one formula to all areas of his life. Most men extend the formula of 'I must understand what I do' to all walks of life. Before taking up consideration of this assertion, I should like to go further and speak of other stages of his life.

Till man comes to a stage where he commits himself to a family, party, ideal, organisation, he maintains this assertion in full. Most men as soon as they find themselves inside a group, lose their identity into it. They are an entity in the measure they are part of it. Ideals flourish in the mind. The moment life touches a man he says 'I have to be practical.' Having said so, the only thing he does is to be material if he is a high character -- and mercenary if he is a low character and the only way in which he does it is in the very same fashion his father lived. In psychological terms he acts subconsciously and what differs from his father is the top dressing, viz. what he acquired from school or society. Character remains but social behaviour changes. If beset with a crisis he drops his ideal, gives up what the family taught him, what he knows to be best but resorts to the most practical -- in low characters most mercenary -- material methods of surviving. The levels to which he descends are decided by a complex of (1) personal strength of will (2) prevalent social opinion (3) material possibilities in the given moment and finally