Daily Notes and Reflections by Alokda

The Mother’s Presence is often first felt as a warmth and sweetness in our heart, also as a growing Peace in all our members spreading from the heart.

Later it changes into Joy, the Joy of loving Her and Serving Her, the joy of simply belonging to Her, the Joy of surrender to Her, the joy of knowing a little of what She chooses to reveal of Her infinite Mystery, the joy of Her countless wonders disclosing before our eyes, the joy of simply reading and writing about Her and many more things that surpass our thought and feelings.

I am sure She grants all sincere prayers, and for each one of us a time is marked when Her Presence will draw near and close and intimate until She makes us one with Her Being and one with Her Substance.

Personally I have found it much easier to be in contact with Her through Service offered at Her Feet, reading Savitri and Prayers and Meditations, loving Her in my heart.

When you feel an aspiration for closeness, and a flower of Love to Her has blossomed in your heart, it is itself a sign that She is close, very close, even when our outer consciousness does not necessarily feel Her.

Alok Pandey

It has been said in spiritual traditions that success is often a harder test to pass than failure. Truly, if we compare the effect that the two have upon us, we can see why it is so.

Success can make one dizzy, haughty and even arrogant. Men drunk with success often forget the great Power working from behind that has pushed them to victory. They begin to believe and sometimes even delude themselves that they are someone special and extraordinary. Very soon their confidence passes into an overconfidence that loses contact with earthly realities. Flying upon the wings of vanity they presume, like Daedalus & Sampati, that they can touch the sun with their beaks. Success is indeed a heady wine that one enjoys in the beginning but ends up by being swallowed by it.

Failure has another effect, if one can endure and bear and go through it. While success hypnotizes you and gets you stuck to one option, failure dehypnotizes and unstucks us. It forces you to humility and makes you aware of the realistic limits, so that you may work steadily and patiently to exceed them. Success creates the illusion of power and control except in exceptional cases and even there one can easily fall into trap of confusing a limited and ignorant power for a genuine and supreme one. Failure strips us of all shows and shams, those facades and images that men hang on their outsides to deceive themselves and the world. It teaches us how to distinguish the real from the artificial, the genuine from the imitation by robbing of the sheen and shine and the glitter and glamour that falsehood uses sometimes as a cover and a cloak to hide its ugliness. Failure bares us all, so that we can confront us in our utter nakedness and walk, even if slowly, in the light of truth. Indeed failure has a much greater potential than success to bring us closer to truth… and open new doors for us.

Indeed when all outer doors close upon us one by one, we have this one rare chance to open the inner door and find ‘the One’ who never fails us; ‘the One’ who is the source of all security, satisfaction, strength; ‘the One’ whose touch upon our lives brings such a peace and joy that no outer success can ever bring. Success often depletes us by expending our energies over perishable goods and toys that break and by crowding our life with flowers that are scentless. Failure increases us by teaching perseverance and endurance and helping us discover our own inner strength. It allows us the possibility of new perspectives, and invites us to fresh goals, different aims; alternate life-views that are more complete an enduring. Indeed, he is most unlucky who has never known failure for such a one has never known God and His Grace. And fortunate is he who has weathered the storms of failure that toss against his boat. He has seen through the mask of night and when the storm and the dust settles he is ready to receive wider horizons & the light of wisdom. Success creates a zone of artificial light within the dark night. Failure ventures into the heart of night and pucks out of its folds of secrecy the jewels that hide within the darkness’ caves. Indeed, blessed is misfortune for through it one can see the face of God.

This does not mean that we should seek for failure. We should seek neither for failure nor for success for they are two sides of the same coin. As we have seen every success carries in itself the seed of failure and every failure hides within its crust the fruit of success. Yet we should seek neither but simply do the deed that God has put into our hearts, to fulfill the purpose for which we are born, to be in tune with the ‘Will’ that moves the world. And this indeed is true success, the sign of a life well-lived, a life worthy of man. To go ahead and do what we must and are meant for without caring for success and failure, victory or defeat, the jeers and cheers of the crowd, the praise and insults heaped by demons or the gods. Better it is to fail and fall fulfilling one’s true calling rather than succeed while following what may come natural to another but is alien to our own deepest self.

The Mother has written the following: “Our Path To walk on the path you must have a dauntless intrepidity, you must never turn back upon yourself with this mean, petty, weak, ugly movement that fear is.

An indomitable courage, a perfect sincerity, a total self-giving to the extent that you do not calculate or bargain, you do not give with the idea of receiving, you do not offer yourself with the intention of being protected, you do not have a faith that needs proofs, – this is indispensable for advancing on the path, – this alone can shelter you against all dangers.”

In the above message vis a vis our need for protection She is not saying that we cannot ask Her protection when in difficulty or danger. All that She is saying is that we do not take to the Path in the spirit of bargaining or calculation for then it would mean that the sadhaka was motivated by purely outer and worldly gains rather than seeking the Divine for the sake of the Divine.

Secondly, She is asking us to keep fear as far away from us as we can since it shuts us in a very narrow hole, a weakness that closes us to the Divine working. On the other hand if we walk with courage and faith we are actually truly safe since we thus create the best conditions for the Divine Grace to act and protect us. Fear, on the other hand invites the danger. She is in fact giving us the perfect recipe for safety. She is not telling us not to call Her when we are in distress. Whom else will the child call but his mumma? But this call should be full of trust. Besides, the reason for our undertaking the journey of yoga should not be out of calculation about what we will get out of it. That puts the cart before the horse. When we give ourselves to the Divine with the complete trust of a child as Dhruva and Prahlad did, the Divine takes full care and protects us from every danger. But if the seeking is done with this or other ulterior motives then it comes in the way of the full workings of the Grace.

The self giving should be an act of love and done freely without any other motive except the joy of self giving. We can equally say that a giving which is accompanied with a hidden agenda of personal gain is really not a giving but a calculated move which cannot deceive the Divine who knows the truth behind our seeking. 

Equanimity is not a dispensable element but the very foundation of yoga. It is the bedrock on which all later genuine yogic development stands. First of all it liberates us from the touches of outer nature, the shock of the senses, the waves of anger and desire and grief that besiege all of us. Thus by its liberating influence it prepares a suitable and strong ground for the awakening of spiritual experiences. But its role does not end here but extends itself far even when we begin to climb the inner peaks and receive touches from the subtler domains. In the absence of equanimity the sadhaka is often carried away by the experience rather than containing it as one more useful link in his spiritual progress. He often exaggerates it or sometimes doubts it rather than studied and observing it with a calm and equal vision without prejudices or hasty jumping to conclusions. For there is always the vital in us hiding in a little corner that is enamoured of experiences for their own sake and often, most often unconsciously adds colour and flavour to what transpires within and thereby not only distorts and falsifies what was coming but also looses its true utility. Thus equanimity has a double utility, one practical in facing the painful trials and tribulations as well as the blinding and misleading pleasures of outer life. It helps us to keep our head on the shoulders in the face of contrary appearances and the crest and troughs of life. But also in our inner life it helps create a suitable field for the descent of truth and to maintain our balance in the wake of the new experiences whose origin and meaning we do not know to begin with.

In other words equanimity has two sides to it. First the passive side that receives the touches and gifts and shocks of life without an undue reaction, or better still with an enlightened and calm passivity to the Will of God for the moment in the universe. But it has a dynamic side too. It consists in the right evaluation of men and events and forces and circumstances without undue exaggerations and aberrations that arise by the interference of our personal emotions and reactions in any judgement.

Equanimity is not indifference, nor is it a courageous stoic affront. Even a philosophical outlook and vairagya do not strictly qualify for being termed as equanimity though all these can lead us towards them. But most of all one should not make the mistake of confusing an inert and unenlightened passivity born of weakness and ignorance with equanimity. Equanimity is a great power and immensely extends our mastery over life. It is born from the Knowledge of the soul, from recognizing the truth that a deep wisdom works in this world with its inscrutable ways. As we begin to grow in the knowledge of Its ways and appreciate the relative utility and place of each and every circumstance of life and see how it is leading us to the grand goal, so do we begin to grow into an enlightened equanimity that is full of wisdom and therefore also full of force. For the force of equanimity comes from a growing stillness and Peace, from the Impersonality that lets the Divine do His Will freely in us and through us as well as in the world making us His conscious and plastic instruments. Finally true equanimity caries in itself a sense of joy and surrender rather than being a labouring and painful achievement. Knowledge, Impersonality, Universality through the growing vision of God and His Working, and its resultant Peace and Joy and detachment from all that is not yet recognized as the Divine are the edifice on which equanimity rests.

Finally equanimity is not something sudden and instantaneous. Just as most true spiritual experiences this too grows as we grow in our soulfulness and Godward aspiration and sincere surrender. It gradually extends itself to other and vaster fields than that of our limited present limited zone that we now call ourselves. And as it grows it prepares and helps grow other diviner elements in us. Then we find how beautifully God’s Grace has been leading us despite ourselves, we begin to see with open eyes God’s play and His method in the world. We recognize the utility of each stumble and failure and the marvelous Grace that works even when all seems darkest. And our hearts are filled with an ever increasing gratitude and love for Him who is the very core and essence of our and the world’s existence.

One of the big challenges of modern times is to find the right balance between Discipline and Freedom. A generation or two earlier the limits of freedom and the needed discipline were defined externally by the social and cultural milieu in which one lived. But since the late nineteen sixties the old matrix of socio-religious and cultural formulas have been more or less broken down the world over. The breakdown had of course started much earlier as the social-cultural and religious forces had slowly become hardened and rigid, narrow and stifling to man’s innate urge for freedom. An inner revolt was already simmering below the surface which found expression as the two great wars in the previous century rocked humanity and the scientific-industrial revolution focused increasingly on individualism. Now the surviving relics of this past stick either in rigid fortresses full of darkness with cobwebs of unenlightened thoughts surrounding them or else remain a lip-service to decorate a crumbling building, a hypocrisy and a façade. The younger generation is bound to reject both and they are doing it everywhere.

But the urgent question is what next? The old bases have been demolished and the new is yet to be established. This is a perfect moment for confusion, aimlessness and meaninglessness to step in and fill the old gap. That is where the danger lies. We cannot bring back the old and we cannot witness with unmoved eyes as the angels may do, the demolition of the cherished ramparts. Here we believe that parents and teachers, or in one word educators have big role to play.  However in our enthusiasm to cure the malady we should be careful not to make the disease worse. That is what we end up doing when we try to enforce old belief systems and patterns of life by force. Gone are the days when children would dutifully obey the parents simply because ‘they are elders’ and ‘supposedly wiser’. Blind authority by age or relationship is gone. That has been done away with by the Age of Reason itself. For everything, the children need reason, reason to follow a rule, reason to study, reason to do this and not do that. Mere authority of a religious book or holy scripture no more works. And where it works it is even worse. For then it is read with a blind eye and not with an enlightened heart. The first thing therefore for parents and teachers is to respect the spirit of the Age which demands a thorough enquiry and not blind belief. It is an exacting process since most of us are not equipped or trained to exercise our logical and analytical faculties beyond the sphere of our work. We need to catch up with these inner faculties that we have lost largely through disuse, simply because we took things for granted or accepted them without questioning. Blind belief is to be replaced with an enlightened understanding and enforced discipline with a rational control over our impulses.

But there is more to it. Given a choice children more readily opt for freedom. They see the two, freedom and discipline as being opposed to each other. But in reality the two are complimentary if we understand rightly what freedom is and what discipline is? Freedom is not doing what we want to do? It is the ability to master and control ourselves so much so that we can be free of al external influences and be our own master. Right now we are slaves, slaves to every passing fancy and impulses of the moment, slaves of every suggestion that strikes our brain, even slaves to all that we read without giving a thought and applying ourselves. Discipline, on the other hand gives us true freedom, the mastery over ourselves and our environment. But that is not how we understand it at the moment. Discipline gives us knowledge and power which set us free. Discipline also gives us joy, a subtler and greater and enduring joy which is other than the momentary thrill of a passing pleasure.

However, Discipline, as we generally understand is something external, a forced control over ourselves, a deliberate act whereby we obey someone else because that is what we are told to do or that is what is demanded or expected of us. This is of course one facet of discipline but it does not carry us very far. Such externally driven discipline breaks down at the first opportunity. Our everyday life is full of examples of people who were very well-behaved so to say outwardly, but were discovered to be giving expression to dark impulses in private life. Such a ‘well-behaved’ exterior may be satisfying to our superficial idea of goodness but it does not carry us very far in life. Discipline, like everything else has to be a conscious choice, made in freedom, a choice of our enlightened parts imposed upon our lower instincts and impulses. The parents and teachers have failed if they have not been able to uncover and ignite this enlightened part that is hidden in everyone of us. While in the beginning the educators are the substitute of these higher parts of humanity (a tough role to play) but their role is to awaken the inner teacher that is there in every child. It is the difference between someone else showing you the light always and igniting the light within you. The former can only be a temporary substitute for the latter. And there is nothing better to do this than the silent example and the occult influence of the educators upon the child. A teacher who has mastery over oneself spontaneously helps the students to gain mastery over themselves without as much as speaking a word. A teacher or a parent, who loses control over himself, lets off easily in an outburst of anger or fit of agitation is a poor example and unknowing to himself and even with best of intentions, he infects the child with the virus of anger and revolt, agitation and restlessness. The dictum physician heal thyself applies here too as teachers and parents control thyself first!

Discipline in its truest essence is the art and science of channelizing one’s energies and efforts in a desired direction. It is an internal process and applies as much while playing football as during our studies. In fact one of best and simplest of ways for disciplining a child is to engage him in some regular and methodical physical education. He will enjoy it and through this activity he will learn the art of mastering himself. Similarly simple exercises of concentration taught in an interesting and engaging manner, possibly coupled with some simple rewards can go a long way in training the mind to channelize the energies. Simple games such as Mikado and Carrom can be very helpful. Vigorous exercises and workouts also help by throwing away accumulated energies of anger and such impulses in a healthy sublimated manner. They create an alternate and healthy means for expression and thereby diminish revolt and anger, sex and violence. To sum it up we may well say that discipline is best practiced through outdoor games rather than within the confines of a restricting classroom or through big and boring lectures.

There is also the big role of stories that shape our young and impressionable minds, especially at a younger age. A careful selection of stories, a proper story time in class and at home would be helpful provided we make a careful selection. The stories should be interestingly given and engaging, not those overtly moral ones that do not engage the child’s attention. The moral of the story should run as an undercurrent, something covert and not too explicit. As the child grows up and outgrows the fantasy world the stories should also be more realistic or better still real life events should be made a subject for open, free and frank discussion. We have a tendency to keep certain subjects as taboo and out-of-scope for discussion. But the dharma of this Age demands that we discuss everything under the sun but logically, coherently and dispassionately as an enlightened observer and not a passionate evangelist preaching one particular way of life or trying to convince and convert the student by all kinds of jumbled up and incoherent thoughts. Children see through it very soon and even if they nod a ‘yes’ at the moment simply to avoid ‘wasting’ more of their time, in their heart there is a ‘no’. In real life however, it is only what the heart has accepted and the mind has understood that brings an authentic change.

Matri devo bhava, pitra devo bhava, acarya devo bhava, be unto your mother as unto god, be unto your father as unto god, be unto your teacher as unto god. This was the word prevalent in the Indian ethos till at least a few decades back. Thus interpreted, it was a sound practical advise since if we wish to learn and receive anything worthwhile from our parents and teachers, we must treat them as we would a god. That is to say, we must look upon them as a channel and messenger of God who is made visible and nearer to us through the persona of the significant figures in our life. This was the old ideal, an ideal meant to preserve the collective wisdom of the race by transmitting it passively to the younger generation. The student, the child was supposed to receive this ‘collective wisdom’ without questioning and with reverence towards the teacher. This was meant to ensure a sound pedigree, a well-rounded life harmonious in all aspects, a life relatively free from error and extremes. Whether it succeeded in achieving its goal or not is difficult to say. But if one has to go by the records, then it did possibly create a small nucleus of a cultured humanity, an elite class, sound in habits and noble in temperament. This highly cultured and enlightened group became then a beacon light for the race, so much so that the king himself listened to them and obeyed their command. Thus was preserved a great ancient culture transmitted through passive memory and isolation of a section of humanity dedicated to this higher learning. It went as far as it could, till all came back with a great reversal and a setback.

The setback came for two possible reasons. First, the isolation of a group made them progressively ineffective in dealing with the mundane side of life that unfortunately always forms the bulk. Secondly, and more importantly, the taste of power and respect led to a certain arrogance and sort of inner complacency that sets in men when they inherit success or find fortune lying at their doorsteps. These were men of knowledge no doubt but even the highest knowledge remains theoretical unless it is able to apply itself in every possible sphere of life and action. When the hour of application came, then the contact with the rich and many-sided expression of the life impulse proved too difficult to be handed by a knowledge that one arrived at by a process of passive learning and an exclusive concentration. Finally, and most importantly, the system failed because of an inherent defect. The very same thing that helped the system preserve the collective wisdom became the cause of its slow but inevitable decline. It is the method of passive learning based on reverence and obedience to the external authority of the parent and the teacher in whom one was supposed to see God! Such a method, leads over a time to a stagnation, a blocking of the fresh springs of creativity. It leads to a gradual sinking of the life-force due either to a lack of challenge as the external authority is taken for granted, or else because one keeps applying the old solutions to new problems that Nature keeps presenting before us so as to tease us out of inertia and somnolence. Over a period of time, the old solutions, even the authentic experience fades in its spirit and becomes a convention, a formal ritual, a church or a creed. The last nail on the coffin comes when the empty throne of a receding truth is usurped by the powers of falsehood and its ignorant ministers. The ācarya and the parent, once revered and worshiped, obeyed and followed blindly, become a tyrant themselves. Their eyes are no more on some high inner Truth but on the material gains they can derive from their pupil and the child. They think low, feel low and live for lesser aims and yet, — and that’s the irony of it all, — expect the children to follow the old dictum, no more as a happy expression of an inner feeling but as an externally imposed dictate.

Therefore has the Time-Spirit broken the old sāstra, for indeed, the old rule had become a misrule. But out of its scattered pieces a new truth must be discovered, or rather the old truth seen in a New Light. This rejuvenating mantra is contained in the old formula itself. Only we have read it the other way. Matri devo bhava, Pitra devo bhava, ācarya devo bhava, is a call to the parents and teachers much more than to the students for without the one the other is an incomplete and a half truth that easily turns into falsehood. The call goes forth, ‘O! ye mother, be as a God, O! ye father, be as a God, O! ye teacher, be as a God!’ In other words, the parents and the teachers alike must know that they are mere trustees of God and their true worth lies in how far they can be a good instrument and a channel for God’s work. Now that is not an easy task, for it means literally being on the summit of one’s consciousness. It means to be full of a fundamental humility that knows how little do we really know and is therefore always keen to progress and arrive at fresh vistas and vision of knowledge. It means to have a subtle and plastic consciousness that knows how to adapt the means to the end and is not rigidly stuck in a fixed groove of a particular method. It means also a deep inner freedom and vastness that can see all things calmly and discern rightly by seeing hidden aspects and powers that move us and the relation of each to the whole. It means a total vision and not one cabined in narrow and fixed frames of customary ideas and thoughts. It means to have all the love of the Divine as mother and all the wisdom and patience of the Divine as father.

Nature is breaking these fixed frames. Through our children and our circumstances she is throwing challenges at us or rather calling us to grow up. Today’s children live in a larger inner space and invite us to join them in the sublimest of all adventures, — the adventure and the joy of a constant self-finding and self-exceeding. That is what is required now for parents and teachers as well as for the students, for the vistas of an unending progress have been opened for man and the roads to an infinite journey laid down and made ready for his tread. Those alone will help most in this process who see this godlike possibility in the child and in the man; and not only in thought and idea and feeling but in life and in action, not only in speech and words but as a living example reveal what it means to be as a God, — matri devo bhava, pitra devo bhava, ācarya devo bhava.

Dr Alok Pandey

Freedom, Equality, Fraternity are the dreams man has nurtured since long. How can we realize them?

Freedom first, – but can Freedom be realised simply by doing whatever one feels like? Such a freedom would be limited by its impact upon the freedom of others. It is like the freedom of the animal which has no social restrictions or moral norms and yet is the most bound of all. True freedom therefore is the child of self-mastery of which even the most developed mind is inherently incapable. But what the mind cannot do, the Spirit accomplishes with a masterly ease. Therefore this dream of man cannot be fulfilled until he takes to the spiritual curve of his evolution and traverses it fully.  

Equality next, – but no parliament, government or rule of law can ensure. At best it will pay a lip-service, at worst it will commit the greatest inequalities in the name of ensuring Equality. For equality is not a flattening of all before the State machinery. Humanity is not only variegated in its constitution but also stratified in terms of its inner evolution.  To treat all identically is not equality but a standardisation. Even at the most basic level of material creation standardisation fails for various reasons. The problem only becomes more and more complex and acute as creation climbs through the ladder of evolution towards man. Man cannot be standardised, he can only be ennobled and lifted towards the heights of an ideal. True equality therefore would be to provide equal opportunities for growth and evolution rather than putting all in the same slot. This too cannot be achieved without engaging in conscious spiritual evolution where alone shines the light of the Ideal untarnished by the mind and its limited vision. 

Fraternity is the key to achieve both in a mutual harmony.  But all our efforts to create fraternity on religious, ideological and other grounds have failed so far. For here too the key lies in human ascension out of the limiting and dividing mind into the oneness of the Spirit. The great difficulty here is religion when it focuses on the outward aspects identifying God with a set of outer rituals and external marks. The secular ideologies that seek to create brotherhood fare no better. They dispense with outer marks but cannot bridge the inner divide of mental views and opinions and fixed beliefs where the problem lies. They either try to appease different sections or else blur their distinctions in a standardised uniformity giving rise to worst intolerance. The answer does not lie either in uniformity nor in a blind accommodation of diversity without discovering the true basis of Unity in diversity. Especially Fraternity is not something that can be imposed from outside or accepted as a cult by the mind. It is a thing of the heart and it is only by awakening the heart to the oneness of the Spirit that this can be realised.  

The one hope of man, if he ever must realise this dream, lies in our spiritual ascension, the ascent of our consciousness beyond the Mind. Without this these ideals will either remain sterile dreams to goad us without any power to realise them or mere euphemism to cover up our inability or a lip service to fool others. Something in us perhaps understands this, something in us is perhaps even ready to engage in this higher ascension beyond Man. The fulfilment of our hope lies there and not in an enshrinement of these words as a Holy grail in the constitution or in using them as slogans to deceive the world. And since something in man wants it, it will be so one day sanctioned by the forces that weave the web of Fate.

‘Earth’s winged chimaeras are Truth’s steeds in Heaven,
The impossible God’s sign of things to be.’ [Savitri:52] 

 Is the body purely matter? How is it different from metal or mud? What is the link between a human being, his body and the matter of which it is formed? Seers, since ancient times have said that it is ’consciousness’ or the ’spirit-that-moves-in-all things’. This article explores this aspect deeply and gives us a tool to mould our bodies.

Introduction

The body can change by the power of consciousness from within. In fact, we see this happening more often than we believe. A blind man performs the function of sight by the development of other organs. The consciousness involved in the organ of sight withdraws itself and puts a pressure on other centres and organs for them to develop.

Even the normal functioning of the body reveals that the seemingly blind and mechanical movements of the organ-systems are secret with a tremendous intelligence. There is a conscious manipulation, an intelligent adaptation even at the most minute level, in the molecular dealings. Many organs even directly respond to thought suggestions, feelings, desires and emotions, movements which we associate with a certain degree of developed awareness. Quantitatively too, we have already alluded to the fact that the body can be made to do things which appear impossible. And this happens not only as a result of methodical training but also during moments of intense crises. A sense of danger or an overwhelming emotion (conscious experience) triggers a cascade of physical responses through glandular secretions.

Perhaps the links are there through ‘nadis’ (subtle nerve sheaths) in the energy body. These subtle nerve sheaths serve to mediate between the universal forces and the individual. They are like so many knots or centres through which the physical consciousness and other levels of consciousness pass into the gross body and influence its behavior and change it. What we observe and record as symptoms are the end point of processes in a chain of events. This was well demonstrated by the famous experiment of Sanger. Two groups of subjects were injected adrenaline. One was shown a pleasant film while the other a horror movie. Adrenaline gave rise to joy in the former group and fear in the latter. Thus the body processes have common pathways to accommodate many types of experiences and forces and vibrations. The difference is not due to the pathways but due to the intensity of the energy-stimulus.

The human body has been designed to interpret certain intensities of vibrations and leave out others. Sight for example responds to a very narrow range of visual energies; so with hearing and touch and other senses. Even the sense of pain, pleasure and indifference are a limitation, necessary for the body in our present stage of evolution but not an absolute truth in itself.

It is possible to neutralise pain by conscious will. Instances are known wherein people could pierce their tongue with needles, walk on burning coal and not get hurt or burnt. It is also known that our conscious will can modify pain by a certain psychological process into joy. One can go as far as changing the action of a chemical through consciousness. In an experiment, saccharin was paired with cyclophosphamide (an immunosuppressant). Later, cyclophosphamide was removed and only saccharin given. The body still responded with immuno-suppression. Such a learning would not be possible if the body was a fixed structure. In fact the body is much more plastic than we usually believe it to be. It responds wonderfully to psychological forces. Only we do not utilise this capacity and disbelieve this knowledge.

Growth – the Physical Dimension

To learn how to alter the body processes to our advantage is therefore possible. But for this two things are necessary. One, we must be able to disengage, discover and develop the powers of the hidden physical consciousness in us. Second, we must rediscover the now lost knowledge which links the body-organ systems to the different levels of consciousness and the effects of their corresponding movements.

All physical culture and discipline is essentially a means to develop the physical consciousness and through it make the body strong and healthy, more plastic and adaptable. It is also a means to infuse consciousness into the very cells of the body.

Many parts of the body are not yet under conscious voluntary control of the mind or will. It is however possible to do so through the power of suggestion and imagery. Over a period of time, through practice, the body can be made to respond to the power of thought-will in those parts also which are normally not under its control. Just as anastomoses develop to meet the increased demands of oxygen, so too new nerve channels can develop to link up the organ.

This is not an impossibility – nerves too are known to respond to necessities of growth. New dendrites are known to develop in the brain to accommodate a greater pressure of information and learning. Yogis less restricted in approach and less conditioned to the idea of physical fixity know this very well. Elaborate techniques (pranayama for instance) have been developed to clear the nerve channels, open them and create new ones. It is thus that through rigorous and painstaking discipline and practice even the most autonomous organs can be brought under conscious control. Not only that but the body can also draw energy directly through the senses and live without food. The art/science of converting this directly drawn energy into gross material substance was however not known and hence a minimal intake of food became necessary to provide the substance for the material stuff of the body.

An instance is known in the life of Sri Aurobindo wherein during one such experiment with the body consciousness, he took nothing for 21 days and carried on with hours of walk, regular writing and all other activities without the least diminution of energy. One can also learn to conserve the energy normally lost through sex, speech and other forms of restless, incessant, meaningless dissipative activities transmute it into forms of emotional, vital, mental and spiritual energy for corresponding actions.

Growth — the Spiritual Dimension

But most of all the consciousness can grow and develop by opening itself to a consciousness higher than the mind. This it can do by two methods. One method is to first bring the body under the control of the mind. Next, one can use the mind as a mediating link by opening it to higher ranges of consciousness through faith, aspiration, invocation or offering. The mind of man can, instead of moving in fixed, narrow circles of conditioning, open to wider and higher movements. Thus, one can bring down the power of ‘peace’ and ‘stillness’ into the body through the mind. Peace and stillness are concrete forces that can actually alter the sense-perception, cancel pain, give a sense of rest and well-being, create conditions of harmony and the early return of balance and health, even effectuate a cure. A disturbance of the body’s normal rhythm can arise due to strong and violent internal forces like anger and fear (observe how our breath becomes irregular under the influence of these movements) or the impact of strong external forces impinging and crowding upon us. Peace, if invoked, restores the inner rhythm by calming the system and its violent upheaval. But it can also create a wall of stillness that separates us and our senses from contact with strongly violent forces that come from outside.

Whatever enters the atmosphere of peace and wherever peace penetrates there it creates a quietening effect.

Peace however is only one such higher force which our body-mind conglomerate is not normally aware of. There are other even stronger forces that can help the body consciousness to grow and develop—the forces of Wideness, Harmony, Strength, Love, Beauty, Delight and the mysterious and wonderful power of Grace.

However the Mind is not the only way through which one can open the body-consciousness to the action of higher forces. The body contains in itself its own principle of divinity and if one can, through practice learn to still the body and concentrate its energy on a point, a moment comes when the physical consciousness is disengaged and can directly open to higher forces. This originally was the principle of Hatha Yoga. But it requires a very arduous, painstaking difficult and time-consuming labour. The method of opening through the mind is easier and swifter.

Apart from these two methods is the discovery of the secret soul, the psychic being within oneself. This is the divine principle in man, the secret psychological centre which is the key to everything else. It holds all the movements of our complex nature together. Once discovered, the psychic being can spontaneously bring the body into contact with the highest forces to which even the mind and life in us has no access.

Our body has learned to respond to ignorant forces like fear, desire, pain and pleasure, greed and lust. The price it pays for this contagion is a wearing out, exhaustion, premature decay, disease and illness. But it can also learn to open to the influence of higher forces and develop harmoniously and function smoothly under their pressure.

For a fuller understanding of the process of a consciousness approach to health and healing, we have to turn for a while towards understanding of the principle and power of consciousness itself.

Source of Consciousness

We have been referring to a higher as well as lower consciousness and its action upon the body. All this may present a picture as if there are different types of consciousness and also that the body is different from the consciousness.

This may be true from a strictly pragmatic point of view. It is also easier for our sense-experience mind to understand things by contrast and comparison. But it is not the whole truth of the matter and leaves many gaps and unresolved questions.

The original truth is essentially oneness, whatever we call it. Yet, right up to the atom we find differentiation and differences (even the constituting charges are not one but two or three or more). This problem arises because we have been working the creation backwards. But once we open to the other end of the experience we see that the roots of creation are not in the atomic void but elsewhere. We then begin to discover through hidden faculties that at the origin there is something that nothing can describe. It is supremely undifferentiated, an infinite and eternal, concealing or showing itself through infinite ways. No law can be made of it, no symbol or language or formula describe it. It simply ‘is’ or ‘is not’. The ancients gave it the name of ‘Parabrahman’—the Reality that transcends all and yet contains all.

Consciousness is the power of this Reality. The one consciousness becomes many by a process of differentiation and concentration or we may say absorption and involution. Thus we have the many levels and layers of ‘consciousness’ arising out of the one consciousness, yet supported by it. Thus is also created a hierarchy of planes’ and substances’ and energies and systems of worlds that finally precipitate themselves into the atomic void or gross matter as we know it. Thus matter and its processes are the last step, in the process of differentiation and involution making them dense and limited. So an emergence out of it brings forth all the hidden possibilities. Each hidden possibility that emerges alters matter, making it more pliable, capable and subtle. This is another process of evolution.

The Evolutionary Transformation of the Body

A perfectly healthy body as we envisage it now is a body fit, open and receptive to higher forces. Short of it there is only an absence of disease or its presence. The concept of health has shifted therefore from a passive to a dynamic one. Passive adaptation is the equilibrium that Nature creates between the organism and the world around it. Evolution follows by a temporary dissolution of this equilibrium! An active adaptation would therefore mean the ability of the body to not only survive but also to evolve by a collaboration with nature. The stress of survival is born because of a sense of separateness. Each organism therefore tries to overpower or ‘outsmart’ others in the competitive game of life. This leads to an equal adaptive reaction in other forms of life that assert their right to existence. The individual unit, holds out for a while against the rest, but, sooner or later succumbs as it must, since no individual form of life can be greater than the whole. But while the individual form cannot be greater than the whole, the individual can rediscover its link with the whole and thus arrive at a new mode of mastery.

Elimination versus Assimilation

If we step back from our excessive preoccupation with the individual forms and their differences, we find that all life is essentially one. So, as evolution proceeds, clash and strife are replaced more and more by assimilation, accommodation and transmutation. Growth, at a lesser level assumes the appearance of eliminative competition. Growth, at a higher level, assumes the appearance of acceptance and assimilation. At present, our body has developed capacities to fight and reject whatever is to it ‘not self’. In future, the body will develop the capacity to absorb and change the disparate elements into a harmonious element. But for this, we have to discover a new station of consciousness. Out of the strong separative sense, we have to grow into wholeness and oneness. Out of division and knowledge based upon division we have to grow into oneness and knowledge based upon unity. Obviously, there will be a period of transition and its attendant difficulties but once the body has discovered the new mode of functioning based upon oneness, there will the power of spontaneous immunity rather than simply a power to cure.

A Newer Reality

Thus seen, we understand many happenings in this world in a new way. The human body, on the one hand is being forced to bear the onslaught of a large number of toxins and poison as never before. Bacteria and viruses have taken a backseat. There are enough self-generated poisons: the industrial wastes, nuclear fall outs, drugs, insecticides, cosmetics (to name just a few), that threaten to eliminate the entire race. Or challenge it to evolve!

At another level, there are scientific studies to work on the oneness of physical matter. Organ transplants, cloning, breaking of biological boundaries through cross matings are all obscure ways through which a subconscious foundation for oneness is being laid. All this should not be taken to mean that this crisis is a good thing for there are simpler, safer, direct and better ways to evolve towards oneness. But Nature has taken this risky, bumping course only because man refuses to admit a straight, smooth road to evolution. Everything in us resists the evolutionary pressure and most of this resistance comes from our notion of distinct separateness that makes us blind to everything else in the universe.

Yet, man can collaborate in this great transition and evolutionary transformation of the body. How? That is the secret Sri Aurobindo had set about to discover in the ‘cave of tapasya’ at Pondicherry. He saw it with the lens of truth-vision that awakens in the yogi and the seer. The Mother practically applied this ‘secret’ on her own body. It is hardly possible to describe their yoga of the body-cells here. The true understanding however grows only through experience or identification with the truths thrown as powerful hints.

Sri Aurobindo writes,

“The essential purpose and sign of the growing evolution here is the emergence of consciousness in an apparently inconscient universe,…. As we rise we have to open to them our lower members and fill these with those superior and supreme dynamisms of light and power; the body we have to make a more and more and even entirely conscious frame and instrument, a conscious sign and seal and power of the spirit. As it grows in this perfection, the force and extent of its dynamic action and its response and service to the spirit must increase, the control of the spirit over it also must grow and the plasticity of its functioning both in its developed and acquired parts of power and in its automatic responses down to those that are now purely organic and seem to be the movements of a mechanic inconscience.”[SABCL 16:15]

A million years ago the animal sprawling in the swamps of Africa and Asia stood erect, – a marvel of Nature, and called himself man. He was man indeed characterized by something unique, that source of his rise over the animal world he inherited and paradoxically as it were, also the reason for his fall from the spontaneous purity and natural harmony of the animal kingdom. A vague light that had shown itself only as a far off promise and rare occasional glimpses in the higher animals had suddenly shot beyond measure. This light had come to full birth within him and with its birth was born in man a restless seeking for Truth, the search for something higher and nobler and beautiful, a discontent with what was or is. It coaxed the animal out of his slumber, woke in his belly the hunger of the titans and in his heart the instincts of a god. Thus was born, amidst the pathless wilds a strange creature, an uneasy compromise between the demigod and the beast. He raised his head and saw the vacant Vast inviting him. He plunged his gaze below and fathomed the treasures of the deep seas. He looked around and saw the untouched grounds for an endless discovery.

Since then his quest has taken him far and high, without and within. He has cut paths into the wilds of the forest and filled them with cement and stones. He has dwelled within his inner being and tried to divine the laws that built the worlds and the Godheads in their far off starry homes. He has mapped the skies and the seas, plunged into his inner depths, measured the distance between the galaxies and the stars, shrunk space and squeezed time. And yet his search is far from being over. Each discovery has only increased his hunger; each finding has opened to his awakening eye an even greater seeking. The answered questions have raised more unanswered questions. Each mystery solved has led him to the doors of a still greater mystery. Tired and weary and restless he has created toys to satiate his hunger but soon the pangs are felt again and he needs new toys and fresh gadgets to play with even before he has outgrown the fancy of his old gadgets. Even as he sheds old layers of ignorance like peels from his eyes, fresh layers stand between him and the ultimate Truth. The old walls gone, new ones arise in its place; walls subtler and firmer like some magical entrance that refuses to yield unless one knows the elusive formula. Thus does he move in ever-widening circles of Ignorance driven by his first impulse to seek and know. Each ground of Knowledge rests upon a shadowy throne of doubt and a grey penumbra follows his advance. Unsure of anything he still tries to reconcile himself and the world, seeks to unite the two fragments of the one cosmic puzzle, – himself and the world he inhabits. He has lost his animal instincts and the sure spontaneity of that world; he is yet to gain the sure foothold on some terra-firma of sure Knowledge. In fact the very knowledge that had come to save him from the rigours of the animal world has become an artificer of his doom. The many paths he cut across the wilds have left behind thick trails of battle and strife. The animal in him is not dead; it has only assumed a more fanciful face and a cunning brain. The gods within him awake from time to time and he is stirred by sublime impulses but the titans’ voices soon drown his inner listening and he becomes a prey to dark and dangerous impulses.

This has been man’s story so far, a long dim preparation, the search for a Truth ever guessed and neared and missed, the cult of an Ideal never made real here. Still he continues to search out of the wilds into the far blue sky sailing amidst distant stars, his goal fixed outside all present maps, his fragile ship unable to cross the ultimate seas of knowledge or convert it into currencies of wisdom. Thus he moves on through day and night, from life to life, through cycles of creation and destruction. He rises from the grave and the pyre and seeks again and finds and loses and starts his search again. Thus he goes on invited by a rumour and a call. He is as if driven by a curse that denies him rest and peace in any home; all his resting places of knowledge and comfort zones of happiness prove to be only temporary inns. His Science and his Religion both bind him to these minor outposts until the restless urge in him drives him further to some land where he can reconcile both, his inner subjective world and the outer one that seems objective to his senses. He must find that meeting point where the two currents meet, the within and the without. He must touch the reconciling Wisdom in which the self and world grow true and one. He must discover the New Path that will lead him to this Integral Reality, the path that would release from within his depths the imprisoned gods and appease the chained beast that grovels in his subterranean den. It is this that now seeks to be born within him and just as the animal was a living laboratory in which man was worked out; man may well be the conscious instrument through whose co-operation the Next Species is being worked out. Everything that we have witnessed in the past century has worked towards this new becoming, this much wanted and foreseen change. Everything that we are witnessing today is also pointing towards this change that is pressing itself upon us from everywhere, from within and without. It is a meeting point of two currents of Time, the New and the Old; the moment of great churning within and without that through a passage of momentary confusion is yet leading us towards something that is unprecedented in earth’s history, the birth of an entirely new way of seeing and being, the birth of a New World. Towards this we shall now turn our attention…