Spiritual Life is Positive, Not Punitive
Divine Life Society Publication: The Study and
Practice of Yoga by Swami Krishnananda
The practice of yoga has a
double aspect to the seeker. There is an initial feeling of confidence,
enthusiasm, and even a sense of success, but it is followed by a sudden
diminution of enthusiasm and a sense of helplessness which comes upon one due
to certain psychological reasons. All students of yoga will pass through these
stages.
The lowest condition of human
existence is one of material attachment and immersion in social values,
imagining that the world is all and nothing is beyond, and that sense-life is
the real life. But a day must come when one is shaken up from this conviction,
and a sense of the beyond peeps into one's life. It is then that people like to
go to ashrams, go on pilgrimage, see Mahatmas, Saints, Gurus, or resort to
sequestered places for the purpose of isolation, peace of mind, etc., as it
occurs to their minds. Then comes a feeling that there is something superior to
earthly existence or worldly life – that a life divine, a life of discipline
and ethicality, morality, a life of love of God perhaps is the aim of life, and
one has to take these higher aspects of life very seriously. Life in the world
is not all. This is the stage of the seeker, the sadhaka, who works
oneself up into an emotional enthusiasm of the love of God, practice of sadhana,
discipline, austerity, diminution of physical pleasures and enjoyments of life.
The mind and the senses have
needs. They want something, and we have been telling them, "I am not going
to give you anything." We are not going to give any kind of satisfaction
to the temporal pattern of our physical existence. This is what is called sadhana
usually speaking, in common language. When we do something contrary to the
normal demands of body and senses, we regard it as a kind of religious life –
austerity.
One of the defects of the
general approach to life spiritual is the treading of a beaten track of
tradition, which has been driven into our minds right from our childhood as the
proper approach to things. It is not true that what society says is always the
right approach to things. We live a kind of traditional mode of conduct which
we are compelled to regard as final in its worth and value, merely because we
have been taught these lessons right from our childhood.
We have been brought up under
these conditions. We have a list of what we call the 'do's' and 'don'ts' of
life. Right from babyhood we are told by our Parents and teachers, "Do
this and don't do that." We are frightened right from childhood, and we
are reared in a state of fear. We are never told the reason why it should not
be done. Also, we are not told the reason why it should be done. And also they
say, "You must do this. If you don't, you will get this punishment, even
of hell." This fear of religion often becomes the basis of our approach to
God, and we know very well how harmful it is to a positive approach to anything
whatsoever.
Anything that we call success
is positive – it is not negative. When the positive action is missing, and
merely the negative condition prevails, it becomes an unhappy state. If we
analyse our spiritual practices – Is our sadhana making us unhappy? To
underline what I have said already, a sense of positivity and satisfaction
should precede and accompany anything that we do as a spiritual practice.
The life spiritual is not an
imposition either from a Guru or from a monastery – it is a thing that we have
undertaken voluntarily, of our own accord. Nobody compels us to lead a
spiritual life. Any kind of compulsion is unhealthy. Neither does the monastery
require it, nor does the Guru require it. It is we ourselves that want it for
our own purpose, for our benefit and welfare. So every moment, every day
rather, one has to watch one's mind. "Is this spiritual practice an
imposition upon me by the Guru, or the monastery, or society, or somebody else?
Or is it something that I have been voluntarily doing and I am perfectly
satisfied with it?" If there is any kind of external pressure and an
unhappy feeling, whether it is justified or unjustified, that unhappy feeling
is the reason why there is a reaction one day or the other. So ultimately, the
reaction is caused by our unhappiness. What we are aiming at finally is a
development of our own inner nature, which is the highest spontaneity.
Nothing can be more
spontaneous than what we ourselves are. There is no compulsion or restriction
imposed by us on our own nature or our own being. It is better to give up
spirituality if it has become an imposition, a kind of torture, a suffering, a
sorrow, and something which the mind resents.
What is to be emphasised here
is that the life spiritual is positive, undertaken by ourselves and not imposed
upon us by others. We want it because it has some value for us, and every
discipline that we are practising is undertaken by us of our own accord,
deliberately. We need it and we know why we need it. We should not do it
because somebody tells us to do it – then it is external and we may not like
it. So even a little that we do – really, positively and genuinely, with joy –
is of greater worth in our life than many things that we do in a day without
joy in the mind.
Many spiritual seekers are
driven by emotion rather than by intelligence, and this happens to everyone in
the beginning. We suddenly cry for God, as if God is going to jump from the
skies in a minute. That looks very wonderful in the beginning, "Oh, how
religious is the person, how spiritual, how yearning, how pure, how
genuine." But this will not work for all time, because while God is love,
God is also law. He will not break a law merely for the sake of love,
notwithstanding the fact that He is infinite love.
It is here that we find a
combination, inextricably related, of law and love. Tremendous disciplinary
restrictive law combined with infinite spontaneity of affection and love – all
these we will find in God. No one can be regarded as more affectionate than
God, and no one can be regarded as stricter than God. He is the strictest of
all conceivable beings – yet He is the most compassionate. These two features
are blended there in a Single Unitary Being. And so, as God's nature is reflected
in the stages of sadhana, the disciplinary aspect or the restrictive
feature of sadhana, which is voluntarily undertaken, has to go hand in
hand with spontaneity of approach and a positivity of feeling and satisfaction.
To reiterate, spiritual practice
is voluntary. It is we that move towards God. We are not pushed by some motive
force from outside or from behind. Forces can assist us, but they should not
compel us, because anything that is of the nature of a compulsion is extrinsic
in nature – whereas the spirit is intrinsic, and spirituality is the
manifestation of this intrinsic nature of our own being.
Every external factor should
be converted into an internal feature of our sadhana so that all our
external relationships, whatever be their nature – whether of a family, or an
institution, or a whole nation - these external factors should be transformed
into an internal feature necessary in the transformation of the total
personality, because the individual's personality is not an island. "No
man is an island," as a poet wrote. We are not like islands, completely
cut off from other portions of the land.
Every individual is connected
to every other thing in the world, in some way or the other, so it is not
possible to have a totally isolated individual approach, oblivious of external
factors. When these factors are visible, especially when they are very pressing
in their nature, they should be taken note of in their proper place, giving due
respect to the position they occupy, and then converted and transformed into a
motive force for the onward movement of the spirit towards God.
Continue to read:
The Study and
Practice of Yoga by Swami Krishnananda
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