Health and Ayurveda

Monday, April 16, 2007

YOGA AS SCIENCE

One of them may be described as seeking the self by the Self by the Self; the other may be described as seeking the Self by the Not-Self; and if you will think of them in that fashion, I think you will find the idea illuminative. Those who seek the Self by the Self, seek him through the faculty of Buddhi; they turn even inwards, and turn through the active working Manas; they are outward-turned, and by study of the Not-Self, they turn to realize the Self. It is along that difficult and strenuous path that the Self must be found by way of the Self. Such a man must utterly disregard the attention, upon the Self. To the man who would find the Self by the Self, every sense is a hindrance and an obstacle, and there is no logic, no reason, in denouncing the subtler senses only, while forgetting the temptations of the physical senses, impediments as much as the other. In the search for the Self by the Self, all that is not Self is an obstacle. Obstacle, then, are all the senses, whether you call them Siddhis or not, in the search for the Self by turning away from the Not-Self. It is necessary for the man who seeks the Self by the Self to have the quality which is called “faith” in the sense in which I defined it before- the profound, intense conviction, that nothing can shake, of the reality of the Self within you. Turn from him to the seeker for the Self through the Not-Self. Just as you cannot study the physical world without the physical senses, so you cannot study the astral world without the astral senses, nor the mental without the mental senses. Along the lines of pure thinking-the metaphysical line-you may reach the Self. Those directions will cease to be self-contradictory, if you will only separate in your thought the two methods. For you must remember that there is Yoga of the left-hand path, as well as Yoga of the right-hand path. Both men may be called moral, if judged by the outer action alone. The scientific man understands that. If you had a perfect sense of hearing. The reason why there should be that classification is that the word pleasure and the word pain express two fundamental states of difference, not in the Self, but in the vehicles in which that Self dwells. Pleasure and pain belong to the Self as a whole, and not to any aspect of the Self separately taken. The answer is: “Pleasure belongs to the Self as a whole. The universe is full of pain”. Do not the Upanishads say: “The Self is bliss”? Pain is an excrescence. The Self, who is bliss, being the all permeating life of the universe, pain has no permanent place in it. Let us pause for a moment to ask: “why should there be pain at all if the Self is bliss?” Just because the nature of the Self is bliss. Pain is necessary that the Self may force his vehicles into making efforts which develop and organize them. Pain purifies. Pain teaches. Pain gives power. Power is pain transmuted. From pleasure comes illumination. Pleasure enables the Self to manifest. When it harmonizes the vehicles of the Self from outside, it enables the Self more readily to manifest himself through the lower selves within us. If pain comes, we take it and utilize.

Dr. Maganlal S. Molia
Rajkot (Gujrat)

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