Early Cultural Writings

Rajayoga

19-December-1920

Man fulfilling himself in the body is given Hathayoga as his means. When he rises above the body, he abandons Hathayoga as a troublesome and inferior process and rises to the Rajayoga, the discipline peculiar to the aeon which man now evolves. The first condition of success in Rajayoga is to rise superior to the dehatmak bodh, the state of perception in which the body is identified with the self. A time comes to the Rajayogin when his body seems not to belong to him or he to have any concern with it. He is not troubled by its troubles or gladdened by its pleasures; it has them to itself and very soon, because he does not give his sanction to them, they fall away from it. His own troubles and pleasures are in the heart and mind, for he is the rajasic and psychical man, not the tamasic material. It is these that he has to conquer in order that he may realise God in his heart or in his buddhi or in both. God seen in the heart, that is the quest of the Rajayogin. He may recover the perception and enjoyment of the body afterwards, but it is only to help the enjoyment of God as Love and God as Knowledge.

The processes of the Rajayoga are mental and emotional. Patanjali's science is not the pure Rajayoga; it is mixed and allows an element of the Hatha in its initial processes. It admits the Asana, it admits the Pranayam. It is true it reduces each to one of its kind, but the method of conquest is physical and therefore not Rajayogic. It may be said that the stillness of the body is essential to concentration or to samadhi; but this is a convention of the Hathayoga. The Rajayogin concedes no such importance to the body; he knows by experience that concentration can be secured in any easy and unconstrained posture which allows one to forget the body; it is often as much helped by rhythmic motion as by stillness. Samadhi, when it comes, itself secures stillness of the body. The pure Rajayogin dispenses

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therefore with the physical practice of Asana.

The real reason why Patanjali laid so much stress on Asana was that he thought Pranayam essential to samadhi and Asana essential to Pranayam. It is difficult, though not impossible, to do the practice of Pranayam according to Patanjali's system without perfect bodily stillness. It can be done and has been done even while walking about, but this is not so easy or usual. Now Pranayam in its proper sense, the mastery of the vital force in oneself and Nature, is essential to every Rajayogin, but it can be brought about by much simpler methods. The only physical process that the Rajayogin finds helpful enough to be worth doing, is nadishuddhi or purification of the nerve system by regular breathing and this can be done while lying, sitting, reading, writing, walking. This process has great virtues. It has a wonderfully calming effect on the whole mind & body, drives out every lurking disease in the system, awakens the yogic force accumulated in former lives and, even where no such latent force exists, removes the physical obstacles to the wakening of the Kundalini shakti.

But even this process is not essential. The Rajayogin knows that by tranquillising the mind he can tranquillise the body, by mastering the mind he can master both the body and the prana. This is the great secret of the Rajayoga that mind is the master of the body, creates it and conditions it, body is not the master, creator or lawgiver of the mind. It may be said that the body at least affects the mind, but this is the other discovery of the Rajayogin that the body need not in the least affect the mind unless by our consent we allow it to do so. The kumbhak or natural cessation of the breathing is essential to the deeper kinds of Samadhi, not to all; but even so he finds that by the cessation of the lawless restlessness of the mind, which we mistakenly call thought, we can easily, naturally and spontaneously bring about the cessation of the breathing, a calm, effortless and perfect kumbhak. He therefore dispenses with physical processes, easy or laborious, and goes straight to the root of the problem, the mind.

Rajayoga is of three kinds, sachesta, salpachesta and nischesta, with effort, with little effort, and without effort.

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Patanjali's, the only systematised kind, though each is quite methodical, is sachesta, involving great strain and effort throughout. We may best compare the systems by taking each of Patanjali's steps separately and seeing how the three kinds of Rajayogins will deal with them. In the present article we shall deal with Patanjali. The first step is the preparation of the moral nature, the discipline of the heart, its perfection in the four great qualities of love, purity, courage and calm, without which siddhi in the Rajayoga is impossible. Patanjali prescribes the practice of the five yamas or regulating moral exercises, truth, justice and honesty, harmlessness, chastity and refusal of ownership, and the five niyamas or regulating moral habits, cleanliness and purity, contentment, austerity, meditation on Scripture, worship and devotion to God. In order to establish these habits and exercises and remove the impurities of the heart it is evident that Patanjali intends us to use the method of abhyasa or constant practice. Anyone who has made the attempt will realise how difficult it is to compass all these qualities and how long and tedious a discipline is required to establish them even imperfectly. Patanjali seeks to purify and quiet the life while the mind and heart are yet impure and restless, a system possible only to hermits in an asrama. For this reason the Rajayoga has fled from the homes of men and taken refuge in the forest and the cavern.

Afterwards Patanjali recommends the quieting of the body and the mastering of the Prana by Asana and Pranayam. The reason of this is clear enough. The Pranayam of the Hathayoga does not lead to purity, but to force and intensity; every quality that it finds potent in the system it raises to tenfold activity and power. Unless therefore the life and character be previously made quiet and pure, Pranayam done in one's own strength may do immense moral, physical and mental mischief. Allowing for the overcoming of his initial difficulty and for the admission of Hatha into Rajayoga, it must be admitted that Patanjali's system is admirably logical and reasonable in its arrangement.

Next comes the mastery of the mind, that restless, self-willed and shifting force which is so difficult to control. Again, as in

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his previous steps, Patanjali relies wholly on abhyasa or practice. He arranges concentration in four stages of development, Pratyahara or the drawing inward of the senses from their objects; Dharana, or the success in this process resulting in the fixing of the mind for a moment on a single thought, feeling or object,—such as a single part of the body, the tip of the nose or the centre of the brows for preference; Dhyana or the continuation of this state for a fixed period; Samadhi or the entire withdrawing into oneself for an indefinite time. The preliminary process once successful, the rest follows with comparative ease, but the preliminary process is itself so enormously difficult that one would be amazed at Patanjali's putting it first, if one did not perceive that he is relying on the rigorous and thorough mastery of each step before the next is attempted; he trusts to the Hathayogic kumbhak to bring about Pratyahara with comparative ease. Even as it is, most Yogins prefer to take the Dharana or concentration on a single object first, trusting to the practice of Dharana to bring about Pratyahara by a natural process. This is undoubtedly the more easy and straightforward process, though Patanjali's is the more logical and scientific, and, if mastered, may lead to greater results.

Concentration once attained, we proceed to what Patanjali evidently considers the essence of Yoga, the coercion of all vrittis or functionings of the mental and moral qualities so as to arrive at sanyama or turning of the whole passionless intelligent Will in the spirit on whatsoever the Yogin wishes to possess, from the realisation of God to the enjoyment of mundane objects. But how is this silencing of the vrittis to be effected? for the yamas and niyamas only establish certain good habits of life, they do not thoroughly purify mind and heart. We have to do it by a process of removal by replacement, always depending on abhyasa, replacing bad vrittis by good, the many good by the few better, the few better by the one best, until we arrive at absolute sanyama. This can be done, not easily but without insuperable difficulty if the power of concentration is thoroughly attained by Patanjali's method.

Sanyama is a mighty power. Whatever the Yogin does

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sanyama upon, says Patanjali, that he masters. The knowledge of one's past lives, of the thoughts of men, of men in this world and spirits in the other, the vision of the past and the future, the knowledge of all that is in the present, the mastery of Nature, the siddhis of the Hathayogin, the realisation of God, all power, all bliss, all knowledge is in his grasp. As to what he shall do with the power, Patanjali leaves the choice to the successful Yogin.

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