Psychology, Mental Health and Yoga

Attitudes, Mental Health and Yoga

An attitude is defined as a mental set which predisposes one to perceive things in a certain way, to feel towards things in a certain way, and to be prone to react towards things in a certain way. Thus an attitude influences all the three basic elements of behaviour, namely, thinking, feeling and willing. For example, an attitude of optimism predisposes one to perceive the bright rather than the dark side of things; it tends to make one feel hopeful rather than easily despairing; and it inclines one to continue with one's endeavour rather than to give up effort prematurely. Examples of everyday attitudes which influence behaviour are: optimism or pessimism; courage or timidity; faith or doubt; goodwill or hostility; confidence or diffidence, etc.

The importance of attitudes lies in the fact that they are more potent than external factors in determining success or failure, health or sickness, happiness or unhappiness. As the American psychologist William James (1842-1910) remarked: "The greatest discovery of my generation is that people can change their lives by changing their attitudes of mind." Attitudes are primarily important also because, unlike external factors, over which we generally do not have much control, attitudes lie within us and are therefore susceptible to significant control, given the necessary will and effort.

Most of our attitudes are determined by our predominant feelings. Therefore, how we perceive things and how we are inclined to react towards things depend on how we feel towards things. For the most part, feelings determine attitudes, and attitudes determine behaviour. Thus in

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most cases, feelings determine behaviour. Psychological disturbances almost always involve harmful feelings, and, consequently, generate attitudes which perpetuate psychological ill-health. Hence the relevance of attitudes for mental health.

From the viewpoint of yoga, attitudes are determined by the predominant state of one's consciousness. What predominates in one's consciousness depends upon the part of one's being with which one is most identified. Most human beings usually identify themselves predominantly with one or another part of the outer being - the body, or the vital (consisting of life energy, impulses, desires, feelings), or the mind. Each of these parts of the being has its own characteristic consciousness and attitudes. The physical consciousness of the body is characterised by inertia, obscurity, mechanical and chaotic activity, repetitiveness. and narrowness or constriction. The vital consciousness is characterized by energism, action and passion. The characteristics of mental consciousness are rationality, objectivity, balance and harmony. The influence of the physical consciousness is to be seen in attitudes which are marked by lethargy, indifference, boredom, doubt, diffidence, depression and pessimism. The vital consciousness is reflected in attitudes which show prejudice or predilection, pride, over-confidence, ambition and excessive optimism. Attitudes stemming from the mental consciousness reflect a rational and objective view of things, and an inclination towards ideals.

All human beings are endowed with physical, vital and mental consciousness, and are therefore influenced by qualities of all the three parts of the outer being in different degrees. But in the majority of people, it is the

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vital consciousness that is generally predominant, and exercises the strongest influence on their attitudes. From the viewpoint of yoga psychology, the predominance of the vital nature is the chief cause of psychological disturbances. For, the human being at the present stage of evolution is primarily a mental being; therefore to be dominated by the vital being is to act contrary to one's nature as a mental being. So, in order to overcome the force of instincts, impulses, desires and feelings of the vital nature, it is necessary to have recourse to mind and its force of mental will. It is the mind that enables one initially to discriminate between what is beneficial and what is harmful, what is proper and what is improper, what is right and what is wrong. Secondly, the mind, with its force of mental will, can curb, at least to some extent, the instincts and impulses from being expressed in speech or action. Most importantly, mind can formulate and adhere to positive attitudes which one wants to inculcate in oneself. The act of adhering to an attitude and impressing it on one's consciousness by repeating it to oneself -an exercise which is being increasingly used by mental health practitioners - is referred to as affirmation. The practice is akin to auto-suggestion. But auto-suggestion consists in the effort to repeat positive thoughts to oneself while the mind remains relaxed and passive so as to impress these thoughts on what is called the subconscious mind. On the other hand, affirmation involves the mind's active, conscious and deliberate effort to hold on to a positive attitude.

However, from the viewpoint of yoga, it is necessary to go beyond mind if one is truly to succeed in establishing right attitudes. For, though the mind can control the vital

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nature and prevent its irrational tendencies from dominating one's attitudes, the mind's control is very limited and precarious. Secondly, mental consciousness, being interfused with the physical and the vital consciousness, needs to be freed from their influences before it can express its own rational nature. Most of the time, the lower influences, especially of the vital nature, are so subtle and powerful that the mind is usurped and enslaved by the physical and vital nature, and is even used to defend irrational tendencies by rationalizing them. In order to free itself from domination of the vital nature, mind needs to invoke a force greater than itself. Furthermore, the mind itself has its own inherent disturbances and limitations. To overcome the disturbances and limitations of the mental being, too, a power greater than that of the mind must be tapped, for to try to transform the mind by its own force of mental will and intelligence is, as the well-known simile goes, like trying to cut a knife with its own edge.

Attitudes stemming from a consciousness which is deeper or higher than that of the physical, vital and mental parts of the being are often quite the opposite of the attitudes that prevail in our ordinary consciousness. This may be illustrated from attitudes towards circumstances and towards people around us.

The chief characteristic of the common attitude towards circumstances consists in regarding them as the causes of sorrow or happiness. This attitude is so deeply ingrained in us that most people are not even conscious of it, not to speak of questioning its validity. Because of such an attitude, people are constantly occupied with trying to change or improve what appear to us to be inimical,

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unfavourable or less than optimal circumstances. Such an attitude leads to two chief consequences. First, the dependence on circumstances gives them a supremacy and maims the power of the will - the first stage in the development of a neurosis. Secondly, since the attitude that happiness is to be found in favourable circumstances is based on an illusion, people never discover the true inner well-being. As the Mother remarks:

"People think that their condition depends on circumstances. But that is all false. If somebody is a 'nervous wreck', he thinks that if circumstances are favourable he will improve. But, actually, even if they are favourable he will remain what he is.... It is not the circumstances that have to be changed: what is required is an inner change.'"¹

From the viewpoint of yoga, it is the attitude towards an event or circumstance that determines the kind of effect it has on us. As the Mother categorically states:

"There is a state in which one realises that the effect of things, circumstances, all the movements and actions of life on the consciousness depends almost exclusively upon one's attitude to these things. There is a moment when one becomes sufficiently conscious to realise that things in themselves are truly neither good nor bad: they are this only in relation to us; their effect on us depends absolutely upon the attitude we have towards them. The same thing, identically the same, if we take it as a gift of God, as a divine grace, as the result of the full Harmony, helps us to become more conscious,

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stronger, more true, while if we take it - exactly the very same circumstance - as a blow from fate, as a bad force wanting to affect us, this constricts us, weighs us down and takes away from us all consciousness and strength and harmony. And the circumstance in itself is exactly the same - of this, I should like you all to have the experience, for when you have it, you become master of yourself. Not only master of yourself but, in what concerns you, master of the circumstances of your life. And this depends exclusively upon the attitude you take."²

The right attitude toward circumstances, looked at from the standpoint of yoga, is expressed by Sri Aurobindo in the following letter to a disciple:

"You should not be so dependent on outward things; it is this attitude that makes you give so excessive an importance to circumstances. I do not say that circumstances cannot help or hinder - but they are circumstances, not the fundamental thing which is in ourselves, and their help or their hindrance ought not to be of primary importance. In yoga, as in every great or serious human effort, there is always bound to be an abundance of adverse interventions and unfavourable circumstances which have to be overcome. To give them too great an importance increases their importance and their power to multiply themselves, gives them, as it were, confidence in themselves and the habit of coming. To face them with equanimity - if one cannot manage a cheerful persistence against them of confident and resolute will - diminishes, on the

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contrary, their importance and effect and in the end, though not at once, gets rid of their persistence and recurrence. It is therefore a principle in yoga to recognise the determining power of what is within us - for that is the deeper truth - to set that right and establish the inward strength as against the power of outward circumstances. The strength is there - even in the weakest; one has to find it, to unveil it and to keep it in front throughout the journey and the battle."³

Attitudes towards people around us provide another example of the contrast between ways of looking at them from the ordinary consciousness and from a deeper consciousness. Viewing people from the ordinary consciousness, we tend to admire or idolize some and to criticize or condemn others. From the viewpoint of a deeper consciousness, what we see in others is merely a reflection of what we have in ourselves. The good and beautiful qualities which we see and admire in others are potential qualities that lie deeply embedded within us and which we consciously or unconsciously yearn to realize. The dark qualities in others of which we feel critical serve to reflect what we carry in ourselves. As the Mother has well stated it:

"In a general and almost absolute way, anything that shocks you in other people is the very thing you carry in yourself in a more or less veiled, more or less hidden form, though perhaps in a slightly different guise which allows you to delude yourself. And what in yourself seems inoffensive enough, becomes monstrous as soon as you see it in others. . . .

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"Look upon everything with a benevolent smile. Take all the things which irritate you as a lesson for yourself and your life will be more peaceful and more effective as well, for a great percentage of your energy certainly goes to waste in the irritation you feel when you do not find in others the perfection that you would like to realise in yourself.

"You stop short at the perfection that others should realise and you are seldom conscious of the goal you should be pursuing yourself. If you are conscious of it, well then, begin with the work which is given to you, that is to say, realise what you have to do and do not concern yourself with what others do, because, after all, it is not your business. And the best way to the true attitude is simply to say, 'All those around me, all the circumstances of my life, all the people near me, are a mirror held up to me by the Divine Consciousness to show me the progress I must make. Everything that shocks me in others means a work I have to do in myself.'

"And perhaps if one carried true perfection in oneself, one would discover it more often in others."⁴

Though yoga calls for rising above the mental consciousness, mind and its will cannot be prematurely abandoned. As Sri Aurobindo remarks: "So long as there is not a constant action of the Force from above or else of a deeper will from within, the mental will is necessary."⁵ In dealing with the force of instincts and impulses, what is available to most human beings is the force of mental will. When one undertakes the practice of a spiritual discipline such as yoga, one comes to battle with not only the forces

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of one's own personal nature, but also with corresponding forces of a universal nature which obstruct or attack the practitioner to subvert the efforts towards rising above the ordinary nature. The importance of using the mind's intelligence and will in dealing with such attacks and obstructions by holding on to the right attitude is pointed out by Sri Aurobindo:

"One sees the negative side only during the attacks, because the first thing the attack or obstruction does is to try to cloud the mind's intelligence. If it cannot do that it is difficult for it to prevail altogether for the time being. For if the mind remains alert and clings to the truth, then the attack can only upheave the vital and, though this may be painful enough, yet the right attitude of the mind acts as a corrective and makes it easier to recover the balance and the true condition of the vital comes back more quickly."³⁶

From the evolutionary point of view, the importance of mind lies in the fact that it represents the highest faculty well evolved up to now. Therefore, a certain preparation of the mind is essential for a leap into what is beyond mind. To quote Sri Aurobindo:

"Our evolution has brought the being up out of in-conscient Matter into the Ignorance of mind, life and body tempered by an imperfect knowledge and is trying to lead us into the light of the Spirit, to lift us into that light and to bring the light down into us, into body and life as well as mind and heart and to fill with it all that we are. This and its consequences, of which the

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greatest is the union with the Divine and life in the divine consciousness, is the meaning of the integral transformation. Mind is our present topmost faculty; it is through the thinking mind and the heart with the soul, the psychic being behind them that we have to grow into the Spirit, for what the Force first tries to bring about is to fix the mind in the right central idea, faith or mental attitude and the right aspiration and poise of the heart and to make these sufficiently strong and firm to last in spite of other things in the mind and heart which are other than or in conflict with them."⁷

What has been stated in the above-quoted passage regarding the action of the Force on the mind for inculcating the right mental attitude is illustrated in the establishment of one of the most important attitudes for mental health as well as for yoga, namely, the attitude of being a detached, uninvolved and non-identified witness of the movements of one's ordinary, surface nature. As Sri Aurobindo states:

"Very often when this witness attitude has not been taken but there is a successful calling in of the Force to act in one, one of the first things the Force does is to establish the witness attitude so as to be able to act with less interference or immixture from the movements of the lower Prakriti."⁸

The practice of affirmation in the field of mental health has been alluded to above. A somewhat similar practice in the field of yoga is the repetition of the mantra. Though repeating a mantra has a much more profound significance

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than the practice of affirmation, a feature common to the two practices is that they both serve to inculcate a certain attitude which tends to bring one out of the ordinary, disturbed or constricted state of consciousness. From this limited view-point, a mantra may be described as an affirmation that is related to, and which tends to induce, a deeper or higher state of consciousness, impregnated with attitudes of aspiration, courage, hope, trust and faith. The following are examples of mantric affirmations, relevant to a practitioner of yoga:

"Remain fixed in the sunlight of the true consciousness - for only there is happiness and peace. They do not depend upon outside happenings, but on this alone."⁹

"At the very moment when everything seems to go from bad to worse, it is then that we must make a supreme act of faith and know that the Grace will never fail us."¹⁰

"... in spite of our ignorance and errors and weaknesses and in spite of the attacks of hostile forces and in spite of any immediate appearance of failure the Divine Will is leading us, through every circumstance, towards the final Realisation."¹¹

"There is a return for all the trials and ordeals of the spiritual life."¹²

"Whatever I may be, my soul is a child of the Divine and must reach the Divine sooner or later. I am

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imperfect, but seek after the perfection of the Divine in me and that not I but the Divine Grace will bring about; if I keep to that the Divine Grace itself will do all."¹³

"I want the Divine and nothing else. I want to give myself entirely to him and since my soul wants that, it cannot be but that 1 shall meet and realise him."¹⁴

"Since I want only the Divine, my success is sure, I have only to walk forward in all confidence and His own Hand will be there secretly leading me to Him by His own way and at His own time."¹⁵

REFERENCES

1. Collected Works of the Mother, Vol. 14 (Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 1978), p. 232.

2. Ibid., Vol. 6, pp. 123-124.

3. Letters on Yoga, Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library (Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 1970-73), Vol. 24, p. 1696.

4. Collected Works of the Mother, Vol. 10, pp. 22-23.

5. Letters on Yoga (SABCL, Vol. 24), p. 1717.

6. Ibid., p. 1753.

7. Ibid., pp. 1624-25.

8. Letters on Yoga (SABCL, Vol. 23), p. 1007.

9. Ibid. (SABCL, Vol. 24), p. 1709.

10. Collected Works of the Mother. Vol. 15, p. 181.

11. Letters on Yoga (SABCL, Vol. 23), p. 579.

12. Ibid. (SABCL, Vol. 24), p. 1666.

13. Ibid., p. 1754.

14. Letters on Yoga (SABCL, Vol. 23), p. 587.

15. Ibid., pp. 584-85.

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