Psychology, Mental Health and Yoga

Mastery, Mental Health and Yoga

During the past few decades, the state of mental health has come to be conceived more and more in positive terms, as denoting the presence of certain attributes associated with psychological well-being, rather than the mere absence of a diagnosable disturbance. One such positive view of mental health conceives it as a state of mastery. Perhaps the most prominent among those who have put forth such a view is the psychiatrist, Karl Menninger, who has described human response to life's challenges as consisting of five stages: Panic, Inertia, Striving, Coping, Mastery.* Some of the chief psychological characteristics associated with the five stages are as follows:

Panic: severe anxiety with almost total inability to relax; extreme attachment to things and persons, associated with a strong sense of possessiveness; violent or destructive feelings such as anger, cruelty, jealousy; wanting to possess or destroy others.

Inertia: aimlessness, boredom and depression; living in the past; motivated chiefly by pain-avoidance and the satisfaction of security needs; passivity and indolence; insensitiveness towards the feelings of others.

Striving: struggle to meet one's needs by controlling the environment and persons; motivated chiefly by biological needs; continual stress and tension; not inclined to relax unless compelled; critical of oneself and others;

* The five stages have been elaborated upon as a measuring scale of mental health by Dr. Wayne Dyer in The Sky's the Limit, New York: Pocket Books, 1981.

Page 129

competitive with others.

Coping: motivated by rational goals and interests; more or less successful management of oneself and one's life; a sense of direction, associated with confidence and self-reliance; more relaxed than tense; empathy towards others.

Mastery: motivated chiefly by ideals, such as Truth, Goodness and Beauty, sense of meaning and purpose in life; poise and centredness; deep sense of security and serenity; great sense of humour; understanding and acceptance of others.

Those familiar with the psychology of yoga would readily detect the correspondence between Panic, Inertia, Striving, Coping, and Mastery on one hand, and the qualities of Tamas, Rajas and Sattwa on the other. Inertia as described above is clearly a state of Tamas, a characteristic attributed in yoga psychology essentially to the physical consciousness. In Sri Aurobindo's words:

"The stigmata of Tamas are blindness and unconsciousness and incapacity and unintelligence, sloth and indolence and inactivity and mechanical routine and the mind's torpor and life's sleep and the soul's slumber.... At the heart of this inert impotence is the principle of ignorance and an inability or slothful unwillingness to comprehend, seize and manage the stimulating or assailing contact, the suggestion of environing forces and their urge towards fresh experience."¹

Both Panic and Striving represent different states of

Page 130

Rajas, the characteristic quality of the vital consciousness. Governed by Rajas, states Sri Aurobindo, a human being is impelled

"...to strive, to resist, to attempt, to dominate or engross his environment to assert his will, to fight and create and conquer. This is the mode of Rajas, the way of passion and action and the thirst of desire. Struggle and change and new creation, victory and defeat and joy and suffering and hope and disappointment are its children and build the many-coloured house of life in which it takes its pleasure. But its knowledge is an imperfect or a false knowledge and brings with it ignorant effort, error, a constant maladjustment, pain of attachment, disappointed desire, grief of loss and failure."²

Coping and Mastery reflect different degrees of the predominance of Sattwa, the quality inherent in mental consciousness. As Sri Aurobindo describes it, Sattwa makes for

"... clear comprehension, poise and balance... it understands, sympathises; it fathoms and controls and develops Nature's urge and her ways: it has an intelligence that penetrates her processes and her significances and can assimilate and utilise; there is a lucid response that is not overpowered but adjusts, corrects, harmonises, elicits the best in all things. This is the mode of Sattwa, the turn of Nature that is full of light and poise, directed to good, to knowledge, to delight and beauty, to happiness, right understanding, right equilibrium,

Page 131

right order: its temperament is the opulence of a bright clearness of knowledge and lucent warmth of sympathy and closeness. A fineness and enlightenment, a governed energy," an accomplished harmony and poise of the whole being is the consummate achievement of the sattwic nature."³

It is interesting to note from the above-stated parallels that Western psychological thought, which began with a highly materialistic view of things based on physiology and biology, representing a polar opposite of the Eastern spiritual viewpoint, is now coming close to the ideas of the East. However, psycho-spiritual concepts like mastery, meditation, disidentification, peace, spontaneity, living in the here and now, etc., which have been recently emerging in Western psychological thought, have a much deeper connotation in the East. This is due to the fact that in the East such concepts are founded on a system of psycho-spiritual thought and discipline, whereas in the West such a foundation is absent. The purpose of this essay is to bring out the deeper implications of the concept of mastery from the viewpoint of the Gita and Sri Aurobindo's yoga.

The Gita regards the ordinary human condition as a state of bondage. Purusha, the Soul, is bound by Prakriti or Nature. As Sri Aurobindo puts it:

"The soul is the witness, upholder, experiencer, but it is master only in theory, in fact it is not-master, anśa, so long as it consents to the Ignorance. For that is a general consent which implies that the Prakriti gambols about with the Purusha and does pretty well what she

Page 132

likes with him. When he wants to get back his mastery, make the theoretical practical, he needs a lot of tapasya* to do it."⁴

Bondage and limitation are brought about through the operation of the three Gunas - Tamas, Rajas and Sattwa - which are the three essential modes or qualities of Prakriti. Due to Tamas, the mode of inertia and unconsciousness, "man seeks only somehow to survive, to subsist so long as he may, to shelter himself in the fortress of an established routine of thought and action in which he feels himself to a certain extent protected from the battle, able to reject the demand which his higher nature makes upon him, excused from accepting the necessity of farther struggle and the ideal of an increasing effort and mastery."⁵ Rajas, the mode of passion, action and struggling emotion leads to "a growth of power and capacity, but it is stumbling, painful, vehement, misled by wrong notions, methods and ideals, impelled to a misuse, corruption and perversion of right notions, methods or ideals, and prone, especially, to a great, often an enormous, exaggeration of the ego."⁶ As a result of Sattwa, the mode of poise, knowledge and peace, "there is a more harmonious action, a right dealing with the nature, but right only within the limits of an individual light and a capacity unable to exceed the better forms of this lower mental will and knowledge."⁷

According to the Gita, man's sense of relative freedom and freewill comes from ahamkara, the ego, which is itself part of Prakriti and subject to the forces of Prakriti. Thus

* Austerity.

Page 133

the will of the ego is not truly a free will, but a will determined by Prakriti, formed in us by the sum of its own past action or Karma. Therefore, the first step towards mastery is freedom of the Purusha from bondage to Prakriti by overcoming the ignorance of identification with Prakriti, and thereby rising above the ego and the Gunas.

In order to rise beyond the action of the Gunas and attain liberation, it is necessary to discover the Purusha and live in its consciousness. Sri Aurobindo explains this as follows:

"The Purusha or basic consciousness is the true being or at least, in whatever plane it manifests, represents the true being. But in the ordinary nature of man it is covered up by the ego and the ignorant play of the Prakriti and remains veiled behind as the unseen Witness supporting the play of the Ignorance. When it emerges, you feel it as a consciousness behind, calm, central, unidentified with the play which depends on it. It may be covered over, but it is always there. The emergence of the Purusha is the beginning of liberation. But it can also become slowly the Master -slowly because the whole habit of the ego and the play of the lower forces is against that."⁸

One recommendation for the discovery of the true being and its liberation from the surface nature is "the practice of the separation of the Prakriti and the Purusha, the conscious Being standing back detached from all the movements of Nature and observing them as witness and knower and finally as the giver (or refuser) of the sanction

Page 134

and at the highest stage of the development, the Ishwara, the pure will, master of the whole Nature."⁹ This practice may appear to be similar to that of disidentification taught in Assagioli's system of Psychosynthesis. However, there is a crucial difference between disidentification as used in psychotherapy and as a spiritual practice. As a psychotherapeutic practice, disidentification generally involves taking one's stand in the mind in trying to distinguish the self from body, feelings and thoughts, and affirming to oneself, "I am not the body, 1 am not my feelings, I am not my thoughts." Such a practice is helpful in separating oneself to some extent from body, feelings and thoughts, and thereby partially freeing oneself to a small extent from their sway or domination. But as long as the true spiritual being remains veiled by body, feelings and mind, one is inevitably more or less identified with the physical, emotional and mental parts of the surface being. Therefore the partial disidentification one may obtain by exercising one's mental discrimination and mental will breaks down easily, causing one to fall back constantly into the common state of identification. A celebrated passage in the Gita describes the psychological process of this fall into identification in relation to mastery over the senses. Sri Aurobindo comments on the passage alluded to as follows:

"All intelligent human beings know that they must exercise some control over themselves and nothing is more common than this advice to control the senses; but ordinarily it is only advised imperfectly and practised imperfectly in the most limited and insufficient fashion. Even, however, the sage, the man of clear.

Page 135

wise and discerning soul who really labours to acquire complete self-mastery finds himself hurried and carried away by the senses. That is because the mind naturally lends itself to the senses; it observes the objects of sense with an inner interest, settles upon them and makes them the object of absorbing thought for the intelligence and of strong interest for the will. By that attachment comes, by attachment desire, by desire distress, passion and anger when the desire is not satisfied or is thwarted or opposed, and by passion the soul is obscured, the intelligence and will forget to see and be seated in the calm observing soul; there is a fall from the memory of one's true self, and by that lapse the intelligent will is also obscured, destroyed even. For, for the time being, it no longer exists to our memory of ourselves, it disappears in a cloud of passion; we become passion, wrath, grief and cease to be self and intelligence and will."¹⁰

As a spiritual practice, disidentification involves not merely the negative process of distinguishing body, feelings and mind as the not-self, but rather, a positive identification with the true spiritual being. Such an identification can be achieved, not by mere mental exercise, but by an all-absorbing concentration and an all-consuming aspiration for transcendence of the mind and dissolution of the ego. Herein lies a fundamental difference between yoga and psychotherapeutic approaches in general. The latter utilise the positive aspects of mind and ego for overcoming psychological disturbances or for promoting psychological growth. From the viewpoint of yoga, however, identification with mind and ego implies ignorance

Page 136

about one's true being. Such ignorance inevitably entails limitation, bondage and suffering. The higher aspects of mind and feeling can indeed bring some amelioration of the suffering, as they also can lead to a relative mastery. But true well-being and real mastery come only from the Self. These teachings of the Gita, variously expressed thus far, are succinctly recapitulated in the following passage:

"When we can live in the higher Self...we become superior to the method of the lower workings of Prakriti. We are no longer enslaved to Nature and her Gunas, but, one with the Ishwara, the master of our nature, we are able to use her without subjection to the chain of Karma, for the purposes of the Divine Will in us; for that is what the Greater Self in us is, he is the Lord of her works and unaffected by the troubled stress of her reactions. The soul ignorant in Nature, on the contrary, is enslaved by that ignorance to her modes, because it is identified there, not felicitously with its true self, not with the Divine who is seated above her, but stupidly and unhappily with the ego-mind which is a subordinate factor in her operations in spite of the exaggerated figure it makes, a mere mental knot and point of reference for the play of the natural workings. To break this knot, no longer to make the ego the centre and beneficiary of our works, but to derive all from and refer all to the divine Supersoul is the way to become superior to all the restless trouble of Nature's modes. For it is to live in the supreme consciousness, of which the ego-mind is a degradation, and to act in an equal and unified Will and Force and not in the unequal play of the Gunas which is a broken seeking and

Page 137

striving, a disturbance, an inferior Maya."¹¹

Bondage and mastery have thus far been explained from the viewpoint of the Gita in terms of Purusha, Prakriti, Gunas and Ishwara. Sri Aurobindo introduces another cardinal concept pertaining to the psychology of mastery - that of the psychic being. The psychic being is Chaitya Purusha, the Purusha in the heart, which constitutes the inmost being, as distinguished from the inner being which consists of Annamaya Purusha (the Purusha in the physical), Pranamaya Purusha (the Purusha in the vital) and Manomaya Purusha (the Purusha in the mental). The outer, the inner and the inmost parts of the being are spoken of in the following extract which alludes to mastery:

"There are, we might say, two beings in us, one on the surface, our ordinary exterior mind, life, body consciousness, another behind the veil, an inner mind, an inner life, an inner physical consciousness constituting another or inner self. This inner self once awake opens in its turn to our true real eternal self. It opens inwardly to the soul, called in the language of this yoga the psychic being which supports our successive births and at each birth assumes a new mind, life and body. It opens above to the Self or Spirit which is unborn and by conscious recovery of it we transcend the changing personality and achieve freedom and full mastery over our nature."¹²

According to Sri Aurobindo's Yoga, the psychic being is a portion of the Divine and is thus the Ishwara of our

Page 138

individual nature. Therefore the key to mastery over one's outer being and life lies in discovering the psychic and bringing it to the front. This is expressed in the following statements:

"The outer being, left to itself, is not very responsible; it is most often the plaything of the forces of Nature. But the inner or higher being, the deeper consciousness, is the master and builder of our destiny. That is why it is so important to discover this sovereign consciousness and unite with it in order to put an end to all the incoherencies of life and all the conflicts of Nature."¹³

"To be aware of one's central consciousness and to know the action of the forces is the first definite step towards self-mastery."¹⁴

"... the first step is the identification, and then, once you can keep this identification, the psychic governs the rest of the nature and life. It becomes the master of existence. So this is what we mean by the psychic coming in front. It is that which governs, directs even organises the life, organises the consciousness, the different parts of the being."¹⁵

"The most important thing for an individual is to unify himself around his divine centre; in that way he becomes a true individual, master of himself and his destiny. Otherwise, he is a plaything of forces that toss him about like a piece of cork on a river. He goes where he does not want to go, he is made to do things

Page 139

he does not want to do, and finally, he loses himself in a hole without having any strength to recover. But if you are consciously organised, unified around the divine centre, ruled and directed by it, you are master of your destiny."¹⁶

In ordinary life, human beings try to control undesirable feelings, thoughts and actions with the help of mental intelligence and mental will. However, too often the mind is unable to discern what is undesirable, and even when it can so discern, the mental will is often too weak to overcome the wrong movement. The psychic, on the other hand, has an immediate perception of what is right and wrong, and has an inherent power to reject automatically what is wrong. That is why the practice of yoga involves a progressive replacement of the mental control by psychic and spiritual self-mastery. As Sri Aurobindo states:

"In sadhana* the mental or moral control has to be replaced by the spiritual mastery - for that mental control is only partial and it controls but does not liberate; it is only the psychic and spiritual that can do that. This is the main difference in this respect between the ordinary and the spiritual life."¹⁷

"Your difficulty in getting rid of the aboriginal in your nature will remain so long as you try to change your vital part by the sole or main strength of your mind and mental will, calling in at most an indefinite and impersonal divine power to aid you.... If you want a true

* The practice of yoga.

Page 140

mastery and transformation of the vital movements, it can be done only on condition you allow your psychic being, the soul in you, to awake fully, to establish its rule and opening all to the permanent touch of the Divine Shakti*...."¹⁸

It should be evident from what has been stated above that the concept of mastery in yoga is much deeper than what it connotes in the West. It may be said that in the West, mastery, like other terms used to delineate the positive state of mental health, describes a quality of being which in the language of the Gita, would be called sattwic. Most human beings fall short of such an ideal state because they are governed primarily by Tamas and Rajas. However, from the viewpoint of yoga, the mastery conferred by Sattwa is only a relative one, since Sattwa too is a quality of Prakriti, the outer nature, which in our present state of Ignorance binds the Purusha, the true inner being. As Sri Aurobindo states:

"... richness of life, even a sattwic harmony of mind and nature does not constitute spiritual perfection.... Sattwa itself does not give the highest or the integral perfection; Sattwa is always a quality of the limited nature; sattwic knowledge is the light of a limited mentality, sattwic will is the government of a limited intelligent force. Moreover, Sattwa cannot act by itself in Nature, but has to rely for all action on the aid of Rajas, so that even sattwic action is always liable to the imperfections of Rajas; egoism, perplexity, inconsistency,

* Power.

Page 141

a one-sided turn, a limited and exaggerated will, exaggerating itself in the intensity of its limitations, pursue the mind and action even of the saint, philosopher and sage. There is a sattwic as well a rajasic or tamasic egoism, at the highest an egoism of knowledge or virtue; but the mind's egoism of whatever type is incompatible with liberation. All the three gunas have to be transcended. Sattwa may bring us near to the Light, but its limited clarity falls away from us when we enter into the luminous body of the divine Nature."¹⁹

Thus, according to yoga, true mastery can be attained only by becoming trigunātita, above and beyond the three Gunas, by disidentifying from Prakriti, and attaining "the true character of the Purusha, free, master, knower, and enjoyer".²⁰ For mastery lies in "the power of the internal consciousness - above as Atman, below as Purusha first witness and then master of the nature."²¹

As implied in the last quotation, the state of mastery is preceded by the witness state of liberation in which one becomes a detached, unidentified observer, unaffected by whatever takes place in the outer being and external environment. This is one of the methods taught in yoga for gaining control over the mind. Thus, in a letter to a disciple, Sri Aurobindo advises:

"Detach yourself from it [the habitual movement of thoughts] - make your mind external to it, something that you can observe as you observe things occurring in the street. So long as you do not do that it is difficult to be the mind's master."²²

Page 142

But detachment must culminate in a still higher slate before one can be said to have attained mastery. The distinction between detachment and mastery is explained by Sri Aurobindo thus:

"Detachment is the beginning of mastery, but for complete mastery there should be no reactions at all. When there is something within undisturbed by the reactions that means the inner being is free and master of itself, but it is not yet master of the whole nature. When it is master, it allows no wrong reactions - if any come they are at once repelled and shaken off, and finally none come at all."²³

In the language of the Gita, the Purusha has a higher status than also that of the free and passive witness, sāksi. By rising to that higher status one becomes Swarat, self-ruler, the Ishwara, Lord and Master. "When that is done, the Purusha is no longer only a witness, but also the master of his Prakriti, iśvara."²⁴

REFERENCES

1. The Synthesis of Yoga, Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library (Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 1970-73). Vol. 20. p. 221.

2. Ibid., pp. 221-22.

3. Ibid., p. 222.

4. Letters on Yoga (SABCL, Vol. 24), p. 1111.

5. Essays on the Gita (SABCL, Vol. 13), p. 49

6. Ibid., p. 358.

7. Ibid.

Page 143

8. Letters on Yoga (SABCL, Vol. 23), p. 1006.

9. Ibid., p. 673.

10. Essays on the Gita (SABCL, Vol. 13), pp. 93-94.

11. Ibid., p. 202.

12. Letters on Yoga (SABCL, Vol. 23), pp. 1020-21.

13. Collected Works of the Mother, Vol. 14 (Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 1980), p. 357.

14. Letters on Yoga (Cent. Ed., Vol. 23), p. 1011.

15. Collected Works of the Mother, Vol. 6, p. 334.

16. Ibid., Vol. 5, p. 139.

17. Letters on Yoga (SABCL, Vol. 24), p. 1298.

18. Ibid., pp. 1532-33.

19. The Synthesis of Yoga (SABCL, Vol. 21), p. 660.

20. The Synthesis of Yoga (SABCL, Vol. 20), p. 92.

21. Letters on Yoga (SABCL, Vol. 24), p. 1441.

22. Ibid., pp. 1268-69.

23. Letters on Yoga (SABCL, Vol. 23), p. 1012.

24. The Synthesis of Yoga (SABCL, Vol. 21), p. 739.

Page 144