THERE is in the Upanishad a description of the stage in man's life when he becomes so old and decrepit that he cannot walk except on a stick, tvam jίrņo daņdena vañcasi. At precisely that stage in our life, we in the Ashram received a call to plunge into the activities of our Playground. I was then perhaps the oldest among the inmates, and had long passed the fifty year limit once set by the ancients for repairing to the forest, pañcāśordhe vanam vrajet; I was in fact in my early sixties.
For at least twenty years previous to that, we had been taking it rather easy and were doing very little physical work or exercise. That had been what might be described as a period of inner preparation, a time devoted almost entirely to meditation and study. Lest however I should lose all elasticity of body, I had been making use of two opportunities for some kind of exercise. One was to ride on a bicycle once a week to the local French Post Office and back. The Mother used to receive her foreign mail in those days through that Post Office, and on me "had devolved the task of bringing in the mail. That incidentally was how I got my famous headgear: it came in connection with this particular item of work. During summer, the hot summer months of Pondicherry, I had to go to the Post Office in the blazing sun. It was quite a distance in those days and I felt I needed some kind of protection for my skull. I struck upon a device. The mail had to be carried in bags, one or two white canvas bags. I folded them up in two and put them on my head, the two corners of the bags sticking out on either side like a
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pair of horns. This gave the children of the local school an occasion for a hearty laugh one day: "Quel bonnet! quel bonnet!" – "What a cap! what a cap!" they cried. When I mentioned this to the Mother, she said, "All right, we shall see." We had a French lady, called in the Ashram by the name of Sarala, staying with us here at "Belle Vue", with her husband who was known as Shuchi. Shuchi died later and was buried in the public cemetery in Pondicherry. This Sarala was asked to devise something for my head. It was she who designed my skull-cap which has since been the inspiration for many a subsequent imitation.
Let me in this connection tell you another amusing story. One day there came to the Post Office a packet addressed to the Mother from Japan. It was war time and the rules were very strict, leg. any kind of undesirable matter should find entry. One of the Post Office employees, a Frenchman, opened the packet in my presence. He found in it- nothing else except a single sheet of paper with something on it that looked like a sketch – just the branch of a tree. The official handed me the paper with obvious disappointment, adding his comment, "Une branche quelconque" – "some sort of a branch!" The "branche" happened to be a fine piece of Japanese painting. But who would appreciate that? Not in any case a detective of the Post Office. I mentioned the incident to Sri Aurobindo. He could never forget the story; at the slightest opportunity he would come out with that "une branche quelconque".
Now to come back to the point. I was speaking of the kind of exercise I had in those days, that medieval period of our existence, perhaps you would call it. The second item in my physical education programme was still more impressive. It consisted in giving a very careful wash to my clothes when I took my bath. This allowed some exercise to the limbs and body and I considered this as the minimum needed for keeping up the physical tone; it did duty for push-ups and dumb-bells and everything else. I should add another
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item: that was walking, a kind of morning walk. Early in the morning every day I used to go out and deliver to the sadhaks the letters written to them by Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. In those days, of course, the Ashram houses were not so many and not so far apart, so it was not exactly a 1500 or 5000 metre walking race.
I have told you, we received the call to join the Playground activities. I was enlisted in the Blue Group. In those days it was the Mother who decided who would go to which group; in any case it was done with her knowledge and approval. Udar was our captain. We started learning the steps, "Un, deux, un, deux". Ages ago, I had done some military marching with the Volunteer Corps, but that was only for a few days. I remember how in that enthusiasm for everything Swadeshi, they had started giving the marching orders in Bengali.
I had to start on this new athletic career without any preliminary practice or training. Many of you may recall how we joined in our first competitive tournament, on the site along the sea-face where the Tennis grounds stand – they had not yet been built. I had no knowledge of the special technique, there was no warming up or anything. We just walked in and took our positions along the starting line, and off we went as soon as the whistle blew. We simply ran for our lives, with the result that I sprained a thigh muscle in my first run. Luckily, this happened near the finishing line, so I could somehow finish the race. The results were not bad: I shared the second place with Pavitra and Yogananda – the first position went to someone, a sadhu who is no longer with us. I took part in the long jump in the "same manner, without any previous practice or warming up. Some people advised me to do a little preliminary training but my reply was, "My sole events in the course of a whole year are a single race and three jumps. They do not deserve more." This is the opening chapter in my new career of athletics.
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At that time I had not the faintest notion that one day I would develop into a regular athlete, that is to say, undergo all kinds of training and exercise. I told you once about the difference between the physical training activities here and the way we used to set about them in our. time. This is an age of science and those were the days of untrained skill. Let me illustrate from an experience I had in football. We never observed the rule that a proper warming up is needed before one joins the game. We entered the field straightway, and it has happened' several times that after the first long run at the beginning of the game I felt absolutely worn out and wondered how on earth I was going to last through the game. Of course, everything was all right after a while and the body received a new influx of energy as it got warmed up – we used to call it "heating up the blood". Today, the first and most important principle of any kind of game or other exercise is "training", a detailed and minute training. Formerly, one could pass off as a master by simply mastering the rules of the game. This applied not only to games like cricket or football; even in our own native wrestling and lathi-play, "training" meant nothing more than getting acquainted with all the tricks and applying them correctly in practice. But that is not what is now meant by "training". "Training" implies a special preparation of the body, making it apt for a special kind of activity. First of all, One has to acquire a general all-round physical fitness. Next, one has to find out which particular parts of the body and which of the muscles are specially called -into action in any particular movements and these have to be specially trained with a view to give them the necessary strength, endurance and skill, exactly like a material instrument, as if they were bits of dead matter. In whatever activity you wish to specialise, – for specialisation seems to be the aim of physical culture today, – you have to prepare yourself for it; the preparation itself becomes the main objective, the end in view is relegated to the second position. You take part in a 100 metres race,
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actually a matter of a few seconds only. But in order to prepare for the race, you have to train for several hours every day, for days on end over a period of months and perhaps years.
Formerly, the entire emphasis was on the game itself, not so much on the person who played the game; it used to be said that it was the game that made the player. But now the scales have turned the other way: the player has become the main interest. The concentration is on the player himself and his training is the main thing. He has first of all to build up the body, next his vital forces, and finally even his mind and will power have to be geared to the end in view; the inner psychological factors are taken particularly into account today. In science too the same 'thing is noticeable, even in the study of physical sciences. Formerly, the whole effort of science lay in discovering and establishing the existence of the separate, self-existing and independent elements in Nature and in finding out the mechanism of their action through the methods of observation and experiment. Now it is being said, observation and experiment are all right so far as they go, but at the same time one cannot ignore the person who makes the observation and experiment; he too has an importance, perhaps a prime importance.
To a certain extent, I too have gone through this phase of modern "training", as you all know. I have given up the old methods of learning by rule-of-thumb and have tried to acquire some kind of proficiency through a process of regular training, following in the footsteps of many among yourselves, although I may not have been able to tread the lines of our Madanlal. His theory seems to be that the more effort you put in, "the greater becomes your skill or ability and that there is no game on earth that you cannot master by sheer dint of hard work. Madanlal himself is a living proof of his doctrine, for he is without a rival in this method of hard painstaking practice. There are, as you know, two main types among those who do well in studies or – shall we say?
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– there are two ways of becoming a good student. There are those who, gifted with natural intelligence and ability, waste the whole year in all sorts of extra-curricular activities and in pleasures and pastimes and then read up for days and nights for a month or two just before the examination and get through the test and even secure high places. There is the second type who read and work hard throughout the whole year, devote some time every day to their studies, and never run the risk of falling ill or having a nervous breakdown about the time of the examination on account of excessive work. Our Madanlal belongs to this second category. He is really out to prove by his own example that definition of genius which makes it nothing but the capacity for taking infinite pains.
I have to mention another name in this connection. For much of what I have now achieved in the field of athletics I owe a deep debt to our Chinmoy. He has been my coach. What have I learnt from him? It is enthusiasm. What do I mean by enthusiasm? I shall explain. One of the secrets of physical training is that you must always try to perform a little more than your capacity, or what you may think is the limit of your powers. Perhaps it was with this end in view that in our time when one had to exercise a particular part of the body, the instructions were to go on repeating the movement until one began to sweat and felt exhausted. For how long am I to manipulate the dumb-bells or the Indian clubs? Until you are tired, the chart said, that is, until you felt you could do no more. Now of course nothing is done by such haphazard guesswork. You have to repeat the movements for a certain definite number of times, by actual count, say, five or six repetitions for the first day, to be increased by one or two every day or week, a final limit being set in respect of each individual according to his capacity. This is the method of scientific training today.
Whatever the method you adopt, your strength and capacity have to be increased in this manner. If you go beyond
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your limits, there is always a chance of accidents, but some accept the risk. The carefree enthusiast asks you to hitch your wagon to a star whereas the more cautious would point to the tragedy of Icarus. The legendary hero of Greek mythology had invented wings for man to fly, but he built them of wax. His aim had been to reach the sun, but as he came near that burning orb the wax got melted by the heat and his wings vanished and he was hurled back headlong down to earth.
Well, it was from Chinmoy that I got the courage or the foolhardiness for an attempt of this kind. This has been of great help to me. But there was a considerable resistance born of old age, even though we are here precisely to get rid of that. The resistance comes from two sources. It is there first of all in your own individual consciousness; you have heard of the adage about getting old before twenty. It is true that here in the Ashram we are often apt to forget, or we try to forget, to take count of our age. For example, even at the age of sixty, I did not quite realise or, rather, my body did not feel – it is quite natural for the mind not to feel, but the body itself must realise – that it carried any load of more than twenty-five or thirty years. This kind of feeling must have come at one time or another to many among the older people here. This is indeed the root idea behind our desire to conceal the true age and reckon our age at less than the true figure. This recourse to a slight falsehood comes. of an attempt to express and maintain the fact of our youth that is still effective in our life and inner consciousness in spite of our years. But the inexorable law of the external physical nature is still in operation; It invades our mind and' afflicts it at times. Moreover, in addition to this resistance in our own individual consciousness 01.' frame of mind, there is pressing upon us from all around the collective resistance, a resistance that comes from the consciousness arid mental attitude of everybody else, the neighbours with whom we live. Even if we manage to forget, they will remind us of the pressure
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of advancing age. It is difficult ordinarily to escape from the influence of this double pressure. But to get rid of this influence and pressure is after all the very aim of our endeavour here.
Physical culture has its side of expenditure or utilisation of energy when you execute a particular movement and follow it to the end. But there is, in addition and precisely because of this, another side to it; that is the gathering or accumulation of energy. The body utilises energy, so it needs to recuperate it; that is the way it conserves its energy. A man works during the day and sleeps at night; the energy he spends in the waking hours he recuperates at night-time. You may want to know, "But then what about the food he takes?" Food, that is, adequate nutrition, is a vital source of energy, but I am not discussing the need for food in this particular context. I am not speaking here of the need for the material basis of physical substance. My point just now is about the life-force or physical energy in the body. The method of acquiring and storing that energy is what may be called relaxation, which implies a release of tension, a loosening of the limbs and muscles. We are all familiar with the process; all I wish to do here is to give a somewhat elaborate account of this relaxation, for in my experience I have noticed some special features about it.
The first thing to note is this. All those who take part in physical exercise are, no doubt, already familiar, or they have to get familiar, with the truth that relaxation is not merely an end-product of exercise, it has a place in. exercise itself. Let me explain.
In all physical-culture activities and in every exercise, one has to pay particular attention to one thing, for success depends on it to a large extent. Normally, we are inclined to work up all our muscles and nerves at the same time, even when only a certain limited number actually come into play. This means tension. And if the tension is excessive, it leads to what we call stiffness or rigidity. Instead of that, what we
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should do is to give as much relaxation as possible to the other parts of the body and work up only such of the muscles as are actually called into play and for the time are needed for the work. These too should remain passive, that is to say, relaxed, till the very moment they are called into play. You have heard that story about the watch. One day it suddenly became conscious about itself and discovered that it had been working constantly without a break or pause for rest for twenty-four hours a day. So it complained to the owner, "My dear sir, all of you work no doubt but you take rest as well: if you work the whole day, you get the whole night for sleep. But I have to go on working throughout the day and night without a wink of sleep." And the owner replied, "But don't you see, you go on ticking and between the two ticks you take a good rest." This is a very fine analogy. When, for instance, we take part in a race, that is exactly what takes place. It is not at all necessary to tense both the legs at the same time. All that is needed is to use with all their strength the muscles of the leg that is to strike the ground, but only for the duration of contact; they could be held relaxed until the next stroke. The other leg should in the meantime remain relaxed, and alert – I say alert, not active – till its turn arrives. This applies to all the other parts of the body. We might recall in this connection the two types of heart-beat, the systole and the diastole, the movement of contraction and that of expansion, with an interval or pause in between.
This, in fact, is the way to a right working of the body: right, first because it is efficient and secondly because it is harmonious. It is efficient in the sense that it gives better results and acts with more power and vigour. For, under this method, only those muscles are brought into play that are needed and exactly when they are needed. If other muscles get worked up by a sort of reflex action, that leads to the wastage of a good part of the energy through useless channels, it is not utilised in full when and where it is needed.
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And secondly, as I say it makes for harmonious action which acquires the natural ease of a rhythmic graceful movement. Relaxation is just another name for what is known as the pause in the rhythmic movement of poetry; for after all, it is pause and movement that make up rhythm.
But this is not all. I have used the term relaxation in the sense of pause or rest, but I do not thereby imply that it is a going off to sleep. Sleep is normally a lapse into inconscience and that brings inertia and rigidity. One must remain equally conscious and awake during rest as during work. Unconsciousness in action renders the act mechanical, brings with it a lifeless rigidity. The movements of the body have to be permeated by an awakened consciousness, so that the consciousness in rest is helped thereby to get infused with new force. If the consciousness is of the right sort, the new force can descend even from supraphysical worlds and give to the movements of the body a supreme beauty and strength.
In fact, relaxation is in truth what in our language, in the technical phraseology of Hathayoga, is known as śavāsana, the corps-like stance. But h could be made into a stance of life instead of death. And that indeed is its true object. In other words, it is not a negative condition of doing nothing, it can be changed into a positive state. We are apt to think of it as a state of absolute inaction. That is not true, it has to be raised to a condition of positive action, at least when we are awake. Normally, to remain silent and still with all the limbs of the body in a state of complete relaxation means drifting into sleep. One is no doubt rested in sleep, but a conscious sleep is preferable to the unconscious type. Conscious sleep means conscious immobility.
There are two or three steps in this process. First, there comes a general relaxation and immobility of the whole body. Next, there has' to be a relaxation of each separate part, one after the other. One may begin with the toes – there is a relaxation of the muscles and joints of the toes; then the muscles and joints of the ankles and legs, the knees, the thighs,
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the abdomen and the waist, the chest and throat and the face including the lips and chin, and finally the forehead and the eyelids and the scalp are all relaxed in turn and stilled. In the same way one may come down step by step from one level to the next down to the toes. All one has to do is to watch and see how everything gets relaxed and falls quiet, just as the thought waves subside and grow calm.
This all of you can try and you can see for yourself how greatly. it invigorates the body, how fresh and alive it becomes.
The results are still more deep and intense if you can rise a step higher; then it becoms a part of yoga and spiritual training. To relax a part of the body means unravelling one of its knots or strands, widening and opening out what was limited within bounds and self-centred; that means putting it in contact with all that is around, with the universal. It is as if you had within you a pipeline which was corked and, clamped and which you open up now to let in the gradual flow of the universal life-energy. This, in more erudite language, is called cakrabheda, breaking through the six or, according to another count, twelve or more centres of consciousness or energy that are there in the body; these are liberated and brought into play. Through śavāsana one becomes unified with the universal life-energy; from head to foot there streams in the vitality inherent in all Nature.
. One may proceed still farther, take a higher step. I have. just been speaking of ascending and descending up and down the different parts and levels of the body, as it were polishing them smooth in the process, making them quiet and still. But when the being or consciousness reaches the level of the head and takes its firm station there, it can not only widen itself out by opening horizontally on all sides, it can also rise to a higher plane, even without any definite knowledge, simply with the feeling that it has reached somewhere. You may remember that somewhere in the Beyond is the Force and the Presence of the Mother. If you can get into touch
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with Her nearness and presence there in this manner, then you have already broken through the six centres, accomplished the end of Hathayoga and Tantra. There comes pouring into each limb not only a wide peace but also a strength and an illumination. This you may say is an easy simplified method of breaking through the centres.
There is an enormous difference between consciousness and unconsciousness; they belong to two different worlds as it were. The same work or. action, if done in an unconscious-manner, will give one result; the result will be very different if it is done consciously. The Mother once told you about this. How many times in the day we have to go up and down the stairs, but most of the time we do it in an unconscious manner, mechanically like inanimate things. Such unconscious or mechanical movements and exercise do not help the body much. But if you do the same movements consciously, if the steps are taken and the legs moved with full consciousness or concentration, two good results follow: first, you avoid the possibility of an accident, for then there is little chance of stumbling or slipping down the stairs, and secondly, your muscles develop more strength and capacity. Indeed, the entire body may gain in vitality by this little exercise if performed consciously.
The lower animals know of no such conscious exercise, in fact they have no possibility of any kind of voluntary training. Their bodies grow and the muscles develop, naturally and inevitably, as they grow in years. And they decline as naturally and inevitably with the coming of old'
age. You know the story of the animal in the fable who had lost its power to bite and scratch, galita-nakha-dantah. Man alone of all terrestrial creatures has the capacity of over-passing the limits set by Nature, and he does that by virtue of his conscious power of will and thought.
That is why the Mother has often said that the real foundation of all work, of all true action is peace. The vast multitudinous movement of the universe has for its base an
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unfathomable Peace; out of the Silence springs the rhythmic Word of the Truth.
Now to conclude. .
It is not true that an elderly person taking part in exercises undergoes an unnecessary strain or should be made an object of ridicule. It is not a mere waste of energy, there is a definite feature of gain. An old man doting on his pretty young wife? Perhaps so, if you like: you know the famous line of Valmiki on Dasharatha, how he held his young wife dearer even than life, vrddhasya tarunī bhāryā prānebhyo'pi garīyasi. An old man may very well fall in love with exercise much in the same way. To young people in the abundance of their youthful vitality, the need for physical exercise is not always so apparent. How the children of our Green Group shun like poison the rules and regulations of the Playground and try to shirk work is known to their captains. But for an elderly person accustomed to regular training, to miss a single exercise-period seems like wasting a whole day: he feels so out of sorts.
But apart from the question of likes and dislikes, there is a real difference, a difference in kind, between the old and the young. To young people physical exercise is something that is easy, spontaneous and natural; in their case the bodies. execute the movements out of a natural capacity for imitation, by virtue of an instinctive reaction or habit. When a child learns to take his first steps, it does so because it sees others doing the same; one acts as one sees – yad-drstam tat krtam. The movements are passed on to the limbs directly from the vision. It is not quite the same thing with an elderly person. He has first to see the movements executed, he has to remember them and his own movements follow upon a kind of reflection; it is the mind that has to act as intermediary. The mind has to commit them to memory and it is only then that the body can be made to obey, like a servant taking orders from the master. This process has its points both good and bad.
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The first defect is that the body takes time to learn and, what is worse, the movements it executes remain somewhat rigid, lifeless and inharmonious. But good results may come and do come if one pays attention. In other words, the movements of the body can be performed consciously. Generally speaking, so long as we are young, our physical movements and exercises are carried out more or less unconsciously, just as the animals act naturally and automatically under the impulse of habit. We are not always conscious of what we are doing. But as we grow in age this spontaneity of the body disappears and one has to cajole it into action. That is to say, the movements have to be done consciously. As I have already remarked before, it is this conscious action that is one of the gifts of age. I should, however, add that this consciousness is not the same thing as the deliberate power of the intellect. Deliberation is only the beginning of conscious growth. But mere deliberation rather adds to the rigidity of the body. Still, it is a necessary stage in the growth of consciousness, a first step in that direction.
The very aim of life is to grow in consciousness. We pass through life mostly in a state of ignorance and inconscience, under subjection to Nature. In place of that we have to become conscious, not only in a general way, but by infusing consciousness into every limb in its activity. The result will . be that there will manifest in them a light, a beauty, and finally a light and force that are not of this world, but come from the higher ranges.
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