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The Means of Realisation
Vedanta is merely an intellectual assent, without Yoga. The verbal revelation of the true relations between the One and the Many, the intellectual acceptance of the revelation and the dogmatic acknowledgement of the relations do not lead us beyond metaphysics, and there is no human pursuit more barren and frivolous than metaphysics practised merely as an intellectual pastime, a play with words & thoughts, when there is no intention of fulfilling thought in life or of moulding our inner state and outer activity by the knowledge which we have intellectually accepted. It is only by Yoga that the fulfilment and moulding of our life and being in the type of the true relations between God and the soul can become possible. Therefore every Upanishad has in it an element of Yoga as well as an element of Sankhya, the scientific psychology on which Yoga is founded. Vedanta, the perception of the relations between God in Himself and God in the world, Sankhya, the scientific, philosophical and psychological analysis of those relations and Yoga, called also by the Rishis Yajna, their practical application in social life, religious worship and individual discipline & self-perfection, is and has always been the whole substance of the Hindu religion. Whatever we know of God, that we ought in every way to be and live, is almost the only common dogma of all Hindu sects and schools of every description. If then we know this of God and ourselves that we and He are one, So ‘ham asmi, but divided by a movement of self-awareness which differentiates our forward active movement of waking life from the great life behind that knows and embraces all, then to recover that oneness in our waking state becomes the supreme aim and meaning of every individual existence. Nothing connected only with the movement of division can be of any moment to us, neither our bodily life and health, nor our
Page – 421 family welfare, nor our communal wellbeing compared with this immense self-fulfilment; they can only be of importance as means or movements in the self-fulfilment. If, farther, we know that by recovering our secret oneness with God we shall also be at one with the world and that hatred, grief, fear, limitation, sickness, mortality, the creations of the divided movement, will no longer be able to exercise their yoke upon us, then the abandonment of all else, if necessary, for the one thing needful, becomes not only the supreme aim and meaning of human life, but our only true interest. Even if, as is quite probable, we cannot in one birth attain to the fullness of this grand result yet it is clear that even a little progress towards it must mean an immense change in our life & inner experience and be well worth the sacrifice and the labour. As the Gita says with force, “A little of this rule of life saves man out of his great fear.” If farther a man knows that all mankind is intended to attain this consummation, he being one life with that divine movement called humanity, it must also be part of his self-fulfilment to pour whatever fullness of being, knowledge, power or bliss he may attain, out on his fellow beings. It is his interest also, for humanity being one piece, it is difficult for the individual to attain fullness of life here when the race creates for him an atmosphere of darkness, unrest and base preoccupation with the cares of a half-intellectualised animal existence. So strong has this atmosphere become in the Iron Age, that it is the rule for the individual who seeks his own salvation to sever himself from life and society and content himself with only the inner realisation. Modern Hinduism has become, therefore, in all but its strongest spirits, absorbed in the idea of an individual salvation. But our Vedic forefathers were of a different stuff. They had always their eye on the individual in the race. Nothing is more remarkable in the Veda than the absolute indifference & even confusion with which the singular and plural are used by the Singer, as if “I” & “we” were identical in meaning, and the persistence with which the Rishi regards himself as a representative soul, as it were, of the vishám devayatínám, the peoples in their seeking after the Godhead. We find the same transition in the Isha from the singular “pashyami” of the successful representative soul
Page – 422 realising his oneness with God to the plural asman when he turns to pray for the equal purification and felicity of his fellows. Our ideal, therefore, is fixed,—to become one with God and lead individually the divine life, but also to help others to the divine realisation and prepare, by any means, humanity for the kingdom of God on earth,—satyadharma, satyayuga. Our means is Yoga. Yoga is not, as the popular mind too often conceives, shutting oneself in a room or isolating oneself in a monastery or cave and going through certain fixed mental and bodily practices. These are merely particular and specialised types of Yogic practice. The mental and bodily practices of Rajayoga and Hathayoga are exercises of great force and utility, but they are not indispensable. Even solitude is not indispensable, and absolute solitude limits our means and scope of self-fulfilment. Yoga is the application, by whatever means, of Vedanta to life so as to put oneself in some kind of touch with the high, one, universal and transcendent Existence in us & without us in our progress towards a final unity. All religious worship, sincerely done, all emotional, intellectual and spiritual realisation of that which is higher than ourselves, all steadily practised increase of essential power, purity, love or knowledge, all sacrifice and self-transcending amounts to some form of Yoga. But Yoga can be done with knowledge or without knowledge, with a higher immediate object or with a lower immediate object, for a partial higher result or for the fullest divine perfection and bliss. Yoga without knowledge can never have the force of Yoga with knowledge, Yoga with the lower object the force of Yoga with the higher object, Yoga for a partial result the force of Yoga for the full & perfect result. But even in its lowest, most ignorant or narrowest forms, it is still a step towards God.
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