1/23/18
Yoga Darsana verse 2
Where the seer, the sight and the
seen
Are not known, there the heart
Should be joined while vasana is present.
Such is yoga - thus the yoga
knower.
Nataraja Guru’s translation:
Where,
the seer, the sight and the seen
Are
not present, there the heart
Should
be joined as long as incipient memory factors (are present);
Such
is Yoga, (says) the
knower of yoga.
Coping
with vasanas is a key element of yoga—we might even call it the key element—and the class did a masterful
job of scrutinizing the most important instructions woven into Nitya’s
commentary. Vasanas are famously resistive of transformation. They do not
readily respond to mere thinking or willing. Rather they have to be “defunded,”
with the energy they demand being redirected to better purposes.
In
review, the difference between the two forms of conditioning, samskaras and
vasanas, is that the former are memories from the present life and the latter
from previous lives. In other words, vasanas are our genetic dispositions, a
concept from thousands of years before the advent of microscopes and consequent
gene theory, but remarkably similar in practical terms. It hardly matters what
we label our conditioning, since both types participate in shaping our actions
all the time. Our genetic propensities are clothed in present-life concepts
which are bestowed on us and reinforced by all the conditioned people already
present on the planet when we arrived here ourselves. We would have been very
fortunate if any of them had suggested that the way we perceive and conceive
the world is the basis of our psychic oppression: instead they were all eager
to “show us the ropes” and help us to “fit in” by being identically bound in
the way they are. As Narayana Guru laments in Atmo 56, “Where is the end to
this?” How about the Portland Gurukula?
The
point is that we cannot just decide to change and voila! change will happen.
Most of the process is outside our immediate control. We are only beginning to
have a neuronal theory that makes sense of the laborious process of rewiring
our brains. The sages of the past often enough had no clear idea of how their
miraculous escape from bondage happened. They talked it up as a terrific state
of mind, and wove all kinds of wild fantasies about what brought it about, but
most of those look a lot like fairytales to the modern mind. The state was true
but the route to it was imaginary. There is a pot of gold at the end of the
rainbow, but both gold and rainbow are only symbols representing something
highly mysterious. Narayana Guru was a rare version of high intelligence
combined with exceptional erudition, which resulted in an understanding that
was steadily pared of its excesses all through his life. By the time late in
life when he composed Darsanamala, he had deconstructed his philosophy to the
bare bones, to the essence of what is going on psychologically. He didn’t make
up fairytales to explain how he got to an amazing place. He just looked inside
for a long time and found who he already was.
Narayana
Guru refers to the heart in this verse, and it can be somewhat misleading that
the commentary talks about head and heart or brain and heart. Heart is the
core, the central, neutral space (or non-space) that we have called the Karu or
the Absolute. It’s the real pot of gold. It may be symbolized by the heart
organ, but is not merely that. It is the locus of intuition. To be in that
core, that pacified core, all our scheming, promotional activities (though they
have their place) have to be set aside.
Nitya
first speaks of the head part, but doesn’t speak specifically about the heart
as yet:
What is relevant in localizing
consciousness in the head and the heart is warranted by two specific features
of consciousness. One is the urge to know, the attention that is sustained, the
manipulation that one feels somewhat compulsively to make, and relating to the
goal as the main motivational factor connected with one’s primary drive, to
which every shade of one’s behavior is intrinsically related…. On the whole
this aspect of consciousness is responsible for the total involvement of the
entire organism to make a performance of action.
It sounds like it, but I think Nitya isn’t dividing the two
organs, rather he is affirming they are both doing the same thing. Deb
clarified it a bit by saying our heart is where our values and emotions are,
and it is also where we get lost and where the incipient memories arise. The
heart is an arena of multiple tangents and distractions. We can bring them back
into ourselves and sit undisturbed. Only in a pacified heart does yoga become
established.
Jan
loved the sentence near the end: “This is achieved by making the light of pure
spirit prevail upon the heart with a discipline that constantly diffuses the
ego’s craving for power, glory and pleasure.” It isn’t that we have to force
the issue, but only to let in the light. Light and pure wisdom are the same
thing. And then Jan added, we do have to restrain the beasts that want to take
over.
Deb
seconded that emotion, agreeing that discipline is needed, and that’s what
Narayana Guru recommends in joining the heart with the Unknown. Doing that
allows the spirit to be the actor, rather than the ego, so that we act on the
basis of a universal harmony instead of as separate individuals.
I
added that light is let in when we take away our programs. The light is already
in us, but our programs obscure it. Even when our programs are to let in the
light, it’s the programmed part that
gets in the way. We wind up doing a program rather than basking in the light,
and the ego is satisfied because it is all very explainable, and thus
defensible. Just dark.
Curiously,
Susan had just been listening to a talk by Alan Watts where he said if you
search for truth you are in fact pushing it away. We are already truth, so any
search is bound to lead away from it.
This
got Bill musing on the complexities of the ego’s collusion with the intellect.
We need our intellect to function effectively in the world, yet it can turn
nefarious. He felt that if you follow a light that isn’t merely self-interest,
you can act honorably.
This
of course is the exact opposite of the modern religion that enthrones
self-interest as its absolute value, its God. Well this does too, in a way,
only its self interest is modified by knowing that the Self includes everyone
and everything. It’s a Self-interest that isn’t limited to an excruciatingly
small version of the self, one that doesn’t care what misery and destitution it
leaves in its wake. It cares very much, on a grand scale.
Nitya
definitely warns us about the collusion of the ego and the intellect, in a
complex paragraph:
As both retention and affection
are closely linked with the ego, the ego should be further examined. The ego as
such has no power to do anything unless it can wield the faculty of
illumination and the faculty of discrimination. The Self is the only source of
illumination. The Self is not the ego. Ego is a projected identity on the
subtle aspect of nature which has gone into the procreative matrix of a person.
In other words, ego is a shadowy person. It is and it is not. It is this aspect
of the ego which says ‘I know’ or ‘I do not know’. Its power to discriminate is
the more vital and functionally efficient aspect. This, of course, is to be
associated with buddhi, or
intelligence. Buddhi is again a link
to the Self or the spirit. Its power to perceive and discriminate is the
borrowed light of the Self. At the same time, it is loaded with the incipient
memories retained by a person. Furthermore, it is subject to the influence of
the triple qualities of procreative matter, such as being pure and sublime;
being kinetic; and being retentive, inertial or opaque.
So the intellect has its flaws, but when defended by the ego
it may find itself safely beyond criticism. This is where it can really lead us
into disasters of all sorts. Intellect- and ego-driven actions often backfire,
if not explode.
I
have been reading Narayana Guru’s biography that Nancy Y. is preparing for
publication. He magnificently embodied the yogic approach to conflict, of how
to be successful as a neutral participant. I will tuck one typical story into
Part II as an example. One day you can read the whole biography. It’s so
uplifting to see that wisdom can carry the day. The peaceful revolution
Narayana Guru inspired may well be the largest one of its kind in history, a
testimony not only to him but to the many great souls among the downtrodden
people of the time, burning for a chance to express their thwarted vasanas for
peace, justice, tolerance and much more. The Guru showed that by going into the
pacified state, you are where the power of truth resides. We have to get below
the conflicting turbulence to rediscover this source, and that’s where he
directs us to “join our hearts.”
Paul
brought up a familiar adage of his, that the ego should not be the master, but
is better as a servant. In the light of the Yoga Darsana, I suggested that
neither position was adequate: the ego should be a Good Citizen, and neither a
slave nor a master. There is always a balanced position in between the
extremes, and that’s where yoga aims its arrow. A master gives orders and a
slave or servant takes them. A good citizen acts according to their best
understanding, making an optimal contribution to the needs of the moment.
Giving and taking orders are outside of the purview of healthy citizenship.
Knowing what’s best is the key, and it is disturbed by any imbalance.
This
brought Jan back to the idea of discipline. It has to be an internally directed
choice, and not a set of rules to follow. It isn’t a one-time accomplishment,
where once you get it you never slip up ever again. We slip in and out of
successful actions, but that’s okay. Our blunders show us where to work, where
to try to let the light back in.
Deb
reprised an idea we have kicked around that the measure of the depth of your
understanding isn’t that you never make mistakes but how quickly you recover
from them. Do you spend days regretting your slips and kicking yourself for
them, or do you pick yourself up and carry on with head held high? I agreed,
and noted that so many spiritual biographies make it sound like there is one
moment of realization and then everything is perfect ever after. That means if
anything goes wrong then you weren’t enlightened after all. Eternal perfection
may have happened a few times in human history, but for the rest of us we learn
by doing, and especially by screwing up. Much of our work has been to stop
amplifying our mistakes by adding guilt and self-punishment to the brew.
We
could easily imagine that the source of behavior is in both the head and heart,
but we usually divvy it up the way Nitya relates it:
The act of mentation, which is
allegorically said to be of the head and not of the heart, has direct reference
to the illumination of a gestalt, a theme, or on an ensemble, which is amply
made available through perception and the logical orientation of it with one’s
cognitive ability.
Karen
recalled hearing that the longest and hardest journey is for the mind to travel
18 inches, down to the heart. So true.
Our
genetic makeup can be read in every cell of our organism, and we are coming to
understand scientifically that memories are also held by the whole body as well
as in specific parts of the brain. No matter how we conceive of the process,
urges are arising in the hidden depths and surging up through our whole being,
getting modified by more peripheral parts of our personality that correlate it
with the cultural and physical demands or our environment, and being expressed
in a rough approximation of our presumed intentions. The whole business is so
profound! The tragic aspect is that we only express a tiny percentage of our
true capacity. The original impulse contains universes of possibilities, yet we
are experts at whittling it down to a toothpick.
The
way I think of this, and it is admittedly blasphemous, is that some vasanas are
expressing our best potentials, while others are detritus from the ancient past
that are no longer useful or relevant. Our ego (hopefully armed with real
intelligence) decides which vasanas to promote and which to consign to the ash
bin. High values are attended to and lower selfish desires are stifled. The
traditional belief is that all vasanas are bad and should be burnt to a crisp so
they don’t influence us. I see that as little more than a trick to fool the
ego, which does very often fail us by making poor choices. It’s a way to take
decision-making out of the ego’s hands, so to speak. But I think a
contemplative person can discriminate in a healthy way. I quoted the I Ching:
“He who acts from these deep levels makes no mistakes.” I would say “makes
fewer mistakes.” Or better, acts well.
We
have discussed earlier how our vasanas are able to arrange the world around us
to provide them the opportunity for expression in a way that conforms to the
situation. Now we are going to really manage them. The verse’s advice is that
so long as the ego is having prejudicial ideas about the vasanas, we should
have recourse to the stillness of samadhi
and not give them any energy at all. If persisted in long enough, they will
eventually expire, leaving the contemplative in a vast empty field:
If yoga is to be understood as samadhi, the modulations
which
spontaneously happen at the cognitive level should be quelled, and they should
also be made inoperative at the affective level. This is why the Guru
recommends the triple absence of individuation – that is, the perceiver, the
perceived, and the act of perception – as an accomplished fact of the pacified
heart. All we have said hitherto is to be visualized entirely to connote the
word hrt, heart, used in this verse
by the Guru. The affectation of the ego will persist as long as the ego is
infatuated with the glamour of the incipient memory.
The Guru, through his foil Vidyananda, amplifies this idea
in his commentary in Part II. It definitely is what he epitomizes in the verse
itself.
Deb
responded that what Nitya underlines here is that in any experience whether positive
or negative, if we are actualizing it with the triple factors of perception and
perceiver and perceived, we are caught in illusory world of individuation. To
get to that deep core, we must try and see through that division of
consciousness.
This
is right. The triple division works well in practice only if you see it as one
in essence. Then the other is also you. That awareness changes everything you
do. You no longer have the urge to dominate and control the other, and you
can’t turn your back on suffering. It is impossible to continue as a small
isolated unit adrift in endless space. You are “a piece of the continent, a
part of the main,” in John Donne’s immortal words.
To
me, the crucial thing is to remove the ego from its perch as the controlling
operator of our life. Using contemplative insight, to teach it humility. The
ego is one essential part of a long train of magnificent operations, and it is
the beneficiary of all the profundities of our being. Instead of burying them
in the subconscious, some of them could be let out to play. A fearful ego won’t
allow anything other than its petty hopes and desires to hold the field. It has
to be reassured that letting go will be to its benefit, along with the rest of
our whole being, not to mention our neighborhood.
The
most salient point here is what does this mean in a practical sense? Jan
invited us to come back next week with an example to share of how we manage
vasanas. She made a beginning by thinking of them as manifesting as self-talk, words
that you repeat that keep a familiar cycle going in your head. It helps to be
aware of your self-talk, to treat it like a train going by in the distance that
you aren’t riding on. Later on we wound up with a couple of terrific examples,
so stay tuned. And once again we invite any email participants to send us a
story of your own, any time. We agreed that we all manage our vasanas naturally
to some extent, so it isn’t anything overly arcane. Sharing our successes is
definitely helpful, however.
Bill
first summarized that vasanas are urges. They act as motivation, and when they
bubble up, the ego interacts with the intellect to reassert the dynamic of
perceiving, which colors how we react to the world. Then we retain the
resulting coloration, imagining it to be the world’s true colors instead of the
result of our own prejudices. This is of course where we have to be careful to
discriminate between the merely appealing and the truly cosmic urges. I added
that we should always question our impulses. If they are worthwhile they won’t
be defeated by being examined, but we don’t want to overly inhibit ourselves,
either.
Paul
asked if biological imperatives were vasanas, and he got a resounding yes. Then
he reasoned that it isn’t like pulling out rotten teeth, that we aren’t aiming
at an absence of vasanas, but only that they take their proper place infused
with greater understanding. After all, how could we do away with our genetic
inheritance? What would be left? It’s something we have to work with, one way
or another. Deb added that if you suppress such things, they don’t go away,
they gain more power when they’re out of sight. The trick is to drench them all
in the light of the spirit.
Karen
and Deb gave their examples already of managing vasanas. Karen talked about how
she had been very frustrated by her son recently, who promised to help her with
a home-improvement project and then was always busy. She was getting really
irritated about it, so she decided to work on feeling differently. She
substituted gratitude for her irritation, which always makes her laugh when she
thinks of all the beautiful aspects of her life that she easily feels grateful
for. When she finally got her son to come over, she heard how busy he was with
many important tasks, and her upset just went away. She realized her thing wasn’t
that important and could wait. This is a great example of how getting the facts
in place of our worried imaginings can be a major upgrade, especially coupled
with wise intentions to regain a peaceful state.
Deb
admitted that there are times when she finds herself under a black cloud. She
feels dissatisfied, unhappy, and rejects the whole world. She could easily fume
ferociously. Several others recognized how comfortable that kind of state can
be. We like it. It feels so good that
everyone else is wrong and we are the lone right one, so let’s just stay here.
Now Deb can see how her ego colludes with her intellect to project the blame
outward and let her off the hook. She has learned to not take that periodically
recurring state so seriously, to give it less credence, and accept that even
she can have a few faults and it’s okay. She has found—not at all
surprisingly—that this minimizes the misery that her state of mind used to keep
boiling for a longer time. It’s a winning situation for everyone, including her.
Again,
these are not mystifying processes. We have all made significant progress in
managing these unhealthy urges. Most of us still have room for improvement,
though.
Paul
mentioned hunger as a vasana, and we joked that vasanas like that should not be
defused. If we don’t eat, we die. But here’s is how it can be visualized by a
yogi. We have a genetic disposition from long history of near starvation to
gobble up whatever comes our way. Sweet foods, rare in the wild, are especially
craved. Now that we live in a time of food abundance, that vasana or group of
vasanas can cause us to overeat to an unhealthy degree. Probably we were
encouraged to eat excessively as children as well, so there is a samskaric
element too. Managing these impulses is a familiar way we wrestle with our
conditioning. Hardly anyone thinks it is a simple matter to just decide what to
do and do it—there is a tremendous inner urge that thwarts us quite easily.
That’s why weight-loss diets famously fail. The vasana often operates by giving
the ego permission to do exactly what it wants to do, and the ego supplies the
rationalizations necessary to clear the road, making all kinds of excuses and
defenses… in short, we effortlessly cave in to the vasana, to our eventual
regret. Nitya points directly at this weakness:
Ego vastly depends on the
intellect both for discrimination and manipulation. Thus heart, which is said
to be the seat of the ego, also becomes the seat of all intrigues continued by
the ego and intellect in collusion. An aspirant yogi has to become vigilant in
stopping this unhealthy alliance between ego and intellect, which are bent on
aiding incipient memories. This is achieved by making the light of pure spirit
prevail upon the heart with a discipline that constantly diffuses the ego’s
craving for power, glory and pleasure. Until this is accomplished, yoga is not
achieved. When the heart has known the undisturbed depth of the silent spirit, yoga
is achieved.
Here Nitya is using the heart as the repository of the
feelings we act on egotistically, which is very different from the core or
Karu. It’s also the sense Narayana Guru means: the source of desire. No matter
how we think of the heart, if we spend time in an oceanic place where the
triple functions are not operative, it is a curative period. It’s a vacation
from ordinariness.
We
recalled how duality—and its correlate triputi,
the tribasic function—arise out of unity. There is only unity, through and
through, yet it takes on the appearance of a subject and an object, plus the
way they interrelate, which is the third factor. In yoga we are spending time
in a refuge that isn’t a subject operating on an object, manipulating it or
trying to erase it. There is only being. As the Gita says, a little of this
releases you from a lot of fear. Fear comes from the other, from the object. No
object, no fear. Or at least the gradual draining away of fear. It is kind of
stupid that we live in very safe environments yet we still act as if we were
wandering through a veldt filled with hungry predators. Now there’s a
vasana/samskara complex worth de-energizing!
In summation, Deb recalled the end of the last verse for us:
Instead of entertaining an
assumed false identification, the Self remains established in its truest form
because it is freed of its obligation to fulfill the instinctive wish of a vasana, an incipient memory. Narayana
Guru praises such a reversion of transcendence within immanence itself as yoga,
and he qualifies it as vasananasa,
the reduction of the potential into the impotent.
Moni closed the evening with an original translation of the
verse. Basically, there is no remedy for vasanas. The only solution is to gain
union with the Absolute. A remedy would be taking place in the triple aspect of
horizontal consciousness, but only when we see and know the One does vasana
lose its grip over us.
We
separated thoughtfully, wondering what fine examples we were going to bring in
for the next session.
Part II
Swami
Vidyananda’s commentary:
The seer, the seen and the sight, or, in other words, the
knower, knowledge and what is known, are called in Vedānta triputi (tribasic prejudice). In the true form proper to
the Self
there is no triputi. When the
outgoing activities of the mind have been restrained and the attitude of samādhi (peace) is reached, there is no
room for the operation of triputi. In
that state of peace, the form of the Self free from triputi becomes revealed without any hindrance. Patanjali has also
described this state as, “then takes place the attainment of the proper form of
the seer.” This form is free from triputi
and is of the status of sat-cit-ānanda
(existence-subsistence-value or bliss.) As soon as one comes out of the
state of samādhi the tribasic
prejudice (triputi) asserts itself
and the many activities of the mind produce attachment and aversion and the
consequent sensations of pleasure and pain. The incipient memory factors (vāsanās) which remain in the inner
faculty of the mind is the subtle and potential source causing all the varied
activities of the mind. Therefore, until such time as these vāsanās are weakened and completely
destroyed it is necessary to unite the mind with the Ultimate Self which is
free from tribasic prejudice (triputi), and, thus, to practise (the art of) samādhi (i.e. the wisdom
of supreme
peace which is that of Yoga). It is such a kind of Yoga that has been stated by
qualified persons who have experienced this type of peace as consisting of true
Yoga.
* *
*
Here’s
a story illustrating Narayana Guru’s neutral way of bringing light to conflict,
from the biography Nancy Yeilding serialized in Gurukulam Magazine, and is now
in preparation for publication. Ezhavas were a fairly low caste and Pulayas
outcastes:
K. Ayyappan (1889–1968) was one of nine children of a poor
Ayurvedic doctor. He had come to Guru as a teenager, burning with the clear
light of reason and the desire to clear away the chains of superstition and
prejudice that bound his brothers and sisters. He came to be known as Sahodaran
(brother) and was one of the first leaders to interpret the peoples’ problems
in terms of class struggle, in addition to the constrictions of religion and
caste.
He
was upset by the Guru’s disciples who used his name to achieve their own
emancipation while participating in the oppression of others. Restrictions
against those considered to be outcastes were being enforced at Kidanganparambu
Temple in Cochin. As a gesture against such hypocrisy, he organized
inter-dining between those considered Ezhavas and those considered Pulayas
(thought lesser because of their past enslavement and harsher present
circumstances of life). The inter-dining, which was seen as breaking one of the
major “caste” restrictions, took place in 1917, just after he finished his B.A.
Immediate
reactions were vicious: biting ants and burning oil were thrown on them. When
the families of the young men who participated found out, they were told to
drink paņcagavyam (a mixture of cow
dung and urine, ghee and milk) to “purify” themselves. Those who refused left
their homes and joined K. Ayyappan. They were excommunicated; the barber and
person responsible for burial rites were forbidden to go to the family of any
participant who refused to undergo a purification ceremony, and women from
those families who had been given in marriage were sent back. The bad feelings
erupted in a fistfight between them and the orthodox elements of society. The
police had to be called in to quiet things down and an injunction was declared
against the annual celebration of the temple, which was soon to take place.
One
night the news spread that Narayana Guru was coming to the temple. He had asked
that there be no lights. In the darkness the crowd gathered peacefully, waiting
for the Guru. No one could see who else was there because of the dark. A chair
covered with a white cloth had been set out for Guru. Guru came in quietly and
sat down. They could tell he was there only by a faint shadow on the white
cloth. The sea of people was absolutely silent.
Guru
asked, “When did Vallabhassery come?” Out of the dark Vallabhassery said, “This
humble came this afternoon.” Then Guru asked after the health of Muloo, the
uncle of one of the young men who had been at the feeding (Guru Nitya’s
father). The young man replied, “He is all right now.” Guru asked him, “You are
studying here now?” He answered, “Yes.” Guru then asked him, “What was the
trouble here?” and the young man told the story. Guru said, “Ask all the people
of both sections to come before me tomorrow morning.”
They
all came the next day. He asked the old people their grievance. They said, “You
gave us a temple and a good life. We want to protect the traditions. The
youngsters are ignorant of the tradition. They are disrupting everything.” Guru
asked, “What did they do?” They answered, “They had a public feeding with a
Pulaya.” Then the youngsters had their turn. They said, “You taught us that man
is of one caste, one religion, one God. We want to live that in our lives. We
don't want that to be just an empty slogan.”
Guru
said, “I don't see anything wrong here.” He turned to the old people and asked,
“Can’t you agree?” “Never,” they replied. The young people also said, “Never.”
Then Guru said, “You both agreed that you don't agree.” Everyone laughed. “One
agreement can lead to another.” He said, “The young people cooked last time.
Now the old people can make paysam (a
sweet, festive pudding) for young and old to eat together.” In that gesture the
incidents were ameliorated and the temple was open to all.
