There are plenty of paths towards the Divine right from the Vedic Age to our own present civilisation. The mistake that we however often make is that it is the path leads you to God. If it were so then God would be simply a helpless witness who waits for the disciple’s efforts to reward Him at the end of a long and not-so-easy journey.
But there has always been this idea based on experience of countless mystics all over that the Path is nothing more than a convenient device to draw the soul closer to its highest destiny. This highest destiny is embedded within each soul and it pushes from behind through all the varied experiences of life. The nature of the path and the experiences of life are so intertwined as to push the soul in the direction of its ultimate inevitable destiny. It is as if each and every circumstance is so crafted by the Grace as to lead us towards the final fulfilment already promised when it plunged into the journey of life and death and rebirth. It is as if a supreme Intelligence, an All-knowing Wisdom and Love, an unerring Guide has already planned out everything, including every stagger and stumble and fall. Then we discover that always it is the Divine who has been carrying us, albeit hidden behind the veil of our ignorance. We strive, we seek, – and there are methods and processes, there are paths that criss cross like lanes and bylanes through which one moves until we are taken, driven and secretly led through all the various experiences, good and bad, pleasant and painful to the Grand Trunk Road where we find the Divine waiting for us in His Royal Vehicle. He knows all paths and every path. But He is bound to none and hence we can equally say that He is everywhere and has no Path. This after all has been the final word of Wisdom. So long as we think or believe in the Path the Divine remains hidden even though always with us. But when the path is replaced by a conscious aspiration regardless of the road we have taken, when we reach the point where we consciously surrender ourselves into His hands then are we truly delivered. This at least has been hinted in the Upanishads, promised in the Gita, and revealed fully in all its details in Sri Aurobindo’s writings.
Yet the paths are there through which different souls have walked depending upon the point of nature through which the person comes in contact with or connects with the Divine. Gyanayoga takes the help of the discerning Mind to discover the ultimate Reality by constantly distinguishing between the temporary transient truths and the one abiding Eternal Reality. The mind keeps reminding itself “not this”, “not this”, neti neti, stepping back from form, name, appearances and instead of reacting and responding to these ever changing scenes focuses on the Eternal Permanent. The bhakta, instead of scattering one’s emotions on different creatures turns them all towards the Divine. In the path of works, instead of engaging in action for the fruits one desires, one turns all works into the service of the Divine. Rajayoga uses the mental faculty of concentration by fixing the mind on the central or highest Idea of the Divine. The Tantra Yoga directs the heart and mind and will towards worship and service of the Divine Mother. The Kundalini Yoga awakens the sleeping energies within our base and core and turns them upwards towards the Divine. There are many methods, steps stages impossible to describe in detail. If I would recommend one book that gives us these different paths in their essential truth, it would be Sri Aurobindo’s The Synthesis of Yoga.
In all paths there can be two approaches. One turns to find the Divine away from the world or else one tries to find the Divine everywhere and in everything. The key is sincerity of aspiration and the ability to concentrate. If one is sincere in one’s aspiration then the concentration and everything else comes easily. So the whole question comes down to the sincerity of the seeking. The Divine is fully, supremely conscious. He knows if our seeking its genuine or not. He is not a general accountant counting the hours one sat for meditation, the number of bhajans one sang, the amount of work one has done outwardly. He sees the core, the aspiration, the genuineness of the seeking. It is to this that He responds.
However as mentioned, in the end we realise that always it was He who was leading us through everything. And though in our ignorance we claim the superiority of paths, the greater Truth is that He is the Path and the Goal and hence by whatever Name and through whatever form one can remember Him, He responds and carries us through that. All paths are His paths. As the Gita puts it, as men have faith in me so do I respond, ye yathamam prapadyante….
Here are two passages from Sri Aurobindo describing the essence.
‘Certitudes
In the deep there is a greater deep, in the heights a greater height. Sooner shall man arrive at the borders of infinity than at the fulness of his own being. For that being is infinity, is God—
I aspire to infinite force, infinite knowledge, infinite bliss. Can I attain it? Yes, but the nature of infinity is that it has no end. Say not therefore that I attain it. I become it. Only so can man attain God by becoming God.
But before attaining he can enter into relations with him. To enter into relations with God is Yoga, the highest rapture & the noblest utility. There are relations within the compass of the humanity we have developed. These are called prayer, worship, adoration, sacrifice, thought, faith, science, philosophy. There are other relations beyond our developed capacity, but within the compass of the humanity we have yet to develop. Those are the relations that are attained by the various practices we usually call Yoga.
We may not know him as God, we may know him as Nature, our Higher Self, Infinity, some ineffable goal. It was so that Buddha approached Him; so approaches him the rigid Adwaitin. He is accessible even to the Atheist. To the materialist He disguises Himself in matter. For the Nihilist he waits ambushed in the bosom of Annihilation.
ये यथा मां प्रपद्यन्ते तांस्तथैव भजाम्यहम् ।’
Closing with the last few passages from one of Sri Aurobindo’s Works The Yoga and its objects.
‘It is said in the “Sanatsujatiya” that four things are necessary for siddhi—śāstra, utsāha, guru and kāla—the teaching of the path, zeal in following it, the Guru and time. Your path is that which I am pointing out, the utsāha needed is this anumati and this nitya smaraṇa, the Guru is God himself and for the rest only time is needed. That God himself is the Guru, you will find when knowledge comes to you; you will see how every little circumstance within you and without you has been subtly planned and brought about by infinite wisdom to carry out the natural process of the yoga, how the internal and external movements are arranged and brought together to work on each other, so as to work out the imperfection and work in the perfection. An almighty love and wisdom are at work for your uplifting. Therefore never be troubled by the time that is being taken, even if it seems very long, but when imperfections and obstructions arise, be apramatta, dhīra, have the utsāha, and leave God to do the rest. Time is necessary. It is a tremendous work that is being done in you, the alteration of your whole human nature into a divine nature, the crowding of centuries of evolution into a few years. You ought not to grudge the time. There are other paths that offer more immediate results or at any rate, by offering you some definite kriyā you can work at yourself, give your ahaṅkāra the satisfaction of feeling that you are doing something, so many more prāṇāyāmas today, so much longer a time for the āsana, so many more repetitions of the japa, so much done, so much definite progress marked. But once you have chosen this path, you must cleave to it. Those are human methods, not the way that the infinite Shakti works, which moves silently, sometimes imperceptibly to its goal, advances here, seems to pause there, then mightily and triumphantly reveals the grandiose thing that it has done. Artificial paths are like canals hewn by the intelligence of man; you travel easily, safely, surely, but from one given place to another. This path is the broad and trackless ocean by which you can travel widely to all parts of the world and are admitted to the freedom of the infinite. All that you need are the ship, the steering-wheel, the compass, the motive-power and a skilful captain. Your ship is the Brahmavidya, faith is your steering-wheel, self-surrender your compass, the motive-power is she who makes, directs and destroys the worlds at God’s command and God himself is your captain. But he has his own way of working and his own time for everything. Watch his way and wait for his time. Understand also the importance of accepting the Shastra and submitting to the Guru and do not do like the Europeans who insist on the freedom of the individual intellect to follow its own fancies and preferences which it calls reasonings, even before it is trained to discern or fit to reason. It is much the fashion nowadays to indulge in metaphysical discussions and philosophical subtleties about Maya and Adwaita and put them in the forefront, making them take the place of spiritual experience. Do not follow that fashion or confuse yourself and waste time on the way by questionings which will be amply and luminously answered when the divine knowledge of the vijñāna awakes in you. Metaphysical knowledge has its place, but as a handmaid to spiritual experience, showing it the way sometimes but much more dependent on it and living upon its bounty. By itself it is mere pāṇḍitya, a dry and barren thing and more often a stumbling-block than a help. Having accepted this path, follow its Shastra without unnecessary doubt and questioning, keeping the mind plastic to the light of the higher knowledge, gripping firmly what is experienced, waiting for light where things are dark to you, taking without pride what help you can from the living guides who have already trod the path, always patient, never hastening to narrow conclusions, but waiting for a more complete experience and a fuller light, relying on the Jagadguru who helps you from within.
It is necessary to say something about the Mayavada and the modern teachings about the Adwaita because they are much in the air at the present moment and, penetrated with ideas from European rationalism and agnosticism for which Shankara would have been astonished to find himself made responsible, perplex many minds. Remember that one-sided philosophies are always a partial statement of truth. The world, as God has made it, is not a rigid exercise in logic but, like a strain of music, an infinite harmony of many diversities, and his own existence, being free and absolute, cannot be logically defined. Just as the best religion is that which admits the truth of all religions, so the best philosophy is that which admits the truth of all philosophies and gives each its right place. Maya is one realisation, an important one which Shankara overstressed because it was most vivid to his own experience. For yourself leave the word for subordinate use and fix rather on the idea of Lila, a deeper and more penetrating word than Maya. Lila includes the idea of Maya and exceeds it; nor has it that association of the vanity of all things, useless to you who have elected to remain and play with Sri Krishna in Mathura and Brindavan.
God is one but he is not bounded by his unity. We see him here as one who is always manifesting as many, not because he cannot help it, but because he so wills, and outside manifestation he is anirdeśyam, indefinable, and cannot be described as either one or many. That is what the Upanishads and other sacred books consistently teach; he is ekamevādvitīyam, One and there is no other, but also and consequently he is “this man, yonder woman, that blue-winged bird, this scarlet-eyed.” He is sānta, he is ananta; the Jiva is he. “I am the aśvattha tree,” says Sri Krishna in the Gita, “I am death, I am Agni Vaishwanara, I am the heat that digests food, I am Vyasa, I am Vasudeva, I am Arjuna.” All that is the play of his caitanya in his infinite being, his manifestations, and therefore all are real. Maya means nothing more than the freedom of Brahman from the circumstances through which he expresses himself. He is in no way limited by that which we see or think about him. That is the Maya from which we must escape, the Maya of ignorance which takes things as separately existent and not God, not caitanya, the illimitable for the really limited, the free for the bound. Do you remember the story of Sri Krishna and the Gopis, how Narada found him differently occupied in each house to which he went, present to each Gopi in a different body, yet always the same Sri Krishna? Apart from the devotional meaning of the story, which you know, it is a good image of his World-Lila. He is sarva, everyone, each Purusha with his apparently different Prakriti and action is he, and yet at the same time he is the Purushottama who is with Radha, the Para Prakriti, and can withdraw all these into himself when he wills and put them out again when he wills. From one point of view they are one with him, from another one yet different, from yet another always different because they always exist, latent in him or expressed at his pleasure. There is no profit in disputing about these standpoints. Wait until you see God and know yourself and him and then debate and discussion will be unnecessary.
The goal marked out for us is not to speculate about these things, but to experience them. The call upon us is to grow into the image of God, to dwell in him and with him and be a channel of his joy and might and an instrument of his works. Purified from all that is aśubha, transfigured in soul by his touch, we have to act in the world as dynamos of that divine electricity and send it thrilling and radiating through mankind, so that wherever one of us stands, hundreds around may become full of his light and force, full of God and full of Ananda. Churches, Orders, theologies, philosophies have failed to save mankind because they have busied themselves with intellectual creeds, dogmas, rites and institutions, with ācāraśuddhi and darśana, as if these could save mankind, and have neglected the one thing needful, the power and purification of the soul. We must go back to the one thing needful, take up again Christ’s gospel of the purity and perfection of mankind, Mahomed’s gospel of perfect submission, self-surrender and servitude to God, Chaitanya’s gospel of the perfect love and joy of God in man, Ramakrishna’s gospel of the unity of all religions and the divinity of God in man, and, gathering all these streams into one mighty river, one purifying and redeeming Ganges, pour it over the death-in-life of a materialistic humanity as Bhagirath led down the Ganges and flooded with it the ashes of his fathers, so that they may be a resurrection of the soul in mankind and the Satyayuga for a while return to the world. Nor is this the whole object of the Lila or the Yoga; the reason for which the Avatars descend is to raise up man again and again, developing in him a higher and ever higher humanity, a greater and yet greater development of divine being, bringing more and more of heaven again and again upon the earth until our toil is done, our work accomplished and Sachchidananda fulfilled in all even here, even in this material universe. Small is his work, even if he succeeds, who labours for his own salvation or the salvation of a few; infinitely great is his, even if he fail or succeed only partially or for a season, who lives only to bring about peace of soul, joy, purity and perfection among all mankind.’
Affectionately,
Alok Da
