The Effective Power of the Yogic Process in the Life-Experience of the Practitioner

Rare are those individuals who can take up a practice and not see any result whatsoever, yet continue on with endless patience and persistence. We look at the example of Milarepa, the great yogi of Tibet who spent a number of years doing hard labor at the behest of his guru, Marpa, and who was not granted any teachings. Yet even Milarepa did not do this without a sense that there were real powers and achievable results if he persevered. His time learning and practicing the magic arts showed him the powers available and their real, and tangible, results.

Who could endure the ‘dark night of the soul’ if he had not previously had experiences that showed him the light, the power, the peace, of the spiritual experience?

Most people who take up yoga seriously actually do so after some kind of experience of an ‘opening’. Dannion Brinkley, struck by lightning, was pronounced dead and came back to life with a vision, a knowledge and a mission. The real and lasting impact of the practice he took up afterwards shows the power of the spiritual force to redirect the life, the focus and the understanding.

Widely reported experiences include the rising of a powerful force from the base of the spine up through the top of the skull; or, a sense of a descending force drilling or raining down from above into the being. It is not just the physical experience, however, that shows the power of the yogic force. A review of one’s life and how the psychology has changed, how the reactions have changed, show the power of the inward view that yoga brings with it. There arise new powers of patience, peace, focus and concentration in action, an inner sense of contentment or joy, a new power that yield results in whatever field one tends to focus. As the Gita states, ‘yogaha karmasu kaushalam’, ‘yoga is skill in works’.

When certain types of experience arise, they change everything for the individual. There are new sources of inspiration, there may be arising a form of intuition, there are new ways of seeing that break out of the narrow step-by-step approach of the logical intellect and move swiftly and surely to a new level of understanding, and with it, a new power of action. Many find they are able to move the focus of their awareness within their being, in the head, between the eyebrows, in the heart, in the solar plexus, and experience different results depending on the nexus they have opened in so doing.

When we look at the lives most people live, they seem fixed in a firm routine, unchanging, invariable, seemingly laid out in a line from birth to death. The yogic practitioner’s life is vastly different, and we observe changes in patterns, changes in responses, changes in understanding, growth, development, experimentation.

Sri Aurobindo observes: “The invisible Force producing tangible results both inward and outward is the whole meaning of the yogic consciousness. Your question about yoga bringing merely a feeling of Power without any result was really very strange. Who would be satisfied with such a meaningless hallucination and call it Power? If we had not had thousands of experiences showing that the Power within could alter the mind, develop its powers, add new ones, bring in new ranges of knowledge, master the vital movements, change the character, influence men and things, control the conditions and functionings of the body, work as a concrete dynamic Force on other forces, modify events, etc., etc., we would not speak of it as we do. Moreover, it is not only in its results but in its movements that the Force is tangible and concrete. When I speak of feeling Force or Power, I do not mean simply having a vague sense of it, but feeling it concretely and consequently being able to direct it, manipulate it, watch its movements, be conscious of its mass and intensity and in the same way of that of other, perhaps opposing forces; all these things are possible and usual by the development of yoga.”

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, The Hidden Forces of Life, Ch.7 Spiritual Forces of Help and Succour, pp.162-163