Spiritual Growth Articles

When we see deeply religious or spiritual people, we expect to see people who are serious, reserved and who carry an air of distance from the things of the world. This expectation has been so deeply embedded in the human psyche that we almost unconsciously take up this attitude when we tread the spiritual path. Consider the austerity and silence of monasteries and cloisters, or even the churches, temples, mosques or synagogues that abound throughout the world. It almost feels like heresy to relax, enjoy a laugh or just to be generally cheerful.

When the great yogi of Tibet, Milarepa, was eventually given the teachings by his Guru, Marpa, he was sent to practice intense meditation. When Marpa sent him to his meditation retreat, he gave him a scroll of information with the instruction that he should open it at the time when it was an absolute emergency. He was so engaged in the practice that he did not pay much attention to eating. He wound up many days (months, years) subsisting on a tea of nettle leaves.

Our mental process tends to take us to extremes. We want simple answers, without a lot of nuance. Thus, when we seek spiritual liberation, we tend to take the concept of renunciation or rejection to mean that we abandon the exte al life to focus on our spiritual pursuits. If our vital nature does not cooperate with this, we try to suppress it, and if that does not succeed, we even try to punish or torture our physical or vital being, or create a sense of anguish in our emotional or mental being.

In Western society, people are inculcated, from early childhood,in the idea that they need to be active in order to succeed in the world. The outlook is extremely focused on an outward perspective. The body, life-force and mind have to be trained and harnessed into action. Time not spent in active efforts at development and putting the powers of being to work is considered to be time ‘wasted’. People who do not focus on putting the powers of mind, life and body to work in the world in a noticeable way are considered to be ‘dreamers’ and are not taken seriously.

The vital nature is enamoured of experiences that are new and different, ‘exciting’, unusual. This is the allure of the vision quest, fasting, and the use of entheogenic substances to bring forth experiences, visions, contact with alte ative states of conscious awareness, and alte ative realities. Many techniques have been developed to encourage these experiences, including various psycho-physical practices, breathing techniques, mantras and chanting, the use of mudras, bandhas, tratak, devotional singing and dance, Sufi dancing, etc.

It is perhaps a virtually universal experience. An individual takes up a spiritual practice, and for a time, particularly when Sattwa is in the forefront, he has unique insights, experiences and a sense of progress. At some point, however, these experiences tend to recede and the individual is left to address the need for change in his physical, vital and mental being. At that point, things become more difficult, visible progress is sometimes lacking, and discouragement can set in.

As the seeker attempts to achieve the separation of the witness consciousness from the exte al nature of the being (which is comprised of the body, the vital being and the mind), the first phase is generally the separation of the mental awareness from the body. This brings forth the awareness of the mental Purusha.

All of the action that takes place in the world, in the galaxy, in the universe, occurs within a vast, unmoving, wide space. The ancient Vedic Rishis termed this basis of reality, Satyam, Ritam, Brihat, the Truth, the Right, the Vast.

If we reflect on how we learn, how we gain skills, we find that one of the key elements is repetition. We train our muscles through repetition of an exercise regimen. We train our minds through repetition and we train our responses through repetition. At some point we embed the results of the repetition into what we call ‘muscle memory’ or ‘cellular memory’. Our immune systems respond more effectively to provocations that have been seen before. There is thus a ‘memory’ in our immune system.

Facing the difficulties and obstacles presented by the exte al world to our ego-personality, we frequently become disturbed and react with anger, frustration or some other indication of a lack of peace. We tend to “become” the reaction. Someone cuts in front of us on the road and we become angry, in some cases expressing ourselves through what is known as ‘road rage’ or at least mentally engaging in some type of upset reaction.

In the Taittiriya Upanishad, there is an interesting chapter often referred to as the "calculus of bliss". It starts from the measure of one human being who has everything, health, strength, all human opportunities fully available to him. That is the measure of "human bliss".

Establishing peace and quietness in the being is not a matter of intellectual determination; rather, it is a concrete experience that comes with the action of the Force that descends into the being from higher ranges of consciousness. Many believe that it is a matter of disciplining oneself not to react to circumstances. Stoicism and similar disciplines try to suppress and overcome the reactions and to a certain degree, such methods may provide some help initially.

The idea that significant events or forces can take place within us during sleep or in the twilight range between sleep and waking is something that has been part of human understanding for thousands of years. In particular, dreams, a particular form of the sleep state where the consciousness is attending and in some cases participating actively, have been explored to some depth. In modern Western psychology, the work of Freud broke ground with his study on The Interpretation of Dreams.

A relatively small number of people attend to the quality or texture of the mind. People tend to identify with the sensations, feelings, emotions, thoughts and reactions that ‘take over’ the mind stuff. We become angry and identify with that movement so closely that we do not normally observe the anger, but we ‘are’ the anger. We don’t observe the sensation of heat or cold, hunger or thirst, but rather, we identify with them.

When we hear that we must cultivate detachment and indifference to the physical body as the instrument of our exte al interactions in the world, we tend to immediately jump to the idea that we must renounce everything and simply let the body do whatever happens without any care or conce for its fate. This is due to the nature of our minds that want simple ‘black and white’ answers without any form of ‘nuance’ involved.

As long as we are getting upset or disturbed, the exte al personality is still reacting to things and we have not attained the true standpoint of the witness consciousness. Thus, we experience difficulties and respond based on the Guna that is predominant at the moment. We may react with happiness if things seem to be working according to our expectation, frustration or anger if we feel like we are not getting what we want, or despondency or depression if we lose hope or feel like our efforts are being rebuffed.

We see in the legends about great yogic practitioners and their struggles to achieve the spiritual results, a variety of approaches. Two major approaches have been categorised as the “baby monkey” and the “baby cat” approach. The differentiation involves the way the individual participates in the process of spiritual growth and transformation. The baby monkey approach involves substantial personal effort.

Forces that operate in the world are not necessarily ‘hostile’ even if their effect on any particular individual appears to be extremely negative. These forces operate on a large scale to carry out their own role and fulfillment, without specific regard to who may be impacted. When an earthquake or a tsunami strikes for instance, it is not aimed at a particular person who happens to be among those affected.

Sri Aurobindo translates Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, Chapter One, Section Two, Verse 1: “Formerly there was nothing here; this was concealed by Death — by Hunger, for it is Hunger that is Death. That created mind, and he said, ‘Let me have substance.’ He moved about working and as he worked the waters were born and he said, ‘Felicity was born to me as I worked.’ This verily is the activity in action. Therefore felicity cometh to him who thus knoweth this soul of activity in action.”

The question of detachment, renunciation, is frequently interpreted as one of avoidance and a rejection of the exte al life in the world. It most often turns to austerity. If one follows this line of approach to its logical conclusion, the only solution is to renounce all action, renounce all desires, and live an isolated life focused solely in realisation, liberation and eventually the opportunity to merge the consciousness into the divine source.

The more we focus on difficulties, they more they seem to accumulate! It is one thing to be able to quietly observe issues as they arise; it is quite another to fixate on them and expend energy trying to push through them using the normal powers of body, life and mind. The spiritual force, once it begins work in the being, continues relentlessly. Sometimes as it pushes into a new area of the consciousness it can provoke the awakening of old samskaras, memories, habits, instincts, trained responses which may seem to the seeker to be a backwards or retrogressive step in the sadhana.

A popular proverb in recent years is ‘you are what you eat’. There is certainly an element of deeper truth in this expression. All material substance holds vibratory patterns. Rocks absorb heat and radiate it back afterwards for hours. Water absorbs thought vibrations as shown by Masaru Emoto in his book The Hidden Messages in Water.

It is a limitation of our normal mental mode of understanding that we do not tend to take into account the impact of time and the cyclical nature of development. We expect things to move in a straight line. We expect progress to be continuous and in a single direction. When we overcome a particular issue or obstacle, we believe it is in our past, over and done with.

Operant conditioning is a phenomenon identified in Western psychology by B.F. Skinner. His experiments showed that by the results of carrying out specific actions, they can either be encouraged, through positive reinforcement, or discouraged through negative reinforcement. One of the principles he elicited in his experiments was the impact of the reinforcement over time. Experiments showed that by removing any positive reinforcement, certain behaviours would weaken and fade out over time. Consistent reinforcement led to patterns, habits and embedded actions.

We are not destined to be the puppet or plaything of the exte al Nature, Prakriti, through the working of the 3 Gunas or qualities of Nature. When we shift our standpoint to that of the Divine, when we recognise our Oneness with the creative Force, we can participate in the ordering and the ‘ordaining’ of the divine manifestation. We may be immersed in the play of Prakriti. When we shift to the standpoint of the Purusha, the witness consciousness, we begin by observing.

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When one steps back and begins to observe the mind’s action and what Swami Vivekananda calls the ‘mind-stuff’, chitta, a number of different statuses can be seen. The normal human mind is usually constantly active and it jumps from one thing to another in response to impulses, impressions, sensations, vital or physical drives or emotional or mental preoccupations or focus. There are other states as well.

Most people do not observe closely the status of the ‘mind-stuff’ as they focus on the impulses, or ‘ripples’ of the mind stuff. The yogic practitioner has a unique position in that observation of the mind stuff and bringing it to a state of quiet, focused receptivity is essential for opening to and integrating the spiritual force into his mind, life-energy and body.

We can learn much from the quite commonly related phenomenon called the ‘out of body’ experience. Many people have had such an experience where they resided in their awareness outside the body, in some cases from above the body and from that vantage point could observe the body as different and separated from the awareness with which they identified. Many of these cases occur during traumatic events such as an accident or an extreme onset of an illness.

The integral yoga is not a ‘hobby’ or ‘pastime’ to be taken up when convenient. It requires an intensity of dedication and focus, and a depth of aspiration and consecration that is both rare and difficult to achieve. An individual needs to be fully immersed in the yoga and its processes in order to obtain the result.

Most people identify themselves with their exte al being, their body-life-mind complex. They assign a name to that being and they answer to that name. They are totally immersed in the needs, wants, and directions that that exte al being is taking. When they awaken to a deeper spiritual urge, they talk about “finding the soul” as if the soul is an element of that exte al being.

In the Bhagavad Gita, Chapter 2, v. 54, Arjuna asks Sri Krishna how to recognise the enlightened man. Sri Aurobindo translates: “What is the sign of the man in Samadhi whose intelligence is firmly fixed in wisdom? How does the sage of settled understanding speak, how sit, how walk?” Sri Aurobindo goes on to explain: “Arjuna, voicing the average human mind, asks for some outward, physical, practically disce ible sign of Samadhi.

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Seriously, we get all wound up about things that have no real significance in the larger picture of life. Whether it is someone cutting in front of us in a queue or on the road, or whether someone says something about us which we do not like, we tend to get revved up and stew on what happened. In issues that have some relevance to our daily lives, we become even more fixated on what we desire to see happen. And if we turn to politics, religion or economic theory, we are in many cases ready to kill to uphold our favoured viewpoint.

There are sound reasons to establish calm, peace and equality in the being as the foundation for the spiritual practice. When an individual takes up some form of concentrated practice, tapasya, it can lead to the uprising of powerful energies, as well as an influx of thoughts, emotions, feelings and sensations to which the normal human experience is not acclimated. There is a long history in the yogic tradition that speaks about the dangers attendant on any attempt to awaken the kundalini energy at the base of the spine without adequate guidance and preparation.

The mind cannot adequately create, imagine, describe or image the experience of the descent of peace and vastness that takes hold of the being and superimposes itself over the activities of the mind, life and body. Until one has the actual experience, therefore, nothing specific can be said about it. When an individual has this experience, there is a strong pressure on the body-life-mind complex and if it is not adequately prepared to ‘hold’ the energy, there is always an attempt to explain it, describe it, or get insight about it.

The play of the Gunas in the exte al nature explains the various reactions, moods and psychological states we experience. This is true not just in the ordinary life of the individual in society, but also for those who take up the practice of Yoga. The patterns of reaction based in the action of the Gunas are well-known. When Rajas is predominant there is an uprising of ambition, desire, and pressure to achieve a specific result.

We have something of a conflict in the way we tend to view the development of consciousness. On the one side, we generally try to minimize the distractions and reactions to sensations, impulses, feelings, thoughts from outside while we attend to our meditation or deep spiritual concentration. The stories abound of sages who were so immersed in their internal meditation that they did not react to anything exte al, in some cases having anthills grow up around their bodies!

Particularly in the West, when people think about Yoga, they believe it is a series of physical postures or exercises done with a certain sense of concentration. They associate Hatha Yoga with the entirety of yogic practice, and in many instances, treat Yoga as a form of physical conditioning.

We have a fixation on food. We do not seek food just for nourishment and proper care of our bodies, generally; rather, we use food to provide us with comfort, emotional support, and fulfillment of desires for various tastes. We center many of our relationship rituals around food. At some point, many individuals conclude that they need to adjust their eating habits, whether through dieting, or fasting. The disease conditions of anorexia and bulimia are extreme examples of our attempts to incorporate our manner of addressing food issues in relation to societal expectations and norms.

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There is a deeply embedded aspiration wtihin humanity to discover some purpoe or significance to our lives, and to the very existence of the creation within which we live and act. Our training and education, from our earliest childhood, is fixated on achieving our standing within the exte al reality of the society within which we live. We are asked to learn a trade, have a career, marry and raise a family. We are then told that we should seek for enjoyment and we search for happiness through exte al actions and material gratifications.

The Bhagavad Gita, Chapter 2, v. 47-48, as translated by Sri Aurobindo, states: “Thou hast a right to action, but only to action, never to its fruits; let not the fruits of thy works be thy motive, neither let there be in thee any attachment to inactivity. Fixed in Yoga to thy actions, having abandoned attachment, having become equal in failure and success; for it is equality that is meant by Yoga.”

The spiritual path tends to breed considerable opposition from friends, family and associates because it takes the seeker along an entirely different line of development that does not necessarily meet the expectations of those people. It is a “path less travelled”. It is not infrequent that appeals are made to the seeker to accept the normal mode of life of the society, get a career, earn money, start a family, relate to friends and family on the normal superficial level that focuses on entertainment, distraction, socializing, gossip and comparing oneself on exte al factors to others.

Spiritual experiences are not purely subjective events impacting the mind or the emotions. They can also take on a very concrete form that impacts the vital nature and the physical body. Because of a general mental, religious and social bias against what appear to be unusual experiences, many people are left confused, bewildered, or even afraid to discuss what has occurred within them for fear of being labeled or even ostracized. Many people have been referred for psychological counseling once they have begun to speak about what is occurring in their inner state.

It is a human trait. We tend to oscillate between extremes. Too much, or too little, seems to be our method of living. Wise men, sages and Rishis throughout the ages have counseled ‘moderation in all things’, the ‘middle way’, the way of ‘balance’. These tenets for living are also helpful in our understanding of our physical body and its proper maintenance.

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It is much easier to spot faults in others than in oneself. The New Testament of the Bible relates a parable directly on point: “And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye? Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote that is in thy brother’s eye” (Matthew 7:3-5).

We try to judge situations and events from our human understanding. We do not generally see the chain of cause and effect that led to a specific circumstance, nor the impact of the result that we observe on future events. We see things from our own narrow egoistic viewpoint and judge them based on our own desires, wishes or trained ways of analyzing them.

The goal of the integral yoga is nothing less than the transformation of human nature, the uplifting of consciousness to the next evolutionary stage in the manifestation and the consequent changes that brings about to create a new harmony and a new balance in the life of the individual and in the world. Those who take up this yoga find that human nature is not so malleable, and thus, old modes and habits of action tend to stay embedded even when we recognise that things need to change.