Yoga: Then and Now

The ancient sages developed a basic ‘life plan’ for people to be able to pursue in their lives a balanced agenda consisting of Dharma, Artha, Kama and Moksha. Dharma essentially was following the individual life purpose and being true to one’s own life and destiny. Artha was the pursuit of remunerative activities so one could support oneself and others. Kama was the pursuit of pleasure in life. Moksha was the pursuit of liberation from the ties of the external life, after having experienced and lived out the other three. In order to accomplish this they defined stages of life during which people would generally carry out these stages sequentially, so that after obtaining an education, one pursued a career and the life of a householder, raising and supporting a family, honoring the elders and educating the children. After this period of life was completed, the time came to abandon all of that and take up the life of renunciation and focus on one’s spiritual development.

Of course, there were exceptions to this general guideline. Paramahansa Yogananda, for instance, relates in his Autobiography of a Yogi how, from a very early age, he was captivated by the idea of following the spiritual path, and he made several attempts to run away from family and school to find his Guru and receive his initiation. The Dalai Lama, when he takes birth in a new body, is generally identified at a very early age and undergoes intensive training and education befitting his intended role.

The general ideal was based on the idea of a division or separation between the life in the world and the life of the spirit, and one then had to choose which to pursue and the general guideline was to first live in the world and experience it, and then take up spiritual realisation. Of course, this meant that the life remained untransformed and the body, when its external purpose was completed, could be disregarded and eventually dropped.

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother envisioned another path, however. That path integrated the life in the world with the life of the Spirit, and worked to transform the external life, not abandon it. Thus, the yogic path begins much earlier and follows a somewhat more difficult process of finding a way to live in the world while learning how to remain in contact with, and embody, the spiritual consciousness. Their goal was not to escape from life, but to transform the earthly life into a divine life.

The Mother observes: “Naturally, there are many ways of doing it [awakening in the body an aspiration for the Divine] and, in fact, each one should find his own. But the starting-point may be very different, apparently almost the very opposite.”

“In former times, when yoga was a flight from life, it was a common practice for people, apart from a few predestined ones, not to think about yoga until they were old, when they had experienced much, known all the vicissitudes of life, its pleasures, its sorrows, its joys and miseries, its responsibilities, disillusionments, indeed all that life usually brings to human beings; and naturally, all this had disabused them a little of their illusions about the joys of existence, so they were ready to think of something else, and their body, if not full of youthful enthusiasm (!), was at least not a hindrance, for as it had been satiated, it no longer asked for much…. To start from this end is all very well when one wants to leave life behind with a spiritual attitude and does not expect any collaboration from it in the transformation. This is obviously the easiest method. But it is also obvious that if one wants this material existence to participate in the divine life, to be the field of action and realisation, it is preferable not to wait until with wear and tear the body becomes sufficiently… quiet so as not to obstruct the yoga. It is much better, on the contrary, to take it quite young when it is full of all its energies and can put enough ardour and intensity into its aspiration. In this case, instead of relying on a weariness which no longer demands anything, one should rely on a kind of inner enthusiasm for the unknown, the new — for perfection. And if you have the good fortune to be in conditions where you can receive help and guidance from childhood, try while still very young to discern between the fugitive joys and superficial pleasures life can give and the marvellous thing that life, action, growth would be in a world of perfection and truth, where all the ordinary limitations, all the ordinary incapacities would be done away with.”

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, Powers Within, Chapter XVI Body, pp. 123-124