|
|
| AYURVEDA |
CONCLUSION
The fundamental facts necessary for achieving success in spiritual culture are:-
Sraddha-faith in the efficacy of Concentration.
Veerya-Progressively increased effort or energy arising out of that belief.
Smriti- capacity to call up the desired object before the mind repeatedly by the use of that energy.
Samadhi – Concentration of the mind on a single object with a view to stopping all dispersiveness and lastly.
Prajna – Insight into the nature of things by concentration. Sutra 1. 20.
To these five, we must add Abhyasa practice) and Vairagya (Dispassion or detachment).
Ayurveda recognises the value of this great science of Yoga and expects the physician to use these spiritual powers, in the diagnosis and treatment of diseases. Refer, Chakra sarira Cha. I. V. 136-142. Ashtaiswaryas or the 8 supernormal powers are described here. The relation of mind to pain was discussed.
“Jnana buddhi pradipena yo navisati tatvavit
Aaturasyaantaraatraatmanam na sa rogaanschikitsati”
(Ch. Vi-IV).
that is:- A learned physician who fails to enter the inner soul of the patient with the aid of the brilliant lamp of knowledge and understanding can never (really) treat diseases.
[III] YOGA PSYCHOLOGY
[CONTENTS – Yoga Psychology – Triple barricade of matter – Chittavruthi (Fluctuations of mind) – Vasanas (impressions of previous lives) – Modifications of mind classified – Vairagya (detachment) and Abhyasa (Practise) – Savitarka Samadhi (Reflective Meditation) – Saananda Samadhi – Saasmita Samadhi – Asam – Pragnaatha Samadhi – Antharayas (Obstacles to Samadhi) – Yama, Niyama – Asana – Praanayaama – Fundamental Traits.]
The Yoga system professes to free the soul from the material bondage by laying down a progressive scheme of self-realization. The main objective of Yoga Psychology is to lay bare the process of thinking in its ethical aspect of progress towards or away from that self-illumination which is identical with salvation; incidentally, it has to discuss the difficulties and dangers that beset the path of the aspirant after liberation at different stages of progress. The means it suggests to achieve this summum bonum – Moksha – of the spirit is to turn the material impediments themselves into weapons of attack so that Nature ultimately retires from the field of battle. By concentration on Nature’s objects, they are subdued and seen through.
Triple barricade of matter
The spirit is enclosed within a triple barricade of matter and until all the barriers full off the soul would remain in bondage to matter.
1. The physical body supplies the gross vestment of spirit, and material comforts often pass for spiritual blessings. This was the basis of the Charvaka philosophy where the soul and the body were identified and the existence of a disembodied soul (or even a purely spiritual soul) was denied.
* We are greatly indebted to Sri Haridoss Bhattacharya, M. A., B. L., P.R.S. Darsana, sgara Head of the Department of Philosophy and Dean of the Faculty of Arts, Dacca University, for the following extracts taken from his valuable article on Yoga psychology contributed to the Cultural Heritage of India Vol. I.
2. Then there is the belt of the external sense-organs. As contrasted with the organic sensations mediated by the gross body, these bring reports of external objects and fascinate the soul by the beauties of diversified Nature. The reaction to sensory knowledge is effected by means of the organs of action, and this brings in more knowledge of the external world and more material pleasures.
3. Then there is the group of internal principles (antahkarana) – mind (manas), ego (ahamkara) and intelligence (buddhi) – which forms the last and the most insidious chain of bondage round the soul.
Thus the Yoga philosophy reiterates the main Upanishadic conclusion that the soul must not be identified either with the body or with the senses or with the mind or even with the ego and the intelligence principle. (Buddhi) and that one must penetrate into the inner spiritual core after ripping open the “sheaths” (kosas) of materiality.
*Yoga Sutra ii. 13; iv 4.
Chittavrithi – (Fluctuations of mind)
The starting point of the enquiry is constituted by an investigation into the nature of phenomenal consciousness, which is an unceasing flow of cognitive states, using the word, cognition m its most extended sense to include all types of awareness, impulse and affection. This is called chittavritti, mental modifications or fluctuations of the mind-stuff, the word chitta being a comprehensive designation of the collocation of the five vital arts, (Pranas) the eleven organs (Indriyas – including the mind power) and the other conditions of knowledge like egoism (ahamkara) and intelligence (buddhi). It roughly corresponds to the Western conception of consciousness as a stream in which there are both apprehension of objects and appropriation by the self of the states of awareness as its own. It must be remembered that all types of beings are not capable of the same type of experience nor do two individuals of the same species agree about their mental contents. The reason for this is to be sought in the law of karma which determines what type of embodiment and experience is to be expected of any particular soul, when unaided by Yogic proficiency.
Vasanas (Impressions of previous Lives)
The chitta is not a perfectly uniform pliable stuff – it differs from individual to individual, making the task of one easier than that of another. Past karma has set limits to its capacities, so much so that certain types of embodiment are only expiatory in character without the right and the capacity to improve one’s lot by personal endeavour, just as probably other embodiments are only meant for enjoying the fruits of past karmas and are equally devoid of the capacity of improvement. All individuals do not have to begin at the same point on the onward path and the same disciplines are not necessary for all to bring about spiritual insight. The chitta, again is differently equipped with instinctive cravings in different kinds of beings in accordance with the types of their embodiment. As beings have been coming and going during the whole period of their eternal life, they must have assumed many shapes in course of transmigration and a deposit of impressions of those different lives is left in the chitta as vasanas. These vasanas become active according to embodiment, so that a human body is never prompted by bovine instincts nor a cow by human impulses. (*Yoga Sutra iv. 9). These vasanas are eternal in the sense that they are not habits, memories and dispositions acquired during the lifetime of the individual, nor do they disappear, like these with the cessation of the body. The yogin has to fight not only against visible enemies but also against invisible foes: for, in addition to the conscious contents of his mind, there are also native tendencies like natural introversion and extroversion, innate propensities peculiar to the species carried over from past lives, and also latent deposits, (samskara) of past activities of this life. It is not enough, therefore, to step the flow of conscious states alone, for latent tendencies of different kinds sprout up into overt thoughts and activities so long as they are not totally burnt up by the fire of discriminating knowledge (viveka). (*Yoga Sutra 81. Ii, 26. Iii. 50, iv. 26-34.). When, therefore, yoga is defined as chittavrittinirodha (suppression of the modifications of the mind-stuff), it must be understood not only as the stoppage of presentations but also as the credication of those potencies or latent tendencies that generate new streams of thought and new lines of action. (*Yoga Sutra i. 2. 50. I.). Much of yogic direction is, therefore, aimed at the uprooting of potencies that make for fresh bondage through lapse in inhibition. Hence the yogin (in Brahmanism, Buddhism and Jainism) is enjoined to consolidate conquests as well as to attack new outposts if he wishes to samadhis, bhumis or gunasthanakas mark the line of advance in spirituality (*Yoga Sutra i. 17. 18: ii. 27. iv. 29.) and woe unto him who forgets that positions attained with arduousness can be retained only b vigilance and effort and that to make no effort to advance is the surest way to court retreat.
Modifications of Mind
Modifications of mind are classified. Now this chitta whose modifications are to be suppressed in order to obtain insight is not homogeneous in character. There are distracted natures (kshipta), unsteady minds (vikshipta), passionate and stupid egos (mudha), attentive dispositions (ekagra) and intuitive tempers (nirudha). (*Vyasbhashya on Y.S.i.I.). The perpetually restless, the occasionally steady, the infatuated, the mono-ideistic and the restricted exhaust the different types of minds and they are faced with difficulties of different degrees and kinds in realizing their true selves. All avenues of empirical or phenomenal knowledge must be closed before transcendental cognition can arise.
Vairaagya (detachment), Abhyasa (Practice)
The indispensable conditions of all spiritual advance is the cultivation of detachment (vairagya) – not in a spasmodic fashion but by practice in a systematic way (abhyasa). (*Y.S.i. 12-14; Dh. Gita, vi. 35.) The Yoga system advises a control of the affections as the indispensable condition of the disappearance of the phenomenal world. So long as we retain interest in any object, we are bound to notice its presence and feel the effects of that knowledge: even subliminal cravings are to be checked by suitable means to ensure perfect freedom. The process starts with a desire that the senses should not stray into the fields of their normal activity; this is the condition of the striving (yatamana). The next stage is represented by the knowledge that interest in certain objects has ceased but not in others: this is the condition of differentiation (vyatireka). The third stage is attained when interest in sense object has completely ceased, but there still lingers a residual anxiety in the mind (whence it is called one-organed, ekendriya). Students of abnormal psychology will readily remember cases of anxiety neurosis (and anxiety-hysteria) where the knowledge of the originating cause has disappeared from conscious memory and yet the effect appears in the form of anxiety. It is only when this stage is crossed and the state of detachment from seen and unseen delectations arises that the condition known as control (vasikara), which is the highest form of lower detachment (aparavoiragya), may be said to have been attained (*Y. S; i. 15). Beyond this stage is paravatragya, highest detachment, in which complete indifference even to the elements of nature (gunas) is reached because of self knowledge; and this discriminative knowledge becomes the cause of salvation only hen it is never disturbed or broken (aviplatva) (*Y.S; I; 16; ii. 26; iii. 9. 12.) by a return of the consciousness of the subject-object relation.
Side by side with the control of the emotional aspect of mental life there goes on a transcendence of crude cognitions on a progressive fashion. Every phenomenal cognition implies three factors, namely the knower (grehitri), the process of knowledge (grahana) and the object to be known (grahya) – a trinity which noumenal knowledge wholly transcends [*Y. S: iii. 47. (with Vyasabhashya)]. The chitta or mind – stuff has a tendency to identify itself with the object which it cognizes when its fluctuations are weakened; if its activities were absolute in character, then there would be no possibility either of improvement or of final liberation. Hence the importance of fixing the mind-stuff upon the right object, for what a mind thinks it tends to become.
Savitarka Samadhi (contemplative meditation)
It has already been remarked that the path to liberation lies through the fields of nature herself – that the soul uses the phenomena of Nature themselves to conquer her finally. The process of conquest consists in the different kinds of knowledge in the chitta corresponding to the different kinds of Nature’s manifestations. Thus the ordinary mind is filled with contemplations of the grosser aspects of Nature- the products of the mahabhutas which Prakriti evolves last. Using a word which is common with Buddhism but not entering into such niceties of distinction as Buddhism does regarding the different kinds of intellection (mano, chitta, vedana, vijnana, samjna, etc), the Yoga calls this stage of knowledge savitarka, samadhi – here the mind synthesizes its impressions and ideas into the percept of a gross object like a cow or a jar and keeps itself fixed thereon. In this stage all the elements of perceptual knowledge, namely the sound (Sabda), or the name the meaning (artha) conveyed to the mind and the actual object (vastu) are all rolled up together so that the experience is as much a mental as a physical fact. (*. Y. S: I, 42, Y. S: i. 43, Y. S: i. 9). The duality of subject and object is, in its full significance, present in this cognition and the mind does not rise here above the relativity which all concrete knowledge implies, the knowledge of one object being dependent upon a contrast with that of others. Now this gross cognition can be superseded either in aspect of the objective content or that of the elements involved. Thus when the three elements of sound (in the case of auditory cognition), meaning and object intended are reduced to the last, i.e. when the mind understands the nature of objects in a direct fashion without the help of words or psychical doubles, we reach the stage of nirvitarka (indeter minute Samadhi). (*. Y. S: I, 42, Y. S: i. 43, Y. S: i. 9). Words often tend to conceal the real nature of an object and also to produce the illusion of a sensible contest (as in the case of negative word.) when the mental state called vikalpa follows. It is necessary to raise above the complication of knowledge by verbal and meaning factors and to get a direct unverbalized knowledge of things, such as is possessed by babes and deafmutes: when this is accomplished the savitarka stage is superseded by the nirvitarka stage and knowledge about things is transcended in a direct acquaintance with them.
But the yogin must go beyond the stage of gross contact altogether and try a grasp the subtle elements of Nature (tanmatras) in their true essence.
|
|
Previous
Next
|
|
|
|