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Namah Yogic insights into human psychology

quieten our thoughts, feelings and desires opens a wide path on which one can walk
by the practice of equanimity and niskama even as one is engaged in all the countless
karma (giving up the desire for fruit in an activities of our everyday life. This is a big
action). The nature is also trained to turn its difference especially in our age that keeps
activities, thoughts and feelings and will in a us busy in many more ways than the forest
Godward direction. All this helps us to gain dwellers of yore. In fact a proper practice of
peace, calm and quietude in our otherwise the specialised systems of yoga such as the
restless and hyperactive life, driven by all Hathayoga and Rajayoga or even Jñaanayoga
kinds of forces. Once nature is quietened then with its requirement of intense meditation is
the sadhaka enters the inner territories until he difficult to undertake without a certain degree
is able to touch the real bed, the stable self, of withdrawal from the worldly life and its
the soul within. He is no more identified with manifold activities. That is why perhaps over
the ever shifting ego-self that keeps changing a period of time yoga and spirituality began
its colours and moods by the hour. There he to get alienated from life, so much so that
discovers the true nature of man which is they were seen as irreconcilable opposites.
fundamentally divine. It was so believed that one can either lead a
material life or a spiritual one.
This is a great difference in the yogic and
the prevalent psychological understanding But the yoga of the Gita opened a new chapter
of mankind. According to yoga, man has in this journey by integrating life with yoga.
fundamentally a divine nature which is now This new chapter was taken to its full logical
covered but can be recovered by removing conclusion by Sri Aurobindo whose Integral
the veils. According to prevalent psychology Yoga not only reconciles the material life and
and even some religions, man has an animal- the spiritual but also attempts to transform the
human nature and there is no hope of his material and bodily existence of man by the
ever having a divine nature. He can try to pressure of a growing spiritual consciousness
make the animal in him more acceptable (the within.
psychological view) or else be forgiven and
redeemed for his sins by accepting a certain Reprogramming our nature
belief-system (Semitic religious viewpoint). It
is left to each one to go by what one feels more Nevertheless this does not mean that the Gita
comfortable with. In yoga there is no idea or the Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo can
of any conversion or exchange of one belief be practised while one is busy dancing as a
over another. It is grounded in practice and puppet of nature and its lesser forces. These,
rooted in the experience of countless yogis. whose names are greed, lust, anger, jealousy,
One has to go beyond beliefs and practice fear, have to be excised and removed. We
the yoga and find for oneself. have to remind ourselves that this is not me
but an imposition from universal nature or
However while the typical Rajayoga, Hathayoga, the earth nature as it stands today. Here
Jñaanayoga and even a type of Bhaktiyoga need we need to consider the double nature of
specialised practices for which we must find man. There is in man a true soul-nature. It
separate time, the Karma yoga of the Gita contains the original and authentic blueprint

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