Page 18 - NAMAH-Jan-2018

Namah Vol. 28, Issue 4, 15th January 2021

In fact, the first humans were fast losing the entering the mainstream of science. All these
vitality of the ape but what they were gaining are early signs but clear enough to indicate
was not yet visible on the surface, not even the direction of the future.
to them. They were wanderers and explorers
who knew not who they were and why they If we look at the history of spiritual evolution
were and where they had to go and what it took quite a similar route. The Vedic mystics,
they were searching. They must have felt for example, had to clothe their experiences
quite ill-equipped compared to the strong in symbolic language which was revealed
apes and the beasts of the wild and yet each only to the initiate. Spiritual practices, as
challenge they faced brought out of them the different from spiritual philosophy, were a
hidden mental power. They had to conquer rather closely guarded secret. It was meant
the earth not through the extreme vitality of only for the initiate. Not all were considered
the animal or its brute strength but through ready for the spiritual life. There were
something else, something new, the growing ashrams and monasteries where the spiritual
light of a mental intelligence and its power truths were taught. While the acceptance was
of reason. Something similar to what we are much more in India, the guardian of spiritual
witnessing today. aspiration in mankind, in other parts of the
world it took the form of occultism. Spiritual
The mental man has entered a fast-forward practitioners were often misunderstood and
curve through which he is exhausting his persecuted right until our own ages. It is only
mental capacities and sounding its utmost now that we see a kind of generalisation of
possibilities. In the process he is discarding the spiritual impulse, a collective seeking,
many things and changing others. New a greater acceptance of spirituality. Science
impulses and aspirations are seizing him itself is beginning to accept at least some
already, the aspiration for a new kind of aspects of it. Scientific knowledge is itself
thought that unites Creator with the Creation, drawing towards the sense of the mystic
the aspiration to make earth a beautiful home, and spiritual intuitions. All these are signs
the urge to explore and understand other of a preparedness for the generalisation of
dimensions beyond the material universe, the yoga in mankind. A greater collective
the hope of freedom from disease and the spiritual evolution is clearly in the offing.
possibility of physical immortality. The
collective imagination of the race is being Evolution of the spiritual man
seized by ideas of transmutation to a new
species. Knowledge has burst beyond its In other words what is happening is that the
seams and the neat material world with clear- spiritual evolution of man through yoga is
cut laws is collapsing into an indeterminate changing into the evolution of the spiritual
chaos. On the other hand, irrational impulses man. The spiritual evolution up until now
seem to be seizing humanity, breaking down took the form of an individual journey,
the fixed social order and the old formats of whereby each one had to follow a certain
the mind-built world. The subjective side of path of yoga and its fixed formal practices.
existence is being given importance while It was like a narrow road opening us out
certain practices such as meditation are of the mental rooms into the wide sky of

18