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Namah Yogic insights into human psychology

This rajas has come to awaken the world to core where the urge for progress lies. This can
a greater world order. It has fallen into a happen if both realise the limited boundaries
habitual routine and is satisfied within limits and framework within which we operate.
of tradition and custom. This blocks future On the other hand, too deep a satisfaction
possibilities and is the big drawback of sattva. between two human beings may prevent them
It preserves a relationship by force of duty from exploring higher and greater possibilities.
and religious sanction, by moral and ethical
codes and norms. Yet, and for these very Sri Aurobindo succinctly summarises this
reasons, it keeps it tied to the farthest outposts limited groove within which most human
of ignorance and never really ventures further relationships turn, giving us penetrating
into vast, unexplored regions of the Spirit. insights into the truth underlying all our
present human relationships:
Complementarity and affinity
“Human affection is obviously unreliable
It is almost an evolutionary necessity, or because it is so muchbound up with selfishness
so it seems, to bring together two persons and desire; it is a flame of the ego sometimes
operating from different levels and in different turbid and misty, sometimes more clear and
ways. Yet behind this a law operates. It is brightly coloured — sometimes tamasic based
the law of complimentary beings. According on instinct and habit, sometimes rajasic and
to this law that operates secretly in nature, fed by passion or the cry for vital interchange,
two persons with different, often seemingly sometimes more sattwic and trying to be or look
opposing tendencies, are brought together to itself disinterested. But fundamentally it
for evolutionary purposes. If they can stick depends on a personal need or a return of some
along in a dynamic relationship then slowly kind inward or outward and when the need is
they gain enormously from each other and not satisfied or the return ceases or is not given,
get enriched in the process. Such relations are it most often diminishes or dies or exists only
meant for progress more than for personal as a tepid or troubled remnant of habit from
happiness. They bring out hidden possibilities the past or else turns for satisfaction elsewhere.
from each other through contact, interchange The more intense it is, the more it is apt to be
and close influence. This law draws two troubled by tumults, clashes, quarrels, egoistic
people of very different types together, very disturbances of all kinds, selfishness, exactions,
different in nature so that their mutual contact lapses even torage and hatred, ruptures. It is
may bring out hidden elements in one’s own not that these affections cannot last — tamasic
nature. instinctive affections last because of habit
inspite of everything dividing the persons,
On the other hand, there is the law of affinity e.g. certain family affections; rajasic affections
that draws two human beings together due can last sometimes in spite of all disturbances
to shared tendencies, attitudes and ways of and incompatibilities and furious ruptures
thinking and feeling. The relationships based because one has a vital need of the other and
on such affinities are happy but rather static clings because of that or because both have that
from the evolutionary point of view. They can need and are constantly separating to return
evolve only if they touch the deeper psychic and returning to separate, or proceeding from

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