Page 9 - NAMAH-Apr-2024

Namah Editorial

Instead, the principle of automaticity is That is why nearly all spiritual traditions
being traced to brain-circuits, regulating use the japa — repeating a sacred name
primitive aspects of behaviour to neuro- or mantra verbally, often with the help of
transmitters and to gene mutations. It is counting rosary beads, so that instead
true that in a section of OCD subjects, of ruminating on habitual ideas one
stress and traumatic events are present can galvanise oneself by repeating the
in the background but it might be that name of the Lord! Sri Aurobindo had
they are not the prime causative factors, commented, “But more important is what
only that OCD subjects might be more may be described as a trained and developed
vulnerable to these influences. automatism, a perfected skill and capacity
of eye and ear and the hands and all the
Moreover, OCD subjects do not appreciably members prompt to respond to any call made
respond to psychoanalysis or any in-depth on them, a developed spontaneous operation
psychotherapy, but to behavioural and as instrument, a complete fitness for any
cognitive behavioural therapies and in demand that the mind and life-energy can
extreme cases, require psychosurgery. In make upon it (5).”
OCD, there is an ideational as well as an
action component. In certain obsessive The Mother commented that, “The japa is
spectrum disorders like trichotillomania, made precisely to control the physical mind
and in most other habit disorders like tics (6).”
or torticollis, mediated through the physical
mind, there is no ideational component The Yoga of Transformation — The Mind
but only mechanically recurrent habitual of Light
movements, which are even more refractory
to behavioural interventions. The evolutionary journey in consciousness
needs to proceed through a transformative
trajectory that would progressively manifest
higher planes of consciousness till the
Supramental consciousness is reached. The
Supramental also has to descend through
the hierarchies of consciousness so that the
eventual dream is realised. In this whole
process, it is the physical mind and not the
intellectual mind that plays an initial pivotal
and decisive role.

Sri Aurobindo explains that in the Yoga of
The phenomenon of Japa Transformation, the physical mind has to be
transformed first before the intellectual mind
The physical mind is not only involved is transformed. At the moment however,
in clinical conditions like OCD, but is one has to learn to shift from the physical
hindrance to contemplative thinking. mind to higher ranges of mental functioning

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