The First Yogic Realisation
Monday October 4 2004 08:43 IST
By Karmayogi
Writers, artists,
musicians and poets are unique expressions of human Personality. If they are
proud of anything, it is their creativity. One becomes creative when he is
unique.
The world has not produced another Shakespeare in 400 years. That fact confirms
one's claim to be unique. Nor has another Vyasa been born in India to write an epic
that condenses all life into its slokas. Sri Aurobindo says each truth has an
opposite, which is equally true.
Mathew Arnold speaks of the birth of culture and the birth of great literature.
It issues, he says, out of a National Glow of Thought that is the result of a
cultured society entering into a long static period of centuries.
Shakespeare, Newton, Socrates, Valmiki, Kalidas are such
products. That is, they are the efflorescence of the thought of their age, a
product of their age. They who are unique in their expression are universal in
essence.
God executes his Will in the world through the instrumentation of the
individual MAN. Sri Aurobindo says Shakti acts and She alone acts. Man is a
mere instrument, a channel.
Creative personalities create unique products, but their theme is social, what
all society happily receives and endorses. A writer feels that what he writes
is his OWN thought. Yoga says thoughts are not ours, they are universal and
they pass through our minds.
Transport is public. We get into the train or bus and after a short while get
out of it. The transport is not ours, the journey is ours. As thoughts enter
from outside, so life too enters from the atmosphere into our lives. To realise
that our thoughts are universal, our acts are universal, our lives are universal,
is, according to Sri Aurobindo, the First Yogic Realisation.
With that Realisation, ego dissolves and disappears. To dissolve our ego is the
sadhana. That is yoga, or yoga sadhana. It needs no asana, pranayama, yantra or
tantra. It needs a knowledge. To execute it, one needs a yogic humility.
Then one sees the samudra of energy before which one is a speck. That
perception gives us humility. God is that samudra. Man is a speck in it. God is
not important for us. We are important to God. HE wishes to live our lives in
us. We do not agree with Him. We want Him to act according to our wishes! If
that is not possible, we turn away from Him.
It never occurs to us that God can live our lives better than we can. What
stands in the way is ego. To dissolve the ego, to be aware that He alone acts,
is the First Yogic Realisation.