Sri Ramchandra's Rajayoga: New Darsana : Part-2 :Psychology

Transmission - 1

The attainment of this condition of knowing is what is attempted by all the methods of training known as hatha-yoga (physical control), through breath-control or the stirring up of the inner nerves known as the right-breath (pingala or solar) and the left-breath (ida or lunar) so as to arrive at the vibrations which are central or spinal; or the usually well-known steps of the astangayoga-such as yama, niyama, asana, pranayama, dharana, and dhyana preceded by pratyahara, and finally samadhi. These may be of good help, but only according to the conception that if we control the physical, the mental will automatically get controlled. These yogas more often produce simulacrums or pseudo-conditions rather than the real conditions. One test of this matter is that these become, or tend to become, ends in themselves, i.e. mechanical. They do not lead towards knowledge of the Ultimate or liberation that arise from such a knowledge or being.

The real yoga should be started from the other end by inducing the original movement or vibration that had set in motion these organic creations, and whose impetus has not died out. This is the central force that has to be brought into activity, and it is here that, in yoga, one needs the person who can start it, or give it an impulse from the central point of oneself.

This central force or original vibrations that has enlarged itself from extreme subtlety to the grossest manifestation, is present in the grossest formations. There is one continuous flow of that vibration through out all the organic existence of oneself. The person who can stimulate or make manifest that vibration, or set it into motion again, is the knower of the secret of existence and reality.

The Yoga of inner stimulation or ignition, or ujjivana (upward living), is therefore effected by the connection, which the Yogin makes with this ultimate or primal vibration (spandana) or Kshobha. Self-ignition is rather difficult and, in a sense, impossible. It can be done only by that primal being or Reality itself, or by one who has been charged with this duty of igniting others-the Guru. Such a Guru is indeed Godhead-luminous and all knowing about the ways of the initial and final vibrations, and the paths of inner ascent.

Thus, Yoga starts with the transmission of the central force into the being or heart of the individual seeker. The original dhyana cannot begin unless this transmission is the force behind it; other kinds of dhyana are effortful mentations, despite the fact of their being conscious attempts to focus oneself on the goal, which is not defined. The transmission by the Guru into the heart of the seeker makes the seeker become aware of the true goal of reality, which begins to uncover itself. In Zen and other schools, the conscious awareness, either of discarding all ideation's or of aiming at Zero or nihil or pure ideationlessness, leads to strains on the system, and liberation becomes impossible. Even in the so-called Fourth Way of Gurdjieff-Ouspensky, the consciousness is sought to be intensified and uplifted to the highest center, and freed from the exclusiveness of the lower or other three ways. The attempt to lift consciousness to a higher, or even the highest, level beyond the three lower levels is undoubtedly necessary; the only question is whether that consciousness is not different from our own ordinary consciousness.

The highest consciousness which perhaps is about as unconscious as the sleep condition is such because it is unmediated consciousness, and is experienced as vibrations which might internally stimulate experience of sounds, lights, feelings, or sensations. In all these experiences, however, the inner certainty is that it is something not imagined by oneself, or consciously sought after, or in some sense constantly mediated upon; so that they do not become hallucinatory projections from oneself for one's own satisfaction.

Usually, dreams are considered to be wish fulfillment. They may be due to other reasons as well. Modern psycho-analysts consider that certain kinds of wishes which could not gain fulfillment in our life, either public or private, and as such are repressed by oneself, either out of fear of criticism or any other fear, find expression either directly or symbolically in dreams. They have explained all this indigenously, and in any case these are usually subjective and refer to oneself. But dreams also have a symbolic technique which is claimed to be universal, and therefore capable of being interpreted In fact even prognostications are made both in psycho-therapy and psychology. Certain drugs produce dreams which are about common to all those who take them.

But the Yogic Consciousness is not like dream consciousness, through in ordinary life it is just possible that since every abhyasi is also capable of having dreams, or rather, dreams being also states of consciousness, they are the operations of the highest consciousness already introduced or transmitted to him. They through out the inner psychic contents and, in doing so, do not create psychos but abolish them. Further they are, in one sense, the intimations of the higher consciousness at that level of the individual where his external organs are at rest only the inner mind actively receiving the higher consciousness. In other respects it may very much look like the other symbolic imagination or projection from within one's own depths.

The transmission of the highest consciousness is experienced by the abhyasi when he sits before his Guru who ignites his inner being or his central being connected with his heart. The heart-the physical heart-is important at the first stage because our closest thoughts are surely tinged with the affective factors, which have linked themselves with all thought. Man is a creature of emotional thought and instinctive thought, and the center of the physical existence is the heart. The transmission of the spiritual force by the Guru to the heart may be expected to bring about a lot of change. The usual anticipation of most abhyasis preparing to receive the first transmission is to expect some mighty electric charge to pass one and thus create an impression on oneself. Some abhyasis expect immediately some changes like the abolition of the mental modifications-or the passing of thoughts which prevent concentration on the Guru or his transmission. But, what is experienced actually is not any such radical or spectacular phenomenon, but a setting up of anew kind of vibration which makes one feel 'the quiet' amid the chasing thought, 'the quiet' amid the noise of the surroundings, a withdrawal of the senses of hearing from the outer world and also a slow giving up of desire for anything other than the 'quiet' itself. The experience of the 'silent mind' even when the objective mind is not completely stilled, is almost the first experience of the abhyasi. Normally this attainment takes quite a long time if it is striven after in the usual way by trying to control the pose, the breath, the checking of incoming thoughts and throwing out of the thoughts already within us etc.

Psychological experience of this silence is at first only subjective. In some cases psychologists would say that it is a kind of negative adaptation to the environment as happens in the case of school boys who have to listen to the class lectures, or write their essays, or speak, when the neighbourhood is full of all kinds of noise ranging from the tin-workshop and blacksmith to the modern entertainment's of radio songs, ribaldry, and the sound of the hoots of cars and lorries. One may thus be said to feel the silence of a place in dhyana also. But this is not really the experience of the silent-mind.

The experience of stillness as all pervading, and accom-panying us all through our works, is a different thing from negative adaptation. It is this that is experienced during transmission by the Guru when one has sought his help on life's journey. Out of this experience of the silent mind develops the experience of an omnipervasive presence-a presence that is very different from the constant fear that haunts most people not just the criminals and sinners.

Stillness, omnipervasiveness, and a spiritual dynamism awakening the individual to aspire for the highest experience, and therefore a sense of movement towards the highest and Ultimate, are almost the first fruits of the first transmission. The experience of the abhyasi is of course subjective. It is however common to all those who experience the transmission. The flow of some force or current all through the body is actually felt. It is subtle at the beginning. It appears also as if it is cleansing the whole system. Ancients called this process a kind of nadi-suddhi-a purification of the entire psychonic (nadi) system, which is subtler than the nervous system. In one sense the psychonic system cleans and clears both the nervous and the circulatory systems, as these two are all pervading in the organism.

But though the first aim of transmission is actually to connect the individual's heart with the supreme trans-cosmic force or Spirit that is the goal of the individual, yet it achieves the cleansing process of the entire organism. This is seen by the transmitter who removes the dirt and disease of the system appearing in the organism, and thus makes the individual sensitive to the transmission, a feel of the glow (called light) and lightness of the entire system interpreted in the usual Yoga as anima. The lightness, the glow, and the feeling of subtle vibrations all through the system are the triple experiences as the abhyasa or practice of transmission advances.

Of this transmission hardly any other system of Yoga is aware. Nor are they aware of its powers. Usually it claimed that it is personal devotion that produces this condition. It is an emotion that produces this condition. It is an emotional hallucination. Some who have not known this transmission seek to affirm that it is a product of the repetition of the primal sound, OM which makes one feel it all over. This condition is called anahata, the attainment of the indestructible sound. But all these explanations are not correct. Inner agitation does not mean transmission. Emotion cannot set up transmission. Transmission is that process by which one is connected from above with that below, or by which the inward psychic being is awakened by the overhead, cosmic or supercosmic or primal Being. This is an initiation-literally it means the beginning of the evolution of man into a cosmic being. It is the beginning of passing from the individuated or personal, limited, circumscribed, physical being to the world of cosmic functions. One becomes energized as a member of that cosmic world. In a deeper sense it is not that also; but one becomes one which Ultimate Reality, or begins to be linked up with that Ultimate Reality.

The result of the transmission is, as it were, the beginning of the experience of the Ultimate Reality, and this experience, at our human level, is experienced as vibration or movement. Some say it is of the nature of nada (sound-occult and internal)

It also facilitates the several modifications within the organic system. We are able to sit in a steady posture for a considerable time in absorption in the transmission. The transmission itself puts one in a state of absorption (dhyana). Though there is no effort to achieve the control of mental movements outside oneself, such control is something that results from this transmission. Concentration seems to be natural and not something enforced by will. The individual will itself begins to disappear, but it manifests itself as aspiration, which is the sublimation of the will.

Thus, in Sri Ram Chandra's Rajayoga, the mental modifications, controls and concentration become resultants of the transmission of the superconsciousness from Above.