Overcoming the Impulse of Anger

There is an illustrative tale in the Mahabharata. The Pandava and Kaurava princes were being instructed by their noted teacher Dronacharya. Today’s lesson was ‘not to become angry’. The 100 Kaurava princes were asked if they had learned the lesson and they all replied in the affirmative. The 4 youngest Pandavas replied similarly. When Dronacharya came to the eldest, Yudhisthira, who was being groomed as the next king of Hastinapur, he received an unexpected reply, namely, that he had not learned the lesson. The next day the scene repeated, with the same result. On the following day, after going through this same scenario, Dronacharya lashed out and struck Yudhisthira across the face. This was a potential death sentence for Dronacharya to strike the crown prince, but Yudhisthira answered that he had now learned the lesson. As we learn later in the epic tale, none of the others actually learned how to control the impulse of anger in real-life situations, other than Yudhisthira.

We experience anger when we are unable to fulfill a desire, or when someone acts contrary to our wishes. Road rage is a great example of an instant rising up of anger due to a traffic failure, whether someone cuts us off on the road, drives too close, or does not let us pass when we are hurried. Spiritual seekers are not exempt from the uprush of anger, and, as with other vital impulses, it needs to be addressed.

As long as we remain based in the ego-consciousness, anger remains with us, and we tend to identify with it, and undergo ‘anger management’ procedures and training to address the anger which we accept as our own. Sri Aurobindo reminds us that the impulse actually arises outside in universal Nature and it is a matter of our tuning to it and accepting the impulse when it comes that leads to an expression of anger. The answer, then, is to find a way to change the channel, so to speak, and tune our awareness to other and higher energies, thus not giving anger an opportunity to express itself through us.

Sri Aurobindo writes: “I think you have always had an idea that to give expression to an impulse or a movement is the best way or even the only way to get rid of it. But that is a mistaken idea. If you give expression to anger, you prolong or confirm the habit of the recurrence of anger; you do not diminish or get rid of the habit. The very first step towards weakening the power of anger in the nature and afterwards getting rid of it altogether is to refuse all expression to it in act or speech. Afterwards one can go in with more likelihood of success to throw it out from the thought and feeling also. And so with all other wrong movements.”

“All these movements come from outside, from the universal lower Nature, or are suggested or thrown upon you by adverse forces — adverse to your spiritual progress. Your method of taking them as your own is again a wrong method; for by doing that you increase their power to recur and take hold of you. If you take them as your own, that gives them a kind of right to be there. If you feel them as not your own, then they have no right, and the will can develop more power to send them away. What you must always have and feel as yours is this will, the power to refuse assent, to refuse admission to a wrong movement. Or if it comes in, the power to send it away, without expressing it.”

“Of course the best way will be if you can keep the contact more with the Mother and her Light and Force and receive and accept and follow only what comes from that higher force.”

Sri Aurobindo, Integral Yoga: Sri Aurobindo’s Teaching and Method of Practice, Chapter 10, Difficulties in Transforming the Nature, Anger and Violence, pp 296-299

Advertisement

The Supreme Consciousness and the Creative Force of Manifestation

Indian spirituality and philosophy has recognized two primary aspects to existence, the Supreme Consciousness that creates, informs, constitutes and contains all that exists, and the Creative Force that actually manifests the universal creation. The Gita describes the Supreme Consciousness as the Purushottama, the ultimate Purusha, and the Creative Force as the Para Prakriti, the Divine Shakti, the supreme executive Nature. The Gita, as with other Vedantic texts, focuses primarily on the realisation of the Purushottama, as Vedanta generally sets the goal as the liberation of the individual from the cosmic creation. With the development of the Tantric tradition, the emphasis shifted to liberation through achieving oneness with the Divine Shakti. Sri Aurobindo accepts both aspects as real and has developed a unification that works to both achieve ultimate realisation of the Purushottama as well as with the Divine Shakti. The Divine Shakti is called the Divine Mother as it is the creative force that manifests and gives birth to the universes, galaxies, worlds, and all forms and forces that are experienced in this creation.

Sri Aurobindo observes: “The Gita does not speak expressly of the Divine Mother; it speaks always of surrender to the Purushottama — it mentions her only as the Para Prakriti who becomes the Jiva, that is, who manifests the Divine in the multiplicity and through whom all these worlds are created by the Supreme and he himself descends as the Avatar. The Gita follows the Vedantic tradition which leans entirely on the Ishwara aspect of the Divine and speaks little of the Divine Mother because its object is to draw back from world-nature and arrive at the supreme realisation beyond it; the Tantric tradition leans on the Shakti or Ishwari aspect and makes all depend on the Divine Mother because its object is to possess and dominate world-nature and arrive at the supreme realisation through it. This yoga insists on both the aspects; the surrender to the Divine Mother is essential, for without it there is no fulfilment of the object of the yoga.”

Sri Aurobindo, Integral Yoga: Sri Aurobindo’s Teaching and Method of Practice, The Integral Yoga and Other Systems of Yoga and Philosophy, pg.30

The Integral Yoga: Development Beyond the Yoga of the Bhagavad Gita

While the Bhagavad Gita provides a strong foundation for the spiritual practice of the Integral Yoga, it was developed within a context of time, place and circumstance that brought it to a certain stage of human evolution and potential. Today, the teachings of the Gita remain relevant, but do not provide the ultimate answers as to the evolutionary process and the role of the human individual within that process. Sri Aurobindo shows that the ancient sages had glimpses and indications of the further steps in the process, but did not focus on them or develop them in their fullness at the time. The Integral Yoga therefore provides new lines of development beyond those set forth in the Gita, and explores the human potential within the broader evolution of consciousness that Sri Aurobindo has outlined.

Sri Aurobindo writes: “It is not a fact that the Gita gives the whole base of Sri Aurobindo’s message; for the Gita seems to admit the cessation of birth in the world as the ultimate aim or at least the ultimate culmination of yoga; it does not bring forward the idea of spiritual evolution or the idea of the higher planes and the supramental Truth-Consciousness and the bringing down of that consciousness as the means of the complete transformation of earthly life.”

“The idea of the supermind, the Truth-Consciousness is there in the Rig Veda according to Sri Aurobindo’s interpretation and in one or two passages of the Upanishads, but in the Upanishads it is there only in seed in the conception of the being of knowledge, vijnanamaya purusha, exceeding the mental, vital and physical being; in the Rig Veda the idea is there but in principle only, it is not developed and even the principle of it has disappeared from the Hindu tradition.”

“It is these things among others that constitute the novelty of Sri Aurobindo’s message as compared with the Hindu tradition — the idea that the world is not either a creation of Maya or only a play, lila, of the Divine, or a cycle of births in the ignorance from which we have to escape, but a field of manifestation in which there is a progressive evolution of the soul and the nature in Matter and from Matter through Life and Mind to what is beyond Mind till it reaches the complete revelation of Sachchidananda in life. It is this that is the basis of the yoga and gives a new sense to life.”

Sri Aurobindo, Integral Yoga: Sri Aurobindo’s Teaching and Method of Practice, The Integral Yoga and Other Systems of Yoga and Philosophy, pp.28-29

The Bhagavad Gita Provides a Suitable Initial Foundation for the Spiritual Development of the Integral Yoga

The Bhagavad Gita rightly occupies an important spot in the spiritual tradition of India. The teaching of the Gita is expansive and detailed, exploring the paths of Knowledge, Devotion and Works and providing insight into the attitude of the seeker, the relation to the teacher, and the nature of the divine consciousness, transcendent, universal and individual. Sri Aurobindo translated in various places the verses of the Gita, which were brought together by Anilbaran Roy in the book Bhagavad Gita and Its Message. This book also includes relevant passages from Sri Aurobindo’s more expansive and seminal review of the Gita, Essays on the Gita. The Gita remains an important text for spiritual seekers and provides a valuable foundation for the further developments envisioned by Sri Aurobindo in the evolutionary manifestation of the supramental consciousness and the transformation of life on earth.

Sri Aurobindo writes: “I may say that the way of the Gita is itself a part of the yoga here and those who have followed it, to begin with or as a first stage, have a stronger basis than others for this yoga.”

“Our yoga is not identical with the yoga of the Gita although it contains all that is essential in the Gita’s yoga. In our yoga we begin with the idea, the will, the aspiration of the complete surrender; but at the same time we have to reject the lower nature, deliver our consciousness from it, deliver the self involved in the lower nature by the self rising to freedom in the higher nature. If we do not do this double movement, we are in danger of making a tamasic and therefore unreal surrender, making no effort, no tapas and therefore no progress; or else we may make a rajasic surrender not to the Divine but to some self-made false idea or image of the Divine which masks our rajasic ego or something still worse.”

Sri Aurobindo, Integral Yoga: Sri Aurobindo’s Teaching and Method of Practice, The Integral Yoga and Other Systems of Yoga and Philosophy, pp.28-29

The Third Great Secret of the Gita’s Way of Karma Yoga

There are several central issues that arise when we take up the yoga of works as a serious discipline. The first of these is the question of transitioning from our normal mode of action toward the Divine action contemplated by this Yoga. The second brings us to the ultimate question of whether and how the human being can act without the normal motive force of desire, in one form or another, driving that action.

Sri Aurobindo addresses the first of these by referencing the various intermediate “strategies” and showing that they have their place during the transitional phase: “At first we have to learn to bear the shocks of the world with the central part of our being untouched and silent, even when the surface mind, heart, life are strongly shaken; unmoved there on the bedrock of our life, we must separate the soul watching behind or immune deep within from these outer workings of nature. Afterwards, extending this calm and steadfastness of the detached soul to its instruments, it will become slowly possibly to radiate peace from the luminous centre to the darker peripheries.” The movements of stoicism, resignation, or aloof detachment can be partial or temporary aids along the way. “In the end we must either discard or transform them and arrive instead an an entire equality, a perfect self-existent peace within and even, if we can, a total unassailable, self-poised and spontaneous delight in all our members.”

Having begun this process of eliminating the desire for fruits, and gaining a complete equality in our reactive being, the question of the motive spring of action comes to the fore:

“For ordinarily, the human being acts because he has a desire or feels a mental, vital or physical want or need; he is driven by the necessities of the body, by the lust of riches, honours or fame, or by a craving for the personal satisfactions of the mind or the heart or a craving for power or pleasure. Or he is seized and pushed about by a moral need or, at least, the need or the desire of making his ideas or his ideals or his will or his party or his country or his gods prevail in the world.”

Once all this desire-based impetus is removed, what is left? “The Gita replies with its third great secret of the divine life. All action must be done in a more and more Godward and finally a God-possessed consciousness; our works must be a sacrifice to the Divine and in the end a surrender of all our being, mind, will, heart, sense, life and body to the One must make God-love and God-service our only motive. This transformation of the motive-force and very character of works is indeed its master idea; it is the foundation of its unique synthesis of works, love and knowledge. In the end not desire, but the consciously felt will of the Eternal remains as the sole driver of our action and the sole originator of its initiative.”

Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis of Yoga, Part One: The Yoga of Divine Works, Chapter 3, Self-Surrender in Works–The Way of the Gita, pp. 96-97

The Gita’s Test For the Abandonment of the Fruits of Works

Given the mind’s propensity to treat a mental acceptance as an actual accomplishment in the world, it is not only possible, but likely, that the seeker will adopt the “idea” of the abandonment of the fruit of works while the outer actions and reactions continue. Various justifications and excuses come before the mind to “distinguish” these reactions from any desire for the fruits of the work on some level. And thus, the transformation of the consciousness gets subtly blocked at the mental level and cannot work itself out throughout all the planes and parts of the being.

In order to provide the seeker with a way to work through this web of illusion on the mental plane, much of it suggested by the clever suggestions of the vital nature, the Gita sets up a clear “test” for how one can determine that the abandonment of the fruits of the work is true, complete and unwavering.

Sri Aurobindo discusses this issue: “The test it lays down is an absolute equality of the mind and the heart to all results, to all reactions, to all happenings. If good fortune and ill fortune, if respect and insult, if reputation and obloquy, if victory and defeat, if pleasant event and sorrowful event leave us not only unshaken but untouched, free in the emotions, free in the nervous reactions, free in the mental view, not responding with the least disturbance or vibration in any spot of the nature, then we have the absolute liberation to which the Gita points us, but not otherwise. The tiniest reaction is a proof that the discipline is imperfect and that some part of us accepts ignorance and bondage as its law and clings still to the old nature. Our self-conquest is only partially accomplished; it is still imperfect or unreal in some stretch or part or smallest spot of the ground of our nature. And that little pebble of imperfection may throw down the whole achievement of the Yoga!”

Sri Aurobindo goes on to point out that there are intermediate steps or “approximations” of equality that should not be confused with the state of consciousness that the Gita is describing. It is not a status that derives from disappointed expectation of desire, or pride or indifference, all of which are forms of ego driven by the modes of Nature, the three Gunas. “There is too, on a higher level, the equality of the stoic, the equality of a devout resignation or a sage detachment, the equality of a soul aloof from the world and indifferent to its doings. These too are insufficient; first approaches they can be, but they are at most early soul-phases only or imperfect mental preparations for our entry into the true and absolute self-existent wide equal oneness of the spirit.”

Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis of Yoga, Part One: The Yoga of Divine Works, Chapter 3, Self-Surrender in Works–The Way of the Gita, pp. 95-96

The Three Gunas of Nature and the Evolution of Consciousness

As a follow up to the Sankhya distinctions of the separation of Purusha and Prakriti, Sri Aurobindo points out that: “The individual soul or the conscious being in a form may identify itself with this experiencing Purusha or with this active Prakriti.” When it is identified with the Purusha, the witness consciousness, it attains freedom from the bondage of the action of Nature and the machinery of the Lord of Creation found in Nature. When it is identified with Prakriti, the active Nature, it experiences the bondage and is manipulated by the operative machinery of the three modes, called the three Gunas of Nature, Tamas, Rajas and Sattwa. These three modes are all present in all existences, in varying proportions, and undergo constant changes, which leads to action and reaction in the universal creation.

Sri Aurobindo links the operation of the Gunas and the varying proportion of those Gunas in various states of existence with the stages of the evolution of consciousness: “…by an entire immersion in Prakriti, this soul becomes inconscient or subconscient, asleep in her forms as in the earth and the metal or almost asleep as in plant life. There, in that inconscience, it is subject to the domination of Tamas, the principle, the power, the qualitative mode of obscurity and inertia; Sattwa and Rajas are there, but they are concealed in the thick coating of Tamas. Emerging into its own proper nature of consciousness but not yet truly conscious, because there is still too great a domination of Tamas in the nature, the embodied being becomes more and more subject to Rajas, the principle, the power, the qualitative mode of action and passion impelled by desire and instinct. There is then formed and developed the animal nature, narrow in consciousness, rudimentary in intelligence, rajaso-tamasic in vital habit and impulse. Emerging yet farther from the great Inconscience towards a spiritual status the embodied being liberates Sattwa, the mode of light, and acquires a relative freedom and mastery and knowledge and with it a qualified and conditioned sense of inner satisfaction and happiness. Man, the mental being in a physical body, should be but is not, except in a few among this multitude of ensouled bodies, of this nature. Ordinarily he has too much in him of the obscure earth-inertia and a troubled ignorant animal life-force to be a soul of light and bliss or even a mind of harmonious will and knowledge. There is here in man an incomplete and still hampered and baffled ascension towards the true character of the Purusha, free, master, knower and enjoyer. For these are in human and earthly experience relative modes, none giving its single and absolute fruit; all are intermixed with each other and there is not the pure action of any one of them anywhere. It is their confused and inconstant interaction that determines the experiences of the egoistic human consciousness swinging in Nature’s uncertain balance.”

Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis of Yoga, Part One: The Yoga of Divine Works, Chapter 3, Self-Surrender in Works–The Way of the Gita, pp. 91-92

Free Will and Determinism

We believe that we exercise free will in our actions. We make choices, we determine the direction we want to go and the steps we want to take. We have the sense of freedom in our minds based on this illusion of free choice. It is an illusion because we fail to take into account the larger framework and reality that actually sets up and determines our choices for us, the machinery of the three modes of Nature, and Nature carrying out the Will of the Supreme in all things. Our entire development of personality, values, and our decision-making process is conditioned by these larger and less visible realities. Sri Aurobindo advises that is what is meant when the Gita “…speaks of the Lord within the heart of all existences who turns all creatures as if mounted on a machine by the illusion of Nature.”

Sri Aurobindo describes the machinery: “Partial itself, the mind rides on a part of the machine, unaware of nine-tenths of its motor agencies in Time and environment, unaware of its past preparation and future drift; but because it rides, it thinks that it is directing the machine.”

If the individual ego-personality does not have free will in any real sense, the question then arises as to whether free will exists at all, and if so, who exercises that free will. It is normal for the “either/or” circuit of the human mind to jump from the one extreme of “free will” to the other of “determinism” without trying to solve for the actual truth that upholds both concepts.

For free will does exist. “The only free will in the world is the one divine Will of which Nature is the executrix; for she is the master and creator of all other wills.” and further “There is a secret divine Will, eternal and infinite, omniscient and omnipotent, that expresses itself in the universality and in each particular of all these apparently temporal and finite, inconscient or half-conscient things.”

The human being partakes of this free will because it is in fact not separate from the Eternal: “This divine Will is not an alien Power or Presence; it is intimate to us and we ourselves are part of it: for it is our own highest Self that possesses and supports it.”

“Our highest Self which possesses and supports this universal Power is not our ego-self, not our personal Nature; it is something transcendent and universal of which these smaller things are only foam and flowing surface. If we surrender our conscious will and allow it to be made one with the will of the Eternal, then and then only shall we attain to a true freedom; living in the divine liberty, we shall no longer cling to this shackled so-called free will, a puppet freedom ignorant, illusory, relative, bound to the error of its own inadequate vital motives and mental figures.”

Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis of Yoga, Part One: The Yoga of Divine Works, Chapter 3, Self-Surrender in Works–The Way of the Gita, pp. 89-90

Equality and Oneness Are the Foundations Of a Divine Consciousness

It may be useful to try to place ourselves, for the moment, in something akin to the divine standpoint rather than our own individual ego-personality, and try to understand what this means as to the perspective and understanding about our own role in the world and the unity of the entire creation.

Obviously it is not easily possible to make this leap without preparation, but we can at least work with different perspectives that will provide analogies to the situation. The first one is to imagine that the cells of our body are akin to separate individuals in the world. We know, from our standpoint experiencing the entire body, that each cell is part of a larger whole, a unified “oneness” if you will and what impacts one, impacts all, and thus, we need to treat each cell with respect and provide it what it needs to grow, thrive and contribute to the health and well-being of the whole.

The next one is the perspective of the impressionist artist. One can view a painting of Van Gogh, for instance, close up, and see all the individual single brush strokes. Close up they look somewhat “chaotic” and disorganized, but as one moves back from the painting, one reaches a perspective point where suddenly one sees the harmony and cohesiveness of the whole scene being communicated, and one can, for the moment, forget the individual brush strokes.

A third exercise is to take the position of the sun, and see the earth as a single unified whole, a planet with an eco-sphere and bio-sphere, all of it nourished and supported equally by the energy that the sun provides to the earth.

The central thread is that from the Divine standpoint, all creation is ONE and the Divine treats and supports the entire creation with equality.

Sri Aurobindo provides the relevance to the practice of the Yoga: “As long as we live in the ignorant seeming, we are the ego and are subject to the modes of Nature. Enslaved to appearances, bound to the dualities, tossed between good and evil, sin and virtue, grief and joy, pain and pleasure, good fortune and ill fortune, success and failure, we follow helplessly the iron or gilt and iron round of the wheel of Maya.”

“If, on the contrary, we live in the unifying reality of the Brahman, then we go beyond the ego and overstep Nature. For then we get back to our true self and become the spirit; in the spirit we are above the impulsion of Nature, superior to her modes and forces. Attaining to a perfect equality in the soul, mind and heart, we realise our true self of oneness–one with all beings, one too with that which expresses itself in them and in all that we see and experience. This equality and this oneness are the indispensable twin foundation we must lay down for a divine being, a divine consciousness, a divine action.”

“The Supreme Power, the one Eternal and Infinite is equal to all things and to all beings, and because it is equal, it can act with an absolute wisdom according to the truth of its works and its force and according to the truth of each thing and of every creature.”

Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis of Yoga, Part One: The Yoga of Divine Works, Chapter 3, Self-Surrender in Works–The Way of the Gita, pp. 88-89

Key Principles of the Karma Yoga of the Bhagavad Gita

The normal human consciousness sets up artificial divisions and oppositions and then acts upon them. This is due to the nature of the human mentality and its “either/or” logic track that wants to make everything “black and white”. It is difficult, in the extreme, for most people to accept two apparently opposite ideas as both being “true” at the same time. In modern society, with our technological prowess, we have found that this line of approach has very serious practical applications, and the “zero or one” logic we have built into the computers have allowed us to achieve some remarkable things in the material world.

Nevertheless, this approach has its limitations and when we go outside the framework of what it can actually deal with, we find that it is totally incapable of coping with the type and level of complexity found in Nature. A different standpoint is required to move beyond the limitations of the mind, which we may call the “divine standpoint”.

The Gita attempts to move us toward this new standpoint through the core aspects of its approach to Karma Yoga. Sri Aurobindo explains: “Its key principle, its spiritual method, can be summed up as the union of two largest and highest states or powers of consciousness, equality and oneness. The kernel of its method is an unreserved acceptance of the Divine in our life as in our inner self and spirit.”

While the mind separates “man” from “God”, the Gita’s approach stresses the unity of all existence in Nature as well as the unity between “Nature” and “God”. They are not opposites but actually ONE.

“An inner renunciation of personal desire leads to equality, accomplishes our total surrender to the Divine, supports a delivery from dividing ego which brings us oneness.”

Another contradiction that the mind is fixated on is the separation between active and passive being. This also, however, is unreal. “The Gita promises us freedom for the spirit even in the midst of works and the full energies of Nature, if we accept subjection of our whole being to that which is higher than the separating and limiting ego. it proposes an integral dynamic activity founded on a still passivity; a largest possible action irrevocably based on an immobile calm is its secret,–free expression out of a supreme inward silence.”

The Gita translates the two core aphoristic statements of the Upanishads, “One without a second” and “All this is the Brahman.” into a unified vision that recognizes that the key is Oneness, which means that the entire manifestation is real, or as Sri Aurobindo calls it in The Life Divine, “reality omnipresent.”

Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis of Yoga, Part One: The Yoga of Divine Works, Chapter 3, Self-Surrender in Works–The Way of the Gita, pg. 88