Training the Mind through Yoga

I

AN INTRODUCTION TO THE BHAGAVAD GITA

THE SCRIPTURES of the world are like great statues, executed by some celestial Michelangelo, which stand eternally before mankind, able to perform miracles for those who can become absorbed in their beauty and majesty. The transforming power of a work of art, whether it be spiritual or material, will only affect the one who divests himself of all preconceived ideas and reactions and stands before it, vulnerable and ready to receive its impact.

Here we introduce the Bhagavad Gita to those who do not know it already. Its teachings are neither Eastern nor Western, they are universal—not of an age, but for all time. Due to the fact that many of the inspired commentaries on it still survive, and also that much of the teaching given is psychologically modern, the man of today and the man of the world should find great benefit and solace in it. Perhaps, indeed, the Scripture is directed more to such men than to holy and dedicated souls.

The words ‘Bhagavad Gita’ mean ‘The Song of the Lord’. In the Gita, the Lord appears as a Teacher, so that it could be called ‘The Song of the Divine Teacher’, for such it is, and this constitutes its great value for us. It forms part of the ancient classic called the Mahabharata. This word means ‘Great India’, and the theme of the classic is the history of India, her legends, laws and law-givers; her emperors, warriors, sages and her spiritual wealth, which is the holy Truth which she gave forth to the world.

One of the episodes in this epic tells of a conflict which took place between two branches of the same House—the Kurus and the Pandavas. The struggle arose over past action of their king, conceived and carried out by him in order to protect and uphold dharma or the universal law of righteousness. Believing that only a righteous man should have power over others, he had nominated as his successor, not his own unworthy son who is the rightful heir, but the virtuous eldest son of the other branch of the family—Yudhisthira. After prolonged double-dealing by the Kurus, and after the Pandavas have wandered in exile for twelve years, a war breaks out—a war fought by the Pandavas to prote the principle of righteousness. At the time of this event, Shri Krishna, a manifestation of God, has incarnated into the world as the friend and relative of both sides. He intends that righteousness shall prevail and, while remaining neutral, makes an offer to the two forces. To one he says he will give his powerful force of men, elephants and weapons; to the other—himself, unarmed and alone, as a charioteer, and he leaves it to the two sides to make their choice. The Kurus choose the vast army and the powerful weapons; the Pandavas, Shri Krishna himself. This is the point at which the Scripture opens.

The first chapter gives a vivid description of the field of battle, with the warriors preparing for the fight; and then, the light is turned on the one who should be the foremost among the combatants, the bravest of the brave—the Pandava Prince—Prince Arjuna. Arjuna is a Kshatriya—a member of the warrior caste. He is a man of action and a born fighter, one who should be in his element in the midst of such a struggle. But the Bhagavad Gita is not an epic telling of the rise and fall of civil powers, or the great deeds of warriors. It is a spiritual document in which not only the truth about the Self of man is revealed, but also the hidden motives of his mortal heart, and the way in which they may be transcended.

This drama is played out in the Gita to the accompaniment of a recital of the rules on discipline, the control of the mind and body, and the true traditional relationship which should exist between a Teacher and his disciple.

Although Prince Arjuna is a typical man of action, he is at this moment at a psychological cross-roads. As a mighty warrior he has hitherto fought with dispassion and skill and has performed the duties of his caste without question or difficulty. Now, he is confronted with a situation which tests him as a man, not as a warrior. He is face to face with opponents who are his relatives and friends and, identifying himself for the first time with the probable result of his actions, he loses his detachment and is robbed of all will and courage. In his extremity, he turns to Shri Krishna, who is now his charioteer, but who will soon become his Teacher, and tells him that he will not fight and rob his world of all its joy and inspiration, that he would rather become a monk with a begging bowl.

Far from this decision commending itself to the Lord, Krishna upbraids him and tells him that he is a coward, that he does not understand the nature and significance of true action, that he must deal with the problems of his inner life while standing firmly based on the ground of his mortal and outer life, and that he must accept the responsibilities of his caste and rise up and fight. In fact, Arjuna has not yet earned the right to call himself a man of peace and enlightenment. Later on, when his Teacher is instructing him, we shall hear him say: Better one’s own duty though devoid of merit, than the duty of another well discharged. Better is death in one’s own duty; the duty of another is productive of danger. But at this moment, faced by Shri Krishna’s stern words, Arjuna gives way completely and acknowledges his bewilderment and his ignorance of what is right and what is wrong, and disclaiming any further responsibility of choice of his way of life, asks Shri Krishna to accept him as a disciple and teach him. Now begin the imperishable teachings, revealing the philosophy, the training and the discipline to Prince Arjuna and to us also.

Shri Krishna does not retire into the forest with Arjuna in order to give this instruction; he expects him to receive it on the battlefield where his destiny has placed him, which means that he expects his pupil to practise one-pointed concentration in the midst of furious activity and tension. Even so did the old Samurais of Japan perform the tea-ceremony, which is a ritual with deep spiritual meaning, in the midst of battle. So Arjuna, now full of faith in the power and compassion of his Teacher, sits obedient in his chariot, listening absorbed to the Truth given by his divine charioteer, while all around him the conches and drums are sounding, and the air is full of the noise of the preparations for battle. We must imagine that there he sits attentive until his instruction is completed and he can testify that, by the grace of his Teacher he has recognised the Truth and his doubts have vanished. When this happens it will be all one to him whether he lives and fights in the world, or retires into the forest for meditation. His destiny, as the disciple of Shri Krishna, is to become the prototype of a perfect Yogi, one who has detached himself from the fetters of his instruments, the body and the mind, and can live an intense inner life and a full outer one, at one and the same time—one whose knowledge of the Truth has killed out personal ambition. In fact he is to become a complete and free man.

At this point the reader will perhaps ask himself why this Scripture should be considered so especially suited to the needs of modern times.

All the great religious creeds of the world have the seed of Truth at their heart, but the fructification of that seed, in the form of belief and teaching, varies with the time and clime in which it flowers. In other words, although the deepest and most secret desire in man has always been for expansion and freedom, the means he has employed to try to achieve this desire has varied with the changing times. In the past, at any rate in the West, the majority sought for this security and expansion in the protection and guidance of a God, all-powerful and marvellous, who was served and worshipped but was not thought to be directly knowable in this life, except by the Saints. The rituals through which he was worshipped were a source of power to the worshippers. They were relied upon and were reverenced as channels through which grace would descend on those who had faith and devotion. Many men flowered into sainthood as the result of this way of thought and religious training, and where the faith was not distorted, the ordinary people were happy in the assurance that they had access to a Power whose service meant spiritual growth.

Today this desire for expansion and freedom is perhaps stronger than ever, but it is showing itself in new and strange ways. The majority think that expansion and equality are synonymous words, and they have achieved mediocrity. They believe that analysis and reason will reveal the nature of anything, so they are pulling everything to pieces only to find that nothing is revealed. They do not acknowledge the existence of any higher power, so they cannot worship, and therefore they cannot evoke a response from any quarter. Everything is being reduced to its lowest common denominator, including man himself, and the time seems to be rapidly approaching when he will not be able to find any stimulus to which he can make a response and he will be left alone with himself.

In one of his prose works the poet Robert Graves says: In our civilisation, serpent, lion and eagle belong to the circus tent; ox, salmon and boar to the cannery; racehorse and greyhound to the betting ring and the sacred Grove to the saw mill. The moon is despised as a burnt-out satellite of the earth and woman reckoned as ‘auxiliary state personnel’.

This sounds unpromising enough and it would be fatal if there were, in fact, nothing which could stand analysis and depreciation and still survive, immutable and perfect. But all down the ages, mystics of the East and West have affirmed that such a pure and constant element does exist, and in the Gita Shri Krishna reveals it to Arjuna and tells him it is the highest teaching he has to offer. This immutable and untaintable thing is the supreme Reality, the innermost Self of man. It lies near at hand, but man travels far afield in search of it.

I once knew a child whose parents believed in allowing it to have its own way in everything, and who laboriously explained to it that there was nothing definitely wrong or wicked, that everything was really good and right, only some things were a little inconvenient to other people if you did them. One day after having patiently tried to shock, or at any rate to get some reaction out of someone, he burst into tears and cried: "Isn’t there anything I mayn’t do? In the same way, at the present time humanity is pulling things to pieces but looking over its shoulder all the time, hoping that retribution may come from something more powerful than itself and crying out: Isn’t there anything that I can’t destroy?"

This may not be a high manifestation of spiritual need, but it may fairly be considered to come in that category, for although man on the one hand is subscribing to the doctrine of materialism and scepticism, he has never struggled more desperately to assert his personal right and need to enjoy and possess everything in heaven and earth—including happiness and almost divine authority and power. Dr Shastri attributed this urge to the secret messages man receives from his hidden and neglected higher Self, which he wrongly interprets.

Ages ago the East perfected the art of analysis and reached a point beyond which reason and analysis could not go, and then they found what was beyond that point by relying solely on their purified and enlightened inner sense. The man of today is still playing with mental toys and if he is to be cured of his bad habit (and it is not an incurable malady but a habit, one which has slowly settled down on him), he must, like a drug addict, be slowly weaned from his drug and not cut off from it without preparation. And here we have the first of many reasons why the methods of the East are pre-eminently suited to the West of today, for the old Teachers did nothing in a hurry; they knew that the mind had been turned outwards for so long that it would take time to correct it. They did not favour sudden conversion, but slow immersion. They accepted the apparent limitations of their pupil and used them for their own purposes of instruction. They allowed him to continue to use his reason, but in order that he might prove to himself the limited range of reason. They encouraged him to analyse until he was tired of the process, but he had to analyse his own mind and emotions. Only after a long apprenticeship, and when his trust and confidence had been cemented, did they fully disclose to him his divine nature—the real cause of his dissatisfaction and also of his arrogance, his dreams of power and pleasure. This method can be seen at work in the Gita.

There is a simile used in the East to describe this technique. You wish to show a friend a certain bright star, so you take him out into the night. He looks up into the sky full of millions of stars, but cannot see the bright particular one you wish to show him. So you tell him to stop searching the sky and to turn his attention to a cedar branch which bends over a pool nearby. He is puzzled, but obeys, and then you direct his gaze straight up behind the branch and tell him that there he will see the star. Now he sees it plainly, but he would never have done so unaided and without preparation. In the same way, the Teacher promises to bestow the supreme Truth on the pupil, but first he directs the pupil’s attention to the mind, and the pupil brings it into focus by discipline and becomes a student. Then he brings the heart under review, and the pupil becomes a devotee, a lover. Then the importance and significance of dharma—the law of righteousness—and the needs of his fellow-men is placed before the pupil, who sets himself to become a servant, steadfastly believing all the