Finding cosmic purpose

Yoga, Zen and Peace

‘Yuktah’ is from ‘Yoga’, and the sense of yoga is to yoke, to rein in, to hold in. Yoga is also an ordinary Sanskrit word for a method. So, it’s not a theoretical thing; it’s a method for reining in the mind and focusing it, and then from that inspiration arises. When inspiration arises, those meditations will have what is called efficient force, bhavana, causing things to become, and when the meditations reach that point, then there can be peace within and that begins to affect the peace without.

Peace without, depends on peace within. One teacher remarked, “You know, if you got all the wealth in the world and you spread out it out evenly over everyone, as though you were spreading butter on a huge slice of bread so that everyone got an absolutely fair share, within 25 years the inequalities would be greater than they are today. The strong, the beautiful, and the cunning would get everything. A lot of people in a few months would have gambled everything away. By spreading out, by imposing justice, by imposing peace you can only get a very temporary effect, unless, within the people, there is peace”.

All the great movements, good and bad, are initiated by a few enthusiasts and they can be successful because it corresponds to something which is sleeping, or semi-sleeping, in the hearts of the others and when they see this then something awakens in them. The great villains can’t do much by themselves. One man physically can only kill twenty or thirty people, but because he focuses like a burning glass, he focuses the diffused rays, for instance, of antisemitism. He can focus the feelings of hundreds of thousands of people, which they just have quite weakly, into a movement. That movement was, as we know, a wholly bad one.

The point is that it can be a few people who are clear and concentrated like a burning glass. They can focus these potentialities and in the case of the Yoga it is spiritual potentialities which are focused and these will have an effect on a very wide area. One of the old Upanishads says examine the world and you will see that there are no solutions simply in terms of this world that you can see in your ordinary lives. People always say, “I cannot make sense of the world. Why has this happened to me?” We cannot find a cosmic purpose, a divine purpose, simply in terms of an individual life. It has to be a cosmic view and that view must not be simply theoretical. It must be an actual vision and then a participation in the cosmic current. The spiritual teacher says examine the world. You can examine the world in four ways. The Indians were great analysts, with a very strong intellectual tradition going back a long way indeed. The subtlety of the thought in the Upanishads in 600 and 700 BC at least are masterpieces of analysis. He says you can learn, examine it, by instruction, if you are most intelligent. Then by inference. If you are still less intelligent, by direct observation and lastly, bitter experience.

We tend to say, “Oh well, let people find things out for themselves!” Well then, take the case of drinking and driving. If you are most intelligent you can learn from instruction; this causes the greatest number of accidents and the reasons are given and the alcohol in the blood and so on. One can learn from instruction. But if you think, “Oh, it’s true drinking leads to a lot of accidents but probably people who drink heavily are very bad drivers anyway.” There may be no connection at all. Then try and infer, see the figures for drunken drivers and the accidents, and if you can’t from that, then from observation. Perhaps you’ll see a drunken driver having an accident, and then lastly, perhaps, if you still can’t get it from that, you drink and drive and you learn for yourself. The only trouble is that you may well be dead!

So, the most intelligent [way] is to learn from instruction, then that will tell you how to infer, and it will tell you what to observe, then your experience will become constructive. Examine the worlds and you will see, in terms of mortality of the human being, being born, growing up, attaining maturity, getting old, getting sick, and dying. There’s no peace in this, and there’s no happiness in this, but if there’s something wider than that, if there’s immortality, if there is an experience, not just a belief, but even for a fraction of a moment, he experiences immortality, now, then the ageing and the giving up of the body, will be like having a good typewriter. You get it when its new. You use it steadily and carefully, and it can be preserved for a long time and when it gets very old, and the shift lock doesn’t work on one side, and the L key has given way, then you use the 1 instead of the L. You can still type if you know it well and look after it and then finally, ‘Thank you’, and you put it in the dustbin. Well, then, the body will be like that.

The Gita says, “Even as here, one casts off worn out clothes and puts on others that are new, even so the Self, after the death, throws away the worn-out body and takes on others that are new.” He can see and experience, even briefly, that current which doesn’t depend on the body and the mind, but there’s a continuous current. Then his view of life can be one of peace, even in spite of the great ups and down of life.

Titles in this series are:

Part 1: Yoga, Zen and Peace

Part 2: Ethics and the Cosmic Self

Part 3: Desires beyond our needs are ghosts

Part 4: Gifts, sacrifice and austerity

Part 5: Becoming free

Part 6: The job of the King

Part 7: Seeking for realisation in Yoga and Zen

Part 8: The way of praying the cosmic current

Part 9: Melting Ice

Part 10: No distinction