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<p class="paracenter">THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE COLLECTIVE
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<p class="paracenter"></p>
<p class="para"> An integral sadhana cannot be 
confined to the individual alone; an element of collectivity must enter into it. 
An individual is not an isolated being in any way. There are, of course, schools 
of Yoga and philosophy that seek to isolate the individual, consider him as an 
entity hemmed in by his own consciousness; indeed they view the individuals as 
all distinct and separate, each a closed circle or sphere, they may barely touch 
eac<i>h </i>other but never interpenetrate or intercommunicate. Each stands as a 
solitary island, all together forming the vast archipelago of the universe. This 
is a position, no doubt, that can be acquired by a kind of discipline of the 
consciousness, though not to a great perfection; but it is not a natural or 
necessary poise. Normally, individuals do merge into each other and form one 
weft of give and take. A desire, an impulse, even a thought that rises in you, 
goes out of you, overflows you and spreads around even to the extreme limit of 
the earth, like a Hertzian wave. Again, any movement in any person anywhere in 
the world would come to you, penetrate you, raise a similar vibration in you, 
even though you may not so recognise
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<br><p class="pageno">Page-27</p>
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<p class="para">it and consider it as something exclusively personal to you. You 
send out vibrations into the world and the world sends out vibrations into you. 
Individual life is the meeting-ground of these outgoing and incoming forces. It 
is precisely to avoid this circle or cycle of world-vibrations that the older 
Yogis used to <i>leave the world, </i>away from society, retire to 
mountain-tops, into the virgin forest where they hoped to find themselves alone 
and aloof, to be single with the Single Self. This is a way out, but it is not 
the only or the best solution. It is not the best solution, for although 
apparently one is alone on the hill-top, in the desert crypt, or the forest 
womb, one always carries with oneself a whole world within, the normal nature 
with all its instincts and impulses, reactions, memories and hopes: you cut away 
the outside, run away from it, but what about the outside that is within you? 
The taste for a tasty thing does not drop with the removal of the object. 
Secondly, such an individual solution, even if it were possible, would still be 
a purely personal matter and, in the ultimate analysis, egoistic. It is why the 
Buddha refused to enter definitely into Nirvana and withdrew from the brink to 
work among men. Indeed, the real solution is elsewhere. It is not to withdraw or 
go away but to find within the orbit here a centre, a focus of consciousness 
which is not controlled by the outside forces but can control them,
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<br><p class="pageno">Page-28</p>
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<p class="para">which is not coloured by them but can lend them its own 
luminosity. That is the soul or the psychic centre.
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<p class="para"> And this centre is not an 
isolated entity in its nature: it is, as it were, a universal centre, that is to 
say, it links itself indissolubly in a secret sense of identity with all other 
centres. For this self is only one of the selves through which the One Self has 
multiplied itself for a varied self-objectification. The light that shines here, 
the fire that burns here and the delight that flows here illumine, purify and 
revitalise not only the individual in which it dwells, but move abroad and 
extend into the other individuals with which it lives in spiritual identity.
</p>
<br><p class="pageno">Page-29</p>
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