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<p align="center" style="line-height: 150%; margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0"><b>
<font size="4">Yoga
as Pragmatic Power</font></b></p>
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<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY style="line-height: 150%; margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0"><FONT SIZE=3>PEOPLE
ask about the practical value of Yoga, but do not always wait for an
answer. For, according to some, Yoga means &quot;introversion&quot;,
escapism – illusion, delusion, hallucination. And yet the truth of
the matter is that Yoga is nothing but a downright practical affair,
that its proof is in the very eating of it. To judge a Yogin you are
to ask, as did Arjuna, a very prince of pragmatic men, how he sits,
how he walks <I>about – kim <FONT FACE="Luxi Serif">Ä</FONT>s<FONT FACE="Luxi Serif">ī</FONT>ta
vrajeta kim. </I>Indeed the very definition of Yoga is that it is
skill in works. To do works and not to run away from them has always
been the true and natural ideal even (and particularly, as we shall
see), for the spiritual man: the ideal is as old as the Upanishadic
injunction, &quot;Doing verily works in this world one should wish to
live a hundred years.&quot; The Yogi as a world-shunner was not
always the only ideal or the highest ideal. To do works, yes; but,
with skill, it is pointed out, that is to say, in the way in which
they can be most effectively done. Sri Krishna teaches Arjuna the
skill and shows how to apply it in the crudest and the most terrible
action, <I>viz ., </I>a bloody battle. But the skill that he demands,
that is demanded of a Yogi, is not mere cleverness, craftiness or
business policy including deceit, duplicity, sharpness; it means
quite another spirit and faculty.</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>The ordinary man does works, achieves the object he aims
at, through processes and means which, however powerful and
effective, can be only moderately and approximately so. The amount of
time and energy wasted is not proportionate to the result obtained.
Man knows to utilise only a fraction of the energy collected in a
system: the best of dispositions and organisation can harness just a
modicum of the total stock, the rest is frittered away or locked up,
whether it is vital energy or</FONT><BR>
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<FONT SIZE=3>Page – 391</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>mental energy or even physical energy. That is because
the central power that drives, the consciousness that controls the
whole mechanism is of an inferior quality, of a lower potential. The
Yogi views all energy as various forms and gradations of
consciousness. So what he proposes, as a good scientist, is to lift
up the consciousness and thus raise its potential and effectivity and
minimise the waste. The higher the consciousness, the greater the
effectivity, that is to say, the pragmatic value. As we rise in the
scale there is less and less waste and greater and greater
utilisation until we reach a climax, a critical degree, where there
is absolutely no waste and where there is the utmost, the total
utilisation of the whole energy. This supreme peak of consciousness
that is absolute energy Sri Aurobindo names the Supermind. But on
lesser levels too the spiritual consciousness is dynamic and
effective – pragmatic in a way that the ordinary, limited,
externally pragmatic consciousness cannot hope to be.</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>Sometimes it is urged that in the worldly affairs we
should move according to the worldly procedure, otherwise to import
into mundane things spiritual values would merely confuse issues and
end in failure in both the fields – “fallen from hence, lost from
thence&quot;. Of course there are spiritual points of view that go
ill with the mundane, as indeed there are mundane considerations that
do not match with the spiritual. The two categories of view-point
have been succinctly and luminously named by Sri Aurobindo as the
Materialist Denial and the Ascetic Refusal.* But there are other
points of view, .other lines of approach which seek a harmony and
union between Spirit and Matter, that envisage the marriage of Heaven
and Earth.</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>The fundamental truth to be noted is that the Spirit is
power, not merely consciousness: indeed the very definition of the
spirit is that it is consciousness-energy. And it is this
consciousness-energy that is at the source of all cosmic activities.
Man's action too springs from this original source, although
apparently it seems to be caused by other secondary and derivative
energies. As a matter of fact what these energies that seem to be
actually in play do is not the origination but rather</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>the deviation and diversion, a diminution and
adulteration of the supreme energy, a lowering of the quality, the
tone and .</FONT></P>
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<BR>
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<FONT SIZE=3>-----------------------------</FONT></P>
<P style="line-height: 150%; margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0"><FONT SIZE=3><I>*
<FONT SIZE=2>The Life Divine, </FONT></I><FONT SIZE=2>by Sri
Aurobindo</FONT></FONT><BR>
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<FONT SIZE=3>Page – 392</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>temper of the dynamism. In other words, as we have
already said, a thought force, a vital force, a nervous or physical
force, all these are only lower, even minima values, more or less
distant and deformed echoes of a true and absolute Power behind and
above them all. These forces become powerful in proportion as they
are instruments and functions of that one mother energy. The truth is
most beautifully illustrated in the story of Brahma a and the gods in
the Kena Upanishad. The gods conquered and were proud of their
conquest; each thought that it was due to his own personal prowess
that he conquered. But they were utterly discomfited and shamed when
the Divine Powter appeared and proved to them that but for this Power
they would not be able even to tackle a blade of grass-Fire would not
burn it, Water would not drench it, Wind would not move it.</FONT><BR>
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<FONT SIZE=3>Page – 393</FONT></P>
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