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<h1 align="right" style="text-align:center;line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0"><b style='mso-bidi-font-weight:normal'>
<span style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><font size="4">The
Spirit of Tapasya</font><o:p></o:p></span></b></h1>
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style='mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

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style='mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt'>T</span><span style='font-size:10.0pt'>APASYA</span><span
style='mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt'> (Asceticism) is usually understood to mean
the capacity to undergo physical discomfort and suffering. We are familiar with
various types of Tapasya: sitting in summer with blazing fire all around and
the fiery noonday sun overhead (Panchagnivrata), exposing one's bare limbs to
the cold biting blasts among the eternal snows, lying down on a bed of sharp
nails, betaking oneself to sack-cloth and ashes, fasting even to the point of
death: there is no end to the variety of ways and means which man's ingenuity has
invented to torture himself. Somehow the feeling has grown among spiritual,
religious and even moral aspirants as well that the body is the devil that has
to be curbed and controlled with bit and bridle and whip. Indeed the popular
view measures the greatness of a saint by the amount of his physical
privations.<o:p></o:p></span></p>

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11.75pt;mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'><span
style='mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt'>One seems not to know that the devil cannot
be so easily checkmated or beguiled. For, indeed, it is easy for the body to
take punishment, to submit to all kinds of rigours, yet feel as if it was making
ample amends and atonement in that way rather than really give up its
aboriginal instincts and impulses. Often one deceives oneself, succeeds in
hiding, in secretly preserving one's unsaintliness behind a smoke-screen of the
utmost physical tapasya.<o:p></o:p></span></p>

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11.75pt;mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'><span
style='mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt'>Real Tapasya, however, is not in relation to
the body and its comforts and discomforts; it is in relation to the inner
being, the consciousness and its directives and movements. Tapasya, austerity,
consists in reacting to the downward pull of the ordinary consciousness,
turning and attuning it to the rhythm of higher levels. To oppose the force of
gravitation, to move ceaselessly towards purer and luminous heights of being
and consciousness, that is Tapasya, Askesis, true asceticism.</span><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

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<span
style='font-size:10.0pt;'>Page-106<o:p></o:p></span></p>

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style='mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt'>Virgil, the great poet of a diviner order in
human life, expressed the idea most beautifully and aptly in those well-known
lines, one of the characteristic passages showing his genius at its best:<o:p></o:p></span></p>

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style='mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

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mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'><span style='mso-bidi-font-size:
10.0pt'>. . . s<i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>uperasque evadere ad auras</i>,<o:p></o:p></span></p>

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mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'><span
style='mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt'><span style='mso-spacerun:yes'>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </span><i
style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><span style='mso-spacerun:yes'>&nbsp;</span>Hoc
opus, hic labor est.</i>¹<o:p></o:p></span></p>

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style='mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

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mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'><span style='mso-bidi-font-size:
10.0pt'>. . . to move out into the higher spaces, <o:p></o:p></span></p>

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11.75pt;mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'><span
style='mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt'>This is work, here is labour.<o:p></o:p></span></p>

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style='mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

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mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'><span
style='mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt'>Heroism consists in this untiring march
upward to more and more rarefied heights. That means the growth of
consciousness, its uplifting and expansion, freeing it from the limitations of
the ignorant egoistic movements, pressing it forward to the domains of higher
illuminations, towards spiritual consciousness and soul-knowledge, towards
communion with the Divine, the cosmic and the transcendent Reality. That is the
real work and labour. Bodily suffering is nothing: it is neither a sign nor a
test of the ardours of consciousness thus seeking to uplift itself. Indeed,
Tapas, the word from which tapasya is derived, means energy of consciousness,
and Tapasya is the exercise, the utilisation of that energy for the ascent and
expansion of the consciousness. It is this inner athleticism that is the thing
needful, not its vain physical simulacrum-not the one which is commonly
worshipped.<o:p></o:p></span></p>

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style='mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;line-height:150%;mso-pagination:
none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'><span style='font-size:
10.0pt'>¹ Virgil<i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>: Aeneid</i>, VI. 128<o:p></o:p></span></p>

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<span
style='font-size:10.0pt;'>Page-107<o:p></o:p></span></p>

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