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Pujya Dr. K.C. Varadachari Complete Works Vol -1

Talks and Lectures on the System of Sri Ramchandra's Rajayoga

Rajayoga - A New Interpretation

  

All India Radio Talk at Hyderabad on 30-7-1967.

The way of union with the Divine Reality is called Yoga. Raja yoga utilises divine thought of the super-finest kind to bring about this union. Since thought is verily the sovereign fact about reality this method is called Raja yoga.

Patanjali's Yoga implies this, but does not lay it out in clearest terms as it was intended to be imparted by the teacher or instructor. It also emphasizes only the suppression and control and the final eradication of human thought and its modifications. The most disturbing feature of the latter is its persistent disturbing nature. It has become the root cause and effect of tensions, emotional, intellectual and physical. Man has been trying several recipes for getting rid of his stream of thoughts, which disturb his peace, and Raja yoga became one of them. Its main help was negative. But even this became difficult, for, the human mind refuses to be suppressed and repressed. It is this that made for the positive approach of securing Divine thought to effect it.

The ancient yogis of the bye-gone past had known that this Divine thought could be sought and brought down by appropriate means - through surrender to the supreme God who is the Guru of all mankind. No human effort of any kind could bring about this union or bring down the Divine thought. God himself, or one who has already secured his connection or link or yoga with Him alone, could do this.

Human methods of approach have been in the main negative. They have firstly been wrong in the aspirations for a happy earthly and economic life. They have moved to the opposite extreme of denying all earthly and social life. Renunciation or escape from life was counselled as the condition for securing the divinest thought. Mere knowledge as a quality of thought was also held to be sufficient. But the ancient discovery that it was the breath or life-force, the prana or pranasya prana was not followed up. Therefore it does not feature prominently in the later yogic systems, which consider prana or breath to be a variant of the air (vayu) rather than the source and fountain of all life. God is Existence, Divine Consciousness and Bliss.

The method of securing and introducing it into the seeker after peace, relaxation, freedom from tensions, self-realization, and liberation, was lost mainly because it was thought that the individual must evolve before this force could be introduced into his heart. Individual fitness alone determined the initiation or introduction of divine thought, and for securing this fitness, adhikara, it was emphasized that several practices should be followed. While it was essential and obligatory to do them, it nevertheless became almost impossible except for a select few, to attain such fitness or adhikara or arhata. In this manner the original method of introducing divine life-breath that makes possible spiritual evolution and emancipation, got lost. And this also put Raja Yoga beyond the reach of the common man, and made it also appear to be a difficult self-torturing process.

In order to restore this supreme divine thought which is also the divine life-force to its pristine position, some thinkers envisaged the necessity to make a direct attempt to gain it through prayer and meditation on the traditional forms and patterns of religious worship. But it also fell into gross complexities. Purest surrender to God alone as the Ultimate Guru became clearly the only alternative.

Such a prayer of mankind brings down the Godhead himself. The Raja yoga, which secures the Divine Descent into the seeker's heart, is natural, and is without the efforts of the human individual. It is the most beneficent, provided the aspiration is kept alive by constant remembrance of God. But all this was mostly theoretical, or speculative and imaginary.

During this century a remarkable personality tried to secure this divine possibility and experiment on its potentialities. He showed that practically every human being can be made fit for the higher approaches by means of the Divine thought itself without introducing complexities and knots. Not only peace from mental confusion and riot of thoughts could be secured, but also even the divinisation of man's nature could take place, once this force is introduced into the seeker. The practical operation of this divine thought in man was simple, uncomplicated by rituals and learning, and even bereft of all that pass for devotional methods. The Guru who has secured this capacity to introduce divine thought-life-force into the heart of the seeker merely introduces this force, and the individual soul, awakened superconsciously to its destiny and union with the Ultimate, begins to move upward and Godward.

All the several methods become natural rather than artificial. This method of meditation or dhyana which is essential to all yogas is divinely operated, and the individual feels the transmission of divine life-energy flowing into one's entire nature, physical, vital and mental, and harmony results as a consequence. The receptivity for this divine experience begins to grow more and more, and one experiences cosmic consciousness as well as divine consciousness. But this yoga does not base itself on any human need, nor does it trade in miracles. Natural divine condition or sahaja samadhi results in all activities, and one is, in the language of the Gita, established in the Divine - a sthitaprajna - living and moving and having his being in the Divine Godhead or the Ultimate Absolute.

Most yogins cannot reach this condition in this worldly life. But in the real Raja yoga, renunciation is transformed into non-attachment and divinised. Family life and social obligations take on a divine harmonious nature and peace is secured everywhere. Moderation becomes the vital principle in divine living. The ancient ideal of an ideal yogi as grhastha gets realised in the simplest possible way.

This is the discovery of the modern yogi Sri Ram Chandraji of Shahjahanpur living today, and he has also perfected the method of initiation through divine thought, which takes over the entire spiritual voyage of the individual. But constant watch over the individual being necessary, one is naturally made to feel the living presence of God and be associated within throughout. Raja yoga, in this sense, is called Natural and divine as contrasted with that which is in vogue. This is the cardinal principle of Sri Ramchandra's Raja Yoga.

Though modern man swears by human reason and by human values, and tries to sublimate his instincts and break his tensions by faultless etiquette and good manners, we know how thin is the distinction between the modern civilized man and the savage barbarian. Culture or humanism demands the divine touch and life-breath to change it into divine culture. But without securing God's grace and descent as the breath of our breath and life of our life, one can only be guided by ignorance and misery and anguish. All this leads to the inevitable necessity of securing God-thought and God-life-breath through those who are in full possession of that force. This is the most important role of the spiritual Guru in Yoga.

Our salvation depends on adopting Raja yoga of this divine kind. Then alone can the statement that all life is yoga that makes for well-being, get verified, and made the most significant method for higher evolution of man into divine nature.