The Application of Madhuvidyá Is the Best Means of Pratyáhára Yoga
Pratyáhára Sádhaná
The object of the ordinary mind, be it external or internal, is the outcome of the five fundamental factors. In order to maintain its separate existence the mind has to be attached to some object. Here, an object means “a place”. Just as a living being in order to maintain its physical existence has to inhabit some physical space, similarly the mind, to maintain its subtle existence, has to attach itself to some object of requisite subtlety.
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From this we arrive at the conclusion that the mind never enjoys the original object; it enjoys only the reflected shadows of the original object. Catching the shadows of the physical world, people mistakenly believe that they have realized their goal. If the mind really desires to enjoy something, it should adopt the opposite course. The mind will have to be extricated from the quinquelemental world which has been created as the crudest manifestation of cosmic mind-stuff, and adopt the universal Puruśa – the original constituent of cosmic mind-stuff. The object of Puruśa is the mind, and if Puruśa becomes the subject of the mind, then, as a result of their proximity developing into union, the subjective feeling of each will disappear. This union is called yoga. In other words, it is the union of the unit “I”, centred in the mind, with the universal Puruśa.
If a person desires to merge in Puruśa while retaining their “I” feeling, then that person will not be completely free from objects. In that state, the universal mind of the universal Puruśa becomes their object. We call this state savikalpa samádhi. Where there is no anxiety about the “I” and no desire to preserve the separate identity of the “I”, then a state of complete freedom from objects or thoughts is achieved. This state is called “salvation” or nirvikalpa samádhi....
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One has to advance by making the maximum effort to keep the mind scrupulously away from vices. Never let your mindʼs purity be polluted in any way. After practising this for some time, you will observe that the same mind that sustained your vile tendencies has become your greatest friend. Your mind will serve all your purposes, so you should let it have constant inspiration from your soul. Enlighten your mind with the effulgence of the soul. The absolute truth in you will automatically reveal itself.
–Patanjali
Those who adopt the reverse course are truly ignorant, in that as they dedicate themselves to crude objects, they gradually transform their minds into crudeness. By gradual transformation their mind-stuff reaches a stage where they cannot be called human beings. Who can say that the fire-burnt cane has been transformed into a plantain tree, that the decomposed beef has been transformed into an onion through natural changes, and that the rice-water has produced tańd́uleraka leaves? Likewise, no one will be able to recognize you as a human being in your degenerated condition.
Therefore, do not absorb yourself in crude thoughts or allow yourself to be carried away by impulses and tendencies. The extroverted tendency and the dedication to these crude objects are sure impediments to the realization of the self.
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In mundane life, finite objects are indispensable. The preservation of existence is not possible by pursuing the path of shreya or ultimate gain all the time. Nevertheless, shreya alone is necessary for oneʼs supreme spiritual progress, and only shreya and not preya, or the immediate and superficial gain, should be pursued. It is said in the Vedas:
Tayoh shreya ádadaenasya sádhu bhavatihiiyate arthád ya u preyo vrńiite,
Shreyasca preyasca manuśyametastao sampariitya vibinakti dhiirah
Shreyo hi dhiiroʼbhipreyaso vrniite preyo mando yogakśemád vrńiite.
–Kat́hopaniśad
If spiritual aspirants are advised to follow only shreya, then how will they maintain their existence during the period of spiritual practice? They will have to deal with preya in such a manner that it does not become a cause of bondage or extroversion of tendencies, but will instead lead to the introversion of tendencies and thereby to mukti or liberation. This technique is known as madhuvidyá.
Madhuvidyá teaches you that you can endeavour to attain liberation even while leading a worldly life, provided of course that before dealing with any object of gratification you take it with Cosmic feeling. While feeding your child you ought to contemplate that you are not feeding your child but giving proper care to the manifestation of Brahma in the shape of a child. When you plough your land, you ought to contemplate that you are giving proper care to the manifestation of Brahma in the shape of land. If you properly follow madhuvidyá you can keep yourself aloof from the shackles of actions even though you perform actions. This madhuvidyá will pervade your exterior and interior with the ecstasy of Brahmánanda and will permanently alleviate all your afflictions. Then the ferocious jaws of Avidyá cannot come and devour you. The glory of one and only one benign Entity will shine forth to you from one and all objects.(1)
sarveśáḿbhútánáḿ madhvasya máńuśasya
sarváni bhútáni madhuh
Ayamátmá sarvesáḿ
bhútánáḿ madhvasya átmanah sarváni bhútáni
madhuh.
People may ask, “We are ordinary people. If we always keep ourselves absorbed in the thought of Brahma, can we properly attend to our worldly duties?” To this my reply is, of course you can, and you will do them still more beautifully. In the worship of Brahma there is a method by which every worldly duty can be performed easily and perfectly. For ideation on Brahma a person does not have to become a hermit in the forest. Only go on behaving rightly and properly with every manifestation of Brahma in this universe – remove or rectify the mental disease of criminals and reform their characters, cure the sick of their sickness, and arrange for their medicines and their diet. Just remember only this: that you have to behave properly and reasonably with every entity of this world. Pay special attention to the word “properly”. By “proper behaviour”, I mean that in which there is neither anger nor jealousy, neither attraction nor aversion...
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The attraction between one object and another is always chromatic, pertaining to rága or colour. The word rága is derived from the root rańj which means “dyeing”. Anurága means “to dye oneʼs mind with the colour of that Infinite Entity”. Nothing will result from dyeing oneʼs clothes with saffron colour only for show. Dye yourself within. People of some particular religious creeds think that dyeing their clothes or bodies with a particular colour is a part of spiritual sádhaná. But remember that is all useless unless you are dyed within as well. Can a person become a shúdra only by wearing a dark dress, or a vipra by donning white garments? Mahatma Kabir used to say,
ráuṋgáile yogii kápaŕá.
With mind undyed he remains a fake.]
Dye your mind with His colour. Those who have not done so cannot attain Him, for this very coloration is prema or divine love. The differences in colour are signs of distinction; without these differences there is identity. No external sign of sádhutá or virtue is necessary. Become a sádhu within. Behind the external show of virtuousness of many so-called sádhus exists a pharisaic state of mind. Preserve the true dignity of the word sádhu.
Khalrii upar khák lágáye
Mana jaeśá to taesá.
And ashen body a sádhu walks
With the swaggering gait of a well-fed buffalo
And crude mind filled with thoughts mean and low.]
This is why I say that you must bring about a revolutionary change in the flow of your judgment and thought, and see how, after overcoming your fascination with external colour, your mind becomes tinged with His glorious colour. In Ananda Marga sádhaná, the method of withdrawing the mind from degrading tendencies and absorbing oneself in the colour of the Great, is called pratyáhára yoga [the yoga of withdrawal] or varńárghyadána [the offering of colours]. All people have a particular attraction for one or another object or activity, and as soon as they become attracted to an object, then their minds become coloured with the colour of that object. You can withdraw your mind from the colour of that object and dye yourself in His colour by offering Him the captivating colour of the object that has attracted you: this is the real pratyáhára yoga. The word pratyáhára means “to withdraw” – to withdraw the mind from its object.(2)
The main object of the Spring Colour Festival (Vasantotsava) is not playing with external colours; it is meant to offer Him the colours of different objects which have dyed the mind. When this practice of offering your own colours – your own attachments, becomes natural and easy, you will then merge in Him. Then you will have no need for any colour, for you will become colourless – you will go beyond the reach of any colour. Your unit-ego will become one with the Cosmic Ego. Whichever way you look you will see only Him in His ever-surging glory. There is no “I” nor “you”. By an everlasting, mutual pact the final curtain will have fallen on all clashes of “I” and “you”. At that stage, if you call Parama Brahma “I”, you are right in calling Him so; if you call Him “He”, you are equally right; and if you call Him “You”, again you are correct. The extent of your attainment of Him will be proportionate to your self-surrender.
Remember, you have to offer your own identity – not money, rice, plantains or other crude objects.(3) The give-and-take of crude things is a business transaction. If you want to attain the bliss of Brahma, you must offer your own self. If you want to have the Great “I”, you must give away your own little “I”. You have to give the full sixteen annas (the full rupee). Giving fifteen annas and holding back one anna will not do. You must completely surrender. To attain that Infinite One with the help of your mental concentration and strength, you have to surrender yourselves. But remember, self-surrender does not mean suicide. On the contrary, your soul will have its full expression. Your existence will not become contracted, for contraction is inert in principle.
The existence of microcosms is bound up in action. Microcosms will have to act and to move; life is a dynamic process from beginning to end. No one has come to this world to remain static; staticity is contrary to living existence. Even the physical body changes every moment, even the body maintains dynamic movement.
Human beings perform two types of action: pratyayamúlaka [original actions] and saḿskáramúlaka [reactive actions – actions prompted or goaded by saḿskáras]. Original actions are performed under oneʼs own initiative, and thus one is fully responsible for them. Every original action is a new action. It may represent an extension of the experience of the past, but it is not a reaction. And the actions which human beings are compelled to perform as reactions to their previous actions are called reactive actions. In other words, original actions constitute efforts, and reactive actions constitute the resultants [of the original actions].
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When people rob others, or indulge in hypocrisy, or cheat people, or indulge in tall talk day after day, they are committing original actions. When a dishonest government employee accepts a bribe it is an original action, and when his son gets sick and has to be rushed to the doctor it is the reactive action (the reaction to the original action). When his son dies he laments, “I havenʼt knowingly done anything wrong. Oh, Lord, why have you given me such severe punishment.” But God did not give him any punishment – the deep sorrow he felt at the death of his child was the result of his past original actions.
The moment sádhakas start spiritual practice they must surrender all their original actions to Brahma so that they do not have to endure the reactions. This surrender is the most important aspect of spiritual practice.
Brahmaeva tena gantavyaḿ Brahmakarmasamádhiná.
Reactions in requital to past actions normally occur more in a spiritual aspirantʼs life than in an ordinary personʼs life. The reason is that when all original actions are surrendered to Brahma, there remain only the reactive actions. The reactions may be good or bad [according to whether they are resultants of good or bad original actions]. But think about how many of the deeds you performed before coming to the path of sádhaná were good and how many were bad. To tell the unpleasant truth, ninety-nine percent of your deeds were bad. Hence it is often the case that sádhakas have to suffer much more from bad reactive momenta than they get to enjoy good ones. It can even be said that the more one suffers from reactions (karmaphala), the more one is progressing along the path of sádhaná.
Of course, the requital of the reactive momenta may possibly be pleasurable instead of painful; it all depends upon the nature of oneʼs actions. In either case, the more one surrenders oneʼs actions to Brahma, the shorter will be the period of requital caused by the reactions. In this case the intensity of the requital will be greater than normal; but this is a good sign, because intense requital means the exhaustion of the requital within a short period.
Suppose you have incurred a loan of a thousand rupees. If you repay the loan in monthly instalments of one rupee it will take you a thousand months to clear the loan. One rupee being such a small amount, this will hardly cause any suffering at all. But if you want to free yourself from the debt quickly, you will have to pay a larger amount every month, which will obviously cause more suffering. Likewise, if one does not feel the need to be freed of oneʼs reactive momenta quickly, one can undergo less affliction, but then one may have to wait ten or twenty lives to exhaust all the reactive momenta. Moreover, within those ten or twenty lives one will probably undergo psychic degeneration, and due to oneʼs mean actions imbibe new reactive momenta.
Hence genuine sádhakas always strive to be relieved of their acquired saḿskáras as early as possible; therefore they surrender completely to Brahma. The consummation of self-surrender precipitates the requital of saḿskáras, and this requital may take place in the Shákta, Vaeśńava or Shaeva stages, but in the Shaeva stage the requitals are not felt so keenly, and therefore may be considered not to be requitals in the true sense of the term. The requital of reactive momenta is felt most acutely in the Shákta stage, because this stage involves a tremendous fight against Prakrti.
Ananda Marga has harmoniously blended the Shákta, Vaeśńava and Shaeva sádhanás. Of the three, the Shákta sádhaná is the most important, because it is the initial stage of the microcosmʼs journey towards the Macrocosm. Progress on this journey is made through pratyáhára yoga. As all spiritual aspirants are aware, the goal of pratyáhára, dhárańá, and dhyána is the attainment of samádhi. Pratyáhára is the conscious endeavour to withdraw the mind from mundane qualities and attractions – easier said than done! The process of varńárghyádána(4) is in most cases very difficult to perform properly.
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The importance of pratyáhára sádhaná is immense, because it involves a harmonious blending of knowledge, devotion and action. In this sádhaná, the Shákta bháva finds its consummation, and the latent devotion starts sprouting. This sprout ultimately develops into the highest Vaeśńava bháva. Shaeva bháva is the path of knowledge. So in social life there is a great need for Sháktas and Vaeśńavas. The pratyáhára yoga with which a Shákta starts rendering service to the world reaches its consummation in the perfect and total service of the Vaeśńava. Pratyáhára begins with vigorous action and culminates in selfless devotion.
Vashiikára siddhi is only attained by devotees. Even Shankaracharya [the great protagonist of jiṋána] admitted, Mokśakárańa samagryáḿ bhaktireva gariyasii – “Of all the ways to attain salvation, the way of bhakti or devotion is the greatest.”
If knowledge is likened to the elder brother of a family, devotion is his younger sister, happily holding her brotherʼs hand as she walks beside him. The little sister cannot walk alone, nor would it be safe for her to do so, but when she walks merrily along with her brother, people look lovingly at her and speak sweet words to her. They will probably ask that elder brother, “Is she your little sister?”
Just like práńáyáma, pratyáhára yoga is not complete in itself. Práńáyáma, you know, is a practice to control the movement of the vital energy of a particular body:
It is the process by which the movement of vital energy is controlled by a spiritual aspirant. But práńáyáma should always be associated with bindu dhyána, that is, meditation on a particular point. If práńáyáma is not associated with bindu dhyána, it will affect self-restraint. Práńáyáma will make the mind restless. Similarly, pratyáhára yoga – here the actual English term is “withdrawal” – should always be associated with dhárańá.
The difference between dhyána [meditation] and dhárańá [concentration] is that dhyána is something stationary; that is, the object is a stationary one in the case of dhyána. In the case of dhárańá , the mind moves along with the object; that is, there is a dynamic force behind dhárańá. And dhyána, although sentient, has no movement in it. In the sphere of – rather, in the arena of – spiritual practice, pratyáhára has very much importance, because in the primordial phase of sádhaná, one will have to withdraw oneʼs mind from the physicalities of the universe.
Now in pratyáhára yoga, what are you to do after withdrawing all your propensities from the objective world, from the physicalities of the world? To where are these mental propensities to be directed? If the mental propensities are withdrawn but are not guided to some other point, what will happen? Those withdrawn mental propensities will create an internal disturbance in your mind, will create a disturbance in your subconscious and unconscious strata. This is dangerous. Sometimes it so happened in the past, and may happen in the future, that if a spiritual aspirant, without the guidance of a strong guru, tried or tries to practise pratyáhára only from reading books, there would be some danger. So whenever you are withdrawing your mental propensities from different objects, you are to guide those collected propensities into some moving object, moving within the realm of your mind.
And what is that moving object? That moving object is your citta – your objectivated “I” feeling. The citta is moving. The citta is something moving. So these withdrawn propensities are to move towards the citta and not towards external objects. They stop moving towards external objects, but they start moving towards the internal citta, that is the thing.
If the propensities are withdrawn but not goaded towards the citta, then there will be a dangerous reaction. I think you have understood. That is why it has been said,
“What are intelligent spiritual aspirants to do? They are to goad their mental propensities to the citta.”
Here the word váun represents the external movement of the propensities. Then, manasi + prájiṋah – that is, “those withdrawn propensities are to move towards the citta.”
Tad yacched jiṋána átmani.
“And the citta, along with the withdrawn propensities, is to be guided towards the ahaḿtattva, the doer ʼIʼ, the owner ʼIʼ – the ʼI doʼ feeling that is subject to the ʼIʼ having a direct objectivity.”(5)
Here this doer “I”, although not in movement, still has the full potentiality of movement. It can move, it may move, it can partly transform itself into the done “I”, so it has the potentiality. So, the citta, that is, the done “I”, is to be directed towards the doer “I”, the ahaḿtattva. Not the feeling “I exist,” but the feeling that the “I” that exists is now able to do something. This is the ahaḿtattva.
Jiṋánamátmani mahati niyacchet. Now this jiṋána átmá, or aham, has also potentiality, so the mutative principle is very prominent in it. That doer or mutative principle is also a binding fetter, a tethering agency. So, “one will have to withdraw this jiṋána átmá, this ahaḿtattva, into the mahattattva” – jiṋánamátmani mahati niyacchet. Mahati means “within the mahattattva”. And what is the mahattattva? The mahattattva is the feeling “I exist”.
Now in this pure “I” feeling there is hardly any movement, because it is a creation of the sentient principle. But you know, although the sentient principle cannot give any specific figure, any boundary line, still it is a sort of bondage, and because there is bondage there is a fight within and without. You are doing something. Is there no fight, is there no movement? Although there is no figure, there is fight, there is movement.
So, jiṋánamátmani mahati. [The mahattattva] is almost free from bondage, but there is still bondage. Suppose a very good man is harshly rebuking an immoral person for having insulted him. Is that unfair? No, no, it is not unfair. It is called “sentient anger”. Anger is static; but sometimes it may be sáttvika, it may be sentient. And that type of anger is sentient anger – sáttvika krodha in Sanskrit.
Tad yacchecchánta átmani. “Now this pure ‘I’ feeling, ‘I exist’” – where all your propensities, along with the citta, and the citta along with the ahaḿtattva, and the ahaḿtattva along with the mahattattva, form one strong unit of movement – “is also to be withdrawn and merged into that Cognitive Principle.” And that Cognitive Principle is free from all bondages. And that is the Paramágati, that is the supreme goal of human existence.
[1] In Ananda Marga sádhaná, the practical application of madhuvidyá is the use of siddha guru mantra which is a daily practice in Ananda Marga meditation. The ácárya or ácáryá will impart the appropriate guru mantra, in accordance with the initiateʼs saḿskáras. The use of guru mantra during the day, before every action, whether big or small, will increase, guru bhakti (the feeling that “my Guru is always with me”) and his power of remembrance will also increase tremendously. Those of an advanced age and those who suffer from problems like extreme forgetfulness, will get benefit from the maximum uses of guru mantra. –Trans.
[2] Varńárghyadána is performed at the end of each sádhaná, along with gurupujá. It is purely a psycho-spiritual process. As a result of this, the seeds of reflections of crude objects still remaining in the mind after the application of guru mantra will be obliterated and offered at the feet of the Sadguru. In this way, sádhakas will not incur new saḿskáras of pratyamúlaka karma. The ácárya or ácáryá will give proper instructions regarding it. Varńárghyadána is a must after daily sádhaná and also after collective meditation, as instructed by the author. –Trans.
[3] This is the reason that, in Ananda Marga sádhaná, the significance of gurudakśińá is not to offer anything crude to Guru but to offer oneʼs entire self to His lotus feet. –Trans.
[4] Offering of oneʼs mental colour back to the Lord. –Trans.
[5] The “I” having a direct objectivity (also known as the “done ‘I’”) is the citta.
Shrii Shrii Anandamurti
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