Spiritual Message for the Day-Yoga Is Conscious Hastening of the Process of Evolution by Sri Swami Chidananda

Baba Times Digest© | 29 May 2015 16.02 EST | New York Edition

Yoga Is Conscious Hastening of the Process of Evolution

Divine Life Society Publication: The Path Beyond Sorrow by Sri Swami Chidananda

First of all, it is necessary for us to have a clear conception of what the Yogic way of life is. The destiny of the human being is evolution and we are all progressing towards ultimate perfection, since we are all meant to realize once again our innate divinity. However, the normal course of human evolution is very, very slow—perhaps spread over countless years and requiring many lives, taking only a few progressive steps in each life. In this process of taking a few forward steps in each body, one undergoes untold suffering, untold sorrow, so much of pain, so much of misery due to the bondage of the body and the interplay of currents of like and dislike, of attachment and repulsion; one undergoes all the different experiences which this physical frame has to go through—growth, change, decay and death. To be brought into contact with anything that is unpleasant is sorrow; to be removed from the contact of anything that is pleasant is sorrow; to be deprived of that which we want is sorrow; not to get what we desire is sorrow; and to get that which we do not desire is sorrow; and ultimately, to part from all, that is sorrow.

The great ones pondered over this life with its bondages and imperfections, its restlessness and peacelessness, its pain, suffering and sorrow. They ruminated over the various miseries characterising this earth-life and said, “No! We should not thus drag on through this earth-plane, life after life! There must be some method by which we can complete our great destined journey more quickly and find ourselves in that ultimate state of supreme blessedness and perfection”.

The technique evolved to rapidly go through this process of achieving fulfilment and perfection is named “Yoga”. The Yogic way of life is one that implies a great intensification of the process of evolution, since the Yogi does not want a slow, dragging process. In India, the achieving of “at-one-ment” with that wonderful Perfection (Divinity) is known as “Yoga”. This then implies that if you take to this life of Yoga, you are trying to do within the short span of a given incarnation, a given embodiment, what perhaps would have taken you a thousand years or two thousand years, spread over several successive incarnations, to achieve. Therefore, Yoga means an intensification of evolution within a single life-span, or perhaps even within just a few years of a single life-span. If you look at the Yogic way of life from this angle then you will begin to understand many things which may be puzzling to you.

If a Botanist were to evolve some method in his floral laboratory whereby he could sow a seed of some fruit, have the tree growing in three months and yielding fruit in six months, it would be considered that he had accomplished a miraculous and extraordinary thing. He would doubtless become a man of the day with the whole world agog at such an accomplishment, with publications full of articles on his research and pictures of the product, and the radio and the TV carrying the story of his miracle, of what formerly took a much longer time having been accomplished, through intensification, in a relatively short period.

Yoga is intensification. During this intensified effort to pack into a short span all the experiences that the evolving individual would otherwise have had to go through over a much longer period of time, very unusual appearances, unusual phenomena, are frequently brought about. To one who does not realize what is taking place within the consciousness of the concerned individual, these things appear as extraordinary, but one who understands knows exactly why they have come about.

It is not in the lives of all seekers or all practitioners of Yoga that one comes across these phenomena, but only in the lives of those who go all out for Yoga with every cell and nerve fibre, with all their heart, mind and might, with an all-soul dedication to the life of Yoga.

Excerpts from: Yoga is Conscious Hastening of the Process of Evolution - The Path Beyond Sorrow by Sri Swami Chidananda

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