You can look at the two components, raja yoga and bhakti yoga, in this way: raja yoga is clearing the negative, restrictive and limiting, and bhakti yoga is connecting with the positive, the good, joyous and happy. Bhakti yoga does not look at the negative; dharana does not look at the negative. It is only pratyahara which makes you aware of the restricting, limiting conditions of the mind. You have to work through that in pratyahara itself. When we come to bhakti yoga, where we are connecting with the positive qualities and experiences of our life, there is no question of using the practice to look at our negatives.
The reason is simple. There are two poles, positive and negative, and we have to go from the negative towards the positive, from tamas to sattwa. We are looking at the tamasic when we are practising antar mouna and other techniques of pratyahara. After that, we cut our connection with the tamasic. In dharana, it is only fixation of the mind, and when you move into bhakti yoga, it is only connection with positivity and negating the awareness of the negative, so that you are able to fully experience and immerse in the opposite behaviour of the mind. The natural behaviour of the mind is tamasic, and therefore the opposite of it is sattwic. This is an important principle that yoga believes in.
Sri Aurobindo, one of the great masters of India, made a statement, ‘In the beginning the intellect was my friend and it remained my friend as long as I knew, what I was dealing with. When I come to unknown dimensions, the intellect becomes a barrier, not a friend.’ This statement applies in raja yoga and in bhakti yoga. In raja yoga, you are dealing with the interactive mind: the mind, the senses, the world, the sense objects. Their influence and your response, everything is there. You are going through a process of self-awareness, self observation and self correction. Then that stops there. When we go into dharana, into bhakti yoga, we are not dealing with the interactive mind. We are trying to access the positive, sattwic content of our life and let it flower. In these negative and positive dimensions, we have raja yoga and bhakti yoga. That is one point.
Point two. People generally translate bhakti as devotion. When yoga is added to the word bhakti, they call it yoga of devotion. Everybody has done it. If you analyse the word bhakti, then it means an expression of pure love. That can be expressed when the heart is pure, not when the heart is tainted, not when the heart is self-centred, self oriented, not when the heart is closed. When the heart is closed and we are desiring things for ourselves, there is no faith, no devotion, there is only demand and expectation. You confuse your demand and expectation with faith and devotion.
Suppose, I have this inner, social problem, and I go to a temple and pray to God, ‘Please help me overcome my problem.’ Is that devotion or is that filing the petition to the higher government to help me overcome my difficulties? The municipal corporation says, ‘You have to pay your electricity bill, you have to pay your water bill,’ so I file the application to the district authorities, ‘Please help me and cross out all that I owe.’ That is not faith, devotion or even a prayer. Everybody does it. Why? They do not look to anything beyond themselves.
Happiness is something which is shared. You cannot hold it within yourself. Happiness is something you share, for you are already bubbly and little bubbles are exploding. You share that happiness. With sadness, when you contract and withdraw, you go to your room and lie down. You say, ‘I don’t want to see anybody.’ Individual pain closes the person and individual happiness opens the person. If we apply the same principle in raja yoga and bhakti yoga, the path will be clearer. Raja yoga allows us to see our closed mind, our closed heart, our closed nature, and the reasons for them being closed. Then we work with it to open up. While we are doing this opening and observing them closely, we are continuously aware of the problem, the difficulty, the negativity, which is the reason why it is closed. So the tamasic state is at the forefront of the mind all the time.
Imagine two scales, not digital ones, mechanical ones. On one scale is the weight and on the other side is the product, and both have to be equal. In your own life, if you put all the good that you have on one scale and all the negative and bad on the other scale, which side will be heavier? Nobody is going to answer that. I can assure you that it will be the negative side which will be heavier. I do not know why you have to hide from yourself and not be straight and say, ‘Yes, the negative side will be heavier.’ Everybody wants to hide from the negative while living in the negative, and that is the paradox of life. So, we have these two scales: negativity and positivity. Negativity is greater, positivity is light and less.
What do you do to balance it? Do you remove the negative? No. That is not the yogic thinking. Think outside the box. You do not remove the negative, you keep on adding things to the positive. The more you add, the heavier the positive side will become, and the negative will become lighter and lighter.
The purpose of bhakti yoga is to make the positive side heavier, without bothering about the negative. For that reason, in dharana and in bhakti yoga we do not look at the negative. Only in pratyahara we look at the present structure in which we are living, and if there is a defect in that structure, we correct it.
Make the house appropriate to your needs, requirements and comfort. Right now your house which is your head is not geared for comfort, and you do not know how to make it comfortable. Remove things that are of no value to you from your mind, and only keep those things which add value to your mind. Can you analyse, can you see what things add value to your life, what things do not add any value to your life, yet are still there?
In your own home, there is so much clutter that you never clear. Do you think that clutter and possessions add value to your life? No, they do not, it is just clutter. If you remove that clutter and only keep those things that add value to your house, to your life, you are a happier and better person. The intention of the raja yoga and bhakti yoga program is to know the clutter through raja yoga, to know the value of items through bhakti yoga, to get rid of what has no value to you in your home or in your life, and what is just rubbish being kept. That is the path of yoga, not closing the eyes and hiding from the world, but confronting that which limits, restricts, is bondage, negative and confining. Then you come to the state of expansiveness of mind and expansiveness of understanding and wisdom. Then you will begin to experience the spiritual nature of your life. Now you are experiencing the material nature, yet there is also the experience of the spiritual.
If you continue with this, soon you will change and notice a change in your lifestyle, behaviour, mind-set, responses and reactions. They will become more positive, better, harmonious and less conflicting, more satisfying and fulfilling.
That is the start of the journey for each one of us, the connection with truth, which is known as satsang. Satsang does not mean having the gift of gab, the gift of yapping. Many people love to talk and can talk continuously without stopping. That is not satsang; satsang is not speech or discussion. Sat is truth and sang means in company of. If you are in company of truth you are in satsang and experiencing that satsang is the first outcome of the raja yoga and bhakti yoga experience. Experiencing positivity, experiencing the truth inside will be the first experience of raja yoga and bhakti yoga combined; and that will start your spiritual journey.
12 October 2023, Raja Yoga-Bhakti Yoga, Ganga Darshan, Munger