Yoga and the Dream of Change

The dream to change the world (and oneself) are inherent part of our being human. We are born for it and our collaboration is part of the great Divine design. But for this to happen effectively we must first reclaim the heights from where we fell. We must first discover our own highest possibilities without which we are more likely to create a mess and a confusion rather than change. Though even in our ignorance we are still driven by forces beyond our reckoning and the crown of change falls upon man sometimes but it is invariably a mixed baggage. It is quite different from an action or change brought about with full knowledge and the fully effective power.

Therefore, the first necessity for man is to rediscover himself and his own highest Self and its divine possibilities. Then guided by the Divine Will (and not his own limited ego- and desire-self) he can and must become a conscious instrument of the Divine. But for this man must acknowledge that there are higher states hidden within him. He must have the faith that not only these higher possibilities exist but that he can discover and identify with them through yoga.

Towards this end the simplest way is to find someone who has so realised it himself and to approach such a Master with trust and humility and surrender. It means acknowledging that the Divine knows better than we do and to first tune ourselves to His Will and His Wisdom and then instead of being an unconscious or half-conscious play thing of countless forces of all kinds through which the Divine acts man can become a powerful conscious representative of the Divine upon earth, a dynamo for His Works, a channel of His Divine Light and Intelligence, an ocean of His Peace, a flame of His Love and Ananda. Let man therefore first upgrade his judgments, skills, will, reason and everything else and then return to act. Let the child first grow into a man as they say and then take up his career. For this he must go through the schooling process first.

By refusing to grow we remain tied to the kind of fatalism that we find rightly frightening due to subjection to the forces of ignorance. It is religions that teach fatalism, not yoga. Yoga frees us from fatalism and the fixed scroll of destiny and its wheels under which we find ourselves perpetually crushed.