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Pujya Dr. K.C. Varadachari - Volume -1
 

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

Sri Ramchandra's interesting Investigations on the Phsio-Psychology of the Human Organism

  
Sri Ramchandraji of Shahjahanpur has made startling investigations in Yoga psychology. These are found in his Reality at Dawn, Efficacy of Rajayoga and Towards Infinity.

He reveals that all creation is of the Mind (Manas) which is the first Stir of the reality. This Primal Manas radiating in vibrations from that Centre or Reality created concentric circles so to speak and upto a point really revealed the potentialities of the Centre itself. This luminous region upto the extent of seven original circles was known as the Central Region of the Mind. This area is not open to the area of knowledge and therefore was known as the Ajnana or Region of Ignorance - where knowledge does not penetrate and which can only be investigated with the help of Ajnana and the Ultimate Tam itself, that is beyond the original Stir and may be known as God.

The regions that follow are the Region of Egoism firstly cosmic and later individualized for each person. The same pattern is in the Cosmic as it is in the individual or particular individuals or persons. The Manas now diminished in its force remains subtle but tends to become grosser and grosser. Eleven circles of egoism are known as the Region of the Mind and this is followed by the grosser region of the Heart. The human organism as a matter of fact from almost the head to the feet is the region of the heart in the gross level as well as in the subtle level. The Heart becomes the essential region governed by the circulation by the heart processes. Physically everybody knows that the heart is central to the body. (Though today there are cases of transplantation of the heart, yet it would not disprove the thesis that the heart remains the main pumping station of power to all the portions or limbs of the body including the brain). Whilst the nervous system is centred in the brain and the nervous system including the spinal ones the heart is the circulatory hub of all processes. Towards the harmonization of the two centres alone is evolution working. This conception of the three regions - the heart, the mind and the central region, is unique. He, however, nearly identifies the three regions with the Indian conception of Pinda, Brahmanda and Parabrahmanda and the Kendriya or central regions which means that he considers that while the heart is individual, the manas is more cosmic, and para-brahmanda is still more cosmic and the Central goes to the supracosmic and acosmic levels of Experience.

Every individual, is connected with the Ultimate and sub-ultimate regions physio-psychologically.

The stir (ksobh) for expansion is stated to have taken place from below the Centre. This is significant, as showing that creation is a downward movement rather than an upward movement. Sri Ramchandra has mentioned that there are what are called kala-dasa points - points that belong to Time, which emerges along with the movement in space that is below the Centre. They all stand under the Centre. This is also the significant metaphor of the Veda which speaks of the Urdhva mulam adhas sakah - the root is above, the branches etc. are below. So too the Gita mentions this analogy.

Kala-dasa points are all placed along the spinal cord of the individual body. They are below the Central point which is in the region of the Cerebellum. Sri Ramchandra points out that there is also the point of destruction just below the Centre. But by crossing down or by implication discovering that the creative downward movement is really a process of destruction of the Ultimate Happiness, perfection, existence and so on, one may conceive of the downflow of evolution (pravrtti).

Thus we have the points numbering twenty. From laya avastha one descends to the conversion of vibrations into particles, the higher minds conversion into the lower. Though upto this point divine knowledge is present, the downward movement takes it to subtle desires (kama), which moves to the point of rage (krodha), which tends to flow down to habits and tendencies (lobha, moha), this moves towards hunger and grosser desires pertaining to the maintenance of the body and lower though for perpetuation, preservation, sexual appetites and finally ends up in Kundalini. Thus desire, anger, possession, self-preservation, delusion and sex are all clearly necessary for the extension of the field of the individual evolution. All individuals are the basic results of the downward movement of the ari-sat, or the sixfold which may be said to typify also the six-fold sat-cakras of the Tantrik conception. The centres there too are considered to be downward facing or hanging down buds, which it is the business of the yogi on this path to upturn or make them unfold upwards by piercing them from below with the help of the energy of the Kundalini. It is somewhat of a strange conception that the grossest power should be awakened and made to pierce the points or centres of lotuses from below and then move upwards till the Ultimate Centre is reached.

Sri Ramchandra presents a more rational explanation of the spinal downward turned points which represent the life-forces of instinctive evolution, which is also considered to be that of Nature.

It may not be very difficult to equate the six centres with points of Sri Ramchandra's diagram. These too are subtle centres except perhaps the last ones - a fact recognized by the Minor Upanishads also.*

Unlike the method adopted by the tantriks who wish to move by the same route as by which the original force had descended - an impossible if not risky job, Sri Ramchandra proceeds to show that the route of ascent is different from the spinal route of descent. This route is frontal rather than spinal and posterior. The starting point is the heart as stated by the Upanishads, where the Jiva is resident and where the Isvara is also working. Without entering into the metaphysics of the double presence of the Jiva and Isvara in the heart, we can state that one has to move upward from the heart to the Centre that is above. The path is not direct but rather zig-zag. From the point of the heart (left) one proceeds to the right and from that one ascends to point three just above the nipple (left) and proceeds from thence to the point four which is upwards of the right nipple. From that point one proceeds to the throat point which corresponds to the visuddha point in the spinal in the front. This completes the frontal ascent in the pinda-pradesh or the individual evolution or ascent. It is from the thoracic point one moves to the point in the top of the forehead - not the bhru-madhya which is said to be point corresponding to the ajna cakra in the spinal level. It is the experience of many practicants at this point - to have vibrations or throbbing. Sri Ramchandra advises that this point should not be touched at all on the upward journey. May be that this point corresponds to the destructive eye or point in the back and might open up that point's activity. However, many use this for material power some even present it as the third eye of Shiva. However, this point is bypassed on the ascent. One reaches the Cit-lake at the top of the forehead. One begins to experience the Mind region - as it opens up the cosmic levels, leaving behind the individual particularized life. Ego at this region is no longer identified with the body or the sense-cum-motor organs, but is free from their limitations and restrictions.

Waking-consciousness according to mandukya Upanishad refers to the sensory-cum-motor-mind awareness. But the true waking-consciousness seeks to be beyond these restrictions of limitations or grossness. The real awareness of the cosmic linkings of the mind or ego as mind becomes possible when one dwells more and more in the cit-lake (manasarovar of the Upanishads).

The modern tendency to emphasize the place of the waking-consciousness arises from the fact that one would like to be held responsible for one's actions - especially the errors and sins that so much dominate it. The waking-consciousness involves that one must be conscious of one's powers and be able to plan the future according to whatever ideals that one has. In fact, it is the practice of some to see that the subconscious and unconscious levels of consciousness are gradually abolished. The Yoga sutra itself admits that nidra or sleep is a great impediment to Yoga. More so dreams also that set the mind wandering from one idea to another idea. Obviously we have to conclude that the yogi never ought to sleep or dream but be in the waking-consciousness.

In all these what is the essence of the matter is that one forgets the inner self - the fourth. Our waking consciousness suffers much from this loss of inner consciousness - the turiya. Therefore, it is not really jagrat - watchful but pleasure - hunting. Its world is narrowed to the field of desires which fulfil the appetites of the senses - motor and sensory. Similarly the svapna - su - apna is equally void of the inner awakenness of the self - dhi - and as such is nightmarish and wish-fulfilling rather than free and luminous (taijas). The Su-supti without the fourth or dhi is again not a sound sleep of the prajna but just a fatigue consciousness or a state of a-prajna.

It is the fourth that must inform all these three states - all of which are necessary for the real up - bringing of the body as an instrument of the inner self. If the philosophy behind these discoveries was the attainment of the turiya or the fourth which is of the dis-embodied being then it is conceivable that some have never bothered to exercise the fourth in the three states of the body. If, on the other hand, the goal is to see that the fourth functions in and through the three states then it would really manifest the visva, taijas and the prajna. This might be the essential meaning of the attempt to arrive at that waking-consciousness which has all the richness and amplitude of the cosmic and supra - cosmic levels of Reality.

It is, however necessary to plumb the depths or ascend the heights of the Reality as it is in itself so that it might be made to function with that same force and energy and consciousness in the lower levels without dissolving them into nothingness - a fact well known to the earlier yogis who attempted nisprapancikarana dissolution of the fivefold unification or aggregation that gave rise to the world.

The Bhagavad Gita has a passage, which reveals that the night of the Yogi is daytime for the common man and the waking state of the yogi is the sleepy state of the ordinary man. This gives the clue that one has to understand by the waking state not the state of the senses, motor and sensory and the lower mind operating through them, but the state of the inner self-the purusa. The purusaic consciousness or the Dhi is the waking state of the Purusa, whereas it is the state of sleep of the prakrti, contrariwise, the waking state of the prakrti is the sleep state of the Purusa- the prajna.

All these reveal that technical terminology has been rather loosely applied by expositors, without a firm grasp of the experience that is boded by the states and levels.

Therefore, Sri Ramchandraji supplies a firm interpretation of the prakrtic evolution on the one hand as explained by the Kala-dasa points and the purusaic evolution, which is explained as the frontal heart cerebral movement of the consciousness.

Samadhi as transcendental meditation is a double-edged experience. On the one hand samadhi provides the break away from the prakrtic embodied consciousness into the purusaic-that involves suspension of all bodily activities. This samadhi has been known to be reserved for those who have totally discarded attraction for the body and given up any attempt to use it for any purposes. Of course the actual practice has been rather opposed to this total renunciation. Therefore, samadhi as the radical withdrawal of the consciousness from the body is not fully accepted as the way to realisation, though a few yet cling to it as the only truth.

Samadhi as the state of purusa - consciousness really realizing itself within the prakrti, which is, as it were, but its ksobh, and externalized, is what the sahaja method seeks to attain. This does not mean the severance of the link between the purusa and the prakrti, which are usually set against each other. The realisation of the highest consciousness - the purusaic within the prakrti or the body is naturally brought about by the transmission of the Ultimate thought arising from the Ultimate purusa or Self or God, samadhi is not a state of trance - loss of bodily consciousness as such. It is a deepest state of absorption in the Ultimate from which one derives all power and consciousness and bliss and existence for then one goes beyond all these too.

The correlations made by Sri Ramchandra are invaluable and form a corrective to the speculative conjectures of the tantrikas and the mantrikas.