Page 13 - All India Magazine May-2022

Rajayoga

The first condition
Man fulfilling himself in the body is given Hathayoga as his means.

When he rises above the body, he abandons Hathayoga as a trouble-
some and inferior process and rises to the Rajayoga, the discipline

peculiar to the aeon in which man now evolves. The first condition
of success in Rajayoga is to rise superior to the dehatmak bodh, the

state of perception in which the body is identified with the self. A time
comes to the Rajayogin when his body seems not to belong to him or
he to have any concern with it. He is not troubled by its troubles or
gladdened by its pleasures; it has them to itself and very soon, because
he does not give his sanction to them, they fall away from it. His own
troubles and pleasures are in the heart and mind, for he is the rajasic
and psychical man, not the tamasic material. It is these that he has to
conquer in order that he may realise God in his heart or in his buddhi
or in both. God seen in the heart, that is the quest of the Rajayogin.
CWSA 1: 507

Tranquilising the mind
Now Pranayam in its proper sense, the mastery of the vital force
in oneself and Nature, is essential to every Rajayogin, but it can be
brought about by much simpler methods. The only physical process
that the Rajayogin finds helpful enough to be worth doing, is nadi-

shuddhi or purification of the nerve system by regular breathing and

this can be done while lying, sitting, reading, writing, walking. This
process has great virtues. It has a wonderfully calming effect on the

whole mind & body, drives out every lurking disease in the system,
awakens the yogic force accumulated in former lives and, even where
no such latent force exists, removes the physical obstacles to the
wakening of the Kundalini shakti.
But even this process is not essential. The Rajayogin knows that by
tranquillising the mind he can tranquillise the body, by mastering the
mind he can master both the body and the prana. This is the great se-

All India Magazine, May 2022