Page 16 - All India Magazine Jul-2025

once a thing is born it must have its youth, growth, enjoyment,
life and final decay and death; when once an impetus has been
given by Prakriti to her creation, she insists that the velocity
shall spend itself by natural exhaustion before it shall cease.
To arrest the growth or speed unseasonably by force is nigraha,
which can be effective for a time but not in perpetuity. It is
said in the Gita that all things are ruled by their nature, to their
nature they return and nigraha or repression is fruitless. What
happens then is that the thing untimely slain by violence is not
really dead, but withdraws for a time into the Prakriti which sent
it forth, gathers an immense force and returns with extraordi-
nary violence ravening for the rightful enjoyment which it was
denied. We see this in the attempts we make to get rid of our evil
saWskDras or associations when we first tread the path of Yoga.
If anger is a powerful element in our nature, we may put it down
for a time by sheer force and call it self-control, but eventually un-
satisfied Nature will get the better of us and the passion return
upon us with astonishing force at an unexpected moment.
*
Substitution
There are only two ways by which we can effectively get the
better of the passion which seeks to enslave us. One is by sub-
stitution, replacing it whenever it rises by the opposite qual-
ity, anger by thoughts of forgiveness, love or forbearance, lust
by meditation on purity, pride by thoughts of humility and our
own defects or nothingness; this is the method of Rajayoga,
but it is a difficult, slow and uncertain method; for both the an-
cient traditions and the modern experience of Yoga show that
men who had attained for long years the highest self-mastery
have been suddenly surprised by a violent return of the thing
they thought dead or for ever subject. Still this substitution,
slow though it be, is one of the commonest methods of Nature
and it is largely by this means, often unconsciously or half-con-

16 All India Magazine, July 2025