Page 16 - All India Magazine Jul-2025
P. 16

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
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