Page 18 - All India Magazine Oct-2020

Equality of the Vital (Prana)

A perfect equality not only of the self, but in the nature is a

condition of the Yoga of self-perfection. The first obvious
step to it will be the conquest of our emotional and vital
being, for here are the sources of greatest trouble, the most
rampant forces of inequality and subjection, the most insis-
tent claim of our imperfection. The equality of these parts
of our nature comes by purification and freedom. We might

say that equality is the very sign of liberation. To be free
from the domination of the urge of vital desire and the
stormy mastery of the soul by the passions is to have a calm
and equal heart and a life-principle governed by the large
and even view of a universal spirit. Desire is the impurity of
the Prana, the life-principle, and its chain of bondage. A free

Prana means a content and satisfied lifesoul which fronts
the contact of outward things without desire and receives
them with an equal response; delivered, uplifted above the
servile duality of liking and disliking, indifferent to the urg-

ings of pleasure and pain, not excited by the pleasant, not
troubled and overpowered by the unpleasant, not clinging

with a achment to the touches it prefers or violently repel-
ling those for which it has an aversion, it will be opened to
a greater system of values of experience. All that comes to
it from the world with menace or with solicitation, it will
refer to the higher principles, to a reason and heart in touch
with or changed by the light and calm joy of the spirit. Thus
quieted, mastered by the spirit and no longer trying to im-

pose its own mastery on the deeper and finer soul in us,
this life-soul will be itself spiritualised and work as a clear
and noble instrument of the diviner dealings of the spirit
with things. There is no question here of an ascetic killing of
the life-impulse and its native utilities and functions; not its

All India Magazine, October 2020