Life likes to kill and to violate, but for all
it compels to blame
Those who is free to execute or to pardon, to cancel inevitable execution.
It grieves me to look at a poor robber, who will regret, will understand, and will forgive him?
The frightened by the name of God rustles like dry grass.
Svetlana Kekova
In the beginning, there are some fragments from texts.
«The first two steps of yoga are as if preparatory. They are called "yama" and "niyama", and have one root. These words are synonyms; their difference is to a certain extent artificial. The first word has got the sense «abstention», the second – «observance of vows» (B.L.Smirnov, «The Book About a Slaughter with Clubs», p. 197).
«Self-checking, observance … of injunctions, yogic poses, regulation of breathing, distraction of organs of sense, concentration on the object, contemplation and attention – such are eight means of realization of yoga» («Yoga-Sutras of Patanjali», p. 136)
«The Self-checking is a nonviolence, truthfulness, honesty, abstention, and unacceptance of gifts» (ibid., p. 30, 137).
«The observance of religious injunctions is cleanliness, satisfaction, asceticism, self-training, and devotion to Isvara» (ibid., p. 32, 138).
«There is no exception for these principles which are absolute on their character. "Yamas" are the law for everybody, despite of distinctions of caste and the country, age and conditions. Everybody should achieve them, though not everyone can be elected for the high life of contemplation» (S.Radhakrishnan, «The Indian Philosophy», vol. 2, p. 311-312).
Meanwhile "Maitra Upanishada" mentions only last five angs (stages, steps) of system; there are no mentions about yama, niyamaand asanas at all, as the process of interosculation of brahmanism and Sutras had not been completed by then. About the octatomic system, including yama and niyama, it was spoken in the later "Tirumantiram".
Today only a lazy bugger did not hear about yoga or did not try to practice it. Usually in the West, one perceives it (and not groundlessly!) as a universal method of the improvement. Ethics of the system is known poorly and looks too archaic in order to concern to it seriously. Some people do not see any connection between yoga and moral principles at all; for example "Dhyânabindu" and "Amritananda Upanishada" mention six stages of yoga; yama and niyamaare not designated in them. Contemporaries of Patanjali and early commentators even reproached yoga for that its purpose – achievement of the personal liberation – contradicts ethics.
In India, one considers that the person does not come to yoga by accident, but having deserved it in the former incarnations. Is it so or not, but the origin of moral values in the person is not traced. It is known that in the daily life there is no reason to be kind, delicate, and even simply polite. But we meet these engagements, as though we belong to another world which is based on good, conscientiousness, sacrifice, to the world which is completely distinct from ours. Perhaps, we appear from this supreme world, being born on the ground in order to return then again to it and to live under the reign of these laws to which we subordinate here only sometimes.
What is the morality? Does it exist at all, all the more an ordered one? Moral, worthy behaviour… Conscience… Ethics… These words sound strangely while the technogeneous society is enveloped by a mad aspiration to the material welfare. With what is then the person alive? There are primary needs, and without satisfaction of them he cannot exist, there are the intellectual and spiritual ones also. Let us enumerate them according to Maslow(«Motivation and Personality», 1999):
1). The physiological ones – food, drink, sleep, sexual relations, the instinct of continuation of human race;
2). The psychological ones – safety, stability, belonging to a group, love, respect, self-esteem;
3). The aesthetic ones – beauty, order (harmony), symmetry, completeness (systematicness);
4). The intellectual ones – understanding of the current events, knowledge;
5). Emotional and motoric self-expression peculiar to the given person.
The first two positions together with the fifth are the needs of survival, the third and the fourth are those of development. The satisfying of the first ones (however, as well as any other levels of motivation including the higher) does not provide us automatically with a system of values and spiritual development what one can see well by the example of the advanced countries.
The satisfaction of basic needs of the first level is indefinitely and cyclically; being realized, they simply disappear out of sight for some time ceasing "to press" on consciousness. The needs of the second level are invariable and constant, though during the certain moments they can not be realized. There can be no needs of the third level at all; many manage without them perfectly well.
The fourth level together with the third is a soul development, meaning a personal search for the answer to a sacramental question: what for is there all this including me? There can be only private answers here. For example the following (poetic): «If life is in all similar to delirium, then the death is its result and the purpose. Night goes as a hound on the trace, light exudes through a door crack. And while Syzygy manages its brutal way above the Earth, the eternal skeleton not remembering me appears through me».
So, yama-niyama. On the one hand, ethics is a certain doctrine about moral as a form of the public consciousness, on the other hand, it is a system of norms of the public behaviour of a separate person or groups incorporated by some attribute. Ethics and moral of a subject and a group can not coincide or turns out absolutely opposite.
The society is an arena of the compelled interaction of people, and also their various associations, from a family up to the state. The physiological needs are peculiar to the body; they prevailed until the human mind had come into existence. According to logic, the person should scoop from biosphere components necessary for maintenance of life and compensate damage in the quantity required for restoration. Unfortunately, the average person always strives to take as much as possible not giving whenever possible anything at all. To limit appetites of instincts, on the one hand, desires, on the other hand, and not to enable greedy fools to destroy community in which it is possible to live more or less adequately, it had been created the restrictions called laws and moral. The formalized rules of behaviour are a systematization of the legal and forbidden, it is a code of laws. Deviation from them is punished, but both an allowable measure of the deviation from instructions and punishment for it is usually stipulated in the legislation.
It is impossible to regulate life entirely, just for this reason alongside with formal laws in any community there are ethics, laws of conscience. In contrast to the legal ones, they are formulated usually as precepts where measures of infringement and punishment are not specified. A number of precepts have a religious origin and do not need consequently a substantiation. The majority of people do not observe them strictly, and it is not necessary, though they had appeared thousand years ago and play an important role in the society, defining the basic level of ethics. If one cannot transgress the law at all, so the religious precepts should not be broken without emergency. Aside from them there are in society so-called principles, they need substantiations, which are given by science. A rigid collision of ideologies has led today to a destructive relativity of moral, especially of that its part which concerns aspect of the personal inviolability or as it is customary to speak human rights. How to counterbalance the main problems of modernity, "state-person" and "society-nature" relations?
Orthodoxes say: one must manage what you already have, as the Bible, the Buddhist Canon, the Koran, the Talmud exist thousands years. But is it possible to organize the modern life adequately within the framework of ideas of the remote past? That is unlikely anyone would. Not to follow spells which sense had been lost, these ideas should be changed taking into account the current realities. Besides «The knowledge of God’s will does not at all guarantee the ability and readiness to carry it out » («Why does not the Church stand on positions of pacifism», p. 159).
A. Shvejtser, Saint-Exupery, P. Florensky, Teyar de Sharden, M. Mamardashvili, D. Andreev and many others tried to adapt ethics of the past to the present. Someone from them has not created complete systems, but realized ethical principles by all his life, for example M.Voloshin, mothers Maria and Teresa, Luke Voyno-Yasenetsky, patriarch Tihon, V. Hlebnikov, and others.
The twentieth century has paid a terrible price for attempt of transformation of the real life into the kingdom of liberty, equality, and brotherhood. It became clear that to eradicate evil means to wipe out the entire human race, as the source of evil is the animal side of the human nature. Wise men always knew that good and evil are the right and the left hands of God, and having destroyed evil, we are automatically deprived of everything including good. The Orthodox Church denies the a priori presence of evil in the world, but there are also other opinions, for example: «Today we can already assert with confidence that much from that we name evil is explained by an illness, illness of the body or spirit, ignorance, stupidity, immaturity of the person, imperfection of social conditions and public institutes. But we do not know meanwhile what share of evil we have the right to explain by these reasons. Today our knowledge allows us to reject resolutely applications for primary, biological, fundamental sinfulness, viciousness, malignance or cruelty of the human nature» («Motivation and Personality», p. 179-180).
Konrad Lorenz and Dolnikconvincingly and a long time ago have shown the biological conditionality of many aspects of the human behaviour. A lot of what the Church qualifies as sins using them as a means of awakening of fault and pressure (however, easily releasing these "sins" for a certain recompense), have clearly been shown by ethology as atavisms of the animal human nature, the natural programs of behaviour received from ancestors.
Japanese consider that there are no moral and immoral actions, there are the pertinent, and inappropriate ones, what is true under one condition, can be unacceptable in the other, the moral in Japanese is a behaviour corresponding ideally to the situation. But for this purpose the subject already should be to the core moral, while «The behaviour of the average person is more likely a conventional (contractual) one than ethical, it is not based on the moral certainty and principles, it is nothing more than a thoughtless following to the standard norms» (ibid, p. 230).
On the one hand, «Nobody has the right to specify a person how he should live. Even if one would do it very much. Do you agree? Then why do you call militia when you see a naked person going along the street? Do you want to teach him how one should go "correctly" in the streets? Why do you consider possible for yourselves to interfere? Is his appearance nasty to you? And if yours is the same to him? In fact he does not force you to strip naked, does not attempt on your complexes and stereotypes. You do not consider this person equal to you and his opinion equal to yours? Why? Only because most people think and behave so as you? And he has another model of behaviour which does not concern you. If he violently undresses you, then of course, there would be on hand a direct attempt upon your freedom. Do you agree? Certainly, there is no such freedom practically in any country; nowhere one appreciates the person so high. But I speak about the tendency. Are you ready to love your neighbor who is unlike you? Or even if to respect him?» («Literaturnaya Gazette» Nr. 16. 10,1996, A. Nikonov). But on the other hand, should there be in fact any restrictions?
It is impossible to observe morality by the efforts of the will, either there it is, or there is not. What is the use to learn by heart "from" and "up to" the moral code of «the builder of communism» or bible precepts? They had existed millennia, but people as before steal, rape, and kill. It is possible to learn theoretically the whole moral, but it becomes inherent only in the case when it had sprouted in you and operates not disappearing at collision with the reality. V. G. Korolenko had ingeniously said: «Conscience, it is when nobody sees and does not learn, but I shall not do». Conscience is a concept of ethics, an analogue of the legal concept of "responsibility". At times life turns around so that it is necessary to choose uncompromisingly, just then the conscience and the responsibility based on the objective, not depending on the person, loss of situational stability are shown (or not) in us. When a choosing person weighs advantage or harm of his actions for himself, surroundings, society as a whole, and the nature, just in this case, the ethical status of the person called conscience becomes apparent.
Any moral is a restriction. Immoral people longing for money and power frequently possess the modest intellectual resources, but it is compensated by their association to criminal groups and communities, a high purposefulness and a full absence of any restrictions in actions. For those who had become free from chimera called conscience, only own desires are moral, as Mark Twain had noticed once sarcastically: «If I had a dog, as harmful as conscience, I would poison it».
«The behavior is an attempt to resist to the pressure of a need (or a desire) by means of interaction with the environment» (Maslow). All depends on roads, which we choose every minute. A strong orientation to the predefined moral is dangerous; it leads to a rigid collision with the reality and the loss of adaptation. Each of us collided with furious fighters for the truth; as a rule, they are constant clients of funny farmswith the diagnosis «intolerance of life».
Jung asserted: «Observance of moral at any cost is a sign of barbarity». Maslow had gone some more further: «I am ready to declare that the illness itself is nothing else as a loss of the animal beginning. A precise identification with his biology, "animality" bring in the paradoxical way the person nearer to a greater spirituality, to the greater health, to the greater prudence, to the greater rationality. I think that… all known methods, except for hypnosis and behavioral therapy, restore and strengthen our lost instinctoidal needs and tendencies, our suppressed, pushed in a distant corner of animal ego, our subjective biology "(«Motivation and Personality», p. 136).
Whence to receive moral, where "to take" it?
Each person is a product of environment, in which he was born, has grown and ripened. The character and internal sets of the personality including the restrictive ones, are formed by environment, parents, neighbors, friends, school, street, books, video production, and now also by the world wide web. Undoubtedly, the heredity plays a certain part in occurrence of morally depraved persons; it is a scientific fact, however, in overwhelming majority of cases the child unconsciously absorbs spirit of an environment and behaves similarly, not feeling for the time being an appreciable influence of copybook rules and precepts. We have no concept about the presence of universal values in ourselves; one can learn it only in rigid situations, just then it becomes clear, who I am, and what is incorporated in me.
As is known there are three types of ethics:
A scientific one, deducing moral principles from biology (K. Lorenz), it is based on the concept of survival of personality and society under condition of the preservation of environment;
A utilitarian one, considering as possible the creation of a society without conflicts what is rather problematic (if only people are not unified similarly to screw nuts);
An ideal one, seeing the meaning of life in service not to material aspirations, but exclusively to religious-philosophical, the "higher" ones.
It correlates with old Indian ideas about three purposes of the existence: desire – Kama, benefit or a utilitarian advantage – Artha, a duty and observance of laws – Dharma. Theyaffirm in the Laws of Manu that all these three aspects have the right to existence, but only their proportional combination gives the harmony.
If a person declares that his moral orientation is defined by aspiration to the truth, then the question immediately arises: and what is the Truth?
Ancient thinkers had believed that the world in which we live is false, it is necessary to be rescued from it. Such rescue or liberation (Samadhi, Moksa, Mukti) was announced as an overall objective and a crown of the being in all six systems of Brahmanism including yoga.
As information, we shall note that the old Indian society had been subdivided into four varnas(colors). These are Brahmin(«twice born») – clerics and philosophers; Kshatria- princes, warriors, scientists and people of art; Vaishya- tradespeople and farmers; Shudra – handicraftsmen (plebs). There were made different moral demands of varnas (see the dictionary of terms); and their representatives possessed specific rights and duties, that in those days were quite justified. The life span of Brahmins had been conditionally divided into four stages: childhood, youth, period spent as a pupil – Brahmacharya; the head of the family and the owner of a house – grihastha; the eremite living in a wood – varnaprastha; the wanderer – sanyasa. The one, who was professionally immersed in yoga, left as a rule all public and personal communications.
Thus, the name of the first stage of yogic ethics, yama is translated by the terms restraint, abstention, restriction; of the second one – niyama– as observance of rules, behaviour.
Sutras enumerate the following principles of yama:
– Ahimsa- nonviolence, not causing harm;
– Satya – truthfulness;
– Asteya- not assignment another's;
– Brahmacharya – continence;
– Aparigarha- nonacceptance of gifts.
Principles of niyama:
– Shaucha- an internal and external purification;
– Samtosha- contentment with what already is;
– Tapas – self-restraint;
– Svadhyaya- studying of sacred texts;
– Isvarapranidhana- devotion to God.
The overwhelming majority of commentators assert that mastering yoga without ethical background is impossible, for only its presence provides a successful integration of the subject into society. Actually it is not quite so. Such (strongly pronounced and prevailing in behaviour of the subject) qualities as dullness, greed, prevalence of instincts, the mad aspiration to material welfare, envy, malignance, extreme egocentrism are incompatible with yoga.
Some visitors of the forum realyoga.ru are too lazy in order to think, and they ask stupid questions, for example: «Whether is it possible to begin practicing Hatha-Yoga without a strict observance of the rules of yama and niyama?»
At once, an answer suggests itself: – And what, were the ethical and moral principles until this moment unfamiliar to you? Were they also not realized in life? And now you are going to get rid from the former and to learn by rote the new ones? All this is bosh, the overwhelming majority of people come to yoga as the mature and developed persons, with a personal, for a long time settled ethics, and moral to which they were learned by life, they had already adapted to society although in the different degree, but one should not teach them. They should adapt to yoga, to build it competently in their day regimen, it is really a most important problem on which successful solution all depends. The person of XXI century does not need the old Indian ethics, as it cannot be the guide to action for him. However, it will be rather useful to understand the main principles of niyamawith regard to the today's realities and to the practice itself.
Let us consider the principle of nonviolence, ahimsa. When there is a conflict, then as a rule, the aggression is answered by the aggression, and the flywheel of imbalance starts uncontrollably spinning fast, sometimes to the full destruction of situation and destruction of its participants. Gandhi had shown by personal example that in case of the nonviolent struggle, the necessary result can be reached with relatively "small" blood though those whose blood was shed will hardly be consoled by this consideration. A nonviolent action can have a form of advice, request, pressing, offer, a certain behavior (opposed to the behavior of an adversary), not containing compulsion, provocation, mockery, insult, or instigation.
The person owning the method of nonviolence:
– Operates not only in his interests, protecting even his opponent againstlie, disrespect and his own arrogance;
– Makes demands first of all to himself;
– Does not try to suppress or to humiliate the opponent, searches for worthy ways for all out of the conflict;
– Having met a rough behaviour, does not refuse nonviolent actions;
– Respects the opponent in spite of everything.
It is clear that it reminds the sanctity, but Gandhi hadbehaved just so. For the fainthearted, the nonviolence is problematic, as it possesses a high degree of the internal difficulty. Frequently one compares ahimsa with a precept of the Old Testament «thou shalt not kill», though it is not clear how to follow it if one intends to kill you.
In vegetarianism, which frequently uses ahimsa as a cover, there is in my opinion a latent hypocrisy: animals and fish are declared alive, and plants are not, but such division is absolutely intentionally, the true vegetarians should use stones for food! Jabber that yogis do not use meat is nonsense. They avoid it only when can do with something another; concerning the diet there are noconcrete evidence in Sutras, and "the Yoga Upanishads" simply recommend to avoid heavy (tamasic) food.
Taking into account discrepancy of the «Laws of Manu», it is admitted from the point of view of ahimsa:
– To use animal food where is no vegetarian one;
– To eat meat in the case if it is dictated by climatic conditions; yogis of Ladakhwhere the mid-annual temperature is equal to zero eat everything. And full refusal of meat in the north of Russia where hundreds generations had eaten it is a violence over organism and a true way to illnesses;
– For a hunter it is allowable to get meat of animals, which he can cope with his own hand (without armored troop-carriers and the rifled weapon);
– If necessary one should eat meat not to cause harm to own body;
– It is allowable to use the offered meat food in order not to offend the owner of the house.
In the work «What is life from the point of view of physics?» E. Schrödinger had suggested a hypothesis that all living things receive with food the negative entropy. It is known that the right and left molecules are indiscernible through their chemical properties, but food can be assimilated only in the case when substances included in its structure possess a certain type of molecular symmetry, molecules of amino acids are leftsymmetrical, those of sugar are right symmetrical, etc. Hence it is clear that the organism utilizes not only the consumed substance, but also its structure. To eat a substance, in which molecules of the right and the left kind are chaotically mixed, is not possible for the person, and until protein will be synthesized, it is impossible to bypass the principle «a living thing lives by a living thing». Once some researches of plants of the Tibetan medicine with "hot" and "cold" properties had been carried out in the Buryat branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences; and it had turned out that the objective data are frequently hidden behind archaic characteristics. For example – a fantastic degree of correlation of "hot" and "cold" with left and right rotating isomers. Doctors of antiquity were able to define these properties with surprising accuracy without any electronic microscope and optical polarizers.
In observance of ahimsaextremes, as well as everywhere, are senseless; a bright example for it are the Indian jinas. They had refused farming in order not to do much harm to earthworms; they walked so in order not to tread upon something alive, etc. Also they had generated eventually a caste of usurers; it's not for nothing that one says the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
«The biggest problem of the modernity is a divergence between what the person is ready to make for the society, and what the society demands from him. It is a very disturbing sign, as with the best will in the world, one cannot see advantages, which even one person could pull out of the extremely sensitive feeling of the responsibility or good natural leanings» («The Back of the Mirror», p. 226).
The violence follows from the aggression, but where its roots are? The continuous interspecific struggle in wildlife is a natural process; under constant conditions in biocenosis, the balance of quantity of species is supported automatically. As soon as it is broken, spontaneous regulators, for example epidemics, start to operate. The struggle between relatives within a species is a competition. The nature had provided along with the aggression ways of its blocking which extends only on congeners. The more dangerous is the predator, the more rigidly "is" this forbidden instinct "built" in each individual. When, say, the wolves fight, the defeated one holds up to the winner its carotid, and the last cannot simply bite. If there were no such prohibition, wolves would disappear from the face of the earth for a long time. Showdown between the mountain gorillas of Africa possessing a monstrous force is “seeing”, who as the first looks aside has lost. Efficiency of a protective instinct is proportional to damage, which a beast can injure its congeners.
Each animal controls the space proportional to its real force. If not to encroach on this territory, the conflict between representatives of one species arises as a rule seldom. The more harmless is an animal, the less is expressed the blockade of intraspecific aggression, therefore if to cage two frailest turtle-doves together then the stronger one will by all means peck inevitably and ruthlessly to death another.
Once Cro-Magnon had fastened a stone to a stick and had whacked his neighbour in the heat of the quarrel on top of the head. Since then the weapon was unfortunately improved very strongly. The human being had suppressed all forms of life on the planet (except insects and viruses) and as the interspecific rivalry was exhausted with it, he took care of his social environment. And as the nature of homo sapiens had not provided the instinct forbidding to kill relatives, we have wars, prisons, death camps, etc. The phrase «the increase of criminality among lions owing to the drought in savanna» sounds wildly but when something similar is spoken about people, it does not shock us. Kurt Vonnegut had gloomy joked once: «What did not scientists do, it doesn't matter, they get weapon in the end». Aggression is inherent in the animal human nature; therefore, it is hardly possible to get rid of it. Culture and moral serve to its deterrence, but the best way out of it is a reorientation of the aggressive pulse.
In the sixth century B.C., Chilonfrom Lakademonhad told: «Know yourself!». The one who qualitatively practices yoga starts to feel in due course the unity with the whole world; and his attitude to the nature varies considerably. If you do not break a green branch for no particular reason, do not kick of boredom a kitten, do not crush a frog, you will feel sorry also for the person. Probably everyone is obliged – within the framework of common sense – to follow a principle of awe of life, which was formulated by A. Shvejtser.
Practice of yoga clears the unconscious; it lowers the potential of aggression, and besides the sensitivity to external injuring factors decreases. The one, who has understood himself and has received peace of mind, has no claims to others. The Sutrassay: «Any enmity stops at the presence of a person gained a foothold in not causing evil to others». The nonviolence is a big thing, but it presents a problem. The evasion from resistance to evil is not ahimsa. Gandhi spoke that it is real only at presence of the fearlessness; only when the person develops in himself the force necessary for effective resistance to evil, the nonviolence becomes his virtue. If someone does not counteract, speaking to himself: «Be the oppressor punished by God», it will be a contrast to ahimsa. Nonviolence is a state of mind; the Laws of Manuassert: «By causing evil, the person gets morbidity, not causing – the health. While the evil has not ripened, it can be stopped by a word if not to make it in time one has to use force».
The most important moment of asana practicing consists of that the violence over your body is a direct infringement of ahimsa! Not causing harm (including pain which is a signal of trauma) to own body is a basic principle of the classical yoga; therefore the abstract discourses on where and how yogic ethics is applicable are ridiculous. Yoga begins there where the body disappears from perception. But is it capable to resist to the external evil? Sometimes one asks me: Will you collide at night times with smart guys, who have tough fists and not water in veins – what will be?
Castaneda put a similar question to his teacher; actually, there was a rifle with an optical sight. Don Juan had answered simply: – In those places where a queer fellow with a rifle is around, I never shall find myself.
The second principle of yama is satya, truthfulness. The person operates with thought, speech, body; any discrepancies in these three components destroy the truth. Abstractly everyone understands that it is bad to lie, but for whom it is bad? For the one who lies or whom one lies? By attempts of cultivation of truthfulness one can gradually come to such condition, when words and deeds are not at variance, but to be able to speak the truth, it is necessary firstly to learn to be silent. It is told in "Aranyakaparva" that the lie is allowable only in two cases, when the matter is death and marriage.
If it begins the finding-out of relations, so its fact itself means: rightfulness or wrongness of both parties of the conflict cannot be proved or denied. And if persons (collectives, countries, peoples) have brain, they will find out not relations, but search for variants of a withdrawal from the situation, which will be worthy and comprehensible to all.
The truth is difficultly achievable in general, but illusion of its possession is an awful thing. The person is so lazy by nature that in most cases, he is hardly capable do harm purposely. Therefore, any, even the most terrible things are done as a rule only at full conviction of his correctness.
Actually, good and evil are only philosophical categories, moreover the rather indistinct ones. Here is one of many examples. Once, as long ago as under socialism, a PT instructor of one of schools of Uzbekistan had arranged for senior pupils during the spring vacation a walking tour in foothills of the Pamirs. On the third day of the way he had been bitten by a lebetina viper, and at once it was found out that they had forgotten the whey. The PT instructor made everything in the right way: he made an incision in skin, sucked out blood, cauterized little wounds, but the hand swelled for all to see. In despair, he dispatched guys on vicinities; and soon an old shepherd leading a nomad's life nearby with his flock of sheep came tearing along. After a brief examination, he told that things were in a bad way, and one had to hasten, as the nearest first-aid post was not near. By this time, the hand of the teacher turned literally to a log. The old man seated him to himself behind the back and gave the horse its head. However, soon the teacher began to lose consciousness; and then the shepherd told: Climb down, you cannot ride any more, you must go on foot. The guy having fallen down on the ground answered it was all over, and he would not move from the place. The old man forced him to rise and drove some hours with shout and abuse, sometimes whipping him with lash. When, at night, they reached the first-aid post in a settlement, the doctor told that there was now no need in the whey, from intensive physical work poison fused in blood. The violence with respect to the dying man, is it good or evil? Certainly, one could feel sorry for the guy, but then he would most likely be lost. In this case, the old man unmistakably knew what exactly was to do, and the knowledge is gotten by mind and experience.
Let us consider asteya and aparigarha; one usually considers these categories as complementary. Really, non-acceptance of gifts and non-attachment partly coincide, in Russian there is for this purpose the word "non-possessiveness". At a conference on yoga (1989), Iyengar had been asked a question: What is your attitude toward fact that pupils pay to you money? Doesn’t it contradict niyama? He answered so: I am a professional, yoga is my life. Since as well as in any business, I spend my energy and time, it should be compensated. I do not demand anything special, people give me so much, how much they consider it as necessary, from poor men I accept only gratitude. But to receive a payment from the rich – why not? How could I manage, not having means to construct a huge center in Poona, which is visited by thousands people? And how could I live and teach yoga?
The concept asteya corresponds with disinterestedness; in general Iyengar is probably right: the person is rendered for service to this world. However, services differ; a great variety of «teachers of spirituality» appeared today who as though unostentatiously hover around the soul, but get into pocket.
Asteya is a refusal of desire to appropriate the belonging to someone; the property is not vicious, and the vice is a concentration of all aspirations on it. Non-attachment is similar with non-action, it is a property not to be especially pleased, when money is present, and not too much to mourn, if there is no. Patanjali says: «All riches are reached by yogin through exercises in not appropriation» («Classical Yoga», 2.37).
The term "brahmacharya" (the last component of yama) can be translated as "a pious life" or "continence". Already Veda count a seed as concentration of vital energy. The tantra being a later system of rescue than yoga of Patanjali considered that it should be kept as sex is energy-based and interferes with spiritual development. In India, there are four types of brahmachari:
– Savitri- after acceptance of the sacred cord, the sanctified keeps continence three days;
– Prajapatya – continence lasts a year;
– Brahmachariproper – continence since the moment of initiation up to the end of Veda studying;
– naisthika – the full chastity.
Suppression of sexual desires is not welcomed, quite the contrary, it is necessary to create the best conditions for their sublimation, though Vivekananda had interpreted brahmacharyaas chastity in thoughts, word and business under any conditions. But the matter is that continence should not break the rest of principles of yama; if the person painfully struggles with himself, he has no time for yoga. What positive sense had the action of the archpriest Avvakum, when he had held his hand above fire and Leo Tolstoy´s father Sergy avoiding temptation had cut his fingers with an axe?
Probably, one can refuse the terrestrial love only in the name of love to God. Texts recommend yogins going «under the full program» to abstain from sex; and the Buddha edified monks so: «Do not talk with a woman, if it happens to talk, do not look at her, if it happens to look, be on the look-out».
Nevertheless, in India, it is widely known the Temple of sixty four yoginis who had once become proficient in the doctrine down to samadhi though in Hinduistic tradition the female asceticism was not encouraged.
Victor (16.07.2003): «What does the person eat for? To prolong life and to forget for some time about meal that the need for it has disappeared, did not press on consciousness, did not disturb. It is the same with sex: in the spectrum of vital displays, it takes a concrete limited niche. And to exaggerate its importance regarding it as a paramount importance how Freud had made it for example, it is senselessly and harmfully. The traditional yoga gives the person a peace of mind; and at the same time sex, as well as other natural displays, takes a place appropriate to it and "does not press"! And infinite discussions of how to understand, interpret and do it "correctly" and "spiritually" is one of forms of dependence! When there is a harmony, all occurs how it should be just by the given person, and there is nothing especially to babble here about. It takes in life exactly so much time as necessary, and not more. The whole rest of time when you do not remember sex, it is just brahmacharya, it cannot be absolute, as is the case with the person who cannot not eat. And if he tries, he is, excuse me, a fool as nothing good will happen. When you endlessly discuss it and try to observe "correctly", then there is no trace of brahmacharya. IMHO».
Niyama is acultivation of the habits assisting yoginto receive skills of introspection. It is an influence on the character by means of self-discipline, just for this reason niyama is amore intimate thing. If for observance of requirements of yama, one can go in a wood or a cave (to avoid situations of temptation), so instructions of niyama should be carried out even in the full loneliness. Strictly speaking, they do not correspond with moral bases, more likely it is a forming of qualities of character necessary for a successful mastering yoga. It may seem that yama leads the person to altruism, and niyama is a "rollback" aside selfishness, but actually they counterbalance each other, helping to avoid narrowness when the will degenerates into cruelty and the nonviolence into self-destruction. The tactless truthfulness can border on roughness, non-money-grubbing with parasitism, continence can be a subject of pride.
The first item of niyama shaucha (means "to purify" or "to be pure") – an elimination of pollution in all its aspects. The majority of commentators interpret it as requirement of external and internal purification. The external one is a sanitation of the body (and the surrounding space) with the help of various methods, its keeping in cleanness by ablutions, consumption of corresponding food, washing. Vivekanandaasserted unequivocally: «The slovenly person cannot be a yogin».
«Yogin on his belief is a spiritual essence; however, it does not prevent him to pay necessary attention to such material aspect of life as care of the body. Everyone who in the right way practices yoga should from the very beginning understand precisely and unambiguously that a good physical condition of the person is the only reliable means of achievement of the desirable. His first duty is preservation of the ideal health… » («Personal Hygiene of Yogin», p. 17).
For interest, one can recollect that five kinds of purification are mentioned for example in Tantra:
– Deha or Sharira shuddhi – purification of the body (Shat karmaand asana);
– Nadi shuddhi – clarification of channels "nadi", asanaand pranayama;
– Manas shuddhi – purification of mind (Ajapa-japa, Antara mouna, etc.);
– Chakra shuddhi – practice of mudras and bandhas;
– Bhuta shuddhi or Pancha Dharani mudra.
By means of these procedures the following purposes are reached:
– Deliverance of illnesses;
– Cleanness of the body;
– Preservation of high physical fitness;
– Strengthening the immune system;
– Longevity;
– The moral and spiritual enlightenment.
The internal purification (abhyantara) is reached by cultivation of goodwill to every living thing. Another part of niyama- samtosha- satisfaction in what already is. In the West, the constant dissatisfaction was considered (up to Hans Selje) as one of factors of progress, in the East it was always perceived as a negative state. Being inverted on itself, it can accept pathological character and result in illnesses of the mentality. The traditional religious education results in that Hindoos are for the most part counterbalanced, though having population density of India any European country would blow up as a bomb.
To be content with circumstances what they may be it is not for the person of the West; fear not to achieve result, not to receive what you expect, it forces us to be constantly overstrained, supervising a great variety of events. The regular practicing of yoga spontaneously leads to samtosha, it is expressed by that you are pleased with what has been already received, and are not too afflicted, if something does not go yet. In other words, positive aim is kept always, what is very important. Samtosha has nothing to do with the complacency; it is more likely a positive coloring of perception of the world. Not without reason, the optimist from a joke is confident that we live in the best of the worlds, and the pessimist is afraid that it is indeed so.
Samtosha is counterbalanced by tapas, which is not identical to Christian ascesis; it is not at all always directed on suppression of flesh and suppression of passions. Quite often tapas is a self-torture undertaken for the sake of accumulation of force, not a principled refusal of pleasure, but aiming at reaching its maximum. By means of tapasa, some legendary characters forced to obedience even the gods of the Indian pantheon having carried out any of their desires. Tejas (heat, shine) is an equivalent to concept of tapas in Upanishads.Sometimes tapas is translated as ardor,that is an accumulation of energy and sensations accompanying it in the body. One considers that the fire of tapasadestroys mental, spiritual, and corporal pollution.
Usually commentators interpret tapas as ability not to perceive contrasts: ardor and cold, hunger and thirst, standing and sitting, lack of speech, etc. SSS (Swami Satyananda Sarasvati) lists the following kinds of tapas:
– Test by ardor and cold;
– Stay at hot fire that the body becomes thin and brown;
– Pranayama;
– Fasting;
– Concentration of mind on one point;
– Silence.
One considers that harmful substances are removed from the body by similar practice, it becomes strong and hardy, and the mind suitable for contemplation. Siddhas are reached by means of tapasa, but it can be also tamasic, i.e. mad and reckless, having undertaken to the detriment of himself. From the point of view of psychology, it is a voluntary and controllable frustration leading in commonness to a neurosis. Due to the conscious control, the given conditionally pathological process is sent to a desirable channel, it is an original «controllable autogenic neurosis». However, the borderline is here certainly very unsteady. The aforementioned means refer more likely to the methodology of tapasa.
In the Indian literature, there is a description of different kinds of tapasa. It can be a long-term one, executed all life say at stages of brahmacharya, vanaprastha,and sanyasa, or a short-term one for the sake of achievement of a concrete goal. The short tapasa is a moderately long standing on one leg, motionless stay in water, standing between five bonfires (four bonfires and the sun), contemplation of a crystal, different kinds of restriction in behaviour and food – fasting, sitting on an anthill, etc. The long-term one is brahmacharya, constant restrictions in food and mobility, long-term vows, etc.
According to aspects of performance, one can conditionally divide tapas into three levels:
1. A physical described above.
2. A verbal: a vow of silence (mouna) is used most frequently, or a pronunciation of separate mantras aloud, and also japas, a continuous saying in a whisper, and at the same time the ideal form is considered such where words are said without visible movement of lips.
3. A mental – fixation of mind on the image of deity or his separate symbol. It can be any attribute of god: name, epithet, bija mantra, a graphic equivalent, yantra, with a long subsequent fixation of the given figure in consciousness. In this case, tapas actually coincides with some stages of different kinds of yoga.
In agamas, nigamas, Gitaand Upanishadsthe main attention was given to that what follows implementation of tapasa and reception of gifts, which differed depending on the caste of the devotee. So Brahmanmost often received from deity true knowledge, Kshatriy asked and received force and invulnerability, vayshya- riches, glory, longevity, and sons.
In many myths, the nucleus of a plot is a zealous ascetic, tapasin from whose behaviour his associates suffer: the space around him starts to burn or water in the river on which coast he creates tapas begins to boil. Even gods led by Indra start to be afraid of the force accumulated by him. Indra sends to tapasin apsaras ("heavenly" dancers) for "washing out" of concentration. If the ascetic is unshakable, gods begin to hinder him in process of tapas.
Any mutual relations (communications) with the other world are pernicious (and most often are impossible) for the person who had not passed a certain process of purification. Just such role was carried out by various kinds of the tapasic selfless devotion. During ascesis tapasin cleanses himself from filthiness of the world here and receives an opportunity of real contact to the world of celestial beings.
Quantity of the accumulated force is a small change in mutual relations between tapasin and gods: the more he got it, the more serious things can be demanded from them by ascetic. The possession of a plenty of force could put tapasin on the level of gods and at times higher. Myths frequently tell about fights of Devas with Asuras who abandoned themselves to tapas with the purpose of «capture of power» in the Universe and overturning of «the established order» in it. Just this fact is connected to that gods andnot terrestrial essences are more afraid of tapasins.
But the main thing is an achievement by tapasin of the certain degree of the purity necessary for the communications with other worlds. The more severe is tapas the more expressive is ability to such contact.
Most likely, Kundalini-yoga had originated from tapas too, in its process the physical body of the adherent should "fuse" on fire of a mental pressure and be transformed for a free contact with the other world. During his asceticism tapasin gets rid of the main source of filthiness, the own body suppressing (minimizing) its usual functions and displays. The wise man Mankanaka sees it for example as a result of his tapas when a grassy juice starts to flow from his prickedhand instead of blood (which being one of eight dirty substances of the body, did not extend the defilement to their divine equivalents). So, tapas is an old Indian practice consisting of physical, verbal, and mental actions, which purpose is a purification and a mental strengthening of tapasin, as a result of what he can contact to the supernatural world.
All aforesaid sounds even somehow pathetically, but it is one thing to know a story about a Hinduistic ascetic who had stood twenty years on one leg with a hand lifted upwards, and another thing to see it with your own eyes, I heartily do not recommend it. As the hero of the well-known marginal story «Moscow – Petushki» would tell: «I vomit or do not vomit, but spit up for sure».
During adaptation to yoga, the beginners should strictly avoid extreme situations, in texts it is spoken about it so:
«5.26. Yoga beginner should avoid travels, women, and the heat of fire. He also should avoid butter, sour milk, sugar juice and juice of sugar cane, ripe bananas, coconuts, pomegranates, grapes, and everything in what there is sour juice.
5.29. … The food of yoginshould be easily digested, not pungent and suitable to form the basic substances of the body.
5.30. Yogin should avoid everything what stood for a long time, what is hardly digested and rots in bowels; and also what is too hot.
5.31. Also he should not make in the mornings cold ablutions, should not hunger, subject his body to sufferings, should not eat only once a day or remain without meal more than three hours» («Gheranda Samhita»).
In the system of niyama elements tapas gets sense from Isvarapranidhanand svadhyaya, together with it they form Kriya Yoga: «Asceticism, self-training, confidence in Isvarais yoga of action» («Classical Yoga», 2.7).
Svadhyaya means studying Veda, or studying yourself by means of their reading. A basis of such practice is japa. Svami Shivananda had asserted that svadhyayademands a daily reading of Bhagavad Gitaas through the sacred text we receive contact with God.
The last requirement of niyama is isvarapranidhana, devotion to the deity. Religious Indian authorities treat this aspect as «devotion, humility, self-devotion, worship, and establishing God as motive of all human actions», and as sensation of his allpresence.
The problem of connection of yoga with the idea of God is rather delicate. S. Radhakrishnan writes the following: «It is not easy to describe God of Patanjali. The personal god of yoga’s philosophy is very poorly connected to the rest of the system. Devotion to god is only an auxiliary means for achievement of the final liberation. God represents only a special "ego», not the Creator and guardian of the Universe. Isvarafacilitates achievement of the liberation, but does not give it directly. Such an understanding of God Isvarais certainly unsatisfactory, and we should tell that the philosophy of yoga has introduce the concept of god only to be fashionable and to attract minds of people» ("Indian Philosophy», vol. 2, p. 326, 328).
«Idea of «Isvara» had been introduced into Sutras of Patanjali accidentally, it is not inherent in them organically; removal of this idea from the system does not only break its construction, but gives a bigger sequence to the statement. Yoga Sutras listing methods of achievement of samadhi mention alongside of others also devotion to Isvara, but not as about the purpose, not as about something self-sufficing, and only as about one of modes of work at self-improvement» (B.L.Smirnov, «The Book About Bhishma», p. 104).
«One has to consider SutrasI, 23 – 26 either as the latest interpolation or as a concession to the society which Patanjali had to make» (ibid).
«The radical and deciding difference of Upanishad and Gita yogafrom yoga of Patanjali consists of that the first ones set themselves as an object the unity with the Supreme, achievement of the unity with the Atman (early Upanishad) or with Purusha (Gita, late Upanishads), and yoga of Patanjali aims as the object a dissociation» (ibid, p. 194).
Both the system of Leibnitz leads to atheism, whether Leibnitz wanted it or not and yoga of Patanjali in essence leads to atheism too. However hard Patanjali tried to mention Isvara, he entirely relied on Sankhya Karika which is atheistic in its essence. Both unpersuasive are the theory of the preestablished harmony artificially attached to "The Monadologie" and the doctrine about «The Supreme Monad» and unpersuasive is the mention of Isvara in Yoga Sutraswith whom Patanjali in essence has nothing to do.
In sense of atheistic understanding of Sutras, the most disputable is perhaps SutraII, 45 (the added recurrence I, 23): «Samadhi siddhir isvarapranidhanat» – «Samadhi happens to be a successful one through devotion to Isvara». But Sutra does not say about the fusion with Isvara as about the purpose of yoga and points simply out a number of the techniques recommended for achievement of… samadhi» (ibid).
« … Patanjali does not mention Isvaraas the final aim of yoga: his purpose is not yoga "Taittiriya Upanishad" or "Bhagavad Gita" (XVIII, p. 64 – 66), not the unification, but a rupture, not the orderliness, but an isolating (kaivalyam)" ("The Book About Bhishma», p. 195).
From all told above the unequivocal conclusion follows: yoga is an applied technology,it does not cross with religious beliefs, besides being rather useful for life’s quality program. Some figures of the Russian Orthodox Church try to present it as a heresy opposite to the spirit of Orthodoxy, but it does not correspond with the reality. The improvement of body and soul is undoubtedly a God-pleasing affair. Vijnyana Bhikshu asserted: «From all kinds of contemplation, contemplation of the supreme Deity is considered as the most important», so Christian ascetics thought too.
The essence of a religion consists in the consolidation of connection of each individual with a metaphysical factor of the extraterrestrial origin. The question of existence or non-existence of God will always confuse the mind, and one must learn to live, not having an unequivocal answer to it. Or to find your variants of the answers allowing to keep your mental equilibrium.
What is the belief? It is possible to trust only what is logically unprovable: «And God's Son has died, it is worthy of belief because it is absurd. And being buried, he has revived, it is not a subject to doubt, for it is impossible» (Tertullian).
The known functionary and plenipotentiary of the Russian Orthodox Church, Deacon A. Kuraev happens to be rather inconsistent in his statements about yoga: «Yogic «tat tvam asi» is adequate to the real experience of anyone (and consequently including the Christian one!) contemplative asceticism». But at the same time the internal light which a contemplator sees is «a created luminescence of mind», and Orthodoxy, Kuraev asserts, a priori distinguishes nottrue light from notcreated light of the Deity.
«And here is the most important borderline dividing impassably the Christian experience and the pagan experience. The person is not a particle of the Deity, God is not the supreme structure of human soul» («Satanism for Intellectuals», vol. 2, p. 140-150).
«The light which yogis and occultists contemplate is not the Divine one» (ibid., p. 259).
«Anthropologically and archetypicallythe yogic way is alien to our Mediterranean culture» (ibid, p. 205).
So, according to Kuraev, «tat tvam asi» of yoga is adequate to experience of any contemplative asceticism, hence, and of the Christian one. "Luminescence" is observed both in the yogic and Christian experience, but in contrast to yoga,Orthodoxy automatically distinguishes light of the Deity from the spiritual one, but nevertheless the created luminescence of mind. The pagan mysticism considers this light as the final instance, whereas the Orthodoxy as an intermediate.
Hence, the mystic-Christian is capable to see light both true and false one and possesses an immanent ability to distinguish the first from the second. And mystic-yogi if he sees light then exclusively a false one. It already smells slightly even not of the confessional, but of the vulgar racism. The question is, why can a Christian see the true spiritual light, and a yogi cannot? Isn’t it because comprehension of the truth is inherent in general only in orthodox believers? It also surprises the fact that Kuraev persistently puts on the same plane yoga and occultism, though in detail preparing «ethics alive», he should see that the Roerichs are related in the same way to traditional yoga as he himself to the Roerichs.
In general Deacon is not indifferent to yoginis, here is for example one his passage of the beginnings of the 1990-s: «A prostitute from the "Metropole" hotel can enter the kingdom of Christ easier than a Himalayan eremite» («Shapes of Neopaganism», М., MNPO, "Bukva", p. 53). How not to recollect here a phrase: «Jesus announced God’s Kingdom, but there has come the Church» (E.V.Barabanov, «The New Political Theology by I. B. Mets and J. Moltman», «Problems of Philosophy», № 9, 1990, p. 76-82).
Here is opinion of K. G. Jung, a deeply religious person: «For the present it is too early to speak about what consequences can have the general recognition of a disastrous analogy between the state religion of Marxists and the state religion of the Church. The absolutist claim on that the God’s Kingdom can be submitted by a person reminds sadly of the "divinity" of the state, and the moral conclusion made by Ignatius Loyola proceeding from authority of the Church («the ends justify the means») serves as an extremely dangerous justification of lie as a tool of the policy. Both the Church and Marxism demand an unconditional belief thereby limiting freedom of the person. One limits his freedom in relationship with God, another with the State digging thus a tomb of the individuality» («The Problems of Soul of Our Time», p. 75-76).
«Churches tolerate importance of the individual only when he recognizes their dogmas» (ibid, p. 81).
In Sevastopol a certain father George, the best friend of the local mafia (what is not at all a secret for surroundings), constantly brands in his sermons yoga, which is «from Satan». And the mantra "Aum" as themother superior of one female monastery has declared is «a pray for appeal of the lunar demon». All this is a lie, yoga (in its form of sound mind) does not attempt on prerogatives of belief, but it takes care exclusively of healing and preservation of the human body that God’s soul would live in it all term in full given for it.
By the way, some figures of the Russian theology are known who considered yoga in a quite constructive way. Here is a fragment of the book of Old Believers' bishop Michael Semenov (1874 – 1916): «Yoga, its part Hatha-Yoga, is a doctrine about the healthy person. Yogis believe that the essence of the person is not in the body. They recognize that his immortal "ego", of which any human being is more or less aware, is not his body which "ego" only borrows and uses. They recognize that the body is only clothing in which the spirit dresses. They know what the body is, and are not deceived by the thought that it is the essence of the person. But, knowing it, they know also that their body is a tool which the spirit uses for its display and work. They know that the corporal covering is necessary for display and growth of the person at the present stage of his development. They know that the body is a temple of spirit. And according to that they believe that cares for development of the body deserve the same attention as well as development of some superior aspects of the person because having an unhealthy and insufficiently advanced material body, the thought cannot function well and truly. And this whole tool cannot be used most efficiently by its owner, the spirit.
They believe that spirit is our chief also in the physical life, that it becomes apparent and through life of the body too. In spirit’s presence, one can with spirit eat, drink, and think. All can be and should be spiritual. And not entering into discussion of religious bases of the doctrine of yogis, one can say that their doctrine of the body carries features of truly religious world view.
Yoga in the part, which is called "Hatha-Yoga", offers a whole range of technical and moral education of the body and ethics of feeding and breathing. Who wishes, those can address to their theories, doubtful in the philosophical part, but not useless practically. Perhaps, their hints about breathing are not superfluous, maybe it is possible to learn to order cellules of the body indeed, it is possible to operate blood circulation, to give rest to tired parts of the body» ("Selected Articles", "Kitezh", 1998).
Noting therefore today a prejudice of the Russian Orthodox Church worthy of regrets according to traditional yoga and hoping for the victory of common sense, let us recollect words of the apostle «Try everything, adhere to the best».