Questions & Answers
Pariprasna
July 2021
Srimat Swami Tapasyananda Ji (1904 – 1991) was one of the Vice-Presidents of the Ramakrishna Order. His deeply convincing answers to devotees’ questions raised in spiritual retreats and in personal letters have been published in book form as Spiritual Quest: Questions & Answers. Pariprasna is a selection from this book.
The Vedanta Kesari
40
Synthesis of Yogas QUESTION: What is actually meant by the synthesis of the four Yogas? In a spiritual life so lived what are the stages of Sadhana? What kind of spiritual experience can one expect at the culmination of each stage? MAHARAJ: Man has intelligence, emotions and will. It is better to allow them to develop in an integrated way than allow them to develop lopsided. To say ‘I am a Jnana Yogi’ and sit quiet in some place reading books and making a show of meditation or to say that ‘I am a Bhakti Yogi’ and always indulge in emotionalism, superstition, ritualism and thinking of Prasadas (things offered to God) especially when it is available more for oneself to eat than for distributing; or to say, ‘I am a Raja Yogi’, and sit somewhere bellowing air in and out and thinking of health and diet or to say ‘I am a Karma Yogi’, and go about as a busy-body, a mere restless and egotistic Karmi—all these are lopsided and unhealthy ways of life. The ideal position is to have only one integrated yoga, in which all the faculties are given equal place. Or you may have two Yogas, Jnana and Bhakti; the difference being that, in the first, there is more stress on the impersonal aspect of Reality and, in the latter, on the personal aspect. Yoga and Karma standing for practice of concentration and for social concern respectively, should form only the auxiliaries of these Yogas. These are necessary to keep the followers of the two Yogas on an even keel. Talk of ‘stages’ of Sadhana has very little meaning. It is the product of certain curious notions arising from the stages of discipline, like Chittasuddhi, Karmasannyasa (abandonment of work), spoken of in some Vedanta texts. To us, Chittasuddhi seems to be a continuous lifelong process, unless a man has been completely transformed by the divine touch. In the days when man’s life was bound by rituals, there was meaning in speaking of Karmasannyasa. Today karma has lost that meaning. In a socialistic society every one has to work. There can be differences in the field of work, it may be physical, technical, intellectual or spiritual. For 99% of Sadhakas today, Karmasannyasa can mean only abandonment of the fruits of work and, if he is enlightened enough, also the sense of agency. There may be rare cases of what Sri Ramakrishna speaks of as the Lord relieving a
