Cosmic Forces in Everyday Life
???, ???
An extract from the book A Yoga philosophy guidebook.
What has come to be known as yoga is rooted in an ancient spiritual tradition that, in a very nuanced and specific way, describes a world that is much more complex and multidimensional than we typically assume. The Rig Veda points to cosmic forces that interpenetrate our individual lives–influencing our thoughts, feelings, and beliefs. We are not the isolated beings that we thought we were, enclosed in our skin. Energies, forces of light and darkness, forces that support our growth toward wholeness and forces that seek to block that growth, forces of love and forces of separation move through us, under the radar, but with real effect. Every event in our individual and collective lives can be understood differently through this lens. Our lives take on an inherent sense of purpose, something that many in our modern world are lacking and hungering for.
People today are spiritually starving. They long for connection, for hope, for the experience of being seen and being loved. The Vedas tell us that this hunger, this aspiration, is natural. It is not to be ignored or suppressed, but kindled, empowered, and sung out. Our longing for wholeness is as natural as fire, and it purifies us; it burns away separation. It reaches toward heaven and releases an offering of smoke; it lights up the darkness, and it offers warmth and protection. Nurturing our aspiration draws collaborative forces of light to us, empowers them, and transforms life from a chaotic dog-eat-dog scramble to a purposeful adventure of self-discovery.
The ancient teachings of yoga call to us and invite us to understand ourselves and the world around us more deeply, to pay attention and take notice. The major problems that we face today: personally, locally, nationally, and globally, look insoluble to the separative mechanistic consciousness. But the more we understand the hidden forces that are at play, how they operate and what motivates them, the more possibilities emerge for approaching problems from the inside, by dealing directly with fundamental energies. Then teaching yoga becomes an opportunity to hold a deeper perspective on life and offer it to those who are drawn to you as a guide and friend.
“The Rig Veda rises out of the ancient Dawn with the sound of a thousand-voiced hymn lifted from the soul of [humanity] to an all-creative Truth and an all-illumining Light. Truth and Light are synonymous or equivalent words in the thought of the Vedic seers even as are their opposites, Darkness and Ignorance. The battle of the Vedic Gods and Titans is a perpetual conflict between Day and Night for the possession of the triple world of heaven, mid-air, and earth and for the liberation or bondage of the mind, life, and body of the human being, his mortality or his immortality. It is waged by the Powers of a supreme Truth and Lords of a supreme Light against other dark Powers who struggle to maintain the foundation of this falsehood in which we dwell and the iron walls of these hundred fortified cities of the Ignorance.”
– The Secret of the Veda by Sri Aurobindo p 421