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LEX TALIONIS AND ETHICAL BEHAVIOR
If position indicates priority, Patanjali assigns "thought" to the top of the list of obstacles that confront the climber at the very bottom of the Path.
The would-be yogi would have anticipated the need for moral reformation; and before he even established a base camp would have broken a few obviously bad habits. The questionable ones he'd put on hold. And he would relax, secure in the knowledge that he had attained a reasonably pure ethical state and was, therefore, ready to begin. But Patanjali's first instruction confounds him! He is required to gain control of what he thinks! And this instruction seems incomprehensible.
The edict is particularly baffling since he has always labored under the certainty that a man's thoughts are his own business, that they are his personal and private possessions which he is, in no way, obliged to share with others. Not only does he have a Constitutional right to refuse to incriminate himself with spoken words, but so inalienable is his right to think whatever he likes that legal protections are not even considered necessary. It is his actions for which he is responsible.
An alien thought disturbs him. Curiously, the only time he is not held responsible for his actions is when he is deemed incapable of thinking.
Well, actions are evidenced by demonstration, testimony, and forensic science. But what, he wonders, is the evidence of thought? How does anyone else know what he's thinking?
If he dismisses the requirement, skimming over the instructions to get to more practical matters, he will likely have committed an error that is fatal to his program.
Patanjali's instructions differ from routine Sankhya or other yoga regimens in several significant ways.
Professor Eliade notes, "Whereas Sankhya was atheistic, yoga was theistic, since it postulated the existence of a supreme God (Ishvara); [and] while according to Sankhya the only route to salvation was that of metaphysical [academic] knowledge, yoga granted considerable importance to the techniques of meditation." Ishvara is a watchful deity, one Buddhists refer to as the Buddha Self or, personified, as Amitabha (Amitofo) or another member of the Trinity. Patanjali also calls Ishwara "Drashtuh (the Seer; of the soul) Sva-rupe (in his own nature, or state"). Professor Ernest Wood translates this as "The Looker"; and in Monier Williams one of the translations of the term is "One who watches and judges" as in a trial. Eliade translates this with a capital Self which accords with the Zen Buddhist term, Buddha Self or Buddha Nature.
Patanjali begins his instructions as follows: "Yoga requires us to control the ideas in the mind. Then the Looker can dwell in his own proper nature. Otherwise we identify with the ideas."
He uses the word vritti, a cognate of writhe, to designate "thoughts," which suggests the churnings or writhings of thought. The mind that is not calm is ruffled or turbulent with thoughts; and to whatever extent these thoughts are deemed not to be proper to the Looker, the Path climber is in trouble.
Before the climber can move on, he must understand what getting control of the thoughts entails. This prohibition does not mean that thoughts are obliterated. On the contrary, the man is supposed to think... but his thoughts should be proper, ethical, and non-injurious.
So, thoughts are not private things, after all. The Buddha Self (The Looker) is inside the climber; and the Buddha Self is privy to all his thoughts.
Regardless of whether those ideas or thoughts are right facts or wrong assumptions, fictions created for any reason, or are pleasant dreams or nightmares, or are accurate or inaccurate recollections of events, the climber identifies with any idea that is improper. He may err in his logic or his recollections, and for so long as none of them sullies his mind, making it unfit for the Looker's dwelling place, he is safe. But when he entertains improper ideas, well, then... whatever they are, he is.
The state of mind that the Looker considers proper is calm and clear, untainted by the familiar septet, anger, pride, envy, lust, greed, gluttony and sloth. It is, says Patanjali, "uncolored." To be uncolored is to be without sinful emotion, attachment, projection or desire.
The recommended procedure for controlling the mind is to remain alert and aware, and to achieve uncoloredness.
In other words, the climber is directed to attain Holy Indifference towards the outside world, to be free of bondage to any part of it, to be benignly independent of all that happens to him and around him. He is dedicated to purifying his thoughts and actions so that the Looker's dwelling place will remain undefiled.
A person on the Path may be in no position to turn his back to the outside world. He must act and react to events. Yet, the demand remains: he may not allow these events to affect him in any negative emotional way. No furtive or otherwise improper thought may be quartered in his mind.
And to whatever extent that the Looker views a sinful thought as being unworthy of His presence, He leaves the one who has thought it to his own self-inflicted punishment. In short, He applies the Lex Talionis: the Law of Like Retribution. This cannot be stated too frequently. As far as meditation and all forms of spiritual progress are concerned, the greatest deterrents are also the ones we least associate with our malevolent thoughts. We blame a variety of causes for our failures - a head cold, a back ache, or a host of infirmities any competent physician would label "psycho-somatic" or at least a condition that was the result of inattention, anxiety, or any kind of bad judgment.
It is easy to understand this law when it applies to actions. "An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth," says Exodus' Chapter 21. The punishment fits the crime. In a way, a person counts on it. "What goes around, comes around," he complacently says. "It's karma." And indeed, karma does mean action. But the Lex Talionis mandates "like retribution." When the offense is psychological, the offender is punished psychologically. This is basic Buddhism.
The Buddha's Four Noble Truths state that the cause of life's bitterness and pain is desire (a thought if ever there was one!) For as long as suffering defines anybody's hell, Samsara (the material world) and it's unquenchable desires define Buddhism's. Hell is a place of punishment; and whenever a person succumbs to desire, he issues himself a visa.
The idea that bad thoughts create self-inflicted wounds is supported by science. In his study of suicide, Man Against Himself , psychiatrist Karl Menninger says, "There are certain laws governing the activity of the conscience with which we have come to be familiar from clinical experience. One of them is that the ego must suffer in direct proportion to its externally directed destructiveness. It is as if that part of the destructive instinct retained within the ego had to carry on within the microcosmos of the personality an activity precisely comparable to that which the ego is directing toward the macrocosmos outside. If the individual directs an attack of a certain nature upon some person in the environment, the conscience, or super-ego, directs an attack of the same nature upon the ego. This formula is well known to us in social organization in the form of the lex talionis, the intuitive basis of all penal systems." He later adds, "One more fact or 'law' about the conscience: a sense of guilt may arise from other than actual aggression; in the unconscious a wish to destroy is quite equivalent to the actual destruction with regard to exposing the ego to punishment."
What to Menninger is a "super ego" can safely be called the Looker or the Buddha Self.
Patanjali recognizes that it requires a certain practice to eliminate improper actions and, by extension, improper desires. The Looker has laid out the Five "Yamas" or expected rules of conduct; and whenever anyone finds himself wanting to break those rules; he has to stop and investigate his desires until he understands not only their harmful consequence but also their source. If he's angry at someone, he needs to understand that it is the projection of his own Shadow content upon that individual that is the engine of his anger. This task ought to keep him busy for a few days - or at least long enough to cool down.
May he drink or take drugs? No, because intoxication constitutes an impropriety in the Looker's eyes. May he indulge in sexual adventures? No. Because sexual impropriety is by definition improper. It may be of interest to note that in antiquity the rules for the fully committed yogi required something more than celibacy. According to Vachaspati Misra's Gloss, (Vyasa's Commentary), on the nature of continence, (Y.S. 2:30) "'On the restraint of the hidden power'" he says, "the words 'hidden power,' are used to signify that the mere non-use of the organ is not continence. The desire of seeing and speaking to women and embracing them... is also incontinence. The meaning is that the other sensations tending towards that are also to be checked." (Vyasa lived a secluded life.) The climber may not lie or steal or envy; but more, he must discover why he even desired to lie or steal or envy; and then, having illuminated the origin, eradicate the desires at their origin. This is no small order. But what if he falters? Patanjali recommends that immediately he purge the troubling "sin" by the antidote of its opposite. If the climber wishes harm to someone and is swift in his recognition of this indecorous breach, he is to stop himself as abruptly as possible, and sorrowing for his lapse, pray for good fortune to come to that individual.
Uncoloredness or Holy Indifference is that pure state in which a person observes, acts, and reacts without becoming emotionally involved. He responds in ways that are simple, direct, without guile, and "natural." Emotion taints; and the Looker mandates that He dwell in a pristine, transparent place. Here is an old story that illustrates this state:
While a holy man is sitting by a river, a scorpion crawls to the riverbank and falls into the water. It struggles there, unable to swim. The holy man reaches down into the water and scoops up the scorpion; and as he lifts it to place it on dry land, it stings him. A few minutes later the scorpion returns to the water's edge and falls in and again begins to drown. Once more the holy man reaches down to rescue it - and again as he places it on dry land, he is stung by the scorpion.
A man, standing nearby, watches all this and is amazed when yet again the scorpion crawls to the riverbank and falls into the water - and yet again is rescued by the holy man - who yet again is stung. The man cannot stand by and watch what he considers insane behavior. He approaches the holy man, demanding, "Why do you persist in rescuing that ungrateful scorpion who keeps stinging you for your trouble?"
The holy man shrugs, "It is the nature of a scorpion to sting, just as it is the nature of a human being to help a creature in need."
In ways gross and subtle, a man suffers from the harmful thoughts he directs towards others. As he reviews his daily travails, he may fail to connect the two events: the improper thought and the psychological punishment. He may find other reasons that cause him to experience insomnia or impotence, irritability or forgetfulness. He may be preoccupied when he should be attentive; he may step down from what he thinks is the bottom rung of a ladder only to discover that he was actually standing on the penultimate rung - and then never connect his damaged foot with a malicious thought he has had. Yet, the punishment is inescapable. The old joke about the man who has a nervous tic - an uncontrollable jerking of his left shoulder - applies. The man goes to a hypnotist to be cured; and, placed under hypnosis, he is told to cease jerking his shoulder. When he is returned to consciousness he is relieved to see that his shoulder no longer jerks. As he writes his check to pay the hypnotist, his left eye begins to twitch.
Needless to say, not all afflictions are applications of the Lex Talionis. But those which are must be cured at their source.
Finding one's true nature - the one that is a fit dwelling place for the Looker - is the goal of daily discipline. Fulfilling the spiritual commitment to live a life of kindness and integrity; helping others without getting emotionally involved in their problems, keeping a discreet distance, not having "friends" but just being friendly to all; correcting an error as quickly as possible, and investigating with determination the source of any action or thought that is unworthy of the One Who Watches is a climber's first challenge.
Were it not so impossible to sculpt, a fourth monkey would doubtless be added to the standard three: Hear No Evil; Speak No Evil; See No Evil; and Think No Evil.
A WORKING MODEL OF THE PSYCHE: Understanding emotion and motivation.
For so long as an individual's ego is involved in the effort, there can be no substantive progress in yoga, alchemy, Daoism, Zen, or any of the martial arts. During the instructional period, it is of course necessary that the student be self aware; but once he has learned to execute the procedures correctly, his next challenge is to exclude his ego from the performance of the task.
In the discipline of archery, for example, the student must learn the proper techniques for standing, nocking, drawing, aiming, and releasing. But once he has learned these steps, he must then eliminate himself as the archer when shooting; for in the art of archery there can be only the target, the arrow, and the bow. A hand and arm will draw the bowstring, but the moment the archer thinks, "This is my hand that is drawing the bowstring," he is already at a disadvantage.
Zen, not being orthodox Buddhism, has always preferred to seek spiritual insight in Daoism's literature: and in the subject of the self-destructive ego, that literature does not disappoint: Here is Thomas Merton's translation of a poem by Chuang Tzu:
The Need To Win
When an archer is shooting for nothing
He has all his skill.
If he shoots for a brass buckle
He is already nervous.
If he shoots for a prize of gold
He goes blind
Or sees two targets -
He is out of his mind!
His skill has not changed. But the prize
Divides him. He cares!
He thinks more of winning
Than of shooting -
And the need to win
Drains him of power.
Ego awareness mandates that attention be detoured through a layer of consciousness that delays action and reaction, facilitates distraction, and prejudices choice. Spontaneity is lost as the performer considers his own well-being or the reactions of others.
To act without diverting thoughts is to act "beneath the level or threshold" of self-conscious awareness, i.e., to act subliminally in the egoless, transcendental state; but freeing the ego from diverting thoughts is not an easy matter. It requires a divorcement from all emotional sources.
According to an old Zen mondo:
A master counsels the novice monk,"You must destroy your connections to the people in your former, secular life. Sever your ties to them and regard them as if they are dead. Cut them all down."
The novice is perplexed. "And my parents? Must I slay them, too?"
The master answers, "Who are they to be spared?"
The novice replies, "And you, Master, must I kill you, too?"
And the master responds, "Don't worry. There is not enough of me left for you to get your hands on."
A Rudimentary Model
In order to understand why we do the things we do - why we feel compelled to act in certain ways, with anger, lust or greed - we need the guidance of a workable model. The one that best suits Yoga, Zen, Daoism, or any modern alchemical opus is the model developed by Carl Jung.
In antiquity, humanity's various instinctive behaviors were attributed to a consortium of divinities represented in the psyche and, therefore, in art, in a variety of forms: human, animal, vegetal, geometric, and in certain representative objects. The maternal instinct, for example, could be represented by the goddess Demeter, by a Tiger as is Kali's totem animal; by stalks of wheat; by an inverted triangle; by a "uterine" cup, and so on.
Natural phenomena such as wind, sun, rain, and earthquake, can also be regarded as divinely ordained, but these do not generally influence the psyche.
As to human behavior, to one degree or another, most people believe that divine beings exert their will upon the individual, and that if the divine will is to be altered, the god must be propitiated with prayer or sacrifice. Doctor Jung surveyed the world's religions and mythologies and selected a group of "archetypal gods" that represented the basic instincts of survival.
Mircea Eliade discusses the psychological dynamics as Patanjali refers to them, and it is clear that Patanjali's system dovetails nicely with the model proposed by Jung.
The consciousness of the enlightened man recognizes facts for what they are - and probes for deeper, universal truths. Likewise, the man who is striving to attain the detached freedom of enlightenment is required to plumb the turbulent thoughts and urges (vrittis) of his mind in order to reach the instinctual sources (vasanas) of the turmoil.
Vrittis, the Sanskrit term which indicates this emotional content, is related to the English word "writhe" or "whirl." The usual translation of the Sanskrit term is "whirlwinds" which describes this roiling in the mind, this bubbling up of energy that is created chemically by hormones and other substances released into the bloodstream by the powerful instincts or archetypes.
These emotions pressure the ego, and often, if the force is strong or the ego weak, they will demolish any ethical or social restraint. The archetypal forces then project themselves upon persons, places or things which act as convenient receptacles for contents that belong properly to the individual who projects them. The recipient, then, can be a love-object or an appealing scapegoat. The object of yoga is to destroy these emotional ties, to calm the turbulent thoughts, and then to contain and to integrate the instincts. "Now, this destruction cannot be achieved," writes Professor Eliade, "unless one begins by knowing experimentally, as it were, the structure, the origin, and the intensity of what is doomed to destruction." The work, then, begins by gaining a familiarity with a psychological model. For our simple model we have considered nine of these basic instincts.
1. The Buddha Self, Self, or God of gods. This is the pre-eminent instinct which strives always to convert chaos into cosmos. Being also the receptacle of the mind, itself, it is privy to our thoughts as well as our actions. Our conscious mind may forget many things; the Self forgets nothing. The ego, then, is made in the "image" of the Self in that it strives to organize material world chaos into a manageable, limited cosmos. (In a more advanced spiritual state this archetype will subsume the meditator's ego -- first in a Satori experience, and later as a reflection of the meditator's time in the Void.)
2. Mother - the Child projects this instinct upon the Mother. The instinct engages the sucking reflex and the clinging ability of the infant. (Newborn babies have a peculiar ability to grasp things.)
3. Child - the Mother projects this instinct upon the Child. She gives milk and her loving attention to the child's needs.
4. Shadow - the social instinct which acts like a "coin" with two opposing sides:
a. The Friendly Shadow affords positive self-preservation via the friend, "buddy system," confidant, or group, as the instinct to form alliances, herds or packs for safety and to obtain a larger gene pool;
b. The Enemy Shadow affords negative self-preservation via the destructive instinct to kill those who threaten, or to subjugate or exploit those who are perceived to be inferior or even subhuman.
5. Hero. This is a four-phased instinct which corresponds to the four basic phases of development.
a. The Trickster: who reassures the child that his mistakes and failures will be forgiven.
b. The Superman: who inspires physical development in the pre-teen.
c. The Human: who inspires cultural development in the young adult.
d. The Savior: who sets the standard for peaceful coexistence, instructs mostly by mature example, and inspires the spiritual individual to become a conduit to the divine. (In a more advanced spiritual state, this archetype will subsume the meditator's ego.)
6. Anima in males/Animus in females. The reproductive "sexual love" instinct. (In a more advanced spiritual state, this archetype will subsume the meditator's ego in a "Union of Opposites" mysterium coniunctionis, or Bodhisattva experience.)
7. Persona. The instinct to conform social or professional conduct to accepted standards.
8. Hunter. The instinct to pursue and stalk which minimizes the need for food, drink, and rest and keeps the attention focused on the quarry.
9. Transformation. The instinct for spiritual fulfillment.
To see how these instincts facilitate survival, we can imagine the life cycle of a child born anywhere in the world in the year 5,000 B.C.
The moment the baby is born he experiences a chaotic world of pleasures, pains, sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and textures. The opposite of chaos is cosmos; and baby must create order out of disorder.
As his consciousness emerges, he begins to recognize his mother's face and voice and fragrance. He knows that she satisfies his hunger, keeps him warm and clean, and comforts him. His attachment to his mother is a bond which cannot be easily severed. He has projected an archetype - the Mother goddess - upon her, and he is her adoring devotee.
Mother will project the Child upon her baby. Hormones will cause her to lactate and cause her to keep her attention upon him. He will arouse tender feelings of love and protectiveness in her, feelings which cause her to tolerate behavior which would otherwise be unbearable. Nature provides for adults to be slaves to cuteness. The child screeches, whines, smells bad, and robs others of sleep and of mother's attention; but when he gurgles and giggles, he is utterly adorable and automatically forgiven.
As the child grows, he is able to identify individuals and to determine pleasant from unpleasant. He learns to communicate and to move about. He also develops an ego - a continuing sense of identity. He can think and realize that he is the same person today that he was yesterday and will be tomorrow. Associations of every kind adhere to his ego and he can remember and qualify them according to how they affect him.
But then his world is suddenly disrupted. Mother has a new baby and he is pushed aside to join the other "ordinary" members of the family - his father and siblings. He is no longer the center of his mother's attention. He now has to acquire the social skills to interact with the rest of his family. He also has to be taught to fear such things as fire and dangerous creatures, including, of course, the enemies of his family or clan. The entire curriculum is so difficult to master that his parents must be patient and constantly reassuring. He is encouraged by heroic animal "trickster" stories of Loki, the ancient equivalent of Bugs Bunny.
He projects the Friendly Shadow instinct upon his father and siblings. They constitute his support group (the first 'Herd') and will share food and shelter with him and tend him when he is sick or injured. The family will expand into the larger peer group, the clan, tribe, or nation.
The Enemy Shadow acts as a repository for every injury, psychological or physical, which the child experiences or of the many "horror" stories he's told about his group's enemies. Rejection, insult, neglect, bullying, fear, and an assortment of painful experiences can be too much for his developing ego to contain; and the damage is shifted to an alter ego, the Enemy Shadow. It is the survival function of this archetype to furnish a person with sufficient energy and anger to defend himself or those who are in his charge with all necessary force. The archetype's strategy is to dehumanize the person upon whom it has been projected. When we are angry with someone we call him a rat, a snake, a skunk, a louse... animals that steal our food or foul our dwelling place and can, therefore, be killed with impunity. We also select animals we find loathsome or that exhibit behaviors we consider objectionable in humans. No one ever called his enemy a robin or a lion. He is a vulture or a weasel.
As the child reaches seven or eight years of age, it is time for him to acquire skills that are needed to support the family. He must learn to hunt and fish and fight. For this he needs inspiring, superhuman heroes to copy. His family and friends tell wonderful stories of heroes who are usually half-man and half-god and possess superhuman abilities. He and his friends will try to swim as fast as Submariner and to develop the strength of Superman, and so on. His play becomes a competition with friends to see who has the best survival skills. When he goes adventuring, he has a best friend to act as his "security" buddy.
When the boy reaches thirteen or thereabout he discovers the allure of girls. Now he is in the most awkward time of his life because peer pressure is at its highest and the hormones released by his Anima will confuse him. His voice will deepen and he will get pimples on his face and above all things he desires to be desirable. If he projects this Goddess instinct upon one specific girl, he will think about little else but loving and being loved by her.
The boy quickly sees which "heroic" males succeed with girls - the ones who are outstanding because of social prominence, handsomeness, wealth, artistic talent, athletic ability, military prowess, or intelligence. His heroes now are human heroes. Unless he's been born a prince or has movie-star good looks, he knows he needs to excel in one of these categories to be noticed. And now he practices or studies in ernest. He begins also to show-off his abilities.
In order to succeed in his social ambitions - whether they are to excel in the arts or in business, he needs to cultivate the appropriate personality - the "bedside manner" of any endeavor. He also needs to learn how to interact respectfully with adults... the parents of friends, teachers, community leaders. He may acquire several distinct personalities - one for home, one for school, one for his friends, and so on.
The young man has to be a food provider if he desires to marry and have a family of his own. Ritualistically, he prepares for the hunt. As he begins the pursuit, he projects the Hunter archetype upon the quarry, precipitating a release of powerful hormones. Now he fixates on his prey to the exclusion of all other considerations. He has to be able to maintain this one-pointed concentration for days at a time as he pursues an animal to a place where he can not only kill it but carry the meat out and back to camp or home. (Hunters get into an extraordinary meditative zone.)
Often when a person has fulfilled his biological destiny he begins to question the meaning of life. The material world has lost its appeal. He has striven unceasingly for success - for the admiration and respect of his family and peers; and regardless of the degree to which he has gained them, they have failed to deliver any enduring satisfaction.
Each man's ego has a baseline of qualities which he regards as a "given." He accepts these qualities as his "due" - and takes them for granted. His ambitions and defeats begin from this personal baseline. If he is born rich, the poor may envy him, but he takes his wealth as a matter of course; and while he may envy those who have greater wealth or pedigree, he desires only to expand his assets as proof of his own financial acumen. He, too, has his financial anxieties and embarrassments. If he is born with a great mind and has a fine education, average guys may nod in wonderment at his genius, but he associates with those of equal brilliance and suffers from his failures to solve science's notable challenges. Domestically, perhaps he has an overbearing mother-in-law, a wife who finds him inadequate, children who are ungrateful, friends who are perfidious, and so on through the normal vicissitudes of life. Advantages in life do not insulate or inoculate an individual from unhappiness. The rich, the smart, and the beautiful are no more or less happy than the rest of us.
It is the nature of the ego never to be satisfied. These deeply rooted desires must be incinerated, "burned out," the yogi insists. Yet, though a yogi can attest that the heat generated by the Kundalini experience is a torrid heat, he knows to a certainty that in order for the heat to consume the roots of desire, a complete transformation of attitude and action has to occur. A revolution in the psyche must be experienced. And this is where the gods of the Hearth and the Forge, the cauldron and the crucible, come into the Opus. (Iconographically, the Manipura Chakra (Solar plexus) has within it a stylized cauldron. The fire generated at the base of the spine provides the necessary heat for the cauldron.)
All Zen, Hindu, Daoist, Sufi, Alchemical, and so on, systems account for this vital burning process.
The transformation of the psyche is usually painful. It is not a simple matter to withdraw our projections from the people, places, and things of the world, and then to weaken them sufficiently so that they won't obstruct our quest to "Die to Self" or "Kill the fool" and to prepare ourselves for Yoga's great adventure.
In the course of living, we sin and we are sinned against. These instincts appear, increase, level off, and decline in accordance with biological necessity. The greatest problem in life is caused when this natural progression is disrupted and we are prevented from maturing normally.
Usually we are unaware of any problems until we are grown and the life-cycle is supposed to repeat itself. Thus, a man marries and all seems to have progressed on schedule, but he displays an exaggerated concern for his mother's welfare - much to the consternation of his wife. The wife, likewise, may be unable to govern the household without constant detailed advice from her mother, much to the husband's irritation. Such maternal attachment evidences an arrested development. Some of these individuals have no "close personal friends" - they are so completely bound to their mothers. They may have casual acquaintances or spouses, but their innermost thoughts and experiences are confided only to their mothers.
Some persons may have their development stultified at the "Shadow" level. A man may marry and be unable to give up his friends, finding something to do with them nearly every night of the week. Usually, alcohol and spectator sports are integral to this group activity. The man is not prevented from having children; but psychologically he is no more able to be a good father than he is able to be a good husband.
Parental misconduct or bullying schoolmates can also have the expected detrimental effect upon children. It is the function of the Enemy Shadow to protect an individual against attack or the threat of it; and when a child is unable to retaliate against his abuser, the Shadow does not dissipate: it stores the anger and frustration in a reservoir of hostility which will likely be tapped for a lifetime of belligerence or other antisocial behavior. The Shadow can contaminate any relationship, and serious problems should be resolved with professional help before a strenuous spiritual program is begun. Religion helps - but it is not psychotherapy.
In terms of Jung's Depth Psychology, "Detaching oneself from the world" is another way of saying "counteracting instinctive imperatives" and then, "integrating the archetypes" which is to experience, while in the meditative state, the subsumation of the ego by the Trinitarian archetypes (Self, Anima/Animus; Mother/Child) and then, at the conclusion of the Opus, to live in the unassuming, graceful mode of "the man through whom the Dao flows freely."
Real and Unreal
In Eliade's text on Patanjali's aphorisms the material world is presented as illusionary. The words are different from those we're used to in Zen, but the message is the same. Where Zen defines the real and true as being eternal, immutable, universal, and unconditional and the illusionary as being temporal, changing, localized, and subject to conditions, Patanjali's yoga, as Eliade points out, draws similar differences between Being and Becoming. Being is the real and "Being can never maintain any relation with non-being. Now," he continues, "Nature has no true ontological reality; it is, in effect, a universal process of becoming... Whatever becomes, is transformed, dies, and disappears [and] is not part of the sphere of being."
Regardless of the argument that is offered, the fact remains that two modes of existence are acknowledged: the profane material world of samsara and the sacred world of nirvana. The goals of the yogi are to devalue the former and to access the latter.
In accordance with Buddhism's Four Noble Truths, life in the world of samsara is "bitter and painful." This, then, is our hell. The man or woman who embarks on this inward journey must effectively "die to the world." He will have a new life, one that cannot sustain personal attachments. He cannot care about the people in his life in a way that requires emotional response or interference. He may not intrude into others' lives and he may not allow them to intrude into his. This must clearly be understood; and however much it seems impossible at the start of his journey, with diligence he will acquire this independence.
Professor Eliade stresses that this emotional unattachment must be achieved if a man is to gain Freedom. He must develop an impervious psychological shield against both adversity or prosperity, i.e., in finding neither pain nor pleasure in external conditions while yet finding all to be satisfactory conditions under which he can live.
The man who quests does not cease to care, rather he tempers his caring so that if confronted by adversity, he can respond in whichever way his freedom allows. No honest labor is beneath him. He affixes no blame and gives no credit. He does not have "friends"; he is simply friendly to everyone. He remembers that the ego is part of the material world of illusion; an illusion which, like all others, must be dispelled.
In the world of the Spirit, he begins as merely a "stream entrant" and he has no idea whatsoever how deep the water, how strong the current, how far away the other shore.
