Detachment and Integral Yoga

One can be impartial but not detached, said Laski. It is true for him and his way of thinking. Impartiality is a discipline mind accepts, whereas detachment is a status of consciousness beyond the scope of mind. Those who function with the mind as the central instrument cannot hope to grow detached.

Detachment is a capacity to function in a plane without itself being part of it. Only the Soul is capable of functioning in the mental, vital, physical planes like that. The highest reach for the mind in this direction is impartiality, for the vital forgetting the object of attachment and for the physical detachment is to move physically away from the object of attachment. These parts of being are not meant for these.

To make detachment 100% possible, attachment in every realm is to go, even the attachment to the Divine. Even on that pretext that vibration must be shed. The three successive preliminary conditions for commencing Integral Yoga are Renunciation, Equality and Oneness. Detachment comes when equality is established. The process is to constantly try to lift vital, mental acts to the plane of the Soul till one comes to function from the Soul centre, rather soul begins to function in one through the silent mind, quiet heart and calm nerves.

Mind helps this process if it acquires fuller knowledge of the processes of its present method and a stronger will to put that greater knowledge into practice. The emotional centre can similarly help if it overgrows the need of a certain event that makes for attachment as an experience. If the centre is fairly strong it can reject the experience in future in as much as it has overgrown the need for that experience. If it is weak, the centre must quickly exhaust that experience by passing through it. The physical consciousness has its own being and it primarily acts for its own preservation. As and when this preservation is in jeopardy the physical consciousness puts the mind aside and acts from its own knowledge to preserve the body. This is illustrated by people saving themselves from fire accidents, drowning etc and not knowing how they escaped. The body knows how to protect itself and does it perfectly when needed. For detachment to be possible at the physical level, the body must be penetrated by the higher consciousness and the body should know there is nothing outside from which it needs to protect itself. This is possible only when the light lodges in the physical. In short the mental, vital, physical centres must either reject or exhaust the need to go through the experiences which they now enjoy. The test for having achieved this is equality.

EXCERCISE :
It is easy for one to know most of the areas of his attachment. Mental attachment is shown in either pride or vanity over doing a thing apart from its use value. Emotional attachment is sentiment. Physical attachment can be illustrated when one is not able to sleep in a new place or write with a pen other than the one he is used to. Make a full list of all the activities to which one is strongly attached. Choose one for mental attachment another for sentiment and a third one for physical attachment.

Call Mother and establish her. Offer Her all that you are and all that you are going to do. Examine the nature, form and layers of one of the attachments. Recollect the history of its formation. Offer all that passes before your mind to Mother who has responded to you. This is the first part. The second is to examine your nature and its needs that make this attachment possible. Know this second part but do not take it up in the first stage. On examination you will find that many aspects of this attachments are silly, some are needless and nothing is indispensable. Examine them in the three aspects of mind, vital and physical.

After the examination and the understanding offer all these ingredients to Mother. If possible offer the ‘examination’ and the ‘understanding’ too. What is important in the effort is total willingness to accept the results and a readiness to shed what is discovered as unwanted. Individual attachments will give way soon but the attachment itself will show itself stronger in other similar acts. Now list all acts of attachments that can be said to be of the same strength at one given level. Concentrate your effort in a few of them that stand out in that plane. When the few you concentrate on give way ALL acts of attachment at the plane will suddenly disappear. Now is the time to move to stronger ones.

The whole being should be behind this effort. The effort is taken as a token at certain landmarks. The results will be rewarding if one lets Mother wash away the stain of attachment. The only danger is one is likely to grow attached to the success in shedding attachment. This means one is shedding attachment at one level and is fortifying it at the next higher level. That is the occasion to examine your nature that needs the experience of attachment. That is to be taken up later.