on the conscious level, does the whole being operate, unless we are frightened out of
our wits. If lions begin to attack us from all sides in the jungle, the whole being may
start working in a particular manner because our intention is to escape, and every
cell of the body will be active, cooperating with us for the escape. Intense fright,
intense joy and deep sleep—these are the stages or states of mind that may manage to
draw the attention of the whole personality. But, we are not in such a state of fright
always, nor are we in such a state of joy, and we have no occasion to ponder over the
implications of sleep, so that, in consequence, we have no idea of what it means to be
totally attracted towards an object.
This is indicated in a sutra in the Samadhi Pada, in a mild form without a detailed
commentary, where the great author told us, tīvra saṁvegānām āsannaḥ (I.21): The
achievement becomes quickened if the ardour is intensified. The word used is
‘samvega’, a very peculiar term in yoga psychology which has no equivalent in any
other language. One’s heart should throb at the very thought of the object. Can it do
that? Then it is possible to concentrate. That throbbing of the heart at the very sight
of the object due to the joy on its perception, and even the thought of it, is called
samvega. Without that samvega, the concentration will not come. How can we think
of an object which attracts us only in a lukewarm manner, in which we have only a
stepmotherly interest, and which we do not like from the bottom of our heart because
we have other interests in the world? With this kind of attitude of the mind where it
has side activities together with this so-called activity called yoga, success is far away.
Yoga is not a hobby; it is not an experiment that we are making; it is not an activity; it
is not a vocation; it is not a business; it is not a job. It is the sinking of our personality
in the ideal that we have chosen. We are sunk in it totally, saturated and absorbed,
and nothing else remains.
That is the stage where we become superhuman, at least in a very small measure. We
become superhuman the moment we are able to draw the attention of the total
personality in respect of anything. The difference between man and superman is that
while the faculties of the ordinary man are dissipated, the faculties of the superman
are integrated. We must have heard of the saying that Lord Krishna has sixteen
kalas—which means to say, sixteen powers. These sixteen powers are nothing but the
sixteen energies that are present in the individual. They are present in us also, not
only in Lord Krishna. But what happens in our case is that they are diverted in
sixteen different directions: the pranas which are five, the organs of action which are
five, the senses of knowledge which are five, and the psychological principle—these
are the sixteen forces. In us, all these are higgledy-piggledy. Everything goes
anywhere it likes and there is no coordination among them. But in a superman they
are total, whole, complete—integrated like a mass, and not isolated in their content.
That is why when a thought originates in the mind of a superman, it immediately
takes effect, whereas in ordinary people it does not take effect because its energy has
been diverted in some other way.
The implementation of a thought, or the materialisation of an idea, is nothing but the
extent of the union which one feels with the object concerned; that is called the
materialisation of the thought. The moment we think something, it happens—and it
must happen if the mind is able to unite itself with the object wholly. And, the
percentage of this union will also be the determining factor of the percentage of this
success, or implementation of the thought. But if always there is the feeling that the
object is totally outside the mind, and the mind has very little interest in the object, it