towards this end that the consciousness is driven by the experience of dharma-
megha samadhi.
Chapter 109THE CONDITION PRIOR TO FINAL ABSORPTIONIt is said in the sutra, tataḥ kṛtārthānāṁ pariṇāma-krama samāptiḥ guṇānām (IV.32), that
on the fulfilment of the purpose of the gunas of prakriti, there is a recession of the
effects into their causes and the modifications of prakriti come to an end, which is
the background of the liberation of the spirit. This fulfilment of the purpose of the
gunas, and the return process, is often described by teachers as a complicated
process. It does not seem to take place in a trice because, in some way, at least, we
may say that the return of the gunas to their original source has something to do
with the practice of yoga.
We are studying a great scripture on yoga—the methodology of practice—and it is
this practice that is supposed to lead us to the liberation which the text describes in
such great detail. We have to understand by this description that the gunas resolve
themselves into their causes by certain techniques, by certain processes, due to
something that has happened to them on account of the meditations, or samyamas,
which the yogin practises. Therefore, the evolution of prakriti into the forms, and
the resolution of the forms into the original condition of prakriti, has something to
do with the method of practice, because the practice of yoga is only a corresponding
ascent of consciousness, stage by stage, in accordance with the levels of prakriti—by
which it has come to the level of the forms and by which also it will go back to the
original source. There is a great philosophical history behind this system of practice
which is called yoga. Both schools of thought—Yoga as well as Vedanta—have opined
differently in respect of the processes through which the yogin has to pass before the
ultimate liberation is attained. How does it come about that the gunas go back to
their sources merely because there is the practise of yoga by an individual? How does
an individual attain salvation and compel the gunas to resolve themselves into their
sources? Is it possible? Of course it appears to be possible; otherwise, there would
not be such a long effort made in describing this process at all. But how does it come
about?
That prakriti is cosmic in its nature and is not the stuff of merely a single individual,
and the gunas are not the property of any one person so that he can order them to go
back to their original sources, that there is a universal significance in the activity of
prakriti, that the gunas are commonly active everywhere in the whole of creation
and not merely in any particular individual would be enough indication as to the
methods the yogin has to adopt in the practice. This background of the description—
namely, the character which is cosmical, attributed to prakriti—would compel the
individual yogin to conform to the laws of that cosmical prakriti. The liberation of
the soul does not mean a violation of the law of prakriti. That is not what is intended.
It is a fulfilment of the law of prakriti rather than a violation of it, and this fulfilment
has to take place through the practice of yoga. How does it happen?