We have studied so much about this practice, but when the last point is reached—the
question of liberation is raised—masters and teachers give us various descriptions of
the return process. There is a feeling in the mind of everyone that the world is more
powerful than himself or herself—and not even a yogin can escape this feeling. The
universe is larger than the individual. A subtle discomfiture of feeling would
introduce itself to everyone’s mind, and this is the reason why doubts arise in the
practice of yoga. Patanjali has mentioned in one of his earlier sutras that doubt
comes as one of the obstacles in the practice. One of the serious doubts that may
come even in an advanced stage is: “How am I going to confront this vast universe,
this terrific thing that is before me? How can I master prakriti? Is it possible?” The
prakriti that we are speaking of is the universe as a whole. Is an individual going to
master it? A yogin, whatever be his power and force of will—can he control the whole
universe? What is the connection between the individual yogin and the cosmical
prakriti, without conforming to whose laws and without mastering whom, liberation
is not possible? What is the meaning of the return of the gunas to the original
sources when there is a fulfilment—as the sutra tells us, as the scriptures tell us—of
the purpose of the gunas, which have a relevance to the practice of yoga? That is very
important. We are not describing merely some kind of fanciful tale; it is a
consequence of the practice of yoga, which has a great connection with the attitude of
prakriti as a whole towards this individual that is practising yoga.
This difficulty has created certain doctrines in philosophy—namely, that the return
process is not a sudden jump of the individual to the Absolute, because the Absolute,
or the purusha, whatever we may call it, is something transcendent to prakriti, far
beyond the very notion of the mind of any individual. The whole process of creation
seems to be of such a nature that there have been, perhaps, evolutionary processes
that have taken place earlier than the manufacture of the human individual. It does
not mean that suddenly a human being cropped up from the Absolute. It does not
appear to be like that. Whatever we understand from the scriptures, whatever is the
description of the theory of creation according to the different schools of thought, all
of these seem to make out that there is a gradual descent of prakriti from the cosmos
in a descending order of density, and we are told that at a particular stage there is a
bifurcation into the objective universe and the subjective individual. Here, the
Vedanta, the Yoga and the Samkhya all agree. There is no conflict among them. At a
particular level—whatever be the name they give to these levels in their own way—the
items in the process of this descent seem to be almost the same. At a particular stage
there seems to be a split of the cosmic indivisibility of prakriti into the objective,
perceptible world and the subjective individual.
Now here is the crux of the entire matter. When the individual is thus cut off by a
peculiar act of prakriti, it does not appear to have been with the permission of the
individual. By a fiat of its cosmic will, prakriti has simply willed that it should be so,
whatever be the reason behind it. This event of the split of prakriti into the
individual, with the counterpart of the external world, seems to have taken place due
to some power which cannot be said to be under the control of any individual.
Otherwise, the individual would not create the individual himself, by his own will.
This theoretical background of the history of the process of creation has forced
certain teachers of thought to feel that the return process also should be along the
same lines as the line of descent from the top. There is, therefore, a necessity for the
individual to go to the cosmic. This is a very difficult thing. We cannot suddenly
absorb our individuality into the Absolute, or annul our personality. We cannot