The Challenge of Changing Human Nature

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Those individuals who take up
the practice of yoga for the

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purpose of transformation of the
nature and the development of

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wider and higher states of
consciousness inevitably find

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that the influence of the
physical and vital basis upon

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which human life is based
represents one of the greatest,

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if not actually the greatest,
obstacles to their spiritual

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development.
The idea of changing human

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nature, overcoming the embedded
habits, the atavistic

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tendencies, the ingrained
responses bred into human

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existence for many millennia is
one that most people consider to

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be essentially impossible.
If we look, however, at the long

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trend of evolution, we see that
indeed, while many things are

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deeply embedded, other elements
can and do change, evolve, grow

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and progress.
The challenge then, for the

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practitioner of yoga is how to
speed up these changes and

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support the evolutionary trend
in a compressed time period.

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This is clearly not something
easy nor instantly successful,

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but it is something achievable
with patience and persistence,

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along with a scrupulous review
of the motive forces that rise

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up in many cases without our
conscious attention and control

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to continue the habitual
patterns of the past, Sri

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Robindo writes in the Synthesis
of Yoga quote.

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The principle of dark and dull
inertia is at it life's basis.

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All are tied down by the body
and its needs and desires to a

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trivial mind, petty desires and
emotions, an insignificant

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repetition of small worthless
functionings, needs, cares,

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occupations, pains, pleasures
that lead to nothing beyond

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themselves and bear the stamp of
an ignorance that knows not its

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own.
Why and wither.

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This physical mind of inertia
believes in no divinity other

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than its small earth gods.
It aspires perhaps to a greater

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comfort, order, pleasure, but
asks no uplifting and no

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spiritual deliverance.
At the centre we meet a stronger

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will of life with a greater
gusto, but it is a blinded

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demon, a perverted spirit, and
exults in the very elements that

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make of life a striving turmoil
and an unhappy imbroglio.

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It is a soul of human or Titanic
desire, clinging to the garish

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colour, disordered poetry,
violent tragedy or stirring

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melodrama of the mixed flux of
good and evil, joy and sorrow,

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light and darkness, heady
rapture and bitter torture.

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It loves these things, and would
have more and more of them, or

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even when it suffers and cries
out against them, can accept or

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joy in nothing else.
It hates and revolts against

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higher things, and in its fury
would trample, tear, or crucify

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any diviner power that has the
presumption to offer to make

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life pure, luminous, and happy,
and snatch from its lips the

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fiery brew of that exciting
mixture.

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Another will in life there is
that is ready to follow the

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ameliorating ideal mind, and is
allured by its offer to extract

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some harmony, beauty, light,
nobler order out of life.

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But this is a smaller part of
the vital nature, and can be

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easily overpowered by its more
violent or darker, duller yoke

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comrades.
Nor does it readily lend itself

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to a call higher than that of
the mind, unless that call

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defeats itself, as religion
usually does, by lowering its

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demands to conditions more
intelligible to our obscure

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vital nature.
All these forces the spiritual

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seeker grows aware of in himself
and finds all around him, and

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has to struggle and combat
incessantly to be rid of their

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grip and dislodge the long
entrenched mastery they have

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exercised over his own being as
over the environ in human

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existence.
The difficulty is great, for

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their hold is so strong, so
apparently invincible, that it

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justifies the disdainful dictum
which compares human nature to a

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dog's tail.
For straighten it never so much

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by force of ethics, religion,
reason, or any other redemptive

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effort.
It returns in the end always to

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the crooked curl of nature, and
so great is the vim, the clutch

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of that more agitated life will.
So immense the peril of its

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passions and errors, so subtly
insistent or persistently

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invasive, so obstinate up to the
very gates of heaven, the fury

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of its attack, or the tedious
obstruction of its obstacles,

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that even the St. and the Yogin
cannot be sure of their

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liberated purity or their
trained self mastery against its

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intrigue or its violence.
End Quote.

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Reference Srioro Bindo and the
Mother, Looking from Within,

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Chapter 1, Looking at Life and
Circumstances, pages 17 to 19.