Integral Yoga Vedanta—Action Prototype Informed by Yogic Inquiry
and Service Leadership for Personal and Global Transformation
Vrinda (Estela Pujals)
California Institute of Integral Studies
Abstract
Every day that the thought of what is the role of Western yogis now that it is our turn to pay a debt of gratitude to the land that enriched our bodies, minds and spirits with a tradition that transcends words and was created by the great beings of the past in ways that modern science is just beginning to understand, comes to my mind I am humbled at the extent of my ignorance about the ramifications and complexity of this thought. Still the thought persists, it has taken possession of my mind, emotions and reason to be. It is in the light of the inspiration and gifts that enriched my life and the lives of many, in the East and the West, that we consider it is time to form coalitions of yogis for extending the benefits of Integral Yoga-Vedanta towards personal and global transformation. The experiment that started in the Site of Action essay gave way to the Action Plan submitted less than a month ago. So, why did I consider the value of picking up garbage in India? It was in a gesture of humility and gratitude before proposing more daring plans for collaboration—I hoped it would open the doors. And after revisiting the complexity of this vision, in view of the feedback of Professor Joanne Gozawa and in the light of the reading material in our course syllabus, in addition to a few connections that were made in the last month, it is obvious that the vision remains linked to a transformative that is presently shared by others. And we reach the conclusion that such an ambitious vision needs to be held in a longer period for nurturing and gestation before it matures to fruition in the hearts and minds of those that it holds.
Integral Yoga Vedanta—Action Prototype Informed by Yogic Inquiry and
Service Leadership for Personal and Global Transformation
From India, my Mother land, I have inherited the most precious and enlightening stories from a philosophy that keeps informing my life. From the Site of Action and Action Plan essays, where I detail the first seed for a project meant to contribute to the land that has given to us the wisdom of Integral Yoga-Vedanta, which took form during my first and only trip to India, led me to further explore the cultural biases and misconceptions that kept this aspiration on hold and in a state of impossibility. The more humorous paradoxical aspect of the rejection of my proposition in India, in my eyes at least, is that in a culture where most believe in reincarnation, I am seen as a foreigner, while spiritually and intuitively, India has been my mother land and its people are my own culture since many lives before. On an academic note, the insights and guidance of Professor Gozawa have been invaluable in helping me to elucidate a better “plan,” for which the ongoing successful connections initiated by other scholars serve as a humbling reminder of the discipline and the rigor required to succeed in this vision. This is no longer a personal vision; it needs to connect with the visions of others with a similar foundation. In the course of our Transformative Leadership Program, it has become clearer to me that so many salient principles and theories of the Yoga-Vedanta are present, in an upgraded language, the social sciences and the systems thinking studies available to us now and that these need to be integrated in developing this vision.
After consulting with several scholars immersed in the values that we have inherited from Integral Yoga & Vedic culture, like Karen E. Trueheart, Ph.D., Director of the Gandhi Institute and former faculty at CIIS, Stuart Sovatsky, Ph.D. alumni of CIIS, there is much more to be learned from establishing a more effective connection to learn from their insights. Also, there is much to be learned about the best approach to contribute to India in a spirit of karmayoga (service) from Dr. Jorge Ferrer, Director of the School of East-West Psychology, CIIS, and Dr. Sangeetha Menon, professor at the National Institute of Advanced Studies, School of Humanities, Bangalore, India, who is involved in the epistemologies, definitions of terminology in Consciousness Studies, “experience-experiencer duality problem levels of I-ness in Adwaita-Vedanta of Adi Sankaracharya” (2010).
Reading essays by Dr. Ferrer, Dr. Sovatsky (both from CIIS) and Dr. Menon, were most valuable for reminding me of the degrees of ignorance that a false feeling of certainty contributed to clouding my mind. The light shed by such reading was humbling to the mind but is unheeded by the heart, which is driven by a different “intelligence”. So, the drive and intention to continue research in this direction continues unhampered. The work ahead will surely present untold challenges and rewards. “In the transition from ego consciousness to Divine consciousness a devotee inevitably experiences much inner conflict and tension” (Jyotirmayananda, 1994, p.158).
On the topic of the qualities that one values most for transformation from an identity of contracted consciousness to one of expanding consciousness, Viveka Chudamani of Adi Shankaracharya proposes , in a verse that makes reference to another work of Shankara´s Atmabodha “The Panchakosha (Five Sheaths or layers of personality) affect the individual’s identity from a shifting mode to the more disciplined levels of personality integration. The Five Sheaths or layers of personality are: the Food or body layer of personality (also known as food-body or food-sheath) arises from the Prana (universal energy) layer or sheath, which arises from the Mind sheath, which in turn arises from the Intellect sheath, which in turn arises from the all-pervading Bliss or Spirit. (Jyotirmayananda, S. audio exposition of Shankara, Viveka Chudamani, Verse 27, referencing Atmabodha, Verse 14). These are mentioned here inasmuch as they are significantly relevant to the study of personal and global transformation. The contribution of this study to personal and global transformation cannot be underestimated, in view of the wealth of contributions that Sri Aurobindo and other Indian sages have demonstrated from the personal and global transformation that emerged from this discipline. To this effect, Sri Aurobindo commented to a would-be biographer, “I see that you have persisted in giving a biography—is it really necessary or useful? The attempt is bound to be a failure, because neither you nor anyone else knows anything at all of my life; it has not been on the surface for men to see” (Heehs, 2000, p. 86).
That Sri Aurobindo´s inner life, nor the inner life of any other person, is not “on the surface for men to see” does not mean that the contributions of such a way of life are invisible. This is what I mean by the process of preparation, karmayoga, for uniting the efforts of East and West yogis in what could begin as consciousness studies, but needs to extend to benefiting society at large. And the groundwork has already been laid by enlightened personalities in the recent past as well as the ongoing service of loka-sangraha (service to uplift humanity) of yogic leaders in the present.
The following are just a few parallels between the material assigned for this course as potential resources for advancing a collaborative work from the yogic perspective of Integral Yoga-Vedanta students from India and the US. So many resources are not included here for lack of time and space, or all practical purposes for our course’s requirements, but that merit at least to mention: the parallels between Integral Yoga and the following: Systems Thinking, the formative practices of the Buddha prior to attaining Nirvana, Kundalini Yoga and Systems Theory, Vedantic Inquiry into “Who am I?” in the light of the participatory inquiry paradigm and identity inquiry, and many more areas to be explored. For the sake of validating the claim of how much the required reading in this course resonates with Integral Yoga-Vedanta, below are some of the author’s citations that speak about overlapping theories.
In The Cultural Complex and Transformative Learning Environment, Dr. J. Gozawa invites an interesting question when she states, “…what I am calling integral pedagogy is inspired by integral philosophy (Chaudhuri, 1965) and integral consciousness studies (Combs, 2009; Wilber, 1995)” (Gozawa, 2010, p. 14). And here “integral philosophy” most likely refers to Integral Yoga-Vedanta, since Chaudhuri was a Vedic scholar informed by the Integral Yoga-Vedanta of Sri Aurobindo; so, the parallels and areas for exploration keep expanding. Also, it may be interesting to put together and examine the different epistemologies that inform Dr. Chaudhuri and Dr. Combs on their respective interpretation of consciousness.
Reading Dr. Robert Burton on “Winning at gambling turns the orbito-frontal cortex into pure neon. Without this exhilaration there would be no addiction” (2008), it is impossible for me to ignore what mystics describe as the thrill of the unknown described by yogis in the spiritual path—a thrill before which sensory pleasures and the fulfillment of world powers pales into insignificance. Why would the search of God, or the pursuit of yogic enlightenment be boring? The big “what if” or the “subjunctive universe” as described by Professor Gozawa, also play into the yogic meaning avidya, the universal principle of ignorance; which has also been described as the field of all possibilities, the Unknown, God, the womb of all discoveries and knowledge. Akin to another enlightening aspect in Yoga-Vedanta, the analogy of mental superimposition or seeing a snake-in-the-rope when in semi-darkness—the natural state of discursive mind.
It is also interesting to bring into play the views of Yoga-Vedanta when considering our Western views like when J. Lehrer recognizes the benefits when “scientists learned about the importance of our moral emotions by studying psychopaths”, and goes on to elaborate, “This might seem callous—tragedy is turned into an investigative tool—but it is also extremely effective. The broken mind helps us understand how the normal mind works” (2009, p. 184). An unfortunate study missing here, according to Yoga-Vedanta is that these studies do not give us insight into the above normal mind, the mind of yogis, the undamaged, or the fully healed body-mind-spirit complex of those with an advanced quality of living. So, why is it that in the West most models are the models of the sub-normal instead of the models of those who have attained a higher level of human potential? And, what if… What would modern psychology and society at large look like if the above-normal minds were factored into the human paradigm?
In Organic Inquiry, Jennifer Clements keeps right at the heels of Integral Yoga-Vedanta time and time again. Of all the theories studied, and especially from the works of Hames, Reason and Senge, OI comes closest to Integral Yoga-Vedanta. OI, suggests a process of preparation, inspiration and integration which resembles sadhana, or yogic disciplines. The role of the liminal reminds one of the stages of creative concentration that arises out of different stages of yogic samadhi. To elaborate on the parallels would take a voluminous essay, but for the sake of brevity, albeit not to disregard its importance which may be at the center of where I would like to dedicate most of inquiries in the future, Clement´s reference to the contribution of Dr. Sangeetha Menon (National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bangalore, India) to OI and Consciousness Studies opens up another world of study. Her contribution will shed much light into what direction should any future collaborative work or karmayoga from yogis in the West looking East might look like. It would be of immense value if, on the other hand, we were considering the importance of extending the contributions of yogis and philosophers like Dr. Menon into US academic transformative and consciousness programs. Almost everything in OI speaks to me in terms of Yoga-Vedanta.
Reading Peter Reason´s Participation in Human Inquiry, kept resonating within the words of the most prominent teachers or gurus in Integral Yoga-Vedanta. First, the mention of autopoiesis, “literally meaning the self-generating poetry of living systems” (Segal, 1986: 127; Maturana and Varela, 1987) is akin to the ways of the Path of Devotion in Integral Yoga; it is also relevant to the highly lyrical mystic epic poems like the Bhagavad Gita and the Ramayana, as well as the enlightening aphorisms and metaphors in the Upanishads. On the other hand, there is room for an interesting discussion from the point of view of Adi Shankaracharya when we consider the polarities in Maturana and Varela´s statement, “what we do not see does not exist”. It all depends on what terms we define that which “exists”.
Reason then touches upon one of the most debated topics in Vedanta, the concept of relativity of sense perception or maya, “We are as a culture beginning to learn that all conceptual knowing is relative, but this learning is not easy: Lawson (1985) has pointed to the sense of vertigo we may experience as concepts crumble and the world as we know it reels off into meaningless” (Reason, p. 12). This hits at the heart of the difference between spiritual materialism in the West and the mystics spirituality of the East: the believe in the reality or the relativity of the perceived world; one more in accord with material pursuits, the other more in accord with modern science. And guess what? Modern science agrees more and more with the sense of relativity of the perception of “reality” than with the more “Western” materialistic views. And the dizziness can be explained in the language of the mystic split experienced in yogic Samadhi.
From Synergic Inquiry, by Yongming Tang and Charles Joiner, the three dimensions of consciousness, the methodology and the process of action, reflection cycle leading to integrating brings more contrasting parallels with Integral Yoga, from a very different point of view, one where language draws from Zen Buddhism. “The task of SI is to help us become aware of our hidden assumptions so that we can expand our consciousness from our own habitual preference for either the visible, logical, or mythical level, until our consciousness extends to all three dimensions” (Tang & Joiner, 2006). And in terms of Integral Yoga and Adwaita-Vedanta, one could extend this metaphor into the experience of expansion of consciousness beyond the empirical and into the mystical or transcendental—yogic Samadhi . In the “dynamic dance between action and reflection” SI resembles Integral Yoga practices of abhyasa and vairagya (repeated effort and letting go a lesser value for a higher value); also interesting would be to compare SI with yogic disciples like meditation, sadhana, and bhakti (or devotional practices). The food for thought here is a veritable feast. In SI the definition of consciousness also differs from that in Yoga-Vedanta; but this is best left for a future opportunity for discussion. As a “methodology for social action and change,” SI, invites contrasting to Integral Yoga.
Also, “Sixth sense of the complementary nature,” in the works of Scott Kelso, J.A., & Engstrom, D.A. speak directly to the illusory nature of empirical perception found in Adwaita Vedanta. From their website, The Four Aspects: TSS, the squiggle sense, TCN the complementary nature, CP complementary pairs, and CD coordination dynamics. “The complementary nature of the human being includes the complementary nature of the human brain~mind, the observer~observing,” (www.thecomplementarynature.org ) can be paired in contrast to the principles found in Patanjali Sutras and Viveka Chudamani and their work reads like the refreshed version of the 10,000 years old Upanishads. Also, the parallels between the principles in Integral Yoga-Vedanta and the works of Dill, J., Senge, P., Hames, R. are irresistible, but need to be taken up in a future essay.
To conclude, I need to confess that my assumptions about collaboration in the face of diversity and cultural complexes, difference, creativity with disappointments and the uncertainty about transformation, have led me through a thrilling discovery of the risks and the joys of ignorance. The Action Plan was revised and found extremely faulty and ineffective. Further conversations with others already ahead in the “plan” are needed and the avenues of communication with the above-mentioned scholars have been established and will continue to be explored. The insights given by Dr. Joanne Gozawa, our professor, have been invaluable to the search for expansion of consciousness, and in the recognition of the need to evaluate our Site of Action and Action Plan under the lens of SI and OI for a more effective conversation in our “current state of globalized world and the changing worldview of multiple emergent realities” (Gozawa, Syllabus: Diversity in Action). It is helpful to know that learning to speak about the academic application of Integral Yoga-Vedanta for personal and global transformation American-English accent as well as in Indian accent is an ongoing task that has occupied scholars from more than a few centuries ago.
Reference
Adi Shankacharya. (1947). Viveka chudamani. (Translation by Swami Prabhavananda and Christopher Isherwood). Hollywood, CA: Vedanta Press.
Burton, R. (2008). On being certain. New York, NY: St. Martin Griffin.
Clements, J. (2004). Organic Inquiry: Toward research in partnership with spirit. The Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, 2004, Vol. 36, No. 1.
Dill, J. (2009). Teaching the virtues of a global citizen. Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture.
Gozawa, J. (2010). The cultural complex & transformative learning environments.
Hames, R.D. (2007). The five literacies of global leadership. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Heehs, P. (1989). Sri Aurobindo: A brief biography. New Delhi, India: Oxford University Press.
Jyotirmayananda, S. (1994). Mysticism of the ramayana. Miami, FL:Yoga Research Foundation. Talk on Viveka Chudamani of Adi Shankaracharya, (May 12, 2010) http://yogaresearch.podomatic.com/entry/eg/2010-05-12T17_37_01-07_00 .
Lehrer, J. (2009). How we decide—the moral mind. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
Menon, S. http://www.nias.res.in/faculty-sangeetamenon.php
http://www.samvada.com/research.htm and http://www.samvada.com/publica.htm
Reason, P. (1994). Participation in human inquiry. London, UK: Sage Publications.
Scott Kelso, J.A., & Engstrom, D.A. (2006) The complementary nature. Cambridge, MA: MIT Publishers. http://thecomplementarynature.com/wordpress/grokking/the-four-aspects
Senge, P., Scharmer, O., Jaworski, J., Flowers, B.S. (2004). Presence: Exploring profound change in people, organizations and society. New York, NY: Currency-Doubleday.
Singer, T. (2000). The vision thing. Chapter 10: cultural Complex & myth & invisibility.
Singer, T. & Kimbles, S. (2004). The cultural complex. Introduction, Chapter 1, 5.
Smith, A. D. (2009). Cosmopolitanism & nationalism. The Hedgehog Review: The Cosmopolitan Predicament. Fall 2009. Volume Eleven. Number Three.
Tang, Y. & Joiner, C. (2006). A collaborative action methodology. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
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