My Gita Part 3

Dharma Versus Riti and Niti Vishnu is not angry with Ravana or Duryodhana or Duryodhana's commanders, for he can see the roots of their self-obsession and psychological blindness. These come from a sense of isolation and abandonment. They feel they have to fend for themselves and there is no one who can help them; and so, rather than realize their human potential, they regress to their animal nature, focussing on outrunning imagined predators, fending off imagined rivals and consuming imagined prey. When humans behave as animals do, despite the human ability to outgrow animal nature, it is adharma. It evokes compa.s.sion in Vishnu. For him, the villainy of Ravana and Duryodhana is viparit-bhakti, reverse love, born of hunger, fear and a yearning for love.

Arjuna, no one is hurt when you walk this path of humanity; no one is killed; even a little effort helps you fear less.-Bhagavad Gita: Chapter 2, Verse 40 (paraphrased).

Dharma is more about empathy than ethics, about intent rather than outcome. I follow dharma when I am concerned about your material, emotional or intellectual hunger. I follow adharma when I focus on my hunger at the cost of yours.

You and I can exchange Empathy enables exchange. I can satisfy a hunger of yours and you can satisfy a hunger of mine. This refers not just to physical hunger, but psychological hunger as well. This act of mutual feeding informs the yagna, the ancient Vedic ritual, which establishes the human ecosystem of mutuality, reciprocity, obligations and expectations that we shall explore in this chapter. Yagna is a key theme in chapters 3 and 4 of The Gita. In Vedic tradition, technically, the word 'karma' refers to yagna. Karma yoga begins when we acknowledge that we are always part of an exchange.

Krishna declares that the only action worth doing is yagna. Yagna refers to the Vedic fire ritual, 4,000 years old, nowadays abbreviated to the havan.

Arjuna, all actions other than yagna entrap us. Yagna alone liberates us.-Bhagavad Gita: Chapter 3, Verse 9 (paraphrased).

The a.s.sociation of yagna with a battle seems strange. However, in The Gita Krishna looks upon it as a metaphor, indicative of relationships. To appreciate this, we have to look at the basics of a yagna.

He who initiates the yagna is called the yajamana. He invokes a deity (devata) and offers him food (bhog) exclaiming, 'Svaha!', meaning, 'This of mine I give you'. He hopes that the invoked deity will give him what he desires (prasad), exclaiming, 'Tathastu!' or 'So be it'. This indicates an exchange.

Yagna Yagna is a very special form of exchange, where we can give and hope to receive. It is give and get, not give and take. When we take without giving, we become the oppressors. When we give and don't get, we become the oppressed. Feeding the other is dharma. Not expecting reciprocation is nishkama karma.

Arjuna, the wise define renunciation as giving up action and detachment as giving up expectation.-Bhagavad Gita: Chapter 18, Verse 2 (paraphrased).

The yagna is mentioned in the first verse (rig) of the first hymn (sukta) of the first book (mandala) of the collection (samhita) known as Rig Veda because it is a reminder of our humanity. No animal feeds another except its own offspring; at best, its pack or herd. Humans can feed everyone around them. Humans can also return the favour. To trade is a very unique human phenomenon. Trading behaviour has been doc.u.mented in chimpanzees and vampire bats, but nothing on the human scale.

Exchange creates a network of expectations and obligations. Yagna thus is the cornerstone of sanskriti (culture). This idea echoes the sentiment of modern economists who see the market as the foundation of society.

When humans began exchanging, we stepped out of the animal world. From exchange came ideas of mutuality, reciprocity, expectation, obligation, debt and balancing accounts that shaped culture. Yagna is a ritual reminder of this very human ability.

Arjuna, way back, Brahma created humans through yagna and declared that yagna will satisfy all human needs. Use yagna to satisfy the other and the other will satisfy you. If you take without giving, you are a thief. Those who feed others and eat leftovers are free of all misery. Those who cook for themselves are always unhappy. Humans need food. Food needs rain. Rain needs exchange. Exchange needs action. Exchange began with divinity, that primal spark of humanity. Those who indulge themselves, those who do not repay it backwards, as well as pay it forward, break the chain, are miserable and spread misery.-Bhagavad Gita: Chapter 3, verses 10 to 16 (paraphrased).

In the Kalpa-sutras, which elaborate Vedic household rituals, the yajamana is advised to perform five yagnas (pancha-yagna) to feed everyone around: the self, the other, family, birds and animals and ancestors. When we do that, the boundary between family and stranger is removed. As the Upanishads say: the whole world becomes family (vasudaivah kutumbakam).

Yagna for Relationships In most writings, yagna is translated as 'sacrifice'. This translation came from the European Orientalists of the eighteenth century who never really conducted the ritual or witnessed it. They probably equated the yagna with the blood sacrifices seen in tribal communities around the world to appease fearsome spirits, or even with the sacrifice of Abraham's son demanded by Abraham's G.o.d as a mark of love and obedience.

Later, scholars realized that there was another word for sacrifice in the Vedic texts, bali, and that yagna was clearly a larger concept. Historians drew attention to the practice of honouring deities (puja) with food, flowers, incense and lamps, that became popular in Puranic times. This had its roots in the Vedic practice of pouring ghee into fire. Both are acts of invocation and libation. Yagna came to be seen as an earlier form of puja. So yagna was then translated as 'worship'.

But the Puranas show yagna in a very different light. In the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, kings perform yagna to get children. Mantras chanted yield instant results: a G.o.d is obliged to give a woman a child, or turn an ordinary arrow into a deadly missile. Yagna thus a.s.sumes expectation and obligation, giving in order to get. Yagna is clearly an exchange.

The word 'exchange' is rarely used to explain yagna. It is problematic. It lacks n.o.bility. We have learned to valourize sacrifice, where there is giving without getting. We even celebrate worship, where getting is a surprise, a bonus, not the outcome of any expectation. This, despite the fact that the last hymn of every yagna and puja is always the chant of expected outcomes (phala-stuti). Perhaps we have been conditioned to be ashamed of human yearnings, maybe by mendicants of the Buddhist, Jain and Hindu orders who chose to renounce the world. Perhaps our preference for socialism in the post-Independence era made us frown upon the idea of exchange, as it reeks of a trader mentality. How can we trade with the divine?

By calling the battle at Kuru-kshetra a yagna, Krishna indicates that Arjuna is part of an exchange. Either he is the yajamana who will please his brothers, or he is the devata who has to repay the debt he owes his brothers. The Pandavas depend on him, and he is indebted to the Pandavas. To deny these dependencies, these expectations and obligations, is to deny humanity.

The monastic order rejected the yagna. In essence, they rejected the other. For yagna is all about paying cognizance to the hunger of the other. The other is both an individual (para) as well as the collective (param). Yagna is about the relationship between the individual (aham) and the other (para/param) through exchange.

In the Shiva Purana, when the hermit Shiva beheads Daksha and destroys his yagna, all the G.o.ds beg him to give life back to the yajamana and restore the yagna, for without it they will starve. Thus, the devatas depend on the yajamana as much as the yajamana depends on the devatas. There is interdependence at play here.

Arjuna, those who offer food to the G.o.ds and survive on the leftovers find brahmana. Not those who offer nothing. Different yagnas are thus laid at the mouth of the brahmana. It all begins with choosing an action. Rather than choose to give up the world, choose to understand the brahmana, which demands action, hence yagna. Thus, informed by the wise, you will see all beings in yourself, and all beings as part of me. There will be no confusion.-Bhagavad Gita: Chapter 4, verses 26 to 35 (paraphrased).

In Puranic lore, he who gives upon getting is a deva; he who seeks retrieval of what he thinks has been stolen is an asura; he who grabs, takes without giving, is a rakshasa; he who h.o.a.rds is a yaksha! He who does not partic.i.p.ate in the yagna, does not give or want to get, is a shramana or tapasvi, the hermit, much feared in the Puranas as the cause of drought, hence starvation. Within us is the yajamana, the devata, the asura, the rakshasa, the yaksha and the shramana. They manifest in different interactions.

Brahma's Sons Once, as Shiva was pa.s.sing by a yagna-shala, where a yagna was being conducted, the wives of the yajamanas, the yagna-patnis, ran after him, begging him to satisfy them. The yajamanas got upset and created, out of the yagna, a whole bunch of monsters. Shiva destroyed all the monsters and then began to dance. He used various gestures of his hands and feet to convey the wisdom of the yagna that escaped the yajamanas, that the yagna existed to satisfy the yearnings of those around them, not to create monsters to defend themselves.

A similar story is found in the Bhagavat Purana, where Krishna, while tending to his cows, comes upon a few yajamanas performing yagna and asks them for food. They ignore him. So he goes to their wives and the yagna-patnis feed him all the offerings they had prepared for the yagna. The yajamanas are furious but then realize that their wives look content, while they feel angry and frustrated. The yagna had yielded results for their wives, not them, for the yagna-patnis had fed the hungry and discovered the true meaning of the yagna.

Arjuna, like a well surrounded by water, hymns and rituals are of no value to the one who has understood the meaning.-Bhagavad Gita: Chapter 2, Verse 46 (paraphrased).

Human hunger is not just about food. We seek emotional and intellectual nourishment too. We seek meaning, validation, significance, value, purpose, power and understanding. We seek ideas about wealth, power, relationships and existence. We seek entertainment. We seek food to liberate us from the fear of the predator, security to liberate us from the fear of the prey and meaning to liberate us from the fear of invalidation. This transforms every meeting into an exchange. Lovemaking is yagna. Child-bearing is yagna. Child-rearing is yagna. Feeding is yagna. Teaching is yagna. Service is yagna. War is also yagna. Exchange can be used to satisfy our desires, or repay our debts. It can entrap us, or liberate us. It depends not on the action, but on the thought underlying the action.

A wish (sankalpa) always precedes a yagna. It is about asking for whom are we performing the action: for the benefit of the self (aham) or the benefit of the other (para)? Who is the beneficiary (aradhya)? And who is merely the instrument (nimitta)? In nishkama karma, the devata is the aradhya and the yajamana is the nimitta.

Approach to Exchange In the Ramayana, disruption happens because characters act for their own pleasure at the cost of others and resolution follows when Vishnu acts for the pleasure of others, not his own. It is Dasharatha's desire for sons, Kaikeyi's desire for the kingdom, Surpanakha's desire for pleasure and Ravana's desire for domination that cause disruption. Ram works not for his personal happiness, but the happiness of Ayodhya. In the Mahabharata, it is Shantanu's desire for a young wife, Dhritarashtra's desire for the throne and Yudhishtira's desire not to lose a gamble that causes disruption. Krishna works not for his personal happiness, but for the happiness of the Kurus.

Krishna asks Arjuna to fight the war not for his own sake but for the sake of others. He has to consider himself merely the instrument, for the karma-bija of the war has already been sown and the karma-phala of carnage is inevitable.

Arjuna, I am time that destroys worlds. Even without you, these warriors are doomed to die. So arise and fight; destroy your opponents and claim your success. It is I who has already killed them. Make yourself merely my instrument.-Bhagavad Gita: Chapter 11, verses 32 and 33 (paraphrased).

To do yagna is to recognize that we live in a sea of a.s.sumed expectations and obligations. You and I can h.o.a.rd, grab, give in order to get, get before giving or simply withdraw from the exchange. We can act out of desire, duty or care. We can choose to expect or control outcome, or not.

You and I withdraw in fear What stops us from empathizing and exchanging? What makes us want to control the other, or simply withdraw, find peace in the isolation of the cave? The process of discovering the source of disconnection is called yoga, though the word yoga itself means 'to connect'. It involves moving through the many containers that const.i.tute deha in order to discover dehi. Krishna starts speaking of yoga in Chapter 5 of The Gita, elaborating it further in Chapter 6. Yoga is what we will explore in this chapter. With this, we move from the outer social world to the inner psychological world, from karma yoga to bhakti yoga.

Each of the eighteen chapters of The Gita is t.i.tled 'yoga'. These are then bunched together to give us three types of yoga: behavioural (karma), emotional (bhakti) and intellectual or cognitive (gyana). So what does the word 'yoga' exactly mean?

Colloquially, Indians use the word 'jog' for yoga. In astrology, jog means alignment of the stars that results in favourable conditions for an activity. From jog comes the word 'jogadu', the resourceful individual, a word typically used in the eastern parts of India for one who is able to create alignment and connections in a world full of misalignment and disconnections. The word 'jogadu' has given rise to the words 'jugad' and 'jugadu' in the northern parts of India, where it means improvisation and even by-pa.s.sing the system. Sadly, today, jugad is used in a negative sense, for it is practised for the self at the cost of the other, in the spirit of adharma, not dharma.

The word 'yoga' has its roots in the sound 'yuj' which means to yoke, like a horse to a chariot. The word 'vi-yoga' refers to disconnection or separation. Thus, 'yoga' has something to with binding things together, or connecting things.

Traditionally, yoga has been used as a complement to sankhya. Sankhya means enumeration and refers to a.n.a.lysis, the tendency to break things down into their const.i.tuent parts. Yoga is its complement and refers to synthesis, the tendency to bind parts to establish a composite whole. In art, sankhya is visualized as an axe (parashu), used to slice things into parts, while yoga is visualized as a string (pasha), used to tie things together. Ganesha, the scribe of the Mahabharata-and hence The Gita-holds these symbols in his hands to remind all of these two techniques of enquiry. Krishna uses both sankhya and yoga to solve Arjuna's problem. He establishes boundaries using sankhya and then dissolves them all using yoga.

Arjuna, practise yoga with conviction and without dismay, for it will connect you with that from which you are disconnected, and unhook you from your sorrow. -Bhagavad Gita: Chapter 6, Verse 23 (paraphrased).

a.n.a.lysis and Synthesis Nature is full of discrete units: planets, stars, rocks, rivers, plants, animals and humans. These units are naturally drawn together or pulled apart by certain forces of attraction or repulsion. In the physical world, these forces have been observed at inter-planetary as well as sub-atomic levels. In the biological world, they manifest as animals seeking opportunity, such as food and mates, and shunning threats, such as rivals and predators. This attraction (raga) and repulsion (dvesha) is part of life.

RagaDvesha Yoga enables us to be aware of these natural forces of attraction and repulsion, and not be swept away by them. Krishna equates the senses to cows (indriya-go-chara) that graze on the pasture made of various kinds of stimuli. Yoga turns our mind into the cowherd who determines what the senses should or should not graze upon. Thus, yoga has much to do with the mind, and it complements yagna that has much to do with society. Yagna is the outer journey, while yoga is the inner journey that Arjuna has to undertake.

Yoga and Yagna Arjuna feels that if he withdraws from the battle, all problems will be resolved and there will be peace. However, not fighting a war does not tackle the underlying hunger and fear. It simply denies and suppresses the hunger and fear and the consequent rage, which then ends up festering secretly as people 'pretend', awaiting to explode more intensely at a later date. Outer peace does not guarantee inner peace. Further, it does not take into consideration the other's thoughts and feelings. Arjuna's desire for peace, howsoever n.o.ble, may not be shared by Bhima or Duryodhana, who are ready for war. Forcing his n.o.ble view on them would be judgement, devoid of empathy, hence adharma. Arjuna may not want to do yagna, but he cannot stop others from doing so. Our decision to act or not act cannot be insensitive to the feelings of those around us. Hence, any discussion on yagna is complemented with discussions on yoga. While yagna focusses on tangible giving and getting, yoga focusses on discovering intangible thoughts and emotions of the yajamana as well as the devata, the boundaries that we create and use to include some as family and exclude others as enemy.

Arjuna, your mind is your friend and your enemy. If you control the mind, it is your friend. If your mind controls you, it is your enemy.-Bhagavad Gita: Chapter 6, verses 5 and 6 (paraphrased).

Mind of the Yajamana and the Devata The value of the mind slowly amplifies as The Gita progresses. In Chapter 3 of The Gita, Arjuna asks whether Krishna values knowledge over action. Krishna replies that he values informed action. In Chapter 5 of The Gita, Arjuna asks if Krishna values action over renunciation. Krishna replies that he values detached action. Informing the mind about the exchange and detaching action from the expectation of results demand that Arjuna take an inner journey.

Arjuna, the exchange of knowledge is greater than the exchange of things for ultimately all exchange culminates in the mind.-Bhagavad Gita: Chapter 4, Verse 33 (paraphrased).

Krishna introduces yoga as an inner yagna, where we are our own yajamana and devata, our own beneficiary and instrument. We choose our stimulus. We choose our response. Here, the fire is not in the altar outside, but can be our body, our senses, our mind, even our breath and our digestive fire.

Arjuna, there is yagna everywhere, where offerings are made to various fires. Worldly stimuli can be offered to the sensory fires. The sensory experience can be offered to the mental fire. The mental understanding can be offered to the wisdom fire. Breath is offered to the fire of life, as is food. Fasting is offered to the fire of restraint.-Bhagavad Gita: Chapter 4, verses 26 to 28 (paraphrased).

Patanjali, in his Yoga-sutra, written around the time of The Gita, defines yoga as stopping the rippling and twisting of the mind (chitta-vritti-nirodha) caused by various experiences and memories that result in disconnection. He gives an eight-step process to stop the ripples and untwist the mind, so as to restore connection. With each step we move inwards through the containers that const.i.tute the body.

With yama, we limit social engagements by not indulging in s.e.x, violence, falsehood, theft and greed. Then, with niyama, we discipline ourselves by practising cleanliness, contentment, austerity, reflection and having faith in divinity. Third comes asana, where we activate the body using various postures. Fourth is pranayama, through which we regulate the breath. With pratyahara, we withdraw from sensory inputs. With dharana, we become aware of the big picture and gain perspective. With dhyana, we become attentive and focussed. With samadhi, we go further within, experience our emotions and discover fear!

Patanjali's Yoga Fear (bhaya) is a neuro-biological fact. It is the first emotion that manifests with the arrival of life. It is a critical emotion, essential in the struggle for life. For it evokes hunger (kshudha) and makes the organism seek food (bhog) to nourish itself.

Fear of death by starvation makes trees grow, seek out and grab sunlight as well as water and nutrients from the soil, so that they can nourish themselves. This same fear makes animals wander endlessly in search of pasture and prey, and form packs that collaborate to increase the chances of finding food. Fear of being killed makes the prey shun the predator, and form herds to increase the chances of survival. Then there is the fear of losing food to a rival that makes animals compete. Fear of dying also creates the restless urge to undertake extra efforts to find a mate, reproduce and risk death to raise an offspring, so at least a part of the creature outlives death.

In humans, the fear is amplified by imagination. We can imagine hunger, our hunger and the hunger of those around us, current and future hunger, and so our quest for food is insatiable. We can imagine predators and so feel insecure all the time. This amplified fear goads human imagination to invent various physical and social instruments to create excess food, distribute and secure it; and themselves.

The greatest human fear is validation. We seek meaning (artha): who are we? What is our role in the world? Surely we are not just animals-predator, prey, rival or mate? This fear gives rise to the notion of property and to hierarchies in society. Out of fear, we do not share. Due to fear, we fight over property.

Fear crumples our mind (chitta), knots it, twists it, creates ripples and waves and eventually wrinkles our mind. These wrinkles in the mind are called impressions (samskaras). They appeared with the first experience of fear in the first living organisms. The experience of all feeders and food, every plant and animal, has been stacked up over millions of years. The crumpling has been intensified by imagination (manas). It causes disconnection. The frightened, hence crumpled, hence disconnected, mind is referred to as aham. The mind that is not crumpled, hence connected, is referred to as atma. Yoga is about un-crumpling and reconnecting, moving from aham to atma.

Aham to Atma The Gita reveals a familiarity with all the practices referred to in the Yoga-sutra. Krishna speaks of using the breath to make the journey from the outside to the inside.

Arjuna, ignore the onslaught of external stimuli and focus between your eyebrows, regulating inhalation and exhalation at the nostrils, to liberate yourself from fear, desire and anger, and discover me within you, I who receive and consume every offering of your yagnas.-Bhagavad Gita: Chapter 5, verses 27 to 29 (paraphrased).

There is reference to meditation in The Gita: sitting still and calming the mind until one's breath is natural and rhythmic.

Arjuna, sit still on a mat that is neither too high nor too low. Your head, neck and back aligned, still your senses, focus your mind, gazing at the nose-tip.-Bhagavad Gita: Chapter 6, verses 11 to 13 (paraphrased).

The point is to make one's way through the turbulence of the mind and discover the tranquillity beyond.

Arjuna, use your mind to ignore sensory stimuli, outgrow that desire, disconnect from intelligent arguments and ideas, rein in the restless fickle wandering emotions, expand your mind and discover the tranquillity within. -Bhagavad Gita: Chapter 6, verses 24 to 27 (paraphrased).

And having once realized the fear within, the yogi is able to see the fear without, in others around, in individuals as well as in the collective, for he is connected.

Arjuna, those connected see everything equally, for they discover me everywhere, in everyone and everything. They always see me, and I see them. They always establish me everywhere. I am always established in them.-Bhagavad Gita: Chapter 6, verses 29 to 31 (paraphrased).

This is where The Gita departs from the Yoga-sutra. While the Yoga-sutra speaks of samadhi as complete withdrawal from the material world, Krishna's Gita speaks of samadhi very differently, as the ability to see the world with perfect equanimity, without judgement.

Arjuna, one who has attained samadhi is not disturbed by unhappiness, nor does he crave happiness. He is not consumed by craving, fear or anger. He is at peace in pleasant and unpleasant circ.u.mstances. He is content in wisdom.-Bhagavad Gita: Chapter 2, verses 55 to 56 (paraphrased).

This divergence from the Yoga-sutra is not surprising, as mythological tales inform us that Patanjali was a serpent who overheard Shiva revealing the secret of yoga to Shakti. Shiva is a hermit. His path is suitable for the tapasvi who does not wish to engage with the world. Krishna speaks to the yajamana, the householder, and the whole point of yoga is to facilitate engagement with the world. If the tapasvi is focussed on the inner journey, and if the yajamana is focussed on the outer journey, then the yogi takes the inner journey in order to be better at the outer journey.

Arjuna, the yogi is far superior to a hermit who withdraws from the world, to a scholar who understands everything but does nothing, or a householder who does everything without understanding.-Bhagavad Gita: Chapter 6, Verse 46 (paraphrased).

Patanjali Yoga brings awareness and attention to fear. By recognizing the reality of his own fears, the yogi is able to appreciate the fears of those around him. He observes why he withdraws and why those around him withdraw. He does not seek to amplify fear by trying to control people. He works towards comforting them, enabling them to outgrow their fear. Thus is born empathy and the ability to let go. The yajamana performs nishkama karma.

A yogi looks within to appreciate the mind that occupies the body, the thoughts that occupy the mind, the fears that occupy the thoughts, the opportunities and threats that occupy the fears, and the fears of others that occupy those opportunities and those threats.

You and I hesitate to trust Connecting with the other is not easy, especially when we look upon each other as predator or prey, rival or mate. In such a situation we trust no one but ourselves, as animals tend to do. Or we trust the other only in situations of extreme helplessness, as only humans can. Thus, we become asuras and devas. Krishna discusses the difference between the two in Chapter 16 of The Gita, but we discuss it much earlier in My Gita as we need to understand 'G.o.ds' before we plunge into conversations about 'G.o.d'. These beings are not 'out there' in the world, but very much 'in here' in our minds.

The words 'deva' and 'asura' refer to divinities in the Veda, and are roughly translated as G.o.ds and demons, but Krishna uses them differently. A deva is one who accepts the reality of atma; an asura does not. Thus, Krishna sees devas and asuras not in supernatural terms or as inherently good or evil, but as people who value the dehi and those who don't, respectively. The asuras are trapped by the literal and the measurable, while the devas appreciate the metaphorical and the non-measurable. Those who do not look beyond the body and material reality, says Krishna, have no hope of freedom, despite any material accomplishments.

Arjuna, those who think as devas do are eventually liberated and those who think as asuras do are forever trapped. Fear not, you think like a deva.-Bhagavad Gita: Chapter 16, Verse 5 (paraphrased).

While asuras are equated with non-believers (nastikas) and devas with believers (astika), the split is not so simple. Devas may believe, but do they experience?

Non-Belief, Belief, Experience The Gita presents atma as a fact, hence in Chapter 17, Verse 23, the phrase 'om tat sat' is used, which roughly translates as 'that which is forever true'. It is the closest we get to the definitive article 'the' in Sanskrit. This fact, however, can never be measured, therefore from a scientific point of view it can never be proven. It can, however, be experienced (anu-bhava). Believing is a cognitive process, an acceptance of a conceptual truth. Experience is an emotional process, the journey from the head to the heart. To enable anu-bhava, one has to simultaneously perform the inner journey of yoga and the outer journey of yagna.

Arjuna, those who cleanse themselves with contemplation and meditation discover me, embrace me, find shelter in me and are liberated from yearning, fear and anger.-Bhagavad Gita: Chapter 4, Verse 10 (paraphrased).

Two thousand years ago, hermits (shramanas) popularized the practice of yoga, but they did not care so much for the outer journey of yagna. They valued the inner fire of the mind (tapa), not the outer fire (agni) of the altar. While the word tapasya is used interchangeably with yoga, tapasya refers to the inner journey, while yoga refers to the inner journey that eventually leads to an outer journey. The hermits were tapasvis, who valued meditation and contemplation, not exchange. They can thus be differentiated from the yogis, who valued meditation and contemplation as well as exchange. Hermits valued withdrawal over engagement, celibacy over marriage, isolation over union and zero (shunya) over infinity (ananta). In other words, hermits caused a rupture between the inner and outer journeys.

Rupture of the Inner and Outer Journey In the Puranas, this rupture is made explicit. The devas prefer yagna but not tapasya. The asuras prefer tapasya but not yagna. Both are the children of Brahma. Indra, leader of the devas, who is not committed to the inner journey, is eternally insecure: he fears those who perform yagna and tapasya, and considers them as rivals. So he disrupts the yagna of kings by stealing their horses. He sends damsels known as apsaras to enchant sages immersed in tapasya and irritates them by seducing their neglected wives. Asuras, on the other hand, are visualized as performing tapasya and obtaining, from Brahma, many powers that overpower Indra. Thus, devas are portrayed as ent.i.tled, insecure beings while asuras are portrayed as deprived, angry beings. Though half-brothers, these sons of Brahma do not like each other: the devas fear the asuras and the asuras hate the devas.

Stealing Horses, Seeking Brahma's Help and Sending Damsels In the Vedas, the devas and asuras are celestial beings. But in the Puranas, they are clearly rivals. The Europeans identified asuras first as t.i.tans, in line with Greek mythology, and later as demons, in line with Abrahamic mythology. This causes great confusion, as the asuras are neither 'old G.o.ds' nor 'forces of evil'. Both old G.o.ds and forces of evil are unwanted and need to be excluded, while in the Puranas, both are needed to churn the ocean of milk, and draw out its treasures. Since the devas were visualized as being surrounded by affluence and abundance in swarga, they were naturally preferred over the asuras as the devas had a lot that they could give, if made happy, while the asuras had nothing.

The visualization of asuras either as villains, anti-heroes or even wronged heroes persists even today amongst writers on mythology, who see asuras as old tribal units overrun, even enslaved and demonized, by yagna-performing Vedic people. Asuras are even seen as embodiments of our negative impulses and devas as personifying positive impulses. We overlook the fact that in popular Hinduism neither devas nor asuras are given the same status as ishwara or bhagavan. We need to see devas and asuras as our emotions that prevent us from completing the outer and inner journeys.

Puranic stories typically begin with Indra not paying attention to the yagna while an asura is deep in tapasya. Indra's power thus wanes while the asura's power waxes. The asura is able to invoke Brahma and get boons from him, using which he attacks, defeats and drives the devas out of their paradise, swarga. Dispossessed, Indra and the devas go to Brahma, not for boons but for help. Brahma then directs them either to Shiva, Vishnu or the G.o.ddess, who form the foundation of the three major theistic schools of Hinduism.

In many ways, these stories echo the history of Indian thought: the decline of the yagna rituals of Vedic times, the rising popularity of monastic orders that practise tapasya, and eventually the triumph of theistic traditions. They also reflect the rise of the ritual known as 'puja' that forces the devotee to look at the divinity outside himself through images in the other, thus enabling the yoga of the self with the world around.

Rediscovery of Atma Puja It is significant to note that the asuras seek Brahma's boons and the devas seek Brahma's help. The asuras are not interested in Brahma; only in his possessions. They perform tapasya not to attain wisdom that takes away insecurity, but to simply acquire powers known as siddhis. The devas are interested in Brahma and are directed to Shiva, Vishnu and the G.o.ddess, a calling for the inner journey that grants wisdom, hence takes away insecurity. But the devas do not complete this inner journey.

As the Puranas remind us repeatedly, after either of the G.o.ds or the G.o.ddess vanquishes the asura and Indra gets back his paradise, he goes back to his old ways, feeling ent.i.tled and finding joy in material things, getting insecure with yajamanas who do too much yagna and tapasvis who do too much tapasya, unable to enjoy his prosperity as he feels his paradise is under siege, much like successful people in the world today, who think of G.o.d only in bad times and forget about G.o.d in good times. For them G.o.d is all about their own fortune, not everybody's fortune. For them there is no G.o.d within who enables the world without.