The Four Propensities

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The Four Propensities

The Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo and the Veda recognise four propensities in the evolving human individual. Four tendencies in various proportions. First, the impulse to wisdom and knowledge. Second, the impulse to heroism and force. Third, the impulse to skill and enjoyment. Fourth, the impulse to work and serve.

The resemblance of this scheme to the much maligned Chaturvarna is no accident. Ancient civilisations attempted structuring societies in specific taxonomies for harmonious living. Each one more or less deformed as determined by the force of the idea and capacity of the peoples to internalise it.

Here is what Sri Aurobindo says about the Chaturvarna:

We must realise that the ancient Aryan Rishis meant by the chaturvarnya not a mere social division, but a recognition of God manifesting Himself in fundamental swabhava, which our bodily distinctions, our social orders are merely an attempt to organise in the symbols of human life, often a confused attempt, often a mere parody and distortion of the divine thing they try to express. — Sri Aurobindo

These impulses are not mutually exclusive. They exist in proportions within us, with one dominating.

Every man has in himself all the four dharmas, but one predominates, in one he is born and that strikes the note of his character and determines the type and cast of all his actions; the rest is subordinated to the dominant type and helps to give it its complement. — Sri Aurobindo

And why should one bother with this in Yoga? Well, according to accepted conventions the aim of Yoga is release from the human condition…an escape into an ethereal terrain. At least this is so according to dominant views from Vedanta and Buddhism.

But the Veda and Integral Yoga conceive of another possibility. The perfection of human life, the out-flowering of the immanent Divine in the lower triple realms of Manas, Prana and Deha…mind, vital and physical beings. To raise our currently impoverished capacities into the full plentitude of the energies that wait to pour out from the divine heights. Wisdom, Valour, Plentitude and Service…all manifested and integrated in our being under the auspicies of the Satyam-Rtam-Brhat…the Truth, the Right and the Vast.

The perfected man develops in himself all four capacities and contains at once the god of wisdom & largeness, the god of heroism and force, the god of skill and enjoyment, the god of work & service. — Sri Aurobindo

This clue provides us a framework of growth, a pathway for the expansion of our capacities. For our aspiration is not a thing blind, not a ticket to hurl ourselves into a featureless Infinity. Not for us the impoverishing ascetic narrowness, nor the debilitating pittance of the materialist.

Our aspiration is Agni, the one in whose wake follow the procession of the Gods and their Powers. And Agni’s progressive waking results in the progressive perfection of our four impulses and capacities. And to that high aspiration we shall yoke our wills, and be guided into luminous becomings in the now and the after.

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(Picture Courtesy PuronoCalcutta)

References: Record of Yoga, Sri Aurobindo