Aishwarya

Can't blame you if what comes to your mind is Aishwarya Rai, Hollywood star and former Miss World. To a yogi, however, the word aishwarya is a heavily loaded term with a profoundly esoteric meaning in practice, thought and philosophy In epistemological terms aishwarya means positive activity emanating from self-reliance, self-esteem and self-discipline. Aishwarya also connotes selfdirection. The most important aspect of aishwarya is that it stems from and has at its core the idea of positive self direction as against self destruction. Unfortunately most of us tend to head towards self-destruction.

Behavioural therapists encourage us to practise moral and ethical practices through positive reinforcement which increases our capacity towards self-reliance. Since aishwarya is positive activity its flow and continuity requires inner strength and wisdom. Our scriptures reflect the sadhaka's or spiritual aspirant's prayers and guidance for tejas or strength and illumination. Strength is important but more importantly wisdom should manifest this strength or else we may indulge in acts of undesirable activities which are both not only impulsive and wasteful but also quite often reprehensible.

Books of wisdom like the Ramayana, the Mahabharata, the Bible, all bear testament to ample examples of misuse of strength for personal power and petty gain. Aishwarya has an inbuilt aspect of fortitude and patience — strong resolve that helps us overcome the trials and tribulations of daily life. We only need to look around to see that strength given to us is being used in conflict situations. While the fortitude aspect of aishwarya also implies bala or strength we must use this strength to fight temptation and ignorance. Along with pride, anger jealousy greed, egocentricity and fear; ignorance and temptation are the real enemies that we need to overcome with the help of bala or strength. Through practice and deployment of positive bala we cut through the roots of our afflictive tendencies and thus also hack our way through our primordial affliction, which is ignorance. In this way we overcome lower states of existence as a pasu or animal-like existence characterised by gross attachments or desires, fixations and addictions of lower materialistic orders linked only to satiation of sense-gratification. Through practice and deployment of aishwarya we overcome these gross tendencies and rise to more exalted states of existence.

Today's mind management and personality development techniques claim to uplift us and help us cultivate good habits.But the difference here lies in the fact that most modern techniques lead to further ego building and self-cherishing and hence work at gross physical or outer levels only. The anomaly of modern techniques is that they work at enhancing our personality or 'outer shell'. The accent is more on 'looking good' and 'seeming good' rather than genuinely 'feeling good' and becoming good'.

Yogic techniques help us achieve subtler and longer lasting states that are beneficial for the soul. Therefore the individual does not have to inflate his ego at the cost of his universal self. How then is aishwarya cultivated by the yogi? Aishwarya along with tejas and bala cannot be cultivated by the weak in body, mind and spirit. Application and repeated practice as prescribed in the eight-fold path of Patanjali yoga is essential. We then purge ourselves of lethargy weaknesses and negative traits. As the scripture puts it, the emphasis is on acquiring a healthy physique, firmness of mind and disciplined will.