The Essence of the Aitareya and Taittiriya Upanishads

by Swami Krishnananda

Thus, the interference of the so-called factors of space-time in the substance of the Absolute is the cause of the manifestation we call this vast universe. Therefore, self-control, control of the senses, mind control, yoga practice, whatever it is, is not a withdrawal of the mind from the substance of the object, which is the selfhood of things, but from the name and the form which are the external characters of the object. The selfhood of the object is the same as the selfhood of ours. That is not the problem. The problem is the externality of it. Who told us that it is out there? The space makes us feel so. There is something called space. We do not know what space is, what time is. These are only some words that we are using to describe a thing which is ultimately unintelligible.

The space-time factor is nothing but a force of externality; that is all we can say about it. We cannot say anything more than that because it is involved in our experience. Space and time are part and parcel of our experience itself and, therefore, we cannot say anything about them. Yet, this much can be understood of them: They are expressional habits of the mind, they are the factors which pull consciousness in a particular direction called externality, and yoga practice is nothing but the subdual of the character of the mind from its movement in terms of space and time.

So the control of the mind, or withdrawal of the senses, is a very difficult task. It involves a herculean effort indeed, because it involves a very subtle understanding of what is expected to be done. There are many people who have a wrong notion of the nature of things. They think that to become a yogi or a seeker of Truth, one has to renounce things. We are always told by religions that we have to renounce things and the world in order to reach God. But we renounce the substance itself, together with the name and the form. This is a mistake arising on account of the incapacity of the mind to distinguish between the name and form, and the existence as such.

There is a humorous story. There was a small boy whose mother was very ill. She was an old lady. She was lying in bed, almost in a dying condition. Flies were sitting on her body, and one fly was sitting on her nose again and again, troubling her so much that people told the boy: “Please drive the fly away. Don’t allow the fly to trouble the old lady. She is in a very bad condition.” “Oh! Yes,” he said. “I will drive this fly away.” But the fly would not go easily like that. Again and again he tried to fan it off, but again and again it sat on her nose. So he took a huge stick and gave a blow so forcefully that it broke the nose of the mother. The fly went off! The poor boy did not know that he was hitting his mother, and instead of driving away the fly, he broke the head and face of that poor lady.

Similarly, this sort of mistake we may commit in rejecting the world. It is not the world that we have to reject. The worldness in the object, the externality in the object, and the non-selfhood, anatmatva, in things have to be thrown off. Here is the crux of the whole matter. Here it is that we always become a miserable failure. When we come to this point, it is hard for us to grasp what this actually means. We think that to leave the house and to go to a forest is renunciation. But it is not, because we are still in the world only. Even in the forest, we are in the world; the world has not gone out of us. The idea that there is a world outside us is to be abrogated. Otherwise, if yoga had been so simple, everybody would have become yogis. A little closing of the eyes, a little japa and a little breathing will not make us a yogi. The intellect is a terrible hindrance; it will never allow us to grasp the truth of things. It always misleads us; it always takes us in the wrong direction. We then say, “I reject this, I fast, I don’t sleep, I don’t talk.” All these techniques that we adopt in yoga do not even touch the fringe of the actual problem. They are all very necessary things, as fasting before treatment of a disease. But fasting itself is not the treatment; we have to give the proper medicament and take care of the body by positive treatment, etc. So, likewise is the case with yoga.

It is not enough if we merely practise the preliminaries of external detachment, which are important enough, no doubt. But they are preliminaries only, and not yoga proper. Yoga proper is an internal psychological technique. It is the most difficult of things to conceive because the mind thinks of an object even in the act of rejecting the object. This is the difficulty. Even when we try to remove the idea of an object from our mind, we have some object in our mind. The objectness does not leave us, just as when we love a person or thing, we think of that person; and when we hate that person also we think of him. Merely because we hate a thing, it does not mean that it has gone out of our mind. So, even renunciation may be a bondage. We may go to a worse condition, if it is not properly conceived. We should not think that hatred is the opposite of love. It is not true; it is the same as love, in a different form. So it is not so simple an affair to practise yoga. It requires a very careful analysis of what is happening inside. The problems are not outside. They are not in the world; they are not caused by people. People are not troubling us, and nobody is giving us any problem; we are our problems.

Therefore, the whole problem is in the incapacity of the mind to grasp the peculiar relationship that it has established with objects outside. Now when we say outside, it means again the peculiar concept of outsideness that has arisen in the mind. This habit of thinking in terms of non-self, anatman, externality, space and time has to be removed. Then the world becomes something not intended to be rejected but absorbed into our Self, because the astitva, or the being of the world, is the Atman of the Absolute, which is the same as ours.

So here we have got a little clue to the inner significance of these two verses I quoted from the Kathopanishad, where the ultimate Purusha is supposed to be realised by an internal movement, which is not a movement towards a town or a village or city or some object. The great commentator Acharya Sankara is never tired of telling us in such contexts that movement to God does not mean movement in space; it is not actually moving in a motorcar or an airplane. It is a conscious transfiguration that is taking place inwardly. Even the word ‘inward’ may be misconstrued. It is a universalisation that is taking place gradually, which looks like an inwardness on account of the Atmanhood present there. This is yoga.

These are very difficult things indeed, and it is really unfortunate if we should think ourselves well placed, very happy, and that we are great seekers of yoga. We are really very far, and so we should be very careful. We are in a difficult situation; we are in a world of great complexities, diversities and misconceptions which sidetrack us every moment of time. Every thought that arises in our mind is a wrong thought. Correct thought very rarely comes to us, because we have no time to think correctly, as we are always moving in the same old groove of traditional thinking. The actual reoriented thinking is unknown to us. We have no time; we are always busy—busy in doing some nonsense, and that has engulfed us in such an intensity and to such an extent that we are immersed in it. And in that immersed condition we are crying for God, and He does not come. So it requires ultimately the grace of God Himself.

After all this, we come to the conclusion that this terrible mess cannot be crossed over unless some miracle takes place. By some mystery of the workings of nature, as it were, divine hands begin to operate and grace descends, and we are brought in contact with a proper Guru or a teacher. That itself is a great blessing. Contact with a proper Guru is really coming in contact with God Himself. To get a Guru is as difficult as getting God. And once you get a proper teacher, then you are on the path. This is a great achievement, and again this is the work of God.