The Epistemology of Yoga

by Swami Krishnananda

This ontological status is the reality of the object. This is its original, the archetype which we have to contact in samadhi —not the definition or the idea that we have. How can we achieve this? We are involved in this tangle of definitive perception and ideational notion of an object. Everything is only this much; nothing more can be available to us in this world. How could we have samadhi with the original of things, which we have not seen? These are the secrets of meditation, into which one is supposed to be initiated, and are not subjects for a platform lecture. Yoga is never taught from a pulpit or from a broadcasting station. It is always a communication from spirit to spirit, from a Guru to a disciple. Such mysteries cannot be understood by reading books or even hearing lectures. How do we contact the original? We have to do that, somehow.

When we contact it by freeing ourselves from our involvement in the definition of an object and the idea about it, we rub our shoulders against it; we recognise it as it is, as it has always been, and as it shall ever be. The mask of the object is lifted when we lift the mask of our perceptional process. Since we are looking at things with a blinkered mind, we cannot see all the aspects of anything in this world. When we cast off these blinkers and lift the mask from the spirit which we really are, we will find, simultaneously, the mask outside is also lifted. The progress in yoga is a parallel of movement and attainment, subjectively as well as objectively. Which comes first and which comes afterwards, we cannot know. Perhaps both things happen simultaneously, internally and externally.

This is a very hard job. In the perception of an object, we cannot break through this tangle of our wrong notion and the completely different way in which the object is in itself. But, by abhyasa, or practice, we can break through this tangle and reach the original of the object.

Here we are in samadhi. The mind is balanced completely. It does not perceive the object any more; it is balanced with that object. It stands on par with the reality of the object, and it should not any more be considered as an object. Would you like to be called an object of anybody? It is an insult. It is a derogatory definition of a person to call him an object. It means a satellite. It is a very unpleasant word—not a cultured way of defining people. It is to rob the thing of its subjectivity and its own status.

Here, it does not remain a satellite or a thing of satisfaction by contact. In samadhi there is no contact, because contact is an operation of the senses. Here it is a contact-less coming together of one’s spirit with the spirit of things—duhkha samyoga viyoga. This dukha samyoga viyoga is the separation from a union with the pain that is caused by the contact of the senses with the false forms of objects imagined in the idea of the mind.

This initial stage in samadhi is very hard—impossible to attain. However much we may try to go into the ocean, we will be thrown back by the force of the waves. They do not want us. But once they embrace us, we enter into them. It is to enter into the gravitational field of the object of meditation, breaking through the other impulse which is the movement of the mind towards this body only—which it regarded as its own, up to this time. It is like the Sun pulling us upwards when we cross the border of the gravitational field of the Earth, instead of the Earth pulling us down because we are within its field.

However much we may try to enter into the substance of an object in meditation, the body—which is manifested by the desires of the senses and the impulsions and assertions of the ego—will pull us back. The ego and the senses will not permit this samadhi. They will pull us back, as the Earth will pull us down, however much we may try to go up. The higher we go, the greater is the danger of falling down; and we fall with a thud and break everything. This can happen if caution is not exercised. We require the grace of the Guru, the infinite blessing of the Almighty; this is the only thing we can say, as we do not know how this mystery operates. All great achievements are mysterious. They are not expected things. Great things come unexpectedly, whatever they be.

Thus, we enter into the structure, the original, the true nature of an object—which is also the true nature of every other object in the world. The definition, the idea and the contactual notion of an object may vary from one thing to another thing. Therefore, we seem to be in a world of multitudinous varieties. But once we enter into the substance of one object, we have seen the substance of every other object in the world—just as when we break through one wave in the ocean, we have touched the base of every other wave in the ocean.

The last thing which will harass us, again and again, is space and time. It is impossible to get out of this idea of space and of our location in time. In fact, our idea of objects, whatever they be, is involved in the concept of space and time. Everything is somewhere, and sometime. How can we think that something can be there without being in space, and without being in time? The idea of space and time arises on account of the distance between the subject and the object, and the isolation of one thing from another thing. Samadhi is the abolition of this distinction between the seer and the seen—which means to say, the overcoming of the distance between the subject and the object, the seer and the seen, the knower and the known, consciousness and matter, ourselves and somebody else.

We appear to be outside somebody, and something or somebody seems to be away from us in space, and therefore in time, on account of the operation of the senses, which tell us that things and persons are external to us. When we place ourselves in the context of those very objects and things, the distance between ourselves and others gets abolished.

Nobody can understand what all these things mean unless we actually practise. Otherwise, we will go on listening and nothing will enter the head, because the mind cannot contain these things. It is not accustomed to think in this manner. This is not the way in which we usually think in our life. This is something quite novel.

The notion of spatial location and temporal process is overcome by the placement of one’s own self in the ideal of meditation—the absorption of ourselves in the object, which is the deepening of meditation, dhyana, into samadhi. As our understanding of the creational process seems to involve a gradational descent, our notion of ascent, also, involves the same gradations. Whatever be the ultimate truth of things, we have to go according to our notion of things—because what binds us is our idea, and not the thing as it is. So, we have to pay due respect to our envisagement of things. Behind the physical is the subtle, behind the subtle is the causal, and behind the causal is the Supreme Truth. This idea of one thing behind another thing is also involved in the concept of space and time—which, again, has to be abolished by a great effort of consciousness.

Various schools of yoga have various things to tell us. Some say that we will rise from one chakra to another chakra —from muladhara to svadhishthana, manipura, anahata, vishuddha, ajna and sahasrara. This is one way of looking at things from a mystical, microcosmic point of view. The individual persists as long as consciousness is at a chakra that is below the sahasrara. A chakra is a whirl of energy, the way in which the mind understands things. This is the hatha yoga technique, the kundalini yoga technique, and other techniques associated with these systems. The Yoga Vasishtha and such other mystical texts like the Tripura Rahasya say another thing altogether, about which I have mentioned something previously.

In Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras it is mentioned that the mahabhutas—the five elements of earth, water, fire, air and ether involved in name, form and the space-time complex—are the initial objects of meditation. Beyond these five elements are the tanmatras: shabda, sparsa, rupa, rasa and gandha. When we contact these subtle forces behind the five elements, we enter the kingdom of heaven, the cosmic ahamkara, the mahat tattva, the prakriti and, finally, the purusha. The Vedanta, in one of its phases, tells us that we cross this border of the five elements and the tanmatras and enter into Virat, Hiranyagarbha, Ishvara and Brahman, the Absolute.

To give an example, it is something like the probing of our understanding of the nature of an object by carefully observing it through an intensely powerful microscope. We begin to see molecules rather than a desk or a table or a chair. If we go deeper into it, we will not see molecules; we will see atoms. The molecules are chemical in their nature, and a molecule of water may look different from a molecule of air or of something else. But atoms are not so differentiated. They look alike, though certain atomists distinguish between an earth atom, a water atom, a fire atom, and an air atom. But, notwithstanding that atoms may differ one from the other in their structure, we can break through the atom by bombarding it. Then, we enter into the electromagnetic field where the atoms enter into one another and we do not know which is earth, which is water, which is fire, which is air—because, as we are told, the atomic structure of a particular form is the reason behind our distinguishing one form from another. Finally, we enter into a wide sea of indistinguishability and an incommensurable, wide-spread continuum.

This is to speak in the language of our own present-day understanding; and all these things, perhaps, mean one and the same thing. But, the yoga technique goes beyond these methods and investigations of science. We are not merely entering into a continuum of an energy as if we are observers of this continuum, standing outside it. The great scientist, the visualiser, the observer, is inseparable from this continuum. He has entered into it. There is no instrument of perception when this continuum engulfs even the beholder thereof.

The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali dilate upon the stages of samadhi, known as savitarka, nirvitarka, and so on. I am not going to speak about this theme now. But these are also the difficulties that we may have to expect, and this instruction as to the degrees involved even in the samadhi process is supposed to tell us that, perhaps, true yoga begins only when samadhi starts. Until that time, it is only digging the earth, laying the foundation and putting the bricks one over the other. The structure is not complete.

Thus, yoga does not end with samadhi; it begins with it. All other things prior to it are a large preparation for this, what some mystics call the spiritual marriage. Perhaps this is the term used by St. John of the Cross where the Great Beloved, centred in all things, lifts the veil and is beheld by the lover. This is how the Sufis, the mystics, and the bhaktas conceive the ideal in yoga. Who can love us more than God loves us? What can we love more than we can love God?

In the beginning, yoga looks like a great analysis of the sensory operations. Sensations and perceptions, including social relationships, are the theme of our discussion and study in the earlier stages of yoga. Later on, yoga melts into understanding. It is a rational, intellectual, logical process, and not merely an analysis of sensation and perception.

Then yoga, when it comes to what is called samadhi, goes beyond the intellectual, rational features of yoga. It becomes spiritual, an affair which can best be described as soul coming in contact with soul—which is generally considered as filled with joy, bliss, or ananda. The nature of the spirit is not a sensation or a logical understanding. It is love which loves only itself. It is joy arising not from contact with any other thing, but from the very consciousness of the very existence of the spirit. It is not love and it is not joy in the way that we understand in this world. It is not loving something and rejoicing over something else. It is a joy accruing from the recognition of the fact that we, ourselves, are the source of joy. The origin, the substance, the root of all things is said to be love. That is why, in the heights of samadhi, we are in raptures of joy.

In the final reaches of yoga, we are not intellectually operating or rationally arguing. In the earlier stages of savitarka, etc., argument ceases. We are possessed. In a state of possession, there is no intellectual operation, no rational investigation, no sensory perception. Possession is possession, and nobody can say anything more about it. When we are possessed, we are in a condition of losing ourselves, totally. We are tripped under our feet, and we lose grip of ourselves because we are gripped by something else to which we really belong. These are the very, very difficult ways in which language tries to express that which it cannot express, by using idiomatic expressions and language which is poetic, imaginative, grasping, melting, possessing—an entering into us, rather than merely an informative description as in science or even in ordinary visual art. Such is the bare outline of the features of that glorious entry into the truth of things that is called samadhi.