What is Knowledge

by Swami Krishnananda

If we had leisure and time to concentrate on the implications of our studies and analysis, we would have realised that this system of living known as yoga is a sort of hackneyed name that we give to the most normal way of living, which again, at the same time, is invariably associated with what is known as meditation. Neither yoga, as anyone would like to understand it, nor meditation, as one may be accustomed to, can be considered as something or anything outside the normal way of living, if ‘living’ or ‘life’ is to mean a progression towards larger and larger successes, achievements or attainments. If living in the world – or life – is not to mean merely existing like a stone or a tree, and if it does not mean merely vegetating, but is a purposive advance or movement in a given direction, this purpose towards which life is an advance can be fulfilled or achieved only if this something called ‘yoga’ or ‘meditation’ becomes nothing but the way of such living itself.

The meditational procedure is not a mystical introversion or a difficult circus feat which only certain people in the world are expected to perform. It is a systematisation of thought and living, which is invariably associated with any project of worthwhile success and attainment.

The environment in which we are placed calls for this adjustment of ourselves we call meditation – call it yoga, if you so like. We cannot independently live, freeing ourselves from all associations with our environment. The very meaning of ‘environment’ is that area which is sticking to our personal life, as our skin is sticking to our body. We are not living in an environment with which we are vitally not connected. The very meaning or significance of this term is that it is an unavoidable association of our very existence or life in this world. Plainly speaking, yoga is this unavoidable obligation on the part of any person to place oneself in harmony with the environment in which one is, whatever be that environment. To come in conflict with an environment would not be yoga, and to be perpetually feeling a sense of opposition from an environment outside is also not yoga. Rather it is not meditation, at least, because the yoga of meditation, or the yoga which is meditation proper, is the healthful adjustment of whatever one is with that we call environment, whatever it be.

The thing we call peace of mind, inward satisfaction, or even security is that friendliness and a state of en rapport with which we are not only related in our day-to-day life, but from which we cannot in any way extricate ourselves, because our very existence is inseparable from this environment. If environment is something different from our own selves, then we need not bother about anything in this world, because the world itself is an environment about which we seem to be feeling the necessity to bother. The need to think of anything is, at the same time, the need to think that there is an environment around – otherwise, there would be no necessity to think at all. The thought of any particular thing is nothing but the thought of that which is outside us, which I call the environment, the atmosphere, whatever be our notion of that particular thing.

This ‘environment’ is a very intriguing peculiarity, because every person has his own or her own idea of this environment. For some person, the environment may be a little office in which he or she is working: “I have no other environment. I am concerned only with my office, and if I don’t come in conflict with my colleagues in the office, I am supposed to be perfectly all right.” But this is only one way of looking at the environmental condition. Everyone is not only in the office, but everyone is somewhere, and that ‘somewhere’ is one’s environment. It may be a shop in which we are working; it may be a laboratory, a school, a university, a train in which we are travelling, or any blessed place. But it is certainly true that we are somewhere, in some way. That peculiar ‘somewhere’ or ‘somewhen’ is our environment. This is always with us wherever we go, because our movement in any direction, in any part of the world, is not going to free us from being in some sort of an environment. We may change the physical location or the conditions of our immediate environment, but we are nevertheless in some environment. A change of environment is not freedom from environment or freedom from involvement in it. So, no one can be freed from being involved in some environment, notwithstanding the desire that sometimes arises to change the environment in which one lives.

The point is not in what environment we are. The point is how we are able to get on with this environment. But if there is a perpetual rub which we feel between ourselves and our environment, it is something for us to think deeply upon why this situation should arise at all. There is a vehemence on both sides: the environment refuses to adjust itself to our way of living, and our way of living refuses to adjust itself with the environment. Both sides assert a sort of individuality of their own, and this affirmation is from two parties which are somehow related to each other for important reasons. The irreconcilability of the circumstances of two sides, which are really not two sides literally, is the conflict of life. It is the problem of existence, and it is the sorrow of man. This is solved, or is attempted to be solved, by what people call yoga or pinpoint as the way of meditation.

I have tried to mention that there is no necessity to demarcate the inner essentials of what is known as ‘yoga’ and what is called ‘meditation’. For our practical purposes, they are one and the same thing because even when we are not attempting to meditate in the proper sense of the term, even when we seem to be taking only the initial step in the direction of yoga, that initial preliminary step also is a kind of meditation. I told you that even the physical exercise of yoga is a condition of meditation. It may be one type of meditation; nevertheless, it is that. Therefore, yoga is meditation. Yogah samadhih says the great commentator on the sutras of Patanjali. Yoga is virtually meditation; it is nothing else. Even when it appears to be something else, it is just that in one form.

Whenever we feel a necessity to be healthily associated with anyone, anything, or any condition, we are performing an act of meditation. The effort on our part to be in union with that which is outside us, is the act of our meditation. When we are in a parliament house as a member thereof, we are nevertheless in a state of meditation, because the necessity we feel to be non-conflictingly involved in the body called the parliament is our meditation. Otherwise, we know how we behave when we are not in the parliament. When we go to purchase vegetables in a shop, we do not feel the necessity to behave like a member of parliament or to inwardly commune ourselves with the body called the parliament. Whenever it becomes necessary for us to be in tune with whatever is external to us, we are in a state of meditation, though we may not be willing to consider that meditation as a sort of holy or spiritual exercise, as we understand spirituality. We need not bother about these words ‘spirituality’, ‘religion’, etc., for the time being.

Yoga or meditation can be freed from all these preconceived associations which make us feel a sense of holiness in ourselves – as if we are lifted above the world and not connected with anything else outside us. It may be a holy exercise, but it is not holy in the sense that other things are unholy to us, because that unholy or extraneous element around us, which becomes a content of our consciousness for any reason whatsoever, also becomes an object of meditation for us, and it ceases to be unholy and irrelevant. A thing that is totally irrelevant for our purposes cannot become a content of our thought or consciousness; we cannot define it, and we will not feel a need to say anything about it – or, much less, think about it.

Yoga or meditation – or yoga, which is meditation – is a necessary duty, an obligation anyone and everyone is called upon to fulfil or perform in order that one may be healthy. If health is the coordination of the components constituting the body, then this principle should apply equally to the necessity to bring about a unison among the components which form any body whatsoever with which we are not only externally connected but invariably related, and from which we cannot free ourselves, for obvious reasons. So, while health is a very desirable thing, perhaps the most desirable thing in the world, and while it is true that health is a condition of our physical and physiological system, it is certainly not exhausted by the balance of the physiological system. This is because in spite of the fact that the physical and physiological system is in a state of balance and can be said to be healthy from a medical point of view, we may be unhealthy for other reasons than purely physiological. A political catastrophe which is hanging heavy on our heads, or a social onslaught or a mental agony cannot be considered as a healthy state, though the body is robust, well-fed and very strong.

Hence, the health of a person is the harmony or the inner coordination of a cooperative type among the constituents of any environment, which is precisely the ‘body’ of ours. Our body is not merely the little six-foot frame that we are thinking of. Our body is anything which is necessarily related to us in our life – such as a family, or even an office atmosphere. We cannot say that the office is irrelevant to us, because it is our body, and any kind of disharmony among the constituents of the office atmosphere will be our ill health. We will not have a moment’s peace; and a restless condition of mind cannot be considered as a state of health. Yoga meditation, to bring it down to the most practical fields of concrete existence on the face of this Earth, may be said to be a universally applicable technique of coordinating oneself with anything and everything with which one is invariably related, and from which one cannot be free at any time.

This environment with which we are related, from which we cannot be free, and whose relationship with which we should be so very harmonious, is a very intriguing outward dimension which ranges beyond even human comprehension, such that we will realise one day that our environment goes beyond even the stars. It is not a mere idle thinking when we are made to feel that our little existence inside our kitchen is invariably connected with the conditions of even the distant stars. We are not talking merely theoretical astronomy here; it is a practical state of affairs. If this is true, our environment is not such an easy thing as we can define at once with a few words.

Yoga meditation, thus, is the simple recipe of it being possible for us to be friendly with one person in the world; and from this little recipe of it being possible for us to be in a state of freedom from conflict with even the littlest thing in the world – from this basic position of the smallest act of sacrifice we perform by being in harmony with this basic thing – from this littlest thing up to the highest conceivable adjustment that we can imagine in our mind, yoga is a uniform law. Yoga is, therefore, not merely meditation on a holy thing called God, as we may imagine in a sacrosanct mood or in a mystical condition of introversion. There is no great sacrosanct holiness about it. It is as holy as any science is in this world – as holy as arithmetic, mathematics, or any kind of sane thinking. It has, therefore, no connection with the so-called isms or religions of the world. It is not religion at all, and we need not even call it a philosophy if we think philosophy is frightening armchair thinking. It is a basic fundamental of any systematised thinking, which is also a healthy way of thinking, and without which life would be a chaotic mass.

What is yoga, and what is meditation? It is not to assume a very holy attitude, as if we are superior to other people. It is not a question of our being better than anybody else; this is precisely what we should free ourselves from in our thinking. When we take to religion, spirituality, yoga, meditation, or a life of God, as people may think, we are not lifting ourselves to a high, lofty, elevated realm whereby we look down upon the crass Earth of matter. It is an inward adjustment of ourselves with That which really is – and we know what really is there. We have thought well to appreciate that whatever may be there anywhere is that with which we are connected and, therefore, it is incumbent upon us to be in a state of meditation always, if meditation is our obligation to be in tune with that which is outside us. Else, we will be in a state of restlessness of mood and agony of spirit. Such a simple and humble way of living is yoga.

The humility that is usually associated with great wisdom of life is a necessary consequence that follows from the invariable association of oneself with all things. The superiority complex that may enter into the mind of any unwary person is an unfortunate consequence of not considering all the aspects of one’s associations with the world. The mind of the human being is made in such a way that it cannot think all things at the same time. There is something which it misses always, and that which it misses becomes the target of its opinion, positive or negative, because there is no need to hold any opinion about that with which we are invariably related. The life of opinion is transcended automatically by the life of the superior reason, by which we do not have to hold any opinion about anything in the world. That state of affairs does not arise because of the fact that there is nothing on which we have to hold an opinion. This is the case because that which usually remains as an object on which we have to pass judgment, or regarding which we have to hold an opinion, is no more that which we have to look upon as an extraneous something – because the notion of an extraneous something is the notion of non-yoga, non-meditation.