What is Knowledge

by Swami Krishnananda

Meditation, therefore, is inward communion. The word ‘inward’ also has to be understood in its proper spirit. Inwardness does not mean here the abstraction of any kind of relationship with the outer world. It is not to be understood in this sense. To close the doors and close the eyes and be seated in a mood of thinking personally need not necessarily mean inwardisation of spirit. The word ‘inward’, to be understood in the sense of yoga and true meditation, means that capacity of consciousness to feel its presence in the very thing which it considers as its content or object. We are driving to the point which yoga considers as samadhi. It is an inwardisation in the sense that the so-called object, or the external environment, does not anymore remain as an external content of the contemplating consciousness, but becomes that with which it has to tune itself in such an intensive manner that it is its own self. As I mentioned, the skin of our body is our own self; it is not an object that we have to think as if it is outside us. As the skin of our body is ourselves, the object of our thought is also ourselves. We need not have to think of it anymore, further on, as we might have been thinking of it earlier.

So, the meditation in which the consciousness engages itself during yoga is an inwardisation in a very, very special sense. The contemplative process of consciousness is inward because it has no outward object to think at that time. The outwardness, or externality, or the position of a thing as if it is there in front, ceases to be operative because of the consciousness contemplating the basic relationship of itself with that object in such a way that it has already become a limb of a larger body of consciousness. I come back to the analogy of the parliament house. A really dispassionate and unselfish sacrificing member of the parliament will not consider other members as outside objects. He will consider them as limbs of his own larger body. The parliament is only a body of which the so-called person is a member and, therefore, one member cannot consider another as an object, if he is a true patriot and a real statesman. It is one single operation which we call the body here in the analogy of the parliament, or any kind of organisation. A member of an organisation cannot consider another member as an object, because all members constitute a single body.

Hence, the object in meditation is no more an object, because the object – or, for the matter of that, any object whatsoever – becomes such an invariable association of consciousness that the object, as well as the subject contemplating, become features of a larger area of experience. Again to come to the analogy of the parliament house, the parliament is neither this member nor that member; it is something more than all the members put together. It is an impersonal power which brings or cements together all these members called the members of parliament. Actually, the parliament cannot be seen with the eyes. It is a power, a force. It is a universalising principle.

Thus, the thing that we are trying to achieve in meditation is not merely the inward association in a literal sense, to be achieved by the subject in relation to the object. It is inward in a different sense altogether, namely, the transcendent meaning implied in the relationship between the contemplating consciousness and the object is inward to both the two terms of the relation we call the subject and the object – consciousness, and its content. This is something I tried to explain on an earlier occasion. In an act of deep meditation, the consciousness neither thinks of itself nor of the object as an outsider. It is trying to overcome the limit set by its own localised existence and the apparent localised existence of its outwardness in the sense of an object. There is a larger being which includes the meditative subject as well as the object meditated upon. This association of consciousness with that transcendent something lying beyond and yet implicit in both the subject and the object is what we call samadhi in yoga. It is not a mere blankness of the mind; it is an intense awareness of our having broken the limitations of our personality, and also outgrown the limitations of that which we call our object or our environment, to which I made reference already. This is the height of yoga meditation.

Here, we are achieving a purpose which is the purpose of everybody in the world. It is the purpose for which the universe is apparently evolving from stage to stage. It is the intention of the cosmos. In a way, we may say, in the act of meditation we are participating in the purpose of the world, in the intention of the cosmos, in the fulfilment of the direction of the universe as a whole. Thus, there is nothing peculiar, strange, or weird about yoga mediation. It is a most necessary, invariable concomitant of any purposive and large-hearted existence.

Mediation, whatever be the way it pursues, aims at a particular uniform goal or aim. We can climb the top of a hill from many points at the base of the mountain. We can climb to the peak of that mountain or hill from any side, but when we climb up to the peak, we will find that we are in the same place which anyone may have reached through any other way. So, meditation is the peak of yoga, which is attainable through any way, by any road which one can follow according to the direction which one takes or the location in life in which one is placed.

Yoga meditation is, therefore, a simple technique and not a difficult art, but it requires a little bit of leisure of the mind to think by itself. What most people lack is the leisure to think. We are preoccupied with pressures which call our attention in different directions, and find little rests for the mind to feel the need to place itself in this condition of attunement. Actually, this pressure that we feel by the calls of life is an unnecessary intrusion in the very purpose for which we are living in this world, because any pressure is a disharmonised element outside, with which we have not been able to set ourselves in tune. It is a toxic matter which the body cannot tolerate anymore – here, our body being what we are involved in.

It is possible to find leisure even in the midst of intense activity. We may wonder how it is possible, because they are contradictions. Leisure and intensity of any activity are not to be equated with some particular thing. But the engagement of a person in a diversity of pursuits need not necessarily mean the absence on the part of the mind to feel a sort of attunement with these diverse pressures. This is a very subtle psychological point. A pressure is not necessarily something with which we are unconnected. It is something with which we are connected – otherwise, we would not feel its presence. But we may wonder that if we are really connected with it, how does it come upon us like a pressure? It comes upon us like a pressure or a pain because we have not been able to understand the voice with which it speaks, the language which it utters, or its own demands. This pressure called the activity of life –  which we consider as the cause of our not finding leisure or a moment’s rest – is not something unrelated to us because, as I mentioned, if it is unrelated to us, we would not bother about it. It is really related, but there is a miscalculated and disproportionate arrangement between ourselves and itself, and this disproportionate relationship between ourselves and that which is pressing upon us is the cause of our considering this pressure as an undesirable pain.

This is important for even non-yogis to understand, because nobody would like to be under a pressure of any kind. It is a very terrible thing indeed in life. But our difficulty is that we cannot escape from it, because if it is something from which we can escape, we would have shoved it out and thrown it into the ditch, and we could be free from it in one moment. There is a conflict in this peculiar situation we call the pressure  in life. And what is conflict? It is an irreconcilable position we are maintaining – irreconcilable because on the one hand we do not like it, and on the other hand we cannot avoid it. Look at this situation, how difficult it is, and what a travesty: we cannot avoid it, and we do not want it.

Now, what are we going to do with that thing which we do not like but we cannot avoid? We know where we are. But we have to find a solution, because we have already said it is unavoidable. If it is unavoidable, the reason why we do not like it has to be explained. We have to go a little deep into this matter: “Why do I not like it, and why is it that I feel a kind of pressure when I have already decided that it is unavoidable? I am speaking in two languages – blowing hot and cold at the same time – when I say I don’t like it and yet it is unavoidable. So, I don’t know what I am speaking when I make statements of that kind.” We cannot be yogins or spiritual heroes or anything meaningful or worthwhile in life if this kind of question goes on harassing our mind day and night. We cannot have peace, let alone yoga meditation. We cannot have rest, we cannot have peace, we cannot lie on our bed for a little sleep, and we do not know on what to place our head.

The difficulty of this kind arises because we are very terribly affirmative in holding opinions about our own selves and about other things. We have an opinion about ourselves which is one hundred percent correct according to ourselves, and we also have a hundred percent correct opinion about that which is called the pressure. Both are hundred percents; and two one hundred percents clash. We cannot have two one hundred percents; it is not possible. A hundred percent is hundred percent.

Here, we may employ an interesting suggestion made by a great thinker. When we are in an atmosphere which we consider as unavoidable and which we do not like, we may adopt this technique. That which we do not like and which is unavoidable is something which we would like to change, so that it may be in harmony with our way of living. If it is possible for us to change the condition in which it is pressing upon us, well and good; we can do that. We can change the whole world, and be happy with it. But if we find that we cannot change it or bring about any kind of circumstantial improvement in the condition which is pressing upon us for reasons well known to us, what is the other way? We have to change ourselves. Either that has to fit into our condition, or we have to fit into that condition. If neither I will budge nor you will budge, there will be war. It can be a war inside our mind, or it can be a war outside in the world; either way it is a war. If we do not want a war either psychologically or socially, we have to adopt one technique, either this way or that way. There cannot be two adverse positions totally irreconcilable with each other.

On a careful investigation into the substance of the matter, we will find that the outward world which is pressing upon us does not require so much to be changed as the need we may feel to change our own self. Again, this dual position which we feel the need to maintain in regard to ourselves and that which is pressing upon us may be overcome and transcended if we take resort to that which is above both ourselves and that which is pressing upon us. The pressure is coming from the object outside, and the pressure is felt by us as individuals. In the Bhagavadgita, towards the end of the third chapter, there is a great teaching which points out that clashes of any kind between the subjective consciousness and the object which is pressing upon it can be overcome only by resort to the Atman – yo buddheh paratastu saha. And what is the Atman? It is that which is neither in us nor in the object, but is in us as well as in the object, so that it is pervading an area larger than that occupied by us as well as the object. The Atman is that which is wider than what we are, wider than what is pressing upon us, and therefore, it is a transcendent presence, though it is immanent in us as well as the object. This is why people say that God is both transcendent and immanent.