In the Light of Wisdom

by Swami Krishnananda

This was the deep analysis of the psychology of yoga. Where comes the need of yoga? The need comes because we never live happily without it. Lacking it we will be miserable, so there is no choice. For yoga or against yoga, do or don’t, want it or don’t want it—there is no such question. We can never live without it. Either we have it, or we live miserably. Yoga is the way of the wise life, the understanding life, the life of the insight into the nature of things. Who can live without it? How can there be life without yoga then? There is no such thing as life without yoga. Life is either lived with it, or life is as if a nothing. People in their credulity have been trying the way without the practice of yoga, and we know where they stand, and most of us are in the same condition.

The yoga analysis discovered that the contact of the seer with the seen—the subject with the object, the adhyatma with the adhibhuta, my personality with the world outside—has been a thoroughly unsatisfactory and artificial one. We have never been able to contact the world properly. We have never been able to possess anything truly, and we have been only deceived from the very time of our birth. The world has deceived all people who have come to into it. Everyone has been living a foolish life, but they discovered this only when they had to depart from this world. That it is difficult for one person to learn from the wisdom of someone else is another interesting thing in life. We will have to pass through this learning process ourselves, and we will have to realise it ourselves ultimately. “Oh, I am sorry, I made a mistake, I never listened to the advice of that person.” This would be the lament of everyone, without exception.

There is no escape in these matters except through wisdom, understanding and honesty of purpose. The yogin, the student of yoga, is a tremendously honest person and one hundred percent sincere in the pursuit. The yoga student is a person who has realised their position properly. “Oh, how miserable it is if I don’t have it. The world cannot in fact be grabbed, the world cannot be possessed, and the world cannot be enjoyed.” All our misbegotten plans have been revealed in one minute. We cannot be happy in this world if we are going to employ the same old erroneous ways of contacting nature. This will not succeed. The vast nature outside is shrewd enough to escape our grasp.

The only way is the yoga way, which means to say the way of directly contacting the lower by means of the higher. We and the world outside are on par with one another, and we are living in the same degree of truth, because both of us are equal. The lower cannot contact that which is at its same level, when the two exist in a similar degree of reality. For example, there are certain husbands and wives who are equally educated, and one will not yield to the other, so the family is unhappy. If some chore needs to be done, who is to do it if both are equally educated? So there is an unhappy tension in some families which have similarly educated partners. To further extend this example, if we consider ourselves to be educated, nature may say, “I am equally educated. Who is there to control me? You want to harness me, but I will harness you!” How can we feel that we will master nature and then try to use it? Why shouldn’t nature use us in the same way? In what way are we superior to it? We should not try to fool nature like this. Other persons have been fooled in this way, but nature has never been fooled.

Utilising the Higher Means

Hence, to understand the world and live in the world is to utilise the higher means rather than our own hands and feet. We know the epic example of Draupadi’s asking for succor from Sri Krishna when she was in dire distress. This example is a symbol of man’s seeking a higher power for success in life. Husbands are of no use. All failed, and Draupadi’s strength by itself failed. What help can we have in this world? Not from those who are related to us, not from those who are sympathetic towards us, and not from that which belongs to us. When everything fails, who will help us? Something else has to come which has neither friend nor foe. Friends and foes may take time, but that which is neither a friend nor foe has no necessity for time to come to protect us, and so will come at once to our aid. Immediately and instantaneous is His action. Such is also the power and the joy that we derive through the practice of yoga. It is not temporal succession—it is instantaneous immediacy. We will not be given it afterwards or tomorrow, but now, at this very moment. There is no future for reality, because it is non-temporal. Hence, the yogic approach is very unique, and that is why I said that we have to understand this very carefully and totally.

We can apply these techniques every day in our lives—not tomorrow, but today itself. We can apply this technique even in the smallest of things and not only in the big thing that we call contact with God. We can attain real sympathy from the world outside even in our smallest contacts. Have we understood this technique? It is this technique that we can employ uniformly in every situation. We can be like the cat in the story that knew only one way of escape. The story goes that there was a conversation between a jackal and a cat in the jungle. The jackal asked the cat, “If a hunter attacks us just now, what will you do?” The cat said, “I will jump to the top of a tree.” The jackal replied, “Do you know only one trick? What a fool. I know a hundred tricks to escape. Nobody can catch me. I know a hundred tricks when you only know one trick.” While this conversation was taking place, they heard the barking of hounds attacking them from all sides. The cat immediately jumped to the top of a tree, but the jackal was thinking, “What trick should I use now? Which is better, this trick, that trick, or the third, fourth, or fifth?” The jackal spent a long time revolving these ideas around in its mind, but before it could act the hounds attacked it. In the final analysis, it was certainly not wiser than the cat.

Likewise, we have been trying to be ‘wise’ in this world, but too much of this wisdom is not necessary. We have to employ a simple technique of being honest in every encounter. That is all. When we are honest with nature, it also reacts very sympathetically, like a mother’s reaction to a child. We see that a mother’s reaction towards her child is not complicated. It is very simple, as we know, and immediately there is a happiness between them. But if two politicians meet, what a complexity arises. How to shake hands, how to smile, how to look—they are all great skills. All these are absent in the simple affection between mother and child because it is real, whereas the friendship of politicians is false. This type of artificial relationship never stands; it eventually fails. Nature does not expect us to be a politician with it. It wants us to be very simple in our approach. Nature wants us to be very simple—not complicated or complex.

The simple way of the child’s approach to the mother is itself yoga. It is not a very difficult technique; we should not be afraid of it. Yoga requires a very, very honest approach and an opening of our hearts to the ‘motherliness’ of nature. If we cry before nature, “Mother, I am yours,” it will open its resources to us immediately. “Yes my child, please come to me.” But to be simple is the most difficult of things in this world. We can very easily make things complex, but we cannot be simple. Truth is simple, and that is why simplicity is difficult. Yoga is this supreme simplicity of approach, where we become so humble and so uncomplicated—almost a nothing.

This is what they call self-surrender in the bhakti marga, the path of devotion. We almost become a nothing; and then nature inundates us, takes possession of us and fondles us as her own. We become one with the world when we cease to be an independent person. This is yoga in one sense, but we have many layers of complicated personality, and these complications have to be resolved. It is for this reason that we study these interesting technicalities of yoga practice. It appears to be a technicality because we do not understand it properly, but when we understand it, it becomes a natural thing.

To walk with two legs is a tremendous technicality; but once we know how to walk, we walk without thinking of our legs. How many times did we fall before we learned how to walk? We know very well how difficult it was. To walk across a tightrope in the circus involves a greatly complicated technique, but for one who knows it, it is simple. Everything is difficult when it is not understood. When it becomes a part of our nature, we just do it without thinking of it. Likewise is the process of yoga.

Our attempt to contact nature through the sense organs is therefore a failure, because nature lies outside the sense organs. Anything that is wholly outside cannot be intrinsically related to us. Our relationship with the world has been extrinsic and not intrinsic. It has been external and not internal, which means to say there has not been a true relationship with nature. We should then not try to contact the world with our sense organs—we will not succeed.

Hence, enjoyment is not the way of wisdom; yoga is the way. Yoga does not mean a kind of asceticism or a withdrawal or relinquishment of the normal life of the world. Again, this misunderstanding has to be removed. Yoga is not withdrawal. From where would we withdraw, and into what? Try to understand the implications of the studies we made earlier. In yoga we are not withdrawing into anything—we are only rising into something higher.

Sublimating the Within and Without into the Higher

The ‘without’ and the ‘within’ have both to be sublimated into the higher. This is what we do in yoga. Where is the withdrawal? It may be a withdrawal, if we regard withdrawal as a comprehending of the outside and the inside in something which is above and including both these two. This cannot be normally called a withdrawal. We become fuller and more complete in the consciousness of yoga, because here we simultaneously grasp both our being and the being of the object instead of trying forcibly and erroneously to possess a thing which does not really belong to us. We cannot think of possessing anything in this world, because the world does not belong to us. If we think that the world is our possession, the world also can think that we are its possession! Both are equally applicable, if we employ this law of possession. But if we go to the third element of an encompassing consciousness, which is transcending and including both, then there will be a unification of the two children under a single parent, as it were. It is like two legs walking systematically under the order of a single personality or like two eyes working together in seeing. They harmoniously work together in seeing an object.

Likewise, in the yoga consciousness, the external world and the internal subject come into a symmetrical union. Here one is not controlling the other, and one is not trying to possess the other. Inasmuch as there is no attempt at possession, it is real union. Possession is different from union, and union is different from possession. People unnecessarily and falsely try to possess, although they cannot really come into union with these things. That is why there is bereavement and separation. The method of yoga is the systematic art of the rousing of the lower consciousness to the higher in a comprehension of both—the outer and the inner. This process involves several stages of ascent.

Whatever be the stage in which we are, that stage has to be properly understood through analysis, and then alone will it be possible for us to rise to the higher level. We should not try to go to the higher without understanding the lower. The lower will have to pay its due before we try to go to the higher. Because the lower is included in the higher, the higher will demand our proper relationship with the lower. We should not imagine that the higher would suddenly come to help us. As Christ said, “Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s.” We cannot merely run to God with the notion that we can despise the world and be a friend of God, because God is in the world also, and He will try to contact us in His immediacy rather than in His transcendence.

The world is not outside reality, because the reality is that which comprehends both—the world and us together. That which is real is that which includes the subject and the object, and this is true at every level of reality and in every grade of truth. There is then no abandoning the world or escaping from life and running away. It is impossible; to where can we run away? We are in the world wherever we go. If at all we can escape, the escape should be to the higher, and not merely to some corner of the lower. Yoga then is a very cautious manipulation of consciousness, subtle in its articulation and spontaneous and joyous when it is made a part of our lives.

In every step that we take in yoga, we as living personalities are involved, and not just our bodies or sense organs. By manipulating the body alone, the objects or our possessions alone, or the prana, the senses, the mind alone, independently, yoga cannot be achieved. As a complete personality we should be engaged in yoga. We are inclusive of all the relations that seem to belong to us—our family, our relationships, our servants, our entanglements—all are involved in our yoga. We cannot say, “Let the entanglements be there; goodbye to them, I shall practise yoga inside my room.” Entanglements are with us, and they cannot leave us. In yoga, our entanglements also have to be sublimated, as the world is a part of our yoga. We cannot kick the world outside and say that we will be separate from it. Our world is with us, and it will not leave us at any time.

Yoga is a Comprehensive Stocktaking

The sublimation that is attempted in yoga is a comprehensive stocktaking by our consciousness, in which no relationships are excluded. Yoga is based on an attention to every one of them. We have to take stock of our relationships therefore, which means to say our desires and our commitments. If we have commitments, we cannot be a yogin. We must fulfil those commitments first or find out a way of putting an end to them in an effective manner—then only can we take to yoga. Else, they will be there as ungerminated seeds, and they will germinate one day. We must take stock of all our longings and unfulfilled ambitions. We may sometimes even have a desire to become an emperor or a president. Well, this may be laughable that one should aspire to be that which one cannot realise in one’s life, but sometimes these ideas come to one’s mind. There was a Brahmin, says the Yoga Vasishtha, who saw the procession of a king, and an idea passed through his mind, “How happy is this king. If only I had been him!” With this idea he died and became a king in the next birth, because even passing thoughts produce an impression in the mind.

There are no such things as passing thoughts. We cannot say that a thought is unimportant if it is there. Even these passing thoughts that might occur to us must be taken note of properly. For or against, good or bad, pleasurable or otherwise, friendly or acrimonious—whatever they are, we should take stock of them. “What are my subtle entanglements?” Nobody else can know this; only we ourselves can know it. We have some subtle entanglements which the public cannot know. We may know them ourselves, but we cannot express them to the outside world for fear of censure.

We can however have our own private diary. If we are afraid that this diary will be seen by other people, we can then note down the weaknesses in code which we alone can understand. We may be afraid, “How can I write it in a diary? Somebody may see it,” but it is for our own good. Our weaknesses can be written in a code which we alone understand. Everyone has subtle entanglements in the world. They are subtle in the sense that they cannot be publicised; they are secret longings of the heart which the world has refused to fulfil. These longings have to be dealt with properly if our yoga is to succeed; otherwise we will be simply nowhere. These longings are like our children, and they have to be properly reared and educated and treated with consideration.

The first thing therefore in yoga is to take stock of the entanglements of our personality. There is a twofold conflict in our nature. One is purely psychological, and the other is factual. There are many difficult Sanskrit terms to designate all this, but we shall try to avoid them to save the bother of remembering them all. There is a psychological conflict and a factual conflict. The factual conflict is that which occurs between us and nature. A factual conflict occurs if we cannot reconcile ourselves with the world outside. The mountain, which is an object of our perception, cannot be intelligibly related to us, and there is a conflict between us and the mountain which is an object outside of us. This is a natural or a factual conflict, as we may call it. The conflict between the object and the subject in a metaphysical sense is one as well.

Then there are psychological conflicts; for example, the conflict between our desire and its fulfilment. Not all of our desires can be fulfilled, so there is a conflict between our desires and the possibility of their fulfilment. This is a psychological conflict. From the psychological conflict we have to go to the factual conflict, which is the higher reach of yoga. The lower one is studied in abnormal psychology, and the higher one usually in general psychology. So again, we go from the lower to the higher.

Everybody is ‘abnormal’ in the sense that there is a psychological conflict in everybody’s mind. A stocktaking of these psychological entanglements has to be done in a very dispassionate manner. We should not try to hide ourselves from ourselves. Though we may hide ourselves to others, we must be open to our own selves at least. If we are not open to ourselves, we alone are going to suffer—nobody else. With this analysis of the relationships which our mind has with outer life, we will have taken one step along the path of yoga. The resolution of psychological conflict is the purpose of the psychoanalysis and psychology of the West, and I have already mentioned how yoga differs from psychoanalysis. Though we may try to resolve the conflict between the desire and its fulfilment, even if we succeed in this we will have a higher conflict between us and the world outside. The resolution of this higher conflict is the object of the psychology of yoga.