True Spiritual Living

by Swami Krishnananda

The truth as it is must come out. The disease has to be dug out from its roots, and there is no use saying, “Everything is okay, everything is all right. The patient is improving.” He is not improving. We are making a false statement. He is preparing for his departure, though we say he is improving. This is what we are speaking about in regard to everything in this world, including our own selves. We are bred and brought up under false conditions, and falsity has become a part of our nature. We do not know what truth is, and we do not want truth, because truth is the most bitter thing in the world. And yoga looks a very bitter, most unwanted, terrifying something when we actually try to understand what it is, because our sweet honey-and-milk relationships seem to vanish into the winds the moment we step into this so-called bitter atmosphere of yoga. But this bitterness is the bitterness of medicine that is going to cure our illness, our disease. This bitterness is necessary.

Why does it look bitter, while it is going to do good later on? It is because it is apparently the opposite of the false notions of satisfaction implanted in the ego in our so-called bodily individuality. I will ask you a simple question: Can you sit absolutely alone in your own room for one single day without speaking to anybody, without seeing anyone’s face? For only one day, do not see anybody’s face, and do not speak to any person. Just see your condition. You will be like a fish out of water. It is a horror to be like that. The next day you will look half crazy because the whole day you have not seen anybody and you have not talked to any person. This shows what we are made of, what our substance really is. Our substance is hollow, and we have no real substance of our own. If we have a substance of our own, we will be happier the more alone we are. This is the test of progress in spirituality: Do we feel happy when we are alone, or do we feel miserable when we are alone?

Our real nature is Aloneness in a very, very special sense. It is not a physical aloneness that we are speaking of, though that too has some meaning, after all, at a particular stage. It is a kind of aloneness which increases in intensity and expansiveness as we go on proceeding further and further in the practice of yoga. In the beginning, it is a small aloneness, almost identifiable with our physical bodily aloneness to which I made reference when I said, “Try to be alone in your room”; but that is not the real meaning of Aloneness. It has a deeper psychological connotation, and finally a very profound spiritual meaning.

God is the Supreme Aloneness, to speak properly. He has no friends. God has no assistants, no secretaries, no army, no police; He has nothing to call His own. The Supreme Aloneness is God Himself, but His Aloneness is different from the aloneness we can think of in our minds. Because God is everything, we can call that Everythingness as a kind of Aloneness in a very, very specialised sense, which is not easy for us to understand. But that Universal Supremacy of Aloneness is reflected in our daily lives and calls for recognition every day, every moment of our time.

When we are disgusted with things, we like to be alone sometimes. Oftentimes it looks that we are fed up with things, for various reasons. Then we do not want to speak to people. Our real nature comes out at that time. If we have lost everything, we do not want to speak to people at that time. Our real nature is manifest then. If we hear that all our property has gone; something catastrophic has happened – our relatives have died in an accident, and whatever we regard as ours has been taken away by powers which are beyond our control. Then we do not want to speak to people. We would like to shut ourselves in a room and cry. That shutting ourselves up in a room and crying is our essential nature, ultimately. That is what is going to happen to us one day: we have to cry. When we were born, we cried; and when we go, we will also cry. In the middle, we smile as if everything is beautiful.

Now, this peculiar thing that I am speaking of, this aloneness, is something very important to think of and very essential for us to understand. As I mentioned some days back, in the practice of yoga there is an attempt at gradual extrication from involvements, beginning with externals first, and moving internally later on. Hence, as it is mentioned in the Bhagavadgita: Vivikta-sevi laghv-asi yata-vak-kaya-manasah (18.52). Viviktaseva: “Resort to secluded places” is the first thing that is mentioned there. This “resort to a secluded place” is the first thing in yoga; everything comes afterwards. Sitting in a posture, and pranayama, and meditations come later on. We have to find ourselves in a state of aloneness first.

This can be initially done by trying to find time to be alone at least for an hour every day, without speaking to people. Can you be alone at least for one hour in a day? This is the least that one can expect of you. Take a determination; make a vow: “For one hour in a day, I shall not speak to people.” But if you are tempted to speak to people, then at least close your door so that nobody will come in and there is no chance of speaking. For one hour in a day, you will not open your door. You will be inside your room, and nobody will enter your room at that time. You may be wondering, “What will I do during that one hour?” Let it be anything. Maybe, in the beginning, you will not be able to do anything. Let it be so. You do nothing; you will only be looking at the watch to see when this one hour will be over. It does not matter. Even if that happens to you, it does not matter; do not open the door for one hour.

Many a time when you do a mala, you go on seeing how much is completed, because you are fed up with it. You are tired. For one hour in a day, do not open the door; be alone, read the Gita, read the Sermon on the Mount, read the Dhammapada, read the Bhagavata, read the Ramayana, or do whatever you like. You may even sing and dance if you like, but don’t open the door. Gradually, you will be accustomed to this kind of living alone for one hour. Then, later on, you can do something positive and substantial during that one hour instead of merely waiting for that one hour to pass. You can chant a mantra or a divine name – loudly, not mentally. Sing loudly the divine name for one hour, or loudly recite the verses of the Bhagavadgita. Something noble can be put into practice during this time. Gradually, the time should be increased. Usually, it is accepted that when you can be alone for three hours continuously, you can be said to have mastered this technique of aloneness to an appreciable extent; and when you can sit in one posture for three hours continuously, you are said to have attained what is called asana jaya – that is, perfection in asana.

If you can sit in one posture for three hours continuously, that is perfection. If you can be alone for three hours continuously, it is a great achievement. All this is nothing but physical isolation. There is very little of the spiritual element in it, because even if you are alone for an hour or two hours or three hours, your mind may be wandering in the shops and thinking of all sorts of things. It does not matter. Even if that is the case, be physically alone for one hour, two hours, three hours – more than that is impossible, of course.

After you learn to be alone physically, you have to try to be psychologically alone. That is the next step in yoga. Psychological aloneness is a more difficult technique than physical aloneness. You can lock yourself in your room, shut your door and be physically alone, but you cannot lock the room of your mind – at least, that is very difficult. You cannot keep the mind in a closet and tell it not to see anybody, not to speak to anyone, and so on. The mind will not listen to this advice. Though physical sequestration, isolation, solitude, may be practicable to some extent, mental solitude is almost an impossibility for many people. And it is mental solitude that we are finally seeking through the habituation to physical aloneness or solitude in the beginning. From the state of physical detachment, you come to a state of mental detachment.

As I said, yoga is essentially freedom from attachments; and in the beginning, it has to take the form of physical detachment, though that is not the true yoga. Physical detachment is not sufficient, because mentally you can be attached, and that is worse. But, how can you come to a state of mental detachment? As I gave the example the other day of freeing your cloth from the clutches of thorns in a jungle, this personality, which is mind and body combined, has to be freed from the clutches of attachment gradually – first through detachment physically, and then detachment psychologically.

So, in the beginning, it is necessary to be free from the atmosphere of physical temptations, attractions, attachments, etc. Do not live in places where you will be physically tempted, physically attracted, sidetracked or seduced. Such physical atmospheres should be avoided. This is the least that one can do, because that is absolutely essential before the higher art of freedom from mental attachments can be attempted. Why do you go to ashrams? What is the purpose? You go to monasteries, cathedrals, nunneries, and so on. What is the purpose? The purpose is to make yourself physically incapable of getting tempted or sidetracked into unwanted channels, because the atmosphere and conditions of a monastery or a monastic atmosphere are such that you are physically prevented from going the wrong way, though mentally you may be indulging. Nobody can control the mind. Mentally, you may be doing the worst things, but yet, physically you are completely restricted from your movements along the directions of indulgence. But a protracted limitation placed upon physical movements in the wrong direction will be highly contributory to the more important practice that you have to embark upon – namely, the freedom of the mind from thinking of objects and attaching itself to objects.