A Textbook of Yoga

by Swami Krishnananda

The more invisible a thing is, the more real it is; and the more tangible it becomes, the more unreal it is. The solidity of a thing is not the reality of an object; the invisible force that is the constitution of the object is the reality. The ‘I am’ in you is not the physical body; the ‘you’ visible to the photographic camera is not your real reality. In a similar manner, as this ‘I am’ in you, which is invisible, is more real than the visible object which is your physical personality, the God-concept should not remain merely as an abstraction in thought—even as ‘I am’ is not a concept in your mind, but is a solidity for you, more solid than the physical solidity of this visible thing. Hard is this to comprehend because the mind etherialises everything that is perceived by a process of knowledge, and solidifies and converts into reality that which it sees with the eyes or is made tangible to the senses.

A great tragedy, as it were, has befallen the whole of creation. The stories of creation tell us that there was a fall of man. We know the story of the fall. There was a headlong coming down, like a Trishanku, with legs up and head down. This is also a logical process. When there is a fall, what falls, actually? Has some solid object fallen? No. It is a reversal of consciousness that has taken place. A topsy-turvy perception becomes what we call ordinary human perception.

These interesting things are not known to the prosaic mind which is accustomed to the ordinary studies of our educational institutions. Are we seeing things properly? When we continuously see a thing for a long time, we are likely to mistake it for the real process of perception. If we go on telling a lie a thousand times, it becomes a truth; so when we are accustomed to an erroneous perception for our whole life, we cannot imagine that there can be another way of perception at all.

Earlier I mentioned the phenomenon of being seen in a mirror. Some reversal takes place even there—the right looks left and the left looks right. You must have observed this. So when a reflection takes place, this is also a kind of fall, we may say. The original face has fallen through the medium of the mirror into the structural pattern of the objective perception of our face, where we see ourselves as topsy-turvy. If we want to know more about this topsy­turvyness, we can go to the bank of the Ganges and see ourselves standing there. We will find our head, which is above, appears lowest, and our feet, which are the lowest, appear as topmost. This is what happens in a reflection.

The individual is sometimes called a reflection of God—that is, a reflection of the Universal. It is called a reflection in one particular sense. An analogy should not be stretched beyond limit. Every comparison has a limit of its own, and only certain features are supposed to be illustrated by any kind of comparison. We can say that an elephant is a quadruped and a cow also is a quadruped, but it does not mean that an elephant and a cow are identical. The comparison is for one purpose only. The reflection aspect is to indicate that the individual, which is a reflection of the Universal through the medium of space and time, sees things upside-down, and perhaps right as left, left as right, and so on.

If we study the whole story of the process of creation, we will realise that the individuality of percipients came later than the cosmic structure of what are known as the tanmatras, the physical elements, etc. The cosmical aspect of creation came first; the individual aspect came afterwards.

Hence, when the will of the Universal manifested this creation, this world that we see as if it is outside us was not an ‘outside’ for anybody, because there was no anybody to see it. All these ‘anybodies’ cropped up later on, like tendrils from the large farm of this cosmic creation. We are all individuals, like offshoots, who have arisen afterwards. A segregation of the inner constitution of this cosmic setup took place in some manner, and individuality shot up and began to behold its own parent as if it is an object outside.

This world is our parent from where we were born—which is to say, we are a part and parcel of it. We are organically connected, vitally related to this world even now. There is a living relation between ourselves and all things that we see outside. The world is not so much outside us as we are made to apprehend, yet we feel that it is outside.

This isolation of the individuality of percipients from the cosmic whole is the so-called fall. When it takes place, there is a complete loss of consciousness of the original. We can never imagine for a second that we are a part of this universe, because this screen of space and time prevents us from knowing it. The biblical Genesis says God kept a flaming sword at the gates of heaven so that mortals could not enter; the fallen mortal would stay outside. The flaming sword is this space-time. It will not permit us to pierce through it and notice the connection that we have with it. Blessed are those who can pierce through it!

Now, this has taken place during the process of creation. The so-called individual adhyatma has been isolated from the total, creating a perceptional process of an object which is the world outside, adhibhauta, and becomes totally oblivious of the adhidaiva, or the divine principle. The God-consciousness in us is dead completely. We are either conscious of the material world, or of only ourselves as this person. What can be worse for us? It is so bad that we call it samsara, a veritable hell into which we have descended.

In your study here, you are actually undergoing a disciplinary process of a new kind of education by which this new knowledge will become a part of your very existence itself. There is a difference between ordinary knowledge and spiritual knowledge. Everyone has ordinary knowledge, everyone has some sort of education, but this knowledge of chemistry, physics, mathematics is outside you. It is not a part of your life. When you live your daily life, you are not actually implementing it in your personality. Your knowledge has not become you. It is a commodity; it is a qualification, an adjective. It is not yourself, so it cannot help you. It is like a shirt that you are putting on. The shirt is not yourself, though the shirt is very important. It makes you look something different, but you are the same person nevertheless, because the knowledge has not become the vital of your life.

I told you earlier that existence is consciousness. It is another way of saying that knowledge is life. Existence is knowledge. Your knowledge is your existence. You are a moving embodiment of the knowledge that you have acquired. When you move, it is knowledge that is moving. It is not that your knowledge is in the studies, in the libraries and your textbooks or your certificate. Your knowledge is visible. Your whole personality is an embodiment of the knowledge that you have acquired through education. It is vibrating through you. Your face shines. If your face does not shine, if it is drooping and crying, and if you find yourself in the wilderness, and the world stares at you as a reality which you did not become acquainted with in your schools and colleges, then the knowledge is like water that has been poured on a rock and the rock has not absorbed it.

But yoga knowledge is a different thing. It is not knowledge in the ordinary sense of the term; it is not knowing something outside you. When you study an atom or a plant, you are studying something outside you. When you study physiology, you are studying a corpse. Here, you are studying yourself.

The most difficult thing is yourself. You can handle anything in the world, but not yourself, because there is no means of handling one’s own self. There is a method by which you can handle things in the world; but what is the method that you will adopt in handling your own self? There are no instruments, there is no modus operandi, there is no means at all. Without a means of handling, how will you handle a thing? If you want to control yourself, how will you do it—with your hands and feet, with your fist, with threats to your own self? Nothing will work, because you cannot become the teacher and the taught at the same time. How could it be? It is not possible. But in some way, you are going to be that.

In the yoga educational process, you are the teacher and the taught. It is not that somebody thrusts knowledge into you. Knowledge that is already in you is made to blossom out into a beautiful flower of real experience. Never believe that knowledge is outside you. That which is imported cannot become your property.

Now again, to bring back to memory all the things that we considered up to this time, the Universal Consciousness is immanent in you even now. Hence, education is to be understood as a bringing up to the surface of your awareness in practical living that which is hidden in you as an immanence and which sometimes looks like a transcendence. The knowledge of the Self is the knowledge of the universe and, vice versa, the knowledge of the universe is the knowledge of the Self, because the cosmic structure which is this creation is involved in the aspect of immanence in the transcendence, about which we have been discussing just now.

How would you know the whole world if you know yourself? Again a doubt will arise in your mind. This doubt arises because you have again slipped into the old cocoon of thinking that this ‘me’ is only this body. Bring back to your memory once again—a hundred times a day, by hammering this idea into yourself—that the whole universal setup is scintillating through you. The transcendent is also immanent.

The largest generality of the cosmos is present in the littlest atom, including your own self. Is this not a great solacing message to you, that the whole universal force is vibrating through each individual? If it could be made part and parcel of your living experience, what authority, what power, what glory, what bliss, what desirelessness! Everything will manifest itself automatically.

The poor things that we are, we go back once again to the old habit of this Mr. So-and-so, this body. “What are you doing?” There is no “what are you doing” and “what I am doing,” and so on. These ideas have no meaning, finally.

I am telling you all this because now you are to be placed in a new atmosphere, a total vision of a different kind of perspective altogether than all that you have been experiencing up to this time. You should not leave this course as you came. You should go as different persons in the sense that you see things which you saw earlier, but in a different manner altogether. Instead of a table, you will see wood; instead of an ornament, you will see gold; instead of the form, you will see the substance. Your vision will change totally because of the entry of your educational process into the substance of things—which is within you and also above you in the sense I have described just now.

Contemplate this daily, and do not forget everything and again think as you did previously. That should not be the case. This is a kind of medicine that is being given to you for the illness of life. It has to be swallowed and absorbed. It has to sink into your being. You have to live it; and in one day you will see that you are a different person. You will all be smiling; you will not cry afterwards.