A Textbook of Yoga

by Swami Krishnananda

You must listen carefully. The first thing you require is to exist in this body; and you want to exist for a very long time—not only for three days. So the struggle for existence involves, on the one hand, the worry about appurtenances necessary for the maintenance of the body and, on the other hand, the qualification that they should be enduring. Why should you add that qualification? If you are comfortable today, is it not sufficient? Why do you worry about tomorrow? Because you feel that you must exist tomorrow also.

What is this peculiar thing that the mind is thinking? What has happened to it? What is the harm if you exist very comfortably today and tomorrow you do not exist? One day is as good as any other day. What is the harm? No, no. This is no good. If you give for only one day and afterwards deny everything, it is as good as giving nothing. This is no good; but why?

There is a desire for continuity in the durational process of time, about which you must also bestow sufficient thought: existence of the body for a long time—if possible, endlessly. You do not want to die physically. You would like to continue your existence. How long would you like to live in the world? You cannot say.

Would you like to live a hundred years? It is a good thing; rarely people live for a hundred years. Suppose, theoretically at least, you are granted a lease of three hundred years. Will you be happy and comfortable, and not worry afterwards? Suppose two hundred and ninety nine years are over; one year is left. What will you say at that time? Even three hundred years are not sufficient.

Why does this happen? This is an in-depth point for consideration. The desire for perpetual, continuous existence even in this body is a reflection of timeless eternity that is masquerading inside you. There is a great man inside this little man that you appear to be, and that big man is eternity. He says no, he cannot die.

The fear of death is an unavoidable phenomenon which goes together with the desire that you should not die. There is a contradiction in your thoughts. On the one hand, you know that you must die; on the other hand, you know very well that you should not die. How is this? These two types of thought arise in your mind at the same time because you are involved in two worlds at the same time: the phenomenal and the noumenal, the empirical and the transcendent.

Time and timelessness—you are involved in time and, also, in that which is not in time. You are involved in two worlds at the same time. The higher world to which you belong, which is timeless in its nature, tells you always that you should never die, because really you will not die as an eternity. But your involvement in this body, which is perishable, tells you this hope has no meaning. Your hope will not be fulfilled; you will perish.

The other aspect is psychological—to have a good name and a lot of fame in the world. You should be a recognised person, with power and authority. You would like to have a good name, not merely while you are alive. You wish that even after you die, people will know that you were an important person. Your name should not vanish. Would you like to be a great, noble man in the eyes of people now when you are alive, and after you die they call you an idiot? You do not want that to be said about you. You will not even know what people are saying, so what does it matter? You have died, but still, it is as if you are hearing what people say.

The eternity in you still tells you that people are speaking this way. See the mysterious, chaotic working of the mind! You do not want that even after death your property should go to some wrong person. What is this ‘wrong person’? Once you have gone, you do not even know whether the property exists or not. Do you know what property you owned in the last birth? You do not know; and the same thing will happen in the next birth. Why are you worrying what will happen to your bank balance and land after you die? Why do you think like that?

The mind and the body act in this manner in two different ways. Though I mentioned only two things, mind and body, there are many involvements in these two classifications. For the time being, we shall be satisfied with only two. The bodily requirement is the source of struggle for physical existence and security, etc. The mental requirement is the way by which we seek to be recognised and have power, authority and position in this world.

The Upanishads are great psychologists. In their wonderful psychological analysis they have said that, finally, we have only three desires, though we seem to have a bundle. Every other desire can be boiled down to these three desires. In Sanskrit they are called eshanas: putraishana, vittaishana, lokaishana. The desire for physical possession and security, the desire for perpetuation of oneself in time, and the desire for name and fame—these are the three desires. All other desires are included in these.

You look very small physically. As you are just one person among many other people, what is your importance? In a large sea of humanity, you are one drop. You will feel very miserable about it, and you do not want to feel that way. “I am a big man.” You cannot become big physically, you know it very well, so you impose upon yourself a bigness by social association—by what is called authority over other people, by becoming a king or a minister or a president. When you are invested with this kind of position or authority over a large area of land and people, it looks as if your personality has grown so big that you are not one person among many others; you are one big person, under whom every other person is subsumed.

The king thinks that the entire population is inside him and he can do anything with them. Physically it is not so, but psychologically he feels it is so. The entire country is inside him, as it were; he holds it in his grip. The largeness that he required has been achieved by this expansion of the gaunatman, or the secondary self.

Why does this desire arise? It arises because the finite hungers for the infinite; the little thing craves for the big thing. The thing that is confined within a little dimension wants to break that dimension and become dimensionless. How large should your kingdom be? Kings are never satisfied; they go on annexing their kingdom. The whole earth, even the sky must be theirs. There is no end for this desire to expand yourself.

The endless desire to expand yourself physically, socially, politically is a desire of the inner infinity in you to assert itself. You will never be satisfied with any amount of property, or belonging, or kingdom that is given to you unless endlessness of belonging is achieved, which cannot be possible. So you will die without fulfilling desires of this kind. No one dies having fulfilled every desire.

On the one hand, the infinity that is incipient, latent in the finitude of your personality asserts itself when it eagerly seeks to expand itself in the form of kingdom, authority, wealth, property, etc. Afterwards there is the desire to perpetuate oneself. This desire is a great phenomenon in the world because to be cut off by time is worse than death. You should not be cut off by time. Perpetuation of your position is very important—perpetuation physically, as well as psychologically.

Physical perpetuation is wrongly attempted through the desire for progeny. People who have no children die by the thought of having no children. They cry and go to all the gods and pray that one child should be born—as if they become gods merely because a child is born. It is a nuisance, as everybody knows, but still it is necessary; otherwise, they cannot exist. Why is there so much desire? It is a false manipulation by the devil inside, which is a distorted form of the desire for perpetuation in time, which says that continuity by physical progeny in a hierarchy of children and grandchildren, etc. is equal to one’s being there in the process of time. But this is really not the truth. So there is another misconception taking place.

The Upanishads say there are three things: the desire for physical expansion by the accumulation of property, wealth, kingdom, etc.; the desire to perpetuate oneself through progeny, which looks like actual continuance in time, and the desire for endless recognition, that one’s name should be remembered even after the body goes. You have no desire in this world except these three. You can go on thinking a thousand things, but you will find that they come from only these three, which are like a big umbrella covering all your desires.

In this circumstance of your placement in this kind of world, what are you supposed to do when you seek salvation? Can you imagine how much inward effort is necessary on your part to take steps along the line of yoga practice? These involvements should be disentangled. They should not be severed by a sword. You do not kill your desire; you disentangle it and untie the knot.

There are three knots, they say: brahma granthi, vishnu granthi and rudra granthi—Brahma’s knot, Vishnu’s knot and Siva’s knot. Perhaps these three knots have some connection with the three desires that I mentioned just now. They are very much emphasised in kundalini yoga and hatha yoga, etc. They are the tamasic, the rajasic and the sattvic; they are the outward, the inward and the universal. They have to be handled carefully by educational methods which are not roughshod and hard upon them.

The whole of yoga practice is an educational process. The student is not hit the head with knowledge so that it may enter. It is not a sudden jerk or a push that is given, but it is a gradual entry of a river into the ocean of the mind of the student.

Therefore, all the efforts of man in this world are finally baseless. He is born like a psychological pauper and dies like a psychological pauper, but in the middle he looks like an emperor. This is no good. We do not want to go like paupers. Let us have some education, some knowledge.