A Textbook of Yoga

by Swami Krishnananda

Suppose your mind is intensely disturbed or agitated for some reason or other, and you are in a state of torn emotion. That is not the time to do physical exercise. You should not say yoga will make you all right. In that condition of the mind, asana cannot make you all right. It will even make you worse, sometimes. The mind has to be perfectly in agreement with the body; only then the body can cooperate in the practice of these exercises. If your mind says, “I do not want it,” you will feel ache all over. It will not do you any good.

Desires of the mind, which actually constitute the mind, have an influence upon the flow of the pranas. Wherever your thoughts are, there your prana also is. When you think something, the mind moves towards that thing, of course. But more than that, and apart from that, the prana also moves towards it.

The idea of the object creates a love-hate relationship with the object, and the prana energises it. The prana does not always move in an equilibrated fashion of harmony in the body. When the body becomes old, it looks ugly, and some parts of the body demand greater attention than other parts. The sense organs demand a lion’s share of pranic energy. A particular sense organ says, “I must have all the energy for myself.” “All the water should flow through my field,” as quarrelling villagers sometimes say. When you go on seeing something with great attention, as in the projection of a moving picture, you do not hear or think about anything else. You do not even know what is happening around you. When you go on gazing, the prana is impinging upon the screen. When you eat a good meal and are highly delighted with it, there also the mind is thinking of it, and so the prana goes in the direction of the digestion of the food. Any other activity also demands the movement of the prana in a similar manner.

Inasmuch as you do not always think in a harmonious manner and your thoughts are distracted, the prana also moves in the body in a distracted fashion. There is no harmonious movement of the prana. It is in a jumble everywhere. Yoga asanas, correctly performed in a sequential systematic manner, will have something like an acupuncture action upon the system, by which certain knots in which the prana is tied up are untied, and they are made to flow in an even manner. The yoga exercise teacher should know all these things—what particular difficulty each student has. All students of yoga exercises are not uniform in their nature. They have mental, psychological, emotional, and even physical differences.

In the earliest of stages of the yoga practice, everything goes well; there is nothing wrong. But in advanced stages, you have to take these factors into consideration. What is the mind thinking? If the asana is performed by the body but the mind is not doing the asana, then there is no cooperation between one part of yourself and another part. If you are doing sirshasana physically, the mind also should be doing that simultaneously. The thoughts move together with the movement of the limbs.

There is a Chinese and Japanese technique called tai chi. It is an exercise which is a psychophysical movement of the whole system, bringing about a kind of meditational activity of the entire organism. It is something very beautiful. Tai chi is a system of blending the thought and the body in a kind of exercise—a kind of yoga exercise—in a manner that thought, prana and the physiological organs are set in a harmonious movement.

The point that I am driving at is that when you are engaged in the performance of a yoga exercise, your mind should be happy to do that exercise. It is not an imposition that is inflicted upon you, and it is not something done as a routine, whether you want it or not. It is a very necessary thing, and the mind is happy about it. The whole point is that your mind has to be happy with what you are doing. You should not do a thing when the mind is unhappy about it. “Oh, this is a stupid thing to do.” You should not say that. “I shall do it, and I am glad to do it. It is good for me. I am happy and pleased.” Then that exercise will benefit you. Even when you eat, you must feel happy. “Oh, beautiful! I like this energy.” If you go on condemning, the food will become poison.

Yoga asana is also mental, as well as being physical. It is also emotional. Unhappy people will not derive benefit from mere physical movements. By a carefully ordained performance of these exercises, the disparity that is usually there between the functions of the body and the laws of nature is diminished. The appetites of the sense organs become less and less intense. Passions get subdued gradually because appetites, passions and desires are the vehemence of the sense organs in respect of their attachment to only this particular body, irrespective of anything else in the world. The more are you concerned only with this body, the more is the appetite, the more is the desire, the more is the passion, and so on. But the less is your concern with this body and the greater is your understanding of its relation with other things in the world, the lesser is the appetite. You can get on with fewer physical comforts than when you are totally physically bound and want infinite physical comforts.

Asana is described in various ways in such textbooks as Hatha Yoga Pradipika, Siva Samhita, etc. They are all good. You can have any exercise for the purpose of your health, but if you are serious about the higher achievements of yoga practice, you need not go into all eighty-four asanas. For the purpose of maintaining sound health, a dozen asanas will do—the aim behind the performance of these yoga asanas being the maintenance of a steady posture of the body.

What is the steady posture? As I mentioned, the steady posture can be defined as a harmonious balance maintained between the physicality of your body and nature’s laws. That is one aspect of the matter—which is very important, of course, so that you may not fall sick. You are friendly with what is operating outside in nature and how nature works.

In the Ayurveda system of medical science, there are prescriptions of how you have to conduct yourself during different seasons. It does not mean that you should eat the same food all the 365 days of the year. When the seasons change, the diet changes. The Ayurveda Shastra, such as Charaka Samhita and others, say that during the monsoon season there are certain items which you should not eat, such as yoghurt. If you eat yoghurt and cold food when it is heavily raining, you will have sore throat, feverishness, etc. There are certain seasons during which you should not eat pulses because they cannot be digested. During some period, milk is not taken. At other times, vegetables with many seeds inside, such as eggplant, should not be eaten because the seeds cannot be digested easily.

When the sun is very hot, you have to behave in one way. When the cold wind is blowing or it is raining, or at the junction of seasons, such as spring and autumn, when people generally fall sick, certain other things have to be done. An adjustment of diet is even prescribed in the Ayurveda Shastra; and other things are also there, like your habits, your way of working, the time of sleeping, and so on. We have wonderful sciences in India even for physically comfortable life, let alone higher things like yoga practice.

The ultimate aim of the yoga practice of asana is steady posture. It is steadiness, harmony with nature’s prescriptions, and basically it is steadiness in seatedness. Yoga is meditation, finally. A particular operation of thought is called meditation. For that, you have to be seated. Why should you be seated? Can you not lie down, stand up, or walk? When the mind is concentrated, the body loses the mental grip and, therefore, the mind will not pay sufficient attention to the maintenance of the balance of the body when it is concentrating on something else. If you start standing and concentrating, you may fall down, and if you lie down, you are likely to go to sleep. Hence, lying down and standing are not considered as proper postures for yoga meditation.

The seated posture—asinah sambhavat—is a sutra in the Brahma Sutras: success follows from a seated posture. You can see by experimenting every day. Do not do meditation; do not think anything, but at least be seated. Do not get up and move about. For half an hour continuously, sit in one posture. See what difference takes place in your personality. You will feel a kind of tingling sensation flowing through the nerves. You will feel a fixity of posture. And if you sit for a long time, you may even feel as if you are a very heavy hill. That sensation will follow.

Seatedness is the proper posture. Various instructions are given for the purpose of maintaining this steadiness of posture. In the beginning, you can lean against a wall which is perpendicular to the ground so that you may not feel an ache in the spine. Use a cushion so that there may not be pain in the knees. Later on you can sit anywhere you like.

Physical steadiness of the posture is achieved by continuous maintenance of it on the one hand and, at the same time, the entertaining of a thought similar to it. Again the same question arises: the mind should not be somewhere else. It should also be in that posture. The mind should be concentrating on something which is steady.

In an aphorism of Patanjali there is an interesting prescription. Prayatna saithilya ananta samapattibhyam is a sutra of Patanjali—relaxation. Feel completely relaxed; do not be rigid. Feel that you have practically isolated yourself from the body. You are not there in the body. This is a kind of relaxation method. Do not be rigid, because then you will feel pain. Effortlessness—prayatna saithilya means effortlessness. Your work should be an effortless performance, without rigidity and pain; then the performance is a happy one. People dance and act in drama theatres spontaneously, not with rigidity and fixity. In a similar manner, let there be an effortless seatedness of the body.

The mind is also to think of something which is fixed. What is fixed in this world? We may think of the Earth itself; it is very steady. You are as steady as the whole planet Earth, or the solar system. The word ‘ananta’ is used in this sutra: prayatna saithilya ananta samapattibhyam. Think of the ananta. What is the ananta? There are two meanings for it. One is the traditional meaning, and the other is a philosophical meaning.

The Puranas say that a huge snake with millions of hoods, called Ananta, is supporting the physical world. Some grandmothers even say that earthquakes are due to the tremors caused when this large snake shifts the load of the Earth from one hood to another hood. Then the Earth shakes, and there is an earthquake. This is an old grandmothers’ tale. How steadily that great snake is positioning the entire cosmos!

Some Puranas even say that the quarters of the Earth, the eight directions, are maintained in position by eight elephants, called Dikpalas. This is all mythology, theology, Purana, etc., and is only to suggest the way in which you can think of the position to be maintained.

Ananta also means without end, no ant—that is, non-finite, infinite, endless. Can you think of endlessness? Think of space from all sides. Imagine that you are moving in space to the right; you are moving further and further to the right; the space has no end. You are moving to the left—no end, no end. You are moving high up, to the top—no end, no end; and then you are going down. Imagine that you are moving in all directions in space at one stroke. Immediately you feel a kind of fixity of your mind. All directions—you must think all six directions at the same time: the four quarters, plus above and below. Endlessness from all sides engulfs you in such a manner that you have nothing to think. When there is nothing to think, there is fixity of mind as well as body. This is the way in which you can attain stability of yoga posture for the purpose of higher achievements in yoga.

This is something about this false self—this body. I have not told you everything about it, only a little bit. This body is connected with the physical nature and it is made up of the same elements as this world is made, and you have to live in a state of harmony with the natural seasons, etc. It starts with yoga asanas; asana leads to posture of the body. This is one thing. But there is something more about this false body. It is not a solid stone, sitting here, so that you can just take it for granted.

The body also is a tremendous involvement, and it is not solid. In the same way as the relations of yourself with society outside are not one solid arrangement and are a juxtaposition of various techniques of mental operation with things and persons outside, so is the case with this physical personality. It is not entirely physical, though it looks like that. It has internal components, which are the reason why this physical body appears to be in this form.

This physical personality is not a solidity, in the same way as the relations of yourself with society outside are not one solid arrangement. It is a juxtaposition of various techniques of mental operation with things and persons outside. So is the case with this physical personality. It is not entirely physical, though it looks that way. It has internal components, which are the reason why this physical body appears to be in this form. So merely doing asana may not be sufficient. Something else also has to be done in order to control this body; and when I say ‘body’, I mean all that constitutes your personality.

Your personality is the body. The outermost part of this personality is the physical body, but there are internal layers which Vedanta philosophy, Samkhya philosophy and others tell you are the body of sense organs, the body of vital energy, the body of pure psychic operations, the body of intellect, reason, and many other things. If you are ignorant of these internal citizens of this little world of your personality and imagine that you are only this solid body, you will be thoroughly mistaken.

So now from the outer world of social relations, we have come to the physical body, and now we shall see what else is inside this so-called individual personality.