A Textbook of Yoga

by Swami Krishnananda

Little we were when we were born; little we are when we depart from this world. We are also little while living in this world, but it is difficult for us to always be aware that we are little because it looks worse than death; so we start whitewashing ourselves with all kinds of ideas of possession and position, etc.—all of which are mere eyewash, indeed. Friends depart, positions go, and we go from this world in the same way as we came into this world. One cannot go on with this state of affairs for a long time. Any effort on the part of man in the manner described empirically, sensorially, socially, etc., will do no good because we have always been outside the structure of reality and never had an occasion to enter into it—namely, our vital connection with the world of nature whose various degrees of manifestation have been described to you earlier.

With these preliminary remarks, I now come to the point actually on hand—a continuation of what I told you previously. Savitarka, nirvitarka, savichara and nirvichara are the names, designations or appellations that are given to these four stages of inner communion with the Reality of the universe. The first one is the attempt to be in a state of unison with the fact of an object, free from the name and idea associated with it, to know a thing as it is in itself minus descriptive adjuncts and ideas connected with it, etc., and to take the whole cosmos of physicality of the five elements of earth, water, fire, air and ether as the very substance out of which your body is made—so that you cannot see this world as something totally alien to you, as you see a building outside. This building of the universe is not outside you, though this little building looks as if it is something outside you. The reason is that the very bricks of the universe are the bricks of your body. The very cells of your physical personality are made of the atoms of the universe. This thought requires deep affirmation, again and again, so that you will be able to know what samapatti, or communion, actually means.

Have you, any one of you, at any time, tried to be in communion with something in your life? You have always been outside—with desire, longing, hatred and a sense of possessiveness. Is it not a tragedy of life? Have you spent five minutes in your life with a feeling of utter union with something? There has been nothing of that kind. Such hardcore egoists we seem to be, that we cannot be in a state of utter friendship and communion with even a pencil or a wristwatch; they are outside. We love a wristwatch, a pencil and a fountain pen, but they are not ‘I’; therefore, they are not as important as ‘I’; therefore, we cannot love them as much as we love ourselves; therefore, our love is futile. It comes to that, finally.

This is a very important matter, and not merely a story to hear and go away, because here is your future destiny. If you cannot love anything in the sense of a communion with it, not merely love in a psychological sense or psycho-pathological sense, then this life is certainly not lived properly. It has been wasted. You have been existing, but not living. Put a question to your own self. Make this note in your diary: “Have I felt a communion with anything in this world since my birth, or have I suspected everything from the beginning itself? Did I keep it apart, and love it with caution?” Is there any such thing as love with caution? Can you call it love at all? But is this not the way in which you treat things? And can you treat the world and God in that way?

You love God with the suspicion: “If He comes, very good; if He does not come, I will manage without Him.” This is suspiciously wanting God. God knows it very well; He is not a fool. He understands that your mind is doubting. This is a very important factor which you have to underline in your diaries and notebooks: It is essential for you to develop the faculty of feeling communion with things. If you love things with doubt, that will not work; that magic will not be of any use. You should not think that the world is a fool, that you can befool it. Even a plant knows what you think about it. You cannot befool even a plant. If you say, “I will plant you tomorrow and then pluck you,” it will understand what you are thinking. Every atom will vibrate in the manner you think about it. The whole world is a total awareness, with eyes everywhere. The Gita tells us: Sarvatah panipadam tat sarvato’ksi-siro-mukham. Everywhere there are eyes; there is no secret place in this world. Therefore, a doubting Thomas cannot be a yoga student.

So here is a point for you to emphasise to yourself: What is it that you are in communion with? You cannot be in communion with anything whose value you doubt. “It is a very good thing, this person is very nice, but…” You should not add ‘but’. No father, no mother, no friend, no sister, no boss, no money, no wealth will unconditionally become your servant. They are your well-wishers only on condition. This kind of conditioned relationship is not to be a yoga student’s relationship with people and the world outside.

Thus, these stages of samapatti, savitarka, and so on, the four stages mentioned, are graduated ascents of a communion of more and more intensity as one advances further. It is impossible for a person to feel, under ordinary conditions, what consciousness will be there when one is in communion with something. If you have never felt communion, you do not know what it is. It is exceedingly delighting, enrapturing, making you lose consciousness, making you mad for it, in which condition you do not know that you are existing. You know only the existence of that which you are looking at and is enrapturing you. Even if it is really outside you, it can rouse up the spirits of a sense of communion within you, though actual communion does not take place even in the best of artistic and aesthetic perceptions. You can be drowned in joy by beautiful classical music, you can be drowned in ecstasy by looking at a beautiful sculptural piece or an architectural edifice, or you can be drowned in joy by reading excellent literature or poetry. Even then, it is not enough; you cannot call it communion. Even these things with which you are not actually in communion—you are not one with them, they are outside you—still thrill you to such an extent that you cannot put a book down until you read it completely, and you go on gazing at the beauty of a painting, etc. I am just mentioning that if even the semblance of a psychological communion with things which are attractive can thrill you, what would be the thrill that you feel when the soul is in communion? No word or language is adequate. That joy, which is not a joy of the mind but of your deepest recesses, will manifest itself gradually. You must read the lives of saints to understand what all this means—how they behaved, how they felt and expressed themselves.

These four stages of savitarka, nirvitarka, savichara and nirvichara are actual communions; they are not merely meditation processes of the psyche. Identification with the thing as it is, identification with the physical universe, identification with the very universe inclusive of the space-time factor, concentration on or union with the tanmatras, which is the third stage of communion, then the tanmatras or the universe of force being considered as also inclusive of the space-time complex, is what we have covered up to this time.

To know what remains further, you have to bring to your memory once again the process of the evolutionary stages, which was the subject of our studies earlier. The Absolute is the only Reality. God Almighty is the only existence; only the Universal is there, and no particularity exists. Then there was a condensation, as it were, of this Universality into the potential for the manifestation of a universe, which is something like cosmic sleep. In Vedanta psychology, it is called the condition of Ishvara. The Ultimate is Brahman; the potential for manifestation is Ishvara. Then, the potential manifests itself like a dream where there are faint outlines of the possibility of actual concrete manifestation of the universe, which in Vedanta is called Hiranyagarbha. An actual final concrete appearance is Virat.

In the famous text called the Panchadasi, the philosopher describes this process something like this: The Ultimate Reality, Brahman, is something like a pure cloth, untainted or untouched by any extraneous material. We purchase pure cloth—linen or a white sheet—from the market. This pure, uncontaminated existence, without any kind of external adjective, is comparable to the Supreme Brahman. Now, in the process of painting, after the cloth is brought, it is stiffened it with starch. We cannot paint on cloth as it is because there are holes, etc. Starch is smeared over the whole cloth, and it becomes stiff. This is the potential for the further action of painting. As is this potentiality in painting, so is the potentiality of the creative process. The Universal, the uncontaminated, non-objective Absolute wills, as it were, to become something, as the painter wills to do something by means of daubing the cloth with starch. Then what happens? The painter draws an outline of the intended picture with a pencil. This outline will give us a vague idea of what he is going to paint, though the clear picture is not there. This faint idea of the outline of a future universe is the next stage, which is called Hiranyagarbha, and is like a cosmic dream. When the colour is filled by the painter and the picture is ready, it is like Virat, the whole thing that we see. God the painter has painted Himself, as it were, with this brush of His intention to become the universe of perception.

These stages are what finally become the so-called object—if at all you can call them objects—of your communion onward, beyond savitarka, nirvitarka, savichara, nirvichara. When you cross these four stages of even the consciousness of the universe being inclusive of space-time, you are filled with bliss. This communion with bliss arises not from any possession of things, but from an Inner Reality itself. Without any kind of contact with things, It arises from all sides, not only from one point. If you eat a delicious mango, the joy comes from only one point; it does not come from all sides. But here, the bliss spoken of arises from every part of existence. It floods you from all sides and all quarters—top and bottom, left and right. This inundation with bliss, this kind of communion, which is of course indescribable in ordinary language, is a samapatti, or a communion, and goes by the name of sananda samapatti. Sananda means filled with bliss—ananda sahita samapatti with sananda.

You may say that you understand what bliss means because you might have been happy for some reason or other. Suppose your salary was doubled and you got a double promotion, were you not very happy? So you know what happiness means. But this is not the kind of happiness that we are speaking of because these double promotions, salary, etc., are perishable things. Perishable joy is no real joy. Here is an imperishable joy which arises not from anything that you acquire from outside, but from what you really are. You cannot say anything in this condition, because what you wanted has come. You do not want anything, actually, except security and joy. If you go to the root of the matter, you will find you do not want buildings, money, security of people. You do not want anything except a sense of perfection in yourself and a continued happiness.

If all the factors that go to make you permanently happy are there, you do not want anything else. That kind of thing has come. It has come forever, and not only for a few minutes or a day. What will you do afterwards? You merely become conscious of being in a state of bliss. There is nothing else to do. This state where you are just conscious of being in a state of a Universal flooding of Bliss is called sasmita, a last state of samapatti. Asmita means ‘sense of being’, a consciousness of one’s being. You are conscious of your being in a state of Universal Bliss. This is sananda samapatti.

All these stages of communion mentioned—savitarka, nirvitarka, savichara, nirvichara, sananda and sasmita—are considered by yoga scriptures and yoga teachers as a communion with a seed—sabija, as it is called. The idea behind this statement is that even in this tremendous, wondrous attainment, which is actually impossible even to imagine, there is a little seed of your being conscious that you are. That seed also has to go. No one can tell you what happens when you are not even conscious that you are—when there is only Consciousness. It is a state of consciousness not of the fact of you being there. It is not a consciousness of something, but Consciousness as such. Here we are taken to giddy heights, with which we close our session.