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You would have gathered that yoga is basically a perceptional change, and not merely an act of doing something with your body. You may do anything - stand on your head for hours - but the perception of things has not changed. The erroneous perception will condition even the practice of your asanas, pranayama, etc. Whole problem is perception, not something that is being done. "I do yoga," people say. "We do yoga." What kind of yoga are they doing? The same persons that they were years back are they today also. The same operational method of perceiving things continues, and no attempt is made to change the way of perceiving things.

This basic requirement is forgotten, and it is not known that every step in yoga is a corresponding change in one's own perceptional procedure. If you have not changed even one wit and you are the same person, then all your doings are outside you; they are not connected with you. For instance, whatever I have told you earlier would have made you have the conformation that things are not just standing in front of you. Nothing is just sitting in front you as the eyes report to you, but we always look outward - like this. The basic relationship of things in general will require you to know that the very thing in front of you that you are beholding with your eyes is also behind you in another form altogether, as things are not in one place; they not just in front of you. Not only are they also behind you, they are to your right and and to your left, and they are above and below. Things are everywhere.

How do you look at a thing, if this is the case? A practice, a kind of exercise, is to be undertaken in order to change the perception of things. Never look at an object as you generally look at, because it is not in front of you. The pervasiveness of the location of every object necessitates the acceptance of its presence everywhere. So it is pervading you from all sides. A good manager or an executive will look ahead, will look behind, will look to the right and to the left, and top and bottom. Every side of an issue is taken into consideration. Not only in business management, but even in legal argument in a court you cannot go on speaking in a stereotyped manner without taking into consideration the consequences and the repercussions of the statement that you are making in regard to the implications of the case. So is the case of a general in the army. He does not just go ahead, like a foolish man. He takes into consideration all ten directions of the situation that is arising front of him, behind him and so on.

In a way, yoga is a kind of military operation. As cautious as a general is in the field, so is the yoga student. A general of the army faces a widespread situation around him, everywhere around him, and we are also facing in yoga a widespread situation. Our problems are not sitting in one place; they are everywhere. They arise from top to bottom, right and left - everywhere. Anything is everywhere. It is not in one place.

So a yoga student, before starting actual meditational practice, should have a clarified mind as to what it is that is intended. You must know very well that yoga is not a change in the way of doing things, but a change in the way of your being itself, because all doing proceeds from being. Whatever you are, that comes out of you. The doing cannot be a great thing if you yourself are not a great person. A puny, stupid individual cannot perform great things, because the thing that is done is an emanation of one's own self. A finite individual cannot produce an infinite result.

It is necessary to know there is a parallel action taking place between oneself and everything that one thinks or sees. Action is not taking place outside. It is taking place everywhere, whenever you start doing something. So the reaction also will come from every side. The reason is that we are personally involved in the very process of acting, and the end result, as well as the very process, are directly connected with ourselves. The whole thing is moving in action, including our own selves; but we think that we are apart from the action and something is being done outside, with our hands. The idea that an action is outside is wrong. It is everywhere. The outside thing cannot produce any result.

Whatever you have learnt up to this time is a great fundamental scientific solution to the very perceptional process that I have presented before you - a very important thing to remember. It is a change in the way of seeing things - primarily how you see and evaluate a thing. Suppose you sit for meditation. Primarily, without going very high up into this technique, just cast your eyes around like this - with open eyes. What am I seeing? I am seeing something - a vast phenomenon of nature in front of me.  This is an exercise I am telling you. What is there behind me? The same nature that is in front of me is behind me. What is there to the right of me? The same nature is there like a sea, spreading itself to the right of me. What is there to the left of me? The same nature is there. What is there above me? The same nature. What is there below me? The same nature. What is there finally? The thing that you are seeing is not in one place.

Can you adjust your mind to the acceptance of this position that when you behold a thing, you are beholding that which is in all places? So your dealing with the thing is actually a dealing with that which is surrounding you from all places. A thing is an atmosphere rather than a substance. This requires tremendous power of will, because for ages, ages, years and years you have been thinking in one way. You have been the son or a daughter of some parents. You have been in a city or a village. You had these relations. You have this, you have that. This is not the way of yoga-looking, because there is a pervasiveness of issue involved in the yoga exercise.

Even if it is a simple exercise like yoga asana, it is not an activity of one individual body that is taking place. It is a pervasive relationship that the body has got with the atmosphere in which it is involved and the substance out of which it is made. You do yoga asana, bend the body in different ways; but you have also to bend the relationship of this body with the nature of which the body is made. The whole nature is doing yoga asana. If the nature is opposed to you, and you are against the operations of nature outside - you cannot accommodate yourself with what is happening outside - then the exercise remains an isolated effort not bringing any particular result.

When you sit for meditation, remember the whole nature is sitting here. This is not a story I am telling you. It is a fact. You are also connected, physically, to everything in the universe, to all nature. The entire nature is sitting here, erect, straight, poised, adjusted, and complete on all sides. In the Upanishads it is said that even the earth is meditating, as it were. All nature is meditating; it is maintaining a balance. Anything that maintains a balance is actually doing yoga. When you sit for meditation, look around; cast your eyes in all ten directions. "What am I seeing? I am seeing my own father and mother who has produced me - the great nature, which is not only around me, but in me and it is me, actually speaking." The distractions of the mind will slowly cease because of there being no necessity to think anything extraneous.

That the world is outside, things are in one position, and everything is somewhere and not other places, is the old prejudiced habit of thinking. Yoga-thinking is not the same as ordinary human thinking. It is an internal modification of the very structural pattern of the operation of the mind. The whole thing rises into the occasion of a complete inner transformation. When you see a thing, you are seeing everything. Immediately the mind will come to a halt: "Am I seeing something? No; I am seeing everything, because this thing that I am seeing in front of myself is everything. So what I am seeing in front of me? I am seeing everything. Where is that everything? In all ten directions."  Immediately when you think of the mind adjusting itself to the ten directions equally, in a balanced condition, you attain stability in asana. You won't have jerking, pain and so on afterwards.

Your maladjustment with things outside causes the discomfort in the mind and the body even when you are seated in meditation. Yoga is balance - in body, in social relations, in thinking, in emotion, in understanding, and in the very being itself. But when you actually start this exercise, you will find you are tired. An unwilling horse is easily tired, and it will never draw the carriage. It will simply keep quiet. A mind that is unwilling is not going to be accessible to your instruction to meditate. The mind cannot be made to undergo any exercise if it is unwilling to do that. The unwillingness arises in the mind on account of its feeling inside that you are interfering with its old habits, which are correct habits according to it: "The old habit of thinking and doing is correct, and I am conforming; that it is okay. Now you are saying something different. I am not willing to yield like that." Here it is not enough if you are merely understanding. A strength of will is necessary. You may have to even speak loudly to yourself: "What am I seeing? I am seeing that which is around me in all directions," so that your attitude towards any particular thing is virtually an attitude towards everything - perceptional inclusiveness.

You can chant the Om mantra continuously. The chanting of Om is not a sound that is produced in a harmonious manner. The sound produced by the recitation of Om is not inside your mind or inside the body; it is everywhere. Like the ripples of water in a lake moving in all directions, so the ripples of this wave of chant will be felt as pervading all the outside surrounding also, together with the feeling that you are getting adjusted to this vibration. After fifteen minutes of this exercise, try the other exercise of seeing and thinking at the same time that the thing is not only in one place. First of all you can open your eyes and see: "The thing that I am seeing is behind me everywhere." Then close the eyes, and feel in the mind this is the situation.

You will find during this time that things are with you. Can you understand the result of this feeling that the things are with you? It is so because of the fact that you yourself are a thing like any other thing. You are not a subjective operational center segregated from other things which you regard as objects, because the standpoint of an object, so-called, permits the same attitude towards you - to recognize you as an object. The so-called subject and object are a misnomer, really speaking. Such words should not be used, because the things this side and that side, which you call subject and object, are parallel to each other. They are on an equal footing. So you are not looking at an object, but are looking at a situation that includes yourself as well the object. Thus the one who has this awareness of a different situation altogether is neither sitting this side as a subject nor operating outside as an object. It is an inclusiveness.

Every act of perception is an inclusiveness in the operation of the mind. Unless a blend of awareness is brought about between that which is seen and that which sees, the perception will not take place. If there is a complete disparity between the situation that is outside and oneself, you cannot behold anything, nor appreciate anything, nor benefit from anything. Every meaningful perception is an operation of equality of status between the seer and the seen. It is not that we are superior to the things that we are seeing. They are as important as you who sees, because everything has eyes to see as you have got eyes to see. In this manner you adjust yourself to an equanimity of position in your asana, as well as your thought and feeling; and also have a surety in your mind. Since these exercises are going to touch the very reality of things, you are going to benefit from these exercises immensely.

Every step in yoga in the right direction is a success of a great achievement which cannot be destroyed. Svalpam apy asya dharmasya trayate mahato bhayat (Gita 2.40), says the Bhagavadgita: Even a little modicum of your movement in the right direction is a great credit that you are adding to your own self. This credit is never destroyed. Hurry, haste, quickness should be avoided in meditation. "Let me do some meditation quickly and go." This idea should not be there. "I am not seeing a person or a thing; I am seeing the whole of nature which has manufactured these persons and things. I am seeing the mother of all things, the parent of everything."

Some kind of discipline, psychologically, is necessary for every person. Usually we do anything at any time. We eat any time, sleep any time, do things any time, and no systematic arrangement of a daily program is maintained. We must have some kind of plan made within ourselves as to what is the work that is to be done on a particular day - in a general way and also in a specified manner. Usually people do the same thing every day, with minor differences. It should not be a burden on the mind to go on thinking of what is to be done. It is a routine habit that is taking place. The work that you do should become spontaneous rather than a pressure that is exerted from outside. The need for work does not arise from outside. It arises from a total situation. Nobody is compelling you to work. The whole situation around you is compelling you to do something which is nothing but an adjustment of yourself in a particular manner, either by doing something or by thinking something. This is a psychophysical adjustment that is called for. Yoga is psychophysical adjustment.