Can we ever believe that the whole universe is constituted only of mathematical point events, as our scientists tell us? We feel that they are talking through their hats. It makes no sense. How can this hard world be made of mathematical point events? But, this is what the world is made of. It is an ethereal emptiness, finally—shunya, a void. There is some substance in this Shunya-vada, a doctrine which says that, finally, there is nothing in this world. There is some truth in it.

The world is made up of nothing. God created the world out of nothing, because there was no substance out of which God could have created the world. Again, we revert to a little philosophical background. “If this world has been created by God, out of what wood, bricks, mortar and cement did He create?” asks the Veda. Where are the beams and the structural patterns of the world, out of which the world was fashioned? Where was the material for the world to be created at all when God alone was? So, He must have created it out of nothing, like a magician conjuring up a large show before a huge audience and flabbergasting them. God has, like a tremendous magician, mayavi, projected this great panorama of the beautiful universe out of nothing, emptiness. Like a balloon, hollow inside, so is this world. This hard substance, this strong body, iron-like body, is an empty balloon. There is nothing inside.

But, the apparent substantiality that we feel in our existence is the characteristic of the Atman, which is not an abstraction. The reverse is the case. The idea of the good, the notion of God, and the consciousness of the Atman are not abstractions. They are the substances. They are the realities whose being is the reason behind our apparent feeling that the body is real, concrete, hard.

Hence, when we attempt self-control, restraint of the senses, we are faced with a terrible difficulty. What are we restraining, and what are we attempting to enter into after this practice of so-called self-restraint? We have a fear that we are entering into a nobody, a nothing, a void, a darkness, an annihilation of personality. Nobody can be happy by a long procedure of meditational practice. We get frightened. We want to get up and run away due to the fear that something wrong is taking place. Perhaps we are going crazy: “From this hard reality of the world, I am withdrawing into a void in meditation. What is the purpose? What do I gain out of it? What is this meditation, going on thinking some abstract idea, rejecting the hard realities of life? Oh God!”

Meditation seems to be a running away from realities into an unreal, ideal kingdom which is within the hat of a person. These difficulties will pursue us wherever we go because, after all, we are what we are. We cannot be anything other than what we are. We are the sons and daughters of fathers and mothers—and we are just that, even now. We cannot be somebody else. Just because we call ourselves yoga students, we do not cease to be sons and daughters of fathers and mothers. We think only in this way. And, we are commercial people. We think in terms of give and take. What comes, and what for? What is the purpose?

These questions are out of point when we are struggling to enter into a non-mathematical, non-commercial, non-give-and-take region of Pure Being, where being alone is the value, and not possessing, enjoying, etc., as we are accustomed to. Why is self-control, meditation, so difficult? It is because there is fear, suspicion, and doubt. We may not accept that we have any doubts, because we do not want to say that we are Doubting Thomases. We wish to regard ourselves as yoga students and lovers of God. Very good! Still, the doubt is there: “Where am I going? What is the outcome of it all, finally?”

The greatest problem before us is that the world seems to be a hard reality, and it cannot be brushed aside as if it is nothing. It is impossible to do so. And this body is there, terribly hanging on us like a hard rock on our necks; and we want to withdraw ourselves from that? Who can withdraw oneself from this granite-like body, so hard, like flint? Like iron, like steel is this body, and we withdraw ourselves from that—into what? What is there, into which we will withdraw ourselves? There is nothing, an emptiness. And the so-called ideal which we seem to be entering into by self-control does not promise any satisfaction. It eludes us, it tantalises us; and, sometimes, it appears as if it is deceiving us. And when we come back, we are the same hungry, thirsty, angry, fatigued souls, not the illumined, blissful, blooming, flower-like yogis who come out of meditation. We are exhausted, tired, perspiring, and aching all over the body.

We have somehow been forced into this conduct of yoga, but the inner being that we are is not permitting it. So, self-control, self-restraint—control of the senses, the mind and the intellect, which yoga is—is not an easy thing, because we know very well how valuable physical life is, earthly life is, and the joys of life are. To convince ourselves that there are greater joys than the joys of the world and the joys of the senses and the body, what an amount of training is necessary! How beautiful things are in this world! How tasty are the delicious dishes, and what a majesty and grandeur we have in the various parts of the world! Can anyone gainsay that things of this kind exist?

What satisfactions the world can provide us with! Are we not running after satisfactions, whether they are of the senses, or of social relations, or aesthetic and romantic satisfactions? Are they non-existent things? Who can say they are non-existent? And whoever, against one’s own will, tries to hit upon the valuelessness of these great values of the world gets defeated, and does not attain to yoga.

Sri Krishna is posed this question by Arjuna: “Is this possible? Whatever you say, I understand, of course; but, is this possible? This mind is like wind, like a gale, like a tornado; who will tie it up in self-control?” “Yes,” says the great Lord. The mighty teacher accepts that it is so. The mind cannot be controlled.

Why can it not be controlled? Because the mind is not inside our body. Here, again, there is a little misconception in us. The mind is not a thing that we can tie with a rope, as we tie up a cow or a horse. It is a power, a force, an energy—a permeating, ethereal movement of nature itself. So, the control of the mind is almost an attempt to control natural forces; and, inasmuch as we have already accepted that nature is stronger than we are because it is outside us—it is very powerful, and it is larger than our body—we cannot imagine how natural forces can be controlled by a single individual. How can one person control all of nature? Again, the doubt comes in the mind.

But, to come to the point again, yoga is not an individual affair. It is not you or me that practises yoga. It is not one person trying to control the powers of nature. Nothing of the kind is yoga. What we call mind is the mode in which nature operates; and, we participate in this mode. Thus it is that we seem to be working in accordance with the natural purposes, instincts, desires, etc. Our desires are uncontrollable because nature is vast, and not limited to our body only. The whole world is working behind us when a desire operates—as, to give an example, the whole ocean is pushing a single wave. All the bubbles of the ocean push the waters up to form a single wave on the surface. This is the reason why our desires are, on the one hand, infinite in number, and, on the other hand, incapable of control. Infinite are the desires because endless is nature. Uncontrollable is desire because we have made a mistake in imagining that nature is outside us.

It is these intriguing facets at the back of the practice of yoga that give meaning to the hard austerities that were, in ancient times, imposed upon disciples by great masters. Why should there be so much tapas, and hardship, and serving the master for years and years together? We can imagine why it is so, and why it is necessary. We can never trust our own minds, because our minds are nothing but a name that we give to erroneous thinking. Who can rely on this way of thinking? Who can try to streamline themselves in an altogether new direction, unless a higher power operates?

Often it is said that yoga is a matter of grace coming from God. It is not an effort of a single individual, because the effort towards overcoming individuality proceeds from the individuality itself. This is another thing which is very interesting about yoga. How can the feeble individual project a kind of effort which is equivalent to the powers of all of nature? So, individual effort is not adequate. Guru’s grace is necessary—which means a higher, divine grace has to operate.

This is a mystery. All yoga is a mystery, in the end. It cannot be logically dissected into precise terms. How knowledge arises in us, how we are able to succeed in controlling ourselves, and how we step out of this phenomenal realm to the higher one is a miracle automatically taking place, even as we do not know how we wake up from sleep. Who wakes us up from sleep? Somehow, we wake up; something happens, and we are awake.

How did the idea of the existence of a higher life arise in our mind, if not by a miracle, a wonder? We never created this idea in our mind. It occurred to us. The ignorant individual cannot manufacture a knowledge which is superior to that ignorance. No philosopher has been able to give an adequate and satisfactory answer to the question of how knowledge arises in a person. An ignorant person cannot create knowledge, because already we have accepted that the individual is ignorant. So, from where does knowledge come? No one knows. It happens.

Everything in the world is a happening, and not a doing of anything, Hence, humility on the part of a seeker is called for—utter effacement of egoism and an acceptance of one’s limitations. Pride has to be ruled out, totally—every kind of pride, even the so-called religious and spiritual pride, which may insinuate itself into us without our knowing it. The smaller we become, the better for us.

When we reduce ourselves and subjugate our egoistic affirmations, the higher powers gradually enter into us as sunlight enters the room when the windows are opened and the breeze blows freshly; otherwise, there is stinking air. We need not have to create the air and sunlight; we have only to open the doors and windows. Such seems to be the requirement on our side. Mostly, it is a humble and simple attitude that is required of us, a goodness that is the characteristic of the exact position in which we are placed in this world.

With this little introduction, I shall try to touch upon certain further details of the way in which we can overcome this pressure exerted upon us by the phenomenal nature and receive the light of the higher Self—the noumenal existence which we really are within ourselves.