The world is in a state of Yoga says the Upanishad. This single sentence may be regarded as the essence of all higher teachings. It is the composure of oneself and a settling of oneself in oneself is what is attempted by the world as a whole. This perpetual activity on the part of all creation, namely, to maintain itself in a state of healthy balance of its part is the Yoga of God's creation. Are we not told in the Veda, as well as in the Upanishad, that prior to the act of creation, God performed tapas concentrated Himself in a fashion which, in its vast inclusive ambit, was clear about every detail of what was to be projected. The thought itself was the action and the action was the same as the being of God. It is not a part in the sense of something that can be isolated from the Whole to which it belongs. It is only a conceptually separable entity but essentially, integrally related to creation.

Thus there is a point in the Upanishad telling us that the world is practicing Yoga; nyayatieva, lilayatieva.  The sky meditates as it were, and so the earth. To conceive in our minds a state where the world can be contemplating creation can be in a state of Yoga. To be able to appreciate the possibility of such a self-settledness on the part of the whole world at one stroke we might have to shed our human personality for a few seconds. If it is true, and it is certainly true, that the world is in a state of self-settled composure and inclusive compactness of its spirit and if it is also true at the same time that we human beings are not capable of separation from the stuff of the world, we, every one of us are in a state totally opposed to Yoga because we do not think with the world. We may think the world, but not think with the world. Here is the crux of the matter which has an import which is spiritual and temporal at the same time. We can think that there is a world, but that is different from aligning our thought with the composure that the world is said to be maintaining in itself.

To participate in the world is different from looking at the world and harnessing it for purposes that are human or individual. We cannot harness to any particularised purpose a thing with which we are moving and without which we cannot be said to be having even an existence worth the name. We have first of all to convince ourselves that we are outside the world in order that we may exploit the world, use it for our purposes and deal with it, a term which implies a wealth of undesirable meaning. To deal with a thing is to totally cut oneself off from all vital relationship with that with which one is dealing. Else, if that with which we try to deal is not so entirely vitally cut off from ourself, our dealings with a thing would be equivalent to dealing with our own self. We do not appreciate and understand the magnitude of consequence that is involved in the errors of our thinking. This is the scientific base, the philosophical foundation, the core of the matter behind the difficulties of life, problems galore and any blessed thing that you can think of in your mind.

When this catastrophic thought, we may call it so, which persists in non-aligning itself with the way of the world and vainly attempts to align the process of the world with a temporarily significant process of an individual or even a group of individuals, when such an attempt is considered as the task of life, which man imagines to be his principal occupation, to put the world to use and to see that it moves parallel with the intentions of human behaviour and conduct, this is the philosophy behind what I referred to yesterday as a materialistic outlook. We have to subtly go into the depths of the difficulties of people in the world. A glib talking and a veneer of outward interpretation of our difficulties will not do. There is a basic cause which refuses to come to the surface of analysis, persists in maintaining its isolation as a background of even human thinking so that even our psychic endeavours and logical approaches would not be adequate instruments to discover the basic difficulties of humanity because they are at the very back of even our psychic approach the conditions that are necessary for us to think in a particular manner, to think in a human fashion, so to say.

These conditions are prior, a priory as they call it in philosophy, precedent to the action of human thinking, every kind of thinking including rationality, scientific observation and philosophic probe. Man is conditioned in this sense. We know very well the meaning of the word condition. It has many meanings, psychological as well as social, but it has a deeper meaning behind the extent to which we are able to know what it is. We are psychologically conditioned, is what psychologists may tell us. Socially conditioned is something well-known but there is a further conditioning which is the cause of all these exterior limitations of our psycho-physical personalities that determines every endeavour of ours so that even our attempt at overcoming our limitations seems to be varnished with a very thick coat of the very condition of this limitation, and so goes all learning of humanity. Once a long rope is given to this kind of thinking, when an instinct or impulsion or a natural proclivity is given unlimited freedom of action, it becomes the law of the day and the natural rule of thought and activity.

Aeons have passed since this circumstance of human creation seems to have taken place and many an explanation is offered to describe the way in which this human outlook originated at a time which was prior to the coming of time itself perhaps, and you can imagine what a length of time has passed. Since we have been educated, educated indeed in this fashion of thinking to which I made reference as an unyogic way of thinking, because of the fact-this thinking of man, of every one of us, of humanity as a whole-is a thinking which considers the world as an associate who has to be put to use and to be utilised for the sustenance of human individuality and make it secure as long as possible in the duration of time and on this earth in every blessed manner. This is not to be. If this is not to be, man is not to be happy in this world. If he persists in this inveterate way of thinking which he considers as his thinking and not the thinking of the world. The masters, the supermen about whom we had occasion to consider certain aspects of yesterday, are different from ordinary human beings in the sense that the super humanity in them is just that characteristic of the operation of their minds which is set in tune with the thought of the world.

To think as a Yogi would think would be to think as the world would think, and hard is this statement, difficult is the import of this suggestion because we cannot understand what the world is thinking, and how we are expected to think if it is to be in tune with the thought of the world. We shall have occasion to consider what all this means subsequently. As a thought which is contrary to the way of the world is unhealthy, and it is a sickness of the world as a whole, it has to be remedied. The remedying feature when sickness as of this kind erupt in the context of world history, health forces begin to act. These forces of health and regeneration of the world, these forces that are unleashed for the purpose of remedying the illness of life are the saviours of humanity. You may call them incarnations, great leaders of mankind, sages or saints. The world is perhaps incapable of thinking in the terms of persons. It is doubtful if it is aware that we are existing as people. It is a matter which requires some consideration. The body for instance may not be aware that it has fingers. It may be aware that it is. Something like that may be the way in which the world thinks.

Personalities are no value for the world, and human history has been a demonstration of this truth, of the manner in which people are treated by the world. They are treated as something which we, as humans, will not be able to understand. Great geniuses have an exit in one second from the drama of life. Great heroes of history in whatever field, whom we would like to be here before our eyes for ages to come, are cast into the winds by the powers of life, the forces of the world. Does it care for us? Our demands seem to be given scant recognition by the rule and the law of the world. It does not bother if you are born; it does not bother if you die. It does not seem to bother how you live also because it cannot consider you in the way in which you consider it. Here is the difference between a loving parent looking at the child and an ignorant child understanding its parent.

The considerations of world forces in respect of people like us are impersonal considerations, not personal affiliations of human friendship or social affiliation. The world is not a human society. We may think it is only that; but it is not just that. This is the reason why humankind right from creation onwards has never been able to understand what this world is, why things are happening in the way they happen. They are happening in the way they have to happen but they are not happening in the way we would like things to happen from the point of view of our observation and interpretation of values foisted upon the world, a world which we have created in our own minds, not the real world namely the world of an exterior association and affiliation in regard to ourselves while the world is not an exterior appendage to our personal lives. Remember that the world is not an appendix to the book of our personal texts. It is a standard existence by itself. However much we may stretch our thought to concede a value independently to the world, especially when we speak of world-peace, human welfare etc., we may not be fully understanding what is happening to our minds when we say like that or when we even think in that fashion.

Even when our thoughts, so-called, extend or appear to extend to the whole area of the world, geographical as well as social, we remain there as a person. In fact, we have not melted into the humanity which we consider as our deity in our social activities. The social welfare worker is a hard-boiled ego yet, because that person cannot cease to be, merely because the sea of humanity has engulfed that person in this endeavour of social welfare consideration or the thought of the good of the world as a whole. It is not easy, almost impossible for us, to get out of the clutches of the background of our very method of thinking, however much we may imagine that we are altruistically thinking and balancing ourselves with the way of things and the world outside, that we are always secure. This is a psychological root and I do not want to use the word 'unconscious' with which the psychologists are familiar while we do not know the exact meaning of this word as they have it in their minds. Apart from that it is not a suitable discussion of what I am trying to tell you as the background of our difficulty. It is unconscious in the sense that it is not capable of thought. That means to say it cannot be converted into an object of thought. Our own backs we cannot see.

Hence to be with the world, which is said to be the art of Yoga, may require a time of effort and endeavour on our part which is not just a psychological effort. When we are students of Yoga in the real sense of the term, it is not this mind that is working. This mind that is human, which is mortal and caught up in the body, which thinks from its own individual point of view and cannot consider the ways of the world as a whole-it is not this mind that practices Yoga. This is the reason why many times Yoga teachers make a distinction between the lower mind and the higher mind. We have heard these terms lower and higher but we cannot easily discover the difference between these two aspects of human thinking, the lower and the higher. The lower is this, about which I said something just now: that kind of thinking which is concerned only with the maintenance and the security of the bodily individuality and the psychic ego.