An Introduction to the Philosophy of Yoga

by Swami Krishnananda

We are all here for the fulfilment of a purpose. It may not be that everyone will be entertaining a uniform idea of what this purpose is. You must have attended schools. You must have passed through various stages of education. You are educated persons, and learned in many respects. You have studied well. You have lived in the world. Now you have come to another place to study something else. So, most of us are likely to have the idea that we are going to pursue another 'course of studies', just as we have already studied something else before: "If today I study physics here, I will study chemistry somewhere else, and for biology I will go to a third place." This idea can be in the minds of many of us, that we are here to study some subject with which we are not acquainted up to this time. It may be yoga, a very well-known term these days. It may be Vedanta, it may be religion, it may be spirituality, it may be the art of God-living, and what not. Thus, it becomes a kind of subject among the many which are useful to people in one way or other.

At the very outset, it becomes necessary that we have to decondition our minds before we attempt anything positive and worth the while. We are not going to study any subject in the ordinary sense of the term. We do not study philosophy here, for, that one can study anywhere else, in a college or university. You have professors and learned men. That would not be a difficulty but here we are not to get acquainted with a branch of learning, if that is your definition of education. This is something quite different, a kind by itself, of which an idea occurred to many stalwarts of yore, both in the East and the West. The latest example of this category, at least to my mind, was Swami Sivananda, the Founder of this Institution.

One cannot say that they were not educated persons, but their education was different from the type into which people get initiated usually as learned persons, lecturers, professors, etc. We have to reorient our way of thinking, with some effort, in order to fathom the intentions of these Masters. It requires an effort because we are born into a world of certain prejudices which die very hard. The purpose of these sessions that we are contemplating to hold here is to get over these preconceived ruts of thinking; the purpose is to bring a right-about turn in the very art of thinking. More properly, we may say we are attempting to learn a way of thinking which is a little different from the usual way of the world. The normal way of thinking is well known: "I belong to America, I belong to India; I am a man, I am a woman, I am a businessman; I am a teacher, I am rich, I am poor, I am happy, I am unhappy, this is good, that is bad." These are well-known ways of outlook in anyone's life.

This, then, is the atmosphere in which we are living in the world, and we work hard every day, whatever be the work we do in the various fields of life, to adjust ourselves to these so-called chaotic presentations before us that we call life. All your day is spent in adjusting yourself with the conditions of the world. If it is cold, you put on your coat. If it is hot, you throw off your bunian. If you are hungry, you eat some food. If you are tired, you lie down. If you are angry, you show your teeth. Well, so many things occasion different conditions in our minds - the psychological circumstances - and we have to adapt ourselves to these sources of the influx of environmental conditions. All effort is only this much - somehow to adapt ourselves to the world-conditions, whether they are geographical, political, social, or family circumstances. We work very hard. Every one of you is working hard. But what for? In what direction? What is the purpose? We are impelled by a peculiar urge from within us to work. Otherwise, there is a sub-conscious threat felt from within towards the very extinction of our existence. We may die if we do not work. Our existence can be abolished by the powerful conditions of life outside.

The adaptations that we make with life outside vary from person to person. That is why what I do may not be what you do every day, and what you do may not be what another does. It does not mean that everyone is doing the same thing, in the same manner, everywhere in the world, in spite of the fact that everyone does something. Now, the necessity to do something is common to every person. Everybody feels a necessity to 'do', whether it is in a factory or a chapel or a temple or a shop. Everybody does something. The variety in doing arises on account of there being a variety in the condition of one's own psychological being. Your actions depend on your mental structure; so activities have connection with psychology. Everyone is active but in different ways. The necessity to be active can be explained only by the impulsion from one's psychological structure. If you study your mind, you can know something about the need that you feel in regard to work in the world.

Why should you do any work? You know it very well. Each one knows the answer. The world is a hard job before us, and we have perforce to go hand in hand with the laws of the world. We cannot regard it as a stranger, as an outsider, as something not connected with us. Our sorrows are our maladjustments with the world, with life, with everything. The rectification of the maladjustment is attempted by work, activity, enterprise, project, planning, etc. All these plannings and projects, of every kind, in life are methods of personal adjustment with the requirements of outward life. I mention to you a few of these interesting factors which have to be considered before we endeavour to find out what it is that we are supposed to do finally, why we are existing at all, why we are breathing and eating and getting on, somehow, in the world. What is the purpose behind it all?

There is something which keeps us restless and anxious, whatever be the things we do. The practice of our vocations in life has a psychology behind it. That is why there is variety in the circumstances of life. There is this picturesque world before us of colours and sounds and movements evincing different kinds of emotions and reactions from each different person. Life is activity. It is work. The moment you think of living in the world, you think of 'doing' something. And this doing, again, as I mentioned, has vital relationship with the needs of your inner personality - the mind, if you want to call it that way. We shall try to think of what this mind is, in a little detail, after some time. For the time being, we may be satisfied with this thing called mind, with which we are almost familiar, which is the thing that limits and streamlines our activities. Activities have a psychology behind them. Every practice of any kind has a mental condition preceding.

The question may pose itself: Why should the mind think in the way it thinks, and drive us in a given direction, towards the performance of some work, towards engagement of ourselves in some activity? The 'how' of the activity of mind is called psychology. How does it work? What are the various branches of the movement of the psyche? The study of the details of the variegated patterns and activities of the mind is psychology. A very vast subject it is, the study of the mind. Unless this is known, you cannot be fully conversant with the techniques of activity in the world, and you would be doing things without sufficient success. Activities will then be like pursuing the will-o'-the-wisp; a wild-goose chase, a going through blind alleys, with no idea as to what will happen in the future, unless there is a correct knowledge of the background of these activities, which is human psychology. Unless you know your mind, you cannot know the nature of the works that you have to do, and the purpose towards which the works are directed.

But, why does the mind work in this manner? Why should I think in the way I am thinking just now? Why do you think in the way you are thinking? What is this devil working inside us, separating one from the other and demanding that one should think in this way and another should think in another way? Why should it be like that? Why should you think in that way and I should think in this manner? Why not think together in the same way? What is the difficulty? This 'why' raises a problem which goes beyond the field known as psychology.

Normally, this field is called philosophy. The 'why' of a thing is studied in philosophy. The 'how' of a thing is studied in psychology, and the 'what' is the actual daily routine of activity. In our approach to anything, even the smallest item, even the most insignificant so-called addendum to our life, we have to be scientific in our approach. And what is the meaning of being scientific? It is taking the first thing as the first thing and the second thing as the second thing and not mixing up one with the other. You should not start with the second thing while the first thing has been ignored. To be able to conceive the consecutive series of any kind of movement is to be scientific.

But if you are oblivious of the series and miss a link in the chain of the development of thought and activity, then, you would not be scientific. And it is practically the same thing as to be logical; to be logical is also to be scientific, though there is a little difference in the significance of these terminologies, with which we need not concern ourselves at present. To be systematic, to be patient, to be observant, to be accessible to rectification, to be tending towards more and more generalised forms of ideas, to attempt at an exceeding of the limitations of body, community, individuality, etc. - these are certain characteristics of a scientific attitude, the logical approach to things. Philosophy is the study of life with reference to 'ultimate causes', and not merely the 'immediate antecedents'.

We are here to bestow some serious thought on the essentials of what we may generally call life, which condition the outward varieties with which we are connected. The outward details are expressions of inward essentials. The type of food that I eat depends upon the kind of hunger that I have, and the way in which the physiological organs operate, and the liver, the pancreas, the intestines, etc., work. So is the case with every kind of inward tendency, mental or psychological. A serious contemplative attitude is to be bestowed upon the factors which go to constitute the structure of the whole of our life, which includes the geographical aspect, the astronomical aspect, the political aspect, the social aspect, the personal aspect, etc. You will find that you are connected to various factors even when you are sitting here near your desk. You are seated here with a little desk in front of you, but you are many things just now. You are an American, a British, a male, a professor, a hungry man; you have anxiety about your future, you have a desire to achieve something, and many such unimaginable things are conditioning you. It does not mean that you are always thinking, "I am a German, an Indian, American," etc., but the idea is not rooted out from the mind. It is there at the background.

How can you forget that you are a woman or man, or that you are coming from such-and-such a country, that you are a national of such-and-such a place? You may not be brooding over this always, but it is there at the back of every kind of thought that is generated by your mind and every approach or outlook which may be there in your mind in regard to life. So, what is it that you are after? It is not study of philosophy, psychology or economics in the traditional sense of the term. You are trying to go into the deepest roots of the various branches of study you call economics or psychology or philosophy, or whatever it is, all which are the outward expressions of an inward need.