In the Light of Wisdom

by Swami Krishnananda

Chapter 18: The Tendency Towards the Cosmic Being

We saw that the practical side of yoga is founded on moral and personal discipline. As a matter of fact, this process of purification and training is as important as anything that follows. On analysis it was discovered that the process of preparation—the setting in tune of the equipment—is the essential prerequisite of the practice. The practice of yoga is impossible for unpurified instruments. It is not that anyone can practise yoga, because the practice is not undertaken by a person or a personality in general, but by a condition of mind. It is our mind that practises yoga more than anything else, and that mind should be prepared for the necessary transformations that yoga requires. It was thought that in the process of alchemy that iron could be converted into gold, but wood could not be converted into gold. In the same way, it is not so that all minds in whatever condition are to be regarded as capable of this practice.

It is said that there are three kinds of disciples: the gunpowder type, the wood type and the plantain stem type. We know what gunpowder is. To set fire to it takes very little time. In a second after the match is lit the gunpowder catches fire. Wood takes a little more time to catch fire. We may have to blow hard on the wood to catch the flame gradually. Sometimes we have to pour kerosene on it, and so on. A little effort is needed to make the wood catch fire, while gunpowder requires no such effort. But the plantain stem will never catch fire—however much we may roast it, it will remain cool.

These three comparisons are supposed to be exemplary of the three types of yoga students—the first class, the second class and the third class. The first class is the one who immediately catches the point of teaching. At once, like fire that ignites gunpowder, the mind that is purified receives the instruction. Not only does it understand what is said, but it also catches the spirit behind the teaching. The students who are of the wood type require hard blowing, being told again and again many a time—sometimes for years. But then there is the plantain stem type which will not understand anything. They may be taught throughout their lives, but nothing will enter the brain. These three kinds of students mentioned in the analogy as gunpowder, wood and plantain stem are the sattvic, rajasic and tamasic types of disciples. Even among many students of the same class we find a distinction.

It is more difficult to catch the import of the teaching of yoga than its outer implications. It is more difficult to catch the spirit of yoga than the meanings of the arts and sciences that are studied in colleges and universities. We know the difficulty about yoga—it does not merely give us information, as is the case in history, geography, physics, chemistry or biology. Yoga does not give us information about things, and this is the difficulty with it. Yoga is not a study about something; it is a study of something. A study of something is the study of a thing directly and not merely gather facts connected with it.

All our studies, generally speaking, are facts related to a thing, so it is indirect knowledge that we gather in colleges. This is information, facts and related circumstances rather than the very substance of the object concerned. In this system we become no wiser after our education, and life remains as complicated as before. Conversely, the spirit of yoga infuses itself into the mind of the student from the very beginning. We have to be, at least in one sense, a yogin from the very outset. We do not become a yogin merely at the end. Even at the first step we are a yogin in one degree of its understanding and practice, because whatever be the step that we have taken in the practice of yoga, whatever be the stage—even if it be the most initial of stages—we will realise that the whole of us has gone into it.

This is the speciality about the learning of yoga, as distinguished from other types of learning or branches of knowledge. The whole of us is in it. It is not just understanding or feeling that merely react in the study of yoga—it is us as a complete personality. This is something very difficult to understand. We have not been initiated into these ways of thinking, and we do not know what it actually means. What do we mean by the whole of personality? We have never been taught this. We have always been taught to understand, to act, to do, or to feel and react. But for the whole of our personality to keep in unison with everything in the world is something untaught and un-understood by us.

Proceeding with Humility

As a matter of fact, we find that the whole of our being cannot be in unison with anything at any time. We give only partial attention to things, and never in our lives have we seen the whole of our being set in unison with things. This means that we can never appreciate anything wholly. There is only a partial appreciation of things. There is no use merely listening, trying to analyse intellectually, or reacting sentimentally. This is the case with learning in the world, but yoga is quite different. The practice of yoga is not a function of the intellect, it is not a function of the emotions or the feelings, and it is also not a kind of action that we are doing in this world. It is altogether different from what an ordinary person in the world can conceive.

Yoga requires a completely new type of approach to life, a new way of thinking into which we have to be initiated—free from all prejudices of the past. We have to set aside all our old ways of thinking, and we have to be reborn altogether, as it were. Saints often say that we have to become like a child—reborn into a new world altogether—forgetful of all the old complexities and memories of the previous life. We become a clean slate when we become students of yoga, otherwise the old impressions will be there to blur and mar the impressions newly created by the study. We should never come to this practice as a 'wise person'. This sort of wisdom is of no use because, as a matter of fact, the wisdom of the world becomes a hindrance in the reception of this new wisdom of yoga.

When a student approaches a master, he doesn't go like a learned person. The learning has to be set aside first, because this learning is not going to help us in any way—it is rather going to hinder. This prior knowledge becomes a kind of preconceived notion with which we approach a subject, as if we knew it already. This 'as if' is a dangerous attitude. When we approach a master of yoga or a teacher, we must go with an open heart and an open mind and open intellect, to receive rather than to react. We are not supposed to react to the master or the teacher. Our duty is to receive, because the capacity to receive is a greater virtue in a student of yoga than the exhibition of learning.

Suffice it to say that all learning is accumulation of information about rather than of a thing, and this knowledge is not of any utility to us. It helps us as a means of approach to the various things of the world, but it does not help us to live. Yoga is living rather than acting, understanding and reacting. This life of yoga is a life of our total personality. Again I have to emphasise this aspect, lest we should forget it, because it is very essential. Right from the very beginning up to the pinnacle of yoga, it is the whole of our personality that undergoes the process of training, and not our minds, brain, intellect or feeling. These functions of the psychological organs are, after all, functions; and they are functions of something—we must know that. But this something of which these are the functions is what studies and practises yoga. The very background of the psychological functions is the substance of our personality.

We should not identify ourselves with the thinking process as if we are that. We are not a process, first of all. How can we say that we are a process of becoming? We are not, and we know it very well. So no process—even if it be the process of thinking—can be identified with us. We are different from thinking, understanding, feeling, action and reaction. This 'we' which is the presupposition of these functions of the psychological organ is what is going to practise yoga. This is hard to understand. This simple thing is difficult enough for the mind to grasp, because this is a new thing that we are hearing and an entirely novel way of approach—not merely to the things of the world, but to our own selves. Up until this time we have been under the impression that we are thinking beings.

Aristotle said that man is a thinking animal—but he is an animal, after all. This is very interesting, this definition of Aristotle. The human being seems to be an animal, though he is rational. We exhibit this animalistic character many a time. But there is something in the human being which is different from rationality, because rationality is a process and the humaness in us is not a process. We can never believe that we are merely a process. It is beneath our dignity to see ourselves only as a kind of process of transformation or change. We may be the perceiver, the observer or the experiencer of a process, but we cannot be merely a process. Earlier in our studies, we discovered that we are a centre of focused consciousness beneath the so-called process of rationality and psychological functions.

Through a careful and regular practice of this understanding, the great moral canon of yoga will become a part of our personality. The moral life becomes a spontaneous expression of our being, and yoga morality ceases to be a struggle. Morality becomes a difficult thing on account of our incapacity to understand our relation to things. People are unmoral, amoral or immoral due to a psychological difficulty in which they get involved. This difficulty is purely due to lack of understanding. We have been taught the wrong knowledge right from the very beginning, and we are brought up in a circle of society which only caters to this erroneous approach to things. To be right and good should not be very difficult. To do wrong should be difficult, really. How is it that it is so difficult to be good? Very strange and ironic indeed.

How is it that people regard immorality and an antisocial attitude as easier to practise than goodness of behaviour? We can imagine how far mankind has moved from its centre, that the wrong appears to be easy and the good appears to be difficult. This itself is enough indication of how far away we have traveled from our own self. We are moving about in a dreamland with blindfolded eyes, and that is why ugliness looks beautiful, and wrong takes the shape of the right. Morality, which is nothing but the practice of the right, is an expression of what we truly are. The expression of our true personality or nature in life is called morality. Why should we need to read many books to know what morality is? To act according to our true nature is morality; to act contrary to what we are is immorality.

Character Consistent with Our True Nature

There is no need to study in detail the many words that the yoga teachers use: ahimsa, satya, brahmacharya, asteya, aparigraha, saucha, santosha, tapas, swadhyaya, ishwarapranidhana, etc. These are all many terms which describe a single attitude, which we are called upon to manifest as a spontaneous ray emanating from our nature. If yoga ends in union with our own spiritual being, it commences with a demonstration of our character consonant with our true nature. Right from the beginning till the end, yoga is consonance with our nature. Wherever we find that we move away from ourselves, we become a worldly person. To judge ourselves and judge things in terms of what is not true—in terms of accessories and associates rather than the principle—would be immorality. Morality does not merely take the shape of the recognition of our true nature, but it is also the recognition of a similar nature in other people.

There are two aspects of the practice of morality. The first is judging from the standpoint of our true nature, rather than from a view based on illusions, and the second is judging others also as beings similar to ourselves. There are no 'adjectives' in this world. Everything is a 'noun', in the sense that all persons and things are substantives in their own status. We know in grammar what a noun is, as distinguished from an adjective. A noun is also called a substantive. A substantive is what is qualified by something else, and that which qualifies a noun is called an adjective. That which stands by its own nature, that which has its own status, and that which is an explanation of its own self is known as a substantive. It does not need a qualification to explain itself, but to enlarge its scope of meaning an adjective can be added.

We try to do the same thing in our practical lives. We act as substantives and use others as adjectives. When other persons or things in the world mean something to us, then we are using ourselves as a noun or a substantive and others as an adjective—they should qualify us. To use the world as a kind of qualification to the self is to utilise it for one's purposes, and this is the beginning of immorality and unrighteousness. To regard ourselves as normal and others as subnormal is the commencement of all antisocial attitudes. What makes us think that we are normal and others are not normal? It is not a fact. Maybe there are others who are superior to us in understanding and experience, or at least they are equal to us. The moral consciousness is therefore an expression of a twofold attitude in life, and this is the spiritual, psychological and the philosophical background of the yamas and the niyamas of Maharshi Patanjali.

The two attitudes I mentioned were, on the one hand, where we judge ourselves independently and not in terms of qualifications, and we judge others as we judge ourselves. This seems to be the meaning behind the great saying, “Judge not, lest ye be judged.” We should not judge others, because we can also be judged in a similar manner. If we say that so-and-so is this and that, then we can also be said to be this and that. Why not? We cannot take the position of a judge and others merely as subordinates, because just as we judge, so too will we be judged.

Yoga morality is simple to understand. People have been frightened many a time by the words ahimsa, brahmacharya, satya, etc. One should not be frightened of these words. These ideals are necessary because they are the fundamental things of life, and if we truly recognise what is good for us, we will not do anything contrary to it. The good is that which is in conformity with our intrinsic nature. What our true nature is, we have tried to understand to some extent in our lessons. The body, the sense organs, the psychological functions and those objects and persons related to these functions from outside are all adjectives—they are all functional qualifications to something else which we are at a deeper level. When we stand by this true nature of ourselves, we stand as a unit of moral expression.

Dharma

In Sanskrit we use a term called dharma, a word which we might have heard many times. Dharma is not religion, as it is often translated—it has a different connotation altogether. Dharma has much to do with morality and is often identified with morality or moral behaviour. Yoga morality is the principal dharma of the student of yoga. The term dharma is very interesting and something which we have to understand. It is a Sanskrit word which simply, etymologically means a quality, a character or a property. Dharma is a property, a characteristic and a necessary concomitant of an existent nature. That which necessarily follows from the very being of something is its dharma. Something which should automatically and necessarily follow, like a corollary flowing from a theorem, could be said to be dharma. If it does not necessarily follow, it is not dharma. Sometimes by reasoning we may come to some conclusion, but that is not dharma. By legal arguments we do not deduce the dharma of a thing. It spontaneously follows, like the breath of our personality, like the light of the sun, the liquidity of water, the heat of fire or the weight of material substances. This is the crux of religious philosophy and the principal teaching of religions, which is why many a time it gets identified with religion. The way in which we have to conduct ourselves in life in conformity with the Reality of life is dharma.

We have another interesting set of terms in Sanskrit: satya and rita. These are two terms which would be beneficial for us to remember. These words occur in the Vedas, and the Vedas are the oldest scriptures—not only of the Hindus, but of the whole world. In the Vedas we have these two important words: satya and rita. Now, rita may be identified with what we generally know as dharma, and the controlling factor behind dharma or rita is satya. While dharma may be the necessary conduct which should follow from something, that something from which it follows is satya. I hope that you understand me. Rita or dharma is something that follows necessarily, and that from which this follows necessarily is satya or Reality. We may call it Truth, if we like. Reality is satya. The characteristic of Reality is rita or dharma. Dharma is a later innovation of the meaning of the term rita. The original Vedic word for dharma is rita, but later this new word dharma was coined to make things a little clearer.

Dharma, or the characteristic of Reality, has a very wide connotation, and it is this which determines moral conduct in life—particularly in yoga morality which is the foundation of the practice of yoga. I shall not tire of saying that we will succeed in yoga only if we know what yoga morality is, and without it there will be no yoga. The original meaning of the term rita is cosmic order. The regularity of the universe and the system according to which the world works, or the law that seems to be inexorably operating everywhere—that is rita. We always see the sun rising from one particular direction. It never changes the way of its movement. The seasons rotate in a particular fashion. The astronomical peculiarities and the laws operating in the stellar regions—we may say the law of the astronomical universe which has a tremendous influence upon our own bodies, personalities and all society—may be said to be the outcome of rita or the cosmic order of things.

Our conduct in life cannot be detrimental to or even deviating from the cosmic order. There is a system or an order set up in the cosmos as a whole, just as there are laws of a government which are applicable in a country. We are not supposed to deviate from this order but are to necessarily abide by it. Our conduct in life necessarily follows from the cosmic order, and if the order of the universe is one manner, our conduct cannot be another. When due to our own egoism, we go contrary to the cosmic order or the law of nature, we know the reactions—we suffer. Whenever we go contrary to the law of nature or the law of the cosmos, we have many difficulties such as physical illness, nervous breakdown, sensory debility, mental aberration, lack of memory, social conflict and even battles and wars. All these can be attributed finally to man's egoistic deviation from the cosmic order. Any attempt at abiding by this order would be tending towards not only the health of the body, personality and of society, but would also take us nearer to the Reality of which the cosmic order is only an expression.

That we are required to follow a rule of morality ensues from the indivisibility of Reality. We may be wondering why this moral law should be there at all. Who invented this? It has not been invented—it is there. It is there, because something is there. There is something, somewhere. We cannot say that nothing is there. That something which seems to be somewhere, which cannot be denied at any time, is demanding allegiance to its nature. That something which is somewhere seems to be everywhere—to our own misfortune sometimes. We do not like policemen standing everywhere. Likewise, many a time we seem to be afraid to hear that something is everywhere. What kind of thing could it be? We do not like something to be everywhere. We want to be alone somewhere, but that is not possible in this world. The world is made in such a way that we cannot be alone. Everywhere somebody is seeing us. Even in the darkest corner of the nether regions this presence will be seeing.

I would like, by way of digression, to tell a story and to give some relief to the mind from understanding such difficult concepts. There once was a saint called Kanaka Das, who was lowborn according to the Hindu caste system. Though the people did not look upon him with due respect because of his so-called low birth, there was another great saint who wanted to teach the public that there was something in this man that was far superior to the traditional rules of caste. The saint gave a plantain fruit to everybody and said, “Eat this where nobody sees you.” All the disciples went to some corner where nobody saw them and ate the plantain. Kanaka Das however held this plantain in his hand and looked up in all directions for half an hour, for one hour, for two hours. He returned with the plantain to the saint and said, “I cannot eat it in a place where nobody sees me, because everywhere somebody seems to be looking at me.” The others thought, “This is a crazy fellow—he cannot find a place where he can eat a plantain without being seen. Why not go to a nearby room and eat it?” But he alone said, “Everywhere I see some eye gazing at me, and I cannot eat this plantain where nobody sees me.” He then explained who was seeing him. This description of the Absolute is given in a few verses of the thirteenth chapter of the Bhagavadgita. Such a description cannot be found anywhere. There are only a very few verses, and we can commit them to memory, if not in Sanskrit then at least in an English translation. We will find who is seeing us everywhere, and why it is that we cannot be alone in this world.

The Cosmic Order

There is an indivisible something which is at the background of the laws that operate. The government is not merely a set of laws—we know that. The laws are formed on account of a necessity felt. That necessity is something prior to the framing of the laws. A good statesman will tell us what the government actually is. It is not persons, for all the officers put together do not make the government. It is not the president, prime minister, the ministers or the governors that make the government. It is not the constitution of the country that is called the government. There is something else, prior to all these formalities and formulations, which only the statesman's keen insight can see. The very presupposition of the set-up which we call government in ordinary language is the rationality behind the governmental system.

Likewise, there is rationality behind the laws of the universe. It is this rationality that determines not only natural functions such as the seasons, the sunrise, etc. but also the growth of our bodies. From childhood we have grown to adolescence; now we are adults, and later we will become old. All these processes, including the biological evolution, the bodily reactions of hunger, thirst, sleep and so on—everything conceivable, all rules and regulations, needs and necessities—are explicable only in terms of this cosmic order which is an expression of the indivisibility of things. We may be wondering, what could be the law of an indivisible substance? We ought to think for a few seconds as to what it could be. The indivisible something can express itself only in terms of indivisibility.

To explain this expression of indivisibility, one could say that it is a tendency to integration. That which refuses to disintegrate is Being. The very definition of Being is that it cannot be disintegrated at any time. If it can disintegrate, it is not Being. That which keeps itself in an eternal balance and will not brook any interference from outside, at any time, is Being. When such an indivisible Being which cannot be interfered with expresses itself in space, time and externality, it draws things towards itself. The tendency towards Being is the cosmic order, and that also is morality, that is righteousness, and that is goodness. The tendency towards Being is the definition of morality, and any kind of tendency to disintegrate or to deviate from our Being is the opposite to it and is un-morality. The tendency to move towards the centre is morality. The tendency to run away from the centre is immorality. To integrate is morality, and to disintegrate is immorality.

Anything and everything has this tendency. It may be the smallest incident of our workaday world, it may be the tiniest action that we perform in our day-to-day lives—it makes no difference. It may be the gigantic movement of a star in the heavens—it makes no difference. All these are governed by the same law and in the same manner. What we call the force of gravitation is nothing but this tendency to Being. A chemical reaction is nothing but this tendency to Being. One element mixing with another to form a third element is tendency to Being. This tendency to Being is explicit in the astronomical universe as gravitational pull, in the chemical world as reaction, and in our own personalities as the biological urge, and in our psychological world as a dissatisfaction with everything in the world and a longing for more and more.

These are expressions of the very same law that operates everywhere. The substance that is incapable of division cannot also allow division in any of its expressions. Any division is intolerable in life, whether it is in family or in our own personalities. When it is in the personality, we call it schizophrenia; and if it is in a family, we call it misunderstanding or discord. If this division is found with a nation, we call it a revolt. If it is in the whole world, we call it war. But all these mean the same thing—a tendency of the unit of expression to move away from what keeps it in unison. This is the philosophical explanation of the moral law and its scientific basis.

Satya, which I mentioned earlier, is the indivisible Reality, and rita is the expression of this Reality in the space-time world. The expression takes place in many levels. In the material world it is cohesion, gravitation and chemical reaction, and in the biological world it is an urge. In the psychological world it is longing, aspiration and a discontent with the present situation. These are all the variegated expressions in the material, biological and psychological levels of the very same law. It works in the moral level as well as in the spiritual level, as we will see. All the world is governed by one law, because Reality cannot be more than one. The moral law therefore is the same as the physical law of gravitation, only working in a different realm for a different purpose. Conversely, when we dissipate ourselves we tend towards a wearing out of our bodily cells, a weakening of the nervous system, a debilitation of the nerves, a weakening of memory, etc. This is all contrary to yoga, because yoga is that conscious tendency of the mind to integrate. When we consciously tend towards integration, we are practising yoga, and when we cannot do this—when we move hither and thither like a fly that moves in different directions with no apparent purpose whatsoever—then we are earthlings bound to suffer. The cosmos is a unitary Being and we are an integral part of it, and we tend towards it. Every part tends towards the whole, and this is the simple intelligible explanation of yoga morality.

The Practice of Morality

I do not wish to go into details as to the various terms of the moral canon enumerated by Patanjali in his sutras. I wanted to give you the crux of the whole matter and the presupposition of the practice of morality in yoga as the foundation for that practice. We ourselves can appreciate why morality should be the foundation of the practice of yoga. Personal moral integration and discipline of personality constitute what are called the yamas and niyamas in yoga. We should be morally pure and personally disciplined. Patanjali gives various descriptions for this practice, and he wishes to take us gradually from the outer to the inner.

He tells us therefore not to hurt or harm others, not to speak pointed and barbed words to any person, to speak sweetly and positively, and to help others if possible—or at least to do no harm if is not possible for us to help. He also encourages us to conserve energy through brahmacharya, not to take things which do not really belong to us, and not to accumulate things which are not necessary. These are the canons of morality according to Patanjali, which are called in Sanskrit: ahimsa (non-hurting), satya (truth), asteya (non-stealing), brahmacharya (conservation of energy) and aparigraha (non-covetousness).

One of the disciplines is contentment (santosha), which means never to grumble, never to be in a melancholy mood, and never to curse fate and God, but rather to be joyous and buoyant in spirit—to be in a position to skip and jump at any moment. This is contentment, and this is a necessary discipline that Patanjali teaches students of yoga. Saucha is purity both internally and externally. External or bodily purity comes about through bathing and external cleaning of the body and the clothing. Internal purity comes about through right thinking. Contentment or santosha comes about on account of this practice of purity. These observances constitute a kind of austerity or tapas. Tapas means austerity. We look with awe upon a person who is a tapasvin (one who practises austerity). We have heard of people who practise tapas and attain tremendous powers. Power is nothing but the energy that is released out of our personality on account of the control of the senses.

We cannot be powerful if the senses are extroverted and we indulge in the pleasures of sense. The so-called powers of yoga are nothing but our own energy released, like atomic energy that can be released. The energy is hidden in us, but we waste it and dissipate it through sense enjoyments. When we practise tapas in its form as sense control, power comes automatically. Our thoughts assume a tremendous force; our speech or the words that we utter become true. Non-indulgence of the senses is tapas. This makes us powerful like a thunderbolt, strong in our personality, in our speech and in our thoughts, because the mind has become very powerful in concentration and meditation. This is tapas.

To enable the practice of tapas, to enable sense control and to give us certain positive suggestions in the practice of this discipline, we are asked to follow another technique, which is the daily study of a scripture of yoga. This is called swadhyaya. This does not mean just reading some book in a library. If we pick out some random book from a library and read it, this is not swadhyaya. 'Swa-dhyaya' means 'Self-study', that is, study pertaining to the true Self. Swa means 'Self' and adhyaya means 'study'. That which is spiritually beneficial and intellectually disciplined, enabling a control of oneself may be regarded as swadhyaya. The study of such books as the Bhagavadgita, the Upanishads, the Sermon of the Mount from the Bible, The Imitation of Christ by Thomas Kempis, the Dhammapada of Buddha and such texts may be taken as guides in our swadhyaya. We should not have too many books in swadhyaya—otherwise our minds get distracted. Later on it will be profitable to take to only one kind of concentrated study. We should not read a hundred books, because they will sometimes create doubts. Swadhyaya is then one of the disciplines described and is considered to be as important as our physical exercises, asana or pranayama, and also as important as our daily meal or bath.

Saucha, santosha, tapas and swadhyaya (purity, contentment, austerity and sacred study) are four of the disciplines. The fifth one prescribed is self-surrender to God. This is partly a discipline of bhakti yoga and partly a discipline of every yoga. Self-surrender implies a recognition of the omnipotence of God. If God is omnipresent and omnipotent and omniscient, we cannot but surrender ourselves to Him. It follows again as a dharma or a necessary corollary from the very nature of God. If God is omnipresent, we cannot but be an integral part of Him. This recognition of our being an integral part of God—integral means inseparable—this recognition itself is an act of self-surrender. We cannot any more remain a different or isolated being. We cannot any more think as a person unconnected with Reality. We cannot think except in terms of the cosmic order of God. We cannot but be moral. We cannot but practise rita, because satya is there determining it in the background. Though there are many stages of the practice of surrender of self to God, the essential meaning of it is the voluntary recognition of the omnipresence, omnipotence and omniscience of God. That which automatically follows from this acceptance, namely, that we cannot even exist independent of God—this is self-surrender.

These disciplines, yamas and niyamas, which are the first rungs in the ladder of yoga, are two of the accessories to the practice of yoga. I have said that there are at least seven accessories altogether, along with seven stages of meditation, and seven transformations of the mind that one undergoes in meditation. These I will try to gradually touch upon in later lessons. Try to remember all these points, because all these things that I have spoken on are like small bricks. If isolated bricks are taken out from the baking oven and thrown pell-mell here and there, they will serve no purpose. But these bricks that we have brought forth can be joined together to constitute a beautiful building, so that all will come together to comprise necessary units in the building of the edifice which is the practice of yoga.