The Philosophy and Psychology of Yoga Practice

by Swami Krishnananda

“I am.” I mentioned that we cannot doubt that we are. But what is it that we mean in our minds when we say “I am”? This should be explained a little further. Is this body, this little physical frame, this son or daughter of somebody, the ‘I am’, that we are speaking of? Maybe. Mostly, we think this is the ‘I am’. We often refer to our bodies so vehemently often throughout the day, as if the body is the be-all and end-all of ourselves, and all our reference is to this body only. This is an unphilosophical, uncritical attitude of man, whereby he concludes that for all purposes in life, he is the body only. What else can be there? Man cannot see anything else in himself except this conglomeration of bones, flesh, nose, eyes, ears, and what not. But a philosopher is not satisfied merely by reading the lines; he also reads between the lines. Is it true that we are only the body? Is this the only experience we are undergoing in life, or do we pass through other experiences?

The great adventure of Indian thought has been along the states of consciousness, the conditions through which the self passes, and the experiences we undergo in our own personal life. Do we experience only one continuous field of perception such as this waking world, this Rishikesh, this India, this world, this humanity, or have we any other condition also? The philosophical analyses go deep into further experiences we are capable of and through which we pass. We are not always awake; sometimes we sleep, and sometimes we dream. We are unconscious at times; we are semi-conscious in dream, and we say we are very intensely conscious in the waking condition. These three conditions are important from the point of view of deep philosophical studies.

Do we exist in all these three states? Nobody can deny that we exist in all the three states. How do we know that we exist in all the three states? While a dreaming person cannot know anything of the waking world, and we cannot bring to the waking world anything that we saw in the dream world, and in sleep we knew nothing, how can we conclude that we existed in all the three states? Who told us this? Especially in sleep we are totally unconscious; we could not be aware that we were, and yet we say, “I was.” Who told us this? Who is making this statement that we existed in sleep and dream, as we were in the waking world? Is it this body? Can we say that the body is making this statement? No sensible person will say so.

The statement “I existed in all the three states” is not made by the body because, firstly, the body was not operating in the dream world. It was dead, as it were, lying like a corpse, and it had no consciousness of entering into the dream world. But, much worse, it was practically non-existent in the sleep condition. There was nothing practically observable or sensible or knowable in sleep, yet we say, “I existed in all the three states.” Who is making this statement? Not the body, it is very clear, because the body is not conscious. The body seems to be conscious because it is pervaded by consciousness, as a copper wire can be said to be electricity because electricity is passing through it. The force generated by the power house is charging the wire in so intensive a manner that when we touch the wire, we get a shock. The shock is not given by the wire; it is given by the force that is passing through it. Yet, we identify one with the other and say the wire gives a shock. Likewise, the body is conscious in the same manner as the copper wire is electricity. We know the difference between the two, yet we mistake one for the other and mix up one with the other.

The body appears to be conscious. We can touch any part of the body and can feel a sensation because intelligence, consciousness, pervades every cell of the body, as every grain or atom of the copper wire is charged with electricity – or, as the example that is usually given goes, an iron rod heated until it becomes red is charged with the heat of the fire unto its minutest particles. When we touch a heated iron rod, it burns. What burns is not the rod but the fire, yet the iron rod burns, we may say. The body is conscious in a similar manner. That it is really not conscious can be seen in conditions like dream. In the dream world, while we seem to be conscious of a different realm altogether, the body lies there unconscious. We can place a few particles of sugar on the tongue of a dreaming man, and he will not taste it. He will not hear music, and he will not know anything, because he is not there. The so-called ‘I’ is not there in dream. As far as the body is concerned, the ‘I’ has isolated itself from the body. It is not called a dead body because what we call the prana keeps it alive, but the mind is withdrawn. Mind, which is associated with a type of consciousness, is withdrawn from the body. In death it is completely withdrawn in every sense of the term, but we do not call sleep and dream death because the vital energy – the prana, as it is called – keeps the connection of the subtle body with the physical body. If the prana is withdrawn, then there is death of the body. Hence, in the condition of dream, we are conscious of a different world, and the body is not the thing that is so conscious.

Thus, we conclude that this ‘I am’, ‘I exist’ – this centrality of our existence – cannot be the body. Therefore, we are not sons or daughters of somebody; we are something else. We can be anybody else in dream. But there is a greater mystery awaiting us in the state of sleep. Dream is a great mystery indeed, but a profounder mystery is deep sleep. What happens to us? How is it that we are completely cut off from every kind of experience? We are not there at all. Nothing is there – neither ourselves, nor our relations, property, loves and hatreds, the world, creation, or God. Nobody exists for us. What happens to us in sleep? Do we exist there? Yes. Who told us this? Here is the mystery. Who is making this statement, “I was in a state of deep sleep”? Not the body, not even the mind, because the mind was not operating in the state of deep sleep.

While we are obliged to conclude by this analysis that the body is not the ‘I’, even the mind does not seem to be the ‘I’, because in sleep we exist even without the mind. While in dream we can exist without the body, in sleep we can exist even without the mind. What were we then if we were not the body or the mind? The pride attached to physical personality and intellectuality goes when we realise that we seem to be a little different from both body and mind. We are not the physical frame nor the intellectual personality, because both these important items of our experience were completely ruled out in sleep; yet, we existed there. “I was in a state of deep sleep.” Who was in the state of deep sleep? ‘I’ was. What is this ‘I’? Not the body, not the mind. Who else?

Are we not a great mystery? Are we not a wonder in ourselves? What wonder can there be in this world greater than this peculiarity that we ourselves are, which defies every kind of definition. We cannot compare ourselves with anybody. We cannot define ourselves in terms of any quantity, quality, relation, mode, etc. We are nothing of this kind. We are not capable of being shackled even by space and time, because they were not even there in sleep. We were there. Therefore, we could be there even without space and time, without these definitive characteristics of objects of the world, without relationships of any kind, without being men or women, without being the physical body, without being even human beings. Without any of these things we consider as valuable and meaningful in the world, we existed. We existed in the state of deep sleep as something which is not at all of this world.

The ancient masters of India caught hold of this as a central point to be meditated upon and experienced. This is the point of what they call darshana, or vision of Reality. The vision of Reality is the goal of our life. Everyone knows this, and we are all after that. We have to directly come in communion with this great mystery of the universe.

We are pursuing this by what we call the practice of yoga, but the mind has to be very clear about all these things. These analyses, these studies, and these discussions we are carrying on are intended to clear the muddle of the mind, the cobwebs of our personality, the dirt of our thinking, and make it perspicuous, clear and doubtless in regard to everything that is us and everything that is connected with us.

So, while philosophy as merely an intellectual pursuit is not sufficient, it is a walking stick that we can use for a time. While the walking stick does not walk, it is us who will have to walk, yet it is an aid in our walking. Likewise, philosophical analysis, whether of the East or the West, purely from an intellectual, rational point of view, cannot take us to God or the ultimate communion with the Absolute, but they can aid us in walking towards that Supreme. They can be a kind of support to an extent, up to a certain limit, and beyond that some other law will operate.

This peculiar thing that we are in the state of sleep is the mystery of man. This is the so-called ‘I’, and all enquiry regarding “Who am I?” lands us in this difficult situation of trying to know who we ourselves are. The great point that is made out of this situation by philosophers in India is that we existed as pure consciousness. We were not unconscious. Deep sleep is not really an unconscious condition, though it appears to be unconscious. The appearance of an unconscious state in deep sleep is associated with certain factors, which are other than our real nature. There are certain impeding elements which cover the consciousness.

Without going into details about this intricate matter, I may sum up by saying that the ancients concluded that unfulfilled desires are the causes of this unconsciousness. There are deep layers of the psyche in which are buried the impressions of all our lives – desires, fulfilled as well as unfulfilled. Fulfilled desires create an impression of a potentiality or a latency of a further impulsion to repeat the fulfilment of that desire. When a desire is fulfilled, the desire is not extinguished. It always leaves a subtle impression in the mind in the form of longing for an endless repetition of that fulfilment because no desire can finally be satisfied, for certain reasons which I have outlined earlier and into whose details we shall go further on. The unfulfilled desires which are the frustrations of the psyche – which have been repressed even on the subconscious level, for reasons we all know very well, in all the lives that we have lived – also act as an additional thick layer of cloud which prevents our being aware that we are.

Unfortunately, the consciousness that we really are becomes identified with the desires; we become one with our desires. “I want this.” When a statement like this is made, there is a mix-up of what we really are with what we are not. The “I want” is a confusion in the mind; and that every desire is a sort of contradiction on the basis of an error involved in perception itself, is a fact which I have mentioned. This contradiction, which is desire of every kind, produces a big difficulty before us in the form of a darkness which causes us to be apparently unconscious in the state of deep sleep. If we were made up of unconsciousness only, if the substance of our being – the Self, as it is called – is constituted of only unconsciousness and nothing more, then we would not remember that we slept, because we cannot remember anything that occurs in unconsciousness. The memory of sleep is considered as proof of the existence of our being as an essential point of consciousness during the state of deep sleep, and not essentially unconsciousness.

We cannot be constituted of unconsciousness. The building bricks of our personality essentially, basically, at its root, cannot be unconscious. Who would like to be called an unconscious idiot? We would not like to be called that. Even an idiot does not want to be called an idiot; even a foolish person does not want to think that he is foolish – because essentially we are not fools. There is intelligence within us, and this is the so-called Self of the human being – the Self of anything, for the matter of that. In Sanskrit, we call it the Atman.

What is this Self made of? It is made up of pure consciousness only. It is not made up of unconsciousness, as it appears in sleep. It is not mind as it appears in dream, and it is not body as it appears in the waking condition. Neither are we body, nor are we mind, nor are we unconscious. What else are we? Pure scintillating awareness, consciousness.

Where is this consciousness? Philosophers push this argument further and further. Where are you? “I am here in this hall, in Sivananda Ashram.” This is not a correct statement because it becomes meaningful and valid only if you say you are the body. “I am in Rishikesh.” As far as you are the body, it is so, but if you are honest in believing that you cannot be the body merely, then your statement that you are in a particular place in the world is not a correct statement. Nor can you extend it to a mental realm, because you seem to be not even a mind. Where are you, then? Where is this consciousness? Where are you sitting? Here is a further probe into the mystery of one’s own self, the mystery of Ultimate Reality itself.