These ideas have something to do with the knowledge of the structure of things, Samkhya. This knowledge, will make us wake up a little to the situation in which we are today, and we would then be anxious to know what would be our future, and what we could do under the circumstances here to improve ourselves in the direction of our movement or ascent higher. Why should we not take to the practice of Yoga, if Yoga means the effort to evolve into the higher realms of living, towards the final attainment of ultimate perfection, which alone can make us satisfied fully? Who on earth can forego the practice of Yoga if this is the state of affairs, and why should anybody tell us that we should do Yoga? It would be clear like daylight to everyone, once the knowledge of the structure of things is gained.

The practice of Yoga is not what is important; it is the need that one feels for the practice of Yoga that is important. That comes first, and the practice follows afterwards. If we do not feel the need at all, whence comes the practice? We do not feel the need, because we are totally ignorant. We are living in a fool's paradise, under the impression that everything is fine, when, in fact, everything is dead wrong. The universe is moving rapidly, like a fast running railway train, towards its destination, and we are as if sealed in this vehicle, this moving train. We cannot keep quiet. We have to move with the train that moves, because we are in it; we are in the universe that moves, and we have to move. So, we are not stable, independent indivisible isolated beings as we appear to ourselves. We are not self-identified individualities. Rather, we are masses of a process; we are bundles of a movement. This is because of the fact that we cannot be stable, self-identified indivisibilities in an evolving universe. Therefore, great thinkers like Gautama Buddha were tirelessly telling us that we could not touch the same water in a river, the next moment. Every second we are touching new water in a flowing river. Likewise, when we are touching our own body, after a few minutes, perhaps, we are touching something different. It is not the thing that we saw, or was there, a few minutes before. When a train is moving, we see new objects every second, because it is passing through areas not covered already.

The universe is moving, and this unavoidable movement of the universe is called evolution. Whether or not it is the evolution as described by Darwin or Lamarck or the Upanishads, it makes no difference. There is such a thing called evolution, which is another name for the necessity felt by the finite to move towards the infinite. Nothing finite can rest content with its own self. Nobody likes limitations of any kind. We do not like bondage. We resent it whole-heartedly. We do not like any kind of restriction imposed upon us by anything from outside. This is the cause behind the struggle for freedom, because we are limited in every way. The body is a limitation. My existence here is limited by the existence of people outside in the world, and there are other limitations of a social and political nature, about which we are not happy. Because, who likes to be limited, restricted, bound in a prison, as it were? We want to be free birds. We want to have a say of our own in everything. This is not possible in this world. The real freedom that the soul is asking for is unavailable in this finite world of finite individualities and limited patterns of experience.

We are too much enmeshed in prejudices psychologically, and even rationally. Even as there are emotional and sentimental prejudices, we have intellectual and rational prejudices. They may all look highly reasonable things, but they can be self-assertions of personality. They look reasonable, because the mind and the reason have been tied up by knots to such ways of thinking; and they are called the idols of the cave and idols of various other types mentioned by a learned man of England, Francis Bacon, by which what he means is a prejudice of the mind and a stereotyped movement of the way of thinking into which we are born from our childhood. Our parents have told us something and our schoolmasters and professors have said something else. The society tells us yet another thing. We are born in a particular nation, which has its own ways and modes of thinking, and its own ideologies according to which it has to work. These are the ways in which we get brain-washed right from childhood. We have to de-condition ourselves if we have to practise Yoga. Any kind of a conditioned mind is unfit for this purpose. We should shed all these preconditions and notions that we are such-and-such, and this and that, that we are particular religionists, that we are Hindus or Christians or Muslims, that we are monks or householders, or even that we are men or women. These are the prejudices which are hard-boiled things, and they cannot leave us easily. They are a part and parcel of our consciousness. Existence is the same as consciousness, and our prejudiced existence has become one with our consciousness, so that we cannot even detect that we have any prejudice in our minds. Everything looks fine, and we seem to be spotless in our ideas and ideologies. That is why we have been told again and again that a teacher is necessary here on the path.

The mind is enmeshed in various types of inborn traits which are not necessarily compatible with the nature of things. This universe, this world, this large atmosphere around us, is not constituted of bits of matter or isolated units that have no connection with one another. 'Universe' is a very appropriate word to signify this atmosphere. It is the opposite of chaos. Chaos is a confused medley of particulars which have their own ways and move in their own directions, having absolutely no relation with one another. But, 'universe' is a word which signifies arrangement of things, and order in that arrangement, where the particulars are characterised not merely by external connections, but also by an internal relation. The definition of what an internal relation is, as, distinguished from an external connection, can be illustrated by an example. People forming the body of parliament in a country have a connection with one another, because they form one corporate whole called the parliament. They have naturally a relationship with one another, but this relationship of the units constituting the body of parliament can be broken any day by various methods of political manoeuvring about which everyone knows so well. Thus, there is no real internal relationship of the members of parliament as between themselves. A man may resign his post as a member of parliament. Even when he functions as a member, internally he is not related to anyone. He is an independent person. Here, the connection of them all with the parliament is an external connection. An internal relationship is an inviolable connection, whereas an external connection is such that it can be snapped if necessity arises.

Our relationship to the universe is not like the relationship of the members of a parliament or a corporate body. Our relationship to the universe is internal, inviolable, inexorable and eternal; it cannot die. We are related to the universe for ever and ever, and we can never sever this relationship at any time. Well, we may consider the limbs of the body as inviolably related to the body, but even this organic connection of the limbs of the body to the structure called the body is of an inferior type. This is so, because a part of the body can be severed. We can cut off the arm of a person, or any other limb of a person, by amputation, and the relationship of this part to the body will cease, but with no amputation and under no circumstances can we sever our relationship with this world or the universe. No amputation is possible here. No kind of severance of relationship of the particulars or individuals is possible under any circumstance in respect of this vast universe. We are eternally related to it since ages, and in the scheme of evolution, if we have risen to this level of humanity by rising from the bottom, we did exist before we were human beings. The prior existence of the individual in other bodies or other species of beings is proved automatically by the fact of the evolution of things, and this fact also proves post-existence for the individual.

Evolution is a fact, and mankind is certainly not the ultimate pinnacle of the process of evolution. If there has been evolution from lower levels to the present level, then it also has to be there from the present level to even higher levels. We did exist centuries and aeons before, and we will continue to exist aeons hence also. We are eternal units of this large structure called the universe. We are not citizens of this world at all. We belong neither to Orissa nor to Madras. What puny, petty ideas we have got in our minds! I am a Maharashtrian, I am a Punjabi, a Tamilian, a Keralite.and so on! How low have we come! How shameful is our existence when we think of these little things as our real marks of identification! In truth, we seem to belong to a large structure, a universe which is behind us and ahead of us through various realms of being. Even while we try to conceive of this structure, we will have consternation every moment of time. We will be looking around on all sides trying to figure out where we are standing at all. "Am I of this world? Am I in this world? Am I in a world at all or am I somewhere else?" - Faced with these questions, one is bound to be shocked; one will not be able to say anything. Such would be one's wonder and consternation at this little insight into the nature of the universe and one's own relationship to it. So, this little picture of the structure of things or the nature of the universe may be regarded as a preface or an introduction to certain other details that we may have to know about the universe itself.

It is true that the large structure of the universe is so vast that it extends behind us in the lower levels and it stretches ahead of us into the higher reaches of evolution. But, there are minute details associated with the analysis we have made, about which also we should know something, in order that we may be left with no doubts in our minds about the practice of Yoga. Before we step into the realm of Yogic practice, we should be free from every kind of intellectual doubt and emotional tension. These two things should be cast out like devils. Intellectual doubts and emotional tensions are our greatest enemies in our spiritual pursuit. All doubts must be cleared either by studies, or by resorting to advice from one's own teacher, or both. That this vast universe was once a large mass, indivisible and undifferentiated in its nature, is something that every religion tells us. The Bible, the Upanishads, why, even modern science - all tell the same thing, practically - that the universe was one indistinguishable undivided mass of matter. Science tells us that it was an atom. The universe was an atom originally, and it split into two, or it became four. It became eight, it became sixteen, it became thirty two, sixty four, endlessly million-fold, unthinkably multifarious and multitudinous, as it is now. This is whatever modern physics will tell us. In the beginning was the word, says the Bible. So is the proclamation of the Upanishads and the Vedas, and every scripture practically. Biology tells us that there was one cell originally. We were originally a single cell or a mono cell or a uni-cell. And this one cell split into two to give us a bi-cell, or splits into four to give us a quarter cell, and so on. I met a physician in Bombay, a great expert. He told me, "Swamiji, today medical science is coming to the very same conclusions which the Upanishads proclaimed thousands of years back. The universe was one or started with one single undivided being. We also say the same thing now. One single unit of individual, a little drop, or perhaps something smaller than a drop, something more minute than what we may call a cell - this is the origin of the large body of the human being". And the doctor told me that if this little cell was minutely analysed scientifically it could tell us how long the body evolving from it would live, the experiences it would pass through, and every other detail till the death of the individual. It all has been decided in this little cell. And what else does the Upanishad tell us! The great Will of the Supreme Being is the original determinant of all the individuals of the universe: even a sparrow cannot fall without the will of God; a leaf cannot move without the will of the Supreme. We cannot eat a thing unless it is permitted by the Law of the Cosmos. Now, this seems to be the origin of things, a single undivided unity which, as our masters tell us and scriptures proclaim, somehow appeared to have divided itself into two. It has not really split itself into two. Because, if it had really become two and hundred and so on, it cannot become one again, and there would be no chance of our reaching God. But, the fact of the possibility of attaining liberation and the chance of attaining God just at this moment should be adequate proof of there not being a real split; and the Vedanta philosophy goes so far as to say that the split is something of the nature of the split that takes place in dream. There is a bifurcation, a modification, a multiplication into individualities and particularities in the dream world. But, it does not really take place; because, when we wake up from dream, the particulars get absorbed into the unity of our mind as if they had never existed at all, notwithstanding the fact that we saw the particulars. So, this is a distinguishing feature of the Vedanta philosophy, which makes a departure from the other doctrines by emphasising that if there had been a real bifurcation or division in the original unity, there would be no chance of liberation of the individuals. In that case, we would be always divided from God.

We cannot even think of unity if the idea of unity had not been implanted in our minds. A finite which is really finite, cannot think of the infinite. The idea of the infinite cannot arise in the finite brain, because the two are contradictions. But the idea of the infinite does arise in our mind, and we cry to break the boundaries of the finitude and reach an endlessness of being horizontally as well as in quality. So, it may be true that God did not cease to be God when He created the world. He is still the same God that He was and He shall be the same God in future too. God is eternal. He is not a changing substance, or an object that ceases to be itself in becoming an effect. This is a highly intricate and interesting philosophical point. This universe, that was one and that is one, does appear as a multitude, but not suddenly. It becomes two at first. This becoming of the one into two is what the Samkhya refers to as Purusha and Prakriti, consciousness and its object, the spirit within and the world outside. The original bifurcation or division is of the one being into the seer and the seen, the subject and the object. The one becomes two, as we may say. There was a state of being which was there prior even to this division of the one into the seer and the seen, namely, a consciousness of Being. We have to stretch our imagination to feel what this state would be like, because even the awareness that one is, is a kind of limitation on absoluteness. The state of absoluteness is not even the self-awareness or consciousness of one's being, the feeling "I am", but something transcendent to it, far beyond it. Subsequently, it is the state of "I am" - ness; Aham Asmi, as the Upanishad puts it. Posterior to this universal self-awareness is the division of the one into the twofold so-called realities of consciousness and its object, Purusha and Prakriti. The Samkhya, in its classical form, talks much of these two principles - Purusha and Prakriti. There are only two things in this universe. Nothing else. Consciousness and what is not consciousness. There cannot be anything else. There is a perceiver and there is the perceived. This is classical Samkhya, of which the practical implementation is supposed to be Yoga.