Chapter 20: The Culmination of Yoga Practice
We are now on our way to the conclusion of these sessions which were devoted, right from the beginning, to the study of cultural values and spiritual values, which led us up to the point of the actual practice of yoga proper. After the consideration of the different stages of the developmental process of the inner psyche and spirit of man, we came to the stage of meditation and absorption, known as samapatti or samadhi in the language of the great teacher of yoga, Patanjali Maharishi.
It was pointed out again and again that the goal of yoga is absorption in the nature of Reality. We have also had occasion to consider what this Reality is in which it is essential for us to get absorbed. Conflict is said to be a conflict with reality. Whenever you are opposed to reality, you are in a state of conflict. According to modern psychology and psychoanalysis, conflict with reality means conflict with that which you consider as unavoidable in your life, with that in which you are involved day in and day out. For psychoanalysts and general psychologists, the reality of life is human society. You are in conflict with human society. You hate your own brother and sister, your father and mother, and your neighbour; you hate everybody, because you have got some ideals—mature or immature, as the case may be—which do not tally with the norms set up by human society. This is a problem with everyone, a problem in society, a problem in the marketplace, a problem in educational circles, in schools, colleges and universities. There is a clash between the inner objective ideology and the social norm, political norm, administrative norm, whatever you may call it.
Now, this is only a psychoanalyst point of view, but reality is not merely human society. The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali have already dispensed with the social aspect of reality when Patanjali inculcated the necessity to be trained well under the yamas and niyamas, the first two rungs in the ladder of the practice of yoga. So for the stage of Yoga Sutras, this social conflict is the least important thing, but for politicians and sociologists, it is a nightmare, a hobgoblin in front of them. They cannot face human society, and consider it as the worst of their difficulties. But for the yogis, it is the least of difficulties. Their problems arise much later on, and not only with human society. Hence, the yamas and niyamas of Patanjali have already taken into consideration the initial problems that you may have to face with your own brother and sister, and with people outside. Be friendly; be harmonious.
In the case of certain crucial issues arising out of the need to be in harmony with human society, you may have to make some sacrifice. Unless you surrender some part of your physical, economic and psychological comfort and joy for the welfare of other people, egoism will rule supreme. If each one sticks to his own guns, as they say, and egoism is rampant, there will be no human society. So a mutual give-and-take policy of cooperation, and not competition, is the rule prescribed by Patanjali in the yamas and niyamas, the earlier stages of his teaching, .
We went up gradually. The realities that are to be confronted in the practice of yoga are not merely human society. That matter has already been considered threadbare. Yoga is far superior to all educational activities that we can think of in the modern world because social values are the determining factors, mostly, in our educational system, but yoga is above that. Yoga considers the social system, the educational system, as very important, and transmutes it into the processes of yoga practice. Therefore, the more important rungs of yoga arise after you are well established in the norms of human society in its generality.
Then comes your own personality—the physical personality, the sensory personality, the pranic personality, the mental personality, the intellectual personality, and the causal personality, which is deeper than everything else, and then the spiritual personality. These are the stages of the ascent in yoga, and we have covered all these things in some way. Finally, we went up to the spiritual aspect of things. The universe is ruled not by a society of people, but by forces which are precedent to the manifestation of human society, and precedent to even the manifestation of nature as a whole. In yoga, the universal spirit is the object of engagement and confrontation finally, and this confrontation is what is known as meditation. I am not going to traverse through the process of meditation again because you have already gathered some information from me as to the essentials of meditation from the point of view of pure yoga practice.
Samapatti, or samadhi, was the subject we took up for consideration during previous sessions, and according to the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, the whole universe is the object of meditation. We have categorised the stages of universal manifestation, the lowest level of which is the physical universe of the five elements, the absorption of consciousness which is known as savitarka samapatti. We also distinguished between the savitarka and nirvitarka aspects by drawing a distinction between the object as involved in shabda, artha and jnana—that is, name, ideation and substance as such—and it was necessary for us to wean the object as such from its involvement in ideation and nomenclature.
When the physical substance as such, independent of its thought and its name—the object as such, the substance pure and simple—becomes the occupation of the consciousness in deep meditation, it is nirvitarka samapatti. But behind the physical universe there are subtle forces known as tanmatras: shabda, sparsa, rupa, rasa, gandha. They are electrical energies, a universal continuum, we may call it, which is ubiquitous, all pervading, and which decides and determines the forms of the five elements—earth, water, fire, air and ether. On that you concentrate, in which you get absorbed in terms of space and time, and also independent of space and time. When the tanmatras become the object of your absorption in terms of their association with space and time, it becomes savichara samapatti. When the tanmatras become the object of your absorption freed from the association of space and time, this becomes nirvichara samapatti, which is the glorious thing with which we concluded the previous session.
Dharma megha samadhi and ritambhara prajna are some of the terms expounded by Patanjali in this context. Truth reveals itself abundantly, as a pot of nectar breaking and the nectar spilling out everywhere. That is ritambhara prajna: Everywhere honey is flowing; the flood of Truth is before you. Dharma megha samadhi: A cloud of virtue rains abundantly on your head, and you become righteousness incarnate. You need not have to practice virtue; you yourself are virtue. Virtue emanates from you, as light emanates from the sun. The sun need not have to practice the art of shedding light to people, because the sun himself is abundant energy, inside and outside. This is what will happen to you when the dharma megha samadhi of nirvichara takes place.
What is higher than that? There is sananda samapatti. In sananda samapatti, bliss emerges from the very consciousness of 'I am I'. This is, according to the Sankhya doctrine, the state of universal ahamkara. Ahamkara is a word which, unfortunately, is associated with two aspects: the universal and the particular. “This person is full of ahamkara,” we sometimes say, which means he is a very egoistic person, self-conscious, always thinking of himself only. But here the ahamkara is 'I am what I am', 'I am that I am'. This is the universal 'I' becoming conscious of itself, to the exclusion of every other level of creation—no space, no time, no space-time complex, no tanmatras, no pancha mahabhutas, no five elements, no human beings, no creation at all. Everything is rolled up like a mat is rolled up when you wake up from sleep.
That universal 'I' is the experience beyond human thought, passing understanding, the ahamkara-tattva. When you are solely in yourself, and you are freed from contamination with any kind of objectivity, this universal I manifests itself. Sometimes when you are alone as an individual person, you feel happy. Do you not feel happy sometimes when you are alone to yourself? Do you always like to be in the midst of people? Do you like to be in a crowd at all times? When you are seated alone in a mood of composure and inward absorption, you feel happiness, free from any kind of association. You are totally alone to yourself in the state of deep sleep, for instance. Do you know how happy you are in deep sleep? What is it that makes you happy in deep sleep? Do you take halwa, kheer, badam, malpua? Are you a king, an emperor? Even an emperor is not conscious that he is an emperor when he is in deep sleep, so emperorship is not the cause of your happiness. The idea of money is not there. You do not know whether you are rich or poor. You do not even know whether you are ill or well. All these ideas, all these associations, are completely cut off in the state of deep sleep, and with all this dissociation from every kind of value in life, how is it that you become so happy? You get up refreshed; bones heal, the mind is alert, and you feel energised, as if something has entered you. What has entered you? You have entered into your own Self. The real I has entered into this little I. You are literally alone in the state of deep sleep, and that aloneness has made you happy. This is a reflection of the universal I-ness that is taking place in the state of deep sleep—unconsciously, of course. You are sitting on a treasure, without knowing that you are on a treasure; you are sitting on the throne of an emperor, without knowing that you are on the throne; you have suddenly become rich, without being conscious that you are rich, and so on, are the examples.
In this 'I am what I am' condition of ahamkara-tattva of the universal Existence, bliss that cannot be even dreamt of in this world manifests itself as sananda samapatti, which is constituted of only bliss. It is not characterised by bliss, but it is the substance of bliss itself. Happiness is not a quality of experience there; it is the very substance of experience. That is the state of sananda samapatti. Higher than that, also there is something. With that I concluded the previous session.
Mahat-tattva is a category of the Sankhya process of evolution which is pure universal Awareness, without even I-ness. The I-consciousness is transcended in this mahat-tattva. It is generality, pure and simple, cosmic Consciousness, without even the trace of 'I am conscious'. This is beyond us to imagine, of course, because what would be the state where there is cosmic awareness without the consciousness of somebody being cosmically conscious? It is cosmic Consciousness minus the awareness of somebody being cosmically aware. That 'somebody' has gone. That 'I' has also gone. The universal 'I am I' has also gone, merged into pure generality, satta-samanya—Pure Existence, general, not particularised, not categorised. Satta-samanya is the word that is used in the Yoga Vasishtha—general Existence. Pure Existence-Consciousness is sasmita samapatti.
The highest reality is called sat-chit-ananda, Existence-Consciousness-Bliss. We have already considered the nature of bliss, and you know what is consciousness of bliss. Now general Existence comes. We are conscious of the existence of things, but they are all particular existences, individualised existences, categorised existences, evolutes appearing as existences. When all these particularised forms are totally transcended, general Existence manifests itself as just consciousness of that Existence only.
Here human words fail, language reaches its limit, logic breaks down, the intellect ceases to work, and all mathematics also end. What happens? Nobody knows. That condition where something tremendous takes place, but nobody can explain as to what takes place, is what may be called the condition where God embraces you in His universal chest. Can you imagine what it is to be embraced by God? The universal Existence has taken you into its own bosom and made you a part of itself. The river has been absorbed into the bosom of the ocean, and so the tumult of the river is no more there. Rivers make a lot of noise when they move, but they stop making noise when they enter the ocean. Similarly, all this work, all these deeds, all this aspiration, all the sadhana practice, all this activity of the world, the entire human history and the history of the cosmos, are melted down into the sublimity, the magnificence and the universality of Pure Being. This is the freedom of particulars in the Universal, the freedom of the divided aspects in the Universal whole, the aloneness that is the nature of Existence, pure and simple. Eka, ekata, kaivalya. The word kaivalya comes from the word kevala: to be alone absolutely and literally, and nothing can be said about it.
Astīty evopalabdhasya (Katha 2.3.13) is an instruction to us in the Katha Upanishad: “What can you say about It, except that It is? It is That which is.” In Buddhist terminology this condition is sometimes described as suchness or whichness or thatness. The Mahayana aspects of Buddhist mysticism go to certain heights, and call the Ultimate Reality as bhutatathata. Bhutatathata means the thatness of things, the suchness of things, or the whichness of things. Language fails here. All kinds of words, such as dharmakaya in Buddhist mysticism, are used, but we do not know what they mean. We run into ecstasies, and utter any word that we can think of in order to explain the joy. When we are over-abundantly happy and are unable to explain the joy that we are feeling, we utter any word that we like; we scream and make a noise, because words become inarticulate at that time. Inarticulate sounds are generally what we make when the joy is too much. If a hundred million dollars have come to us through a lottery, we will have no words; the dictionary fails here. And if a hundred million dollars makes us mum, what about the general Existence of the Absolute? We will melt down completely. This is kaivalya moksha, the supreme isolation of Spirit in its own Self. According to the Sankhya, it is the purusha revealing its originality, the Universal becoming the personal in its own self, or rather, the personality melting down into the Universal. Even the concept of the personality of Godhead is not adequate as far as the description of it is concerned.
This is the culmination of yoga practice, whether it is called the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, raja yoga, bhakti yoga, or any kind of yoga. Definitions differ, descriptions vary, but the experience is the same. The same thing is called by different names by the different schools of thought and systems of practice.
Now I have nothing more to tell you. If there is any question you wish to ask me, please ask it. In the next session I will wind up everything with another few words.
Student: How would you compare the meditation of Patanjali with transcendental meditation?
Swamiji: In one place, Patanjali mentions this: tajjapaḥ tadarthabhāvanam (Y.S. 1.28). The contemplation of God through the recitation of His Divine Name is transcendental meditation. You go on repeating it again and again, again and again. It is not merely repeating it; a particular sound is taken as a symbol for the concentration of the mind, the symbol being a name of God, a mantra as it is called, and the mind is totally absorbed in the meaning of that mantra. Thus japa, which is the recitation of the Divine Name, is combined with intense absorption of the mind in the meaning of that particular word or mantra. This is transcendental meditation, and this is also what Patanjali says in one of his aphorisms. Therefore, there is no contradiction; they both say the same thing. But Patanjali goes above it because it is one of the prescriptions that he gives, but he has other prescriptions of a cosmic nature, as you have already heard. There is no contradiction. Every stage of yoga is comprehended in the system of Patanjali, whatever stage it is. What all the Gurus say in all their languages and their textbooks is comprehended within the sutras of Patanjali; somewhere you will find it. Every kind of yoga is merged in that, either briefly or elaborately. Every meditation is transcendental in the sense that the object of your meditation is above this world. Therefore, no meditation can but be transcendental. It is not of this earth. It is above the turmoil of earthly existence. Therefore, it is transcendental.
Student: Is the goal the same, realising that I am That, and everything is That?
Swamiji: There cannot be two goals for humanity. We are all moving in the same direction. All humanity is having only one goal, whether it is aware of it now or not. You cannot have two final aims. There is only one aim.
Student: There is a Buddhist way of meditation called Vipassana. What is Vipassana?
Swamiji: That is meditation on the breath. It is also a very good method.
Student: They say you can reach the highest goal just…
Swamiji: You can reach the highest goal, provided the concentration on the process of the breath goes deeper and deeper until you become absorbed in the consciousness not merely of the breath but of the breather himself, and then go beyond it into the very cause of the existence of the breather himself. So gradually, stage by stage, it will take you to the Universal Being. The process is perfectly all right, only it has to be gradually transcended.
Student: But they put emphasis on being aware of the sensations in the body.
Swamiji: In the beginning you have sensations. You feel the sensations in the beginning stages, but afterwards you become not conscious of the body itself. You become conscious of something above you that is aware. That is the stage.
Student: In Sankhya they say ananda, bliss, is not of Pure Consciousness.
Swamiji: It is the bliss of the sattva guna. It is not of Pure Consciousness. Pure Consciousness is reached only in kaivalya. Sananda samapatti is not the bliss of kaivalya; it is the bliss of the manifestation of the universal sattva of prakriti, which is conscious of itself. Universal sattva also becomes the medium of experience in mahat, or cosmic consciousness, where it is freed from even the consciousness of I-ness. Therefore, both these stages, sananda and sasmita, are the experiences of the sattva guna of prakriti, but not of Pure Consciousness.
Student: But in Advaita Vedanta, a slightly different bliss is described.
Swamiji: There are three degrees of bliss. Sananda is one degree, sasmita is a higher degree, and what is called the bliss of Advaita is the bliss of kaivalya moksha itself. You can even be happy with a cup of tea, but you cannot call it Pure Consciousness. So happiness is of various categories. In the beginning it is psychological; then it becomes metaphysical—that is to say, the manifestation of sattva guna—then it becomes Pure Absolute Existence, which is what is called the Advaita Vedanta explanation of Bliss. It is identical with kaivalya moksha.
Student: Even this sananda is like an object.
Swamiji: It is not an object in the sense of a sensory object. It is an object of I-consciousness only. There is no sense organ operating there. Ananda is not outside. It is the experience of itself in pure sattva as a self-identical being. It is not an object in the sense of a sense object. There are no senses there. You do not see the bliss outside you somewhere. It is yourself only, but in a lesser degree in comparison with pure kaivalya, or Absolute Brahman.
Student: Ananda also is identification.
Swamiji: It is certainly identification, perfectly so, yes, only a lesser degree.
Student: If I am doing something wrong, is my physical body responsible for that, or is the soul responsible?
Swamiji: Neither the soul nor the body are responsible. The body is an unconscious medium. It cannot be held responsible for anything that is being done. The soul is universal, and therefore it also does nothing. What actually does is the mind that is hanging between the body and the soul, a peculiar identification of consciousness with the body. That particular stage is responsible. It is called personality-consciousness, I-consciousness or doer-consciousness. The consciousness of your doing something is the agent that is responsible there. When you do some action, you are conscious that you are doing it. That thing which is conscious is responsible—your personality-consciousness, your individuality, your being conscious that you are Mister so-and-so, whatever you think you are. You have got some idea about yourself, and that is responsible, not the universal soul, and not the body.
Student: The mind is a part of memory.
Swamiji: No, the mind is not a part of memory. It is memory that is a part of the mind. Memory is one of the functions of the mind. The mind has got other functions also: the consciousness of identity with the body, the consciousness of understanding things clearly, the consciousness of memory, and the consciousness of doing something—action. All these are functions of the mind; and that mind, which is you, is responsible. Actually, you are the mind itself, with all these associated functions. It is not the universal soul, and it is also not the physical body. You are hanging midway, in between. That individual consciousness, so-called, is the responsible medium for actions, good or bad.
Student: Swamiji, do you think anything is a physical thing, a reflection from…
Swamiji: Physical things have no… Suppose you are unconscious; the mind is not operating, and if at that time you do something, you cannot be held responsible for that action. The physical body has done something due to an unconscious reflex action, and you were not aware that you were doing it. When something has been done through the physical body by a reflex action, unconsciously, as it were, from your part, you are not responsible for it. Only if you are conscious that you are doing it are you responsible for it. The whole point is the consciousness of the action, and what you may do or not do is irrelevant. If a corpse falls on someone and kills that person, you cannot say the corpse has done some action. It is the physical body that has done it, but it cannot be called an action, because it is a corpse. So unconscious activity of the body is like a corpse doing something; therefore, it cannot be held responsible. It has no consciousness, so where is the sense of responsibility? Responsibility is identical with consciousness of action.
Student: What is dispassion?
Swamiji: Dispassion means not wanting anything. If you do not like something, that is not dispassion; but if you do not want anything, that is dispassion. If you don't like a thing, that is different. You may not like certain things from your own personal point of view. When you have enough of something and then there is no more need for it, that is dispassion, absence of passion. You cannot have dispassion if you have a desire for things, even though you are away from that object of attraction. Suppose you have a possession in Orissa that you like very much, and now you are in Rishikesh. It is not that you have got dispassion, because although 1,000 miles separate you from that object, your mind is thinking of it. But if you don't want it because you have enough of it, then it is dispassion. If you don't want it even if you have it, that is dispassion, but if you would like to have it and then don't get it, that is not dispassion. Not getting a thing which you want is not dispassion. If you can get it, and yet you don't want it, that is dispassion from the point of view of spirituality.
Student: How to understand this?
Swamiji: You have to learn it from satsanga with Gurus, long satsanga with Gurus.