The Nature of the True Religious Life

by Swami Krishnananda

Chapter 14: Yoga is an Impersonal Science

All study in institutions is an art, by which knowledge we equip ourselves with the necessities to live in this world in the way the world would require us to live. We do not go on studying throughout our lives and spend all our days in schools and colleges, just as we do not go on cooking throughout our lives. The cooking ends in eating. So is the case with study and training of any kind.

We are not to be under a teacher throughout our lives, till we pass away from here. An apprenticeship under a teacher, a study under a Guru or a training in an institution is a preparation, and not and end in itself. It is not that we spend all our days, throughout our lives, in reading and moving from place to place in search of teachers, as if that is the only thing we are expected to do. Simultaneously with our reading and studying and undergoing of training, we also live in the world.

What we call the duty of man is nothing but the art of living. We may call it the performance of a particular executive function expected of oneself, or it may be considered in any other manner from a social, political or personal angle of vision. It is essentially a friendly way of conducting oneself in the world. Yoga is friendship with things, to put it in popular language. The whole gamut of the ascent in the rungs of yoga is a graduated adjustment of oneself with the friends that occupy this world as its inhabitants.

The world is populated by friends. The world has no enemies, just as we have no enemies within our own selves. But sometimes it is said that there are enemies even in one's own self. For instance, in the Bhagavadgita it is said that the higher self can be the friend of the lower self, and it can also be the enemy of the lower self. Ātmaiva hyātmano bandhur ātmaiva ripur ātmanaḥ (B.G. 6.5): “The self is the friend of the self. The self can also be the enemy of the self.” These are difficult things to understand, how we can be friends and enemies to our own selves. We cannot understand how this could be possible. How could I be my own friend, and how could I have an enemy within myself?

These are secret teachings, not popular instructions. Such analogical statements also apply to everything in the world. The world is a friend and also an enemy. Though basically one cannot be either a friend or an enemy of one's own self, even so, one cannot regard the world as a friend or an enemy, due to the peculiar placement of oneself in the constitution of things. The structure of the human personality is such, or at least expected to be such, that friendship and enmity within the organism is unthinkable, and therefore unwarranted. Likewise, the structure of things, the makeup of the world, is such that a friendly or an inimical attitude towards it is an unthinkable hypothesis.

Often religions tell us that the world is the body of God, in order to teach us the lesson that here, within this body which ensouls the intelligence of the universe, there is no chance of any repercussion or jostling of parts within the whole. There is a grand, measureless expanse of what we call the world. All study, whether it is secular or religious, scientific or aesthetic, is finally directed to the awakening of man's consciousness to that relation that exists perpetually between himself and the world. Whatever be our study, whatever be our occupation, it matters not in the end, insofar as it has its vital connection with the great objective of every man, which is life itself.

The dearest thing is life, and anything that is connected with life also appears to be dear and beloved. The most beloved of objectives is one's own life. There is a struggle for protecting one's life, and every appurtenance that we seem to be gathering around ourselves is an accessory regarded as helpful in guarding one's own life and perpetuating it to the extent practicable. Life is the greatest objective. Life is an end in itself; it is not a means to another end. We do not live for something else. Everything else lives for life. All our relationships, social or otherwise, are contributory energies which sustain life, and the greatest love is the love of life.

But what kind of life is it that becomes the object of love? Many times it has been said, almost endlessly, that the greatest of loves is the love of one's own self, and all other loves are conditional relations established with this unconditional love of one's own self. This is again a hard matter, a difficult thing to grasp, because we have what are called altruistic activities, unselfish deeds, and impersonal affections, which would not permit us to accept that love of the self is literally the greatest of all loves. But this inability on our part to understand this great teaching is not a sanction to rebut it. The love of the self is certainly the greatest of loves, in spite of there being such a thing called unselfish activity. The so-called unselfishness that people parade in this world is a secret action of the self towards its own stability—a secret, intelligent operation which the self manoeuvres—which, socially and politically, goes in the name of unselfishness, public works, and so on, because the greatest of public existences is the Self itself. The Self is not a private existence; it is a public existence. Therefore, we are impelled towards public activities.

Unselfish activities, service to the neighbour, to the friend, to the poor, to the downtrodden, to the sick, to the needy, to another, is only an impulsion from this great Self, which is not a private self scintillating within this little body of ours, but is a large public expansion which operates behind even the Public Works Department, the social organisations, the United Nations Organisation, and cosmical humanitarian activities. All these wondrous, breathtaking enterprises of man which go by the name of service for the liberation of the helpless, the ignorant and the poor are within this secret brilliance called the Self.

Therefore, the love of the Self is not in any way opposed to, rather it is equivalent to, the greatest of unselfish activities conceivable because the largest unselfishness is the Self itself, contradictory as it appears. How could the Self be unselfish? “The form of the Self is selfish, but the Self is unselfish.” This seems to be a sentence whose meaning cannot be grasped. The Self is the greatest of unselfish existences because it occupies everything that we call the unselfish projects of mankind.

The Self is the rudimentary status which occupies the principle objective of all living entities, and perhaps even of non-living ones. I mentioned again and again on other occasions that there is a tendency to maintain oneself. There is an urge within every atomic unit to maintain itself integrally, uninterrupted by external interference. This tendency, this impulse, this urge within the minutest unit conceivable in the world is the Self of that particular thing.

What is the Self? Someone put this question the other day. Where is it located; where does it exist? The Self is not a substance. It is not existing anywhere. The Self is only the cohesive pressure that a particular point in space feels. For want of sufficient words in human language we have to go to analogies, comparisons, images and descriptive words to explain what the Self is. It is that centripetal cohesive pressure that each one feels even in an atom, by which one maintains oneself and struggles to maintain oneself. There is the struggle for existence, as scientists and biologists tell us. This struggle for existence is nothing but the struggle to maintain the Selfhood of every bifurcated unit in the world.

But why is there, simultaneously, an urge to serve people and to be good to other people? Why this contradiction in the attitude of anyone in the world? On the one hand, we struggle tooth and nail to survive somehow or other, even if the world goes to the dogs. There is sometimes an impulse of that nature for self-preservation. We have to somehow escape, even though others may be drowning. We are not aware that others are drowning; we are struggling for breath, and at that time we are not thinking of another's breath. This instinct for self-preservation is relentlessly operating even in the most miserable of individuals.

At the same time, there is feeling for another. We often have a sort of impulse within us to save another from drowning. A mother jumps into the well to save her child, even if she herself is going to be destroyed. And “Love thy neighbour” is a very great dictum before us. What is this loving of our neighbour? How is it practicable and meaningful at all in this relentless, devilish urge, as it were, which compels everyone to maintain oneself in an utterly selfish manner? “Man is a wolf who is interested only in swallowing other wolves,” said Thomas Hobbes.

This serving, or loving one's neighbour, has no sense, but it seems to have sense due to an equally irresistible urge within us which speaks in a different language altogether in the form of national spirit, family organisation, love of father, mother, son, daughter, brother, sister. Where comes this feeling of “my brother”, “my sister”, “my father”, “my mother”, “my son”, “my husband”, “my wife”, “my nation”, “my country”, “my brethren”? Where comes this need? What is even the meaning behind such urges?

The meaning arises on account of a dual role which the Self plays in the context of existence. The Self is inside us as an individualised pressure towards a certainty of existence. Therefore, we are struggling for a little breath when we are inside the water, or when we are hunger-stricken we are even ready to steal a piece of bread from anyone, as we feel that we are passing away due to intense hunger. Such an immense urge within us to maintain our body, mind and spirit in unison is one side of the matter. This happens because there is an utter involvement of what we call the Self in this bodily limitation. “Utter” is the only word I can use. It has gone to the extreme of involving itself in this processional concrescence of physical forces called the body, even if one knows and is certain that one day death is to come and swallow this body. Everyone knows this. It may happen tomorrow, it may happen today. No one is ignorant of this fact. In spite of this ostensible truth of the possibility of the quitting of this body any moment of time, an irresistible love for this body persists simultaneously. “Wonder” is the only word that can explain this phenomenon. Such is the involvement of this Self in every cell of one's body.

Every cell of our body is a dear thing for us. We die for it. But, at the same time, our heart melts at the poverty of others and the suffering of a beggar, and we cannot rebut so easily the meaning behind the great Masters' proclamations that unselfishness supersedes selfishness, and that unselfishness succeeds while selfishness does not. This is the other side of the matter. Unselfishness simultaneously persists together with the love for one's own bodily existence because the Self, which appears to be relentlessly, mercilessly, cruelly confined to this body, is also relentlessly present everywhere in the universe, and this urge is equally great. Therefore, there is a pull from two different directions.

Hence, the art of yoga has been very wisely defined in two pithy statements of the Bhagavadgita as “harmony” and “dexterity in action”. Samatvaṁ yoga ucyate (B.G. 2.48); yogaḥ karmasu kauśalam (B.G. 2.50). Both things are said there. The word “harmony” is used without explaining what harmony means, though in an indirect way it has been explained in other passages in the Bhagavadgita. It has also not been explained as to what expertness in action is. What is meant by saying that we have to be an expert in doing things, and what is meant by saying that we have to maintain a balance? Neither of these things are clear to us. But this is yoga.

On the one hand, yoga is samatva, a balancing of these two urges. Yaj jñātvā na punar moham evaṁ yāsyasi pāṇḍava,yena bhūtānyaśeṣeṇa drakṣyasyātmanyatho mayi (B.G. 4.35): “Having been established in this yoga that I am expounding to you,” says Bhagavan Sri Krishna, “you will see the whole universe within Myself, and in Me also.” This is the enigma of the relationship of the world to us and to God. Sometimes it appears as if this relationship is hanging between the two, and at other times it appears that no such extraneous relationship is possible.

The balance that yoga expects of us is variegated in nature. It is not only of one kind; it is of every type. Every moment of time is a conflict in life. Every moment of our lives we are facing a problem. If we sit, there is a problem; if we stand, there is a problem. If we look at a person, there is a problem; if we do not look, also there is a problem. If we speak, there is a problem; and if we do not speak, there is a problem. What a difficult thing life is! The whole of our history in this world is a history of conflicts. That is perhaps the reason why the Bhagavadgita is told in the context of the great war of the Mahabharata, the battlefield of life. The universe is a battlefield in the sense that it is a confrontation of difficulties and a facing of problems.

But problems are meant to be solved. They are not intended to be escaped from. No one can run away from a problem. The problem is going to pursue us like the skin that is attached to our body. We cannot run away from our own skin. The difficulties of life are a part of our existence itself, and one cannot run away from existence. Even if we are going to reach the heavens, the difficulties that we had on Earth will pursue us. As if by a rocket, these difficulties will follow us.

Hence, yoga is a moment-to-moment action. It is not something that is done in a meditation hall, a Buddhist vihara, a Hindu temple or a Christian church. Yoga is a moment-to-moment adjustment of ourselves. Every moment we are in a different type of adjustment and samatva. Every moment it is a new type of adjustment because every moment we are confronting a new phase of the problem. It may not be a new problem, and it may not be considered as an entirely new thing that is confronting us, but it is a new colour that it takes, a new picture that is presented of the very same object, a new side of it. Therefore, like a disease that may take various shapes in the course of the treatment, our problems and difficulties take different shapes as we proceed through life.

Thus, yoga is not a stereotyped movement of a single act which has to be persisted on in a uniform manner from birth to death. It is a living process, not a mechanical adjustment, how the body livingly, organically and vitally adjusts itself from birth onwards. It is not a machine; it is a living being. We are not a mechanical complex. We are different from a machine in the sense that we are able to adjust ourselves automatically. Our psychophysical organism is an automatic system and does not require another operator from outside. Whenever the balance is disturbed, there is a peculiar secret apparatus kept within the organism to maintain the balance automatically. We are able to adjust ourselves to any difficulty. Otherwise, we will die in one second by the confrontations in life.

The temperature of the world goes on changing due to climatic conditions, but our bodily temperature is 98.4°F. Whether we go to the North Pole or to the equator, our temperature remains at 98.4°F. Though the outside temperature varies, we will find our temperature remains the same. How is it? Look at the mechanism of the body, how it adjusts itself to the problem of heat and cold that it is facing. This is an automatic action of the body.

Sometimes the mind also adjusts itself in this way by a secret apparatus of its own, known in psychological studies as defence mechanisms. If these defence mechanisms were not to be there in our minds, we would die in three days by the buffets that we get and the kicks that we receive from the world. If the body were not to adjust itself to the temperature in this manner, we would have died by the temperature differences in the world. Simultaneously there is a psychological adjustment that we are making. Sometimes we brush aside a problem. If we go on remembering everything—“My father died, my brother died, my sister died, I have debt, what a loss, what a loss, what a loss”—if we go on thinking this, then we will not e able to live in this world. So there is a mechanism of forgetting. The mind has a secret computer system, as it were, by which it adjusts itself to maintain itself. Whether we have a desire or have no desire, whether we have an unfulfilled desire or a fulfilled desire, whether there is an unpleasant circumstance outside us or a pleasant one, whatever it is, the mind is able to adjust itself with this condition by its defence mechanism, which is comparable to the capacity of the body to adjust itself to the temperature of the world outside. Like that, a spiritual adjustment has to be made within the soul of man, which is the art of yoga. As the body adjusts itself, and the mind also adjusts itself to some extent, though not always, the you or the I, the specific root of our personality, has to adjust itself to the rootedness of everything else in the world.

Here, we find a necessity to, and a possibility of, making such adjustments—the coming together of the self within us and the self that is without, the coordination between the impulse to maintain oneself in an utterly selfish manner and an unselfish urge within us to be of service to others. The self within feels its presence in others as if by a secret antenna that automatically projects by means and methods which are invisible to the eyes. This is why we have an intense love for ourselves, and also an intense love for other people. We are simultaneously both good people and bad people, at the same time. We can be like chameleons, but we should not be like chameleons. We should have a harmonious outlook, and strike a balance between the stages of the inward self and the stages of the universal Self.

Patanjali's systems of yama, niyama, asana, pranayama, pratyahara, dharana, dhyana are the inward adjustments that we are expected to make within the layers of our own personality. These layers are sometimes called annamaya, pranamaya, manomaya, vijnanamaya, anandamaya—the physical, the subtle, the causal, etc. These stages, niyama, etc., mentioned by Patanjali, are the inward harmonisations of the layers of the personality, which constitute a single encasement of the Self. The body, the mind and the spirit, the koshas—annamaya, pranamaya, manomaya, vijnanamaya, anandamaya—and the Atman within, are not distinct substances. We cannot say that here is the body, here is the mind, and here is the Atman. We cannot keep them separate, in watertight compartments.

There is a gradual condensation of Consciousness, which is the Self, together with an externalisation of it, and also a simultaneous centralisation in a particular point in space and time, which becomes the body-mind complex. The yoga process is a gradual melting away, as it were, of all this hard ice of bodily individuality, and making it evaporate into the liquid of pure Consciousness, which is attempted inwardly by yama, niyama, asana, pranayama, pratyahara, dharana, dhyana, etc. But that is not enough. We have to commune these inwardly aligned layers of personality and selfhood with the layers of the cosmical Self.

Yoga is not over merely with these initial steps of yama, niyama, asana, pranayama, pratyahara, dharana, dhyana. There are the stages of samadhi, about which you might have heard. The samadhis, or samapattis—savitarka, nirvitarka, savichara, nirvichara, sananda, sasmita, nirbija, words which make no sense to an ordinary man—are indicative of the nature of the cosmical adjustments that are made further on in the stages called samadhi. Yoga truly begins with samadhi; it does not end with samadhi. All the other, earlier stages are only an inward adjustment whose comparison we find in the first six chapters of the Bhagavadgita, where we are told about the different methods of a self-integrating process, culminating in dhyana, or meditation, as described in the Sixth Chapter of the Bhagavadgita.

The Bhagavadgita does not end with the Sixth Chapter, and Patanjali's yoga does not end with dhyana, or meditation. A great step further and a leap into the beyond has to be taken wherein and whereby the inwardly adjusted layers of the self simultaneously get adjusted with the cosmical layers of Selfhood. According to the Sankhya, these cosmical layers are the five elements, the tanmatras, the ahamkara, the mahat, the prakriti and the purusha; and according to others, it may be the Virat, Hiranyagarbha, Ishvara, Brahman. Whatever be the nomenclature, all yoga is universal, and it is not Christian or Hindu or Muslim. There is no yoga of a sectarian type. Yoga is a cosmical endeavour and a necessity of each created being. It is an impersonal science and not a religion, again to repeat the same thing that I told you many times.

These are very interesting things, very important things, and at the same time very difficult things to remember. You are students of the Academy, hearing something from somebody, writing down a few words when someone speaks, but you will not be able to remember all these things. When this session ends and you leave the hall, seventy-five percent of what has been said will leave your mind. You will suddenly see a new world outside this door which has nothing to do in a practical way, as it were, with what you have heard from me. This is a trick of the mind. It does not want you to succeed here. It wants you to fail miserably. Satan weeps, they say, if you succeed in withstanding his temptations and his snares. There is an old story—biblical or otherwise, something like a grandmother's story—that Satan asked, “Lord, when will be my salvation?” The Lord had hurled Satan into hell. Satan implored the Almighty, “When will I be relieved?” The Lord replied, “When man will resist your temptations, you will be free.” A very hard thing! Man will not resist temptations, so Satan will not be free.

Our temptations are not the usual stereotyped ones that we find listed in scriptures. The inability to remember what you heard here is actually a temptation, of a different type. “I cannot remember so many things that you have told me. I am fed-up. It is too much for me.” Or, “Well, I am ill. I have got other things, this, that, so many problems.” We have endless excuses not to remember a good thing, endless excuses not to find time enough to pursue this. The world is nothing but a bundle of excuses.

God bless you this day. This is sufficient for you.