A Textbook of Yoga

by Swami Krishnananda

Chapter 1: The True Nature of Our Existence

Philosophy is said to be the investigation into the causes of phenomena which are around us, and in which we are also involved. We see things happening, events taking place, but mostly we do not know why they occur at all. We can observe winds blowing, rain falling, the sun getting hot, etc., as a routine affair in our daily lives, but many of us will not be able to explain why the winds should blow. Why should it rain at a particular time? Why is the sun hot or cold, as the case may be? Why are things what they are? Questions of this kind have often evoked no proper answer. Many a time we find ourselves helpless in knowing what is happening at all in this world, and why we are what we are.

The only thing that seems to be impinging upon us and has a direct effect upon our lives is a series of troubles, responsibilities, difficulties, problems and the like, which we confront every day. Even if we are daily confronting problems, responsibilities and troubles, many of us, educated though we may be, may not know what our problems are. People many a time complain of difficulties in life, but if we ask them to make a list of all their difficulties, they will not be able to make a list. There is a chaos even in thinking about one's daily confrontations. “What are your problems, sir, about which you are daily complaining? Tell me all your problems. How many are they?” It will be very difficult to enumerate these problems. Even those problems which we are facing daily with open eyes do not seem to be very clear to our minds.

Our ancient seers and masters have boiled down all these problems, or confrontations, in life into three categories: troubles that arise from within our own selves, troubles that arise from people and living beings outside, and troubles that arise from sources which are usually called celestial in their nature, such as cataclysms, drought, earthquakes and thunderstorms. By 'celestial', we do not mean actually coming from the gods in heaven, but coming from that which is above our normal ken of operations.

If you would not mind me using one or two Sanskrit words, I may tell you how these ancient masters have designated these problems. Troubles that arise from within our own selves are called adhyatma. Here atma means one's own self, whatever be the concept of our self. The so-called 'me' is called atma. We have problems arising from our own self. We have a headache, stomach trouble, indigestion, fatigue, fever; we have mental disturbance, are worried, have emotional tension and sleeplessness. All these may be considered as problems arising from one's own self. They are called adhyatmika problems, or psychophysical problems. Adhyatmika may be translated as psychophysical: arising from the mind and body.

There is another major problem involved in our personal life, which is the death of this body, which we may not categorise with these well-known problems. This body has to be cast off one day. That is the greatest problem, we may say, among all other problems considered in total. The worst problem is the event of our impending death in this world, which is unavoidable. Whether one is good or bad, high or low, rich or poor, everybody has to go. As the poet tells us, “Sceptre and crown must tumble down, and in the dust be equal made.” We will not know the difference between this and that when death takes place. And it can take place any day. This also is a very serious matter before us.

We have other problems, such as problems from people. We say, “See how people are behaving!” There is political tension, social tension, communal tension, animosity, hatred, quarrelling, war. These troubles that arise from outside are called adhibhautika—socio-physical, we may say. The first one was psychophysical; this is socio-physical. Here the word 'physical' may include political, communal, and so on.

The third variety of trouble is what I mentioned earlier. We do not know when it will rain; and when it rains, it may come with unexpected force. Or rain may not come. We complain of drought, famine, and so on. All events in the world have been classified into this threefold enumeration of human confrontation.

In this predicament of our having to face a threefold responsibility, what are we going to do? If we just casually look at this situation with our mental eye, we will find that we will not be able to take even one step forward. There is nothing that we can do. We may feel that we are totally helpless in this matter. But, we also have something in us which oftentimes tells us that things are not as bad as they appear. If everything is utterly meaningless, chaotic and helpless, we will not be able to lift a finger and will not have any impulse to do anything in this world. If everything is a chaos, what can we do?

Together with this particular level of our psyche which tells us that things are almost beyond our control, there is another element in us—a part of our psyche itself, we may say—which tells us that there is always a hope for the future. Among many other types of hope that we entertain in this world, one of the most intriguing hopes is that we are not going to die tomorrow, though there is no saying as to why we feel like that. Who told us that tomorrow is not our last day? But let anybody say anything; we think: “I know very well that it cannot be tomorrow.” Who is telling us that it cannot be tomorrow? This is the higher aspect of our personality, which lifts us above the involved consciousness, the mind that is involved in phenomena, to which I made a brief reference.

We have, as it is said, a lower nature and also a higher nature. The lower nature makes us feel that we are puppets among people. “What can I do in this vast sea of humanity? I am one among many; I can do nothing. Problems are manifold, and I am single.” This is the lower nature speaking. The frailty of the physical body, the ignorance of the mind, and the finitude of individuality itself in the midst of a large society of people—this consciousness of ours is actually our lower nature saying that we are just small units in this world of humanity, of nature as a whole.

Do we not we feel very helpless and small before this vast astronomical universe? Look at the sun and the moon and the stars; look at this vast sky. No one knows where it ends, where it begins. Astronomy and physics tell us that because the universe is expanding, the stars are receding and are rushing into outer space at an incalculable speed, with a distance between them which is measured in what are called light years. The speed of light is 186,000 miles per second, and the distance light travels with this speed for one year is one light year. And millions of light years—enough to make us feel giddy even by thinking about this—such is the distance, they say, that obtains between the stars, which seem to be studded in the sky like diamonds before our naked eyes. What are we before these things? We are very small creatures crawling on the surface of the Earth, and the Earth is considered to be a very tiny dot in the galaxy, even among the planets in the solar system. Everywhere we seem to be cornered from all sides, and we seem to be nothing before the might of the astronomical universe and the sea of humanity around us. Is this our fate, finally? Sometimes we feel that it is. Nothing can be done before this mighty universe. It is beyond us. All things are above us and beyond us. Uncontrollable is this whole situation, astronomical as well as social.

But there is, as I mentioned, a higher nature in us which tells us that we can conquer nature. We want to probe into the mysteries of existence; we want to control mankind; we would even like to become the emperor of the whole Earth, if we can. Practically, it seems not to be a possibility, but there is a feeling inside that it can happen. “I can rule this whole world, under given conditions. I can control the phenomena of nature by certain operations, by investigations, by experiments and observations. I can overcome the world, control it, master it, harness it, and use it.” Such desires are also in our minds. So we seem to be double personalities—sinking, as it were, on the one side, and raising ourselves to incredible heights on the other side. We are small and big at the same time. We are finite, and we are also infinite.

This is an introductory presentation of the circumstances of life in which we seem to be involved. All this has to be probed into very thoroughly. The structure of these situations, as well as the causes of these phenomena, have to be studied. This investigative process, this in-depth analysis of the human situation, is called philosophical study. Philosophy does not mean any particular doctrine or school of thought, as you may imagine or might have been told. Philosophy is not a school of thought of a particular historical occasion or time. It is the attempt of the mind to probe into the causes of events in the world, of circumstances of every kind. This is the attitude of philosophy.

The ancient masters have taken time to go deep into this circumstance of life, and took the initial step with what one can consider as the immediate fact of life. You have heard that there is a thing called yoga. Yoga actually means union with the fact of life. Without going into technological jargon, briefly and simply we may define yoga as union with the fact of life. Now, what that fact of life is, it is up to you to find out. Or, we may say, union with reality in every degree of its manifestation is yoga. You have to be in union with every fact of life and every degree of reality, if possible at all times, at every time. This is the purpose of yoga.

Now, let us take into consideration the immediate fact of life, which seems to be before us as an indubitable presentation about which you have no doubt at all. I am taking you to a peculiar mental operation where you have to concentrate your mind carefully. When it is said 'a fact of life' or 'a reality of life', which meaning is etymologically and grammatically clear before you, what is actually meant? A thing about which you have no doubt at all may be regarded as a fact. If something is dubious and uncertain, that cannot be categorised as a fact because it may not be a fact, inasmuch as you have a doubt about it. Is there anything at all in this world about which you have no doubt? People say this world exists; some people say this world does not exist as it appears before our eyes. People say that things are very bad; some people say, no, they appear to be bad but there is something else behind it. All kinds of things are told historically, economically, geographically, geologically, astronomically, and so on. As science advances, the previous discoveries are cast out as not facts. Centuries of scientific advancement have passed, and we find that even great scientists such as Newton are considered as not having touched the vitality of life.

Every day we discard the previous discoveries that we considered as facts and replace them with other facts. A fact that can be cast away as no longer being a fact cannot be regarded as fact at all. A transitory fact is no fact. It must be there permanently. It should be there always, and we can never raise a question about it; only then can it be considered as a fact. Such a fact, what is it? The entire world, which is moving in the process of evolution and casting away earlier shapes of its circumstance for the sake of newer ones, cannot itself be considered as a fact—because it moves. Anything that is in transition cannot be regarded as an ultimate fact. So is human history, which is a river moving forward, as it were. History moves onward and forward with all its ups and downs and vicissitudes. These are all enigmas before you. But there is something about which you seem to be very clear, and you do not have any doubt. Do you exist, or have you any doubt even about your existence? Let the world be there, let the world not be there. Let people be there or not. Do you exist? Yes.

There are some people who call themselves sceptics; they doubt everything. A question is raised in philosophical circles: Can the doubter doubt that he is existing? I met a Buddhist theologian who said, “Yes, I even doubt that I exist. I am not even sure that I am existing.” He carried his scepticism to the breaking point. Then a question again arises: Do you doubt that you have a doubt about your existence? There the questioner has to close his mouth. You cannot doubt that you are doubting your existence because then the doubt gets cancelled. So the sceptic cuts the ground from under his own feet. There is something about which you are not in doubt. The point is that you certainly exist and, as I mentioned, you cannot doubt that fact because if you doubt it, you are doubting the very fact of doubt itself. Hence, accept that you are existing: “In this matter, there is no doubt. I do exist.”

Now, what kind of 'I' is it that exists? When you say “I exist”, what kind of 'I' is this? Mr. So-and-so, Mrs. So-and-so, this brother, this sister, this boss, this subordinate, this rich man, this poor man—is this the 'I' to which you are making reference when you say “I do exist”? When a merchant says “I exist”, he does not mean that his richness exists, because his richness may not always exist. The same applies to other associations with oneself. You cannot define yourself in terms of associations and qualifications, because they may be there or they may not be there. Minus all associations and relations, you can be. If everything goes and nothing exists, you will be there. What kind of 'you' is this? The immediate prosaic answer would be: “This me, this I that seems to be undoubtedly there is this five-foot or six-foot tall, two-foot wide physical personality. This is what I can consider as me, for all practical purposes—this me which I can see with my own eyes, which you can also see with your eyes. This physical body of mine which has dimension and weight, this material substance which I can touch and sense, is what I can call myself. What else can I say about myself?”

Go a little deeper into this matter. Is it true that you are this physical body? Because you cannot visualise anything else in you except this body, you say, “There cannot be anything else to me.” Do you mean to say that this 'me', this 'I', is the total aggregate of the limbs of this physical body? The answer will be, “Yes. These hands and feet, this nose, these eyes, these lungs, this heart, this flesh, bone, marrow, and so on—all this put together in a proportion is me. I am all these things assembled in a particular way.” Are you sure that this is the answer to your question? The first answer is, “Yes, what else? I am this conglomeration of the physical elements.”

If some limbs are not there, some part of 'me' will not be there. Is it true? There are people without legs. Are they a little less in their 'me' or 'I', in comparison with those who have two legs? Suppose there is a person who has no legs and no arms; a large percentage of 'me' has gone away. Ask him, “Are you wholly existing, or only partially?” He will say, “I am whole.” He will not say, “I am a half man.” The limbless person is not a half person; he is a whole person. How is it possible? If all the limbs are necessary to make you feel whole, how can limbless people feel that they are whole? Legless and armless, fifty percent has gone; he should feel that he is only fifty percent, and not a whole person. But that is not so. If fifty percent of the body is not there due to amputation or some accident, the person is still whole. What do you mean by this feeling of wholeness? “I am full, sir.” He is as great a person as any person who has all his limbs intact.

Do you agree that there is a defect in your definition of the personality as just this body with all the limbs? You have to think thrice before saying anything further. “So, 'I', this 'me', does not seem to be merely a conglomeration of these limbs of the body, because even without them I seem to be existing. But what is this 'I'? The personality itself is in doubt. In the beginning, I thought everything was clear to me. Now I am feeling that there is some mistake because I have analysed this situation a little further and feel that even if fifty percent of the physical body has gone, I will still be whole.” How is this possible? How could you be whole, when half of you has gone? Is it not a contradiction? “Maybe, but still I am whole.”

Ancient thinkers, philosophers, masters and sages have analysed this situation further. You cannot easily answer this question as to why you feel whole in spite of some percentage of the body having gone. The analysis conducted is in terms of certain experiences through which you are passing. What are the experiences through which you are passing? In waking life, you have an externality consciousness. But you are not always in the waking condition. You also go to sleep and dream. When you dream, you have a consciousness, just as you have a consciousness in waking. But there is a difference. The sense organs—the eyes, ears, etc.—are active in waking life; they are not active in dream. In dream, the physical body is not an object of your consciousness. You are not aware that you have a body, yet you are aware of something.

Now, think of this situation. Are you existing in the state of dream? Certainly. Are you existing with body-consciousness, or minus it? You are totally bereft of body-consciousness. In the beginning, you thought that this body is 'you' because there was nothing else that you can say about your body. Then it became a matter of doubt because you felt that the body does not seem to be the entire 'me', because even if you are bereft of certain limbs, you seem to be whole. And now you are in a third predicament—that you seem to be capable of existing even without being conscious of the body. Why? Because in dream, which is a state of existence, which is also a state of consciousness, you are totally free from association with the physical body.

The third conclusion is, you can exist minus conscious-ness of the body and minus consciousness of your wealth, property, relations, family, circumstances, and so on. In ordinary life you identify yourself with family, political conditions, etc., and you get mixed up with them to such an extent that you are always thinking of yourself as a father, mother, husband, wife, etc. You have no other definition of yourself. But in the dream state, these associations are severed; you can exist independently, minus these associations—minus even the body. In the state of dream, you are existing even without the body. What is it that is existing in dream? It is a mental operation. You are existing as a psyche, rather than as a body. Let us take for granted that you are the psyche—that you are more a mind than a body. Let us come to this conclusion. Are you sure? It is clear that you can exist only as a mind, minus the body, because it is seen in dream. Now go deeper.

When you are fast asleep, what happens to the mind? It does not think. It sees nothing. There is no consciousness whatsoever of anything at all when you are fast asleep—no body, no social relations, not even the mind. Now, think of this situation again. In the state of deep sleep, you exist, isn't it? Certainly you do exist in sleep, minus associations of every kind. You are not a president, a minister, a rich man, a boss, a husband or a wife. You are not anything—not even the body, not even the mind. Did you exist in deep sleep? How do you know that you existed in deep sleep? Who told you? Are you verifying this by comparing your experience with somebody else's? Did you wake up in the morning and ask somebody: “Did I really exist yesterday?” No, you do not put questions like that. You do not have to verify by any kind of experiment whether you really existed in sleep. But without any kind of verifiable medium, how did you come to know that you did exist in sleep when you had no consciousness of existing? Minus consciousness, there is no experience. You had no experience at all in the state of sleep—no consciousness. What makes you feel that you existed there? Who told you?

Now here is a further analytical process, which is psychological and philosophical. You may say, “I know that I did exist in the state of sleep by the memory that I have. Yesterday I existed, and I had a very good sleep.” People say, “I had a very good sleep.” Who makes this statement? Mr. So-and-so? That Mr. So-and-so was not there; he was totally dissociated from what existed in the state of deep sleep. Who is saying that they had a memory of sleep? Tell me, what do you mean by memory? You use the word 'memory': a recollection. What does it mean?

Memory is a consequence that follows as an aftermath of a conscious experience. If you have no experience, there will be no memory afterwards. That means to say, in order to have a memory of having slept and having existed in the state of deep sleep, you must have had some experience in that state. Minus experience, how could you have any memory? You would be like a brick. A brick does not remember anything. But you are not like a brick in the state of deep sleep. Though you look like a brick for all practical purposes, it does not seem to be like that because if that were the case, there would be no memory. Were you having an experience in the state of sleep? At that time, you cannot say that you had any experience, because experience minus consciousness is unthinkable, and there was no consciousness. Therefore, you can say you had no experience. But if that is the case, there is no memory. Again you are in a contradiction here. Somehow or other there seems to have been some sort of an experience even in the state of that total unconsciousness which is sleep—but for which, there would have been no memory afterwards. What experience were you having in the state of deep sleep? It was not an experience of body, not of mind, not of any kind of external social relation; it was just existence. What kind of existence? The existence in the state of deep sleep was free from associations of every kind. See how some great truth comes out from this little analysis.

Were you very happy in sleep, or very unhappy? Even an unhappy person wakes up with happiness after sleeping. Even if there is a wound which is giving agonising pain, you feel a little refreshed after a good sleep. The joy of sleep is incomparable, as everyone knows. The restfulness, the blissfulness and the composure that you feel in the state of deep sleep is incomparable. It cannot be compared with any kind of happiness that you can think of in this world—which means to say, you can be happy without any relation with anything, if the time for it comes. Not only can you be happy without any relation with things, it is the greatest happiness. Other types of happiness are elusive; they can run away from you any day. There can be bereavement of causes that appear to be giving you satisfaction in life. But here is something which will not leave you.

This is an incidental, secondary matter. We shall not touch upon it just now. The point is that you had a kind of peculiar existence-consciousness, we may say, though you cannot verify it by any method of observation. By inference of the circumstance of deep sleep, you can come to the conclusion because of the memory following it that there must have been a state of consciousness; otherwise, memory cannot be explained. You existed, pure and simple, a bare fact of being, unrelated to circumstances outside—not even related to space and time, let alone other things.

Again, listen to me carefully. You had a consciousness in the state of deep sleep. You cannot say that there was anything else. “I have a consciousness that I slept.” At that time, did you have a consciousness of anything other than the fact of having slept? No, there was no consciousness of anything else. There was no consciousness of the world of space and time and objects. “It was only a consciousness of my having been there. There was no other consciousness.” Your consciousness of having been there means a consciousness of your existence. What was it that was there in the state of deep sleep? Consciousness of existence: existence which was conscious of itself. Do not allow the mind to slip away from this fact that you existed as existence which was conscious of itself, that only consciousness was existing.

Now, I will use two other Sanskrit words. In Sanskrit, Existence, Pure Being, is called Sat, and Consciousness is called Chit. In Sanskrit philosophical terminology it is said that you were in the state of deep sleep as Sat-chit, Existence-Consciousness. Inasmuch as you were also happy, you were also associated with Ananda. So what was your state? Sat-chit-ananda is the Sanskrit definition of Existence-Consciousness-Bliss. You were existing as Existence-Consciousness-Bliss. Sat is not existence of something; it is pure, unadulterated, featureless, transparent Existence. Chit is not consciousness of something, but is Consciousness of Existence only, so it is not an objective consciousness. It is unrelated Consciousness, pure and simple.

Unrelated Consciousness is something worth considering. You may ask, “What is the meaning of unrelated Consciousness? I have never heard of such a thing, because all consciousness is related to something—related to the world outside, to people outside, to this body, to this mind.”

We have abrogated all these associations; now we have come to the conclusion that we seem to be something fantastic, and not as we thought ourselves to be. “I never knew that I am like this! I am not a bundle of social relations—not even this body and mind. I seem to be something which I never thought myself to be. This is a great discovery of myself.” It is featureless, unrelated Existence which is conscious of itself—conscious of only itself, not conscious of something else. It is pure Existence, pure Consciousness, pure Bliss, unrelated to anything else. “Wonderful! This is me!”

'Unrelated' means not having anything external to it. Anything that has no externality also has no relativity. Therefore, we call it absolute. It is absolute Existence-Consciousness-Bliss—not related consciousness, related bliss, etc. Incidentally, anything that is absolute, which is not relative, is also timeless. Eternity was scintillating in you when you were in deep sleep, of which you are not aware. This fact has to be investigated further, and deeper. Let us see how we can do it.