The Essence of the Aitareya and Taittiriya Upanishads 6.4. - Swami Krishnananda.

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Sunday, July 25,  2021. 11:48. AM.
Chapter 6: Some Light on Yoga - 4.
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The space-time factor is nothing but a force of externality; that is all we can say about it. We cannot say anything more than that because it is involved in our experience. Space and time are part and parcel of our experience itself and, therefore, we cannot say anything about them. Yet, this much can be understood of them: They are expressional habits of the mind, they are the factors which pull consciousness in a particular direction called externality, and yoga practice is nothing but the subdual of the character of the mind from its movement in terms of space and time.

So the control of the mind, or withdrawal of the senses, is a very difficult task. It involves a herculean effort indeed, because it involves a very subtle understanding of what is expected to be done. There are many people who have a wrong notion of the nature of things. They think that to become a yogi or a seeker of Truth, one has to renounce things. We are always told by religions that we have to renounce things and the world in order to reach God. But we renounce the substance itself, together with the name and the form. This is a mistake arising on account of the incapacity of the mind to distinguish between the name and form, and the existence as such.

There is a humorous story. There was a small boy whose mother was very ill. She was an old lady. She was lying in bed, almost in a dying condition. Flies were sitting on her body, and one fly was sitting on her nose again and again, troubling her so much that people told the boy: “Please drive the fly away. Don’t allow the fly to trouble the old lady. She is in a very bad condition.” “Oh! Yes,” he said. “I will drive this fly away.” But the fly would not go easily like that. Again and again he tried to fan it off, but again and again it sat on her nose. So he took a huge stick and gave a blow so forcefully that it broke the nose of the mother. The fly went off! The poor boy did not know that he was hitting his mother, and instead of driving away the fly, he broke the head and face of that poor lady.

Similarly, this sort of mistake we may commit in rejecting the world. It is not the world that we have to reject. The worldness in the object, the externality in the object, and the non-selfhood, anatmatva, in things have to be thrown off. Here is the crux of the whole matter. Here it is that we always become a miserable failure. When we come to this point, it is hard for us to grasp what this actually means. We think that to leave the house and to go to a forest is renunciation. But it is not, because we are still in the world only. Even in the forest, we are in the world; the world has not gone out of us. 

The idea that there is a world outside us is to be abrogated. Otherwise, if yoga had been so simple, everybody would have become yogis. A little closing of the eyes, a little japa and a little breathing will not make us a yogi. The intellect is a terrible hindrance; it will never allow us to grasp the truth of things. It always misleads us; it always takes us in the wrong direction. We then say, “I reject this, I fast, I don’t sleep, I don’t talk.” All these techniques that we adopt in yoga do not even touch the fringe of the actual problem. They are all very necessary things, as fasting before treatment of a disease. But fasting itself is not the treatment; we have to give the proper medicament and take care of the body by positive treatment, etc. So, likewise is the case with yoga.

To be continued ...

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