The Essence of the Aitareya and Taittiriya Upanishads 6.5. - Swami Krishnananda.

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Sunday, August 01,  2021. 8:07. PM.
Chapter 6: Some Light on Yoga Practice - 5.
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It is not enough if we merely practise the preliminaries of external detachment, which are important enough, no doubt. But they are preliminaries only, and not yoga proper. Yoga proper is an internal psychological technique. It is the most difficult of things to conceive because the mind thinks of an object even in the act of rejecting the object. This is the difficulty. Even when we try to remove the idea of an object from our mind, we have some object in our mind. The objectness does not leave us, just as when we love a person or thing, we think of that person; and when we hate that person also we think of him. 

Merely because we hate a thing, it does not mean that it has gone out of our mind. So, even renunciation may be a bondage. We may go to a worse condition, if it is not properly conceived. We should not think that hatred is the opposite of love. It is not true; it is the same as love, in a different form. So it is not so simple an affair to practise yoga. It requires a very careful analysis of what is happening inside. The problems are not outside. They are not in the world; they are not caused by people. People are not troubling us, and nobody is giving us any problem; we are our problems.

Therefore, the whole problem is in the incapacity of the mind to grasp the peculiar relationship that it has established with objects outside. Now when we say outside, it means again the peculiar concept of outsideness that has arisen in the mind. This habit of thinking in terms of non-self, anatman, externality, space and time has to be removed. Then the world becomes something not intended to be rejected but absorbed into our Self, because the astitva, or the being of the world, is the Atman of the Absolute, which is the same as ours.

So here we have got a little clue to the inner significance of these two verses I quoted from the Kathopanishad, where the ultimate Purusha is supposed to be realised by an internal movement, which is not a movement towards a town or a village or city or some object. The great commentator Acharya Sankara is never tired of telling us in such contexts that movement to God does not mean movement in space; it is not actually moving in a motorcar or an airplane. It is a conscious transfiguration that is taking place inwardly. Even the word ‘inward’ may be misconstrued. It is a universalisation that is taking place gradually, which looks like an inwardness on account of the Atmanhood present there. This is yoga.

These are very difficult things indeed, and it is really unfortunate if we should think ourselves well placed, very happy, and that we are great seekers of yoga. We are really very far, and so we should be very careful. We are in a difficult situation; we are in a world of great complexities, diversities and misconceptions which sidetrack us every moment of time. Every thought that arises in our mind is a wrong thought. 

Correct thought very rarely comes to us, because we have no time to think correctly, as we are always moving in the same old groove of traditional thinking. The actual reoriented thinking is unknown to us. We have no time; we are always busy—busy in doing some nonsense, and that has engulfed us in such an intensity and to such an extent that we are immersed in it. And in that immersed condition we are crying for God, and He does not come. So it requires ultimately the grace of God Himself.

After all this, we come to the conclusion that this terrible mess cannot be crossed over unless some miracle takes place. By some mystery of the workings of nature, as it were, divine hands begin to operate and grace descends, and we are brought in contact with a proper Guru or a teacher. That itself is a great blessing. Contact with a proper Guru is really coming in contact with God Himself. To get a Guru is as difficult as getting God. And once you get a proper teacher, then you are on the path. This is a great achievement, and again this is the work of God.

End.

Next - Chapter-7. The Secret of Sadhana

To be continued ....

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