Yoga way of Analysis
As all thoughts
can be reduced to five types of internal function, all objects can be reduced
to five bhutas or elements. The five great elements are called pancha-mahabhutas,
and they are (1) Ether (akasa), (2) Air (vayu),
(3) Fire (agni), (4) Water (apas) and (5) Earth (prithivi).
The elements constitute the whole physical cosmos. These are the real objects
of the senses, and all the variety we see is made up of forms of these objects.
Our sensations are
the five objects and we sense through the indriyas or sense-organs.
With the sense of the ear we come in contact with Ether and hear sound which is
a reverberation produced by Ether. Touch is the property of Air, felt by us
with the tactile sense. With the sense of the eyes we contact light which is
the property of Fire. With the palate we taste things, which is the property of
Water. With the nose we smell objects, and this is the property of Earth.
There is the vast
universe, and we know it with our senses. We live in a world of fivefold
objects. The senses are incapable of knowing anything more than these elements.
The internal organ, as informed and influenced by the objects, deals with them
in certain manners, and this is life. The yoga is primarily concerned with the
personal life of man in relation to the universe, and not the social life, for,
in the social environment, one's real personality is rarely revealed. Yoga is
essentially a study of self by self, a process of Self-investigation (atma-vichara)
and Self-realization (atma-sakshatkara). The Self envisaged here is a consciousness of gradual
integration of reality, and it finally encompasses all experience and the whole
universe in its being.
While the
psychology of yoga comprises the functions of the internal organ, and its
physics is of the five great objects or mahabhutas, the philosophy of
yoga transcends both these stages of study. The yoga metaphysics holds that the
body is not all, and even the five elements are not all. We do not see what is
inside the body and also what is within the universe of five elements. A
different set of senses would be necessary for knowing these larger secrets.
Yoga finally leads us to this point. When we set out on this adventure, we
begin to converge slowly at a single centre, like the two sides of a triangle
that taper at one point. The so-called wide base of the world on which we move
does not disclose the truth of ourselves or of objects. At this point of convergence
of ourselves and of things, we need not look at objects, and here no senses are
necessary, for, in this experience, there are neither selves nor things. There
is only one Reality, where the universal object and the universal subject
become a unitary existence. Neither is that an experience of a subject nor an
object, where is revealed a knowledge of the whole cosmos, at once, not through
the senses, mind or intellect - for there are no objects - and there is only being
that is consciousness.
Yoga is, therefore,
spiritual, superphysical or supermaterial, because materiality is shed in its
achievement, and consciousness reigns supreme. This is the highest object of
yoga, where the individual and the universe do not stand apart as two entities
but come together in a fraternal embrace. The purpose of the yoga way of
analysis is an overcoming of the limitations of both subjectivity and
objectivity and a union of the deepest within us with the deepest in the
cosmos.
Continue to read:
No comments:
Post a Comment