The Aim of
Objective 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 subtlety of these elements is in
the ascending order of this arrangement, the succeeding one being grosser than
the preceding. Also the preceding element is the cause of the succeeding, so
that Ether may be regarded as containing all things in an unmanifested form.
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. 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. While our
psychological reactions constitute our personal life, the adjustment we make
with others is our social 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, which initially looks like an individual
affair, a process of Self-investigation (atma-vichara) and
Self-realization (atma-sakshatkara). But this is not the whole
truth. 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 go deep into the body we would confront its roots; so also in
the case of the objects outside. When we set out on this adventure, we begin to
converge slowly at a single center, 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.
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