Thought and Action is Vitally Connected
The system of yoga lays down a
kind of discipline that compels us to take a total view of things – not only of
ourselves as individuals or personalities, but also of things outside with
which we are apparently connected.
It is the rise of the ‘whole’
towards a larger ‘whole’. Purnamadah purnamidam,
says the Upanishad. Everywhere there is a sense of fullness. Even an atom is a
completeness by itself; it is not a part of anything. We may say the atom is a
part of a molecule, but that is only a way of expression. The atom, by itself,
is complete, self-sufficient – like a solar system. Everything, even a cell in
the body, is self-complete, though many cells make up a larger body. Every
stage in yoga is a complete step, a full-fledged activity of the mind in that
particular stage or level.
So, the first and foremost of
precautions that we have to take here is that our understanding and emotion do
not move in different directions. Sometimes they even move in opposite
directions, which should not be the case. While the intellect may be denying
something vehemently on a scientific basis, the emotion may be affirming the
very same thing, contradicting what the intellect is asserting, and so on. Many
of the students of yoga are sufficiently prepared intellectually but are not
prepared emotionally and, therefore, there is not much success. The emotions
are driven towards things which the intellect vehemently denies in its own way,
and there is no use when the intellect works in one manner and the emotion
works in another manner.
How are we to discover or find
out if our understanding and feeling go together? This is a great and difficult
task before us, because many of us are incapable of making a subtle analysis of
our nature. If a person is half-sleepy and unintelligent, incapable of judging
things properly, what good will it do to the army if he is made a general or a
commander-in-chief? The battle inwardly fought is more serious than all the
battles that history might have seen in the world.
In the Mahabharata, towards
the end, there is an incident where the Pandava king Yudhishthira, having won
victory in the Mahabharata war and having been crowned emperor with all glory,
pomp and éclat, starts crying and weeping. Why was he crying? He was
responsible for the whole war – in one sense, at least – and through the thick
of the battle he had moved through his brothers with his army, and won the war
with great difficulty. Everyone regarded it as a righteous war. Now he had been
crowned king, the whole country was so joyous and jubilant over this happy
event, and this man was crying! What had happened to him? Sri Krishna was
sitting near him. He asked, “What are you crying for?” “Oh! What is the good of
all these things that I have now! I have killed all my brethren, and I have a
blood-stained kingdom. All my kith and kin, my dear ones, have gone. My
grandfather, my Guru, are no more. What for is this kingdom? Why have I come
here? And why am I here as a king?” He was weeping. Then, Sri Krishna turned to
Yudhishthira and said, “My dear friend, I am very sorry for your state of mind.
You are under the impression that you have fought a battle, engaged yourself in
a very vehement war and killed many people; but do you know that you have not
fought any battle or won any victory? The battle is still to be fought and the
victory is still to be won – because now a battle is going on in your own mind,
and that is indeed a more serious battle compared to the outer battle that you
apparently fought, for which you are crying. Neither have you destroyed
enemies, nor have you won victory. Your enemies are still inside you, and
victory has not yet been won; that is why you are weeping. Your enemies are
working inside.”
The yogi takes, therefore, a
very serious notion of everything. There is nothing simple, unimportant or
insignificant which the yogi can take as a sort of diversion or a hobby. Even
if it is an act of sweeping the floor, it is important for him, because every
thought and every action is vitally connected with what we are.
There are many secrets which
are not open to our minds. Yesterday while reading a book I came across a very
interesting passage, from Rousseau, the great thinker: “Why are you searching
for the cause of evil? You are he.” And the sentence goes on: “You are
responsible not only for the evil that you have done and are doing, but also
for the evil that you are suffering from.” This is something horrible. We are
also responsible for the evils we are suffering from, not merely for what we
are doing. Yes. He opened up a psychological Pandora’s box when he made this
statement, because we are very cozy under our blankets of comfortable thinking,
due to which we think that the sufferings that we are undergoing are not our
own making, that they are thrust upon us by others. Experience is the essence
of this law which works in the universe, and no experience will come to us,
impinge upon us or become our own unless we have a part to play in that drama
of experience.
This is the reason why the
yogi takes everything very seriously and never complains of circumstances,
conditions, persons, things, etc., outside him, because for him there is no
such thing as ‘outside’. He is in a very tremendous expanded atmosphere where
everything seems to be connected with him, and with this attitude it is that he
takes to a persistent practice of the higher stages of yoga.
In the working of the
physiological system in our body, we cannot say which works first and which
works afterwards. The respiratory system, the circulatory system, the heart,
the head are all working simultaneously, though they are apparently different
from one another. We cannot say the head thinks first and the heart is
afterwards; everything is always. Similarly, the stages of yoga are stages only
for the purpose of logical distinction, and they are not a chronological order
that is laid before us. With this grounding, the yogi takes up the task of what
he has to do next.
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