(Mar 9,2014) Spiritual Message for the Day – The Psychology of Yoga by Swami Krishnananda

The Psychology of Yoga

Divine Life Society Publication: - True Spiritual Living by Swami Krishnananda

What is the connection between thought and reality? 

As far as we are concerned, reality is the whole universe, the world outside. There is a feeling in the mind of man that the secrets of nature are outside, and to discover these secrets we require externalized instruments such as microscope, telescope, etc. There is not the least idea in anyone that these secrets are hidden in our own selves. Yoga being a discipline of the mental processes, there must be some secret relevance of this internal process called yoga to the vast reality of the external cosmos. This is a discovery of yoga psychology. 

We were under the notion that all the troubles come from people outside, from the world external to us. There are no such things as problems. The ultimate cause discovered by yoga is a peculiar maladjustment of the subject with the object – the drashta with the drisya, – the seer with the seen. “I, as the seer, the observer, the subject, find it difficult to adjust myself suitably with what I see outside – the drisya, the object world, including everything, every person. 

In our apparent external life of the waking consciousness we appear to be in harmony with others, but there is a conflict, if we go deep into the matter. What is maladjusted with the world outside is not merely our conscious mind, but our total personality and this has to be set right, which is the purpose of yoga. 

No one can know one’s own self, because we mistake knowing for merely a conscious activity of the mind. The knowledge process is identified with what we call a conscious activity of the mind. When I am aware of an object, I am under the impression, wrongly, that my entire personality is tuned to that object in this act of knowing, but what is tuned is merely a part of the mind – the conscious mind, working through the sense organs. Consciously we repress many of our feelings and motives. 

What is my present purpose?

The mind, when it is conscious of an object or deals with a particular object, takes out from its resources only those aspects and features of its structure which are necessary for the fulfillment of a chosen purpose at that given moment of time.  So, while we are deep-seatedly disharmonious with everything, we openly and overtly appear to be harmonious with all things. Therefore, there seems to be a sort of satisfaction and a success in outward life, while there is an inward dissatisfaction and disharmony inside. This latency for disharmony that is within us pursues us even after death. This is the cause of rebirth. We are reborn into embodiment in successive lives because we carry with us, in spite of shedding the physical body, the potentiality of which we are made – the psychological stuff which we really are. And rebirth, the transmigratory process, cannot be put an end to as long as the deep-rooted, the deep-seated potentialities are not brought to the conscious level and made a part of our conscious nature.

Then, what is the solution? 

Like psychoanalysis, yoga prescribes various methods of sublimating these deeper impulses, not by repressing or suppressing them, or even substituting something else for them, but by sublimating them by a very slow growing process. 

Like the nucleus of an atom, the affirmation of the ego, this centralizing principle within us, draws sustenance from the constituents of nature outside, pulls particles of matter from the five elements towards itself, arranges them in a particular pattern into what is called this body; and this process will continue endlessly as long as this centralizing principle, the ego, continues to exist. So, the purpose of yoga is to break this fortress of ego.

The very sensation or feeling 'I am' is called the asmita or ego, in yoga psychology. Asmi in Sanskrit means 'I am', and asmita means 'I am'-ness. This is the cause, ultimately, of isolating us from all creation outside, making it falsely appear that we are disconnected from things outside and that all the problems and difficulties are in the outside world and not in us. You cannot understand the connection with others because the connection is internal rather than external, and the internal connection cannot be known because the asmita, the ego, works only through the senses, which can act only externally. But relations are really internal, and the external relationship is only a temporary shape or form taken by this internal set of relations. To solve the problems of life, therefore, we have to deal with the internal relations, and not merely the outer aspects of these.

Know Thyself

The need for control of the mind, or chittavrtti nirodhah, arises because of our entire personality being involved with everything in the world, and because of this ego principle within us being the seed form of all the future projected activities, including all thought processes, etc. Therefore, when we know ourselves, we have known everything, because the entire past, present and future is hidden inside us. Even the unimaginable past and the remotest future possibilities are all potentially present in ourselves. So, to know one's own self is, in other words, to become omniscient, to know the whole creation; and to know one's own real difficulties is to know everyone's difficulties.

Thus comes about the need for controlling the mind. As we have already observed, this psychological process of controlling ourselves, harmonizing ourselves through the yoga techniques, is not merely a so-called internal activity of ours because, though for the purpose of expressing ourselves, we may talk of yoga as an internal process, it is really a cosmic process. It is so because this so-called internality of ours, this apparent individuality of ours, is really connected with all things everywhere. 

The world 'outside' and we 'within' are only ways of expression. There is neither a 'within' nor a 'without'. And so, while we speak of the subject in relation to an object 'outside', we are speaking in the language of the ego; otherwise, there is no subject and there is no object. To think a thought is to think an object simultaneously, and to think an object is to at once imply all the relations of this object with everything anywhere. Therefore, while rightly directed thoughts can bring about immediate miraculous success, wrongly directly thoughts can bring about a reverse consequence. They can create a hell or a heaven at once, with the power of our thinking. This capacity, this potentiality, this power, this latency hidden within an individual, is discovered by the psychology of yoga; and this has to be unfolded, brought to the surface of consciousness, and made a reality of day-to-day experience.

Excerpts from:

The Psychology of Yoga - True Spiritual Living by Swami Krishnananda 

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(August 1,2013) The Cause of Bondage

The Cause of Bondage

Divine Life Society Publication: Chapter 55: The Study and Practice of Yoga by Swami Krishnananda

What is the bondage from which we wish to be free? What is actually meant by this thraldom of samsara? How has it come about? Why is it that we are full of sorrow and we have no peace? This is mentioned in a single sutra, avidyā kṣetram uttareṣāṁ prasupta tanu vicchinna udārāṇām (II.4), which states that the series of processes by which the individual soul has got into bondage consists of nothing but pains and pains, one after another, in various degrees of involvement.

Ignorance of the true nature of things is the origin of bondage. ‘Avidya’, ‘ajnana’, ‘nescience’, etc. are the terms used to designate this condition. What actually exists is not known; this is called avidya. We cannot, by any amount of effort of the mind, understand what is actually there in front of us; and whatever we are seeing with our eyes or think in our mind is not the true state of affairs. This is called avidya. We may logically argue, deduce, induce, but all this is like the definitions given by the blind men who touched different parts of the elephant. On account of a partial grasp of truth, there is a partial attitude to life; and everything follows from that, one after the other.

Every successive link in the chain of bondage is dependent in one way or the other on the previous link.

The inability to perceive the true state of affairs, the absence of an understanding of the correct relationship among things, creates a false sense of values. Avidya is not merely absence of knowledge –but the presence of a terrific foe in front of us, which has a positivity of its own. It exists in a peculiar way which eludes the grasp of understanding.

So a negative type of positivity is created, we may say, called the individuality, which asserts itself as a reality even though it is based on a non-substantiality. The individuality of ours is insubstantial, like vapour. It has no concrete element within it. It can be peeled off like an onion, and we will find nothing inside it, but yet it looks like a hard granite adamantine being on account of the affirmation of consciousness. The reality that is apparently visible in the individuality is borrowed from that which is really there. The support comes from that which really exists, which is True Being, and this support is summoned for the purpose of substantiating something which is utterly false and wholly untenable. This untenable position is called self-assertion, affirmation, egoism, asmita, ahamkara, etc. All this has happened on account of not knowing correctly the interrelationship of things. There is a dependence of every factor on every other factor so that individuality can have no ultimate value in the scheme of things.

The asmita tattva that is mentioned as the effect of avidya is a centralisation of consciousness, a focusing of it at a particular point in space and time, and a hardening of it into an adamantine substance which gets encrusted more and more by repeated experience of sense contact which confirms the false belief that the isolated existence of the individual is a reality. We get confirmation every day that our individuality is real due to the pleasure that we receive by sense contact.

Piles and piles of notions of this false individuality, asmita, get grouped together, and there is an impregnable fortress created in the form of what we are as individuals.  That which is real has become unreal, and that which is unreal has become real. The thing that has really evolved as an effect becomes the cause, as it were; and that which is the cause looks as if it is the effect. The cosmic substance out of which the individuals have evolved has become the object of perception of the individuals, and the latter have usurped the position of the cause of cognition, experience, etc. notwithstanding the fact that they are evolutes. They have come further than the original substance which is cosmic.  

Conclusively, we may say that everything that we think is a wrong thought. There is nothing like correct thinking as far as the reality of the individual is concerned. When the very basis is wrong, how can anything that proceeds from it be correct? This is the history of the production of asmita out of avidya.

In one place Swami Sivanandaji Maharaj has mentioned in a humorous way that the mind is something which is really nothing, but does everything. This is the world – it is really not there, but it is terrible. The character of the real is injected into the apparent formation of the unreal, and then the unreal looks like a reality. We transfer ourselves to the objects in our perceptions, and then it is the reality of the background of our being which is the cause for our belief in the reality of objects.

No individual can be complete. Everything is a part. Therefore, everything is restless; it has to be restless. But this restlessness, pain and anguish felt by each partial experience of individuality tries to get fulfilment by finding its counterpart in sensory experience.  We may say our likes and dislikes are conditioned by our prarabdha karma. That is why everyone does not like everything – my likes are different from your likes, etc. The reason is that we as individuals are constituted of certain forces which do not relate themselves directly with every factor in the universe, because the prarabdha is a peculiar sample that is taken out of the entire resources behind us, called sanchita karma.

This peculiar effect that further follows from asmita, or individuality, in the form of the pulls and repulsions, raga and dvesha, adds a further confirmation to our belief that the world is real, the body is real, individuality is real – that all our phenomenal experiences are real.

Patanjali gives a series of descriptions for the freeing of one’s consciousness from such involvements by graduated techniques and practice. A sudden directing of the mind to meditation is not possible because the layers are hard enough that they cannot be pierced through at once. Also, the layers of bondage, which have manifested themselves in a series, are not placed one above the other in a linear fashion. They are intricately involved – one getting into the fibre of the other, as it were – and we cannot peel one layer out without causing pain to the other layer that is underneath. Because of the vital involvement of consciousness in every layer, there is a little bit of suffering involved in the peeling out of the layer, just as we feel pain when we peel the skin. We know that skin is not our real nature, but yet we feel pain when it is peeled off because we have become one with the skin, one with the bone and marrow, the flesh – one with everything. Likewise, every layer of bondage has become part of the self, so that the removal of the bondage is not desirable. It looks pleasurable for the soul.

Bondage itself has become a source of joy, so that we can say that the very vision of there being something beyond in the form of freedom has left one’s vision. If a person is a captive in a jail for fifty or sixty years, he may take that as the natural way of living. He has been in the jail for sixty years; he has been used to that way of living, and he cannot think of any value or reality other than that. In a similar manner, there is an accustoming of consciousness to a life of bondage, and the conditions, limitations and restrictions have been regarded as a type of freedom by itself. Even the limitation that has been imposed upon us, we mistake for freedom, and the pain that follows is regarded as joy.

The pleasures of sense are not really pleasures. This is the point that is mentioned in one of the following sutras. They are pains which are misread as pleasures.

It is difficult to know why we feel happiness, why there is pleasure at all in sense contact, unless we know the depth of perception itself. Why is it that we are seeing objects? What is it that compels us or drives us towards objects? Where is the need for us to come in contact with things? Why it is that we wrongly mistake pain for pleasure, and how is it that we can get fooled by the senses in creating a notion of falsehood?

It is the inability to grasp these things that has created an impression that bodily experiences and phenomenal processes are independent by themselves – a reality taken by them. This is the essence of bondage; and how difficult it is to get out of it is clear on the very surface.

Excerpts from:

Chapter 55: The Study and Practice of Yoga by Swami Krishnananda

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(Apr 25,2013) Avidya and the Universality of our true being

Avidya and the universality of our true being

From Divine Life Society Publication “The Yoga System” by Swami Krishnananda

Avidya represents a condition in which one forgets reality and is unconscious of its existence. We have somehow forgotten the real nature of our selves, viz. the universality of our true being. This is the primary function of ignorance. But it has more serious consequences, for it also makes one mistake:

·         the non-eternal (anitya) for the eternal (nitya),

·         the impure (asuchi) for the pure (suchi),

·         pain (duhkha) for pleasure (sukha) and

·         the not-Self (anatman) for the Self (atman).

The Theory of Relativity has put an end to such a thing as stable matter or the so-called solidity or substantiality of things. It is obvious that the world with its contents is transient, and yet it is loved as a real entity and seen as reality. This is one of the functions of avidya. So, also, the impure body which stinks when deprived of life or unattended to daily is loved and caressed as a pure substance. The itching of the nerves is regarded as an incentive to pleasure and to scratch them for an imaginary satisfaction seems to be the aim of all sense-contacts in life, whatever be their nature.

The increase of desire (parinama) after every sensory indulgence, the anxiety (tapa) consequent upon every attempt at fulfilment of a desire, the undesirable effect in the form of psychic impressions (samskara-duhkha) that follow in the wake of all sense-enjoyments and the obstructing activity of the modes of the relativity of things (the 3 gunas) called sattva, rajas and tamas, which revolve like a wheel without rest (guna-vritti-virodha) point to the fact that worldly pleasure is a name given to pain, by the ignorant. Also, objects are loved as one's Self, while in fact they are not. All these are the characteristics of avidya or ajnana, due to which there is a total distortion of reality into an appearance called this universe of space, time and objects.

Another result which spontaneously follows from avidya is asmita or the sense of being. This sense is the consciousness of one's individuality and personality, the ego, ahamkara, or self-affirmation. Forgetfulness of universality ends in an assertion of individuality. The wrong notion that the individual is organically separated from the universe and the consequent self-assertion (asmita), the bifurcating attitude of likes and dislikes in regard to things (raga-dvesha) and a longing to preserve one's body by all means (abhinivesa) are the graduated effects of avidya, which follow from it in a logical sequence. We do not know Universal Being. We know only the particular and the individual. We love and hate objects. We cling to life and fear death.

The first mistake is to think, 'I am not the Universal'; the second to affirm, 'I am the particular'; the third to like certain things and to dislike others; the fourth to strive for perpetuating individuality by the instinct for self-preservation and self-reproduction. The error of forgetfulness of universality has produced affirmation of individuality, which has caused love and hate, or like and dislike, all which finally has led to desire for life and horror of death. This is our present state. We have now to wake up from this muddled thinking and go back to the truth of thinking universally. The union of the individual with the Universal is yoga.

 Continue to read:

Chapter 4: Depth Psychology – The Yoga System by Swami Krishnananda

The Nature of Avidya – From “Moksha Gita” by Swami Sivananda – Commentary by Swami Krishnananda

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