Friday, April 26, 2013

(April 26, 2013) Science Precedes Practice

Science Precedes Practice
From Divine Life Society Publication: “The Tree of Life” by Swami Krishnananda

Many a seeker on the spiritual path is often unintelligently enthusiastic with a misapprehension of the nature of spiritual life and the way to the attainment of the goal. Sincere seekers often imagine that yoga is a practice, and they want nothing but practice, with an added notion that it will bring about an immediate experience of a supernormal reality. There is no such thing as a sudden jumping into the practice of yoga, yet they imagine that it is doing something immediately and that it will be followed up by a sudden outburst of supernal light.

I had occasion to hear from a sincere sadhaka that what he requires is immediate practice and immediate experience. This is not to be unless the mind is cleared of all its cobwebs of entanglement with phenomenal experience. The mind will not concentrate, whatever be the effort we put forth, because the mind we are contemplating is one facet of a large structure of universal psyche. Most people fail in their attempt at concentration of the mind because they think this so-called mind of theirs has no connection with other things in the world.

The Bhagavadgita is also called a Brahma Vidya in addition to its being called a Yoga Shastra. It is a science of the Eternal, and it is a scripture on the practice of yoga. Science precedes practice. There is a scientific system of the methodology of working laid out in one's own mind and, as the science of economics tells us, there are stages of the fulfilment of the program.  To build a house we have a program of making a plan, maybe a master plan. The location, the structure, the nature of the material, the persons who will be entrusted with building, the idea of the work of construction, and the final structure will depend upon the purpose for which it is raised.

Theory and practice are not bifurcated as the North Pole and the South Pole. Idea expressed is action. As water condenses into ice, thought manifests itself as activity. In the same way as water and ice are not different—it is water itself that has become ice, and they are not two different things—likewise, it is the idea that has become practice. Science becomes technology. We cannot have merely a technological organisation without the scientific concept and knowledge preceding this practice.

The ultimate realisation of the aim is the concretisation of the theoretical foundation already laid in one's consciousness. When consciousness becomes one with its content and the content does not remain something outside as a perceptional category, that state of conscious experience is called spiritual Realisation or God-realisation.

This principle is also emphasised in the Bhagavadgita. It is a Brahma Vidya, or the science of the Absolute, and by science what we mean here is the ideological structural basis for its expression as spiritual practice, which is called yoga. Thus, yoga is an external manifestation of the internal foundation of Brahma Vidya. So it is necessary that we should know where we stand. There is not to be that mistake of underestimation or overestimation of oneself. Neither are we nothing, nor are we everything. This is a great difficulty for seekers because nothing can be harder than the assessment of oneself by oneself. We cannot exactly know where we stand in this world, what our relationship is with the atmosphere in which we are living. That is why the need for a Guru arises—a teacher, a guide, a master who has trodden the path and knows the various steps to be taken and the stages to be passed through.

Continue to read:
Severing the Root of this Tree of Life” from the tree of life by Swami Krishnananda
The Theory of Perception” by Swami Krishnananda
Guru-Bhakti Yoga” by Sri Swami Sivananda
The Purpose of Life” by Swami Sivananda

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