What is Knowledge : Ch-4. Part-1.

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Chapter 4 : Yoga – An Integration of Consciousness.

Part-1.

The doctrines behind the practice of yoga, whatever be their background and theoretical foundation, come to almost a unanimous conclusion that the novel adventure known as yoga is an indispensable in the life of a human being, and it principally consists in what may be called 'integration of being'.

Now, this suggestion that one's being has to be integrated – and this is precisely yoga – this principle, at the same time, implies that the final aim of the 'being' of anything or anyone is the enhancement of that very 'being' itself, a sort of augmenting of the 'being' of one's own self in such a way that the achievement of integration leaves nothing left over as something yet to be achieved, known, contacted, realised, or experienced.



There is a sort of integration already established in our psychophysical personality – we are not disintegrated individuals – due to which fact, we seem to be thinking in a sane manner.

We maintain a kind of physical health, which is what may be regarded as the harmony of the physiological system; we seem to be thinking cogently, logically, sensibly, which is also a sort of integration of our psyche; and above all, we maintain that sort of integration in ourselves which makes us feel convinced that we are not dismembered as a composite of parts, but an undivided something.



This is the reason behind our conviction that we exist, and we have no doubt about it.

This conviction of one's own existence is a state of consciousness, and it is integrated because it has no doubts about its own self.

It is not schizophrenically divided within itself, and no one feels like a bundle of differentiated parts.



That we do not consider ourselves as discrete elements artificially brought together into a tentative completeness is a proof that we have a sort of integration in our own selves.

This is psychophysical or social sanity, which is our present condition – the state of affairs in which we are.

But this is not enough.

Swami Krishnananda
To be continued  ...



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