Vedantham : ( 07/11/2012. )

Chapter 5: Maintaining One's Position-14.  But the conditions that the mind expects in order that it may be healthy, happy, or peaceful – for its wholesome existence and satisfaction – are determined by factors which are supermental. These are conditions which go beyond the mind itself. We cannot know why we wish to have peace of mind at all. Why do you cry for peace of mind? Let it not be there; what does it matter? You cannot answer this question. You very stubbornly and arrogantly assert: "I want peace of mind" – as if you know all the things in the world when you have said this, and there is nothing more to say. The requirements of the mind in association with the body that make you a psychophysical organism – the requirements of this situation of yours – depend upon the very structure of the universe. You are not such a free person as you imagine, though there is nothing to prevent you from being ultimately free if you are going to be in a proper p

Chapter 5: Maintaining One's Position-13. But we seem to be imagining a different world before us – a world that is totally different from the world as it really is. The conditions of our internal existence, though they may appear to be mental for the time being, are something more. Ordinary lay thinking will not be able to know what is actually meant either by peace, happiness or unhappiness, because the lay mind has a simple answer: "I want this. I do not have it. Therefore, I am unhappy," and: "I wanted it. I got it. Therefore, I am happy." These are simple statements that people glibly make, as if everything is clear when these statements are made. Your position is not merely the physical body's position. Of course it is also, at the same time, the position that the mind maintains, but there is something more than even this. The necessity for the body to maintain a particular position in yoga – or at any time, for the matter of th

Chapter 5: Maintaining One's Position-12. Now, you may wonder : -"Am I happy only when the mind is happy, and is this all that I expect in this world? Or is there anything else in me?" Many people imagine that mental peace is very important, and they seem to be very clear in their minds when they say this – but really, they are clear about nothing. The words "I want peace of mind" are merely words; the meaning of these words is not very clear, and cannot be very clear, because you cannot know what you mean by 'peace', or 'happiness', or 'unhappiness'. You cannot easily know what happiness and unhappiness mean, if you attribute your happiness and unhappiness to factors other than yourself :- "If I get something, I am happy. If I do not get it, I am unhappy." So, you feel that you are a slave of that which is supposed to make you happy or unhappy. Are you a slave? Would anyone like to be a slave of anybody? But, al

Chapter 5: Maintaining One's Position-11. The thing that you are cannot be merely the body. Even a person with a little common sense will know this. I just mentioned casually, through the analogy of happiness and unhappiness, that the bodily happiness need not be your happiness, and the bodily unhappiness need not be your unhappiness. Even if surgeons cut off limbs of the body, which cannot be regarded as happiness of the body, a person can still be happy; and a person can be in a condition of a total ruin, for other internal reasons, even if the body is perfectly healthy. Thus, our life is more internal than external. Our external life appears to be a very great thing for us because of the fact that the internal factors do not intrude much. It is something like our feeling very happy and satisfied merely because our creditors do not show their faces. A debtor may be happy as long as the creditor does not show his face, but when he shows his face, immediatel

Chapter 5: Maintaining One's Position-10. Do you know that even if the body is robust, healthy, and perhaps happy, you can be unhappy for other reasons? When you say "I am unhappy", you do not mean the body is unhappy. It may be strong like an elephant, and yet the person may be unhappy for a reason which is not easy to know because if one could know why one is unhappy, one need not be unhappy at all. One would throw out all the factors that cause unhappiness if this could be possible. But this is not easily available. The causative factors of unhappiness are not easily available to anyone because they sit on the very brain of the person and, therefore, the very thinking process is conditioned by these factors that cause unhappiness. Thus, you find that the maintenance of yoga posture, finally, in the sense of the yoga system, is a hard thing to do. This is why people had to work through the sweat of their brow for years and years to understand what a

Chapter 5: Maintaining One's Position-9. What is the solution, finally? Know yourself first, and then you will know how to know other things. But, as I mentioned at the outset, how would you know yourself? To know anything, the knowledge has to stand as the subject of another object. You are not the object of knowledge of yourself, because you are the subject of knowledge. You are the knower. If you are the knower, how will you know yourself? If you can grasp some sense out of this peculiar position – that you have to know yourself, in spite of your not being an object of yourself – you would know what yoga is. However, here comes the meaning of what I started saying: yoga is the maintenance of a position. And all that I told you now in a few words is a preparatory introduction to what 'position' can mean in yoga. It is the position that you maintain, and you have to know what 'you' are in order that you may maintain the requisite position i

Chapter 5: Maintaining One's Position-8. All relations are impermanent. Why they are impermanent is a very difficult theme, into which we need not enter just now. It is enough for the time being to know that it is impossible for anyone to know things as they really are unless there is a means of knowing things as they really are. Nothing that is perceptible or cognitional – nothing that is related to mere sensory activity or even mental operation – can be considered as a proper means here in this objective, because all these instruments of knowledge that we have, the mind included, maintain a sort of knowledge position in respect of things by a mediate connection that they establish between themselves and the object. It is not an immediate relationship; it is a mediate relationship. An outward link is created in order that an object may be known in terms of this link, so that what is known is not the object as it is in itself, but only a feature that is c

Chapter 5: Maintaining One's Position-7. It has been felt that we have no relation to our own selves, and we must, at least, be supposed to exist in a relationless manner: "I have no relation to my own self." In this sense one may say that one's own self is a non-relational This is a point that is made out by deep thinkers and philosophers, and due to this feeling of theirs, they concluded that nothing in the world can be known as it is in itself unless one knows one's own self – because to try to know anything else first without a knowledge of one's own self would be to be contented merely with what is relative and not absolute. By 'relative', we mean that which is not at all valuable in itself – it is valuable only because it is connected to something else. The father is important because the son is a big judge or a collector; the son is important because of a relation with a vaster organisation to which he belongs; a person is impo