What is Knowledge : Ch-6-11.

Chapter- 6:- Being in Balance with the World-11.

Why not lie down? This also is not suitable, because you are likely to relax so much that you may become unconscious and sleep.

Yoga is not sleeping, though it is not a consciousness of external objects in a distracting sense.

Thus, the yoga prescription strikes a via media. It says do not stand, because it is not proper; and do not lie down, because that also is not good. The via media is sitting.


Even when you are sitting, you may feel aches. Your knees will give pain, and you cannot bend your legs properly; and you will find the greatest ache will be in the spine. You cannot sit erect for a long time.

Why should you sit erect? You may ask why you should not crouch, or lean backward as you do in a dentist’s chair. This is also not suitable.


Again, you have to understand the purpose of this seated posture. It is not because somebody is ordering you to do it. It is not because Patanjali says “sit” that you are sitting. There is a science behind this seated posture, and I have already tried to mention what it is.

The muscles, the nerves, and everything that your physiological system is made of, is connected to the physical nature outside, and nature maintains a balance. Nature does tolerate any kind of imbalance that is introduced into it. There is a possibility of a certain catastrophe arising in nature – it may be even a cataclysm, or a whirlwind, or a cyclone – if an imbalance of any kind is felt by natural forces, because nature is a balance.

The whole universe is an ultimate balance, and if it is necessary on your part to maintain a balance between yourself and the world of nature – and everything that the world is made of, finally – you have first of all to be balanced in the constituents of your body.

There cannot be non-alignment of your personality in any sense of the term, because you cannot be in harmony with others or with anything outside you if you are not in harmony with your own self. You cannot be a friend of another if you are an enemy of your own self. When you have sorrow caused by the dismembered quarrelling attitude of your own internal constituents, how can you have a wholesome attitude towards others?

“Be good. Do good,” is what Swami Sivanandaji Maharaj used to tell us again and again. You cannot be good to others unless you are good essentially, good in your make-up itself; and doing good is only an external expression of what you are as a good individual.

Swami Krishnananda
To be continued  .....