Vedantham : ( 07/11/2012. )

Chapter-8 : Control of the Instruments of Knowledge.15. It is to be again emphasised that when we speak of the senses, we do not entirely mean the physical fleshy organs like the eyeballs, the eardrum, the tongue or the nostrils. The eardrum is not the ear, the eyeballs are not the eyes, and so is the case with the other sense organs. A sense, in the light of the system of the practice of yoga, is not the fleshy part which acts as a medium for the expression of this activity called the senses. What are the senses? From the point of view of a purely religious or spiritual outlook, or an outlook of yoga, the ‘sense’ that we are referring to is an impulsion of consciousness in a particular direction, and it is not the eyeballs or any such thing. These eyes, these ears, these other sense organs are the locations in the physical body for the expression of the internal impulses. The electric energy that is behind the working of an electrical gadget is different from the physica

Chapter-8 : Control of the Instruments of Knowledge.14. Thus, dependence on the sense organs for obtaining any satisfaction or joy in this world is to accept that we have to be other than what we are in order that we may be happy. What a wonderful thing – that we have to be other than what we are in order that we may be happy. We have to sell ourselves to that which is not really there, and lose ourselves for nothing in order that we may enjoy a phantasmal satisfaction in the world. It is really a work of opening our eyes in which the yoga system is engaged. In yoga parlance, ‘pratyahara’ is the principal word used for the restraint of the senses. Pratyahara usually means withdrawal of the senses. This is very difficult to understand and hard to achieve because, as we go wrong in understanding anything and everything in the world, we also go wrong in understanding the very meaning of sense control. We may imagine, like children, that not to be attracted by the visual objects

Chapter-8 : Control of the Instruments of Knowledge.13. Thus, yoga takes this question very seriously, and in the interest of introducing a wholesome, healthy characteristic into the personality of the human individual, it admonishes that no one can be really healthy if the senses are not restrained – because an overactivity of the senses is not a healthy condition of the personality. It is not healthy because it is a wrong way of thinking and acting. It is wrong because the senses are jumping on things which are really not there. This is a very interesting thing, indeed. Why should we control the senses? It is because the overwhelming activity of the senses acts like a screen over our internal vision. We have a blurred vision of things, as if mist is hanging between us and what we perceive, when the action of the senses is impetuous, overactive and uncontrollable. They come over us like a flood. They dash upon us like uncontrollable waves of power, desire and passion.

Chapter-8 : Control of the Instruments of Knowledge.12. No one can possess any object in the world, finally. Nobody has done it, and nobody will ever do it. The object cannot be possessed merely because of the fact it is not something that is expected to be possessed. Nobody can be subservient to another in the sense of an object, either of the senses or of the mind. There is a noumenal independence maintained by everything in the world, and it is not for nothing that we are told by the Upanishads, for instance, that the world is a ‘Self’ rather than a ‘not-Self’, an atman rather than an anatman, a pure universal subjectivity rather than anything that is of the nature of an object. If the world is not an object, then so much the worse for our sense activity, because there is no function that is expected of the senses – there is nothing that they can do – if the world is not their object. If we are able to realise the reason why the object is not really outside the percei

Chapter-8 : Control of the Instruments of Knowledge.11. We regard a real sorrow as a joy. It is to be considered as a sorrow, because we are duped into the belief that our understanding in regard to its object is entirely untarnished and unblemished, and it is a safe guide for us in our knowledge of the essential substance of creation. The world is not an object, either of mental cognition or sense perception. That it appears to be such is really to be regretted very deeply. This world is a world of regret, basically, because we are involved in a state of affairs which refuses to be known in any way from the point of view of the instruments of knowledge available to us. Our sorrows are invisible things. They cannot be analysed, vivisected, or known in any way. What we know is, therefore, a peculiar presentation. Sometimes the world is compared to a mirage, which looks like water and recedes as we approach that reservoir of water. The more we try to touch the horizon, the fur