What is Knowledge : Ch-8-12.

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 perceiving subject, and also why the world cannot be an object of the percipient, we will also know why the senses are to be controlled.

It is because they are wild movements of consciousness, erratic activities of our mind, chaotic behaviour of our personality, and therefore we are entirely out of balance when we actively operate only through the senses.

A disbalanced personality always overemphasises sense activity; and total dependence on the values of the senses is a dependence on what we call ‘a misguided existence’, finally. Who would like to live such a life?

Swami Krishnananda
  To be continued ....