What is Knowledge : Ch-8-14.

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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 of the world would be to physically close our eyes and not see them. This may be wrongly thought to be a sort of pratyahara; but it is not what is expected of us by yoga.
Swami Krishnananda
  To be continued ....


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