What is Knowledge : Ch-8-20.

05/01/2017.
Chapter-8 : Control of the Instruments of Knowledge.20.

20.1.1
What does yoga tell us? It has many things to tell us. The process of pratyahara is, again, a graduated endeavour on our part. It may take years for us to succeed, as is the case with anything that is educative. In the beginning, as the Yoga Vasishtha sometimes tells us, we have to accept what the senses tell us, and should not oppose them abruptly.

20.1.2
There are people who rebut anything that is said to them: “I don’t agree.” This is not a healthy way of refuting an argument, because logic is not a sudden rebuttal; it is also a gradual educational process.


20.2.1
When the child cries for something undesirable, we say, “Yes, you will get it.” This is a satisfaction to the crying child, though we are not going to give it. The child may be crying for a sharp knife, and we know that we are not going to give it. But if we say “I am not going to give it to you”, it will cry still more. So what do we say? “You are going to get something better than this from the shop.

20.2.2
Tomorrow I’ll get it for you, so keep quiet today.” Then, today the mind is keeping quiet under the impression that tomorrow the knife will come. It will not come, as we know very well, but meanwhile we adopt such measures which will prevent the child from asking for such a thing at all, by somehow or other channelising its interest in something very positive, very interesting, very attractive, which is pleasing to it.

20.2.3
It is not a denial of what it asks for, but a substitute that we are giving in place of what it is asking for. Suppression of a desire is dangerous, and sometimes we are told that even substitution is not an alternative. Though substitution is not an alternative, it is one step beyond mere repression of the will or the force of desire by a mandate of the will power.

Swami Krishnananda
  To be continued ....