Vedantham : ( 07/11/2012. )

Chapter- 6:- Being in Balance with the World-1. Asana, pranayama, pratyahara, dharana and dhyana, which are stages in the yoga system of Patanjali, mean the posture that is maintained, the harmonised flowing of the breathing process, the adjustment of sense activity with mental operations, the concentration of the mind on that which it finally seeks, and its absorption in that object. These essentially are the directly practical aspects of yoga. We are almost entering the inner court of yoga practice when we begin with the adjustment of our personality with not only human society, but with nature itself. The earlier stages, known as yama and niyama, are concerned mainly with performing a great feat of attuning ourselves to the laws which are called social or external in the human sense of the term. These earlier stages are difficult because one cannot adjust oneself with another always and in every way. That is a great hardship. But a greater difficulty arises now, w...

Chapter 5: Maintaining One's Position-23. You must know, therefore, that yoga exercises are not like outdoor games. They are not a public performance of any kind of known exercises. It is an internal dedication that you are performing. There is a total difference between yoga physical exercises and exercises in the form of games in the field outside. Thus, even a yoga asana is a worship of God. It becomes a divine activity on your part because your physical body is not outside you, and you are not outside that which the universe is and that which is the ultimate controlling principle of the universe. Yoga is all life put together, and not merely one part of your life. Hence, through the media of the performance of yoga exercises, and other systems known as pranayama, pratyahara, etc., you are gradually tuning your internal layers – together with the body, of course – with the corresponding internal layers of the universe. In every level of your attunement,...

Chapter 5: Maintaining One's Position-22. You have heard that there is a system of yoga called karma – karma yoga. Karma yoga means yoga of action. Your performances, your deeds, your operations, and whatever you seem to be busy with, become a yoga if these performances are the emanations of the balanced position that you are maintaining because, as you know, what you are doing is actually an expression of what you really are inside. It is not possible to be honest to one's own self by doing what is not one's own essential nature. Your action and speech are an expression of the contents of your own inner personality. Thus, the yoga exercise as a sort of activity that is visible to the eyes is a yoga, no doubt, because it is, at once, an internal position that is maintained simultaneously together with this external performance, by simultaneously maintaining a consciousness of your requirements in the light of the law of the universe. Yoga is a universal ...

Chapter 5: Maintaining One's Position-21. You belong to a larger government presided over by a power which has its own principles, rules, regulations and laws, operating inexorably and impartially in such a way that you cannot have a worthwhile rest even for a moment if you are not in a position of harmony with this system that operates.  Any pain felt in any part of the body is a pain felt by the whole body.  Any imbalance anywhere is the imbalance that is communicated to the internal core of the universe. Thus, the yoga system takes you beyond the ordinary limits of mere social thinking, political thinking and economic thinking, to cosmical thinking. If this is not possible, yoga is also not possible. It begins with little performances, but these little performances have inside themselves, immanently and hiddenly present, the requirement of the largest and the greatest. The highest principle of universality is operating even in the littlest of our actions...

Chapter 5: Maintaining One's Position-20. It is a mutual cooperation that is taking place in an organic manner, and not merely as a cooperation of two friends. There are no two individuals here. To the system of yoga, at least, the human individual and the universe are not two things.  And again, to bring in the analogy of the human organism, your fingers and toes, and your own body, are not two things. It is one thing only that we refer to by two different terms. If the world and you are not two different things, your growth is conditioned entirely by the system that the world maintains. Thus, the position maintained in yoga – the so-called asana – is, of course, a physical position, because the physical world and the physical body are both there; but remember that the physical position is not the entire position of yours because – to repeat again – the body may be maintaining a so-called balance but, at the same time, the mind may be imbalanced. It may look ...

YOUNG SWAMI KRISHNANANDA Chapter 5: Maintaining One's Position-19. So dharma or righteousness is of two types, known as vishesha dharma and samanya dharma. Abidance to law, which is relative to historical, social, or political conditions is vishesha dharma, and abidance to the law that is eternally operating in the whole of the cosmos is known as samanya dharma. While the way of living of people in different times and climes may vary according to these times and climes, there is a general regulating principle behind humanity as a whole. Though it is true that one person need not necessarily think identically like another person, there is a basic equality of human ideology and aspiration. So there is a vishesha dharma, or a particular requirement of the time, and there is a basic conditioning factor which is the inviolable dharma, or what is sometimes called sanatana dharma. It is operative eternally and works with impunity with everything throughout the cosmos, and...

Chapter 5: Maintaining One's Position-18. Every cell of the body participates in this process of growth, and it is not that the nose grows today, and the ears grow tomorrow, and the legs grow the day after tomorrow. There is a perpetual total action taking place in the whole organism when it grows. This is evolution as we see it daily, with our own eyes. Likewise, evolution in a cosmical, natural, physical, or astronomical sense is also a total movement of the universe. Remember what I told you a second before : - Inasmuch as the evolution you have observed in the growth of your own personality is total, and the universal evolution is total, and also at the same time because you are inseparably related to the universe in every way, your evolution and the universal evolution are one and the same. Your evolution cannot be independent of the universal evolution. Therefore, to grow into a state of perfection, towards which is the movement of the universe by way o...

Chapter 5: Maintaining One's Position-17. But we decide ourselves what is expected of us, as if we are omniscient :- "I know what is required of me, and you are nobody to tell me." "I cannot accept anybody's advice because I know all things." "I am not prepared to listen to anybody's advice because I think for myself and do not wish to listen to anybody." If these are the outlooks generally maintained in your life, then you naturally pay the price for it, and you cannot excuse yourself merely because you do not know the law of the universe. Law is impartial in every sense of the term; it has neither friend nor enemy. When I speak of law, I actually refer to the manner in which the universe operates. The system that is maintained by the universe throughout the stages of what we call its evolutionary process is the law that it maintains simultaneously; and if we are also subject to a sort of evolutionary process because of th...

Chapter 5: Maintaining One's Position-16. We are now slowly moving beyond the limits of ordinary human understanding, which satisfies itself merely with the knowledge that everything is fine if the body is well fed and the itching mind is provided with the tentative joys which it seeks from fleeting objects. But even these fleeting objects appearing to give a temporary satisfaction to the psychophysical organism – even this appearance – is due to something that is happening in the universe as a whole. The causes are something else. But we are blissfully ignorant of the causes, not only of our happiness and unhappiness, but even of our very existence here in this world for this short span of life. What makes it possible for us to be alive in this world and be breathing? Is it under our control entirely? You know very well that you do not breathe because of your power over the breath, that it has something to say independently. The heart does not function becaus...

Chapter 5: Maintaining One's Position-15. But the conditions that the mind expects in order that it may be healthy, happy, or peaceful – for its wholesome existence and satisfaction – are determined by factors which are supermental. These are conditions which go beyond the mind itself. We cannot know why we wish to have peace of mind at all. Why do you cry for peace of mind? Let it not be there; what does it matter? You cannot answer this question. You very stubbornly and arrogantly assert :- "I want peace of mind" – as if you know all the things in the world when you have said this, and there is nothing more to say. The requirements of the mind in association with the body that make you a psychophysical organism – the requirements of this situation of yours – depend upon the very structure of the universe. You are not such a free person as you imagine, though there is nothing to prevent you from being ultimately free if you are going to be in a ...