Vedantham : ( 07/11/2012. )

Chapter- 6:- Being in Balance with the World-10. However, this is not the end of the matter. The Reality that we are speaking of, with which you have to set yourselves in tune, is not merely social law – though it is also a very important thing, and you know what will happen if you fight with human society. You do not want to do that, because you will not exist afterwards. But, there is something more than all these things. The yoga system prescribes a rule or a norm by which you have to be in harmony with the reality not only of human society, but also of the world of nature. Can you believe that you can be happy merely by being in tune with human laws but being opponents of natural laws? They will kick you out, and you will not be there. You will cease to be. Therefore, the yoga exercises or asanas, which are not very complicated from the point of view of Patanjali’s system, imply an attempt on your part to keep your physical and physiological system – your muscles and nerve...

Chapter- 6:- Being in Balance with the World-9. From a purely psychological or psychoanalytic point of view, reality is social existence. When psychoanalysts tell us that mental illnesses arise on account of conflict with reality, they practically or entirely mean the irreconcilability of our ideas, our desires, our passions, our emotions, with the norms prescribed by the society of people outside. Whether they are right or wrong, or you are right or wrong, is a different matter. The question of ethics does not arise here. It is a principle of irreconcilability between what you think is proper and what society thinks is proper which causes illness.  As you have not the strength to fight with society and its regulations, you try to be submissive to these forces exerted upon you by society; and in this assumed submissiveness of yours, you drive your passions and inclinations, your desires and longings, and all your impulses into the subconscious and unconscious levels ...

Chapter- 6:- Being in Balance with the World-8. Now, space is not an emptiness. This is the point that we have to understand very clearly. Thus, even our body which is so heavy, weighing so many kilograms, is ultimately space-time. It is a puckered kink of space-time, as it were, which looks like a heavy substance, and just because it is heavy it need not be solid, because heaviness is a feature felt by the pull of gravitation. Otherwise, there will be no heaviness at all. Therefore, heaviness is not a criterion for the substantiality or solidity of an object; it is an illusion produced by the power of gravitation. And even solidity is supposed to be an illusion created by electrical repulsions produced by the contact of that of which our body is made and that which we touch. Well, these are interesting things into which we can research in more detail. The point, finally, that comes out of all this analysis is that the physical body is not outside nature. It ...

Chapter- 6:- Being in Balance with the World-7. When we go above the Earth, we feel chillness because we are away from its centre. The centre of the Earth is said to be boiling even today, and this sometimes becomes the cause of eruptions such as earthquakes, etc. The original heated condition of the Earth had to take an immense, almost immeasurable extent of time to cool down, and it became a liquid mass – which are our oceans, and everything that is liquid. Earth came afterwards. The liquid portion, the watery element, is the consequence of the cooling down of the heated stuff of the physical element. Water condenses into ice, and it hardened into what is called the crust of the Earth. The Indian cosmological scheme to which I made reference also believes in the dissolution of the cosmos – that as things came, so also they will have to go. We have to return to that place from where we came. Astronomers believe that the principle of entropy, a cooling down of the cosmos...

Chapter- 6:- Being in Balance with the World-6. Space, time and motion are considered to be the original conditions of everything in the physical universe. Air is a concrete visible form taken by these vibrations, which are not visible practically. Friction produced by the movement of air became the cause of what is called heat, and heat has various potencies in itself. It condenses into various forms of visible substances. You must have heard from at least one school of astronomers that this Earth was once upon a time a part of the Sun. It was chopped off from the body of the Sun by certain occurrences, whatever be the cause of these occurrences. Some believe that a large star came near the Sun, and the magnetic influence that it exerted on the Sun was so intense that a chip was cut off from it; and there are others who believe that there was a gyrating motion of the Sun which caused a piece of it to come off. Whatever be the reason, the belief is that this Earth ...

Chapter- 6:- Being in Balance with the World-5. Even Newton, the great man, believed that space and time have no connection with the world of nature, that the world of nature is the visible concrete substance physically felt – earth, water, fire, and perhaps air. But today we are awakened by these observant minds that space and time, which do not appear to have any related connection with the visible forms of nature, are involved in the very substance of physical nature. Space and time are not outside the mountains and the rivers; they are internally woven with the very substantiality, the very existence of what are called the visible elements, to such an extent that scientists are forced to believe that even these so-called hard earthy material objects such as brick and stone, table and chair, and so on, are only configurations of space-time. You will be flabbergasted to hear that a hard brick which can break your head is made up of only space-time. How is it possible?...

Chapter- 6:- Being in Balance with the World-4. However, our point here is a little different. It is not merely medical. It is something beyond the visible requirements of our physical personality. There is a necessity for you to maintain a balance with the world outside even physically, if you are to have peace of mind and what is called happiness of the psychophysical organism. You cannot quarrel with nature and be happy. Nature is not merely your parent, but an inseparable part of your larger physical dimension. There is practically no distance between your physical body and the world of nature outside. The mountain may look like a distant object, the Sun and the Moon and the stars are all far away from you, and everything is physically remote from the point of view of your sensory perception – but nature does not get exhausted merely with what you see with your eyes. Nature includes even space, and you should not be under the impression that what you call s...

Chapter- 6:- Being in Balance with the World-3. One of the medical systems in India, known as Ayurveda – very ably propounded by a master physician called Charaka – begins with this interesting doctrine and principle of the organic connection of physical nature with the physical system of the human being. The illnesses of the body are attributed to maladjustment of the body with the world of nature. This maladjustment takes place on account of a physical affirmation of the individual as an independent something, unconnected with nature. Earth, water, fire, air and ether may be said to be the basic building blocks of what we call the world of nature. Do you believe that you have nothing to do with them, that the five elements are left to their own fate, and we are lords of our own kingdom here? This is not so. This physical body of ours is nothing but a form assumed by certain parts proportionately taken from the five elements. We have in our physical body nothing...

Chapter- 6:- Being in Balance with the World-2. The point behind the practice of yoga exercises, which I tried to dilate upon in some way previously, is actually intensely practical. You may be wondering why you should be seated in a particular posture, why there should be a prescription for a pose of the body in yoga, and why it matters what pose you are in. This question arises on account of not properly grasping the relationship between the physical and physiological components of our personality with physical nature outside. We have an ingrained and inveterate habit of convincing ourselves that we have practically nothing to do with the world of nature outside. “What on Earth have I to do with the Sun, Moon and stars? What does it mean to me if the mountain is there outside, if the river is flowing or the Earth is under my feet? I am in no way concerned with these things.” This may be the feeling of the untutored individual. But nature – the physical universe – is not...