Vedantham : ( 07/11/2012. )

Chapter- 6:- Being in Balance with the World-17. So, as I mentioned, apart from the body and the prana, you have the mental process of thinking, the understanding process of the intellect, and volitional activity of the will. There is a fourth something which is called ‘ego’. This is a very difficult thing to understand, and in Sanskrit it is normally translated as ahankara. Thus, the psychic function includes manas, buddhi, chitta, ahankara – wherein we have to include the buddhi sakti, or the volitional process. Manas is indeterminate thinking, intellect is determinate thinking, will is buddhi sakti, which is the power of action. Then there are the principles of ego, and there is chitta, which is a Sanskrit word which cannot easily be translated into English. Some people regard chitta as the subconscious – the principle by which you have a memory of things. For the time being, you may just be satisfied that chitta means memory or the faculty of remembrance, and that is som...

Chapter- 6:- Being in Balance with the World-16. The mind is manas, the intellect is buddhi. The manas, mind, performs the function of indeterminate thinking, and the intellect decides and determines that it is such and such a thing. And there is a will, sometimes called volition – buddhi sakti in Sanskrit. The power of the understanding is the will force – the volition, so-called. When you merely think that there is something, it is manas, or mind, knowing that there is something; when the understanding or the intellect operates, you decide that it is something. Then the will says, “Oh! It is a snake!” Now you understand it is not merely ‘something’. It is decided by the intellect that it is a snake. Then the will orders an action – ‘Quit this place’; and the prana is ordered – ‘Take action’; and the prana urges the leg – ‘Run!’; and you know what you do when you perceive a snake in front of you. Or, if you see something very pleasurable – “My dear frien...

Chapter- 6:- Being in Balance with the World-15. You must know what is inside your body before you can go further. This physical body is made up of the five elements. Then there is the prana which performs various functions, and it assumes various names on account of the performance of these functions. Prana, apana, vyana, udana and samana are certain Sanskrit terms used to describe the functions of the prana. We are not very much concerned with these functional differentiations now. Suffice it to say that there is a vibrating force within us which is vitality, energy, prana, which expresses itself as the breathing process through the nostrils. But you have also a mind which thinks. You are not merely the physical body, the physiological system and the prana. You know that when you are fast asleep, the body is there, and the prana also is there. You are breathing, no doubt, but the mind does not think, so you do not know that you are existing. Hence, whatever you know is a...

Chapter- 6:- Being in Balance with the World-14. The inner constituents of your personality, to which I was referring again and again, are also to be understood properly. What is meant by the inner constituents? As I mentioned, the physical body is ultimately constituted of the five elements – earth, water, fire, air, ether. The bones, flesh, nerves, marrow, blood, and whatever is in your physical body, is nothing but the result of the permutation and combination of earth, water, fire, air and ether. But there is something else; there are energies. The prana, which takes the form of breathing, is also an essential. And the breathing process, which is the expression of the energy we call the prana, is the generator which pumps strength into our body, due to which we are able to move, walk, lift our hands, and perform the physical and physiological functions. If the prana does not pump energy, we cannot even move; there will be no life in the body. The body has no vitality o...

Chapter- 6:- Being in Balance with the World-13. Thus, natural forces are impersonal laws with which you have to attune yourself in what yoga calls samadhis – and as you move higher and higher in yoga, you become more and more superhuman, impersonal, and no more an individual looking at the world as a mass of humanity, as a sea of people. You will see that you are in an ocean of powers, forces, vibrations, and perhaps what people today call the space-time continuum. This is what is awaiting you in the finale of yoga. So, Patanjali tells you to be seated in a very equanimous position, in which you will be so equanimously posed that you will not even know that you have a body. Sit in a very calm posture for a few minutes without feeling any ache or pain in the body. Sit for five minutes, ten minutes, fifteen minutes; you will not know that you have a body at all. You feel a sense of buoyancy of spirit. The intense feeling that you are the body arises on account of you...

Chapter- 6:- Being in Balance with the World-12. However, the point is, again, the maintenance of a balance in the inner constituents of your personality as a preparatory step to maintain a balance with the world of nature; and yoga will expect from you much more than these little prescriptions because yoga will end in meditation and samadhi – which is not merely your tentative feeling of attunement with nature, but a total absorption in it, such that nature becomes not merely your friend, but inseparable from your existence. The Yoga System, as propounded by Patanjali, goes into such ecstatic reaches of experience that your inner layers get tuned up with the inner layers of the cosmos in such an intensive manner that you begin to feel that you are not any more a human being, not a man or a woman, not ‘this’ or ‘that’, but a particle of nature, a wave of nature, a vibration of nature, a pressure point of natural energies. You are not a human being as you are imagining your...

Chapter- 6:- Being in Balance with the World-11. Why not lie down? This also is not suitable, because you are likely to relax so much that you may become unconscious and sleep. Yoga is not sleeping, though it is not a consciousness of external objects in a distracting sense. Thus, the yoga prescription strikes a via media. It says do not stand, because it is not proper; and do not lie down, because that also is not good. The via media is sitting. Even when you are sitting, you may feel aches. Your knees will give pain, and you cannot bend your legs properly; and you will find the greatest ache will be in the spine. You cannot sit erect for a long time. Why should you sit erect? You may ask why you should not crouch, or lean backward as you do in a dentist’s chair. This is also not suitable. Again, you have to understand the purpose of this seated posture. It is not because somebody is ordering you to do it. It is not because Patanjali says “sit” that you are sitting....