What is Knowledge : Ch-9-17.

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23/11/2017

Chapter 9: Yoga Meditation -17.

It is possible to find leisure even in the midst of intense activity. We may wonder how it is possible, because they are contradictions. Leisure and intensity of any activity are not to be equated with some particular thing. But the engagement of a person in a diversity of pursuits need not necessarily mean the absence on the part of the mind to feel a sort of attunement with these diverse pressures. This is a very subtle psychological point. A pressure is not necessarily something with which we are unconnected. It is something with which we are connected – otherwise, we would not feel its presence. But we may wonder that if we are really connected with it, how does it come upon us like a pressure? It comes upon us like a pressure or a pain because we have not been able to understand the voice with which it speaks, the language which it utters, or its own demands. This pressure called the activity of life which we consider as the cause of our not finding leisure or a moment’s rest is not something unrelated to us because, as I mentioned, if it is unrelated to us, we would not bother about it. It is really related, but there is a miscalculated and disproportionate arrangement between ourselves and itself, and this disproportionate relationship between ourselves and that which is pressing upon us is the cause of our considering this pressure as an undesirable pain.

This is important for even non-yogis to understand, because nobody would like to be under a pressure of any kind. It is a very terrible thing indeed in life. But our difficulty is that we cannot escape from it, because if it is something from which we can escape, we would have shoved it out and thrown it into the ditch, and we could be free from it in one moment. There is a conflict in this peculiar situation we call the pressure in life. And what is conflict? It is an irreconcilable position we are maintaining – irreconcilable because on the one hand we do not like it, and on the other hand we cannot avoid it. Look at this situation, how difficult it is, and what a travesty: we cannot avoid it, and we do not want it.

To be continued ...

Swami Krishnananda

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