What is Knowledge :- 10.9

-

15/02/2018

10.The Stages of Samadhi-9.

How do we do this? This is a great feat of the power of the will. A tremendous strength of will is necessary to free oneself from conditioning psychological factors when dealing with any particular person, thing, or even situation. A total dispassion of outlook may be called for.

It has to be total, because there should not be any preconceived ulterior notion or motive in this attempt. It is not that I should know you as I want to know you, but I should know you as you would like to be known – also, as you would like to be known in the sense you really are, not in the sense you think you are.

Hence, appearance is to be broken through in order that reality may be penetrated and contacted in meditation. These are the secrets of what is called initiation in yoga, and are not details which are explained in any textbook.

We will not find it in the sutras of Patanjali or any book on Vedanta or yoga, because while it may appear that it is clear to us, it is really not so, because it is not possible to make everything clear to a mind which is not prepared for this task of utterly clearing the path of its knowledge of an object. We are all, as human beings, accustomed to think of the world in a given fashion, and yoga tells us that this fashion should be overcome.


The fashion of our thinking is a very part of our social and individualised existence itself. In order that we may overcome this limitation set upon us by our personality and our social existence, we have first of all to rid ourselves of our individualised associations, as well as the preconceived notions which we may be already entertaining in our minds – not only in regard to an object, but even in regard to our own selves. In meditation, it is not that we are dealing merely with some object; we are also dealing with ourselves at the same time.

Here, again, we have to repeat the point we emphasised earlier – that the so-called object in meditation is not a totally outside something, because the attempt in meditation is not merely to contact an external something, but to free the so-called something from the externality in which it is involved. Here we have to exercise our thought a little bit to know what actually this means.

The object we are thinking of in our mind is placed outside us somewhere, either physically or even psychologically, and the thing – the objective we want to achieve in meditation – is to free that so-called something standing there as an object from the externality in which it is involved.
To be continued ...
Swami Krishnananda

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

What is Knowledge : Ch-5 -3.

-
Image
Chapter 5: Maintaining One's Position-3. What are you going to understand when you are trying to understand yourself? Where is the object? And which is the subject there? When I see an object, I say, "I see this. I know this table, this desk, this person, this something that is in front of me"; but I am not in front of me, so I cannot make such statements in regard to my own self. I cannot say, "I am seeing myself"; nor can I say, "I am touching myself". These statements, which usually apply to persons and things outside, do not apply to our own self. Hence, this understanding may not be adequate for the purpose of understanding your own self. All knowledge fails when it becomes a means to the knowledge of one's own self, though it becomes a great success when it is a weapon to know what is not itself. There is this peculiar difficulty which is easy to miss, because of the fact that the only thing that we miss in our daily o...
Read more

What is Knowledge : Ch-4. Part-4.

-
Image
Chapter 4 : Yoga – An Integration of Consciousness. Pat-4. It is only the discriminating consciousness that feels dissatisfied with its present achievements. Ignorance is bliss, and when we know nothing about what lies ahead of us, and we are not even conscious of there being anything at all beyond our possessions and our areas of operation and action, we are kept in a state of This ignorance also brings a sort of joy, because of the disconnection of consciousness from the awareness of there being something beyond itself. So, the ignorant person is happy, and we too are happy, though we know very well that our very physical existence here is not secure. It is a terrible insecurity in which we are placed, and the next moment's fate of our physical existence is not known to any wise man in the world; yet, we are happy. This is an instance of how ignorance can be bliss. However, yoga is that art of awakening the sleeping consciousness of the human individual to...
Read more

VEDANTA FOR BEGINNERS - 23. SWAMI SIVANANDA.

-
Image
  ----------------------------------------- Sunday, January 03, 2021. 08:06. AM. 3. ADHYAROPA OR SUPERIMPOSITION-2. Post-23. -------------------------------------------------- You are in search of a rope. You find one. But in the dark you mistake it to be a snake. You run away from it. You search all other places in the house and fail to find a rope. Your brother brings a light and shows you the rope which you mistook for a snake. You now see the rope. Just as you found the rope in the snake itself, even so, you will see Brahman in the objects of the world themselves. You cannot run away to the mountain-caves in search of Brahman. You have to practise seeing the Lord or Brahman in each and every object around you. When you are able to cognise the Reality underlying the objects, you will no more be deluded. ------------------------- The highly exalted Brahmanishtha-Guru for whom there is no world comes down from his exalted state to teach the disciple. He is even then fully consciou...
Read more