The Process of Yoga : 2. Swami Krishnananda

Tuesday, July 28, 2020. 10:27. AM.

Chapter 1: The Spirit of Life -2.

1.

Therefore, to live life would be our greatest effort. Every effort in any direction is only a form of the supreme effort to live properly and in the proper direction. Our profession or work we do in life matters little. 

All this variegated effort of ours in various fields of activity boils down to the effort of living the fundamental life: a successful, profitable, useful, meaningful and significant life. We do not want to vegetate, but we wish to live. What a human being aspires for is to live life in its highest quality, in its greatest intensity, and in its widest extent. Our aspiration is not merely to get on or pull through life. That is what we mean by vegetating – somehow getting on. But we are not satisfied with merely somehow getting on in life till we breathe our last. We have an inner longing to live life at its best, in the highest quantity and quality possible.

2.

Now, this is a question that arises simultaneously with the question as to the spirit or the essentiality of life. The question we have raised before ourselves is, therefore, a very wide question. It is broad enough to bring within its gamut every other possible question, because the question of life is a single question comprehending every other question possible. Nothing can be wider than life, nothing can be more beneficial than life, and nothing can be more dear and significant than what we call life. Life is the spirit of the universe; and we enter into an investigation of the nature of the spirit of life. This question, when answered, will also answer the question as to what spirituality is. And together with this, the other question will also be answered as to whether it is necessary to be spiritual and whether we can live without being spiritual. All these questions are brothers and sisters, co-related among one another, and all point to a single question ultimately, a big question mark of the problem of life.

3.

The spirit of life may be taken as the subject of our discussion today. What is life, and how do we manage to live our life? What should we live for? 

These are co-related questions. ‘Life’ is a general term for the manner of existing, the manner of progressing and the manner of aspiring towards an end or a goal. From this point of view, life seems to be the general urge present in everything in creation. It is present in me, in you, and in every blessed thing in this world. Life is the meaning of creation. Life is the answer to the question of creation. Life is the beginning and the end of all aspiration. And life is a single term summing up everything conceivable in our minds.

4.

Do we live? Yes. Does anything else also live? Yes. Is there a difference between my life and your life? 

This is a very interesting and significant question. Broadly speaking, I am giving an answer from the point of view of mere surface observation. My life and your life may not be identical in every respect because we associate life with various factors of experience. Physical existence, social existence, mental and intellectual existence are all associated with the definition and question of life. And as these levels of experience vary from person to person, life led by different persons and different entities in creation may be said to differ from one another. The lives of a plant and a human being cannot be regarded as identical in every respect, inasmuch as we see human beings living differently from the way in which plants in the vegetable kingdom live; and animals live in a different manner altogether.

To be continued ....