The Process of Yoga : 4-2. Swami Krishnananda.

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Friday, 01 Sep, 2023. 05:30.

Yoga and Meditation

Chapter 4: The Psychology of Yoga-2

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Usually, we do not draw upon the deeper resources. We get on with our conscious experience mostly, and we may even forget the existence of the major resources that we do not draw upon in day-to-day life. If we are very rich and our current account is large enough to maintain us throughout our life, we may even forget the existence of our fixed deposit. Likewise, our entire personality never comes to the surface, to our conscious activity or conscious experience. The major part of our life is buried deep, but it influences our personality even though it does not actually operate actively on the conscious level.

We have reserve forces of the army, of police, and so on. They do not come into conscious action always. Their energies or powers are not drawn upon every day. To give another example, we have the central operative force at the governmental level which determines the activities of the various departments. Their very existence and presence is enough to influence the activities of the lower departments at the day-to-day level of activity. Similarly, our mental structure can get on with the quota that is given to it for conscious activity, and we are likely to mistake our conscious level of experience as the entirety of our life, so that we are apt to make remarks about our own selves, judging ourselves from the point of view of what we are experiencing today at the conscious level. “I am well off” is a general remark that some people may make when they judge themselves from the point of view of what they are experiencing at that given moment of time.

We cannot judge ourselves merely by knowing our personality from today's experience. There is a vast past behind us, and also an enormous future ahead of us. Both the past and the future determine our present. That which has gone past as an experience, leaving an impression in our mind, as well as what is to pull us ahead as a future – both these aspects of our experience have a say in the matter of our present experience. The quantity of desires in our mind – those desires that have been fulfilled, are yet to be fulfilled, and the consequent experiences that follow as a result of these unfulfilled desires of the future as well as the impressions left by past desires – all these tell upon our present life, so that our present experience is a complex of various factors coming from various sides, from different parts of the world, inwardly and outwardly, so that we represent in our individuality a cross section of world experience.

A single individual, when properly studied, is in a position to give us an idea of the total cosmic situation. All the roads that lead to the various corners of the world cross at a point, which we call the individual, and this cross section is the study in the practice of yoga. Just as the main switchboard may show us the position of the various pinpoints or plug points in electricity, a cross section that is taken in the form of an individual and studied properly will give us an idea of the world situation today.

The whole of the cosmos has its impact upon every individual. The cosmic situation cannot be objectively studied, on account of the inadequacy of our instruments; but the whole cosmos can be studied through every individual because every individual, taken independently, represents a replica of the cosmic situation. The whole cosmos is reflected in each individual, and the study of the individual is, therefore, the study of the cosmos. The bondage of the individual, again, is due to a cosmic situation, and the liberation of the individual will also be an outcome of a cosmic situation, so that samsara is not merely an experience of a particular individual but a cosmic situation represented in its totality. The liberation of an individual is also a cosmic experience. There is no such thing as individual salvation. When an individual attains liberation, the whole cosmos is correspondingly affected because the individual is a reflection, as it were, of the whole cosmic setup.

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To be continued

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