Jayashree and Narasimhan have returned to Mysore and I have taken up study with them. It is such a delight to be with them; they are such wonderful people. Wisdom spills from their humble mouths and is eagerly soaked up by the students that sit at their feet, listening with rapt attention.
Yoga is to bring two things together that are not usually together. When you sit by the seashore and watch the waves there is generally a coming and going which neutralizes the height and power of the waves to a mean. Sometimes more than one wave comes in sync, and a much larger wave or even a mega wave is produced – surf’s up! The same is with the human mind, body, and breath. Often we are just coming and going, but if we can sync up our various parts our capacity grows and yoga can occur. We must achieve balance. We are achieving balance unconsciously all the time. At the most basic level our body is constantly shifting its internal heating and cooling mechanisms to cope with temperature changes in our atmosphere. When these mechanisms are out of balance we fall ill. Our journey to find balance physically, mentally, intellectually, and emotionally is yoga. The balance we find is yoga.
Generally we define consciousness through the senses, but consciousness is there without the senses as well. The Indian system of thought does not speak of subconscious, unconscious, or even the paranormal. There is consciousness with the senses, without the senses, and beyond the senses. Human beings are a special class of creature because we have the capability of analyzing ourselves. When our consciousness is shut off from external objects, prevented from extending outwards through the senses, it returns to its container – the mind stuff. So the human being can know himself. When the human being knows himself he can view that which is outside of him with objectivity.
Here’s a word that’s new to me: channelize. To achieve yoga we must channelize our mental faculties. Take a river that has been dammed. The dam is not simply a wall that is made to stop the water. If it were the river would ware it away over time and the dam would eventually break, releasing a destructive torrent of water. Rather, a dam has many gates within it that can be opened and shut to channelize the water for a purpose, whether it is to make electricity or to irrigate farmland. The dam controls the river, the amount of water, the direction it flows, etc. When we channelize our minds we can control our faculties and make use of them for the further evolution of our system.
Stability is a subject that comes up in yoga quite a lot. What is stability? Is the Earth stable? Certainly to us, the Earth is generally stable; I do not worry that is will slip out from under me while I sleep at night. But in reality the Earth is hurtling through space around a giant ball of fiery gas, spinning around once every 24 hours, and tilting back and forth on its axis. The Earth is stable while in constant, proscribed motion. So it is with mental stability. A stable mind has not stopped, but it is also not running from place to place. A stable mental condition is like an engine running idle, not stopped, but not accelerating or decelerating either.
The great problem with transposing Eastern though onto Western minds is that the Western mind tends to think in black and white, while Eastern thought posits various meanings for the same thing in different situations. There are no hard and fast opposites. Ahimsa is not the opposite of himsa, that is to say nonviolence is not the opposite of violence. We often do harm for the greater good. Just think of the poor bacteria on your hands as you soap them up before eating a meal. Each situation is different and it requires discrimination to understand what is right and wrong.
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