Relevance of the Bhagavadgita to Humanity : 26-5. Swami Krishnananda.

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Wednesday, October 05, 2022. 07:00.
Chapter 26: Being Spiritually Alone to Oneself-5.

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Here again we have to follow the law of what is called the via media, or the Golden Mean. This also will be mentioned in the coming verses. You should not go to extremes in your longing for seclusion or being alone. You should know your strengths and weaknesses at the same time. A good soldier capable of fighting in the field of battle is one who knows his strength and also his weakness. It is not good to either overestimate oneself or underestimate oneself. You should know where you stand, and then you will know how to prepare and guard yourself, and work ably in the condition in which you are placed. Likewise, in your aspiration for living a life of yoga, aloneness and seclusion, you must know what you actually are capable of. In the initial stages it may be a gradual elimination of unnecessary contacts with people and things. As Swami Sivanandaji Maharaj was ever fond of telling us, we have to keep a spiritual diary to check the daily progress that we make in our practice. What are the essentials and the non-essentials in our life? We have to demarcate these two things. Now, we have to be a little honest and dispassionate in distinguishing between the essentials and the non-essentials because if we are not honest in making this clear-cut distinction, the non-essential also may look like an essential and the luxury may look like a necessity. Thus, it has to be a dispassionate self-analysis.

In the earlier stages, therefore, the non-essentials should be avoided. Unavoidables, of course, are always unavoidables. You cannot give up those things. “This is impossible, and therefore I must have it. If I don't have it, it will be like death for me.” Well, in that case you have it. But if you can manage comfortably without something, that something is not a necessity. You have to use your own intelligence here if you are endowed with a dispassionate viveka shakti, or discriminative power. If this power is lacking in oneself, it is always good to consult a superior if a superior is available. “These are my ways of living, this is my daily sadhana, this is what I do from morning to evening, this is my routine for the day. Do you think this is all right, or am I making a little mistake?” A superior who has great experience and has trodden the path much before you will be able to guide you to some extent. So in the earlier stages, this instruction of being secluded and being alone may be taken as the elimination of the non-essentials and maintaining only the essentials.

What are the essentials? They are those things without which we cannot exist, and we cannot even sleep, the absence of which will cause restlessness and tragedy will befall us. They are the essentials. This is not easy to understand. You cannot know what are the essentials. Everything will look essential. Therefore, a careful self-analysis, mathematically precise, should be carried on with the help of a Guru, a superior, a teacher in whom you have faith and confidence.

Be alone to yourself when it is not necessary for you to be in the midst of other people. Sometimes it is compulsory for you to be in the company of somebody when you are working somewhere, or for some obligation that you have to discharge. That is an essential. Where it is not obligatory for you to be in the company of somebody or in association with something, that association should be avoided. Thus, you may find more time to be alone to yourself instead of saying, “I have no time.” There is time for everybody. When prarabdha is so heavily weighing upon our shoulders that we cannot find enough time to contemplate, study and be true to ourselves, what to do? Sometimes it may be even necessary for us to reduce our sleep. We have to undergo this little extra sacrifice of reducing the sleep without injuring ourselves. The Bhagavadgita is a good physician and a good parent. It tells us, “Don't ruin your health.” Extremes are not permitted in the yoga of the Bhagavadgita.

Thus, in the beginning non-essentials may be eliminated, and one may resort to only essentials. Being alone and living in seclusion may be regarded as an achievement, but there is a higher meaning hidden in this instruction when we try to understand it from a purely spiritual point of view. You can be alone even in a marketplace; it is not impossible. Even in a railway platform you can be alone to yourself. Even in the din and bustle of a large clamouring crowd of people, you can be as if in a forest with utter desolation around you. This experience is possible even in the midst of dinning noise and the pressing crowd. This is to understand these instructions spiritually, which is a better way of understanding than physically interpreting them as being isolated inside the room, not being seen by anybody, shutting the windows, doors, etc. All that is one thing; a better thing is to be spiritually alone because it is possible that you may be physically, socially alone and in a state of retreat, yet mentally in a crowd. You may be psychologically in a club or in a market while physically in a jungle or in a closed room or a cell or a cave.

Hence, another caution has to be injected into these instructions that one should be alone in a state of concentration in yoga; one should be secluded. There is no real friend in this world. Nobody is your friend. All friendships are an artificial concatenation of forces, relative associations conditioned by factors beyond your control. Nobody will help you finally, and therefore you stand alone when death yawns before you. When the greatest tragedy of quitting from this world is to stand face to face with you, no dear friend, no husband, no wife, no wealth, no property, none whom you hugged as your dearest and nearest will come to your aid. Therefore, that predicament of utter isolation which you may have to face one day or the other should be considered by you as your real status even now. That which you may have to face last is also the condition into which you were born first. You were utterly unbefriended when you came to this world. Nobody came with you – no relation, no friend; nobody knew from where you came, and you will go in a similar condition. How is it that in the middle you had so many friends? You brought nothing with you, and you shall take nothing with you. How is it that in the beginning you had nothing and in the end you had nothing, but in the middle you became so rich with so many things? By exploitation, by imagination, by artificial association you imagined yourself to be rich with friendship and wealth, and so on; hence, dehypnotise yourself. Do not be under the hypnotic effect of artificial friendship. Nobody is your friend, finally. There is no one in this world who, under certain circumstances, cannot deal a blow to you; therefore, do not trust anybody as your utter friend. That is to be guarded.

But thirdly, there is a higher philosophical way of looking at things. The whole universe is a mass of uniformly spread-out forces. You have already been told that sattva, rajas and tamas are the properties of prakriti, which constitute the whole cosmos, of which you are also an embodiment. Your whole personality, body and mind, are made up of these forces only; therefore, you have no friends. You are not in association with anything. Association is unthinkable in this circumstance of your whole personality being made up of the very same substance out of which the whole cosmos is made. Hence, no outward relationship is conceivable. There are no friends, no associations, and nothing can belong to you. So now you are alone in a very lofty sense. This is to conceive aloneness in a philosophical and universal sense. At other times you may consider yourself as alone, as explained, but in the lowest of stages it will be a physical attempt to be isolated from unnecessary connections with unwanted people and things.

Ekākī yatacittātmā: Yata is ‘united, restrained, controlled, and in a state of communion'. The mind and the soul have to stand together in union in yoga. Citta is ‘mind', you may say, and atma is ‘what you are'. Your self, your whole being and your thoughts are united. Your thoughts are not outside you; they are with you; they are you. The thoughts do not move outward. They are in you only; they are restrained. Here again is an injunction on pratyahara. The mind and the intellect and the self stand united as a single experience. This is to be yatacittātmā. Nirāśī: Wanting nothing. And aparigrahaḥ: Expecting nothing. Thus, one can be happy, and a yogi is always happy. Under every circumstance of life he is ever contented.

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Next-Chapter 27: The Practice of Meditation

To be continued ...

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