Relevance of the Bhagavadgita to Humanity : 27-5. Swami Krishnananda.

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Thursday, October 27, 2022. 06:00.

Chapter 27: The Practice of Meditation-5.

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The mind is a web of relations, and it is necessary for us to understand what an interconnection of relations can be. Relations are not substances. They are not tangible things. They are nothing at all, while they appear to be very, very solidly existing there as heavyweights. A relation is an unintelligible something which appears to be there, while it is really not there. It is a kind of illusion. So in one sense we may say the very existence of the mind is an illusion. It is not there. The ego is said to be like that. The mind is that. Every blessed thing of the nature of a non-spiritual character is finally non-existent. The mind, being a mere setup of relational organisations, cannot be considered as an existent something. Therefore, it is on the one hand difficult to handle it, and on the other hand, it is very easy to squash it.

Now, the concentration of the mind on one particular thing works a miracle immediately. The miracle is this, that its so-called multitudinous tentacles of relation are immediately drawn together into a single direction of attention, so it looks as if we have immediately cut off the hands and the feet of this operation and only one limb is left to keep it alive. This is pratyahara.

We also hear some such story of the operations of the mind in concentration, or dharana, in the Yoga System of Patanjali. He tells us that in dharana, in concentration, a manifold operation is to be noticed by the meditator. What are the manifold operations? The types of thought which are extraneous to the chosen method of thinking are not at all conducive to the way of meditation. They are obstructive, and are to be eliminated. Conditions of mind which are to be carefully eliminated are also certain functions of the mind, and they cannot be eliminated by severing them from the body of the mind, like amputation. The severing of the relations of the mind does not mean physically cutting its limbs. The severance automatically takes place when its tentacles are withdrawn. The withdrawal of the outer relations of the mind is tantamount to the severance of those relations. It is not a loss, but a gain. In concentration, therefore, our energy increases to a high pitch and an optimum level. It is not a diminution of activity. When I say we have to sever relations of the mind with undesirable things, it does not mean it has lost the contact with realities in the world. It has all the contact, but in a very heightened form. Pratyahara, withdrawal of the mind from distracting sources, is not a severance from sustaining forces but from the points of concentration which distract and create illness in the mind.

So in the earlier state of concentration when the mind is withdrawn from sources of distraction, it may appear that it is losing all the centres of its pleasure, but really it is not so. It is freed from unhealthy thinking. Its hanging over objects which it imagines to be the sources of its satisfaction cannot be considered as a healthy condition. Hence, when health supervenes by the conscious withdrawal of the relations of the mind from these distracting sources, the level or the content of the force of the mind rises to a high pitch, though in the beginning it looks as if it is a loss and we are very unhappy when we feel that in the discipline of yoga meditation we have to disconnect ourselves from outward relations.

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To be continued 

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