The Spiritual Import of the Mahabharata and the Bhagavadgita- 6.3 -Swami Krishnananda.

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Friday, June 24 2022. 06:00. AM.

Chapter 6: Universal Action -3.

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Now, this is an esoteric teaching which has psycho-biological implications, with a spiritual profundity at the background. The various phases of the moon, which are fifteen in number counted through the bright half and the dark half of the lunar month, as we call it, are connected with the various plexuses in the system of the body, and the digits of the moon are regarded as representative of the digits in the psychic body, which are the plexuses or centres, called the chakras. They are not in the physical body, though they have an impact upon the corresponding centres in the physical body. According to this doctrine, the ajnachakra is the location of the blossomed intellect or the mind when it is fully awakened from the slumber of earth-consciousness and is about to wake up into the consciousness of the super-physical. This is perhaps the reason why this point is recommended as suitable for concentration, one having withdrawn the attention from the externals in the earlier stages.

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Pranapanau samau krtva—there is another difficult technique. Following this advice, the process of breathing through the nostrils is constituted of the prana and the apana flowing through the nervous system, which is twofold in character, known as ida and pingala. This dual breathing through the two nostrils is the cause of distraction of the mind, swinging the attention from the subject to the object and from object to the subject, an alternate attention being thrust towards the object or the subject at different times on account of the ebb and flow of the prana, like the rise and fall of the waves of the ocean. This has to be curbed by a centralised breathing, which is the equanimity to be established between the two flows of ida and pingala. This equanimous breathing is called is the entry of the prana into the central nervous system, called the sushumna. They are all invisible nervous centres that cannot be seen with the eyes. This central breathing is connected with a central way of thinking, which means thinking neither the subject nor the object. Neither are you to concentrate on your personality, your own body, your own individuality as all in all, nor are you to concentrate on an object outside as if it is everything. The truth is in the middle between subject and object, as sushumna is between ida and pingala.




This equalisation of the breath between the ida and pingala by driving it into the sushumna is called the practice of kumbhaka, a stoppage of the breathing arrived at either by alternate breathing, known usually as sukha purvak pranayama, with which we are already acquainted, or by a sudden stoppage of breath which is called kevala kumbhaka—we neither breathe in nor breathe out. Various types of kumbhaka are mentioned in systems like the sutras of Patanjali, for instance. Either the breath can be held by alternate breathing, or after expulsion, or after inhalation, or suddenly. Generally, the sudden stopping is regarded as the highest type of kumbhaka, where we do not think too much about the breathing process, but hold it by a sudden attention fixed upon the object of our meditation.

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So, pranapanau samau krtva nasabhyantara-carinau, yatendriya-mano-buddhir. Here is the masterstroke of yoga, which rises above what I already have said. There has to be a totality of unitedness of the senses, the mind and the intellect. This is very important and hard to comprehend. Like three brothers working in unison in a single family, with one thought though the brothers are three, the senses, the mind and the intellect have to engage themselves in a single practice of absorption of oneself in the object of meditation. When the senses stand together with the mind, and the intellect does not operate, it is called the supreme yoga. When the five senses stand together with the mind, that condition is called pratyahara or the withdrawal of sense energy into the mind. Generally the senses operate independently of the mind, as children working independently of the parents. They are not united with the parents. Pratyahara is the union of the senses in the mind in such a way that it appears that the senses have become the mind itself. 


There is no distinction between the senses and the mind, and we do not know which is operating at a particular moment. The eyes do not see and the ears do not hear, etc., independently, but they combine to perform a single function of attention through the mind, so that it is the mind that sees and hears, not the eyes and ears. It is a supernormal perception, and the intellect talks from logical deliberations. The intellect ceases from argumentative activity and merges itself in this central function which is the head of all the senses, the mind as well as the intellect. When such unison takes place—yatendriya-mano-buddhir munir moksha-paryanah—one becomes a real muni, a really silent person. The silence of the mind is real mouna, where the mind ceases to think of objects, whereas in ordinary verbal mouna the mind may think of objects; though the speech may not express objects through language, but the mind does think of objects. But the mind has to stop thinking of objects—that is yoga, and that is real mouna. One becomes a real muni when this state is attained; one becomes yatendriya-mano-buddhir munir, restrained in the senses, the mind and the intellect.


To be continued ....


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