Summing Up

If you want to dye clothes in different colours in a bucket you have to wash the bucket thoroughly after each dyeing process. Otherwise hour clothes will be spoiled. The dyeing process will not be successful. What does it mean? It means not to cary over one action or thought to another throughout the day. Renounce the “attachment” every time. Be ready to attach and equally ready to detach your mind from your actions. Wash the bucket clean every time! A karma yogi knows the skill of adjusting his work and expressions according to the time, place, and the environment, always leaving room for the “unscheduled ingredient.” Always consider your attitude in all your activities. Be perfect in both the subjective and the objective aspects of activity.

Last but not least, let your life be balanced and controlled by the intellect. Knowledge of fundamental principles gives you latitude and the power of adjustment. It synthesizes everything in life; it destroys any superiority complex. Janan yoga develops discrimination and reasoning. The other yogas are held in form by it. It is the sustainer of the other yogas. Let your entire day, nay, your entire life, be controlled and guided by a disciplined and discriminative intellect, which to your life is like the rudder to a boat. Sri Ramakrishna once said: “Tying up the knowledge of advaita ( janana) in the corner of your dhoti(wearing cloth ) go out into the world and do as you please.” That is, sustain all your activittes with the knowledge of the fundamental principles of jnana. With that as the basis of your thinking you will not make any mistakes. Ramakrishna also said: “An expert dancer never takes a false step.” By following the principles of the four yogas in your daily life, you will always be in touch with the divine force, at work or at play. You need never be very far from your Ideal.

All the yogas aim at one thing: the attinment of perfection. And we find that the root cause of all the obstacles to the attainment of this perfection in yoga is the misconception we have of our ego-consciousness” has to be understood as an illusion, or a superimposed structure on the Self, and it must be eliminated through discrimination. When “ I-consciousness” is eliminated, with it disappears the world. What remains is the Reality – Brahman. In raja yoga the strongest and most basic agitation of consciousness is the sense of “I-ness”. When that has been subdued, divine Consciousness manifests itself. In bhakti yoga the individual ego has to be purified and minimized until it exists no more as such, but loses itself, melts into, as it were, the divine Consciousness conveived of as the Chose Ideal.

In karma yoga, “I and mine” consciousness, which leads to desire and attachment, has to be relinquished. The “little I” as the doer of action, has to be realized as one’s own Self. In all cases it is ego-consciousness with its various modifications that obstructs us from realizing our spiritual Ideal. Let us consider this ego-consciousness. In connection with our study of jnana yoga, we had occasion to discuss the evolution of pristine Consciousness according to the analysis of the ancient sage, Kapila, and I mentioned that this had been accepted for the most part, by the Vedanta philosophy. The differences between the two do not concern us at this point. We learned that Consciousness ( Brahman, in the language of Vedanta) projects all manifestation by the inscrutable power of maya. The evolution is in this manner; first, mahat, undifferentiated consciousness; then buddhi, universal intelligence; next ahamkara individualized consciousness, the “I-am” consciousness in the individual, then means, mind. From the mind follow the senses, the subtle sense objects, and the gross elements.

From this analysis we find that the “I-am” consciousness begets the mind and all its faculties, as well as the external world of phenomena. Now, we may say that practices in yoga are in tended to control consciousness at that point where it first becomes individualized, for it is the “I-am” consciousness that is the cause of man’s obstacles to the realization of his real nature. We may note that according to this realization of his real nature. We may note that according to this analysis the involution of this consciousness in the reverse order. Read Previous  Read Next