For most ‘normal’ lay persons, the goal of Yoga is to improve health. They believe in keeping the body fit and disease free. They focus more on physical aspects of Yoga such as exercises and so on. The modern form of Yoga is centered around this goal.
Since health is indirectly connected with stress undergone by an individual, more informed people try to minimize stress by practicing focusing techniques of Yoga such as Pranayama and so on.
Some who are more intellectually oriented, use Yoga to sharpen their mental concentration. A sharply focused mind helps them in achieving success in whatever they attempt to do.
More advanced practitioners of Yoga aim at happiness beyond body and mind. They are spiritual seekers who use a focused mind to completely calm the mind and to have a vision that is beyond the confines of the body and mind.
Among these advanced practitioners of Yoga, some aim at freeing themselves completely from the clutches of both body and mind. They aspire to achieve ultimate liberation.
What is this ultimate liberation?
For people like Patanjali, ultimate liberation is in attaining Kaivalya – a state in which the soul is free from all entanglements. Such a free soul blissfully abides forever without ever getting trapped into the miseries of life.
For the likes of Buddhists who don’t believe in the existence of soul, this liberation could mean cessation of the endless cycles of deaths and births. According to them, none actually takes birth nor dies, but it is just a phenomenon purely driven by causality. A new birth occurs as a result of accumulated Karmic impressions and craving for a body.
For Vedic philosophers the culminating point of this Yoga is aimed at having a glimpse of the ultimate truth that evades our normal mundane perceptual capabilities. They declare that knowing that ultimate truth can bestow us eternal peace.
That is the ultimate goal of Yoga.
Upanishads talk about this ultimate truth that can be realized through Yoga.
Upanishads are ancient Indian scriptures believed to have been recorded 5000 years ago. There are many Upanishads.
In one of them, namely the Chandogya Upanishad, there is a story of father Uddalaka and his son Shwetaketu. This son returns home after his studies. But he does not show the humility one is expected show as a result of learning. He thinks that he knows everything.
Father Uddalaka asks his arrogant son Shwetaketu whether he has learnt that truth after knowing which there is nothing else to be known. Uddalaka was referring to the ultimate truth.
What is that ultimate truth?
The ultimate truth is the truth behind the existence of this world. Once you know that truth, you know everything in this world. If you don’t know that, then your knowledge, however great, is incomplete.
Father Uddalaka wonders how a complex entity like the world we see around, could have come into existence all on its own? Did it come out of nothing?
The well-known analogy given by ancient Indian scriptures is the act of making an earthen pot. To make a pot, one needs clay. Clay is the raw material used to make a pot. To turn this clay into a pot, one needs a wheel on which the clay is shaped into a pot. This wheel is the tool used to create a pot.
Just the clay and the wheel will not make a pot. There has to be a potter who has the ‘will’ to use the clay and the wheel to make a pot. Potter is the real creator of the pot.
What was the raw material used to create this world? What tools were used? And most importantly who was the potter or the creator?
This is the ultimate truth father Uddalka was referring to. Uddalaka says that if we know the answers to these questions, then there is nothing else we need to know. We know the ultimate truth.
Every religion has a story about how this world came into existence.
The ancient Bible has the story of Genesis where a superhuman entity namely the God created this world by merely wishing so. God said “Let there be light and there was light” … and so on.
The Quran also has similar story.
Ancient Indian folklores too have similar creation stories.
In contrast to these religious explanations of how this world came into existence, ancient Indian philosophers had their own versions.
The ancient Samkhya philosophers from India said that the world came from the insentient primordial substance called Pradhana. In fact, this Pradhana was not a substance but an equilibrium state of three mutually opposing forces namely Satwa, Rajas and tamas.
These ideas are quite abstract. We can imagine Satwa to be energy. Rajas to be action. And Tamas to be inertia. When these three come out of their equilibrium state, the world results. This creation was governed merely by the rules of causality. None crated it explicitly.
Similarly, the Buddhists said that the world emerged from nothing or Shoonya all by itself. None created it.
But the Upanishads find flaws in each of these religious/ Philosophic explanations about the world. They have their own answers that they found by means of meditation. What was that answer?
We will see that in the next episode.
A series revolving around Mind – Science of Mind, Philosophy of Mind, Notions of reality, Mind modulation, Domains beyond Mind, and so on. © Dr. King, Swami Satyapriya 2019-2020
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