Yoga Is A Way of Seeing
by Gurani Anjali in November, 1985 at Yoga Anand Ashram.
Yoga is a way of seeing, it is a way of hearing, it is a way of touching, it is a way of smelling, it is a way of tasting. Yoga is unitive. Yoga is knowing the one in the many and the many in the one, to see the night in the day and the day in the night. Yoga is consciousness. When one does Yoga faithfully, one leaves the realm of attachment and confinement, and one leaves behind pain and pleasure too. Pain and pleasure may occur from time to time, after all, this is the human realm, this is what we go through in this existence because we have a body. This body constantly goes through many changes. But the mind is beyond the body, therefore, with the mind, the body must be understood. And then, through that knowledge which one comes to know, one is released from confinement and attachment, one lives one hundred percent attached and one hundred percent detached.
Now this is something that I am expressing in words, but to have the embodiment is beyond words, it is something one cannot simply speak of, one has to live it. When you have a toothache or a body pain in any place, or when you are going through any type of crisis in your life, you acknowledge that crisis in your life, you express it, and what happens? The next thing you know, you’re confining yourself to the pain and you exclude the rest of your life. You get one-pointed in the pain, in the crisis that you have and you forget that there is a vaster area to your life, to your self. So you stay with that toothache, or that body pain or that headache and you feel the total pain of it. And in finding that pain, you are confining yourself to that pain or crisis and you desire to get away from it. We have a tendency, in this human condition, to run from pain. But in every activity there is a lesson to be learned. The wise take the pain as a power and a remedy. Pain is a power; crisis is a power in your life; everything is powerful and there is a lesson to be learned from it all. The headaches, the colds, the fevers, the marital disputes, the suffering of children, the ignorance of parents, all these are pains, but in them there is a lesson to be learned. When the lesson is learned the pain takes on a different face. The face of pain and crisis changes, and you are inspired then to see beyond them. “Why this pain? Why do I have to suffer this pain? I don’t want pain.” Now you may not want pain but there is a lesson to be learned from it. The pain is there because you don’t know the nature of pain, the reason for the pain. That pain is there to purify you, to clean you out. It is there to prepare you for a higher calling.
But first you have to know the nature of the pain. You have to know where it came from, why you have it and what kind of pain it is. Can it be seen? Is it manifest or is it unmanifest? What is the character of the pain? When you look to it like this, when you examine it, the face of pain changes. Pain is a friend. And it comes repeatedly, everyday. It is a dear friend. Get to know it. Become one with the pain and the pain itself will show you how to ease yourself. The pain will teach you. First you have to get into your breath, you have to breathe in, and in breathing in, go into the pain. And the pain will be released. But don’t confine yourself to pain and say, “I have pain.” When you say, “I have…” you are confining yourself, attaching yourself. You are attaching yourself to the pain and confining yourself by locating it in a place so that it cannot move. If you want to get rid of the pain, you cannot do this. You have to first acknowledge the pain and say, “I am glad you are here. How did you get here? What can I do for you?” Talk to your pain a little.
I have lived in this country for so many years, half my life here and half my life in India, and my body has gone through many changes, with the atmosphere here. The atmospheric changes have bombarded my body quite a lot. But I have watched it. I had to go through the climatic changes, the food changes, the language, the cultural behavior and all the changes this body had to go through, so I’m very familiar with change. Everything is subject to change. Pain too will go, but you have to watch it and allow it to tell you what it will tell you. It will tell you how to be. It is there to show you, that you have to adjust. This is an adjustment problem, like having to tune up your car. And like your car the body too has to be tuned up, it has to be adjusted. So you have to watch it. Don’t simply run from the pain, don’t run for a painkiller, don’t run here and there. When you were born, you were given everything you need-you were given the five senses, a body, a mind-everything to survive. Just tune into all that you have. Tune into the two sides of you, the manifest and the unmanifest, and use these powers that you already have. You have all this to move, to adjust. Use your body, use your head, use your eyes, use everything. These powers that we have here are to survive so that we can evolve to our higher nature.
We have everything we need to live. But how can we live with gusto, with joy, with excitement? It is not enough to have great power and great wealth and a lot of possessions. It is important to have true joy. Joy can truly be very joyous if one has suffered, if one knows the meaning of suffering. The average individual goes through life struggling and toiling. They have a lot of suffering, but the suffering is narcissistic, it is not suffering for sake of purification, it is the suffering of asmita (I-am-ness, ego). And so around the age of 50 or 35-45 or sometimes even 25, the average individual is tired and exhausted and the spunk and joy and robustness are just swept right out. They don’t have that zest for life anymore. But it can be brought back because it has not left you. You have it-the zest for life, the go power, the high level of energy you had when you were 16 or 17, it is still inside of you. Remember when you were 16 or 17? You had the entire world then. As soon as High School was done - and you couldn’t wait until high school was done-you said “I’m going to go out there and do everything. I’m going to ride my beautiful car. I’m going to go out on dates. I’m going to have this and that.” I have a 17-year-old son and I’m watching him. He’s ready to get into the world. But I’m telling him quietly everyday, “remember, out there is pain and there is pleasure. You cannot have one without the other-you’re going to get both.” But when you are 17 or 18, 19 and even up to 25, you feel like you can do anything and you feel like you have so much power. In reality you do have so much power. And you will have it when you are 60 and 70, it never leaves. This is the nature of Brahman (the sacred, the absolute), to be constant, to be creative and to be absolute. We are in the image of brahman. So if we can acknowledge that fact and know that that is the case, then the joy will come back.
But just like brahman, we must not show our face, we must not have asmita. Then we can, we must, share our life with everyone. We must share everything we have. We cannot say, “oh no, I just have a dollar, I cannot give it to you.” If someone comes to you and they need something, and they ask you for a quarter or a half-dollar and you only have a dollar in your pocket, you cannot say, “Oh, I need that. I can’t.” Brahman doesn’t do that. We have to take a lesson from the natural phenomena, like the wind and the rain. Be like that-be like the wind that blows and never says, “here I come.” It never says, “See how powerful I am, I can create a hurricane or a tornado or I can do this, I can do that.” It never says anything, it just acts. That is power. And we are that. Om tat sat. Tattvamasi. We are just like the wind, the rain, the sun, the changes-we go through changes in life. The changes in the body are the gunas: rajas, tamas and sattva. Sometimes you feel very energetic (rajas), sometimes you feel very lazy (tamas), sometimes you feel very spiritual (sattva), you go through many changes. Through all these changes you must not show your face. The need to show your face all the time creates a problem. Because you want to say, in this human existence, “Look, see what I did?” But you know that you can never see your face. This is a fact in life, that you can never see your own face. You may see it in the mirror or someone may talk to you and you may acknowledge it. But you cannot look at your own eyes. You are faceless to yourself. Let it be so in every action. Let it be so. Needing to see yourself creates the problem in life. There is the need to be seen and that need in you creates the problem. But you can never see your own face so let it be so. Don’t look to be seen. You see, you look, you do, you talk, anything at all that pours out of you, just do it. In the looking, look. In the giving, give. And everything will work out fine. But the need in everyone to say, “I’m the boss. Look at me.” That is what creates confusion. Be like the wind that blows and never says, “Here I am.” Be like the breath that is inside of you and constantly keeping you alive and never says “see I’ve been with you for so many years and you don’t even know I’m here.” No, you usually don’t even acknowledge the breath. But the breath doesn’t wait for your acknowledgment, it just goes on. And because of that you are alive.
The need to say, “See what a great job I’m doing,” is asmita, ego. Don’t look for that acknowledgement, that recognition. Just do what you have to do and do it well. Do it whole-heartedly. Be content in the doing, because in the doing, is life. Life is interrupted by asmita, by "I want, I want, I want, me, me, me, look at me. Forget that-it is a big pain in the neck. Forget the me. Forget that. “I’m doing this, I’m doing that.” Forget it. Be like the wind. Be like the rain. Be like the sun. Be selfless.
But to be alive and to be in the human condition, one has to be somewhere. So where can you be? In this manifested existence, in this body, in this world, you have to be. But where can you be? You can only be one place and that is in circumstance, in what you are doing. You cannot see your own face but someone is watching you. And therefore, you are being here for another, in your words, in your actions, in circumstance. You can only be in circumstance. Do what you have to do and walk away. See the activity, feel the activity and learn the lesson to be learned in it. There is so much power coming out in activity and when it is given in that manner, in that faceless, selfless manner, and when it is allowed to be in that manner, it magnifies itself. So be like the wind. Be like the rain. Be like the sun. Learn from these. Om shanti.
Thanks and regards?
Iam at www.yogasanalive.com