Re-Educating the Mind : 4.

It is not true that our inward life is the same as our outward life. They are two different things altogether, and this is perhaps the case in 99.9% of people. For various reasons, psychological as well as social, it becomes difficult for the individual to express his real nature outwardly. Whatever the reason behind it, the fact is there – the outward relationships and inward characters do not coincide with each other; therefore there is irreconcilability, obviously.


So, there is no friendship. Friendship is not a matter of writing a letter or speaking a word, but a matter of feeling. This feeling is impossible unless there is the capacity to appreciate the condition or circumstance of the person or the object with whom we are related, or with which we are related, and finally, to enter into the very feeling of that very person and the being of that object – which is alone, ultimately speaking, real fraternity of feeling or friendship.


We have a subtle distractedness in our mind on account of the presence of an absence of friendliness with things. This will cut at the root of all the yogic practice, because yoga is the attempt to contact Ultimate Reality. It is not a mere social contact that we are trying here, but a contact of utter being – the basic reality that is in everything. So there is a requisition for a complete transformation of our personality, inwardly as well as outwardly, even on the unconscious level – not merely outwardly – so that we get attuned to the structure of anything and everything in the world, under every condition.


There is nothing personal in us, if we become genuine seekers of Truth. We become like crystal, as the Samkhya philosophers would say, which has no colour of its own and appears to have a colour of everything that comes near it. Everything is okay. There is nothing wrong, erroneous, ugly or unwanted in this world from the point of view of the strange harmony that exists among things at the core. Ultimately, everything is harmonious.


That is the meaning of the universe or cosmos. The moment we touch this secret of things by the practice of concentration of mind, we invoke the harmony that is at the back of all things. And harmony is nothing but the attunement of things with one another and the basic relatedness of things, rather than the so-called irreconcilability that is visible outside. The moment the mind concentrates on this fact, bereft of all inward distractions and tensions, there is an automatic summoning of the essential nature of things outside, and they come to us instead of getting repelled.

To be continued ...

Swami Krishnananda