The Tree of Life 1-2. Swami Krishnananda.

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Tuesday, August 23, 2022, 06:15

Discourse 1: The Twofold Character of Cosmic Life - 2.

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Chapter 15 – Purushothama yogam :The Yogam of the Supreme Divine Personality : Lessons from the Analogy of a Banyan tree :

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“What is the sorrow that is hanging heavily on our heads?” is not a question easy to answer. At one moment it may appear that the grief is of one type, and at another moment it is of another type. It changes its colour like a chameleon, and we are under the impression thereby that perhaps there are millions of sorrows. Not so is the case. Sorrow is a single structural or organic defect of personality which ramifies itself into various expressions of inconvenience to our personality, and which goes by the name of sorrow, grief, suffering, pain, and so forth.

There is a basic illness which is deeply rooted in us, and we have not the time or the patience to go into the abyss of this sorrow. We seek immediate relief, as is the case with physical illness. There is an asking for an immediate remedy for an acute case of suffering, and this is human nature. The sorrow cannot be borne any further for a longer period, and so we ask for immediate prescriptions of medicine for our griefs, and these are what the world gives to us in the form of experiences.

Unfortunately for us, we are mistaken in the very approach that we are adopting in the redress of our sorrows. No amount of running to doctors of divinity will be able to keep us in that haven of bliss which we are apparently striving for. The world has been what it was, and it has not given any indication that there has been any change in its structure. Perhaps right from creation up to this day nature does not appear to have changed its colours.

But we are endlessly hoping for something, we know not what. There is an endless agony in the hearts of people. Not one individual through the process of history can be said to have passed a life of perennial freedom from birth to death. There have been thorns under the feet of everyone, though the search was for roses, milk and honey in the world. There is a chaotic approach of the mental structure of man. There is confusion in our brains and anxiety in our hearts, and darkness before us.

Well, this is to give an outline of the picture of the life that we are living in this world and the way in which we are trying to acquire freedom and happiness, not knowing the basic structure of the various problems of life. A good physician is supposed to be one who knows the location of the main switchboard in the personality of the human being, by operating which the whole panorama of experiences can be visualised at one stroke.

A disease is a structural maladjustment, and it appears in the form of an agony to the consciousness. When there is a lack of an alignment between our mind, or consciousness, and the nature of our experiences in life, there is what we call unhappiness. Happiness is nothing but the organic alignment of our mind with the various patterns of human experience. When there is a lack of this alignment a jarring sound is produced, as a loudspeaker sometimes makes a noise. There is some kind of defect in the alignment of the internal mechanism. When the mechanism of our psyche in its relation to the structure of the whole of experience in the world goes out of gear, there is unhappiness because happiness is alignment, and unhappiness is the opposite of it. As Ayurveda physicians tell us, health is the harmony among the humours of the body: vata, pitta, kapha. When the sattva, rajas, tamas qualities are in a state of balance, we are supposed to be enjoying mental as well as physical health. So is the case with every kind of happiness. There is a necessity to put the mechanism of life in order, to streamline the way of the working of the mind in its relation to the various shapes that life takes.

To be continued ...

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