Yoga and the Concentration of the Mind

Yoga is the method of uniting, or "yoking," the innate Godhead within one's being with the ultimate Ground of Being that pervades and upholds the universe. In the second of his Yoga aphorisms (or sutras), the great sage, Patanjali, notes that, "Yoga is the control of the thought-waves of the mind." This, of course, implies that it is only the uncontrolled thought-waves of the mind that separate us from the realization of the Godhead within us. Indeed, Swami Satchidananda, in his commentary on Patanjali's yoga sutras, points out that "for the keen student this one sutra would be enough because the rest of them only explain this one."

In his writings, Swami Vivikenanda (one of the first persons to bring the teachings of India to the West), asks:

"How has all the knowledge of the world been gained but by the concentration of the powers of the mind? The world," he observes, "is ready to give up its secrets if we only know how to knock, how to give it the necessary blow. The strength and the force of the blow come through concentration. There is no limit to the power of the human mind," he points out, "(t)he more concentrated it is, the more power is brought to bear on one point." (I. 130-131.)

"The flow of this continuous control of the mind becomes steady," Vivikenanda notes, "when practiced day after day, and the mind obtains the faculty of constant concentration." (I. 273.)

"Concentration is the essence of all knowledge," he points out, "nothing can be done without it. Ninety per cent of thought force is wasted by the ordinary human being, and therefore he is constantly committing blunders; the trained man or mind never makes a mistake." (VI. 123-124.)

In relation to this Swami Satchitananda cites the Sanskrit saying: Mana eva manushyanam karanam bandha mokshayoho. "As the mind, so the man; bondage or liberation are in your mind."

"If you feel bound," notes Satchidananda, "you feel bound. If you are liberated, you feel liberated. Things outside neither bind nor liberate you," he points out, "only your attitude towards them does that." (Satchidananda, "The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali," p. 5.)

As an 'attitude' is only a conditioned, habitual way of thinking, the practice of yoga is unlearning such conditioned habits of thought, and thereby concentrating the mind into a focused instrument with which to probe the inner depths of one's being. For it is only in doing so that we can become capable of perceiving the All-in-All.

Carl Jung: The Conflict Between Faith, Experience and Knowledge

Over fifty years ago, one of the twentieth-century's greatest thinkers, the Swiss psychologist, Carl Jung made the observation that both science and our modern religious views in the West lack the experiential force that would make them effective vehicles for shaping a sustainable and viable worldview. His comments now, as then, continue to cut to the heart of what is humanity's greatest existential question - how to find deep meaning in a seemingly superficial and surface life that is increasingly defined by a purely scientific worldview in conflict with fanatical and fundamentalist 'religiosity'.

Writing in his classic work, "The Undiscovered Self," Jung observes:

"The West has unfortunately not yet awakened to the fact that our appeal to idealism and reason and other desirable virtues, delivered with so much enthusiasm, is mere sound and fury. It is a puff of wind swept away in the storm of religious faith, however twisted this faith may appear to us."

"We are faced," he observes, "not with a situation that can be overcome by rational or moral arguments, but with an unleashing of emotional forces and ideas engendered by the spirit of the times, and these, as we know from experience, are not much influenced by rational reflection and still less by moral exhortation. It has been correctly realized in many quarters that the alexipharmic, the antidote, should in this case be an equally potent faith of a different and nonmaterialistic kind, and that the religious attitude grounded upon it would be the only effective defense against the danger of psychic infection."

"Unhappily," Jung notes, "the little word 'should,' which never fails to appear in this connection, points to a certain weakness, if not the absence, of this desideratum. Not only does the West lack a uniform faith that could block the progress of a fanatical ideology, but, as the father of Marxist philosophy, it makes use of exactly the same spiritual assumptions, the same arguments and aims."

In a durable commentary that is at least as applicable in the non-Christian East as it is in the West, Jung points out that churches (and one might add mosques, temples and synagogues) "stand for traditional and collective convictions which in the case of many of their adherents are no longer based on their own inner experience but on unreflecting belief which notoriously apt to disappear as soon as one begins thinking about it." Then, he notes, "(t)he content of belief . . . comes into collision with knowledge, and it often turns out that the irrationality of the former is no match for the ratiocinations of the latter."

"Belief," Jung notes, "is no adequate substitute for inner experience, and where this is absent even a strong faith which came miraculously as a gift of grace may depart equally miraculously."

"People call faith the true religious experience," he observes, "but they do not stop to think that actually it is a secondary phenomenon arising from the fact that something happened to us in the first place which instilled 'nous' into us - that is, trust and loyalty."

"This experience has a definite content that can be interpreted in terms of one or other of the denominational creeds," he points out. "But the more this is so, the more the possibilities of these conflicts with knowledge mount up, which in themselves are quite pointless."

"That is to say," he concludes, "the standpoints of the creeds is archaic; they are full of impressive mythological symbolism which, if taken literally, comes into insufferable conflict with knowledge."

[Carl Jung, "The Undiscovered Self." pp. 46-48.]

What is apparent from Jung's analysis, it seems, is the need that both individuals and societies have for a meaningful and experiential belief system which is compatible, and not antithetical, to the collective knowledge that the world has garnered - both through science and through real religious insight. Such an insight, to be meaningful, must take into account what science has disclosed about the outer, material world and what experiential religious practice has disclosed about the inner, spiritual world of the individual and collective consciousness and psyche.

The Indwelling Spirit: You Must Become a Fool to Become Wise

In medieval times, every King had a court jester. The jester was the only person permitted to criticize the King, to prick his pride, to deflate his ego. Carlos Castenada writes of the "trickster" who is a guide to enlightenment. In the same vein, the ever insightful minister, Ted Nottingham, took the following verses as the basis for his sermon on the "Indwelling Spirit" (a podcast of which is available here):

"Do you not know that you are the temple of God. and that the Spirit of God dwells in you? . . . Let no one deceive himself. If anyone among you seems to be wise in the ways of this world, let him become a fool so that he may become wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness. For it is written, He catches the wise in their own craftiness. And again, the Lord knows the thoughts of the wise, that they are vain."

(I Corinth. 3:16-20)

As rendered in Phillip's The New Testament in Modern English, the verses read (in part): "Let no one be under any illusion over this. If any man among you thinks himself one of the world's clever ones, let him discard his cleverness that  he may learn to be truly wise. For this world's cleverness is stupidity to God."

Or, as the Sufi mystic and poet Rumi wrote: "Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment."

A relentlessly progressive minister who urges his congregation to wake up to the spiritual reality of who and what they are, Nottingham points out the futility and frustrations that are inevitable for those who relentlessly take their life situation too seriously. He urges his congregation to let go of their anxieties and petty fears so that they can attain a higher consciousness and realize their "Indwelling Spirit."