What we don’t know is critical on the path inward. What we are seeking is not visible to us ~ we negotiate this journey relying on the wise words left to us by those that made it before us. Thus, the beautiful, questioning, Kena Upanishad3 cautions us:
‘I do not think that I know That; nor do I think that I do not know That.’ He among us who knows what is meant by this, he knows truth, it is neither a state of knowing, nor a state of not knowing.
Faith requires that we acknowledge our ignorance and proceed with an open mind and a questioning heart. It never requires blind acceptance: which means remaining frozen in our ignorance. In such thoughtlessness, we are in danger of imposing the little we do know, on the unknown. Instead, we need to acknowledge what we don’t know ~ and continue our quest.
The Quest
Film maker Martin Scorsese says, “That’s the paradox, and it can be an extremely painful one: on the face of it, believing and questioning are antithetical. But I believe they go hand in hand. One nourishes the other.”
We saw in the Katha Upanishad that Nachiketas chooses to be guided by Yama, the God Beyond Death, on the way of this inward path. In the Bhagavad Gita, Arjuna chooses Sri Krishna as his guide with the words ‘śiṣyaste'ham’ – ‘I am your disciple’ ~ but this does not stop him questioning. Questioning is how they both demonstrate their faith as they make their way in the unknown inner depths: in the dark room, seeking the black cat that may, or may not, be there. Yama, reiterates the great teaching of the Nasadiya Suktam that we looked at a couple of months ago, when he says,
‘The Self of all makes the senses flow outward, therefore one seeks outside of oneself. Only the wise, seeking the immortal amidst mortality, turn their gaze away from the world and look inward ~ to find the Self. (1:4)
He continues in this vein through the subsequent chapters as he answers Nachiketas’s questioning:
It is not in the ordinary field of vision, nor is it seen with the eye.
But when the mind is stilled and the awareness is focussed, the Self within the heart will reveal its transcendent nature, and it will set you free. (6: 9)
However, at no time does Yama define that Self!
The great Sage Patañjali, in his sutras that came long after both these texts4, echoes these teachings in his very first verse,
atha yoganusasanam || 1 : 1 ||
Now, the teaching of Yoga
The word anuśāsana gives us a beautiful insight: ‘anu’ indicates ‘after’ and ‘śāsana’ means ‘a teaching’ or ‘an instruction’. Is our sage telling us this is a teaching that comes from other teachings that came before it? The word ‘atha’ ~ which begins Patañjali’s sutras ~ means ‘now,’ but not just any old ‘now’: ‘atha’ is an auspicious, even momentous, ‘now’. So perhaps he is telling us that this sacred moment is one in which an ancient teaching is coming to us again?
Yoga summons our instruments ~ the external instruments of the body and senses, and the internal instruments of awareness (buddhi), mind (manas), thought (vrtti) and ego (ahamkara), and the breath that bridges them ~ and teaches us with them how to make the journey inward. Use them all is Yoga’s message. Shun none of them; degrade none of them; they are our means on this quest for what Albert Einstein called, ‘that which is hidden behind everything5’.
Like the Nasadiya and the Upanishads, the Sage Patañjali does not define the ‘true Self’. He refers to this Self as Puruṣa or Īśvara. Puruṣa in Yoga refers to that from which the visible, measurable creation (Prakṛti) flows, without adding to it or diminishing it. Īśvara is ‘the highest element of being’ ~ the Being of our becoming. Swami Venkatesananda used to describe it as ‘That which Is’. However, no description is offered for either of these. We seek ~ without having any ‘picture’ of that which we seek! And perhaps that’s the bit of the ‘black cat’ that doesn’t, in fact, exist: our image of it!
But our sage offers the concept of the ‘chosen One’ as part of the journey inwards ~ that we make in the dark seeking that One ~ when he says:
svādhyāyād iṣṭa devatā saṁprayogaḥ || 2:44 ||
Through self-study we make contact with the chosen deity.
The term iṣṭa devatā means, quite literally, ‘the chosen deity’. Among a number of ways of using the mind as an aid in focussing the attention (buddhi) ~ this is another such means: we direct the flow of thought onto one particular image ~ a chosen image ~ of that inner Self or Truth that we seek, thus giving buddhi (awareness) a means of holding steady. We do this acknowledging that it is we who are projecting this image.
We never proclaim this as the image for everyone. We are fully conscious of our ignorance about that Self, that Truth, that Centre, that ‘Being of our becoming’. Through our self-study, we choose an image that our awareness can hold above all others as ‘sacred’ ~ and continue seeking. In ancient civilisations in India we know that there was a vast range of sacred images: from a light or single flame to a tree, to an image of a ‘god’. We do it in the full knowledge that it is ‘my’ chosen image, never something that is an imposition on others.
With self-awareness, mantra and iṣṭa devatā, we hold the awareness steady ~ we use what usually distracts us: mind, thought, ego, to take us inward, so that our stumbling in the dark becomes purposeful ~ just as the Sage Patanjali advised at the beginning of his teaching:
yogaś citta-vṛtti-nirodhaḥ || 1:2 ||
Yoga is the stilling of the movement of thought in the individual consciousness.
tadā draṣṭuḥ sva rūpe-avasthānam || 1:3 ||
Then the seer becomes established in his/her true identity.
Maybe, at some stage of the quest, we realise we are not blind and it is not a dark room ~ we were simply required to remove the blindfold.
References :
[1] This is a quote widely attributed to Oscar Wilde, but I can find no reference to where this quote was made.
[2] Firestein S. How it drives science. New York: Oxford University Press; 2012
[3] Kena Upanishad 2:1
[4] The date of the appearance of the Katha Upanishad is contested. It has to be remembered that these scriptures were passed on orally from one generation to the next, so the contention may simply be about the dates they appeared as written texts. Hindu scholars state it was likely composed the early part of first millennium BCE. The same is true of the Bhagavad Gita: part of the Mahabharata, it was probably written down in the early to mid first millennium BCE. The Patañjali Yoga Sutras are said to have been written around 250 BCE.
[5] Autobiographical Notes, Albert Einstein: A Centennial Edition, 1991.
©Swami Ambikananda, November 2024
