What is a Myth?
Human beings have always been mythmakers. Archaeologists
have unearthed Neanderthal graves containing weapons, tools
and the bones of a sacrificed animal, all of which suggest some
kind of belief in a future world that was similar to their own. The
Neanderthals may have told each other stories about the life that
their dead companion now enjoyed. They were certainly
reflecting about death in a way that their fellow-creatures did not.
Animals watch each other die but, as far as we know, they give
the matter no further consideration. But the Neanderthal graves
show that when these early people became conscious of their
mortality, they created some sort of counter-narrative that
enabled them to come to terms with it. The Neanderthals who
buried their companions with such care seem to have imagined
that the visible, material world was not the only reality. From a
very early date, therefore, it appears that human beings were
distinguished by their ability to have ideas that went beyond their
everyday experience.
We are meaning-seeking creatures. Dogs, as far as we know, do
not agonise about the canine condition, worry about the plight of
dogs in other parts of the world, or try to see their lives from a
different perspective. But human beings fall easily into despair,
and from the very beginning we invented stories that enabled us
to place our lives in a larger setting, that revealed an underlying
pattern, and gave us a sense that, against all the depressing and
chaotic evidence to the contrary, life had meaning and value.
Another peculiar characteristic of the human mind is its ability to
have ideas and experiences that we cannot explain rationally. We
have imagination, a faculty that enables us to think of something
that is not immediately present, and that, when we first conceive
it, has no objective existence. The imagination is the faculty that
produces religion and mythology. Today mythical thinking has
fallen into disrepute; we often dismiss it as irrational and selfindulgent. But the imagination is also the faculty that has enabled
scientists to bring new knowledge to light and to invent
technology that has made us immeasurably more effective. The
imagination of scientists has enabled us to travel through outer
space and walk on the moon, feats that were once only possible
in the realm of myth. Mythology and science both extend the
scope of human beings. Like science and technology, mythology,
as we shall see, is not about opting out of this world, but about
enabling us to live more intensely within it.
The Neanderthal graves tell us five important things about myth.
First, it is nearly always rooted in the experience of death and the
fear of extinction. Second, the animal bones indicate that the
burial was accompanied by a sacrifice. Mythology is usually
inseparable from ritual. Many myths make no sense outside a
liturgical drama that brings them to life, and are
incomprehensible in a profane setting. Third, the Neanderthal
myth was in some way recalled beside a grave, at the limit of
human life. The most powerful myths are about extremity; they
force us to go beyond our experience. There are moments when
we all, in one way or another, have to go to a place that we have
never seen, and do what we have never done before. Myth is
about the unknown; it is about that for which initially we have no
words. Myth therefore looks into the heart of a great silence.
Fourth, myth is not a story told for its own sake. It shows us how
we should behave. In the Neanderthal graves, the corpse has
sometimes been placed in a foetal position, as though for rebirth:
the deceased had to take the next step himself. Correctly
understood, mythology puts us in the correct spiritual or
psychological posture for right action, in this world or the next.
Karen Armstrong: “What is a Myth?” – page 1 of 4
Finally, all mythology speaks of another plane that exists
alongside our own world, and that in some sense supports it.
Belief in this invisible but more powerful reality, sometimes
called the world of the gods, is a basic theme of mythology. It
has been called the ‘perennial philosophy’ because it informed
the mythology, ritual and social organisation of all societies
before the advent of our scientific modernity, and continues to
influence more traditional societies today. According to the
perennial philosophy, everything that happens in this world,
everything that we can hear and see here below has its
counterpart in the divine realm, which is richer, stronger and
more enduring than our own.
And every earthly reality is only a pale shadow of its archetype,
the original pattern, of which it is simply an imperfect copy. It is
only by participating in this divine life that mortal, fragile human
beings fulfil their potential. The myths gave explicit shape and
form to a reality that people sensed intuitively. They told them
how the gods behaved, not out of idle curiosity or because these
tales were entertaining, but to enable men and women to imitate
these powerful beings and experience divinity themselves.
In our scientific culture, we often have rather simplistic notions
of the divine. In the ancient world, the ‘gods’ were rarely
regarded as supernatural beings with discrete personalities, living
a totally separate metaphysical existence. Mythology was not
about theology, in the modern sense, but about human
experience. People thought that gods, humans, animals and
nature were inextricably bound up together, subject to the same
laws, and composed of the same divine substance. There was
initially no ontological gulf between the world of the gods and
the world of men and women. When people spoke of the divine,
they were usually talking about an aspect of the mundane. The
very existence of the gods was inseparable from that of a storm, a
sea, a river, or from those powerful human emotions – love, rage
or sexual passion – that seemed momentarily to lift men and
women onto a different plane of existence so that they saw the
world with new eyes.
Mythology was therefore designed to help us to cope with the
problematic human predicament. It helped people to find their
place in the world and their true orientation. We all want to know
where we came from, but because our earliest beginnings are lost
in the mists of prehistory, we have created myths about our
forefathers that are not historical but help to explain current
attitudes about our environment, neighbours and customs. We
also want to know where we are going, so we have devised
stories that speak of a posthumous existence – though, as we
shall see, not many myths envisage immortality for human
beings. And we want to explain those sublime moments, when
we seem to be transported beyond our ordinary concerns. The
gods helped to explain the experience of transcendence. The
perennial philosophy expresses our innate sense that there is
more to human beings and to the material world than meets the
eye.
Today the word ‘myth’ is often used to describe something that is
simply not true. A politician accused of a peccadillo will say that
it is a ‘myth’, that it never happened. When we hear of gods
walking the earth, of dead men striding out of tombs, or of seas
miraculously parting to let a favoured people escape from their
enemies, we dismiss these stories as incredible and demonstrably
untrue. Since the eighteenth century, we have developed a
scientific view of history; we are concerned above all with what
actually happened. But in the pre-modern world, when people
wrote about the past they were more concerned with what an
Karen Armstrong: “What is a Myth?” – page 2 of 4
event had meant. A myth was an event which, in some sense, had
happened once, but which also happened all the time. Because of
our strictly chronological view of history, we have no word for
such an occurrence, but mythology is an art form that points
beyond history to what is timeless in human existence, helping us
to get beyond the chaotic flux of random events, and glimpse the
core of reality.
common to all mythmakers: ‘What if this world were not all that
there is? How would this affect our lives – psychologically,
practically or socially? Would we become different? More
complete? And, if we did find that we were so transformed,
would that not show that our mythical belief was true in some
way, that it was telling us something important about our
humanity, even though we could not prove this rationally?’
An experience of transcendence has always been part of the
human experience. We seek out moments of ecstasy, when we
feel deeply touched within and lifted momentarily beyond
ourselves. At such times, it seems that we are living more
intensely than usual, firing on all cylinders, and inhabiting the
whole of our humanity. Religion has been one of the most
traditional ways of attaining ecstasy, but if people no longer find
it in temples, synagogues, churches or mosques, they look for it
elsewhere: in art, music, poetry, rock, dance, drugs, sex or sport.
Like poetry and music, mythology should awaken us to rapture,
even in the face of death and the despair we may feel at the
prospect of annihilation. If a myth ceases to do that, it has died
and outlived its usefulness.
Human beings are unique in retaining the capacity for play.
It is, therefore, a mistake to regard myth as an inferior mode of
thought, which can be cast aside when human beings have
attained the age of reason. Mythology is not an early attempt at
history, and does not claim that its tales are objective fact. Like a
novel, an opera or a ballet, myth is make-believe; it is a game
that transfigures our fragmented, tragic world, and helps us to
glimpse new possibilities by asking ‘what if?’ – a question which
has also provoked some of our most important discoveries in
philosophy, science and technology. The Neanderthals who
prepared their dead companion for a new life were, perhaps,
engaged in the same game of spiritual make-believe that is
A myth, therefore, is true because it is effective, not because it
gives us factual information. If, however, it does not give us new
insight into the deeper meaning of life, it has failed. If it works,
that is, if it forces us to change our minds and hearts, gives us
new hope, and compels us to live more fully, it is a valid myth.
Mythology will only transform us if we follow its directives. A
myth is essentially a guide; it tells us what we must do in order to
live more richly. If we do not apply it to our own situation and
make the myth a reality in our own lives, it will remain as
incomprehensible and remote as the rules of a board game, which
often seem confusing and boring until we start to play.
Unless they are living in the artificial conditions of captivity,
other animals lose their early sense of fun when they encounter
the harsh realities of life in the wild. Human adults, however,
continue to enjoy playing with different possibilities, and, like
children, we go on creating imaginary worlds. In art, liberated
from the constraints of reason and logic, we conceive and
combine new forms that enrich our lives, and which we believe
tell us something important and profoundly ‘true’. In mythology
too, we entertain a hypothesis, bring it to life by means of ritual,
act upon it, contemplate its effect upon our lives, and discover
that we have achieved new insight into the disturbing puzzle of
our world.
Karen Armstrong: “What is a Myth?” – page 3 of 4
Our modern alienation from myth is unprecedented. In the premodern world, mythology was indispensable. It not only helped
people to make sense of their lives but also revealed regions of
the human mind that would otherwise have remained
inaccessible. It was an early form of psychology. The stories of
gods or heroes descending into the underworld, threading
through labyrinths and fighting with monsters, brought to light
the mysterious workings of the psyche, showing people how to
cope with their own interior crises. When Freud and Jung began
to chart the modern quest for the soul, they instinctively turned to
classical mythology to explain their insights, and gave the old
myths a new interpretation.
There was nothing new in this. There is never a single, orthodox
version of a myth. As our circumstances change, we need to tell
our stories differently in order to bring out their timeless truth. In
this short history of mythology, we shall see that every time men
and women took a major step forward, they reviewed their
mythology and made it speak to the new conditions. But we shall
also see that human nature does not change much, and that many
of these myths, devised in societies that could not be more
different from our own, still address our most essential fears and
desires.
Karen Armstrong
Karen Armstrong: “What is a Myth?” – page 4 of 4
recalled later, were two lines from the Bhagavad-Gita in which
the speaker is God:
II. Hinduism
If I were asked under what sky the human mind…has most deeply
pondered over the greatest problems of life, and has found
solutions to some of them which well deserve the attention even
of those who have studied Plato and Kant—I should point to
India. And if I were to ask myself from what literature we who
have been nurtured almost exclusively on the thoughts of Greeks
and Romans, and of one Semitic race, the Jewish, may draw the
corrective which is most wanted in order to make our inner life
more perfect, more comprehensive, more universal, in fact more
truly human a life…again I should point to India.
Max Müller
On July 16, 1945, in the deep privacy of a New Mexico desert,
an event occurred that may prove to be the most important single
happening of the twentieth century. A chain reaction of scientific
discoveries that began at the University of Chicago and centered
at “Site Y” at Los Alamos was culminated. The first atomic bomb
was, as we say, a success.
No one had been more instrumental in this achievement than
Robert Oppenheimer, director of the Los Alamos project. An
observer who was watching him closely that morning has given
us the following account: “He grew tenser as the last seconds
ticked off. He scarcely breathed. He held on to a post to steady
himself…. When the announcer shouted ‘Now!’ and there came
this tremendous burst of light, followed…by the deep-growling
roar of the explosion, his face relaxed in an expression of
tremendous relief.” This much from the outside. But what flashed
through Oppenheimer’s own mind during those moments, he
I am become death, the shatterer of worlds;
Waiting that hour that ripens to their doom.
This incident provides a profound symbol for this chapter’s
opening, and Mahatma Gandhi’s life can join it in setting the
stage for the faith we are about to explore. In an age in which
violence and peace faced each other more fatefully than ever
before, Gandhi’s name became, in the middle of our century, the
counterpoise to those of Stalin and Hitler. The achievement for
which the world credited this man (who weighed less than a
hundred pounds and whose worldly possessions when he died
were worth less than two dollars) was the British withdrawal
from India in peace, but what is less known is that among his
own people he lowered a barrier more formidable than that of
race in America. He renamed India’s untouchables harijan,
“God’s people,” and raised them to human stature. And in doing
so he provided the nonviolent strategy as well as the inspiration
for Martin Luther King, Jr.’s comparable civil rights movement
in the United States.
Gandhi’s own inspiration and strategy carries us directly into this
chapter’s subject, for he wrote in his Autobiography: “Such
power as I possess for working in the political field has derived
from my experiments in the spiritual field.” In that spiritual field,
he went on to say, “truth is the sovereign principle, and the
Bhagavad-Gita is the book par excellence for the knowledge of
Truth.”
Huston Smith “Hinduism” – page 1 of 47
What People Want
If we were to take Hinduism as a whole—its vast literature, its
complicated rituals, its sprawling folkways, its opulent art—and
compress it into a single affirmation, we would find it saying:
You can have what you want.
This sounds promising, but it throws the problem back in our
laps. For what do we want? It is easy to give a simple answer—
not easy to give a good one. India has lived with this question for
ages and has her answer waiting. People, she says, want four
things.
They begin by wanting pleasure. This is natural. We are all born
with built-in pleasure-pain reactors. If we ignored these, leaving
our hands on hot stoves or stepping out of second-story windows,
we would soon die. What could be more obvious, then, than to
follow the promptings of pleasure and entrust our lives to it?
Having heard—for it is commonly alleged—that India is ascetic,
other-worldly, and life-denying, we might expect her attitude
toward hedonists to be scolding, but it is not. To be sure, India
has not made pleasure her highest good, but this is different from
condemning enjoyment. To the person who wants pleasure, India
says in effect: Go after it—there is nothing wrong with it; it is
one of the four legitimate ends of life. The world is awash with
beauty and heavy with sensual delights. Moreover, there are
worlds above this one where pleasures increase by powers of a
million at each rung, and these worlds, too, we shall experience
in due course. Like everything else, hedonism requires good
sense. Not every impulse can be followed with impunity. Small
immediate goals must be sacrificed for long-range gains, and
impulses that would injure others must be curbed to avoid
antagonisms and remorse. Only the stupid will lie, steal, or cheat
for immediate profit, or succumb to addictions. But as long as the
basic rules of morality are obeyed, you are free to seek all the
pleasure you want. Far from condemning pleasure, Hindu texts
house pointers on how to enlarge its scope. To simple people
who seek pleasure almost exclusively, Hinduism presents itself
as little more than a regimen for ensuring health and prosperity;
while at the other end of the spectrum, for sophisticates, it
elaborates a sensual aesthetic that shocks in its explicitness. If
pleasure is what you want, do not suppress the desire. Seek it
intelligently.
This India says, and waits. It waits for the time—it will come to
everyone, though not to everyone in one’s present life—when
one realizes that pleasure is not all that one wants. The reason
everyone eventually comes to this discovery is not because
pleasure is wicked, but because it is too trivial to satisfy one’s
total nature. Pleasure is essentially private, and the self is too
small an object for perpetual enthusiasm. Søren Kierkegaard
tried for a while what he called the aesthetic life, which made
enjoyment its guiding principle, only to experience its radical
failure, which he described in Sickness Unto Death. “In the
bottomless ocean of pleasure,” he wrote in his Journal, “I have
sounded in vain for a spot to cast anchor. I have felt the almost
irresistible power with which one pleasure drags another after it,
the kind of adulterated enthusiasm which it is capable of
producing, the boredom, the torment which follow.” Even
playboys—a type seldom credited with profundity—have been
known to conclude, as one did recently, that “The glamour of
yesterday I have come to see as tinsel.” Sooner or later everyone
wants to experience more than a kaleidoscope of momentary
pleasures, however delectable.
Huston Smith “Hinduism” – page 2 of 47
When this time comes the individual’s interests usually shift to
the second major goal of life, which is worldly success with its
three prongs of wealth, fame, and power. This too is a worthy
goal, to be neither scorned nor condemned. Moreover, its
satisfactions last longer, for (unlike pleasure) success is a social
achievement, and as such it involves the lives of others. For this
reason it commands a scope and importance that pleasure cannot
boast.
This point does not have to be argued for a contemporary
Western audience. The Anglo-American temperament is not
voluptuous. Visitors from abroad do not find English-speaking
peoples enjoying life a great deal, or much bent on doing so—
they are too busy. Being enamored not of sensualism but of
success, what takes arguing in the West is not that achievement’s
rewards exceed those of the senses but that success too has its
limitations—that “What is he worth?” does not come down to
“How much has he got?”
India acknowledges that drives for power, position, and
possessions run deep. Nor should they be disparaged per se. A
modicum of worldly success is indispensable for supporting a
household and discharging civic duties responsibly. Beyond this
minimum, worldly achievements confer dignity and self-respect.
In the end, however, these rewards too have their term. For they
all harbor limitations that we can detail:
1. Wealth, fame, and power are exclusive, hence competitive,
hence precarious. Unlike mental and spiritual values, they do not
multiply when shared; they cannot be distributed without
diminishing one’s own portion. If I own a dollar, that dollar is not
yours; while I am sitting on a chair, you cannot occupy it.
Similarly with fame and power. The idea of a nation in which
everyone is famous is a contradiction in terms; and if power were
distributed equally, no one would be powerful in the sense in
which we customarily use the word. From the competitiveness of
these goods to their precariousness is a short step. As other
people want them too, who knows when success will change
hands?
2. The drive for success is insatiable. A qualification is needed
here, for people do get enough money, fame, and power. It is
when they make these things their chief ambition that their lusts
cannot be satisfied. For these are not the things people really
want, and people can never get enough of what they do not really
want. In Hindu idiom, “To try to extinguish the drive for riches
with money is like trying to quench a fire by pouring butter over
it.”
The West, too, knows this point. “Poverty consists, not in the
decrease of one’s possessions, but in the increase of one’s greed,”
wrote Plato, and Gregory Nazianzen, a theologian, concurs:
“Could you from all the world all wealth procure, more would
remain, whose lack would leave you poor.” “Success is a goal
without a satiation point,” a psychologist has recently written,
and sociologists who studied a midwestern town found “both
business men and working men running for dear life in the
business of making the money they earn keep pace with the even
more rapid growth of their subjective wants.” It was from India
that the West appropriated the parable of the donkey driver who
kept his beast moving by dangling before it a carrot attached to a
stick that was fixed to its own harness.
Huston Smith “Hinduism” – page 3 of 47
3. The third problem with worldly success is identical with that
of hedonism. It too centers meaning in the self, which proves to
be too small for perpetual enthusiasm. Neither fortune nor station
can obscure the realization that one lacks so much else. In the
end everyone wants more from life than a country home, a sports
car, and posh vacations.
4. The final reason why worldly success cannot satisfy us
completely is that its achievements are ephemeral. Wealth, fame,
and power do not survive bodily death—“You can’t take it with
you,” as we routinely say. And since we cannot, this keeps these
things from satisfying us wholly, for we are creatures who can
envision eternity and must instinctively rue by contrast the brief
purchase on time that worldly success commands.
Before proceeding to the other two things that Hinduism sees
people wanting, it will be well to summarize the ones considered
thus far. Hindus locate pleasure and success on the Path of
Desire. They use this phrase because the personal desires of the
individual have thus far been foremost in charting life’s course.
Other goals lie ahead, but this does not mean that we should
berate these preliminaries. Nothing is gained by repressing
desires wholesale or pretending that we do not have them. As
long as pleasure and success is what we think we want, we
should seek them, remembering only the provisos of prudence
and fair play.
The guiding principle is not to turn from desire until desire turns
from you, for Hinduism regards the objects of the Path of Desire
as if they were toys. If we ask ourselves whether there is
anything wrong with toys, our answer must be: On the contrary,
the thought of children without them is sad. Even sadder,
however, is the prospect of adults who fail to develop interests
more significant than dolls and trains. By the same token,
individuals whose development is not arrested will move through
delighting in success and the senses to the point where their
attractions have been largely outgrown.
But what greater attractions does life afford? Two, say the
Hindus. In contrast with the Path of Desire, they constitute the
Path of Renunciation.
The word renunciation has a negative ring, and India’s frequent
use of it has been one of the factors in earning for it the
reputation of being a life-denying spoilsport. But renunciation
has two faces. It can stem from disillusionment and despair, the
feeling that it’s not worthwhile to extend oneself; but equally it
can signal the suspicion that life holds more than one is now
experiencing. Here we find the back-to-nature people—who
renounce affluence to gain freedom from social rounds and the
glut of things—but this is only the beginning. If renunciation
always entails the sacrifice of a trivial now for a more promising
yet-to-be, religious renunciation is like that of athletes who resist
indulgences that could deflect them from their all-consuming
goal. Exact opposite of disillusionment, renunciation in this
second mode is evidence that the life force is strongly at work.
We must never forget that Hinduism’s Path of Renunciation
comes after the Path of Desire. If people could be satisfied by
following their impulses, the thought of renunciation would
never arise. Nor does it occur only to those who have failed on
the former path—the disappointed lover who enters a monastery
or nunnery to compensate. We can agree with the disparagers
that for such people renunciation is a salvaging act—the attempt
Huston Smith “Hinduism” – page 4 of 47
to make the best of personal defeat. What forces us to listen
attentively to Hinduism’s hypothesis is the testimony of those
who stride the Path of Desire famously and still find themselves
wishing for more than it offers. These people—not the ones who
renounce but the ones who see nothing to renounce for—are the
world’s real pessimists. For to live, people must believe in that
for the sake of which they live. As long as they sense no futility
in pleasure and success, they can believe that those are worth
living for. But if, as Tolstoy points out in his Confessions, they
can no longer believe in the finite, they will believe in the infinite
or they will die.
Let us be clear. Hinduism does not say that everyone in his or her
present life will find the Path of Desire wanting. For against a
vast time scale, Hinduism draws a distinction the West too is
familiar with—that between chronological and psychological
age. Two people, both forty-six, are the same age
chronologically, but psychologically one may be still a child and
the other an adult. The Hindus extend this distinction to cover
multiple life spans, a point we shall take up explicitly when we
come to the idea of reincarnation. As a consequence we shall find
men and women who play the game of desire with all the zest of
nine-year-old cops and robbers; though they know little else,
they will die with the sense of having lived to the full and enter
their verdict that life is good. But equally, there will be others
who play this game as ably, yet find its laurels paltry. Why the
difference? The enthusiasts, say the Hindus, are caught in the
flush of novelty, whereas the others, having played the game over
and over again, seek other worlds to conquer.
We can describe the typical experience of this second type. The
world’s visible rewards still attract them strongly. They throw
themselves into enjoyment, enlarging their holdings and
advancing their status. But neither the pursuit nor the attainment
brings true happiness. Some of the things they want they fail to
get, and this makes them miserable. Some they get and hold onto
for a while, only to have them suddenly snatched away, and
again they are miserable. Some they both get and keep, only to
find that (like the Christmases of many adolescents) they do not
bring the joy that was expected. Many experiences that thrilled
on first encounter pall on the hundredth. Throughout, each
attainment seems to fan the flames of new desire; none satisfies
fully; and all, it becomes evident, perish with time. Eventually,
there comes over them the suspicion that they are caught on a
treadmill, having to run faster and faster for rewards that mean
less and less.
When that suspicion dawns and they find themselves crying,
“Vanity, vanity, all is vanity!” it may occur to them that the
problem stems from the smallness of the self they have been
scrambling to serve. What if the focus of their concern were
shifted? Might not becoming a part of a larger, more significant
whole relieve life of its triviality?
That question announces the birth of religion. For though in
some watered-down sense there may be a religion of selfworship, true religion begins with the quest for meaning and
value beyond self-centeredness. It renounces the ego’s claims to
finality.
But what is this renunciation for? The question brings us to the
two signposts on the Path of Renunciation. The first of these
reads “the community,” as the obvious candidate for something
greater than ourselves. In supporting at once our own life and the
Huston Smith “Hinduism” – page 5 of 47
lives of others, the community has an importance no single life
can command. Let us, then, transfer our allegiance to it, giving
its claims priority over our own.
This transfer marks the first great step in religion. It produces the
religion of duty, after pleasure and success the third great aim of
life in the Hindu outlook. Its power over the mature is
tremendous. Myriads have transformed the will-to-get into the
will-to-give, the will-to-win into the will-to-serve. Not to
triumph but to do their best—to acquit themselves responsibly,
whatever the task at hand—has become their prime objective.
Hinduism abounds in directives to people who would put their
shoulders to the social wheel. It details duties appropriate to age,
temperament, and social status. These will be examined in
subsequent sections. Here we need only repeat what was said in
connection with pleasure and success: Duty, too, yields notable
rewards, only to leave the human spirit unfilled. Its rewards
require maturity to be appreciated, but given maturity, they are
substantial. Faithful performance of duty brings respect and
gratitude from one’s peers. More important, however, is the selfrespect that comes from doing one’s part. But in the end even
these rewards prove insufficient. For even when time turns
community into history, history, standing alone, is finite and
hence ultimately tragic. It is tragic not only because it must end
—eventually history, too, will die—but in its refusal to be
perfected. Hope and history are always light-years apart. The
final human good must lie elsewhere.
What People Really Want
It is difficult to think of a sentence that identifies Hinduism’
attitude toward the world more precisely. The world’s offerings
are not bad. By and large they are good. Some of them are good
enough to command our enthusiasm for many lifetimes.
Eventually, however, every human being comes to realize with
Simone Weil that “there is no true good here below, that
everything that appears to be good in this world is finite, limited,
wears out, and once worn out, leaves necessity exposed in all its
nakedness.” When this point is reached, one finds oneself asking
even of the best this world can offer, “Is this all?”
This is the moment Hinduism has been waiting for. As long as
people are content with the prospect of pleasure, success, or
service, the Hindu sage will not be likely to disturb them beyond
offering some suggestions as to how to proceed more effectively.
The critical point in life comes when these things lose their
original charm and one finds oneself wishing that life had
something more to offer. Whether life does or does not hold more
is probably the question that divides people more sharply than
any other.
The Hindu answer to the question is unequivocal. Life holds
other possibilities. To see what these are we must return to the
question of what people want. Thus far, Hinduism would say, we
have been answering this question too superficially. Pleasure,
success, and duty are never humanity’s ultimate goals. At best
they are means that we assume will take us in the direction of
what we really want. What we really want are things that lie at a
deeper level.
“There comes a time,” Aldous Huxley wrote, “when one asks
even of Shakespeare, even of Beethoven, is this all?”
Huston Smith “Hinduism” – page 6 of 47
First, we want being. Everyone wants to be rather than not be;
normally, no one wants to die. A World War II correspondent
once described the atmosphere of a room containing thirty-five
men who had been assigned to a bombing mission from which,
on average, only one-fourth returned. What he felt in those men,
the correspondent noted, was not so much fear as “a profound
reluctance to give up the future.” Their sentiment holds for us all,
the Hindus would say. None of us take happily to the thought of
a future in which we shall have no part.
Second, we want to know. Whether it be scientists probing the
secrets of nature, a typical family watching the nightly news, or
neighbors catching up on local gossip, we are insatiably curious.
Experiments have shown that even monkeys will work longer
and harder to discover what is on the other side of a trapdoor
than they will for either food or sex.
The third thing people seek is joy, a feeling tone that is the
opposite of frustration, futility, and boredom.
These are what people really want. To which we should add, if
we are to complete the Hindu answer, that they want these things
infinitely. A distinctive feature of human nature is its capacity to
think of something that has no limits: the infinite. This capacity
affects all human life, as de Chirico’s painting “Nostalgia of the
Infinite” poignantly suggests. Mention any good, and we can
imagine more of it—and, so imagining, want that more. Medical
science has doubled life expectancy, but has living twice as long
made people readier to die? To state the full truth, then, we must
say that what people would really like to have is infinite being,
infinite knowledge, and infinite bliss. They might have to settle
for less, but this is what they really want. To gather the wants
into a single word, what people really want is liberation (moksha)
—release from the finitude that restricts us from the limitless
being, consciousness, and bliss our hearts desire.
Pleasure, success, responsible discharge of duty, and liberation—
we have completed the circuit of what people think they want
and what they want in actuality. This takes us back to the
staggering conclusion with which our survey of Hinduism began.
What people most want, that they can have. Infinite being,
infinite awareness, and infinite bliss are within their reach. Even
so, the most startling statement yet awaits. Not only are these
goods within peoples’ reach, says Hinduism. People already
possess them.
For what is a human being? A body? Certainly, but anything
else? A personality that includes mind, memories, and
propensities that have derived from a unique trajectory of lifeexperiences? This, too, but anything more? Some say no, but
Hinduism disagrees. Underlying the human self and animating it
is a reservoir of being that never dies, is never exhausted, and is
unrestricted in consciousness and bliss. This infinite center of
every life, this hidden self or Atman, is no less than Brahman, the
Godhead. Body, personality, and Atman-Brahman—a human self
is not completely accounted for until all three are noted.
But if this is true and we really are infinite in our being, why is
this not apparent? Why do we not act accordingly? “I don’t feel
particularly unlimited today,” one may be prompted to observe.
“And my neighbor—I haven’t noticed his behavior to be exactly
Godlike.” How can the Hindu hypothesis withstand the evidence
of the morning newspaper?
Huston Smith “Hinduism” – page 7 of 47
The answer, say the Hindus, lies in the depth at which the Eternal
is buried under the almost impenetrable mass of distractions,
false assumptions, and self-regarding instincts that comprise our
surface selves. A lamp can be covered with dust and dirt to the
point of obscuring its light completely. The problem life poses
for the human self is to cleanse the dross of its being to the point
where its infinite center can shine forth in full display.
The Beyond Within
“The aim of life,” Justice Holmes used to say, “is to get as far as
possible from imperfection.” Hinduism says its purpose is to pass
beyond imperfection altogether.
If we were to set out to compile a catalogue of the specific
imperfections that hedge our lives, it would have no end. We lack
strength and imagination to effect our dreams; we grow tired, fall
ill, and are foolish. We fail and become discouraged; we grow
old and die. Lists of this sort could be extended indefinitely, but
there is no need, for all specific limitations reduce to three basic
variants. We are limited in joy, knowledge, and being, the three
things people really want.
Is it possible to pass beyond the strictures that separate us from
these things? Is it feasible to seek to rise to a quality of life that,
because less circumscribed, would be life indeed?
To begin with the strictures on our joy, these fall into three
subgroups: physical pain, frustration that arises from the
thwarting of desire, and boredom with life in general.
Physical pain is the least troublesome of the three. As pain’s
intensity is partly due to the fear that accompanies it, the
conquest of fear can reduce pain concomitantly. Pain can also be
accepted when it has a purpose, as a patient welcomes the return
of life and feeling, even painful feeling, to a frozen arm. Again,
pain can be overridden by an urgent purpose, as in a football
game. In extreme cases of useless pain, it may be possible to
anesthetize it through drugs or control of the senses.
Ramakrishna, the greatest Hindu saint of the nineteenth century,
died of cancer of the throat. A doctor who was examining him in
the last stages of the disease probed his degenerating tissue and
Ramakrishna flinched in pain. “Wait a minute,” he said;then, “Go
ahead,” after which the doctor could probe without resistance.
The patient had focused his attention to the point where nerve
impulses could barely gain access. One way or another it seems
possible to rise to a point where physical pain ceases to be a
major problem.
More serious is the psychological pain that arises from the
thwarting of specific desires. We want to win a tournament, but
we lose. We want to profit, but the deal falls through. A
promotion goes to our competitor. We would like to have been
invited, but are snubbed. Life is so filled with disappointments
that we are likely to assume that they are built into the human
condition. On examination, however, there proves to be
something disappointments share in common. Each thwarts an
expectation of the individual ego. If the ego were to have no
expectations, there would be nothing to disappoint.
If this sounds like ending an ailment by killing the patient, the
same point can be stated positively. What if the interests of the
self were expanded to the point of approximating a God’s-eye
view of humanity? Seeing all things under the aspect of eternity
would make one objective toward oneself, accepting failure as on
a par with success in the stupendous human drama of yes and no,
Huston Smith “Hinduism” – page 8 of 47
positive and negative, push and pull. Personal failure would be as
small a cause for concern as playing the role of loser in a summer
theater performance. How could one feel disappointed at one’s
own defeat if one experienced the victor’s joy as also one’s own;
how could being passed over for a promotion touch one if one’s
competitor’s success were enjoyed vicariously? Instead of crying
“impossible,” we should perhaps content ourselves with noting
how different this would feel from life as it is usually lived, for
reports of the greatest spiritual geniuses suggest that they rose to
something like this perspective. “Inasmuch as you have done it
unto the least of these, you have done it unto me”—are we to
suppose that Jesus was posturing when he uttered those words?
We are told that Sri Ramakrishna once
howled with pain when he saw two boatmen quarrelling
angrily. He came to identify himself with the sorrows of
the whole world, however impure and murderous they
might be, until his heart was scored with scars. But he
knew that he must love God in all sorts and conditions of
men, however antagonistic and hostile, and in all forms
of thought controlling their existence and often setting
them at variance to one another.
Detachment from the finite self or attachment to the whole of
things—we can state the phenomenon either positively or
negatively. When it occurs, life is lifted above the possibility of
frustration and above ennui—the third threat to joy—as well, for
the cosmic drama is too spectacular to permit boredom in the
face of such vivid identification.
The second great limitation of human life is ignorance. The
Hindus claim that this, too, is removable. The Upanishads speak
of a “knowing of That the knowledge of which brings knowledge
of everything.” It is not likely that “everything” here implies
literal omniscience. More probably, it refers to an insight that
lays bare the point of everything. Given that summarizing
insight, to ask for details would be as irrelevant as asking the
number of atoms in a great painting. When the point is grasped,
who cares about details?
But is transcendent knowledge even in this more restricted sense
possible? Clearly, mystics think that it is. Academic psychology
has not followed them all the way, but it is convinced that there
is far more to the mind than appears on its surface. Psychologists
liken the mind to an iceberg, most of which is invisible. What
does the mind’s vast, submerged ballast contain? Some think it
contains every memory and experience that has come its way,
nothing being forgotten by the deep mind that never sleeps.
Others, like Carl Jung, think it includes racial memories that
summarize the experience of the entire human species.
Psychoanalysis aims a few pinpoints of light at this mental
darkness. Who is to say how far the darkness can be dispelled?
As for life’s third limitation, its restricted being, to profitably
consider this we have first to ask how the boundary of the self is
to be defined. Not, certainly, by the amount of physical space our
bodies occupy, the amount of water we displace in the bathtub. It
makes more sense to gauge our being by the size of our spirits,
the range of reality with which they identify. A man who
identifies with his family, finding his joys in theirs, would have
that much reality; a woman who could identify with humankind
would be that much greater. By this criterion people who could
identify with being as a whole would be unlimited. Yet this
Huston Smith “Hinduism” – page 9 of 47
seems hardly right, for they would still die. The object of their
concerns would continue, but they themselves would be gone.
We need, therefore, to approach this question of being not only
spatially, so to speak, but also in terms of time. Our everyday
experience provides a wedge for doing so. Strictly speaking,
every moment of our lives is a dying; the I of that moment dies,
never to be reborn. Yet despite the fact that in this sense my life
consists of nothing but funerals, I do not conceive of myself as
dying each moment, for I do not equate myself with my
individual moments. I endure through them—experiencing them,
without being identical with any of them in its singularity.
Hinduism carries this notion a step further. It posits an extensive
self that lives successive lives in the way a single life lives
successive moments.
A child’s heart is broken by misfortunes we consider trivial. It
identifies completely with each incident, being unable to see it
against the backdrop of a whole, variable lifetime. A lot of living
is required before the child can withdraw its self-identification
from the individual moment and approach, thereby, adulthood.
Compared with children we are mature, but compared with saints
we are children. No more capable of seeing our total selves in
perspective than a three-year-old who has dropped its ice cream
cone, our attention is fixated on our present life span. If we could
mature completely we would see that lifespan in a larger setting,
one that is, actually, unending.
This is the basic point in the Hindu estimate of the human
condition. We have seen that psychology has accustomed us to
the fact that there is more to ourselves than we suspect. Like the
eighteenth century European view of the earth, our minds have
their own darkest Africas, their unmapped Borneos, their
Amazonian basins. Their bulk continues to await exploration.
Hinduism sees the mind’s hidden continents as stretching to
infinity. Infinite in being, infinite in awareness, there is nothing
beyond them that remains unknown. Infinite in joy, too, for there
is nothing alien to them to mar their beatitude.
Hindu literature is studded with metaphors and parables that are
designed to awaken us to the realms of gold that are hidden in the
depths of our being. We are like kings who, falling victim to
amnesia, wander our kingdoms in tatters not knowing who we
really are. Or like a lion cub who, having become separated from
its mother, is raised by sheep and takes to grazing and bleating
on the assumption that it is a sheep as well. We are like a lover
who, in his dream, searches the wide world in despair for his
beloved, oblivious of the fact that she is lying at his side
throughout.
What the realization of our total being is like can no more be
described than can a sunset to one born blind; it must be
experienced. The biographies of those who have made the
discovery provide us with clues, however. These people are
wiser; they have more strength and joy. They seem freer, not in
the sense that they go around breaking the laws of nature (though
the power to do exceptional things is often ascribed to them) but
in the sense that they seem not to find the natural order confining.
They seem serene, even radiant. Natural peacemakers, their love
flows outward, alike to all. Contact with them strengthens and
purifies.
Huston Smith “Hinduism” – page 10 of 47
Four Paths to the Goal
All of us dwell on the brink of the infinite ocean of life’s creative
power. We carry it within us: supreme strength, the fullness of
wisdom, unquenchable joy. It is never thwarted and cannot be
destroyed. But it is hidden deep, which is what makes life a
problem. The infinite is down in the darkest, profoundest vault of
our being, in the forgotten well-house, the deep cistern. What if
we could bring it to light and draw from it unceasingly?
This question became India’s obsession. Her people sought
religious truth not simply to increase their store of general
information; they sought it as a chart to guide them to higher
states of being. Religious people were ones who were seeking to
transform their natures, reshape them to a superhuman pattern
through which the infinite could shine with fewer obstructions.
One feels the urgency of the quest in a metaphor the Hindu texts
present in many guises. Just as a man carrying on his head a load
of wood that has caught fire would go rushing to a pond to
quench the flames, even so will the seeker of truth, scorched by
the fires of life—birth, death, self-deluding futility—go rushing
to a teacher wise to the ways of the things that matter most.
Hinduism’s specific directions for actualizing the human
potential come under the heading of yoga. The word once
conjured images of shaggy men in loincloths, twisting their
bodies into human pretzels while brandishing occult powers.
Now that the West has appropriated the term, however, we are
more likely to think of lithe women exercising to retain their trim
suppleness. Neither image is totally divorced from the real
article, but they relate only to its bodily aspects. The word yoga
derives from the same root as does the English word yoke, and
yoke carries a double connotation: to unite (yoke together), and
to place under disciplined training (to bring under the yoke, or
“take my yoke upon you”). Both connotations are present in the
Sanskrit word. Defined generally, then, yoga is a method of
training designed to lead to integration or union. But integration
of what?
Some people are chiefly interested in their bodies. Needless to
say, they have their Indian counterparts—people who make their
bodies the prime objects of their concern and endeavor. For such
people India, through centuries of experimentation, has devised
the most fantastic school of physical culture the world has ever
seen. 4 Not that she has been more interested in the body than the
West; her interest has simply taken a different turn. Whereas the
West has sought strength and beauty, India has been interested in
precision and control, ideally complete control over the body’s
every function. How many of her incredible claims in this area
can be scientifically corroborated remains to be seen. 5 It is
enough here to note that her extensive instructions on the subject
comprise an authentic yoga, hatha yoga. Originally it was
practiced as preliminary to spiritual yoga, but it has largely lost
this connection so it need not concern us here. The judgment of
the Hindu sages on this matter can be ours as well. Incredible
things can be done with the body if you are willing to give your
life to the project, but these things have little to do with
enlightenment. If their cultivation stems from a desire to show
off, they can actually impede spiritual growth.
The yogas that do concern us are those designed to unite the
human spirit with the God who lies concealed in its deepest
recesses. “Since all the Indian spiritual [as distinct from bodily]
exercises are devoted seriously to this practical aim—not to a
merely fanciful contemplation or discussion of lofty and
Huston Smith “Hinduism” – page 11 of 47
profound ideas—they may well be regarded as representing one
of the most realistic, matter-of-fact, practical-minded systems of
thought and training ever set up by the human mind. How to
come to Brahman [God in Sanskrit] and remain in touch with
Brahman; how to become identified with Brahman, living out of
it; how to become divine while still on earth—transformed,
reborn adamantine while on the earthly plane; that is the quest
that has inspired and deified the human spirit in India throughout
the ages.”
The spiritual trails that Hindus have blazed toward this goal are
four. At first this may seem surprising. If there is one goal, should
there not be one path to it? This might be the case if we were all
starting from the same point, though even then different modes
of transport—walking, driving, flying—might counsel alternate
routes. As it is, people approach the goal from different
directions, so there must be multiple trails to the common
destination.
Where one starts from depends on the kind of person one is. The
point has not been lost on Western spiritual directors. One of the
most noted of these, Father Surin, for example, criticized
“directors who get a plan into their heads which they apply to all
the souls who come to them, trying to bring them into line with it
like one who should wish all to wear the same clothes.” St. John
of the Cross called attention to the same danger when he wrote in
The Living Flame that the aim of spiritual directors should “not
be to guide souls by a way suitable to themselves, but to
ascertain the way by which God Himself is pointing them.” What
is distinctive in Hinduism is the amount of attention it has
devoted to identifying basic spiritual personality types and the
disciplines that are most likely to work for each. The result is a
recognition, pervading the entire religion, that there are multiple
paths to God, each calling for its distinctive mode of travel.
The number of the basic spiritual personality types, by Hindu
count, is four. (Carl Jung built his typology on the Indian model,
while modifying it in certain respects.) Some people are
primarily reflective. Others are basically emotional. Still others
are essentially active. Finally, some are experimentally inclined.
For each of these personality types Hinduism prescribes a
distinct yoga that is designed to capitalize on the type’s
distinctive strength. The types are not sealed in watertight
compartments, for every human being possesses all four talents
to some degree, just as most hands of cards contain all four suits.
But it makes sense to lead with the suit that is strongest.
All four paths begin with moral preliminaries. As the aim of the
yogas is to render the surface self transparent to its underlying
divinity, it must first be cleansed of its gross impurities. Religion
is always more than morality, but if it lacks a moral base it will
not stand. Selfish acts coagulate the finite self instead of
dissolving it; ill-will perturbs the flow of consciousness. The first
step of every yoga, therefore, involves the cultivation of such
habits as non-injury, truthfulness, non-stealing, self-control,
cleanliness, contentment, self-discipline, and a compelling desire
to reach the goal.
Keeping these common preliminaries in mind, we are ready for
the yogas’ distinctive instructions.
The Way to God through Knowledge
Jnana yoga, intended for spiritual aspirants who have a strong
reflective bent, is the path to oneness with the Godhead through
Huston Smith “Hinduism” – page 12 of 47
knowledge. Such knowledge—the Greeks’ gnosis and sophia—
has nothing to do with factual information; it is not encyclopedic.
It is, rather, an intuitive discernment that transforms, turning the
knower eventually into that which she knows. (“She” is
appropriate here because in the principal Western sourcelanguages—Hebrew, Latin, and Greek—the words for
knowledge in this mode are usually feminine in gender.)
Thinking is important for such people. They live in their heads a
lot because ideas have for them an almost palpable vitality; they
dance and sing for them. And if such thinkers are parodied as
philosophers who walk around with their heads in the clouds, it
is because they sense Plato’s Sun shining above those clouds.
Thoughts have consequences for such people; their minds
animate their lives. Not many people are convinced by Socrates’
claim that “to know the good is to do it,” but in his own case he
may have been reporting a straightforward fact.
For people thus given to knowing, Hinduism proposes a series of
demonstrations that are designed to convince the thinker that she
possesses more than her finite self. The rationale is
straightforward. Once the jnana yogi grasps this point, her sense
of self will shift to a deeper level.
The key to the project is discrimination, the power to distinguish
between the surface self that crowds the foreground of attention
and the larger self that is out of sight. Cultivating this power
proceeds through three stages, the first of which is learning.
Through listening to sages and scriptures and treatises on the
order of Thomas Aquinas’s Summa Theologica, the aspirant is
introduced to the prospect that her essential being is Being itself.
The second step is thinking. By prolonged, intensive reflection,
that which the first step introduced as a hypothesis must assume
life. The Atman (God within) must change from concept to
realization. A number of lines of reflection are proposed for this
project. For example, the disciple may be advised to examine our
everyday language and ponder its implications. The word “my”
always implies a distinction between the possessor and what is
possessed; when I speak of my book or my jacket, I do not
suppose that I am those things. But I also speak of my body, my
mind, or my personality, giving evidence thereby that in some
sense I consider myself as distinct from them as well. What is
this “I” that possesses my body and mind, but is not their
equivalent?
Again, science tells me that there is nothing in my body that was
there seven years ago, and my mind and my personality have
undergone comparable changes. Yet, throughout their manifold
revisions, I have remained in some way the same person, the
person who believed now this, now that; who once was young
and is now old. What is this something in my makeup, more
constant than body or mind, that has endured the changes?
Seriously pondered, this question can disentangle one’s Self from
one’s lesser identifications.
Our word “personality” comes from the Latin persona, which
originally referred to the mask an actor donned as he stepped
onto the stage to play his role, the mask through (per) which he
sounded (sonare) his part. The mask registered the role, while
behind it the actor remained hidden and anonymous, aloof from
the emotions he enacted. This, say the Hindus, is perfect; for
roles are precisely what our personalities are, the ones into which
we have been cast for the moment in this greatest of all tragi-
Huston Smith “Hinduism” – page 13 of 47
comedies, the drama of life itself in which we are simultaneously
coauthors and actors. As a good actress gives her best to her part,
we too should play ours to the hilt. Where we go wrong is in
mistaking our presently assigned part for what we truly are. We
fall under the spell of our lines, unable to remember previous
roles we have played and blind to the prospect of future ones.
The task of the yogi is to correct this false identification. Turning
her awareness inward, she must pierce the innumerable layers of
her personality until, having cut through them all, she reaches the
anonymous, joyfully unconcerned actress who stands beneath.
The distinction between self and Self can be assisted by another
image. A man is playing chess. The board represents his world.
There are pieces to be moved, bishops to be won and lost, an
objective to be gained. The game can be won or lost, but not the
player himself. If he has worked hard, he has improved his game
and indeed his faculties; this happens in defeat fully as much as
in victory. As the contestant is related to his total person, so is the
finite self of any particular lifetime related to its underlying
Atman.
Metaphors continue. One of the most beautiful is found in the
Upanishads, as also (by interesting coincidence) in Plato. There
is a rider who sits serene and motionless in his chariot. Having
delegated responsibility for the journey to his charioteer, he is
free to sit back and give full attention to the passing landscape. In
this image resides a metaphor for life. The body is the chariot.
The road over which it travels are the sense objects. The horses
that pull the chariot over the road are the senses themselves. The
mind that controls the senses when they are disciplined is
represented by the reins. The decisional faculty of the mind is the
driver, and the master of the chariot, who is in full authority but
need never lift a finger, is the Omniscient Self.
If the yogi is able and diligent, such reflections will eventually
induce a lively sense of the infinite Self that underlies one’s
transient, finite self. The two will become increasingly distinct in
one’s mind, separating like water and oil where formerly they
mixed like water and milk. One is then ready for the third step on
the path of knowledge, which consists in shifting her selfidentification to her abiding part. The direct way for her to do
this is to think of herself as Spirit, not only during periods of
meditation that are reserved for this purpose, but also as much as
possible while performing her daily tasks. This latter exercise,
though, is not easy. She needs to drive a wedge between her skinencapsulated ego and her Atman, and an aid in doing so is to
think of the former in the third person. Instead of “I am walking
down the street,” she thinks, “There goes Sybil walking down
Fifth Avenue,” and tries to reinforce the assertion by visualizing
herself from a distance. Neither agent nor patient, her approach
to what happens is, “I am the Witness.” She watches her
unsubstantial history with as much detachment as she lets her
hair blow in the wind. Just as a lamp that lights a room is
unconcerned with what goes on within it, even so the yogi
watches what transpires in his house of protoplasm, the texts tell
us. “Even the sun, with all its warmth, is marvelously detached”
was found scribbled somewhere on a prison wall. Life’s events
are simply allowed to proceed. Seated in the dentist’s chair, Sybil
notes, “Poor Sybil. It will soon be over.” But she must play fair
and adopt the same posture when fortune visits her and she
would like nothing better than bask in the praise she is receiving.
Huston Smith “Hinduism” – page 14 of 47
Thinking of oneself in the third person does two things
simultaneously. It drives a wedge between one’s selfidentification and one’s surface self, and at the same time forces
this self-identification to a deeper level until at last, through a
knowledge identical with being, one becomes in full what one
always was at heart. “That thou art, other than Whom there is no
other seer, hearer, thinker, or agent.”
The Way to God through Love
The yoga of knowledge is said to be the shortest path to divine
realization. It is also the steepest. Requiring as it does a rare
combination of rationality and spirituality, it is for a select few.
By and large, life is powered less by reason than by emotion; and
of the many emotions that crowd the human heart, the strongest
is love. Even hate can be interpreted as a rebound from the
thwarting of this impulse. Moreover, people tend to become like
that which they love, with its name written on their brows. The
aim of bhakti yoga is to direct toward God the love that lies at
the base of every heart. “As the waters of the Ganges flow
incessantly toward the ocean,” says God in the Bhagavata
Purana, “so do the minds of the bhakta move constantly toward
Me, the Supreme Person residing in every heart, immediately
they hear about My qualities.”
In contrast to the way of knowledge, bhakti yoga has countless
followers, being, indeed, the most popular of the four. Though it
originated in antiquity, one of its best-known proponents was a
sixteenth-century mystical poet named Tulsidas. During his early
married life he was inordinately fond of his wife, to the point that
he could not abide her absence even for a day. One day she went
to visit her parents. Before the day was half over, Tulsidas turned
up at her side, whereupon his wife exclaimed, “How passionately
attached to me you are! If only you could shift your attachment
to God, you would reach him in no time.” “So I would,” thought
Tulsidas. He tried it, and it worked.
All the basic principles of bhakti yoga are richly exemplified in
Christianity. Indeed, from the Hindu point of view, Christianity is
one great brilliantly lit bhakti highway toward God, other paths
being not neglected, but less clearly marked. On this path God is
conceived differently than in jnana. In jnana yoga the guiding
image was of an infinite sea of being underlying the waves of our
finite selves. This sea typified the all-pervading Self, which is as
much within us as without, and with which we should seek to
identify. Thus envisioned, God is impersonal, or rather
transpersonal, for personality, being something definite, seems to
be finite whereas the jnanic Godhead is infinite. To the bhakti,
for whom feelings are more real than thoughts, God appears
different on each of these counts.
First, as healthy love is out-going, the bhakta will reject all
suggestions that the God one loves is oneself, even one’s deepest
Self, and insist on God’s otherness. As a Hindu devotional classic
puts the point, “I want to taste sugar; I don’t want to be sugar.”
Can water quaff itself?
Can trees taste of the fruit they bear?
He who worships God must stand distinct from Him,
So only shall he know the joyful love of God;
For if he say that God and he are one,
That joy, that love, shall vanish instantly away.
Pray no more for utter oneness with God:
Where were the beauty if jewel and setting were one?
The heat and the shade are two,
Huston Smith “Hinduism” – page 15 of 47
If not, where were the comfort of shade?
Mother and child are two,
If not, where were the love?
When after being sundered, they meet,
What joy do they feel, the mother and child!
Where were joy, if the two were one?
Pray, then, no more for utter oneness with God.
Second, being persuaded of God’s otherness, the bhakta’s goal,
too, will differ from the jnani’s. The bhakta will strive not to
identify with God, but to adore God with every element of his or
her being. The words of Bede Frost, though written in another
tradition, are directly applicable to this side of Hinduism: “The
union is no Pantheist absorption of the man in the one, but is
essentially personal in character. More, since it is preeminently a
union of love, the kind of knowledge which is required is that of
friendship in the very highest sense of the word.” 9 Finally, in
such a context God’s personality, far from being a limitation, is
indispensable. Philosophers may be able to love pure being,
infinite beyond all attributes, but they are exceptions. The normal
object of human love is a person who possesses attributes.
All we have to do in this yoga is to love God dearly—not just
claim such love, but love God in fact; love God only (other
things being loved in relation to God); and love God for no
ulterior reason (not even from the desire for liberation, or to be
loved in return) but for love’s sake alone. Insofar as we succeed
in this we know joy, for no experience can compare with that of
being fully and authentically in love. Moreover, every
strengthening of our affections toward God will weaken the
world’s grip. Saints may, indeed will, love the world more than
do the profane; but they will love it in a very different way,
seeing in it the reflected glory of the God they adore.
How is such love to be engendered? Obviously, the task will not
be easy. The things of this world clamor for our affection so
incessantly that it may be marveled that a Being who can neither
be seen nor heard can ever become their rival.
Enter Hinduism’s myths, her magnificent symbols, her several
hundred images of God, her rituals that keep turning night and
day like never-ending prayer wheels. Valued as ends in
themselves these could, of course, usurp God’s place, but this is
not their intent. They are matchmakers whose vocation is to
introduce the human heart to what they represent but themselves
are not. It is obtuse to confuse Hinduism’s images with idolatry,
and their multiplicity with polytheism. They are runways from
which the sense-laden human spirit can rise for its “flight of the
alone to the Alone.” Even village priests will frequently open
their temple ceremonies with the following beloved invocation:
O Lord, forgive three sins that are due to my human
limitations:
Thou art everywhere, but I worship you here;
Thou art without form, but I worship you in these forms;
Thou needest no praise, yet I offer you these prayers and
salutations.
Lord, forgive three sins that are due to my human limitations.
A symbol such as a multi-armed image, graphically portraying
God’s astounding versatility and superhuman might, can
epitomize an entire theology. Myths plumb depths that the
intellect can see only obliquely. Parables and legends present
ideals in ways that make hearers long to embody them—vivid
support for Irwin Edman’s contention that “it is a myth, not a
mandate, a fable, not a logic by which people are moved.” The
Huston Smith “Hinduism” – page 16 of 47
value of these things lies in their power to recall our minds from
the world’s distractions to the thought of God and God’s love. In
singing God’s praises, in praying to God with wholehearted
devotion, in meditating on God’s majesty and glory, in reading
about God in the scriptures, in regarding the entire universe as
God’s handiwork, we move our affections steadily in God’s
direction. “Those who meditate on Me and worship Me without
any attachment to anything else,” says Lord Krishna in the
Bhagavad-Gita, “those I soon lift from the ocean of death.”
Three features of the bhakta’s approach deserve mention: japam,
ringing the changes on love, and the worship of one’s chosen
ideal.
Japam is the practice of repeating God’s name. It finds a
Christian parallel in one of the classics of Russian spirituality,
The Way of a Pilgrim. This is the story of an unnamed peasant
whose first concern is to fulfill the biblical injunction to “pray
without ceasing.” Seeking for someone who can explain how it is
possible to do this, he wanders through Russia and Siberia with a
knapsack of dried bread for food and the charity of locals for
shelter, consulting many authorities, only to be disappointed until
at last he meets an old man who teaches him “a constant,
uninterrupted calling upon the divine Name of Jesus with the
lips, in the spirit, in the heart, during every occupation, at all
times, in all places, even during sleep.” The pilgrim’s teacher
trains him until he can repeat the name of Jesus more than 12,000
times a day without strain. This frequent service of the lips
imperceptibly becomes a genuine appeal of the heart. The prayer
becomes a constant, warming presence within him that brings a
bubbling joy. “Keep the name of the Lord spinning in the midst
of all your activities” is a Hindu statement of the same point.
Washing or weaving, planting or shopping, imperceptibly but
indelibly these verbal droplets of aspiration soak down into the
subconscious, loading it with the divine.
Ringing the changes on love puts to religious use the fact that
love assumes different nuances according to the relationship
involved. The love of the parent for the child carries overtones of
protectiveness, whereas a child’s love includes dependence. The
love of friends is different from the conjugal love of woman and
man. Different still is the love of a devoted servant for its master.
Hinduism holds that all of these modes have their place in
strengthening the love of God and encourages bhaktas to make
use of them all. In practice Christianity does the same. Most
frequently it envisions God as benevolent protector, symbolized
as lord or parent, but other modes are not absent. “What a Friend
we have in Jesus” is a familiar Christian hymn, and “my Master
and my Friend” figures prominently in another Christian favorite.
God figures as spouse in the Song of Songs and in Christian
mystical writings where the marriage of the soul to Christ is a
standing metaphor. The attitude of regarding God as one’s child
sounds somewhat foreign to Western ears, yet much of the magic
of Christmas derives from this being the one time in the year
when God enters the heart as a child, eliciting thereby the
tenderness of the parental instinct.
We come finally to the worship of God in the form of one’s
chosen ideal. The Hindus have represented God in innumerable
forms. This, they say, is appropriate. Each is but a symbol that
points to something beyond; and as none exhausts God’s actual
nature, the entire array is needed to complete the picture of God’s
aspects and manifestations. But though the representations point
equally to God, it is advisable for each devotee to form a lifelong
Huston Smith “Hinduism” – page 17 of 47
attachment to one of them. Only so can its meaning deepen and
its full power become accessible. The representation selected will
be one’s ishta, or adopted form of the divine. The bhakta need
not shun other forms, but this one will never be displaced and
will always enjoy a special place in its disciple’s heart. The ideal
form for most people will be one of God’s incarnations, for God
can be loved most readily in human form because our hearts are
already attuned to loving people. Many Hindus acknowledge
Christ as a God-man, while believing that there have been others,
such as Rama, Krishna, and the Buddha. Whenever the stability
of the world is seriously threatened, God descends to redress the
imbalance.
When goodness grows weak,
When evil increases,
I make myself a body.
In every age I come back
To deliver the holy,
To destroy the sin of the sinner,
To establish the righteous. (Bhagavad-Gita, IV:7–8)
The Way to God through Work
The third path toward God, intended for persons of active bent, is
karma yoga, the path to God through work.
An examination of the anatomy and physiology of human bodies
discloses an interesting fact. All organs of digestion and
respiration serve to feed the blood with nutritive materials. The
circulatory apparatus delivers this nourishing blood throughout
the body, maintaining bones, joints, and muscles. Bones provide
a framework without which the muscles could not operate, while
joints supply the flexibility needed for movement. The brain
envisions the movements that are to be made, and the spinal
nervous system executes them. The vegetative nervous system,
helped by the endocrine system, maintains the harmony of the
viscera on which the motor muscles depend. In short, the entire
body, except for the reproductive apparatus, converges on action.
“The human machine,” a physician writes, “seems indeed to be
made for action.”
Work is the staple of human life. The point is not simply that all
but a few people must work to survive. Ultimately, the drive to
work is psychological rather than economic. Forced to be idle,
most people become irritable; forced to retire, they decline.
Included here are compulsive housekeepers as well as great
scientists, such as Mme. Curie. To such people Hinduism says,
You don’t have to retire to a cloister to realize God. You can find
God in the world of everyday affairs as readily as
anywhere. Throw yourself into your work with everything you
have; only do so wisely, in a way that will bring the highest
rewards, not just trivia. Learn the secret of work by which every
movement can carry you Godward even while other things are
being accomplished, like a wristwatch that winds itself as other
duties are performed.
How this is to be done depends on the other components in the
worker’s nature. By choosing the path of work, the karma yogi
has already shown an inclination toward activity, but there
remains the question of whether the supporting disposition is
predominantly affective or reflective. The answer to that question
determines whether the yogi approaches work intellectually or in
the spirit of love. In the language of the four yogas, karma yoga
can be practiced in either mode: jnana (knowledge), or bhakti
(devoted service).
Huston Smith “Hinduism” – page 18 of 47
As we have seen, the point of life is to transcend the smallness of
the finite self. This can be done either by identifying oneself with
the transpersonal Absolute that resides at the core of one’s being,
or by shifting one’s interest and affection to a personal God who
is experienced as distinct from oneself. The first is the way of
jnana, the second of bhakti. Work can be a vehicle for selftranscendence in either approach, for according to Hindu
doctrine every action performed upon the external world reacts
on the doer. If I chop down a tree that blocks my view, each
stroke of the ax unsettles the tree; but it leaves its mark on me as
well, driving deeper into my being my determination to have my
way in the world. Everything I do for my private wellbeing adds
another layer to my ego, and in thickening it insulates me more
from God. Conversely, every act done without thought for myself
diminishes my self-centeredness until finally no barrier remains
to separate me from the Divine.
The best way for the emotionally inclined to render work selfless
is to bring their ardent and affectionate natures into play and
work for God’s sake instead of their own. “He who performs
actions without attachment, resigning them to God, is untainted
by their effects as the lotus leaf by water.” Such a one is as active
as before, but works for a different reason, out of dedication.
Acts are no longer undertaken for their personal rewards. Not
only are they now performed as service to God; they are regarded
as prompted by God’s will and enacted by God’s energy as
channeled through the devotee. “Thou art the Doer, I the
instrument.” Performed in this spirit, actions lighten the ego
instead of encumbering it. Each task becomes a sacred ritual,
lovingly fulfilled as a living sacrifice to God’s glory.
“Whatsoever you do, whatever you eat, whatever you offer in
sacrifice, whatever you give, whatever austerity you practice, O
Son of Kunti, do this as an offering to Me. Thus shall you be free
from the bondages of actions that bear good and evil results,”
says the Bhagavad-Gita. “They have no desire for the fruits of
their actions,” echoes the Bhagavata Purana. “These persons
would not accept even the state of union with Me; they would
always prefer My service.”
A young woman, newly married and in love, works not for
herself alone. As she works the thought of her beloved is in the
back of her mind, giving meaning and purpose to her labors. So
too with a devoted servant. He claims nothing for himself.
Regardless of personal cost he does his duty for his master’s
satisfaction. Just so is God’s will the joy and satisfaction of the
devotee. Surrendering to the Lord of all, he remains untouched
by life’s vicissitudes. Such people are not broken by
discouragements, for winning is not what motivates them; they
want only to be on the right side. They know that if history
changes it will not be human beings that change it but its Author
—when human hearts are ready. Historical figures lose their
center when they become anxious over the outcome of their
actions. “Do without attachment the work you have to do.
Surrendering all action to Me, freeing yourself from longing and
selfishness, fight—unperturbed by grief” (Bhagavad-Gita).
Once all claims on work have been renounced, including whether
it will succeed in its intent, the karma yogi’s actions no longer
swell the ego. They leave on the mind no mark that could vector
its subsequent responses. In this way the yogi works out the
accumulated impressions of previous deeds without acquiring
new ones. Whatever one thinks of this karmic way of putting the
matter, the psychological truth involved is readily apparent. A
person who is completely at the disposal of others barely exists.
Huston Smith “Hinduism” – page 19 of 47
The Spanish ask wryly: “Would you like to become invisible?
Have no thought of yourself for two years and no one will notice
you.”
Work as a path toward God takes a different turn for people
whose dispositions are more reflective than emotional. For these
too the key is work done unselfishly, but they approach the
project differently. Philosophers tend to find the idea of Infinite
Being at the center of one’s self more meaningful than the
thought of a divine Creator who watches over the world with
love. It follows, therefore, that their approach to work should be
adapted to the way they see things.
The way that leads to enlightenment is work performed in
detachment from the empirical self. Specifically, it consists in
drawing a line between the finite self that acts, on the one hand,
and on the other the eternal Self that observes the action. People
usually approach work in terms of its consequences for their
empirical selves—the pay or acclaim it will bring. This inflates
the ego. It thickens its insulation and thereby its isolation.
The alternative is work performed detachedly, almost in
dissociation from the empirical self. Identifying with the Eternal,
the worker works; but as the deeds are being performed by the
empirical self, the True Self has nothing to do with them. “The
knower of Truth, being centered in the Self should think, ‘I do
nothing at all.’ While seeing, breathing, speaking, letting go,
holding, opening and closing the eyes, he observes only senses
moving among sense objects.”
As the yogi’s identification shifts from her finite to her infinite
Self, she will become increasingly indifferent to the
consequences that flow from her finite actions. More and more
she will recognize the truth of the Gita’s dictum: “To work you
have the right, but not to the fruits thereof.” Duty for duty’s sake
becomes her watchword.
He who does the task
Dictated by duty,
Caring nothing
For the fruit of the action,
He is a yogi. (Bhagavad-Gita, VI:I)
Hence the story of the yogi who, as he sat meditating on the
banks of the Ganges, saw a scorpion fall into the water. He
scooped it out, only to have it bite him. Presently, the scorpion
fell into the river again. Once more the yogi rescued it, only
again to be bitten. The sequence repeated itself twice more,
whereupon a bystander asked the yogi, “Why do you keep
rescuing that scorpion when its only gratitude is to bite you?”
The yogi replied: “It is the nature of scorpions to bite. It is the
nature of yogis to help others when they can.”
Karma yogis will try to do each thing as it comes as if it were the
only thing to be done and, having done it, turn to the next duty in
similar spirit. Concentrating fully and calmly on each duty as it
presents itself, they will resist impatience, excitement, and the
vain attempt to do or think of half a dozen things at once. Into the
various tasks that fall their lot they will put all the strokes they
can, for to do otherwise would be to yield to laziness, which is
another form of selfishness. Once they have done this, however,
they will dissociate themselves from the act and let the chips fall
where they may.
One to me is loss or gain,
Huston Smith “Hinduism” – page 20 of 47
One to me is fame or shame,
One to me is pleasure, pain. (Bhagavad-Gita, XII)
Mature individuals do not resent correction, for they identify
more with their long-range selves that profit from correction than
with the momentary self that is being advised. Similarly, the yogi
accepts loss, pain, and shame with equanimity, knowing that
these too are teachers. To the degree that yogis repose in the
Eternal, they experience calm in the midst of intense activity.
Like the center of a rapidly spinning wheel, they seem still—
emotionally still—even when they are intensely busy. It is like
the stillness of absolute motion.
Though the conceptual frameworks within which philosophical
and affectionate natures practice karma yoga are different, it is
not difficult to perceive their common pursuit. Both are engaged
in a radical reducing diet, designed to starve the finite ego by
depriving it of the consequences of action on which it feeds.
Neither gives the slightest purchase to that native egoism that the
world considers healthy self-regard. The bhakta seeks “selfnaughting” by giving heart and will to the Eternal Companion
and finding them enriched a thousandfold thereby. The jnani is
equally intent on shrinking the ego, being convinced that to the
degree that the venture succeeds there will come into view a
nucleus of selfhood that differs radically from its surface mask,
“a sublime inhabitant and onlooker, transcending the spheres of
the former conscious-unconscious system, aloofly unconcerned
with the tendencies that formerly supported the individual
biography. This anonymous ‘diamond being’ is not at all what we
were cherishing as our character and cultivating as our faculties,
inclinations, virtues, and ideals; for it transcends every horizon of
unclarified consciousness. It was enwrapped within the sheaths
of the body and personality; yet the dark, turbid, thick [layers of
the surface self] could not disclose its image. Only the
translucent essence of [a self in which all private wants have
been dispersed] permits it to become visible—as through a glass,
or in a quiet pond. And then, the moment it is recognized, its
manifestation bestows an immediate knowledge that this is our
true identity. The life-monad is remembered and greeted, even
though it is distinct from everything in this phenomenal
composite of body and psyche, which, under the delusion caused
by our usual ignorance and undiscriminating consciousness we
had crudely mistaken for the real and lasting essence of our
being.”
The Way to God through Psychophysical Exercises
Because of the dazzling heights to which it leads, raja yoga has
been known in India as “the royal (raj) road to reintegration.”
Designed for people who are of scientific bent, it is the way to
God through psychophysical experiments.
The West has honored empiricism in the laboratory but has often
distrusted it in spiritual matters, on grounds that it deifies
personal experience by making it the final test of truth. India has
not had such misgivings. Arguing that affairs of the spirit can be
approached as empirically as can outer nature, she encourages
people who possess the requisite inclination and willpower to
seek God in laboratory fashion. The approach calls for a strong
suspicion that our true selves are more than we now realize and a
passion to plumb their full extent. For those who possess these
qualifications, raja yoga outlines a series of steps that are to be
followed as rigorously as the steps in a physics experiment. If
these do not produce the expected consequences, the hypothesis
has been disproved, at least for this experimenter. The claim,
Huston Smith “Hinduism” – page 21 of 47
however, is that the experiences that unfold will confirm the
hypothesis in question.
Unlike most experiments in the natural sciences, those of raja
yoga are on one’s self, not external nature. Even where science
does turn to self-experiment—as in medicine, where ethics
prescribes that dangerous experiments may be performed only on
oneself—the Indic emphasis is different. The yogi experiments
not on his body (though we shall find the body definitely
involved) but on his mind. The experiments take the form of
practicing prescribed mental exercises and observing their
subjective effects.
three parts of the self, the West is in full agreement. What is
distinctive in the Hindu hypothesis is its postulation of a fourth
component. Underlying the other three, less perceived by the
conscious mind than even its private subconscious (though
related to it fully as much), stands Being Itself, infinite,
unthwarted, eternal. “I am smaller than the minutest atom,
likewise greater than the greatest. I am the whole, the diversifiedmulticolored-lovely-strange universe. I am the Ancient One. I am
Man, the Lord. I am the Being-of-Gold. I am the very state of
divine beatitude.”
No dogmas need be accepted, but experiments require
hypotheses they are designed to confirm or negate. The
hypothesis that underlies raja yoga is the Hindu doctrine of the
human self; and though it has been described several times
already, it needs to be restated as the background against which
the steps of raja yoga proceed.
Hinduism agrees with psychoanalysis that if only we could
dredge up portions of our individual unconscious—the third
layer of our being—we would experience a remarkable
expansion of our powers, a vivid freshening of life. But if we
could uncover something forgotten not only by ourselves but by
humanity as a whole, something that provides clues not simply to
our individual personalities and quirks but to all life and all
existence, what then? Would this not be momentous?
The theory postulates that the human self is a layered entity. We
need not go into the detailed Hindu analyses of these layers; the
accounts are technical, and future science may show them to be
more metaphorical than literally accurate. For our purposes it is
enough to summarize the hypothesis by reducing the principal
layers to four. First and most obviously, we have bodies. Next
comes the conscious layer of our minds. Underlying these two is
a third region, the realm of the individual subconscious. This has
been built up through our individual histories. Most of our past
experiences have been lost to our conscious memory, but those
experiences continue to shape our lives in ways that
contemporary psychoanalysis tries to understand. With these
The call, clearly, is to retreat from the world’s inconsequential
panorama to the deep-lying causal zones of the psyche where the
real problems and answers lie. Beyond this, however, raja yoga’s
response cannot be described, quite, as an answer to any
articulated call. Rather, it is a determined refusal to allow the
pitter-patter of daily existence to distract from the unknown
demands of some waiting urgency within: a kind of total strike
against the terms of routine, prosaic existence. The successful
yogi succeeds in carrying life's problem to this plane of new
magnitude and there resolving it. The insights of such people will
pertain not so much to passing personal and social predicaments
as to the unquenchable source by which all peoples and societies
Huston Smith “Hinduism” – page 22 of 47
are renewed, for their inspiration will be drawn from direct
contact with this primary spring. In body they will remain
individuals. In spirit each will have become unspecific, universal,
perfected.
The purpose of raja yoga is to demonstrate the validity of this
fourfold estimate of the human self by leading the inquirer to
direct personal experience of “the beyond that is within.” Its
method is willed introversion, one of the classic implements of
creative genius in any line of endeavor, here carried to its logical
term. Its intent is to drive the psychic energy of the self to its
deepest part to activate the lost continent of the true self. Risks
are of course involved; if the venture is bungled, at best
considerable time will have been lost, and at worst consciousness
can disintegrate into psychosis. Rightly done, however, under a
director who knows the terrain, the yogi will be able to integrate
the insights and experiences that come into view and will emerge
with heightened self-knowledge and greater self-control.
With the hypothesis raja yoga proposes to test before us, we are
prepared to indicate the eight steps of the experiment itself.
1 and 2. The first two concern the moral preliminaries with
which all four yogas begin. Anyone who sits down to this task of
self-discovery discovers that distractions lie in wait. Two of the
most obvious are bodily cravings and mental inquietude. Just as
concentration is about to begin in earnest, the yogi may
experience an urge for a cigarette or drink of water. Or
resentments, envies, and pangs of conscience obtrude. The first
two steps of raja yoga seek to clear the field of such static and to
lock the door against further intrusions. The first involves the
practice of five abstentions: from injury, lying, stealing,
sensuality, and greed. The second involves the practice of five
observances: cleanliness, contentment, self-control, studiousness,
and contemplation of the divine. Together they constitute the five
finger exercises of the human spirit in anticipation of more
intricate studies to come. Chinese and Japanese officers who
used to practice variations of raja yoga in Buddhist monasteries
with no religious interest whatsoever—simply to increase their
mental clarity and vitality—discovered that even in their case a
certain amount of moral comportment was a necessary condition
for success.
3. Raja yoga works with the body even while being ultimately
concerned with the mind. More precisely, it works through the
body to the mind. Beyond general health, its chief object here is
to keep the body from distracting the mind while it concentrates.
This is no small object, for an untrained body cannot go for long
without itching or fidgeting. Each sensation is a bid for attention
that distracts from the project at hand. The object of this third
step is to exclude such distractions—to get Brother Ass, as Saint
Francis called his body, properly tethered and out of the way.
What is attempted is a bodily state midway between discomfort,
which rouses and disturbs, and at the opposite pole a relaxation
so complete that it sinks into drowsiness. The Hindu discoveries
for achieving this balance are called asanas, a word usually
translated “postures” but which carries connotations of balance
and ease. The physical and psychological benefits of at least
some of these postures are now widely recognized. That the
Hindu texts describe eighty-four postures indicates extensive
experimentation in the area, but only about five are considered
important for meditation.
Huston Smith “Hinduism” – page 23 of 47
Of these, the one that has proved most important is the worldrenowned lotus position in which the yogi sits—ideally on a tiger
skin, symbolizing energy, overlaid with a deerskin, symbolizing
calm—with legs crossed in such a way that each foot rests sole
up on its opposing thigh. The spine, with allowance for its
natural curvature, is erect. Hands are placed, palms up, in the lap,
one atop the other with thumbs touching lightly. The eyes may be
closed or allowed to gaze unfocused on the ground or floor.
People who undertake this position after their bodies have
reached maturity find it painful, for it imposes strains on the
tendons which require months of conditioning to be
accommodated. When the position has been mastered, however,
it is surprisingly comfortable and seems to place the mind in a
state that conduces to meditation. Given that standing induces
fatigue, chairs invite slumping, and reclining encourages sleep,
there may be no other position in which the body can remain for
as long a stretch both still and alert.
4. Yogic postures protect the meditator from disruptions from the
body in its static aspects, but there remain bodily activities, such
as breathing. The yogi must breathe, but untrained breathing can
shatter the mind’s repose. Newcomers to meditation are surprised
by the extent to which unbridled breathing can intrude upon the
task. Bronchial irritations and congestions trigger coughs and
clearings of the throat. Each time the breath sinks too low, a deep
sigh erupts to shatter the spell. Nor are such obvious
irregularities the sole offenders; through concentrated silence, a
“normal” breath can rip like a crosscut, sending the hush
shivering, flying. The purpose of raja yoga’s fourth step is to
prevent such disruptions through the mastery of respiration. The
exercises prescribed toward this end are numerous and varied.
Some, like learning to breathe in through one nostril and out
through the other, sound bizarre, but studies suggest that they
may help to balance the brain's two hemispheres. On the whole
the exercises work toward slowing the breath, evening it, and
reducing the amount of air required. A typical exercise calls for
breathing so gently across goose down touching the nostrils that
an observer cannot tell if air is moving in or out. Breath
suspension is particularly important, for the body is most still
when it is not breathing. When, for example, the yogi is doing a
cycle of sixteen counts inhaling, sixty-four holding, and thirtytwo exhaling, there is a stretch during which animation is
reduced to the point that the mind seems disembodied. These are
cherished moments for the task at hand. “The light of a lamp,”
says the Bhagavad-Gita, “does not flicker in a windless place.”
5. Composed, body at ease, its breathing regular, the yogi sits
absorbed in contemplation. Suddenly, a door creaks, a sliver of
moonlight shimmers on the ground ahead, a mosquito whines,
and he is back in the world.
Restless the mind is,
So strongly shaken
In the grip of the senses.
Truly I think
The wind is no wilder. (Bhagavad-Gita, VI:34)
The senses turn outward. As bridges to the physical world they
are invaluable, but the yogi is seeking something else. On the
track of more interesting prey—the interior universe in which
(according to reports) is to be found the final secret of life’s
mystery—the yogi wants no sense bombardments. Fascinating in
its own way, the outer world has nothing to contribute to the
present task. For the yogi is tracking the underpinning of life’s
facade. Behind its physical front, where we experience the play
Huston Smith “Hinduism” – page 24 of 47
of life and death, the yogi seeks a deeper life that knows no
death. Is there, beneath our surface accounting of objects and
things, a dimension of awareness that is different not just in
degree but in kind? The yogi is testing a hypothesis: that the
deepest truth is opened only to those who turn their attention
inward, and in this experiment the physical senses can be nothing
but busybodies. “The senses turn outward,” observe the
Upanishads. “People, therefore, look toward what is outside and
see not the inward being. Rare are the wise who shut their eyes to
outward things and behold the glory of the Atman within.” Five
hundred years later the Bhagavad-Gita repeats that refrain:
Only that yogi
Whose joy is inward,
Inward his peace,
And his vision inward
Shall come to Brahman
And know Nirvana.
It is against the background of three millennia of this postulate
that Mahatma Gandhi proposed to our extroverted century: “Turn
the spotlight inward.”
The final, transitional step in the process of effecting this turn
from the external to the internal world is to close the doors of
perception, for only so can the clatter of the world’s boiler
factory be effectively shut out. That this can be done, and
without bodily mutilation, is a common experience. A man calls
his wife to remind her that they should leave for a social
engagement. Five minutes later she insists that she did not hear
him; he insists that she must have heard him, for he was in the
adjoining room and spoke distinctly. Who is right? It is a matter
of definition. If hearing means that sound waves of sufficient
amplitude beat on healthy eardrums, she heard; if it means that
they were noticed, sh...
Purchase answer to see full
attachment