The yoga process here, in this great endeavour known as samyama, attempts to cut
at the root of this problem by a direct focusing of the attention of the mind on the
very same thing with which it cannot reconcile itself—namely, the object. The name
‘object’ is given to that with which we cannot reconcile ourselves; otherwise, it will
not be an object. It will be like us only—it will be a subject. It is something different
from us and, therefore, we call it an object. It stands outside us because we cannot
cope with its ways of working and the manner of its relationship with other things of
a similar nature.
The object that we see with the eyes, for instance, is therefore, on a deeper probe,
revealed to be an index of a condition which is cosmical in nature. It is not isolated as
it appears. The vast prakriti, being universal in its operations, focuses itself on a
pinpoint in the form of an object of sense. And every object has the background of a
universal pressure which prakriti exerts at any given moment of time. This pressure
is exerted by prakriti on any object, whatever be the shape of that object. The
different characters exhibited by different objects do not in any way mean a
difference in the nature of the pressure exerted by prakriti on these objects. It has a
uniform pressure communicated to everything and anything, and that pressure is the
pattern which prakriti wants to maintain in the form of this manifested universe.
That is called the laksana.
As it was mentioned previously, this universe is only one of the forms which prakriti
can take. In every kalpa, or age-cycle, the form of the universe changes. Kalpa means
a cycle of time beginning with the manifestation of the universe and ending with its
dissolution, or pralaya. Between the kalpas is a condition of equipoise called
samyavastha which contains the potentialities for creation of the next kalpa. In
every kalpa, prakriti takes a particular time-form for the projection of a universe
determined by the potentialities existing originally in the condition of equipoise
called samyavastha. All schools of thought tell us that the nature of the universe
manifested in any particular kalpa is equivalent to the requisite conditions necessary
for the fulfilment of the unfulfilled desires of individuals who lay buried,
unconscious, at the time of the dissolution of the world prior to this particular
manifestation.
What we are told here is that any particular object—or any particular group of
objects, for the matter of that—do not constitute a separate entity or a reality by
itself, or by themselves. On the other hand, this particular object, or a group of
objects, represents merely a condition of prakriti, even as the mind itself is such a
condition in a more rarefied form. The subjective manifestation of prakriti is the
mind, and its objective manifestation is the object, the visaya.
In samyama, or the practice of meditation in the form of total absorption, this point
is borne in mind—namely, that the meditation is more on a situation or a condition
rather than a compact substance. We are under the mistaken notion that there is a
solid object in front of us which is completely different from other objects, with no
connection at all with other things, separated by space and time. This is not the truth
of things.
The true state of affairs is that any particular form that is visible or tangible in any
other manner to the senses is a representation of a particular condition, or avastha,
of prakriti, which has as its background the laksana, or the pattern which is in its