be reborn even without our asking for rebirth. We are not asked whether we would
like to be reborn. Nobody is going to ask us anything. We are pressed into it.
This is a great, great question before the philosophy of yoga. Can we do something
about these things, or are we entirely helpless? Yoga tells us that we are not helpless
as we appear to be. We seem to be helpless because we have assumed a kind of false
independence of ourselves. If we would like to use a word, we are too ‘arrogant’ in
our behaviour with things. And we are too egoistic to admit that there are forces
beyond us. There is always a feature which asserts itself in the mind and
preponderates over the mind, proclaiming its supremacy over things. “Man is the
maker of things,” and various sayings are well known to us. But what can man make
when we say, “Man is the maker of things”? He can make nothing. He only undergoes
sorrow.
This state of affairs has arisen on account of a lack of control over the causes of our
experiences. Birth, death and the process of life are experiences we undergo by the
pressure of forces which are outside us. Unless we handle these forces effectively and
gain control over them, we will have to be in this condition only, for all time. Yoga
tells us that it is possible to handle these forces properly by an understanding of the
modus operandi of these forces. There is nothing ultimately impossible, says yoga. A
great solace it gives to mankind. It is possible for the human being to do everything,
provided the human individual follows the prevailing law of the cosmos. Therefore,
we must first understand what the law of the cosmos is, because if the law of the
cosmos is not known, we cannot abide by it. If we do not know what the law is, how
can we follow it? So, first of all, we need to know the law that prevails in this universe
which we are supposed to follow, and which we are apparently infringing. This is the
philosophy behind yoga.
The cosmos is a single integrated being—this is what the yoga philosophy tells us. Or,
for the matter of that, all final philosophies of the world tell this truth to us. There is
one integrated being. We may call it an organism, if we like, in modern scientific
language. There is only one reality. Ekam sat viprā bahudhā vadanti (R.V. I.164.46),
says also the Rig Veda. Many varieties are seen, as it were, but iva—not really. The
duality of perception and the multiplicity of objects is a peculiar phenomena, a set of
phenomena, which present themselves before human perception. But these
phenomena are not the reality. There is a reality behind these phenomena. Why
these phenomena appear at all is a question we may try to answer a little later.
The point on hand is that the universe, which rules over everything with its
inexorable law, is a single government that is a compact organisation of forces with
very subtle mechanisms of control over the least things in the world. No one can
escape the operation of this law of the cosmos. There are mechanisms in every atom
of creation that can detect the events taking place anywhere, not only inside the
atom. Such is the regularity of nature, such is the clarity of the perception of nature,
and such is the strictness of the operation of the law of nature. If this is the truth of
things, and all things are organically related, then that ‘ultimate substance’ is the
ruling force. If we would like to use the language of Samkhya, or Patanjali’s Yoga
Sutras, we can call this prakriti, or pradhana. The ultimate substance whose law
operates everywhere—inside as well as outside—is called prakriti.