One of the things that makes the Bhagavad-gita, yoga’s quintessential wisdom text, so compelling, is that Krishna, the speaker of the Gita, offers his friend, Arjuna, a clear and inspiring vision of a possible future.
That future is one of equanimity, even in the midst of chaos, and freedom from the miseries of material life.
Krishna speaks about how “those who” think in this way or see in that way or act according to this or that higher form of knowledge achieve these transcendental states of consciousness.
It’s a pretty attractive vision, but Arjuna has doubts: it sounds too good to be true.
So, Arjuna asks Krishna to tell him how to recognize such a person.
Krishna obliges by describing the characteristics of such a person and then goes a step further: he tells Arjuna how to attain that state of consciousness for himself.
And, by extension, he tells us how to do it, too.
This is the functional aspect of a yoga wisdom text: it provides us with the means to make transcendental knowledge experiential.
Yoga wisdom literature performs five functions:
- a metaphysical function that reveals the divine nature of the world,
- a cosmological function that gives us a map of reality and shows us where we are,
- a sociological function that shows us how to integrate our spiritual and material lives,
- a psychological function that helps us to understand how our minds work,
- and an illuminative function that provides us with the means to recreate the revelatory experiences of the authors.
Books like the Bhagavad-gita don’t just describe a condition of liberation from material consciousness; they also tell us how we can achieve it. They’re like recipe books: you just follow the recipe. As with any recipe, once you understand the basic principles, you can personalize it according to your tastes.
Similarly, we can personalize our practice within the parameters of the universal principles of yoga. The essential principles of how you cook up self-realization are set and unchangeable, but there are also elements that are variable, that change according to time, place, circumstance, and the individual practitioner.
Knowing the difference between changeless principles and variable details is the art of understanding how to practically apply the theories of yoga in order to achieve the experience of yoga.
A future of equanimity in the midst of chaos and freedom from the miseries of material life is possible. And it doesn’t have to be a distant future, either. As Krishna says in the Bhagavad-gita,
Wishing you all good fortune,
– Hari-k