Yoga Articles by Joel Kramer and Diana Alstad
The 3rd Perspective & Yoga - Bringing the East & West Together (Page 1)
Joel Kramer Yoga Journal, November/December 1981
As a Western man deeply involved in the practice of yoga, I have had to distill the truths of the East that make sense for my life and culture. Yoga is remarkable in its capacity to transcend the beliefs and attitudes of its origins. It gives people of any persuasion a tool to open up to themselves, enhance the quality of their lives, and discover new directions of experience. Yoga provides a context for a basic confrontation with yourself, making you more aware both as an individual and as a participant in the total movement of life.
Perhaps the best way to express what yoga can offer modern society is to explain how it has helped transform my outlook on the world. I was a highly trained intellectual who spent years of post-graduate work in philosophy and psychology trying to find the answer to the riddle of my existence. I put all my hopes into thought and science for answers that became more elusive the deeper I went. Science directs itself to those aspects of life that are observable, repeatable, predictable. But what about the unique, the creative, the spontaneous? Is the universe, am I, an entity that can be totally understood by thought? Are love, care and compassion ultimately reducible to an equation the mind can create? Or, are there realms of understanding that come from a different place?
The West has put enormous emphasis on understanding through external routes, looking at the world outside of oneself, whereas the East has focused its energy into “looking within.” Looking without" has given us an ever-increasing power and understanding of our environment and of the mechanical and predictable aspects of ourselves. Its strength lies in creating a process that is adjustable through feedback. Science values objectivity derived from shared experiences and the mutual agreement of specialists. It proves itself by prediction, control, and workability. The weakness of “looking outside” is that our understanding remains limited to the repeatable and mechanical aspects of experience. We take on the beliefs of the times, going to experts to find out about the world and ourselves. When we become depressed, we go to doctors or psychologists who tell us that certain chemicals in the brain, or an early trauma, are causing the depression. Do the chemicals cause the depression, or are they a result of being depressed? Do I create or have some control over my feelings, or am I merely the effect of impersonal forces and past events?
“Looking within” is the Eastern approach to finding out. It is what the long tradition of yoga has developed. Its strength lies in that you can touch directly into what's going on inside. And, since you are an expression of nature, it enables you to experience nature's essence in a first-hand way. A human being is a miniature universe, and to the extent a person can truly understand the inner workings of his being, he can touch into patterns of impersonal universal processes. The great danger of “looking within” lies in how easily fear, desire, preference and attachment create subjectivity that can prevent a human being from learning. It is so easy to tell yourself what you want to hear and be blinded by your mental projections and emotions. If “looking within” is colored by my wants and images from the past, then what I see will itself be tainted with the very subjectivity I hope to transcend. This is the great paradox and weakness of the inner path. Traditionally, the emotional bond between the seeker on an inner journey and a teacher or guru has been the link that has helped counter the dangers of getting lost in the mind’s endless capacity of creating its own world with itself at the center. There is a further danger. Out of our needs for certainty, security, and feeling protected, it is so easy to create a subjective world with the guru at the center. Here, under the guise of “looking within,” one can in fact be internalizing another person's point of view.
In my own approach to yoga and to life, I have been interested in bringing together and integrating the Eastern and Western perspectives. What I have come upon to date is a way that has been a continual source of renewal for me, making it possible to live in our highly technological world while incorporating in my life the wisdom of the East.
THE EASTERN PERSPECTIVE
In order to understand the difference between "looking within" and "looking without," I had to examine the world views that underlie each of them. The East looks at the world from what I call the "point of view of the one," proclaiming the basic underlying unity of all things to be the only reality. Here, separation, division, and individuation are illusion, or maya. In other words; you and I and everything else that appears separate are actually an illusion. In this context, it's easy to see why "looking within" became the path. Since the senses are not to be trusted, and "out there" is not real or important, where else can you look but within? God, soul, or spirit is inside - beyond thought, beyond desire and emotion. This creates a value system which emphasizes ego-loss and subordination of self to the grand design. Life then takes on a deterministic flavor, which breeds resignation. You live out your karma, hoping for a better next life, which eventually will bring you to the final reward - getting off the wheel of rebirth and death, out of illusion, into oneness or the void.
History in the East is cyclical; everything that matters has all been done before and thus the path is prescribed. Truth is eternal and unchanging. This is why finding a spiritual master (someone who has made the journey past illusion) is so important. Reality is found by "remembering" impersonal eternal truths blocked by the machinations of ego, such as desire, fear, and other aspects of self-centeredness. You must get out of your own way and participate in the flow of life by not resisting your destiny. Surrendering to "what is" is coupled with a tendency to value renunciation. For example, if the conflicts of sexuality bind your energy, then renounce sex. If you are mechanically led by pleasure, renounce it. Also, turn your face away from negativity - root out anger, spite, envy and, of course, violence.
Carl Jung aptly saw that when a person or a culture accentuates one aspect of life, its opposite thrives in the unconscious. This causes the behavior one is trying to suppress to manifest itself in devious, unacknowledged ways. For example, the East's way to truth - "looking within" and experiencing it in the "now" - is counterbalanced by its authoritarianism and reverence for tradition. Renunciation of worldly pleasures is done to achieve more sublime ones, which are thought of as "bliss" instead of mere pleasure.