Since time immemorial, there have been seekers of the truth in every corner of the world. In a bid to know the truth, they observed everything around them without considering the importance of the observer himself.
The truth seekers of the East differ from those of the West in one important thing – they don’t detach themselves from their observations. When you add yourself into whatever stream of knowledge or philosophy you pursue, it then would connect that stream of knowledge with the ocean of truth to churn out the best to give you the epitome of perfection.
To know the truth, you need to know first that you are the catalyst. The study of that catalyst itself is a bigger subject which, in fact, every seeker from the East had begun their investigation with.
The wise men from the East considered the five sense organs as just their tools to measure external stimuli. They knew that the quality of data collected through these “tools” are subjected to errors depending on the sensitivity of these “tools”.
Suppose you visit a friend’s house after a long time and he is serving you a cup of coffee with a spoon of sugar added to it. When you drink it, your tongue finds or detects the sweetness in it. Then you have one or two Gulab Jamuns which happen to be much sweeter. Then again when you come back to the same cup of coffee, to your surprise the coffee feels sugarless. Why? Because you have recalibrated the standard sensitivity of that tool (your tongue) against sweetness with that of a Gulab Jamun. Your tongue will not read or detect anything below the sweetness of Gulab Jamun for some time.
Not only your tongue, but the other sense organs too have the same kind of limitation, based on its use, misuse or abuse. Even if you get a correct reading through these tools, there is a processing end, which is your mind, which again is subject to a number of identifications. Your logical conclusions cannot always be free from prejudice or bias triggered by your society, profession, race, religion, color, ethnicity etc… the list of such influencing factors would go on.
In the East, initiation to knowledge starts with the study of the tools and the processer- the five senses and the mind. The way they function, their limitations, potentials and possibilities. Recalibration of your sense organs to its subtlest point, polishing your organs of action and deconditioning the mind are the preliminary steps to perceive truth.
Systematic scientific methods were codified in this line to help those interested to bring out their full potential. And that is the science of yoga. The ultimate aim of a yogi is self-realization. The journey towards self-realization dissolves everything that you were once self-identified with. And you identify yourself with the same star dust which contains every information and later you have to dissolve that too. A different dimension of reality dawns upon you. All the seekers and seers in the East were such yogis.
When the West looked all around outside for the truth, the East looked inward. That is exactly why any form of knowledge, art or science was available in its fully blossomed state in the East. Knowledge will be complete only when the knower becomes a part of it. Anything you seek should end in you; else the journey continues.
