Text 53] Dhrtarastra Quits Home 723

PURPORT

The yoga system is a mechanical way to control the senses and the mind
and divert them from matter to spirit. The preliminary processes are the
sitting posture, meditation, spiritual thoughts, manipulation of air passing
within the body, and gradual situation in trance, facing the Absolute
Person Paramatma. Such mechanical ways of rising up to the spiritual
platform prescribe some regulative principles of taking bath daily three
times, fasting as far as possible, sitting and concentrating the mind on
spiritual matters and thus gradually becoming free from visaya or material
objectives. Material existence means to be absorbed in the material ob-
jective, which is simply illusory. House, country, family, society, children,
property, business, etc., are some of the material coverings of the spirit
atma, and the yoga system helps one to become free from all these
illusory thoughts and gradually turn towards the Absolute Person Param-
atma. By material association and education, we learn simply to concen-
trate on flimsy things, but yoga is the process of forgetting them altogether.
Modern so-called yogis and yoga systems manifest some magical feats, and
ignorant persons are attracted by such false things. or they accept the
yoga system as a cheap healing process for diseases of the gross body. But
factually the yoga system is the process of learning to forget what we have
acquired throughout the struggle for existence. Dhrtarastra was all along
engaged in improving family affairs by raising the standard of living of his
sons or by usurping the property of the Pandavas for the sake of his own
sons. These are common affairs for a man grossly materialistic and without
knowledge of the spiritual force. He does not see how this can drag one
from heaven to hell. By the grace of his younger brother Vidura, Dhrtar-
astra was enlightened and could see his grossly illusory engagements, and
by such enlightenment he was able to leave home for spiritual relaization.
Sri Naradadeva was just foretelling the way of his spiritual progress in a
place which was sanctified by the flow of the celestial Ganges. Drinking
water only without solid food is also considered fasting. This is necessary
for advancement of spiritual knowledge. A foolish man wants to be a
cheap yogi without observing the regulative principles. A man who has no
control over the tongue at first can hardly become a yogi. Yogi and bhogi
are two opposite terms. The bhogi or the merryman who eats and drinks
cannot be a yogi, for a yogi is never allowed to eat and drink unrestrictedly.
We may note with profit how Dhrtarastra began his yoga system by drink-
ing water only and sitting calmly in a place with a spiritual atmosphere,
deeply absorbed in the thoughts of the Lord Hari, the Personality of God-
head.
