Day 50
When someone is anxious, they are aware of the passage of time; of every moment. However, then the total focus is on an event or a happening rather than just on time. Someone may be waiting for a train, a bus or a boat and they will go on thinking of it is coming. The focus is on the concerned object rather than just on time.
But, if there is a little shift done by you, then when you wait for somebody or something, you will just wait for the moment - for "Now". This is uniting with the time. This is Yoga. When you do this, your mind is in he moment and waiting for nothing.
However, you are still waiting. This adds a different quality to the consciousness. It sharpens the intellect and softens the heart. This is called the Yoga of action. This is the next sutra, Sadhana Pada. Sadhna Pada means, the path of practice.
Kriya Yoga is the Yoga of action. Action is part of this creation. There is activity in everything in creation - from an atom to the sun, moon and the stars. The entire creation is activity. There is nothing that is stable or immobile in this creation.
The Brahman, the infinity is filled with infinite activity. There is absolutely no silence at all. There is activity even in sleep. You may think that, when you are asleep, there is no activity. However, there is tremendous activity then. Your body grows more during sleep than during wakefulness.
That is why a growing child sleeps longer. A youth sleeps more than an aged person because there is a lot of metabolic activity in a youth. The body is getting built up in a child. Every cell is multiplying and in sleep the cells multiply more.
If you deprive somebody of sleep, their growth gets stunted.
Even in silence, there is activity. At the time, in every activity there is a corner that is very silent. Krishna asked Arjuna if he knew who was really intelligent.
When he said that he did not, Krishna said that a person who saw silence in activity and activity in silence was intelligent. How do you see silence in activity and activity in silence? It needs sharpness of awareness, alertness and keenness. And this can be there when there is skill in your activity. Yoga is the skill in activity.
Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankarji
PATANJALI YOGA SUTRAS