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+The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, by Charles Johnston
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
+of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
+www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you
+will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before
+using this eBook.
+
+Title: The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali
+
+Author: Charles Johnston
+
+Release Date: February, 2001 [eBook #2526]
+[Most recently updated: May 14, 2022]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+Produced by: J. C. Byers and Dringbloom
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE YOGA SUTRAS OF PATANJALI ***
+
+
+
+
+THE YOGA SUTRAS OF PATANJALI
+
+“The Book of the Spiritual Man”
+
+An Interpretation By
+Charles Johnston
+
+Bengal Civil Service, Retired;
+Indian Civil Service, Sanskrit Prizeman;
+Dublin University, Sanskrit Prizeman
+
+
+Contents
+
+ INTRODUCTION TO BOOK I
+ BOOK I
+ INTRODUCTION TO BOOK II
+ BOOK II
+ INTRODUCTION TO BOOK III
+ BOOK III
+ INTRODUCTION TO BOOK IV
+ BOOK IV
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION TO BOOK I
+
+
+The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali are in themselves exceedingly brief, less
+than ten pages of large type in the original. Yet they contain the
+essence of practical wisdom, set forth in admirable order and detail.
+The theme, if the present interpreter be right, is the great
+regeneration, the birth of the spiritual from the psychical man: the
+same theme which Paul so wisely and eloquently set forth in writing to
+his disciples in Corinth, the theme of all mystics in all lands.
+
+We think of ourselves as living a purely physical life, in these
+material bodies of ours. In reality, we have gone far indeed from pure
+physical life; for ages, our life has been psychical, we have been
+centred and immersed in the psychic nature. Some of the schools of
+India say that the psychic nature is, as it were, a looking-glass,
+wherein are mirrored the things seen by the physical eyes, and heard by
+the physical ears. But this is a magic mirror; the images remain, and
+take a certain life of their own. Thus within the psychic realm of our
+life there grows up an imaged world wherein we dwell; a world of the
+images of things seen and heard, and therefore a world of memories; a
+world also of hopes and desires, of fears and regrets. Mental life
+grows up among these images, built on a measuring and comparing, on the
+massing of images together into general ideas; on the abstraction of
+new notions and images from these; till a new world is built up within,
+full of desires and hates, ambition, envy, longing, speculation,
+curiosity, self-will, self-interest.
+
+The teaching of the East is, that all these are true powers overlaid by
+false desires; that though in manifestation psychical, they are in
+essence spiritual; that the psychical man is the veil and prophecy of
+the spiritual man.
+
+The purpose of life, therefore, is the realizing of that prophecy; the
+unveiling of the immortal man; the birth of the spiritual from the
+psychical, whereby we enter our divine inheritance and come to inhabit
+Eternity. This is, indeed, salvation, the purpose of all true religion,
+in all times.
+
+Patanjali has in mind the spiritual man, to be born from the psychical.
+His purpose is, to set in order the practical means for the unveiling
+and regeneration, and to indicate the fruit, the glory and the power,
+of that new birth.
+
+Through the Sutras of the first book, Patanjali is concerned with the
+first great problem, the emergence of the spiritual man from the veils
+and meshes of the psychic nature, the moods and vestures of the mental
+and emotional man. Later will come the consideration of the nature and
+powers of the spiritual man, once he stands clear of the psychic veils
+and trammels, and a view of the realms in which these new spiritual
+powers are to be revealed.
+
+At this point may come a word of explanation. I have been asked why I
+use the word Sutras, for these rules of Patanjali’s system, when the
+word Aphorism has been connected with them in our minds for a
+generation. The reason is this: the name Aphorism suggests, to me at
+least, a pithy sentence of very general application; a piece of
+proverbial wisdom that may be quoted in a good many sets of
+circumstance, and which will almost bear on its face the evidence of
+its truth. But with a Sutra the case is different. It comes from the
+same root as the word “sew,” and means, indeed, a thread, suggesting,
+therefore, a close knit, consecutive chain of argument. Not only has
+each Sutra a definite place in the system, but further, taken out of
+this place, it will be almost meaningless, and will by no means be
+self-evident. So I have thought best to adhere to the original word.
+The Sutras of Patanjali are as closely knit together, as dependent on
+each other, as the propositions of Euclid, and can no more be taken out
+of their proper setting.
+
+In the second part of the first book, the problem of the emergence of
+the spiritual man is further dealt with. We are led to the
+consideration of the barriers to his emergence, of the overcoming of
+the barriers, and of certain steps and stages in the ascent from the
+ordinary consciousness of practical life, to the finer, deeper, radiant
+consciousness of the spiritual man.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK I
+
+
+1. OM: Here follows Instruction in Union.
+
+Union, here as always in the Scriptures of India, means union of the
+individual soul with the Oversoul; of the personal consciousness with
+the Divine Consciousness, whereby the mortal becomes immortal, and
+enters the Eternal. Therefore, salvation is, first, freedom from sin
+and the sorrow which comes from sin, and then a divine and eternal
+well-being, wherein the soul partakes of the being, the wisdom and
+glory of God.
+
+2. Union, spiritual consciousness, is gained through control of the
+versatile psychic nature.
+
+The goal is the full consciousness of the spiritual man, illumined by
+the Divine Light. Nothing except the obdurate resistance of the psychic
+nature keeps us back from the goal. The psychical powers are spiritual
+powers run wild, perverted, drawn from their proper channel. Therefore
+our first task is, to regain control of this perverted nature, to
+chasten, purify and restore the misplaced powers.
+
+3. Then the Seer comes to consciousness in his proper nature.
+
+Egotism is but the perversion of spiritual being. Ambition is the
+inversion of spiritual power. Passion is the distortion of love. The
+mortal is the limitation of the immortal. When these false images give
+place to true, then the spiritual man stands forth luminous, as the
+sun, when the clouds disperse.
+
+4. Heretofore the Seer has been enmeshed in the activities of the
+psychic nature.
+
+The power and life which are the heritage of the spiritual man have
+been caught and enmeshed in psychical activities. Instead of pure being
+in the Divine, there has been fretful, combative, egotism, its hand
+against every man. Instead of the light of pure vision, there have been
+restless senses nave been re and imaginings. Instead of spiritual joy,
+the undivided joy of pure being, there has been self-indulgence of body
+and mind. These are all real forces, but distorted from their true
+nature and goal. They must be extricated, like gems from the matrix,
+like the pith from the reed, steadily, without destructive violence.
+Spiritual powers are to be drawn forth from the psychic meshes.
+
+5. The psychic activities are five; they are either subject or not
+subject to the five hindrances (Book II, 3).
+
+The psychic nature is built up through the image-making power, the
+power which lies behind and dwells in mind-pictures. These pictures do
+not remain quiescent in the mind; they are kinetic, restless,
+stimulating to new acts. Thus the mind-image of an indulgence suggests
+and invites to a new indulgence; the picture of past joy is framed in
+regrets or hopes. And there is the ceaseless play of the desire to
+know, to penetrate to the essence of things, to classify. This, too,
+busies itself ceaselessly with the mind-images. So that we may classify
+the activities of the psychic nature thus:
+
+6. These activities are: Sound intellection, unsound intellection,
+predication, sleep, memory.
+
+We have here a list of mental and emotional powers; of powers that
+picture and observe, and of powers that picture and feel. But the power
+to know and feel is spiritual and immortal. What is needed is, not to
+destroy it, but to raise it from the psychical to the spiritual realm.
+
+7. The elements of sound intellection are: direct observation,
+inductive reason, and trustworthy testimony.
+
+Each of these is a spiritual power, thinly veiled. Direct observation
+is the outermost form of the Soul’s pure vision. Inductive reason rests
+on the great principles of continuity and correspondence; and these, on
+the supreme truth that all life is of the One. Trustworthy testimony,
+the sharing of one soul in the wisdom of another, rests on the ultimate
+oneness of all souls.
+
+8. Unsound intellection is false understanding, not resting on a
+perception of the true nature of things.
+
+When the object is not truly perceived, when the observation is
+inaccurate and faulty, thought or reasoning based on that mistaken
+perception is of necessity false and unsound.
+
+9. Predication is carried on through words or thoughts not resting on
+an object perceived.
+
+The purpose of this Sutra is, to distinguish between the mental process
+of predication, and observation, induction or testimony. Predication is
+the attribution of a quality or action to a subject, by adding to it a
+predicate. In the sentence, “the man is wise,” “the man” is the
+subject; “is wise” is the predicate. This may be simply an interplay of
+thoughts, without the presence of the object thought of; or the things
+thought of may be imaginary or unreal; while observation, induction and
+testimony always go back to an object.
+
+10. Sleep is the psychic condition which rests on mind states, all
+material things being absent.
+
+In waking life, we have two currents of perception; an outer current of
+physical things seen and heard and perceived; an inner current of
+mind-images and thoughts. The outer current ceases in sleep; the inner
+current continues, and watching the mind-images float before the field
+of consciousness, we “dream.” Even when there are no dreams, there is
+still a certain consciousness in sleep, so that, on waking, one says,
+“I have slept well,” or “I have slept badly.”
+
+11. Memory is holding to mind-images of things perceived, without
+modifying them.
+
+Here, as before, the mental power is explained in terms of mind-images,
+which are the material of which the psychic world is built, Therefore
+the sages teach that the world of our perception, which is indeed a
+world of mind-images, is but the wraith or shadow of the real and
+everlasting world. In this sense, memory is but the psychical inversion
+of the spiritual, ever-present vision. That which is ever before the
+spiritual eye of the Seer needs not to be remembered.
+
+12. The control of these psychic activities comes through the right use
+of the will, and through ceasing from self-indulgence.
+
+If these psychical powers and energies, even such evil things as
+passion and hate and fear, are but spiritual powers fallen and
+perverted, how are we to bring about their release and restoration? Two
+means are presented to us: the awakening of the spiritual will, and the
+purification of mind and thought.
+
+13. The right use of the will is the steady, effort to stand in
+spiritual being.
+
+We have thought of ourselves, perhaps, as creatures moving upon this
+earth, rather helpless, at the mercy of storm and hunger and our
+enemies. We are to think of ourselves as immortals, dwelling in the
+Light, encompassed and sustained by spiritual powers. The steady effort
+to hold this thought will awaken dormant and unrealized powers, which
+will unveil to us the nearness of the Eternal.
+
+14. This becomes a firm resting-place, when followed long,
+persistently, with earnestness.
+
+We must seek spiritual life in conformity with the laws of spiritual
+life, with earnestness, humility, gentle charity, which is an
+acknowledgment of the One Soul within us all. Only through obedience to
+that shared Life, through perpetual remembrance of our oneness with all
+Divine Being, our nothingness apart from Divine Being, can we enter our
+inheritance.
+
+15. Ceasing from self-indulgence is conscious mastery over the thirst
+for sensuous pleasure here or hereafter.
+
+Rightly understood, the desire for sensation is the desire of being,
+the distortion of the soul’s eternal life. The lust of sensual stimulus
+and excitation rests on the longing to feel one’s life keenly, to gain
+the sense of being really alive. This sense of true life comes only
+with the coming of the soul, and the soul comes only in silence, after
+self-indulgence has been courageously and loyally stilled, through
+reverence before the coming soul.
+
+16. The consummation of this is freedom from thirst for any mode of
+psychical activity, through the establishment of the spiritual man.
+
+In order to gain a true understanding of this teaching, study must be
+supplemented by devoted practice, faith by works. The reading of the
+words will not avail. There must be a real effort to stand as the Soul,
+a real ceasing from self-indulgence. With this awakening of the
+spiritual will, and purification, will come at once the growth of the
+spiritual man and our awakening consciousness as the spiritual man; and
+this, attained in even a small degree, will help us notably in our
+contest. To him that hath, shall be given.
+
+17. Meditation with an object follows these stages: first, exterior
+examining, then interior judicial action, then joy, then realization of
+individual being.
+
+In the practice of meditation, a beginning may be made by fixing the
+attention upon some external object, such as a sacred image or picture,
+or a part of a book of devotion. In the second stage, one passes from
+the outer object to an inner pondering upon its lessons. The third
+stage is the inspiration, the heightening of the spiritual will, which
+results from this pondering. The fourth stage is the realization of
+one’s spiritual being, as enkindled by this meditation.
+
+18. After the exercise of the will has stilled the psychic activities,
+meditation rests only on the fruit of former meditations.
+
+In virtue of continued practice and effort, the need of an external
+object on which to rest the meditation is outgrown. An interior state
+of spiritual consciousness is reached, which is called “the cloud of
+things knowable” (Book IV, 29).
+
+19. Subjective consciousness arising from a natural cause is possessed
+by those who have laid aside their bodies and been absorbed into
+subjective nature.
+
+Those who have died, entered the paradise between births, are in a
+condition resembling meditation without an external object. But in the
+fullness of time, the seeds of desire in them will spring up, and they
+will be born again into this world.
+
+20. For the others, there is spiritual consciousness, led up to by
+faith, valour, right mindfulness, one-pointedness, perception.
+
+It is well to keep in mind these steps on the path to illumination:
+faith, valour, right mindfulness, one-pointedness, perception. Not one
+can be dispensed with; all must be won. First faith; and then from
+faith, valour; from valour, right mindfulness; from right mindfulness,
+a one-pointed aspiration toward the soul; from this, perception; and
+finally, full vision as the soul.
+
+21. Spiritual consciousness is nearest to those of keen, intense will.
+
+The image used is the swift impetus of the torrent; the kingdom must be
+taken by force. Firm will comes only through effort; effort is inspired
+by faith. The great secret is this: it is not enough to have
+intuitions; we must act on them; we must live them.
+
+22. The will may be weak, or of middle strength, or intense.
+
+Therefore there is a spiritual consciousness higher than this. For
+those of weak will, there is this counsel: to be faithful in obedience,
+to live the life, and thus to strengthen the will to more perfect
+obedience. The will is not ours, but God’s, and we come into it only
+through obedience. As we enter into the spirit of God, we are permitted
+to share the power of God.
+
+ Higher than the three stages of the way is the goal, the end of the
+ way.
+
+23. Or spiritual consciousness may be gained by ardent service of the
+Master.
+
+If we think of our lives as tasks laid on us by the Master of Life, if
+we look on all duties as parts of that Master’s work, entrusted to us,
+and forming our life-work; then, if we obey, promptly, loyally,
+sincerely, we shall enter by degrees into the Master’s life and share
+the Master’s power. Thus we shall be initiated into the spiritual will.
+
+24. The Master is the spiritual man, who is free from hindrances,
+bondage to works, and the fruition and seed of works.
+
+The Soul of the Master, the Lord, is of the same nature as the soul in
+us; but we still bear the burden of many evils, we are in bondage
+through our former works, we are under the dominance of sorrow. The
+Soul of the Master is free from sin and servitude and sorrow.
+
+25. In the Master is the perfect seed of Omniscience.
+
+The Soul of the Master is in essence one with the Oversoul, and
+therefore partaker of the Oversoul’s all-wisdom and all-power. All
+spiritual attainment rests on this, and is possible because the soul
+and the Oversoul are One.
+
+26. He is the Teacher of all who have gone before, since he is not
+limited by Time.
+
+From the beginning, the Oversoul has been the Teacher of all souls,
+which, by their entrance into the Oversoul, by realizing their oneness
+with the Oversoul, have inherited the kingdom of the Light. For the
+Oversoul is before Time, and Time, father of all else, is one of His
+children.
+
+27. His word is OM.
+
+OM: the symbol of the Three in One, the three worlds in the Soul; the
+three times, past, present, future, in Eternity; the three Divine
+Powers, Creation, Preservation, Transformation, in the one Being; the
+three essences, immortality, omniscience, joy, in the one Spirit. This
+is the Word, the Symbol, of the Master and Lord, the perfected
+Spiritual Man.
+
+28. Let there be soundless repetition of OM and meditation thereon.
+
+This has many meanings, in ascending degrees. There is, first, the
+potency of the word itself, as of all words. Then there is the manifold
+significance of the symbol, as suggested above. Lastly, there is the
+spiritual realization of the high essences thus symbolized. Thus we
+rise step by step to the Eternal.
+
+29. Thence come the awakening of interior consciousness, and the
+removal of barriers.
+
+Here again faith must be supplemented by works, the life must be led as
+well as studied, before the full meaning can be understood. The
+awakening of spiritual consciousness can only be understood in measure
+as it is entered. It can only be entered where the conditions are
+present: purity of heart, and strong aspiration, and the resolute
+conquest of each sin.
+
+This, however, may easily be understood: that the recognition of the
+three worlds as resting in the Soul leads us to realize ourselves and
+all life as of the Soul; that, as we dwell, not in past, present or
+future, but in the Eternal, we become more at one with the Eternal;
+that, as we view all organization, preservation, mutation as the work
+of the Divine One, we shall come more into harmony with the One, and
+thus remove the barrier’ in our path toward the Light.
+
+In the second part of the first book, the problem of the emergence of
+the spiritual man is further dealt with. We are led to the
+consideration of the barriers to his emergence, of the overcoming of
+the barriers, and of certain steps and stages in the ascent from the
+ordinary consciousness of practical life, to the finer, deeper, radiant
+consciousness of the spiritual man.
+
+30. The barriers to interior consciousness, which drive the psychic
+nature this way and that, are these: sickness, inertia, doubt,
+lightmindedness, laziness, intemperance, false notions, inability to
+reach a stage of meditation, or to hold it when reached.
+
+We must remember that we are considering the spiritual man as enwrapped
+and enmeshed by the psychic nature, the emotional and mental powers;
+and as unable to come to clear consciousness, unable to stand and see
+clearly, because of the psychic veils of the personality. Nine of these
+are enumerated, and they go pretty thoroughly into the brute toughness
+of the psychic nature.
+
+Sickness is included rather for its effect on the emotions and mind,
+since bodily infirmity, such as blindness or deafness, is no
+insuperable barrier to spiritual life, and may sometimes be a help, as
+cutting off distractions. It will be well for us to ponder over each of
+these nine activities, thinking of each as a psychic state, a barrier
+to the interior consciousness of the spiritual man.
+
+31. Grieving, despondency, bodily restlessness, the drawing in and
+sending forth of the life-breath also contribute to drive the psychic
+nature to and fro.
+
+The first two moods are easily understood. We can well see bow a sodden
+psychic condition, flagrantly opposed to the pure and positive joy of
+spiritual life, would be a barrier. The next, bodily restlessness, is
+in a special way the fault of our day and generation. When it is
+conquered, mental restlessness will be half conquered, too.
+
+The next two terms, concerning the life breath, offer some difficulty.
+The surface meaning is harsh and irregular breathing; the deeper
+meaning is a life of harsh and irregular impulses.
+
+32. Steady application to a principle is the way to put a stop to
+these.
+
+The will, which, in its pristine state, was full of vigour, has been
+steadily corrupted by self-indulgence, the seeking of moods and
+sensations for sensation’s sake. Hence come all the morbid and sickly
+moods of the mind. The remedy is a return to the pristine state of the
+will, by vigorous, positive effort; or, as we are here told, by steady
+application to a principle. The principle to which we should thus
+steadily apply ourselves should be one arising from the reality of
+spiritual life; valorous work for the soul, in others as in ourselves.
+
+33. By sympathy with the happy, compassion for the sorrowful, delight
+in the holy, disregard of the unholy, the psychic nature moves to
+gracious peace.
+
+When we are wrapped up in ourselves, shrouded with the cloak of our
+egotism, absorbed in our pains and bitter thoughts, we are not willing
+to disturb or strain our own sickly mood by giving kindly sympathy to
+the happy, thus doubling their joy, or by showing compassion for the
+sad, thus halving their sorrow. We refuse to find delight in holy
+things, and let the mind brood in sad pessimism on unholy things. All
+these evil psychic moods must be conquered by strong effort of will.
+This rending of the veils will reveal to us something of the grace and
+peace which are of the interior consciousness of the spiritual man.
+
+34. Or peace may be reached by the even sending forth and control of
+the life-breath.
+
+Here again we may look for a double meaning: first, that even and quiet
+breathing which is a part of the victory over bodily restlessness; then
+the even and quiet tenor of life, without harsh or dissonant impulses,
+which brings stillness to the heart.
+
+35. Faithful, persistent application to any object, if completely
+attained, will bind the mind to steadiness.
+
+We are still considering how to overcome the wavering and perturbation
+of the psychic nature, which make it quite unfit to transmit the inward
+consciousness and stillness. We are once more told to use the will, and
+to train it by steady and persistent work: by “sitting close” to our
+work, in the phrase of the original.
+
+36. As also will a joyful, radiant spirit.
+
+There is no such illusion as gloomy pessimism, and it has been truly
+said that a man’s cheerfulness is the measure of his faith. Gloom,
+despondency, the pale cast of thought, are very amenable to the will.
+Sturdy and courageous effort will bring a clear and valorous mind. But
+it must always be remembered that this is not for solace to the
+personal man, but is rather an offering to the ideal of spiritual life,
+a contribution to the universal and universally shared treasure in
+heaven.
+
+37. Or the purging of self-indulgence from the psychic nature.
+
+We must recognize that the fall of man is a reality, exemplified in our
+own persons. We have quite other sins than the animals, and far more
+deleterious; and they have all come through self-indulgence, with which
+our psychic natures are soaked through and through. As we climbed down
+hill for our pleasure, so must we climb up again for our purification
+and restoration to our former high estate. The process is painful,
+perhaps, yet indispensable.
+
+38. Or a pondering on the perceptions gained in dreams and dreamless
+sleep.
+
+For the Eastern sages, dreams are, it is true, made up of images of
+waking life, reflections of what the eyes have seen and the ears heard.
+But dreams are something more, for the images are in a sense real,
+objective on their own plane; and the knowledge that there is another
+world, even a dream-world, lightens the tyranny of material life. Much
+of poetry and art is such a solace from dreamland. But there is more in
+dream, for it may image what is above, as well as what is below; not
+only the children of men, but also the children by the shore of the
+immortal sea that brought us hither, may throw their images on this
+magic mirror: so, too, of the secrets of dreamless sleep with its pure
+vision, in even greater degree.
+
+39. Or meditative brooding on what is dearest to the heart.
+
+Here is a thought which our own day is beginning to grasp: that love is
+a form of knowledge; that we truly know any thing or any person, by
+becoming one therewith, in love. Thus love has a wisdom that the mind
+cannot claim, and by this hearty love, this becoming one with what is
+beyond our personal borders, we may take a long step toward freedom.
+Two directions for this may be suggested: the pure love of the artist
+for his work, and the earnest, compassionate search into the hearts of
+others.
+
+40. Thus he masters all, from the atom to the Infinite.
+
+Newton was asked how he made his discoveries. By intending my mind on
+them, he replied. This steady pressure, this becoming one with what we
+seek to understand, whether it be atom or soul, is the one means to
+know. When we become a thing, we really know it, not otherwise.
+Therefore live the life, to know the doctrine; do the will of the
+Father, if you would know the Father.
+
+41. When the perturbations of the psychic nature have all been stilled,
+then the consciousness, like a pure crystal, takes the colour of what
+it rests on, whether that be the perceiver, perceiving, or the thing
+perceived.
+
+This is a fuller expression of the last Sutra, and is so lucid that
+comment can hardly add to it. Everything is either perceiver,
+perceiving, or the thing perceived; or, as we might say, consciousness,
+force, or matter. The sage tells us that the one key will unlock the
+secrets of all three, the secrets of consciousness, force and matter
+alike. The thought is, that the cordial sympathy of a gentle heart,
+intuitively understanding the hearts of others, is really a
+manifestation of the same power as that penetrating perception whereby
+one divines the secrets of planetary motions or atomic structure.
+
+42. When the consciousness, poised in perceiving, blends together the
+name, the object dwelt on and the idea, this is perception with
+exterior consideration.
+
+In the first stage of the consideration of an external object, the
+perceiving mind comes to it, preoccupied by the name and idea
+conventionally associated with that object. For example, in coming to
+the study of a book, we think of the author, his period, the school to
+which he belongs. The second stage, set forth in the next Sutra, goes
+directly to the spiritual meaning of the book, setting its traditional
+trappings aside and finding its application to our own experience and
+problems.
+
+The commentator takes a very simple illustration: a cow, where one
+considers, in the first stage, the name of the cow, the animal itself
+and the idea of a cow in the mind. In the second stage, one pushes
+these trappings aside and, entering into the inmost being of the cow,
+shares its consciousness, as do some of the artists who paint cows.
+They get at the very life of what they study and paint.
+
+43. When the object dwells in the mind, clear of memory-pictures,
+uncoloured by the mind, as a pure luminous idea, this is perception
+without exterior or consideration.
+
+We are still considering external, visible objects. Such perception as
+is here described is of the nature of that penetrating vision whereby
+Newton, intending his mind on things, made his discoveries, or that
+whereby a really great portrait painter pierces to the soul of him whom
+he paints, and makes that soul live on canvas. These stages of
+perception are described in this way, to lead the mind up to an
+understanding of the piercing soul-vision of the spiritual man, the
+immortal.
+
+44. The same two steps, when referring to things of finer substance,
+are said to be with, or without, judicial action of the mind.
+
+We now come to mental or psychical objects: to images in the mind. It
+is precisely by comparing, arranging and superposing these mind-images
+that we get our general notions or concepts. This process of analysis
+and synthesis, whereby we select certain qualities in a group of
+mind-images, and then range together those of like quality, is the
+judicial action of the mind spoken of. But when we exercise swift
+divination upon the mind images, as does a poet or a man of genius,
+then we use a power higher than the judicial, and one nearer to the
+keen vision of the spiritual man.
+
+45. Subtle substance rises in ascending degrees, to that pure nature
+which has no distinguishing mark.
+
+As we ascend from outer material things which are permeated by
+separateness, and whose chief characteristic is to be separate, just as
+so many pebbles are separate from each other; as we ascend, first, to
+mind-images, which overlap and coalesce in both space and time, and
+then to ideas and principles, we finally come to purer essences,
+drawing ever nearer and nearer to unity.
+
+Or we may illustrate this principle thus. Our bodily, external selves
+are quite distinct and separate, in form, name, place, substance; our
+mental selves, of finer substance, meet and part, meet and part again,
+in perpetual concussion and interchange; our spiritual selves attain
+true consciousness through unity, where the partition wall between us
+and the Highest, between us and others, is broken down and we are all
+made perfect in the One. The highest riches are possessed by all pure
+souls, only when united. Thus we rise from separation to true
+individuality in unity.
+
+46. The above are the degrees of limited and conditioned spiritual
+consciousness, still containing the seed of separateness.
+
+In the four stages of perception above described, the spiritual vision
+is still working through the mental and psychical, the inner genius is
+still expressed through the outer, personal man. The spiritual man has
+yet to come completely to consciousness as himself, in his own realm,
+the psychical veils laid aside.
+
+47. When pure perception without judicial action of the mind is
+reached, there follows the gracious peace of the inner self.
+
+We have instanced certain types of this pure perception: the poet’s
+divination, whereby he sees the spirit within the symbol, likeness in
+things unlike, and beauty in all things; the pure insight of the true
+philosopher, whose vision rests not on the appearances of life, but on
+its realities; or the saint’s firm perception of spiritual life and
+being. All these are far advanced on the way; they have drawn near to
+the secret dwelling of peace.
+
+48. In that peace, perception is unfailingly true.
+
+The poet, the wise philosopher and the saint not only reach a wide and
+luminous consciousness, but they gain certain knowledge of substantial
+reality. When we know, we know that we know. For we have come to the
+stage where we know things by being them, and nothing can be more true
+than being. We rest on the rock, and know it to be rock, rooted in the
+very heart of the world.
+
+49. The object of this perception is other than what is learned from
+the sacred books, or by sound inference, since this perception is
+particular.
+
+The distinction is a luminous and inspiring one. The Scriptures teach
+general truths, concerning universal spiritual life and broad laws, and
+inference from their teaching is not less general. But the spiritual
+perception of the awakened Seer brings particular truth concerning his
+own particular life and needs, whether these be for himself or others.
+He receives defined, precise knowledge, exactly applying to what he has
+at heart.
+
+50. The impress on the consciousness springing from this perception
+supersedes all previous impressions.
+
+Each state or field of the mind, each field of knowledge, so to speak,
+which is reached by mental and emotional energies, is a psychical
+state, just as the mind picture of a stage with the actors on it, is a
+psychical state or field. When the pure vision, as of the poet, the
+philosopher, the saint, fills the whole field, all lesser views and
+visions are crowded out. This high consciousness displaces all lesser
+consciousness. Yet, in a certain sense, that which is viewed as part,
+even by the vision of a sage, has still an element of illusion, a thin
+psychical veil, however pure and luminous that veil may be. It is the
+last and highest psychic state.
+
+51. When this impression ceases, then, since all impressions have
+ceased, there arises pure spiritual consciousness, with no seed of
+separateness left.
+
+The last psychic veil is drawn aside, and the spiritual man stands with
+unveiled vision, pure serene.
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION TO BOOK II
+
+
+The first book of Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras is called the Book of
+Spiritual Consciousness. The second book, which we now begin, is the
+Book of the Means of Soul Growth. And we must remember that soul growth
+here means the growth of the realization of the spiritual man, or, to
+put the matter more briefly, the growth of the spiritual man, and the
+disentangling of the spiritual man from the wrappings, the veils, the
+disguises laid upon him by the mind and the psychical nature, wherein
+he is enmeshed, like a bird caught in a net.
+
+The question arises: By what means may the spiritual man be freed from
+these psychical meshes and disguises, so that he may stand forth above
+death, in his radiant eternalness and divine power? And the second book
+sets itself to answer this very question, and to detail the means in a
+way entirely practical and very lucid, so that he who runs may read,
+and he who reads may understand and practise.
+
+The second part of the second book is concerned with practical
+spiritual training, that is, with the earlier practical training of the
+spiritual man.
+
+The most striking thing in it is the emphasis laid on the Commandments,
+which are precisely those of the latter part of the Decalogue, together
+with obedience to the Master. Our day and generation is far too prone
+to fancy that there can be mystical life and growth on some other
+foundation, on the foundation, for example, of intellectual curiosity
+or psychical selfishness. In reality, on this latter foundation the
+life of the spiritual man can never be built; nor, indeed, anything but
+a psychic counterfeit, a dangerous delusion.
+
+Therefore Patanjali, like every great spiritual teacher, meets the
+question: What must I do to be saved? with the age-old answer: Keep the
+Commandments. Only after the disciple can say, These have I kept, can
+there be the further and finer teaching of the spiritual Rules.
+
+It is, therefore, vital for us to realize that the Yoga system, like
+every true system of spiritual teaching, rests on this broad and firm
+foundation of honesty, truth, cleanness, obedience. Without these,
+there is no salvation; and he who practices these, even though ignorant
+of spiritual things, is laying up treasure against the time to come.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK II
+
+
+1. The practices which make for union with the Soul are: fervent
+aspiration, spiritual reading, and complete obedience to the Master.
+
+The word which I have rendered “fervent aspiration” means primarily
+“fire”; and, in the Eastern teaching, it means the fire which gives
+life and light, and at the same time the fire which purifies. We have,
+therefore, as our first practice, as the first of the means of
+spiritual growth, that fiery quality of the will which enkindles and
+illumines, and, at the same time, the steady practice of purification,
+the burning away of all known impurities. Spiritual reading is so
+universally accepted and understood, that it needs no comment. The very
+study of Patanjali’s Sutras is an exercise in spiritual reading, and a
+very effective one. And so with all other books of the Soul. Obedience
+to the Master means, that we shall make the will of the Master our
+will, and shall confirm in all wave to the will of the Divine, setting
+aside the wills of self, which are but psychic distortions of the one
+Divine Will. The constant effort to obey in all the ways we know and
+understand, will reveal new ways and new tasks, the evidence of new
+growth of the Soul. Nothing will do more for the spiritual man in us
+than this, for there is no such regenerating power as the awakening
+spiritual will.
+
+2. Their aim is, to bring soul-vision, and to wear away hindrances.
+
+The aim of fervour, spiritual reading and obedience to the Master, is,
+to bring soulvision, and to wear away hindrances. Or, to use the phrase
+we have already adopted, the aim of these practices is, to help the
+spiritual man to open his eyes; to help him also to throw aside the
+veils and disguises, the enmeshing psychic nets which surround him,
+tying his hands, as it were, and bandaging his eyes. And this, as all
+teachers testify, is a long and arduous task, a steady up-hill fight,
+demanding fine courage and persistent toil. Fervour, the fire of the
+spiritual will, is, as we said, two-fold: it illumines, and so helps
+the spiritual man to see; and it also burns up the nets and meshes
+which ensnare the spiritual man. So with the other means, spiritual
+reading and obedience. Each, in its action, is two-fold, wearing away
+the psychical, and upbuilding the spiritual man.
+
+3. These are the hindrances: the darkness of unwisdom, self-assertion,
+lust hate, attachment.
+
+Let us try to translate this into terms of the psychical and spiritual
+man. The darkness of unwisdom is, primarily, the self-absorption of the
+psychical man, his complete preoccupation with his own hopes and fears,
+plans and purposes, sensations and desires; so that he fails to see, or
+refuses to see, that there is a spiritual man; and so doggedly resists
+all efforts of the spiritual man to cast off his psychic tyrant and set
+himself free. This is the real darkness; and all those who deny the
+immortality of the soul, or deny the soul’s existence, and so lay out
+their lives wholly for the psychical, mortal man and his ambitions, are
+under this power of darkness. Born of this darkness, this psychic
+self-absorption, is the dogged conviction that the psychic, personal
+man has separate, exclusive interests, which he can follow for himself
+alone; and this conviction, when put into practice in our life, leads
+to contest with other personalities, and so to hate. This hate, again,
+makes against the spiritual man, since it hinders the revelation of the
+high harmony between the spiritual man and his other selves, a harmony
+to be revealed only through the practice of love, that perfect love
+which casts out fear.
+
+In like manner, lust is the psychic man’s craving for the stimulus of
+sensation, the din of which smothers the voice of the spiritual man,
+as, in Shakespeare’s phrase, the cackling geese would drown the song of
+the nightingale. And this craving for stimulus is the fruit of
+weakness, coming from the failure to find strength in the primal life
+of the spiritual man.
+
+Attachment is but another name for psychic self-absorption; for we are
+absorbed, not in outward things, but rather in their images within our
+minds; our inner eyes are fixed on them; our inner desires brood over
+them; and em we blind ourselves to the presence of the prisoner’ the
+enmeshed and fettered spiritual man.
+
+4. The darkness of unwisdom is the field of the others. These
+hindrances may be dormant, or worn thin, or suspended, or expanded.
+
+Here we have really two Sutras in one. The first has been explained
+already: in the darkness of unwisdom grow the parasites, hate, lust,
+attachment. They are all outgrowths of the self-absorption of the
+psychical self.
+
+Next, we are told that these barriers may be either dormant, or
+suspended, or expanded, or worn thin. Faults which are dormant will be
+brought out through the pressure of life, or through the pressure of
+strong aspiration. Thus expanded, they must be fought and conquered,
+or, as Patanjali quaintly says, they must be worn thin,-as a veil
+might, or the links of manacles.
+
+5 The darkness of ignorance is: holding that which is unenduring,
+impure, full of pain, not the Soul, to be eternal, pure, full of joy,
+the Soul.
+
+This we have really considered already. The psychic man is unenduring,
+impure, full of pain, not the Soul, not the real Self. The spiritual
+man is enduring, pure, full of joy, the real Self. The darkness of
+unwisdom is, therefore, the self-absorption of the psychical, personal
+man, to the exclusion of the spiritual man. It is the belief, carried
+into action, that the personal man is the real man, the man for whom we
+should toil, for whom we should build, for whom we should live. This is
+that psychical man of whom it is said: he that soweth to the flesh,
+shall of the flesh reap corruption.
+
+6. Self-assertion comes from thinking of the Seer and the instrument of
+vision as forming one self.
+
+This is the fundamental idea of the Sankhya philosophy, of which the
+Yoga is avowedly the practical side. To translate this into our terms,
+we may say that the Seer is the spiritual man; the instrument of vision
+is the psychical man, through which the spiritual man gains experience
+of the outer world. But we turn the servant into the master. We
+attribute to the psychical man, the personal self, a reality which
+really belongs to the spiritual man alone; and so, thinking of the
+quality of the spiritual man as belonging to the psychical, we merge
+the spiritual man in the psychical; or, as the text says, we think of
+the two as forming one self.
+
+7. Lust is the resting in the sense of enjoyment.
+
+This has been explained again and again. Sensation, as, for example,
+the sense of taste, is meant to be the guide to action; in this case,
+the choice of wholesome food, and the avoidance of poisonous and
+hurtful things. But if we rest in the sense of taste, as a pleasure in
+itself; rest, that is, in the psychical side of taste, we fall into
+gluttony, and live to eat, instead of eating to live. So with the other
+great organic power, the power of reproduction. This lust comes into
+being, through resting in the sensation, and looking for pleasure from
+that.
+
+8. Hate is the resting in the sense of pain.
+
+Pain comes, for the most part, from the strife of personalities, the
+jarring discords between psychic selves, each of which deems itself
+supreme. A dwelling on this pain breeds hate, which tears the warring
+selves yet further asunder, and puts new enmity between them, thus
+hindering the harmony of the Real, the reconciliation through the Soul.
+
+9. Attachment is the desire toward life, even in the wise, carried
+forward by its own energy.
+
+The life here desired is the psychic life, the intensely vibrating life
+of the psychical self. This prevails even in those who have attained
+much wisdom, so long as it falls short of the wisdom of complete
+renunciation, complete obedience to each least behest of the spiritual
+man, and of the Master who guards and aids the spiritual man.
+
+The desire of sensation, the desire of psychic life, reproduces itself,
+carried on by its own energy and momentum; and hence comes the circle
+of death and rebirth, death and rebirth, instead of the liberation of
+the spiritual man.
+
+10. These hindrances, when they have become subtle, are to be removed
+by a countercurrent.
+
+The darkness of unwisdom is to be removed by the light of wisdom,
+pursued through fervour, spiritual reading of holy teachings and of
+life itself, and by obedience to the Master.
+
+Lust is to be removed by pure aspiration of spiritual life, which,
+bringing true strength and stability, takes away the void of weakness
+which we try to fill by the stimulus of sensations.
+
+Hate is to be overcome by love. The fear that arises through the sense
+of separate, warring selves is to be stilled by the realization of the
+One Self, the one soul in all. This realization is the perfect love
+that casts out fear.
+
+The hindrances are said to have become subtle when, by initial efforts,
+they have been located and recognized in the psychic nature.
+
+11. Their active turnings are to be removed by meditation.
+
+Here is, in truth, the whole secret of Yoga, the science of the soul.
+The active turnings, the strident vibrations, of selfishness, lust and
+hate are to be stilled by meditation, by letting heart and mind dwell
+in spiritual life, by lifting up the heart to the strong, silent life
+above, which rests in the stillness of eternal love, and needs no harsh
+vibration to convince it of true being.
+
+12. The burden of bondage to sorrow has its root in these hindrances.
+It will be felt in this life, or in a life not yet manifested.
+
+The burden of bondage to sorrow has its root in the darkness of
+unwisdom, in selfishness, in lust, in hate, in attachment to sensation.
+All these are, in the last analysis, absorption in the psychical self;
+and this means sorrow, because it means the sense of separateness, and
+this means jarring discord and inevitable death. But the psychical self
+will breed a new psychical self, in a new birth, and so new sorrows in
+a life not yet manifest.
+
+13. From this root there grow and ripen the fruits of birth, of the
+life-span, of all that is tasted in life.
+
+Fully to comment on this, would be to write a treatise on Karma and its
+practical working in detail, whereby the place and time of the next
+birth, its content and duration, are determined; and to do this the
+present commentator is in no wise fitted. But this much is clearly
+understood: that, through a kind of spiritual gravitation, the
+incarnating self is drawn to a home and life-circle which will give it
+scope and discipline; and its need of discipline is clearly conditioned
+by its character, its standing, its accomplishment.
+
+14. These bear fruits of rejoicing, or of affliction, as they are
+sprung from holy or unholy works.
+
+Since holiness is obedience to divine law, to the law of divine
+harmony, and obedience to harmony strengthens that harmony in the soul,
+which is the one true joy, therefore joy comes of holiness: comes,
+indeed, in no other way. And as unholiness is disobedience, and
+therefore discord, therefore unholiness makes for pain; and this
+two-fold law is true, whether the cause take effect in this, or in a
+yet unmanifested birth.
+
+15. To him who possesses discernment, all personal life is misery,
+because it ever waxes and wanes, is ever afflicted with restlessness,
+makes ever new dynamic impresses in the mind; and because all its
+activities war with each other.
+
+The whole life of the psychic self is misery, because it ever waxes and
+wanes; because birth brings inevitable death; because there is no
+expectation without its shadow, fear. The life of the psychic self is
+misery, because it is afflicted with restlessness; so that he who has
+much, finds not satisfaction, but rather the whetted hunger for more.
+The fire is not quenched by pouring oil on it; so desire is not
+quenched by the satisfaction of desire. Again, the life of the psychic
+self is misery, because it makes ever new dynamic impresses in the
+mind; because a desire satisfied is but the seed from which springs the
+desire to find like satisfaction again. The appetite comes in eating,
+as the proverb says, and grows by what it feeds on. And the psychic
+self, torn with conflicting desires, is ever the house divided against
+itself, which must surely fall.
+
+16. This pain is to be warded off, before it has come.
+
+In other words, we cannot cure the pains of life by laying on them any
+balm. We must cut the root, absorption in the psychical self. So it is
+said, there is no cure for the misery of longing, but to fix the heart
+upon the eternal.
+
+17. The cause of what is to be warded off, is the absorption of the
+Seer in things seen.
+
+Here again we have the fundamental idea of the Sankhya, which is the
+intellectual counterpart of the Yoga system. The cause of what is to be
+warded off, the root of misery, is the absorption of consciousness in
+the psychical man and the things which beguile the psychical man. The
+cure is liberation.
+
+18. Things seen have as their property manifestation, action, inertia.
+They form the basis of the elements and the sense-powers. They make for
+experience and for liberation.
+
+Here is a whole philosophy of life. Things seen, the total of the
+phenomena, possess as their property, manifestation, action, inertia:
+the qualities of force and matter in combination. These, in their
+grosser form, make the material world; in their finer, more subjective
+form, they make the psychical world, the world of sense-impressions and
+mind-images. And through this totality of the phenomenal, the soul
+gains experience, and is prepared for liberation. In other words, the
+whole outer world exists for the purposes of the soul, and finds in
+this its true reason for being.
+
+19. The grades or layers of the Three Potencies are the defined, the
+undefined, that with distinctive mark, that without distinctive mark.
+
+Or, as we might say, there are two strata of the physical, and two
+strata of the psychical realms. In each, there is the side of form, and
+the side of force. The form side of the physical is here called the
+defined. The force side of the physical is the undefined, that which
+has no boundaries. So in the psychical; there is the form side; that
+with distinctive marks, such as the characteristic features of
+mind-images; and there is the force side, without distinctive marks,
+such as the forces of desire or fear, which may flow now to this
+mind-image, now to that.
+
+20. The Seer is pure vision. Though pure, he looks out through the
+vesture of the mind.
+
+The Seer, as always, is the spiritual man whose deepest consciousness
+is pure vision, the pure life of the eternal. But the spiritual man, as
+yet unseeing in his proper person, looks out on the world through the
+eyes of the psychical man, by whom he is enfolded and enmeshed. The
+task is, to set this prisoner free, to clear the dust of ages from this
+buried temple.
+
+21. The very essence of things seen is, that they exist for the Seer.
+
+The things of outer life, not only material things, but the psychic man
+also, exist in very deed for the purposes of the Seer, the Soul, the
+spiritual man Disaster comes, when the psychical man sets up, so to
+speak, on his own account, trying to live for himself alone, and taking
+material things to solace his loneliness.
+
+22. Though fallen away from him who has reached the goal, things seen
+have not alto fallen away, since they still exist for others.
+
+When one of us conquers hate, hate does not thereby cease out of the
+world, since others still hate and suffer hatred. So with other
+delusions, which hold us in bondage to material things, and through
+which we look at all material things. When the coloured veil of
+illusion is gone, the world which we saw through it is also gone, for
+now we see life as it is, in the white radiance of eternity. But for
+others the coloured veil remains, and therefore the world thus coloured
+by it remains for them, and will remain till they, too, conquer
+delusion.
+
+23. The association of the Seer with things seen is the cause of the
+realizing of the nature of things seen, and also of the realizing of
+the nature of the Seer.
+
+Life is educative. All life’s infinite variety is for discipline, for
+the development of the soul. So passing through many lives, the Soul
+learns the secrets of the world, the august laws that are written in
+the form of the snow-crystal or the majestic order of the stars. Yet
+all these laws are but reflections, but projections outward, of the
+laws of the soul; therefore in learning these, the soul learns to know
+itself. All life is but the mirror wherein the Soul learns to know its
+own face.
+
+24. The cause of this association is the darkness of unwisdom.
+
+The darkness of unwisdom is the absorption of consciousness in the
+personal life, and in the things seen by the personal life. This is the
+fall, through which comes experience, the learning of the lessons of
+life. When they are learned, the day of redemption is at hand.
+
+25. The bringing of this association to an end, by bringing the
+darkness of unwisdom to an end, is the great liberation; this is the
+Seer’s attainment of his own pure being.
+
+When the spiritual man has, through the psychical, learned all life’s
+lessons, the time has come for him to put off the veil and disguise of
+the psychical and to stand revealed a King, in the house of the Father.
+So shall he enter into his kingdom, and go no more out.
+
+26. A discerning which is carried on without wavering is the means of
+liberation.
+
+Here we come close to the pure Vedanta, with its discernment between
+the eternal and the temporal. St. Paul, following after Philo and
+Plato, lays down the same fundamental principle: the things seen are
+temporal, the things unseen are eternal.
+
+Patanjali means something more than an intellectual assent, though this
+too is vital. He has in view a constant discriminating in act as well
+as thought; of the two ways which present themselves for every deed or
+choice, always to choose the higher way, that which makes for the
+things eternal: honesty rather than roguery, courage and not cowardice,
+the things of another rather than one’s own, sacrifice and not
+indulgence. This true discernment, carried out constantly, makes for
+liberation.
+
+27. His illuminations is sevenfold, rising In successive stages.
+
+Patanjali’s text does not tell us what the seven stages of this
+illumination are. The commentator thus describes them:
+
+First, the danger to be escaped is recognized; it need not be
+recognized a second time. Second, the causes of the danger to be
+escaped are worn away; they need not be worn away a second time. Third,
+the way of escape is clearly perceived, by the contemplation which
+checks psychic perturbation. Fourth, the means of escape, clear
+discernment, has been developed. This is the fourfold release belonging
+to insight. The final release from the psychic is three-fold: As fifth
+of the seven degrees, the dominance of its thinking is ended; as sixth,
+its potencies, like rocks from a precipice, fall of themselves; once
+dissolved, they do not grow again. Then, as seventh, freed from these
+potencies, the spiritual man stands forth in his own nature as purity
+and light. Happy is the spiritual man who beholds this seven-fold
+illumination in its ascending stages.
+
+28. From steadfastly following after the means of Yoga, until impurity
+is worn away, there comes the illumination of thought up to full
+discernment.
+
+Here, we enter on the more detailed practical teaching of Patanjali,
+with its sound and luminous good sense. And when we come to detail the
+means of Yoga, we may well be astonished at their simplicity. There is
+little in them that is mysterious. They are very familiar. The essence
+of the matter lies in carrying them out.
+
+29. The eight means of Yoga are: the Commandments, the Rules, right
+Poise, right Control of the life-force, Withdrawal, Attention,
+Meditation, Contemplation.
+
+These eight means are to be followed in their order, in the sense which
+will immediately be made clear. We can get a ready understanding of the
+first two by comparing them with the Commandments which must be obeyed
+by all good citizens, and the Rules which are laid on the members of
+religious orders. Until one has fulfilled the first, it is futile to
+concern oneself with the second. And so with all the means of Yoga.
+They must be taken in their order.
+
+30. The Commandments are these: nom injury, truthfulness, abstaining
+from stealing, from impurity, from covetousness.
+
+These five precepts are almost exactly the same as the Buddhist
+Commandments: not to kill, not to steal, not to be guilty of
+incontinence, not to drink intoxicants, to speak the truth. Almost
+identical is St. Paul’s list: Thou shalt not commit adultery, thou
+shalt not kill, thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not covet. And in the
+same spirit is the answer made to the young map having great
+possessions, who asked, What shall I do to be saved? and received the
+reply: Keep the Commandments.
+
+This broad, general training, which forms and develops human character,
+must be accomplished to a very considerable degree, before there can be
+much hope of success in the further stages of spiritual life. First the
+psychical, and then the spiritual. First the man, then the angel. On
+this broad, humane and wise foundation does the system of Patanjali
+rest.
+
+31. The Commandments, not limited to any race, place, time or occasion,
+universal, are the great obligation.
+
+The Commandments form the broad general training of humanity. Each one
+of them rests on a universal, spiritual law. Each one of them expresses
+an attribute or aspect of the Self, the Eternal; when we violate one of
+the Commandments, we set ourselves against the law and being of the
+Eternal, thereby bringing ourselves to inevitable con fusion. So the
+first steps in spiritual life must be taken by bringing ourselves into
+voluntary obedience to these spiritual laws and thus making ourselves
+partakers of the spiritual powers, the being of the Eternal Like the
+law of gravity, the need of air to breathe, these great laws know no
+exceptions They are in force in all lands, throughout al times, for all
+mankind.
+
+32. The Rules are these: purity, serenity fervent aspiration, spiritual
+reading, and per feet obedience to the Master.
+
+Here we have a finer law, one which humanity as a whole is less ready
+for, less fit to obey. Yet we can see that these Rules are the same in
+essence as the Commandments, but on a higher, more spiritual plane. The
+Commandments may be obeyed in outer acts and abstinences; the Rules
+demand obedience of the heart and spirit, a far more awakened and more
+positive consciousness. The Rules are the spiritual counterpart of the
+Commandments, and they have finer degrees, for more advanced spiritual
+growth.
+
+33. When transgressions hinder, the weight of the imagination should be
+thrown’ on the opposite side.
+
+Let us take a simple case, that of a thief, a habitual criminal, who
+has drifted into stealing in childhood, before the moral consciousness
+has awakened. We may imprison such a thief, and deprive him of all
+possibility of further theft, or of using the divine gift of will. Or
+we may recognize his disadvantages, and help him gradually to build up
+possessions which express his will, and draw forth his self-respect. If
+we imagine that, after he has built well, and his possessions have
+become dear to him, he himself is robbed, then we can see how he would
+come vividly to realize the essence of theft and of honesty, and would
+cleave to honest dealings with firm conviction. In some such way does
+the great Law teach us. Our sorrows and losses teach us the pain of the
+sorrow and loss we inflict on others, and so we cease to inflict them.
+
+Now as to the more direct application. To conquer a sin, let heart and
+mind rest, not on the sin, but on the contrary virtue. Let the sin be
+forced out by positive growth in the true direction, not by direct
+opposition. Turn away from the sin and go forward courageously,
+constructively, creatively, in well-doing. In this way the whole nature
+will gradually be drawn up to the higher level, on which the sin does
+not even exist. The conquest of a sin is a matter of growth and
+evolution, rather than of opposition.
+
+34. Transgressions are injury, falsehood, theft, incontinence, envy;
+whether committed, or caused, or assented to, through greed, wrath, or
+infatuation; whether faint, or middling, or excessive; bearing endless,
+fruit of ignorance and pain. Therefore must the weight be cast on the
+other side.
+
+Here are the causes of sin: greed, wrath, infatuation, with their
+effects, ignorance and pain. The causes are to be cured by better
+wisdom, by a truer understanding of the Self, of Life. For greed cannot
+endure before the realization that the whole world belongs to the Self,
+which Self we are; nor can we hold wrath against one who is one with
+the Self, and therefore with ourselves; nor can infatuation, which is
+the seeking for the happiness of the All in some limited part of it,
+survive the knowledge that we are heirs of the All. Therefore let
+thought and imagination, mind and heart, throw their weight on the
+other side; the side, not of the world, but of the Self.
+
+35. Where non-injury is perfected, all enmity ceases in the presence of
+him who possesses it.
+
+We come now to the spiritual powers which result from keeping the
+Commandments; from the obedience to spiritual law which is the keeping
+of the Commandments. Where the heart is full of kindness which seeks no
+injury to another, either in act or thought or wish, this full love
+creates an atmosphere of harmony, whose benign power touches with
+healing all who come within its influence. Peace in the heart radiates
+peace to other hearts, even more surely than contention breeds
+contention.
+
+36. When he is perfected in truth, all acts and their fruits depend on
+him.
+
+The commentator thus explains: If he who has attained should say to a
+man, Become righteous! the man becomes righteous. If he should say,
+Gain heaven! the man gains heaven. His word is not in vain.
+
+Exactly the same doctrine was taught by the Master who said to his
+disciples: Receive ye the Holy Ghost: whose soever sins ye remit they
+are remitted unto them; and whose soever sins ye retain, they are
+retained.
+
+37. Where cessation from theft is perfected, all treasures present
+themselves to him who possesses it.
+
+Here is a sentence which may warn us that, beside the outer and
+apparent meaning, there is in many of these sentences a second and
+finer significance. The obvious meaning is, that he who has wholly
+ceased from theft, in act, thought and wish, finds buried treasures in
+his path, treasures of jewels and gold and pearls. The deeper truth is,
+that he who in every least thing is wholly honest with the spirit of
+Life, finds Life supporting him in all things, and gains admittance to
+the treasure house of Life, the spiritual universe.
+
+38. For him who is perfect in continence, the reward is valour and
+virility.
+
+The creative power, strong and full of vigour, is no longer dissipated,
+but turned to spiritual uses. It upholds and endows the spiritual man,
+conferring on him the creative will, the power to engender spiritual
+children instead of bodily progeny. An epoch of life, that of man the
+animal, has come to an end; a new epoch, that of the spiritual man, is
+opened. The old creative power is superseded and transcended; a new
+creative power, that of the spiritual man, takes its place, carrying
+with it the power to work creatively in others for righteousness and
+eternal life.
+
+One of the commentaries says that he who has attained is able to
+transfer to the minds of his disciples what he knows concerning divine
+union, and the means of gaining it. This is one of the powers of
+purity.
+
+39. Where there is firm conquest of covetousness, he who has conquered
+it awakes to the how and why of life.
+
+So it is said that, before we can understand the laws of Karma, we must
+free ourselves from Karma. The conquest of covetousness brings this
+rich fruit, because the root of covetousness is the desire of the
+individual soul, the will toward manifested life. And where the desire
+of the individual soul is overcome by the superb, still life of the
+universal Soul welling up in the heart within, the great secret is
+discerned, the secret that the individual soul is not an isolated
+reality, but the ray, the manifest instrument of the Life, which turns
+it this way and that until the great work is accomplished, the age-long
+lesson learned. Thus is the how and why of life disclosed by ceasing
+from covetousness. The Commentator says that this includes a knowledge
+of one’s former births.
+
+40. Through purity a withdrawal from one’s own bodily life, a ceasing
+from infatuation with the bodily life of others.
+
+As the spiritual light grows in the heart within, as the taste for pure
+Life grows stronger, the consciousness opens toward the great, secret
+places within, where all life is one, where all lives are one.
+Thereafter, this outer, manifested, fugitive life, whether of ourselves
+or of others, loses something of its charm and glamour, and we seek
+rather the deep infinitudes. Instead of the outer form and surroundings
+of our lives, we long for their inner and everlasting essence. We
+desire not so much outer converse and closeness to our friends, but
+rather that quiet communion with them in the inner chamber of the soul,
+where spirit speaks to spirit, and spirit answers; where alienation and
+separation never enter; where sickness and sorrow and death cannot
+come.
+
+41. To the pure of heart come also a quiet spirit, one-pointed thought,
+the victory over sensuality, and fitness to behold the Soul.
+
+Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God, who is the
+supreme Soul; the ultimate Self of all beings. In the deepest sense,
+purity means fitness for this vision, and also a heart cleansed from
+all disquiet, from all wandering and unbridled thought, from the
+torment of sensuous imaginings; and when the spirit is thus cleansed
+and pure, it becomes at one in essence with its source, the great
+Spirit, the primal Life. One consciousness now thrills through both,
+for the psychic partition wall is broken down. Then shall the pure in
+heart see God, because they become God.
+
+42. From acceptance, the disciple gains happiness supreme.
+
+One of the wise has said: accept conditions, accept others, accept
+yourself. This is the true acceptance, for all these things are what
+they are through the will of the higher Self, except their
+deficiencies, which come through thwarting the will of the higher Self,
+and can be conquered only through compliance with that will. By the
+true acceptance, the disciple comes into oneness of spirit with the
+overruling Soul; and, since the own nature of the Soul is being,
+happiness, bliss, he comes thereby into happiness supreme.
+
+43. The perfection of the powers of the bodily vesture comes through
+the wearing away of impurities, and through fervent aspiration.
+
+This is true of the physical powers, and of those which dwell in the
+higher vestures. There must be, first, purity; as the blood must be
+pure, before one can attain to physical health. But absence of impurity
+is not in itself enough, else would many nerveless ascetics of the
+cloisters rank as high saints. There is needed, further, a positive
+fire of the will; a keen vital vigour for the physical powers, and
+something finer, purer, stronger, but of kindred essence, for the
+higher powers. The fire of genius is something more than a phrase, for
+there can be no genius without the celestial fire of the awakened
+spiritual will.
+
+44. Through spiritual reading, the disciple gains communion with the
+divine Power on which his heart is set.
+
+Spiritual reading meant, for ancient India, something more than it does
+with us. It meant, first, the recital of sacred texts, which, in their
+very sounds, had mystical potencies; and it meant a recital of texts
+which were divinely emanated, and held in themselves the living, potent
+essence of the divine.
+
+For us, spiritual reading means a communing with the recorded teachings
+of the Masters of wisdom, whereby we read ourselves into the Master’s
+mind, just as through his music one can enter into the mind and soul of
+the master musician. It has been well said that all true art is
+contagion of feeling; so that through the true reading of true books we
+do indeed read ourselves into the spirit of the Masters, share in the
+atmosphere of their wisdom and power, and come at last into their very
+presence.
+
+45. Soul-vision is perfected through perfect obedience to the Master.
+
+The sorrow and darkness of life come of the erring personal will which
+sets itself against the will of the Soul, the one great Life. The error
+of the personal will is inevitable, since each will must be free to
+choose, to try and fail, and so to find the path. And sorrow and
+darkness are inevitable, until the path be found, and the personal will
+made once more one with the greater Will, wherein it finds rest and
+power, without losing freedom. In His will is our peace. And with that
+peace comes light. Soul-vision is perfected through obedience.
+
+46. Right poise must be firm and without strain.
+
+Here we approach a section of the teaching which has manifestly a
+two-fold meaning. The first is physical, and concerns the bodily
+position of the student, and the regulation of breathing. These things
+have their direct influence upon soul-life, the life of the spiritual
+man, since it is always and everywhere true that our study demands a
+sound mind in a sound body. The present sentence declares that, for
+work and for meditation, the position of the body must be steady and
+without strain, in order that the finer currents of life may run their
+course.
+
+It applies further to the poise of the soul, that fine balance and
+stability which nothing can shake, where the consciousness rests on the
+firm foundation of spiritual being. This is indeed the house set upon a
+rock, which the winds and waves beat upon in vain.
+
+47. Right poise is to be gained by steady and temperate effort, and by
+setting the heart upon the everlasting.
+
+Here again, there is the two-fold meaning, for physical poise is to be
+gained by steady effort of the muscles, by gradual and wise training,
+linked with a right understanding of, and relation with, the universal
+force of gravity. Uprightness of body demands that both these
+conditions shall be fulfilled.
+
+In like manner the firm and upright poise of the spiritual man is to be
+gained by steady and continued effort, always guided by wisdom, and by
+setting the heart on the Eternal, filling the soul with the atmosphere
+of the spiritual world. Neither is effective without the other.
+Aspiration without effort brings weakness; effort without aspiration
+brings a false strength, not resting on enduring things. The two
+together make for the right poise which sets the spiritual man firmly
+and steadfastly on his feet.
+
+48. The fruit of right poise is the strength to resist the shocks of
+infatuation or sorrow.
+
+In the simpler physical sense, which is also coveted by the wording of
+the original, this sentence means that wise effort establishes such
+bodily poise that the accidents of life cannot disturb it, as the
+captain remains steady, though disaster overtake his ship.
+
+But the deeper sense is far more important. The spiritual man, too,
+must learn to withstand all shocks, to remain steadfast through the
+perturbations of external things and the storms and whirlwinds of the
+psychical world. This is the power which is gained by wise, continuous
+effort, and by filling the spirit with the atmosphere of the Eternal.
+
+49. When this is gained, there follows the right guidance of the
+life-currents, the control of the incoming and outgoing breath.
+
+It is well understood to-day that most of our maladies come from impure
+conditions of the blood. It is coming to be understood that right
+breathing, right oxygenation, will do very much to keep the blood clean
+and pure. Therefore a right knowledge of breathing is a part of the
+science of life.
+
+But the deeper meaning is, that the spiritual man, when he has gained
+poise through right effort and aspiration, can stand firm, and guide
+the currents of his life, both the incoming current of events, and the
+outgoing current of his acts.
+
+Exactly the same symbolism is used in the saying: Not that which goeth
+into the mouth defileth a man; but that which cometh out of the mouth,
+this defileth a man…. Those things which proceed out of the mouth come
+forth from the heart … out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders,
+uncleanness, thefts, false witness, blasphemies. Therefore the first
+step in purification is to keep the Commandments.
+
+50. The life-current is either outward, or inward, or balanced; it is
+regulated according to place, time, number; it is prolonged and subtle.
+
+The technical, physical side of this has its value. In the breath,
+there should be right inbreathing, followed by the period of pause,
+when the air comes into contact with the blood, and this again followed
+by right outbreathing, even, steady, silent. Further, the lungs should
+be evenly filled; many maladies may arise from the neglect and
+consequent weakening of some region of the lungs. And the number of
+breaths is so important, so closely related to health, that every
+nurse’s chart records it.
+
+But the deeper meaning is concerned with the currents of life; with
+that which goeth into and cometh out of the heart.
+
+51. The fourth degree transcends external and internal objects.
+
+The inner meaning seems to be that, in addition to the three degrees of
+control already described, control, that is, over the incoming current
+of life, over the outgoing current, and over the condition of pause or
+quiesence, there is a fourth degree of control, which holds in complete
+mastery both the outer passage of events and the inner currents of
+thoughts and emotions; a condition of perfect poise and stability in
+the midst of the flux of things outward and inward.
+
+52. Thereby is worn away the veil which covers up the light.
+
+The veil is the psychic nature, the web of emotions, desires,
+argumentative trains of thought, which cover up and obscure the truth
+by absorbing the entire attention and keeping the consciousness in the
+psychic realm. When hopes and fears are reckoned at their true worth,
+in comparison with lasting possessions of the Soul; when the outer
+reflections of things have ceased to distract us from inner realities;
+when argumentative-thought no longer entangles us, but yields its place
+to flashing intuition, the certainty which springs from within; then is
+the veil worn away, the consciousness is drawn from the psychical to
+the spiritual, from the temporal to the Eternal. Then is the light
+unveiled.
+
+53. Thence comes the mind’s power to hold itself in the light.
+
+It has been well said, that what we most need is the faculty of
+spiritual attention; and in the same direction of thought it has been
+eloquently declared that prayer does not consist in our catching God’s
+attention, but rather in our allowing God to hold our attention.
+
+The vital matter is, that we need to disentangle our consciousness from
+the noisy and perturbed thraldom of the psychical, and to come to
+consciousness as the spiritual man. This we must do, first, by
+purification, through the Commandments and the Rules; and, second,
+through the faculty of spiritual attention, by steadily heeding endless
+fine intimations of the spiritual power within us, and by intending our
+consciousness thereto; thus by degrees transferring the centre of
+consciousness from the psychical to the spiritual. It is a question,
+first, of love, and then of attention.
+
+54. The right Withdrawal is the disengaging of the powers from
+entanglement in outer things, as the psychic nature has been withdrawn
+and stilled.
+
+To understand this, let us reverse the process, and think of the one
+consciousness, centred in the Soul, gradually expanding and taking on
+the form of the different perceptive powers; the one will, at the same
+time, differentiating itself into the varied powers of action.
+
+Now let us imagine this to be reversed, so that the spiritual force,
+which has gone into the differentiated powers, is once more gathered
+together into the inner power of intuition and spiritual will, taking
+on that unity which is the hall-mark of spiritual things, as diversity
+is the seal of material things.
+
+It is all a matter of love for the quality of spiritual consciousness,
+as against psychical consciousness, of love and attention. For where
+the heart is, there will the treasure be also; where the consciousness
+is, there will the vesture with its powers be developed.
+
+55. Thereupon follows perfect mastery over the powers.
+
+When the spiritual condition which we have described is reached, with
+its purity, poise, and illuminated vision, the spiritual man is coming
+into his inheritance, and gaining complete mastery of his powers.
+
+Indeed, much of the struggle to keep the Commandments and the Rules has
+been paving the way for this mastery; through this very struggle and
+sacrifice the mastery has become possible; just as, to use St. Paul’s
+simile, the athlete gains the mastery in the contest and the race
+through the sacrifice of his long and arduous training. Thus he gains
+the crown.
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION TO BOOK III
+
+
+The third book of the Sutras is the Book of Spiritual Powers. In
+considering these spiritual powers, two things must be understood and
+kept in memory. The first of these is this: These spiritual powers can
+only be gained when the development described in the first and second
+books has been measurably attained; when the Commandments have been
+kept, the Rules faithfully followed, and the experiences which are
+described have been passed through. For only after this is the
+spiritual man so far grown, so far disentangled from the psychical
+bandages and veils which have confined and blinded him, that he can use
+his proper powers and faculties. For this is the secret of all
+spiritual powers: they are in no sense an abnormal or supernatural
+overgrowth upon the material man, but are rather the powers and
+faculties inherent in the spiritual man, entirely natural to him, and
+coming naturally into activity, as the spiritual man is disentangled
+and liberated from psychical bondage, through keeping the Commandments
+and Rules already set forth.
+
+As the personal man is the limitation and inversion of the spiritual
+man, all his faculties and powers are inversions of the powers of the
+spiritual man. In a single phrase, his self seeking is the inversion of
+the Self-seeking which is the very being of the spiritual man: the
+ceaseless search after the divine and august Self of all beings. This
+inversion is corrected by keeping the Commandments and Rules, and
+gradually, as the inversion is overcome, the spiritual man is
+extricated, and comes into possession and free exercise of his powers.
+The spiritual powers, therefore, are the powers of the grown and
+liberated spiritual man. They can only be developed and used as the
+spiritual man grows and attains liberation through obedience. This is
+the first thing to be kept in mind, in all that is said of spiritual
+powers in the third and fourth books of the Sutras. The second thing to
+be understood and kept in mind is this:
+
+Just as our modern sages have discerned and taught that all matter is
+ultimately one and eternal, definitely related throughout the whole
+wide universe; just as they have discerned and taught that all force is
+one and eternal, so coordinated throughout the whole universe that
+whatever affects any atom measurably affects the whole boundless realm
+of matter and force, to the most distant star or nebula on the dim
+confines of space; so the ancient sages had discerned and taught that
+all consciousness is one, immortal, indivisible, infinite; so finely
+correlated and continuous that whatever is perceived by any
+consciousness is, whether actually or potentially, within the reach of
+all consciousness, and therefore within the reach of any consciousness.
+This has been well expressed by saying that all souls are fundamentally
+one with the Oversoul; that the Son of God, and all Sons of God, are
+fundamentally one with the Father. When the consciousness is cleared of
+psychic bonds and veils, when the spiritual man is able to stand, to
+see, then this superb law comes into effect: whatever is within the
+knowledge of any consciousness, and this includes the whole infinite
+universe, is within his reach, and may, if he wills, be made a part of
+his consciousness. This he may attain through his fundamental unity
+with the Oversoul, by raising himself toward the consciousness above
+him, and drawing on its resources. The Son, if he would work miracles,
+whether of perception or of action, must come often into the presence
+of the Father. This is the birthright of the spiritual man; through it
+he comes into possession of his splendid and immortal powers. Let it be
+clearly kept in mind that what is here to be related of the spiritual
+man, and his exalted powers, must in no wise be detached from what has
+gone before. The being, the very inception, of the spiritual man
+depends on the purification and moral attainment already detailed, and
+can in no wise dispense with these or curtail them.
+
+Let no one imagine that the true life, the true powers of the spiritual
+man, can be attained by any way except the hard way of sacrifice, of
+trial, of renunciation, of selfless self-conquest and genuine devotion
+to the weal of all others. Only thus can the golden gates be reached
+and entered. Only thus can we attain to that pure world wherein the
+spiritual man lives, and moves, and has his being. Nothing impure,
+nothing unholy can ever cross that threshold, least of all impure
+motives or self seeking desires. These must be burnt away before an
+entrance to that world can be gained.
+
+But where there is light, there is shadow; and the lofty light of the
+soul casts upon the clouds of the mid-world the shadow of the spiritual
+man and of his powers; the bastard vesture and the bastard powers of
+psychism are easily attained; yet, even when attained, they are a
+delusion, the very essence of unreality.
+
+Therefore ponder well the earlier rules, and lay a firm foundation of
+courage, sacrifice, selflessness, holiness.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK III
+
+
+1. The binding of the perceiving consciousness to a certain region is
+attention (dharana).
+
+Emerson quotes Sir Isaac Newton as saying that he made his great
+discoveries by intending his mind on them. That is what is meant here.
+I read the page of a book while inking of something else. At the end of
+he page, I have no idea of what it is about, and read it again, still
+thinking of something else, with the same result. Then I wake up, so to
+speak, make an effort of attention, fix my thought on what I am
+reading, and easily take in its meaning. The act of will, the effort of
+attention, the intending of the mind on each word and line of the page,
+just as the eyes are focussed on each word and line, is the power here
+contemplated. It is the power to focus the consciousness on a given
+spot, and hold it there Attention is the first and indispensable step
+in all knowledge. Attention to spiritual things is the first step to
+spiritual knowledge.
+
+2. A prolonged holding of the perceiving consciousness in that region
+is meditation (dhyana).
+
+This will apply equally to outer and inner things. I may for a moment
+fix my attention on some visible object, in a single penetrating
+glance, or I may hold the attention fixedly on it until it reveals far
+more of its nature than a single glance could perceive. The first is
+the focussing of the searchlight of consciousness upon the object. The
+other is the holding of the white beam of light steadily and
+persistently on the object, until it yields up the secret of its
+details. So for things within; one may fix the inner glance for a
+moment on spiritual things, or one may hold the consciousness steadily
+upon them, until what was in the dark slowly comes forth into the
+light, and yields up its immortal secret. But this is possible only for
+the spiritual man, after the Commandments and the Rules have been kept;
+for until this is done, the thronging storms of psychical thoughts
+dissipate and distract the attention, so that it will not remain fixed
+on spiritual things. The cares of this world, the deceitfulness of
+riches, choke the word of the spiritual message.
+
+3. When the perceiving consciousness in this meditative is wholly given
+to illuminating the essential meaning of the object contemplated, and
+is freed from the sense of separateness and personality, this is
+contemplation (samadhi).
+
+Let us review the steps so far taken. First, the beam of perceiving
+consciousness is focussed on a certain region or subject, through the
+effort of attention. Then this attending consciousness is held on its
+object. Third, there is the ardent will to know its meaning, to
+illumine it with comprehending thought. Fourth, all personal bias—all
+desire merely to indorse a previous opinion and so prove oneself right,
+and all desire for personal profit or gratification must be quite put
+away. There must be a purely disinterested love of truth for its own
+sake. Thus is the perceiving consciousness made void, as it were, of
+all personality or sense of separateness. The personal limitation
+stands aside and lets the All-consciousness come to bear upon the
+problem. The Oversoul bends its ray upon the object, and illumines it
+with pure light.
+
+4. When these three, Attention, Meditation Contemplation, are exercised
+at once, this is perfectly concentrated Meditation (sanyama).
+
+When the personal limitation of the perceiving consciousness stands
+aside, and allows the All-conscious to come to bear upon the problem,
+then arises that real knowledge which is called a flash of genius; that
+real knowledge which makes discoveries, and without which no discovery
+can be made, however painstaking the effort. For genius is the vision
+of the spiritual man, and that vision is a question of growth rather
+than present effort; though right effort, rightly continued, will in
+time infallibly lead to growth and vision. Through the power thus to
+set aside personal limitation, to push aside petty concerns and cares,
+and steady the whole nature and will in an ardent love of truth and
+desire to know it; through the power thus to make way for the
+All-consciousness, all great men make their discoveries. Newton,
+watching the apple fall to the earth, was able to look beyond, to see
+the subtle waves of force pulsating through apples and worlds and suns
+and galaxies, and thus to perceive universal gravitation. The Oversoul,
+looking through his eyes, recognized the universal force, one of its
+own children. Darwin, watching the forms and motions of plants and
+animals, let the same august consciousness come to bear on them, and
+saw infinite growth perfected through ceaseless struggle. He perceived
+the superb process of evolution, the Oversoul once more recognizing its
+own. Fraunhofer, noting the dark lines in the band of sunlight in his
+spectroscope, divined their identity with the bright lines in the
+spectra of incandescent iron, sodium and the rest, and so saw the
+oneness of substance in the worlds and suns, the unity of the materials
+of the universe. Once again the Oversoul, looking with his eyes,
+recognized its own. So it is with all true knowledge. But the mind must
+transcend its limitations, its idiosyncrasies; there must be purity,
+for to the pure in heart is the promise, that they shall see God.
+
+5. By mastering this perfectly concentrated Meditation, there comes the
+illumination of perception.
+
+The meaning of this is illustrated by what has been said before. When
+the spiritual man is able to throw aside the trammels of emotional and
+mental limitation, and to open his eyes, he sees clearly, he attains to
+illuminated perception. A poet once said that Occultism is the
+conscious cultivation of genius; and it is certain that the awakened
+spiritual man attains to the perceptions of genius. Genius is the
+vision, the power, of the spiritual man, whether its possessor
+recognizes this or not. All true knowledge is of the spiritual man. The
+greatest in all ages have recognized this and put their testimony on
+record. The great in wisdom who have not consciously recognized it,
+have ever been full of the spirit of reverence, of selfless devotion to
+truth, of humility, as was Darwin; and reverence and humility are the
+unconscious recognition of the nearness of the Spirit, that Divinity
+which broods over us, a Master o’er a slave.
+
+6. This power is distributed in ascending degrees.
+
+It is to be attained step by step. It is a question, not of miracle,
+but of evolution, of growth. Newton had to master the multiplication
+table, then the four rules of arithmetic, then the rudiments of
+algebra, before he came to the binomial theorem. At each point, there
+was attention, concentration, insight; until these were attained, no
+progress to the next point was possible. So with Darwin. He had to
+learn the form and use of leaf and flower, of bone and muscle; the
+characteristics of genera and species; the distribution of plants and
+animals, before he had in mind that nexus of knowledge on which the
+light of his great idea was at last able to shine. So is it with all
+knowledge. So is it with spiritual knowledge. Take the matter this way:
+The first subject for the exercise of my spiritual insight is my day,
+with its circumstances, its hindrances, its opportunities, its duties.
+I do what I can to solve it, to fulfil its duties, to learn its
+lessons. I try to live my day with aspiration and faith. That is the
+first step. By doing this, I gather a harvest for the evening, I gain a
+deeper insight into life, in virtue of which I begin the next day with
+a certain advantage, a certain spiritual advance and attainment. So
+with all successive days. In faith and aspiration, we pass from day to
+day, in growing knowledge and power, with never more than one day to
+solve at a time, until all life becomes radiant and transparent.
+
+7. This threefold power, of Attention, Meditation, Contemplation, is
+more interior than the means of growth previously described.
+
+Very naturally so; because the means of growth previously described
+were concerned with the extrication of the spiritual man from psychic
+bondages and veils; while this threefold power is to be exercised by
+the spiritual man thus extricated and standing on his feet, viewing
+life with open eyes.
+
+8. But this triad is still exterior to the soul vision which is
+unconditioned, free from the seed of mental analyses.
+
+The reason is this: The threefold power we have been considering, the
+triad of Attention, Contemplation, Meditation is, so far as we have yet
+considered it, the focussing of the beam of perceiving consciousness
+upon some form of manifesting being, with a view of understanding it
+completely. There is a higher stage, where the beam of consciousness is
+turned back upon itself, and the individual consciousness enters into,
+and knows, the All consciousness. This is a being, a being in
+immortality, rather than a knowing; it is free from mental analysis or
+mental forms. It is not an activity of the higher mind, even the mind
+of the spiritual man. It is an activity of the soul. Had Newton risen
+to this higher stage, he would have known, not the laws of motion, but
+that high Being, from whose Life comes eternal motion. Had Darwin risen
+to this, he would have seen the Soul, whose graduated thought and being
+all evolution expresses. There are, therefore, these two perceptions:
+that of living things, and that of the Life; that of the Soul’s works,
+and that of the Soul itself.
+
+9. One of the ascending degrees is the development of Control. First
+there is the overcoming of the mind-impress of excitation. Then comes
+the manifestation of the mind-impress of Control. Then the perceiving
+consciousness follows after the moment of Control.
+
+This is the development of Control. The meaning seems to be this: Some
+object enters the field of observation, and at first violently excites
+the mind, stirring up curiosity, fear, wonder; then the consciousness
+returns upon itself, as it were, and takes the perception firmly in
+hand, steadying itself, and viewing the matter calmly from above. This
+steadying effort of the will upon the perceiving consciousness is
+Control, and immediately upon it follows perception, understanding,
+insight.
+
+Take a trite example. Supposing one is walking in an Indian forest. A
+charging elephant suddenly appears. The man is excited by astonishment,
+and, perhaps, terror. But he exercises an effort of will, perceives the
+situation in its true bearings, and recognizes that a certain thing
+must be done; in this case, probably, that he must get out of the way
+as quickly as possible.
+
+Or a comet, unheralded, appears in the sky like a flaming sword. The
+beholder is at first astonished, perhaps terror-stricken; but he takes
+himself in hand, controls his thoughts, views the apparition calmly,
+and finally calculates its orbit and its relation to meteor showers.
+
+These are extreme illustrations; but with all knowledge the order of
+perception is the same: first, the excitation of the mind by the new
+object impressed on it; then the control of the mind from within; upon
+which follows the perception of the nature of the object. Where the
+eyes of the spiritual man are open, this will be a true and penetrating
+spiritual perception. In some such way do our living experiences come
+to us; first, with a shock of pain; then the Soul steadies itself and
+controls the pain; then the spirit perceives the lesson of the event,
+and its bearing upon the progressive revelation of life.
+
+10. Through frequent repetition of this process, the mind becomes
+habituated to it, and there arises an equable flow of perceiving
+consciousness.
+
+Control of the mind by the Soul, like control of the muscles by the
+mind, comes by practice, and constant voluntary repetition.
+
+As an example of control of the muscles by the mind, take the ceaseless
+practice by which a musician gains mastery over his instrument, or a
+fencer gains skill with a rapier. Innumerable small efforts of
+attention will make a result which seems well-nigh miraculous; which,
+for the novice, is really miraculous. Then consider that far more
+wonderful instrument, the perceiving mind, played on by that fine
+musician, the Soul. Here again, innumerable small efforts of attention
+will accumulate into mastery, and a mastery worth winning. For a
+concrete example, take the gradual conquest of each day, the effort to
+live that day for the Soul. To him that is faithful unto death, the
+Master gives the crown of life.
+
+11. The gradual conquest of the mind’s tendency to flit from one object
+to another, and the power of one-pointedness, make the development of
+Contemplation.
+
+As an illustration of the mind’s tendency to flit from one object to
+another, take a small boy, learning arithmetic. He begins: two ones are
+two; three ones are three-and then he thinks of three coins in his
+pocket, which will purchase so much candy, in the store down the
+street, next to the toy-shop, where are base-balls, marbles and so
+on,—and then he comes back with a jerk, to four ones are four. So with
+us also. We are seeking the meaning of our task, but the mind takes
+advantage of a moment of slackened attention, and flits off from one
+frivolous detail to another, till we suddenly come back to
+consciousness after traversing leagues of space. We must learn to
+conquer this, and to go back within ourselves into the beam of
+perceiving consciousness itself, which is a beam of the Oversoul. This
+is the true onepointedness, the bringing of our consciousness to a
+focus in the Soul.
+
+12. When, following this, the controlled manifold tendency and the
+aroused one-pointedness are equally balanced parts of the perceiving
+consciousness, his the development of one-pointedness.
+
+This would seem to mean that the insight which is called
+one-pointedness has two sides, equally balanced. There is, first, the
+manifold aspect of any object, the sum of all its characteristics and
+properties. This is to be held firmly in the mind. Then there is the
+perception of the object as a unity, as a whole, the perception of its
+essence. First, the details must be clearly perceived; then the essence
+must be comprehended. When the two processes are equally balanced, the
+true onepointedness is attained. Everything has these two sides, the
+side of difference and the side of unity; there is the individual and
+there is the genus; the pole of matter and diversity, and the pole of
+oneness and spirit. To see the object truly, we must see both.
+
+13. Through this, the inherent character, distinctive marks and
+conditions of being and powers, according to their development, are
+made clear.
+
+By the power defined in the preceding sutra, the inherent character,
+distinctive marks and conditions of beings and powers are made clear.
+For through this power, as defined, we get a twofold view of each
+object, seeing at once all its individual characteristics and its
+essential character, species and genus; we see it in relation to
+itself, and in relation to the Eternal. Thus we see a rose as that
+particular flower, with its colour and scent, its peculiar fold of each
+petal; but we also see in it the species, the family to which it
+belongs, with its relation to all plants, to all life, to Life itself.
+So in any day, we see events and circumstances; we also see in it the
+lesson set for the soul by the Eternal.
+
+14. Every object has its characteristics which are already quiescent,
+those which are active, and those which are not yet definable.
+
+Every object has characteristics belonging to its past, its present and
+its future. In a fir tree, for example, there are the stumps or scars
+of dead branches, which once represented its foremost growth; there are
+the branches with their needles spread out to the air; there are the
+buds at the end of each branch and twig, which carry the still closely
+packed needles which are the promise of the future. In like manner, the
+chrysalis has, as its past, the caterpillar; as its future, the
+butterfly. The man has, in his past, the animal; in his future, the
+angel. Both are visible even now in his face. So with all things, for
+all things change and grow.
+
+15. Difference in stage is the cause of difference in development.
+
+This but amplifies what has just been said. The first stage is the
+sapling, the caterpillar, the animal. The second stage is the growing
+tree, the chrysalis, the man. The third is the splendid pine, the
+butterfly, the angel. Difference of stage is the cause of difference of
+development. So it is among men, and among the races of men.
+
+16. Through perfectly concentrated Meditation on the three stages of
+development comes a knowledge of past and future.
+
+We have taken our illustrations from natural science, because, since
+every true discovery in natural science is a divination of a law in
+nature, attained through a flash of genius, such discoveries really
+represent acts of spiritual perception, acts of perception by the
+spiritual man, even though they are generally not so recognized. So we
+may once more use the same illustration. Perfectly concentrated
+Meditation, perfect insight into the chrysalis, reveals the caterpillar
+that it has been, the butterfly that it is destined to be. He who knows
+the seed, knows the seed-pod or ear it has come from, and the plant
+that is to come from it. So in like manner he who really knows today,
+and the heart of to-day, knows its parent yesterday and its child
+tomorrow. Past, present and future are all in the Eternal. He who
+dwells in the Eternal knows all three.
+
+17. The sound and the object and the thought called up by a word are
+confounded because they are all blurred together in the mind. By
+perfectly concentrated Meditation on the distinction between them,
+there comes an understanding of the sounds uttered by all beings.
+
+It must be remembered that we are speaking of perception by the
+spiritual man.
+
+Sound, like every force, is the expression of a power of the Eternal.
+Infinite shades of this power are expressed in the infinitely varied
+tones of sound. He who, having entry to the consciousness of the
+Eternal knows the essence of this power, can divine the meanings of all
+sounds, from the voice of the insect to the music of the spheres.
+
+In like manner, he who has attained to spiritual vision can perceive
+the mind-images in the thoughts of others, with the shade of feeling
+which goes with them, thus reading their thoughts as easily as he hears
+their words. Every one has the germ of this power, since difference of
+tone will give widely differing meanings to the same words, meanings
+which are intuitively perceived by everyone.
+
+18. When the mind-impressions become visible, there comes an
+understanding of previous births.
+
+This is simple enough if we grasp the truth of rebirth. The fine
+harvest of past experiences is drawn into the spiritual nature,
+forming, indeed, the basis of its development. When the consciousness
+has been raised to a point above these fine subjective impressions, and
+can look down upon them from above, this will in itself be a
+remembering of past births.
+
+19. By perfectly concentrated Meditation on mind-images is gained the
+understanding of the thoughts of others.
+
+Here, for those who can profit by it, is the secret of thought-reading.
+Take the simplest case of intentional thought transference. It is the
+testimony of those who have done this, that the perceiving mind must be
+stilled, before the mind-image projected by the other mind can be seen.
+With it comes a sense of the feeling and temper of the other mind and
+so on, in higher degrees.
+
+20. But since that on which the thought in the mind of another rests is
+not objective to the thought-reader’s consciousness, he perceives the
+thought only, and not also that on which the thought rests.
+
+The meaning appears to be simple: One may be able to perceive the
+thoughts of some one at a distance; one cannot, by that means alone,
+also perceive the external surroundings of that person, which arouse
+these thoughts.
+
+21. By perfectly concentrated Meditation on the form of the body, by
+arresting the body’s perceptibility, and by inhibiting the eye’s power
+of sight, there comes the power to make the body invisible.
+
+There are many instances of the exercise of this power, by mesmerists,
+hypnotists and the like; and we may simply call it an instance of the
+power of suggestion. Shankara tells us that by this power the popular
+magicians of the East perform their wonders, working on the mind-images
+of others, while remaining invisible themselves. It is all a question
+of being able to see and control the mind-images.
+
+22. The works which fill out the life-span may be either immediately or
+gradually operative. By perfectly concentrated Meditation on these
+comes a knowledge of the time of the end, as also through signs.
+
+A garment which is wet, says the commentator, may be hung up to dry,
+and so dry rapidly, or it may be rolled in a ball and dry slowly; so a
+fire may blaze or smoulder. Thus it is with Karma, the works that fill
+out the life-span. By an insight into the mental forms and forces which
+make up Karma, there comes a knowledge of the rapidity or slowness of
+their development, and of the time when the debt will be paid.
+
+23. By perfectly concentrated Meditation on sympathy, compassion and
+kindness, is gained the power of interior union with others.
+
+Unity is the reality; separateness the illusion. The nearer we come to
+reality, the nearer we come to unity of heart. Sympathy, compassion,
+kindness are modes of this unity of heart, whereby we rejoice with
+those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep. These things are
+learned by desiring to learn them.
+
+24. By perfectly concentrated Meditation on power, even such power as
+that of the elephant may be gained.
+
+This is a pretty image. Elephants possess not only force, but poise and
+fineness of control. They can lift a straw, a child, a tree with
+perfectly judged control and effort. So the simile is a good one. By
+detachment, by withdrawing into the soul’s reservoir of power, we can
+gain all these, force and fineness and poise; the ability to handle
+with equal mastery things small and great, concrete and abstract alike.
+
+25. By bending upon them the awakened inner light, there comes a
+knowledge of things subtle, or concealed, or obscure.
+
+As was said at the outset, each consciousness is related to all
+consciousness; and, through it, has a potential consciousness of all
+things; whether subtle or concealed or obscure. An understanding of
+this great truth will come with practice. As one of the wise has said,
+we have no conception of the power of Meditation.
+
+26. By perfectly concentrated Meditation on the sun comes a knowledge
+of the worlds.
+
+This has several meanings: First, by a knowledge of the constitution of
+the sun, astronomers can understand the kindred nature of the stars.
+And it is said that there is a finer astronomy, where the spiritual man
+is the astronomer. But the sun also means the Soul, and through
+knowledge of the Soul comes a knowledge of the realms of life.
+
+27. By perfectly concentrated Meditation on the moon comes a knowledge
+of the lunar mansions.
+
+Here again are different meanings. The moon is, first, the companion
+planet, which, each day, passes backward through one mansion of the
+stars. By watching the moon, the boundaries of the mansion are learned,
+with their succession in the great time-dial of the sky. But the moon
+also symbolizes the analytic mind, with its divided realms; and these,
+too, may be understood through perfectly concentrated Meditation.
+
+28. By perfectly concentrated Meditation on the fixed pole-star comes a
+knowledge of the motions of the stars.
+
+Addressing Duty, stern daughter of the Voice of God, Wordsworth finely
+said:
+
+     Thou cost preserve the stars from wrong,
+     And the most ancient heavens through thee are fresh and strong—
+
+
+thus suggesting a profound relation between the moral powers and the
+powers that rule the worlds. So in this Sutra the fixed polestar is the
+eternal spirit about which all things move, as well as the star toward
+which points the axis of the earth. Deep mysteries attend both, and the
+veil of mystery is only to be raised by Meditation, by open-eyed vision
+of the awakened spiritual man.
+
+29. Perfectly concentrated Meditation on the centre of force in the
+lower trunk brings an understanding of the order of the bodily powers.
+
+We are coming to a vitally important part of the teaching of Yoga:
+namely, the spiritual man’s attainment of full self-consciousness, the
+awakening of the spiritual man as a self-conscious individual, behind
+and above the natural man. In this awakening, and in the process of
+gestation which precedes it, there is a close relation with the powers
+of the natural man, which are, in a certain sense, the projection,
+outward and downward, of the powers of the spiritual man. This is
+notably true of that creative power of the spiritual man which, when
+embodied in the natural man, becomes the power of generation. Not only
+is this power the cause of the continuance of the bodily race of
+mankind, but further, in the individual, it is the key to the dominance
+of the personal life. Rising, as it were, through the life-channels of
+the body, it flushes the personality with physical force, and maintains
+and colours the illusion that the physical life is the dominant and
+all-important expression of life. In due time, when the spiritual man
+has begun to take form, the creative force will be drawn off, and
+become operative in building the body of the spiritual man, just as it
+has been operative in the building of physical bodies, through
+generation in the natural world.
+
+Perfectly concentrated Meditation on the nature of this force means,
+first, that rising of the consciousness into the spiritual world,
+already described, which gives the one sure foothold for Meditation;
+and then, from that spiritual point of vantage, not only an insight
+into the creative force, in its spiritual and physical aspects, but
+also a gradually attained control of this wonderful force, which will
+mean its direction to the body of the spiritual man, and its gradual
+withdrawal from the body of the natural man, until the over-pressure,
+so general and such a fruitful source of misery in our day, is abated,
+and purity takes the place of passion. This over pressure, which is the
+cause of so many evils and so much of human shame, is an abnormal, not
+a natural, condition. It is primarily due to spiritual blindness, to
+blindness regarding the spiritual man, and ignorance even of his
+existence; for by this blind ignorance are closed the channels through
+which, were they open, the creative force could flow into the body of
+the spiritual man, there building up an immortal vesture. There is no
+cure for blindness, with its consequent over-pressure and attendant
+misery and shame, but spiritual vision, spiritual aspiration,
+sacrifice, the new birth from above. There is no other way to lighten
+the burden, to lift the misery and shame from human life. Therefore,
+let us follow after sacrifice and aspiration, let us seek the light. In
+this way only shall we gain that insight into the order of the bodily
+powers, and that mastery of them, which this Sutra implies.
+
+30. By perfectly concentrated Meditation on the centre of force in the
+well of the throat, there comes the cessation of hunger and thirst.
+
+We are continuing the study of the bodily powers and centres of force
+in their relation to the powers and forces of the spiritual man. We
+have already considered the dominant power of physical life, the
+creative power which secures the continuance of physical life; and,
+further, the manner in which, through aspiration and sacrifice, it is
+gradually raised and set to the work of upbuilding the body of the
+spiritual man. We come now to the dominant psychic force, the power
+which manifests itself in speech, and in virtue of which the voice may
+carry so much of the personal magnetism, endowing the orator with a
+tongue of fire, magical in its power to arouse and rule the emotions of
+his hearers. This emotional power, this distinctively psychical force,
+is the cause of “hunger and thirst,” the psychical hunger and thirst
+for sensations, which is the source of our two-sided life of
+emotionalism, with its hopes and fears, its expectations and memories,
+its desires and hates. The source of this psychical power, or, perhaps
+we should say, its centre of activity in the physical body is said to
+be in the cavity of the throat. Thus, in the Taittiriya Upanishad it is
+written: “There is this shining ether in the inner being. Therein is
+the spiritual man, formed through thought, immortal, golden. Inward, in
+the palate, the organ that hangs down like a nipple,-this is the womb
+of Indra. And there, where the dividing of the hair turns, extending
+upward to the crown of the head.”
+
+Indra is the name given to the creative power of which we have spoken,
+and which, we are told, resides in “the organ which hangs down like a
+nipple, inward, in the palate.”
+
+31. By perfectly concentrated Meditation on the centre of force in the
+channel called the “tortoise-formed,” comes steadfastness.
+
+We are concerned now with the centre of nervous or psychical force
+below the cavity of the throat, in the chest, in which is felt the
+sensation of fear; the centre, the disturbance of which sets the heart
+beating miserably with dread, or which produces that sense of terror
+through which the heart is said to stand still.
+
+When the truth concerning fear is thoroughly mastered, through
+spiritual insight into the immortal, fearless life, then this force is
+perfectly controlled; there is no more fear, just as, through the
+control of the psychic power which works through the nerve-centre in
+the throat, there comes a cessation of “hunger and thirst.” Thereafter,
+these forces, or their spiritual prototypes, are turned to the building
+of the spiritual man.
+
+Always, it must be remembered, the victory is first a spiritual one;
+only later does it bring control of the bodily powers.
+
+32. Through perfectly concentrated Meditation on the light in the head
+comes the vision of the Masters who have attained.
+
+The tradition is, that there is a certain centre of force in the head,
+perhaps the “pineal gland,” which some of our Western philosophers have
+supposed to be the dwelling of the soul, a centre which is, as it were,
+the door way between the natural and the spiritual man. It is the seat
+of that better and wiser consciousness behind the outward looking
+consciousness in the forward part of the head; that better and wiser
+consciousness of “the back of the mind,” which views spiritual things,
+and seeks to impress the spiritual view on the outward looking
+consciousness in the forward part of the head. It is the spiritual man
+seeking to guide the natural man, seeking to bring the natural man to
+concern himself with the things of his immortality. This is suggested
+in the words of the Upanishad already quoted: “There, where the
+dividing of the hair turns, extending upward to the crown of the head”;
+all of which may sound very fantastical, until one comes to understand
+it.
+
+It is said that when this power is fully awakened, it brings a vision
+of the great Companions of the spiritual man, those who have already
+attained, crossing over to the further shore of the sea of death and
+rebirth. Perhaps it is to this divine sight that the Master alluded,
+who is reported to have said: “I counsel you to buy of me eye-salve,
+that you may see.” It is of this same vision of the great Companions,
+the children of light, that a seer wrote:
+
+“Though inland far we be,
+Our souls have sight of that immortal sea
+Which brought us hither,
+Can in a moment travel thither,
+And see the Children sport upon the shore
+And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore.”
+
+
+33. Or through the divining power of tuition he knows all things.
+
+This is really the supplement, the spiritual side, of the Sutra just
+translated. Step by step, as the better consciousness, the spiritual
+view, gains force in the back of the mind, so, in the same measure, the
+spiritual man is gaining the power to see: learning to open the
+spiritual eyes. When the eyes are fully opened, the spiritual man
+beholds the great Companions standing about him; he has begun to “know
+all things.”
+
+This divining power of intuition is the power which lies above and
+behind the so-called rational mind; the rational mind formulates a
+question and lays it before the intuition, which gives a real answer,
+often immediately distorted by the rational mind, yet always embodying
+a kernel of truth. It is by this process, through which the rational
+mind brings questions to the intuition for solution, that the truths of
+science are reached, the flashes of discovery and genius. But this
+higher power need not work in subordination to the so-called rational
+mind, it may act directly, as full illumination, “the vision and the
+faculty divine.”
+
+34 By perfectly concentrated Meditation on the heart, the interior
+being, comes the knowledge of consciousness.
+
+The heart here seems to mean, as it so often does in the Upanishads,
+the interior, spiritual nature, the consciousness of the spiritual man,
+which is related to the heart, and to the wisdom of the heart. By
+steadily seeking after, and finding, the consciousness of the spiritual
+man, by coming to consciousness as the spiritual man, a perfect
+knowledge of consciousness will be attained. For the consciousness of
+the spiritual man has this divine quality: while being and remaining a
+truly individual consciousness, it at the same time flows over, as it
+were, and blends with the Divine Consciousness above and about it, the
+consciousness of the great Companions; and by showing itself to be one
+with the Divine Consciousness, it reveals the nature of all
+consciousness, the secret that all consciousness is One and Divine.
+
+35. The personal self seeks to feast on life, through a failure to
+perceive the distinction between the personal self and the spiritual
+man. All personal experience really exists for the sake of another:
+namely, the spiritual man. By perfectly concentrated Meditation on
+experience for the sake of the Self, comes a knowledge of the spiritual
+man.
+
+The divine ray of the Higher Self, which is eternal, impersonal and
+abstract, descends into life, and forms a personality, which, through
+the stress and storm of life, is hammered into a definite and concrete
+self-conscious individuality. The problem is, to blend these two
+powers, taking the eternal and spiritual being of the first, and
+blending with it, transferring into it, the self-conscious
+individuality of the second; and thus bringing to life a third being,
+the spiritual man, who is heir to the immortality of his father, the
+Higher Self, and yet has the self-conscious, concrete individuality of
+his other parent, the personal self. This is the true immaculate
+conception, the new birth from above, “conceived of the Holy Spirit.”
+Of this new birth it is said: “that which is born of the Spirit is
+spirit: ye must be born again.”
+
+Rightly understood, therefore, the whole life of the personal man is
+for another, not for himself. He exists only to render his very life
+and all his experience for the building up of the spiritual man. Only
+through failure to see this, does he seek enjoyment for himself, seek
+to secure the feasts of life for himself; not understanding that he
+must live for the other, live sacrificially, offering both feasts and
+his very being on the altar; giving himself as a contribution for the
+building of the spiritual man. When he does understand this, and lives
+for the Higher Self, setting his heart and thought on the Higher Self,
+then his sacrifice bears divine fruit, the spiritual man is built up,
+consciousness awakes in him, and he comes fully into being as a divine
+and immortal individuality.
+
+36. Thereupon are born the divine power of intuition, and the hearing,
+the touch, the vision, the taste and the power of smell of the
+spiritual man.
+
+When, in virtue of the perpetual sacrifice of the personal man, daily
+and hourly giving his life for his divine brother the spiritual man,
+and through the radiance ever pouring down from the Higher Self,
+eternal in the Heavens, the spiritual man comes to birth,-there awake
+in him those powers whose physical counterparts we know in the personal
+man. The spiritual man begins to see, to hear, to touch, to taste. And,
+besides the senses of the spiritual man, there awakes his mind, that
+divine counterpart of the mind of the physical man, the power of direct
+and immediate knowledge, the power of spiritual intuition, of
+divination. This power, as we have seen, owes its virtue to the unity,
+the continuity, of consciousness, whereby whatever is known to any
+consciousness, is knowable by any other consciousness. Thus the
+consciousness of the spiritual man, who lives above our narrow barriers
+of separateness, is in intimate touch with the consciousness of the
+great Companions, and can draw on that vast reservoir for all real
+needs. Thus arises within the spiritual man that certain knowledge
+which is called intuition, divination, illumination.
+
+37. These powers stand in contradistinction to the highest spiritual
+vision. In manifestation they are called magical powers.
+
+The divine man is destined to supersede the spiritual man, as the
+spiritual man supersedes the natural man. Then the disciple becomes a
+Master. The opened powers of tile spiritual man, spiritual vision,
+hearing, and touch, stand, therefore, in contradistinction to the
+higher divine power above them, and must in no wise be regarded as the
+end of the way, for the path has no end, but rises ever to higher and
+higher glories; the soul’s growth and splendour have no limit. So that,
+if the spiritual powers we have been considering are regarded as in any
+sense final, they are a hindrance, a barrier to the far higher powers
+of the divine man. But viewed from below, from the standpoint of normal
+physical experience, they are powers truly magical; as the powers
+natural to a four-dimensional being will appear magical to a
+three-dimensional being.
+
+38. Through the weakening of the causes of bondage, and by learning the
+method of sassing, the consciousness is transferred to the other body.
+
+In due time, after the spiritual man has been formed and grown stable
+through the forces and virtues already enumerated, and after the senses
+of the spiritual man have awaked, there comes the transfer of the
+dominant consciousness, the sense of individuality, from the physical
+to the spiritual man. Thereafter the physical man is felt to be a
+secondary, a subordinate, an instrument through whom the spiritual man
+works; and the spiritual man is felt to be the real individuality. This
+is, in a sense, the attainment to full salvation and immortal life; yet
+it is not the final goal or resting place, but only the beginning of
+the greater way.
+
+The means for this transfer are described as the weakening of the
+causes of bondage, and an understanding of the method of passing from
+the one consciousness to the other. The first may also be described as
+detach meet, and comes from the conquest of the delusion that the
+personal self is the real man. When that delusion abates and is held in
+check, the finer consciousness of the spiritual man begins to shine in
+the background of the mind. The transfer of the sense of individuality
+to this finer consciousness, and thus to the spiritual man, then
+becomes a matter of recollection, of attention; primarily, a matter of
+taking a deeper interest in the life and doings of the spiritual man,
+than in the pleasures or occupations of the personality. Therefore it
+is said: “Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth
+and rust cloth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal: but
+lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust
+cloth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal: for
+where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.”
+
+39. Through mastery of the upward-life comes freedom from the dangers
+of water, morass, and thorny places, and the power of ascension is
+gained.
+
+Here is one of the sentences, so characteristic of this author, and,
+indeed, of the Eastern spirit, in which there is an obvious exterior
+meaning, and, within this, a clear interior meaning, not quite so
+obvious, but far more vital.
+
+The surface meaning is, that by mastery of a certain power, called here
+the upward-life, and akin to levitation, there comes the ability to
+walk on water, or to pass over thorny places without wounding the feet.
+
+But there is a deeper meaning. When we speak of the disciple’s path as
+a path of thorns, we use a symbol; and the same symbol is used here.
+The upward-life means something more than the power, often manifested
+in abnormal psychical experiences, of levitating the physical body, or
+near-by physical objects. It means the strong power of aspiration, of
+upward will, which first builds, and then awakes the spiritual man, and
+finally transfers the conscious individuality to him; for it is he who
+passes safely over the waters of death and rebirth, and is not pierced
+by the thorns in the path. Therefore it is said that he who would tread
+the path of power must look for a home in the air, and afterwards in
+the ether.
+
+Of the upward-life, this is written in the Katha Upanishad: “A hundred
+and one are the heart’s channels; of these one passes to the crown.
+Going up this, he comes to the immortal.” This is the power of
+ascension spoken of in the Sutra.
+
+40. By mastery of the binding-life comes radiance.
+
+In the Upanishads, it is said that this binding-life unites the
+upward-life to the downward-life, and these lives have their analogies
+in the “vital breaths” in the body. The thought in the text seems to
+be, that, when the personality is brought thoroughly under control of
+the spiritual man, through the life-currents which bind them together,
+the personality is endowed with a new force, a strong personal
+magnetism, one might call it, such as is often an appanage of genius.
+
+But the text seems to mean more than this and to have in view the
+“vesture of the colour of the sun” attributed by the Upanishads to the
+spiritual man; that vesture which a disciple has thus described: “The
+Lord shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his
+glorious body”; perhaps “body of radiance” would better translate the
+Greek.
+
+In both these passages, the teaching seems to be, that the body of the
+full-grown spiritual man is radiant or luminous,-for those at least,
+who have anointed their eyes wit! eye-salve, so that they see.
+
+41. From perfectly concentrated Meditation on the correlation of
+hearing and the ether, comes the power of spiritual hearing.
+
+Physical sound, we are told, is carried by the air, or by water, iron,
+or some medium on the same plane of substance. But then is a finer
+hearing, whose medium of transmission would seem to be the ether;
+perhaps no that ether which carries light, heat and magnetic waves,
+but, it may be, the far finer ether through which the power of gravity
+works. For, while light or heat or magnetic waves, travelling from the
+sun to the earth, take eight minutes for the journey, it is
+mathematically certain that the pull of gravitation does not take as
+much as eight seconds, or even the eighth of a second. The pull of
+gravitation travels, it would seem “as quick as thought”; so it may
+well be that, in thought transference or telepathy, the thoughts travel
+by the same way, carried by the same “thought-swift” medium.
+
+The transfer of a word by telepathy is the simplest and earliest form
+of the “divine hearing” of the spiritual man; as that power grows, and
+as, through perfectly concentrated Meditation, the spiritual man comes
+into more complete mastery of it, he grows able to hear and clearly
+distinguish the speech of the great Companions, who counsel and comfort
+him on his way. They may speak to him either in wordless thoughts, or
+in perfectly definite words and sentences.
+
+42. By perfectly concentrated Meditation em the correlation of the body
+with the ether, and by thinking of it as light as thistle-down, will
+come the power to traverse the ether.
+
+It has been said that he who would tread the path of power must look
+for a home in the air, and afterwards in the ether. This would seem to
+mean, besides the constant injunction to detachment, that he must be
+prepared to inhabit first a psychic, and then an etheric body; the
+former being the body of dreams; the latter, the body of the spiritual
+man, when he wakes up on the other side of dreamland. The gradual
+accustoming of the consciousness to its new etheric vesture, its
+gradual acclimatization, so to speak, in the etheric body of the
+spiritual man, is what our text seems to contemplate.
+
+43. When that condition of consciousness is reached, which is
+far-reaching and not confined to the body, which is outside the body
+and not conditioned by it, then the veil which conceals the light is
+worn away.
+
+Perhaps the best comment on this is afforded by the words of Paul: “I
+knew a man in Christ above fourteen years ago, (whether in the body, I
+cannot tell; or whether out of the body, I cannot tell: God knoweth;)
+such a one caught up to the third heaven. And I knew such a man,
+(whether in the body, or out of the body, I cannot tell: God knoweth;)
+how that he was caught up into paradise, and heard unspeakable [or,
+unspoken] words, which it is not lawful for a man to utter.”
+
+The condition is, briefly, that of the awakened spiritual man, who sees
+and hears beyond the veil.
+
+44. Mastery of the elements comes from perfectly concentrated
+Meditation on their five forms: the gross, the elemental, the subtle,
+the inherent, the purposive.
+
+These five forms are analogous to those recognized by modern physics:
+solid, liquid, gaseous, radiant and ionic. When the piercing vision of
+the awakened spiritual man is directed to the forms of matter, from
+within, as it were, from behind the scenes, then perfect mastery over
+the “beggarly elements” is attained. This is, perhaps, equivalent to
+the injunction: “Inquire of the earth, the air, and the water, of the
+secrets they hold for you. The development of your inner senses will
+enable you to do this.”
+
+45. Thereupon will come the manifestation of the atomic and other
+powers, which are the endowment of the body, together with its
+unassailable force.
+
+The body in question is, of course, the etheric body of the spiritual
+man. He is said to possess eight powers: the atomic, the power of
+assimilating himself with the nature of the atom, which will, perhaps,
+involve the power to disintegrate material forms; the power of
+levitation; the power of limitless extension; the power of boundless
+reach, so that, as the commentator says, “he can touch the moon with
+the tip of his finger”; the power to accomplish his will; the power of
+gravitation, the correlative of levitation; the power of command; the
+power of creative will. These are the endowments of the spiritual man.
+Further, the spiritual body is unassailable. Fire burns it not, water
+wets it not, the sword cleaves it not, dry winds parch it not. And, it
+is said, the spiritual man can impart something of this quality and
+temper to his bodily vesture.
+
+46. Shapeliness, beauty, force, the temper of the diamond: these are
+the endowments of that body.
+
+The spiritual man is shapely, beautiful strong, firm as the diamond.
+Therefore it is written: “These things saith the Son of God, who hath
+his eyes like unto a flame of fire, and his feet are like fine brass:
+He that overcometh and keepeth my works unto the end, to him will I
+give power over the nations: and he shall rule them with a rod of iron;
+and I will give him the morning star.”
+
+47. Mastery over the powers of perception and action comes through
+perfectly concentrated Meditation on their fivefold forms; namely,
+their power to grasp their distinctive nature, the element of
+self-consciousness in them, their inherence, and their purposiveness.
+
+Take, for example, sight. This possesses, first, the power to grasp,
+apprehend, perceive; second, it has its distinctive form of perception;
+that is, visual perception; third, it always carries with its
+operations self-consciousness, the thought: “I perceive”; fourth sight
+has the power of extension through the whole field of vision, even to
+the utmost star; fifth, it is used for the purposes of the Seer. So
+with the other senses. Perfectly concentrated Meditation on each sense,
+a viewing it from behind and within, as is possible for the spiritual
+man, brings a mastery of the scope and true character of each sense,
+and of the world on which they report collectively.
+
+48. Thence comes the power swift as thought, independent of
+instruments, and the mastery over matter.
+
+We are further enumerating the endowments of the spiritual man. Among
+these is the power to traverse space with the swiftness of thought, so
+that whatever place the spiritual man thinks of, to that he goes, in
+that place he already is. Thought has now become his means of
+locomotion. He is, therefore, independent of instruments, and can bring
+his force to bear directly, wherever he wills.
+
+49. When the spiritual man is perfectly disentangled from the psychic
+body, he attains to mastery over all things and to a knowledge of all.
+
+The spiritual man is enmeshed in the web of the emotions; desire, fear,
+ambition, passion; and impeded by the mental forms of separateness and
+materialism. When these meshes are sundered, these obstacles completely
+overcome, then the spiritual man stands forth in his own wide world,
+strong, mighty, wise. He uses divine powers, with a divine scope and
+energy, working together with divine Companions. To such a one it is
+said: “Thou art now a disciple, able to stand, able to hear, able to
+see, able to speak, thou hast conquered desire and attained to
+self-knowledge, thou hast seen thy soul in its bloom and recognized it,
+and heard the voice of the silence.”
+
+50. By absence of all self-indulgence at this point, when the seeds of
+bondage to sorrow are destroyed, pure spiritual being is attained.
+
+The seeking of indulgence for the personal self, whether through
+passion or ambition, sows the seed of future sorrow. For this self
+indulgence of the personality is a double sin against the real; a sin
+against the cleanness of life, and a sin against the universal being,
+which permits no exclusive particular good, since, in the real, all
+spiritual possessions are held in common. This twofold sin brings its
+reacting punishment, its confining bondage to sorrow. But ceasing from
+self-indulgence brings purity, liberation, spiritual life.
+
+51. There should be complete overcoming of allurement or pride in the
+invitations of the different realms of life, lest attachment to things
+evil arise once more.
+
+The commentator tells us that disciples, seekers for union, are of four
+degrees: first, those who are entering the path; second, those who are
+in the realm of allurements; third, those who have won the victory over
+matter and the senses; fourth, those who stand firm in pure spiritual
+life. To the second, especially, the caution in the text is addressed.
+More modern teachers would express the same truth by a warning against
+the delusions and fascinations of the psychic realm, which open around
+the disciple, as he breaks through into the unseen worlds. These are
+the dangers of the anteroom. Safety lies in passing on swiftly into the
+inner chamber. “Him that overcometh will I make a pillar in the temple
+of my God, and he shall go no more out.”
+
+52. From perfectly concentrated Meditation on the divisions of time and
+their succession comes that wisdom which is born of discernment.
+
+The Upanishads say of the liberated that “he has passed beyond the
+triad of time”; he no longer sees life as projected into past, present
+and future, since these are forms of the mind; but beholds all things
+spread out in the quiet light of the Eternal. This would seem to be the
+same thought, and to point to that clear-eyed spiritual perception
+which is above time; that wisdom born of the unveiling of Time’s
+delusion. Then shall the disciple live neither in the present nor the
+future, but in the Eternal.
+
+53. Hence comes discernment between things which are of like nature,
+not distinguished by difference of kind, character or position.
+
+Here, as also in the preceding Sutra, we are close to the doctrine that
+distinctions of order, time and space are creations of the mind; the
+threefold prism through which the real object appears to us distorted
+and refracted. When the prism is withdrawn, the object returns to its
+primal unity, no longer distinguishable by the mind, yet clearly
+knowable by that high power of spiritual discernment, of illumination,
+which is above the mind.
+
+54. The wisdom which is born of discernment is starlike; it discerns
+all things, and all conditions of things, it discerns without
+succession: simultaneously.
+
+That wisdom, that intuitive, divining power is starlike, says the
+commentator, because it shines with its own light, because it rises on
+high, and illumines all things. Nought is hid from it, whether things
+past, things present, or things to come; for it is beyond the threefold
+form of time, so that all things are spread before it together, in the
+single light of the divine. This power has been beautifully described
+by Columba: “Some there are, though very few, to whom Divine grace has
+granted this: that they can clearly and most distinctly see, at one and
+the same moment, as though under one ray of the sun, even the entire
+circuit of the whole world with its surroundings of ocean and sky, the
+inmost part of their mind being marvellously enlarged.”
+
+55. When the vesture and the spiritual man are alike pure, then perfect
+spiritual life is attained.
+
+The vesture, says the commentator, must first be washed pure of all
+stains of passion and darkness, and the seeds of future sorrow must be
+burned up utterly. Then, both the vesture and the wearer of the vesture
+being alike pure, the spiritual man enters into perfect spiritual life.
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION TO BOOK IV
+
+
+The third book of the Sutras has fairly completed the history of the
+birth and growth of the spiritual man, and the enumeration of his
+powers; at least so far as concerns that first epoch in his immortal
+life, which immediately succeeds, and supersedes, the life of the
+natural man.
+
+In the fourth book, we are to consider what one might call the
+mechanism of salvation, the ideally simple working of cosmic law which
+brings the spiritual man to birth, growth, and fulness of power, and
+prepares him for the splendid, toilsome further stages of his great
+journey home.
+
+The Sutras are here brief to obscurity; only a few words, for example,
+are given to the great triune mystery and illusion of Time; a phrase or
+two indicates the sweep of some universal law. Yet it is hoped that, by
+keeping our eyes fixed on the spiritual man, remembering that he is the
+hero of the story, and that all that is written concerns him and his
+adventures, we may be able to find our way through this thicket of
+tangled words, and keep in our hands the clue to the mystery.
+
+The last part of the last book needs little introduction. In a sense,
+it is the most important part of the whole treatise, since it unmasks
+the nature of the personality, that psychical “mind,” which is the
+wakeful enemy of all who seek to tread the path. Even now, we can hear
+it whispering the doubt whether that can be a good path, which thus
+sets “mind” at defiance.
+
+If this, then, be the most vital and fundamental part of the teaching,
+should it not stand at the very beginning? It may seem so at first; but
+had it stood there, we should not have comprehended it. For he who
+would know the doctrine must lead the life, doing the will of his
+Father which is in Heaven.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK IV
+
+
+1. Psychic and spiritual powers may be inborn, or they may be gained by
+the use of drugs, or by incantations, or by fervour, or by Meditation.
+
+Spiritual powers have been enumerated and described in the preceding
+sections. They are the normal powers of the spiritual man, the
+antetype, the divine edition, of the powers of the natural man. Through
+these powers, the spiritual man stands, sees, hears, speaks, in the
+spiritual world, as the physical man stands, sees, hears, speaks in the
+natural world.
+
+There is a counterfeit presentment of the spiritual man, in the world
+of dreams, a shadow lord of shadows, who has his own dreamy powers of
+vision, of hearing, of movement; he has left the natural without
+reaching the spiritual. He has set forth from the shore, but has not
+gained the further verge of the river. He is borne along by the stream,
+with no foothold on either shore. Leaving the actual, he has fallen
+short of the real, caught in the limbo of vanities and delusions. The
+cause of this aberrant phantasm is always the worship of a false, vain
+self, the lord of dreams, within one’s own breast. This is the psychic
+man, lord of delusive and bewildering psychic powers.
+
+Spiritual powers, like intellectual or artistic gifts, may be inborn:
+the fruit, that is, of seeds planted and reared with toil in a former
+birth. So also the powers of the psychic man may be inborn, a delusive
+harvest from seeds of delusion.
+
+Psychical powers may be gained by drugs, as poverty, shame, debasement
+may be gained by the self-same drugs. In their action, they are
+baneful, cutting the man off from consciousness of the restraining
+power of his divine nature, so that his forces break forth exuberant,
+like the laughter of drunkards, and he sees and hears things delusive.
+While sinking, he believes that he has risen; growing weaker, he thinks
+himself full of strength; beholding illusions, he takes them to be
+true. Such are the powers gained by drugs; they are wholly psychic,
+since the real powers, the spiritual, can never be so gained.
+
+Incantations are affirmations of half-truths concerning spirit and
+matter, what is and what is not, which work upon the mind and slowly
+build up a wraith of powers and a delusive well-being. These, too, are
+of the psychic realm of dreams.
+
+Lastly, there are the true powers of the spiritual man, built up and
+realized in Meditation, through reverent obedience to spiritual law, to
+the pure conditions of being, in the divine realm.
+
+2. The transfer of powers from one venture to another comes through the
+flow of the natural creative forces.
+
+Here, if we can perceive it, is the whole secret of spiritual birth,
+growth and life Spiritual being, like all being, is but an expression
+of the Self, of the inherent power and being of Atma. Inherent in the
+Self are consciousness and will, which have, as their lordly heritage,
+the wide sweep of the universe throughout eternity, for the Self is one
+with the Eternal. And the consciousness of the Self may make itself
+manifest as seeing, hearing, tasting, feeling, or whatsoever perceptive
+powers there may be, just as the white sunlight may divide into
+many-coloured rays. So may the will of the Self manifest itself in the
+uttering of words, or in handling, or in moving, and whatever powers of
+action there are throughout the seven worlds. Where the Self is, there
+will its powers be. It is but a question of the vesture through which
+these powers shall shine forth. And wherever the consciousness and
+desire of the ever-creative Self are fixed, there will a vesture be
+built up; where the heart is, there will the treasure be also.
+
+Since through ages the desire of the Self has been toward the natural
+world, wherein the Self sought to mirror himself that he might know
+himself, therefore a vesture of natural elements came into being,
+through which blossomed forth the Self’s powers of perceiving and of
+will: the power to see, to hear, to speak, to walk, to handle; and when
+the Self, thus come to self-consciousness, and, with it, to a knowledge
+of his imprisonment, shall set his desire on the divine and real world,
+and raise his consciousness thereto, the spiritual vesture shall be
+built up for him there, with its expression of his inherent powers. Nor
+will migration thither be difficult for the Self, since the divine is
+no strange or foreign land for him, but the house of his home, where he
+dwells from everlasting.
+
+3. The apparent, immediate cause is not the true cause of the creative
+nature-powers; but, like the husbandman in his field, it takes
+obstacles away.
+
+The husbandman tills his field, breaking up the clods of earth into
+fine mould, penetrable to air and rain; he sows his seed, carefully
+covering it, for fear of birds and the wind; he waters the seed-laden
+earth, turning the little rills from the irrigation tank now this way
+and that, removing obstacles from the channels, until the even How of
+water vitalizes the whole field. And so the plants germinate and grow,
+first the blade, then the ear, then the full corn in the ear. But it is
+not the husbandman who makes them grow. It is, first, the miraculous
+plasmic power in the grain of seed, which brings forth after its kind;
+then the alchemy of sunlight which, in presence of the green colouring
+matter of the leaves, gathers hydrogen from the water and carbon from
+the gases in the air, and mingles them in the hydro-carbons of plant
+growth; and, finally, the wholly occult vital powers of the plant
+itself, stored up through ages, and flowing down from the primal
+sources of life. The husbandman but removes the obstacles. He plants
+and waters, but God gives the increase.
+
+So with the finer husbandman of diviner fields. He tills and sows, but
+the growth of the spiritual man comes through the surge and flow of
+divine, creative forces and powers. Here, again, God gives the
+increase. The divine Self puts forth, for the manifestation of its
+powers, a new and finer vesture, the body of the spiritual man.
+
+4. Vestures of consciousness are built up in conformity with the Boston
+of the feeling of selfhood.
+
+The Self, says a great Teacher, in turn attaches itself to three
+vestures: first, to the physical body, then to the finer body, and
+thirdly to the causal body. Finally it stands forth radiant, luminous,
+joyous, as the Self.
+
+When the Self attributes itself to the physical body, there arise the
+states of bodily consciousness, built up about the physical self.
+
+When the Self, breaking through this first illusion, begins to see and
+feel itself in the finer body, to find selfhood there, then the states
+of consciousness of the finer body come into being; or, to speak
+exactly, the finer body and its states of consciousness arise and grow
+together.
+
+But the Self must not dwell permanently there. It must learn to find
+itself in the causal body, to build up the wide and luminous fields of
+consciousness that belong to that.
+
+Nor must it dwell forever there, for there remains the fourth state,
+the divine, with its own splendour and everlastingness.
+
+It is all a question of the states of consciousness; all a question of
+raising the sense of selfhood, until it dwells forever in the Eternal.
+
+5. In the different fields of manifestation, the Consciousness, though
+one, is the elective cause of many states of consciousness.
+
+Here is the splendid teaching of oneness that lies at the heart of the
+Eastern wisdom. Consciousness is ultimately One, everywhere and
+forever. The Eternal, the Father, is the One Self of All Beings. And
+so, in each individual who is but a facet of that Self, Consciousness
+is One. Whether it breaks through as the dull fire of physical life, or
+the murky flame of the psychic and passional, or the radiance of the
+spiritual man, or the full glory of the Divine, it is ever the Light,
+naught but the Light. The one Consciousness is the effective cause of
+all states of consciousness, on every plane.
+
+6. Among states of consciousness, that which is born of Contemplation
+is free from the seed of future sorrow.
+
+Where the consciousness breaks forth in the physical body, and the full
+play of bodily life begins, its progression carries with it inevitable
+limitations. Birth involves death. Meetings have their partings. Hunger
+alternates with satiety. Age follows on the heels of youth. So do the
+states of consciousness run along the circle of birth and death.
+
+With the psychic, the alternation between prize and penalty is swifter.
+Hope has its shadow of fear, or it is no hope. Exclusive love is
+tortured by jealousy. Pleasure passes through deadness into pain.
+Pain’s surcease brings pleasure back again. So here, too, the states of
+consciousness run their circle. In all psychic states there is egotism,
+which, indeed, is the very essence of the psychic; and where there is
+egotism there is ever the seed of future sorrow. Desire carries bondage
+in its womb.
+
+But where the pure spiritual consciousness begins, free from self and
+stain, the ancient law of retaliation ceases; the penalty of sorrow
+lapses and is no more imposed. The soul now passes, no longer from
+sorrow to sorrow, but from glory to glory. Its growth and splendour
+have no limit. The good passes to better, best.
+
+7. The works of followers after Union make neither for bright pleasure
+nor for dark pain The works of others make for pleasure or pain, or a
+mingling of these.
+
+The man of desire wins from his works the reward of pleasure, or incurs
+the penalty of pain; or, as so often happens in life, his guerdon, like
+the passionate mood of the lover, is part pleasure and part pain. Works
+done with self-seeking bear within them the seeds of future sorrow;
+conversely, according to the proverb, present pain is future gain.
+
+But, for him who has gone beyond desire, whose desire is set on the
+Eternal, neither pain to be avoided nor pleasure to be gained inspires
+his work. He fears no hell and desires no heaven. His one desire is, to
+know the will of the Father and finish His work. He comes directly in
+line with the divine Will, and works cleanly and immediately, without
+longing or fear. His heart dwells in the Eternal; all his desires are
+set on the Eternal.
+
+8. From the force inherent in works comes the manifestation of those
+dynamic mind images which are conformable to the ripening out of each
+of these works.
+
+We are now to consider the general mechanism of Karma, in order that we
+may pass on to the consideration of him who is free from Karma. Karma,
+indeed, is the concern of the personal man, of his bondage or freedom.
+It is the succession of the forces which built up the personal man,
+reproducing themselves in one personality after another.
+
+Now let us take an imaginary case, to see how these forces may work
+out. Let us think of a man, with murderous intent in his heart,
+striking with a dagger at his enemy. He makes a red wound in his
+victim’s breast; at the same instant he paints, in his own mind, a
+picture of that wound: a picture dynamic with all the fierce will-power
+he has put into his murderous blow. In other words he has made a deep
+wound in his own psychic body; and, when he comes to be born again,
+that body will become his outermost vesture, upon which, with its wound
+still there, bodily tissue will be built up. So the man will be born
+maimed, or with the predisposition to some mortal injury; he is
+unguarded at that point, and any trifling accidental blow will pierce
+the broken Joints of his psychic armour. Thus do the dynamic
+mind-images manifest themselves, coming to the surface, so that works
+done in the past may ripen and come to fruition.
+
+9. Works separated by different nature, or place, or time, are brought
+together by the correspondence between memory and dynamic impression.
+
+Just as, in the ripening out of mind-images into bodily conditions, the
+effect is brought about by the ray of creative force sent down by the
+Self, somewhat as the light of the magic lantern projects the details
+of a picture on the screen, revealing the hidden, and making secret
+things palpable and visible, so does this divine ray exercise a
+selective power on the dynamic mind-images, bringing together into one
+day of life the seeds gathered from many days. The memory constantly
+exemplifies this power; a passage of poetry will call up in the mind
+like passages of many poets, read at different times. So a prayer may
+call up many prayers.
+
+In like manner, the same over-ruling selective power, which is a ray of
+the Higher Self, gathers together from different births and times and
+places those mind-images which are conformable, and may be grouped in
+the frame of a single life or a single event. Through this grouping,
+visible bodily conditions or outward circumstances are brought about,
+and by these the soul is taught and trained.
+
+Just as the dynamic mind-images of desire ripen out in bodily
+conditions and circumstances, so the far more dynamic powers of
+aspiration, wherein the soul reaches toward the Eternal, have their
+fruition in a finer world, building the vesture of the spiritual man.
+
+10. The series of dynamic mind-images is beginningless, because Desire
+is everlasting.
+
+The whole series of dynamic mind-images, which make up the entire
+history of the personal man, is a part of the mechanism which the Self
+employs, to mirror itself in a reflection, to embody its powers in an
+outward form, to the end of self-expression, selfrealization,
+self-knowledge. Therefore the initial impulse behind these dynamic
+mind-images comes from the Self and is the descending ray of the Self;
+so that it cannot be said that there is any first member of the series
+of images, from which the rest arose. The impulse is beginningless,
+since it comes from the Self, which is from everlasting. Desire is not
+to cease; it is to turn to the Eternal, and so become aspiration.
+
+11. Since the dynamic mind-images are held together by impulses of
+desire, by the wish for personal reward, by the substratum of mental
+habit, by the support of outer things desired; therefore, when these
+cease, the self reproduction of dynamic mind-images ceases.
+
+We are still concerned with the personal life in its bodily vesture,
+and with the process whereby the forces which have upheld it are
+gradually transferred to the life of the spiritual man, and build up
+for him his finer vesture in a finer world.
+
+How is the current to be changed? How is the flow of self-reproductive
+mind-images, which have built the conditions of life after life in this
+world of bondage, to be checked, that the time of imprisonment may come
+to an end, the day of liberation dawn?
+
+The answer is given in the Sutra just translated. The driving-force is
+withdrawn and directed to the upbuilding of the spiritual body.
+
+When the building impulses and forces are withdrawn, the tendency to
+manifest a new psychical body, a new body of bondage, ceases with them.
+
+12. The difference between that which is past and that which is not yet
+come, according to their natures, depends on the difference of phase of
+their properties.
+
+Here we come to a high and difficult matter, which has always been held
+to be of great moment in the Eastern wisdom: the thought that the
+division of time into past, present and future is, in great measure, an
+illusion; that past, present, future all dwell together in the eternal
+Now.
+
+The discernment of this truth has been held to be so necessarily a part
+of wisdom, that one of the names of the Enlightened is: “he who has
+passed beyond the three times: past, present, future.”
+
+So the Western Master said: “Before Abraham was, I am”; and again, “I
+am with you always, unto the end of the world”; using the eternal
+present for past and future alike. With the same purpose, the Master
+speaks of himself as “the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the
+end, the first and the last.”
+
+And a Master of our own days writes: “I feel even irritated at having
+to use these three clumsy words—past, present, and future. Miserable
+concepts of the objective phases of the subjective whole, they are
+about as ill adapted for the purpose, as an axe for fine carving.”
+
+In the eternal Now, both past and future are consummated.
+
+Bjorklund, the Swedish philosopher, has well stated the same truth:
+
+“Neither past nor future can exist to God; He lives undividedly,
+without limitations, and needs not, as man, to plot out his existence
+in a series of moments. Eternity then is not identical with unending
+time; it is a different form of existence, related to time as the
+perfect to the imperfect … Man as an entity for himself must have the
+natural limitations for the part. Conceived by God, man is eternal in
+the divine sense, but conceived, by himself, man’s eternal life is
+clothed in the limitations we call time. The eternal is a constant
+present without beginning or end, without past or future.”
+
+13. These properties, whether manifest or latent, are of the nature of
+the Three Potencies.
+
+The Three Potencies are the three manifested modifications of the one
+primal material, which stands opposite to perceiving consciousness.
+These Three Potencies are called Substance, Force, Darkness; or viewed
+rather for their moral colouring, Goodness, Passion, Inertness. Every
+material manifestation is a projection of substance into the empty
+space of darkness. Every mental state is either good, or passional, or
+inert. So, whether subjective or objective, latent or manifest, all
+things that present themselves to the perceiving consciousness are
+compounded of these three. This is a fundamental doctrine of the
+Sankhya system.
+
+14. The external manifestation of an object takes place when the
+transformations ore in the same phase.
+
+We should be inclined to express the same law by saying, for example,
+that a sound is audible, when it consists of vibrations within the
+compass of the auditory nerve; that an object is visible, when either
+directly or by reflection, it sends forth luminiferous vibrations
+within the compass of the retina and the optic nerve. Vibrations below
+or above that compass make no impression at all, and the object remains
+invisible; as, for example, a kettle of boiling water in a dark room,
+though the kettle is sending forth heat vibrations closely akin to
+light.
+
+So, when the vibrations of the object and those of the perceptive power
+are in the same phase, the external manifestation of the object takes
+place.
+
+There seems to be a further suggestion that the appearance of an object
+in the “present,” or its remaining hid in the “past,” or “future,” is
+likewise a question of phase, and, just as the range of vibrations
+perceived might be increased by the development of finer senses, so the
+perception of things past, and things to come, may be easy from a
+higher point of view.
+
+15. The paths of material things and of states of consciousness are
+distinct, as is manifest from the fact that the same object may produce
+different impressions in different minds.
+
+Having shown that our bodily condition and circumstances depend on
+Karma, while Karma depends on perception and will, the sage recognizes
+the fact that from this may be drawn the false deduction that material
+things are in no wise different from states of mind. The same thought
+has occurred, and still occurs, to all philosophers; and, by various
+reasonings, they all come to the same wise conclusion; that the
+material world is not made by the mood of any human mind, but is rather
+the manifestation of the totality of invisible Being, whether we call
+this Mahat, with the ancients, or Ether, with the moderns.
+
+16. Nor do material objects depend upon a single mind, for how could
+they remain objective to others, if that mind ceased to think of them?
+
+This is but a further development of the thought of the preceding
+Sutra, carrying on the thought that, while the universe is spiritual,
+yet its material expression is ordered, consistent, ruled by law, not
+subject to the whims or affirmations of a single mind. Unwelcome
+material things may be escaped by spiritual growth, by rising to a
+realm above them, and not by denying their existence on their own
+plane. So that our system is neither materialistic, nor idealistic in
+the extreme sense, but rather intuitional and spiritual, holding that
+matter is the manifestation of spirit as a whole, a reflection or
+externalization of spirit, and, like spirit, everywhere obedient to
+law. The path of liberation is not through denial of matter but through
+denial of the wills of self, through obedience, and that aspiration
+which builds the vesture of the spiritual man.
+
+17. An object is perceived, or not perceived, according as the mind is,
+or is not, tinged with the colour of the object.
+
+The simplest manifestation of this is the matter of attention. Our
+minds apprehend what they wish to apprehend; all else passes unnoticed,
+or, on the other hand, we perceive what we resent, as, for example, the
+noise of a passing train; while others, used to the sound, do not
+notice it at all.
+
+But the deeper meaning is, that out of the vast totality of objects
+ever present in the universe, the mind perceives only those which
+conform to the hue of its Karma. The rest remain unseen, even though
+close at hand.
+
+This spiritual law has been well expressed by Emerson:
+
+“Through solidest eternal things the man finds his road as if they did
+not subsist, and does not once suspect their being. As soon as he needs
+a new object, suddenly he beholds it, and no longer attempts to pass
+through it, but takes another way. When he has exhausted for the time
+the nourishment to be drawn from any one person or thing, that object
+is withdrawn from his observation, and though still in his immediate
+neighbourhood, he does not suspect its presence. Nothing is dead. Men
+feign themselves dead, and endure mock funerals and mournful
+obituaries, and there they stand looking out of the window, sound and
+well, in some new and strange disguise. Jesus is not dead, he is very
+well alive: nor John, nor Paul, nor Mahomet, nor Aristotle; at times we
+believe we have seen them all, and could easily tell the names under
+which they go.”
+
+18. The movements of the psychic nature are perpetually objects of
+perception, since the Spiritual Man, who is the lord of them, remains
+unchanging.
+
+Here is teaching of the utmost import, both for understanding and for
+practice.
+
+To the psychic nature belong all the ebb and flow of emotion, all
+hoping and fearing, desire and hate: the things that make the multitude
+of men and women deem themselves happy or miserable. To it also belong
+the measuring and comparing, the doubt and questioning, which, for the
+same multitude, make up mental life. So that there results the
+emotion-soaked personality, with its dark and narrow view of life: the
+shivering, terror driven personality that is life itself for all but
+all of mankind.
+
+Yet the personality is not the true man, not the living soul at all,
+but only a spectacle which the true man observes. Let us under stand
+this, therefore, and draw ourselves up inwardly to the height of the
+Spiritual Man, who, standing in the quiet light of the Eternal, looks
+down serene upon this turmoil of the outer life.
+
+One first masters the personality, the “mind,” by thus looking down on
+it from above, from within; by steadily watching its ebb and flow, as
+objective, outward, and therefore not the real Self. This standing back
+is the first step, detachment. The second, to maintain the
+vantage-ground thus gained, is recollection.
+
+19. The Mind is not self-luminous, since it can be seen as an object.
+
+This is a further step toward overthrowing the tyranny of the “mind”:
+the psychic nature of emotion and mental measuring. This psychic self,
+the personality, claims to be absolute, asserting that life is for it
+and through it; it seeks to impose on the whole being of man its
+narrow, materialistic, faithless view of life and the universe; it
+would clip the wings of the soaring Soul. But the Soul dethrones the
+tyrant, by perceiving and steadily affirming that the psychic self is
+no true self at all, not self-luminous, but only an object of
+observation, watched by the serene eyes of the Spiritual Man.
+
+20. Nor could the Mind at the same time know itself and things external
+to it.
+
+The truth is that the “mind” knows neither external things nor itself.
+Its measuring and analyzing, its hoping and fearing, hating and
+desiring, never give it a true measure of life, nor any sense of real
+values. Ceaselessly active, it never really attains to knowledge; or,
+if we admit its knowledge, it ever falls short of wisdom, which comes
+only through intuition, the vision of the Spiritual Man.
+
+Life cannot be known by the “mind,” its secrets cannot be learned
+through the “mind.” The proof is, the ceaseless strife and
+contradiction of opinion among those who trust in the mind. Much less
+can the “mind” know itself, the more so, because it is pervaded by the
+illusion that it truly knows, truly is.
+
+True knowledge of the “mind” comes, first, when the Spiritual Man,
+arising, stands detached, regarding the “mind” from above, with quiet
+eyes, and seeing it for the tangled web of psychic forces that it truly
+is. But the truth is divined long before it is clearly seen, and then
+begins the long battle of the “mind,” against the Real, the “mind”
+fighting doggedly, craftily, for its supremacy.
+
+21. If the Mind be thought of as seen by another more inward Mind, then
+there would be an endless series of perceiving Minds, and a confusion
+of memories.
+
+One of the expedients by which the “mind” seeks to deny and thwart the
+Soul, when it feels that it is beginning to be circumvented and seen
+through, is to assert that this seeing is the work of a part of itself,
+one part observing the other, and thus leaving no need nor place for
+the Spiritual Man.
+
+To this strategy the argument is opposed by our philosopher, that this
+would be no true solution, but only a postponement of the solution. For
+we should have to find yet another part of the mind to view the first
+observing part, and then another to observe this, and so on, endlessly.
+
+The true solution is, that the Spiritual Man looks down upon the
+psychic nature, and observes it; when he views the psychic pictures
+gallery, this is “memory,” which would be a hopeless, inextricable
+confusion, if we thought of one part of the “mind,” with its memories,
+viewing another part, with memories of its own.
+
+The solution of the mystery lies not in the “mind” but beyond it, in
+the luminous life of the risen Lord, the Spiritual Man.
+
+22. When the psychical nature takes on the form of the spiritual
+intelligence, by reflecting it, then the Self becomes conscious of its
+own spiritual intelligence.
+
+We are considering a stage of spiritual life at which the psychical
+nature has been cleansed and purified. Formerly, it reflected in its
+plastic substance the images of the earthy; purified now, it reflects
+the image of the heavenly, giving the spiritual intelligence a visible
+form. The Self, beholding that visible form, in which its spiritual
+intelligence has, as it were, taken palpable shape, thereby reaches
+self-recognition, self-comprehension. The Self sees itself in this
+mirror, and thus becomes not only conscious, but self-conscious. This
+is, from one point of view, the purpose of the whole evolutionary
+process.
+
+23. The psychic nature, taking on the colour of the Seer and of things
+seen, leads to the perception of all objects.
+
+In the unregenerate man, the psychic nature is saturated with images of
+material things, of things seen, or heard, or tasted, or felt; and this
+web of dynamic images forms the ordinary material and driving power of
+life. The sensation of sweet things tasted clamours to be renewed, and
+drives the man into effort to obtain its renewal; so he adds image to
+image, each dynamic and importunate, piling up sin’s intolerable
+burden.
+
+Then comes regeneration, and the washing away of sin, through the
+fiery, creative power of the Soul, which burns out the stains of the
+psychic vesture, purifying it as gold is refined in the furnace. The
+suffering of regeneration springs from this indispensable purifying.
+
+Then the psychic vesture begins to take on the colour of the Soul, no
+longer stained, but suffused with golden light; and the man red
+generate gleams with the radiance of eternity. Thus the Spiritual Man
+puts on fair raiment; for of this cleansing it is said: Though your
+sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow; though they be as
+crimson, they shall be as wool.
+
+24. The psychic nature, which has been printed with mind-images of
+innumerable material things, exists now for the Spiritual Man, building
+for him.
+
+The “mind,” once the tyrant, is now the slave, recognized as outward,
+separate, not Self, a well-trained instrument of the Spiritual Man.
+
+For it is not ordained for the Spiritual Man that, finding his high
+realm, he shall enter altogether there, and pass out of the vision of
+mankind. It is true that he dwells in heaven, but he also dwells on
+earth. He has angels and archangels, the hosts of the just made
+perfect, for his familiar friends, but he has at the same time found a
+new kinship with the prone children of men, who stumble and sin in the
+dark. Finding sinlessness, he finds also that the world’s sin and shame
+are his, not to share, but to atone; finding kinship with angels, he
+likewise finds his part in the toil of angels, the toil for the
+redemption of the world.
+
+For this work, he, who now stands in the heavenly realm, needs his
+instrument on earth; and this instrument he finds, ready to his hand,
+and fitted and perfected by the very struggles he has waged against it,
+in the personality, the “mind,” of the personal man. This once tyrant
+is now his servant and perfect ambassador, bearing witness, before men,
+of heavenly things and even in this present world doing the will and
+working the works of the Father.
+
+25. For him who discerns between the Mind and the Spiritual Man, there
+comes perfect fruition of the longing after the real being of the Self.
+
+How many times in the long struggle have the Soul’s aspirations seemed
+but a hopeless, impossible dream, a madman’s counsel of perfection. Yet
+every finest, most impossible aspiration shall be realized, and ten
+times more than realized, once the long, arduous fight against the
+“mind,” and the mind’s worldview is won. And then it will be seen that
+unfaith and despair were but weapons of the “mind,” to daunt the Soul,
+and put off the day when the neck of the “mind” shall be put under the
+foot of the Soul.
+
+Have you aspired, well-nigh hopeless, after immortality? You shall be
+paid by entering the immortality of God.
+
+Have you aspired, in misery and pain, after consoling, healing love?
+You shall be made a dispenser of the divine love of God Himself to
+weary souls.
+
+Have you sought ardently, in your day of feebleness, after power? You
+shall wield power immortal, infinite, with God working the works of
+God.
+
+Have you, in lonely darkness, longed for companionship and consolation?
+You shall have angels and archangels for your friends, and all the
+immortal hosts of the Dawn.
+
+These are the fruits of victory. Therefore overcome. These are the
+prizes of regeneration. Therefore die to self, that you may rise again
+to God.
+
+26. Thereafter, the whole personal being bends toward illumination,
+toward Eternal Life.
+
+This is part of the secret of the Soul, that salvation means, not
+merely that a soul shall be cleansed and raised to heaven, but that the
+whole realm of the natural powers shall be redeemed, building up, even
+in this present world, the kingly figure of the Spiritual Man.
+
+The traditions of the ages are full of his footsteps; majestic,
+uncomprehended shadows, myths, demi-gods, fill the memories of all the
+nobler peoples. But the time cometh, when he shall be known, no longer
+demi-god, nor myth, nor shadow, but the ever-present Redeemer, working
+amid men for the life and cleansing of all souls.
+
+27. In the internals of the batik, other thoughts will arise, through
+the impressions of the dynamic mind-images.
+
+The battle is long and arduous. Let there be no mistake as to that. Go
+not forth to this battle without counting the cost. Ages have gone to
+the strengthening of the foe. Ages of conflict must be spent, ere the
+foe, wholly conquered, becomes the servant, the Soul’s minister to
+mankind.
+
+And from these long past ages, in hours when the contest flags, will
+come new foes, mind-born children springing up to fight for mind,
+reinforcements coming from forgotten years, forgotten lives. For once
+this conflict is begun, it can be ended only by sweeping victory, and
+unconditional, unreserved surrender of the vanquished.
+
+28. These are to be overcome as it was taught that hindrances should be
+overcome.
+
+These new enemies and fears are to be overcome by ceaselessly renewing
+the fight, by a steadfast, dogged persistence, whether in victory or
+defeat, which shall put the stubbornness of the rocks to shame. For the
+Soul is older than all things, and invincible; it is of the very nature
+of the Soul to be unconquerable.
+
+Therefore fight on, undaunted; knowing that the spiritual will, once
+awakened, shall, through the effort of the contest, come to its full
+strength; that ground gained can be held permanently; that great as is
+the dead-weight of the adversary, it is yet measurable, while the
+Warrior who fights for you, for whom you fight, is, in might,
+immeasurable, invincible, everlasting.
+
+29. He who, after he has attained, is wholly free from self, reaches
+the essence of all that can be known, gathered together like a cloud.
+This is the true spiritual consciousness.
+
+It has been said that, at the beginning of the way, we must kill out
+ambition, the great curse, the giant weed which grows as strongly in
+the heart of the devoted disciple as in the man of desire. The remedy
+is sacrifice of self, obedience, humility; that purity of heart which
+gives the vision of God. Thereafter, he who has attained is wrapt about
+with the essence of all that can be known, as with a cloud; he has that
+perfect illumination which is the true spiritual consciousness. Through
+obedience to the will of God, he comes into oneness of being with God;
+he is initiated into God’s view of the universe, seeing all life as God
+sees it.
+
+30. Thereon comes surcease from sorrow and the burden of toil.
+
+Such a one, it is said, is free from the bond of Karma, from the burden
+of toil, from that debt to works which comes from works done in
+self-love and desire. Free from self-will, he is free from sorrow, too,
+for sorrow comes from the fight of self-will against the divine will,
+through the correcting stress of the divine will, which seeks to
+counteract the evil wrought by disobedience. When the conflict with the
+divine will ceases, then sorrow ceases, and he who has grown into
+obedience, thereby enters into joy.
+
+31. When all veils are rent, all stains washed away, his knowledge
+becomes infinite; little remains for him to know.
+
+The first veil is the delusion that thy soul is in some permanent way
+separate from the great Soul, the divine Eternal. When that veil is
+rent, thou shalt discern thy oneness with everlasting Life. The second
+veil is the delusion of enduring separateness from thy other selves,
+whereas in truth the soul that is in them is one with the soul that is
+in thee. The world’s sin and shame are thy sin and shame: its joy also.
+
+These veils rent, thou shalt enter into knowledge of divine things and
+human things. Little will remain unknown to thee.
+
+32. Thereafter comes the completion of the series of transformations of
+the three nature potencies, since their purpose is attained.
+
+It is a part of the beauty and wisdom of the great Indian teachings,
+the Vedanta and the Yoga alike, to hold that all life exists for the
+purposes of Soul, for the making of the spiritual man. They teach that
+all nature is an orderly process of evolution, leading up to this,
+designed for this end, existing only for this: to bring forth and
+perfect the Spiritual Man. He is the crown of evolution: at his coming,
+the goal of all development is attained.
+
+33. The series of transformations is divided into moments. When the
+series is completed, time gives place to duration.
+
+There are two kinds of eternity, says the commentary: the eternity of
+immortal life, which belongs to the Spirit, and the eternity of change,
+which inheres in Nature, in all that is not Spirit. While we are
+content to live in and for Nature, in the Circle of Necessity, Sansara,
+we doom ourselves to perpetual change. That which is born must die, and
+that which dies must be reborn. It is change evermore, a ceaseless
+series of transformations.
+
+But the Spiritual Man enters a new order; for him, there is no longer
+eternal change, but eternal Being. He has entered into the joy of his
+Lord. This spiritual birth, which makes him heir of the Everlasting,
+sets a term to change; it is the culmination, the crowning
+transformation, of the whole realm of change.
+
+34. Pure spiritual life is, therefore, the inverse resolution of the
+potencies of Nature, which have emptied themselves of their value for
+the Spiritual man; or it is the return of the power of pure
+Consciousness to its essential form.
+
+Here we have a splendid generalization, in which our wise philosopher
+finally reconciles the naturalists and the idealists, expressing the
+crown and end of his teaching, first in the terms of the naturalist,
+and then in the terms of the idealist.
+
+The birth and growth of the Spiritual Man, and his entry into his
+immortal heritage, may be regarded, says our philosopher, either as the
+culmination of the whole process of natural evolution and involution,
+where “that which flowed from out the boundless deep, turns again
+home”; or it may be looked at, as the Vedantins look at it, as the
+restoration of pure spiritual Consciousness to its pristine and
+essential form. There is no discrepancy or conflict between these two
+views, which are but two accounts of the same thing. Therefore those
+who study the wise philosopher, be they naturalist or idealist, have no
+excuse to linger over dialectic subtleties or disputes. These things
+are lifted from their path, lest they should be tempted to delay over
+them, and they are left facing the path itself, stretching upward and
+onward from their feet to the everlasting hills, radiant with infinite
+Light.
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE YOGA SUTRAS OF PATANJALI ***
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