---
title: "Yoga Sutras"
source: Indian Philosophy (Gutenberg)
source_url: https://www.gutenberg.org
licence: Public-Domain
domain: philosophy
subdomain: indian-philosophy
date_added: 2026-04-25
---

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.
