The Yoga Sutras Of Patanjali The Book Of Spiritual Man

THE

YOGA SUTRAS

v

OF

PATANJALI

“THE BOOK OF THE SPIRITUAL MAN”

An Interpretation
By

CHARLES JOHNSTON

CHARLES JOHNSTON
New York

Copyright 1912, by
Charles Johnston.

DEDICATED

WITH CORDIAL REGARDS
TO

Charles Rockwell Lanman

►

\

1

Introduction to Book I

T HE Yoga Sutras of Patanjali are in themselves exceed¬
ingly 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 regenera¬
tion, 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 centered 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 cer¬
tain 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, curi¬
osity, self-will, self-interest.

PATAN JALl's YOGA SUTRAS

The teaching of the East is, that all these are true powers
overlaid by false desires; that though in manifestation psy¬
chical, 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 realising of that
prophecy; the unveiling of the immortal man; the birth of the
spiritual from the psychical, whereby we enter our divine in¬
heritance and come to inhabit Eternity. This is, indeed, sal¬
vation, the purpose of all true religion, in all times.

Patanjali has in mind the spiritual man, to be born from
the psychical; or in another sense, veiled by 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 con¬
nected 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 wis¬
dom 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, suggest¬
ing, 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

4

BOOK I

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.

5

BOOK I.

i. 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. Ambi¬
tion is the inversion of spiritual power. Passion is the distor¬
tion 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 dis¬
perse.

7

PATANJALI'S YOGA SUTRAS

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 fretfu],
combative egotism, its hand against every man. Instead of the
light of pure vision, there have been restless senses and imagin¬
ings. 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 attended by
pleasure or pain.

The psychic nature is built up through the image-making
power, the power which lies behind and dwells in mind-pic¬
tures. 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 in¬
dulgence ; the picture of past joy is framed in regrets or hopes.
And there is the ceaseless play of the desire to know, to pene¬
trate to the essence of things, to classify. This, too, busies it¬
self ceaselessly with the mind-images. So that we may classify
the activities of the psychic nature thus:

6. These activities are: Sound intellection, unsound intel**
lection, phantasy, dream, 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 im¬
mortal. What is needed is, not to destroy but to raise it from
the psychical to the spiritual realm.

8

B O O K I

7. The elements of sound intellection are: direct observa¬
tion, 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.

The great example of unsound intellection is materialism,
whereby to the reality and eternity of the soul is attributed the
evanescence and perishableness that really belong to material
things. This false reasoning, therefore, rests on a reversal of
the true nature of things.

9. Phantasy is a fiction of mere words, with no underly¬
ing reality.

One may say, perhaps, that there is this difference between
imagination and fancy: imagination is the image of unseen
things, which are real; fancy is the imaging of unseen things
which are unreal. The power of phantasy has a wide scope
and range. Ambition, whereby a man sets up within his mind
an image of himself, great, rich, admired, to which all men
shall bow down, is a form of phantasy. The pursuit of wealth
is largely phantasy, for men seek not commodities but food for
their cowardice and conceit. The fear of death is a phantasy,
nourished on images of tombs and funerals and black robes.
All these are fictions, with no underlying reality.

9

w

PATANJALl'S YOGA SUTRAS

io. Dream is the psychic condition which rests on mind
states, all material thinge 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 cur¬
rent ceases in sleep; the inner current continues, and watching
the mind-images float before the field of consciousness, we
“dream/’

ii. Memory is the holding fast to mind=images of things
perceived.

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=indulg=
ence.

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 awaken¬
ing of the spiritual will, and the purification of mind and
thought.

io

BOOK I

13. The right use of the will is the steady effort to stand
in spiritual being.

We have thought of ourselves, perhaps, as creatures mov¬
ing 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 unrealised powers, which will unveil to
us the nearness of the Eternal.

14. This becomes a firm resting=place, when followed long,
persistently, with righteousness.

We must seek spiritual life in conformity with the laws
of spiritual life, with righteousness, humility, gentle charity,
which is an acknowledgement 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 noth¬
ingness apart from Divine Being, can we enter our inheritance.

15. Ceasing from self=indugence 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.

IT

r

PATANJALl'S YOGA SUTRAS

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. That spiritual vision which is conditioned and limited
takes the form first of exterior reasoning, then of interior judg¬
ment, then of happiness, then of realisation of individual being.

In spiritual consciousness, there are two clearly marked
stages. The first is spiritual consciousness expressing itself
through the psychical, through reason and feeling. The second
is spiritual consciousness clear of the psychical, and shining
forth luminous, in its own proper being. The first is here de¬
fined in its ascending stages, as first the right training and dis¬
position of the reason; next, the finer perception of intuition;
next the joy and exaltation which comes with the realisation of
spiritual life; and then the awakening to the being of the soul,
though not yet to the knowledge of the soul’s oneness with the
All.

18. Spiritual consciousness unlimited is the final state led
up to by the right practice of spiritual Silence.

Spiritual Silence is the crown and end of purification. It
is the stilling of all passional and psychic storms, those dramatic
fictions through which we seek the sense of real life, which
needs no storm to reveal it, but is innate in the soul, and made
manifest through Silence.

12

BOOK I

19. The external world still dominates those who have con¬
quered bodily lusts, but are immersed in the sense of separate¬
ness.

There is an asceticism that is but a new form of ambition,
a desire to gain spiritual power or grace for oneself, ignorant
that spiritual power and grace belong only to all united. Those
who seek thus, have not yet conquered the world.

20. For the others, there is spiritual consciousness, led up
to by faith, valor, right mindfulness, one-pointedness, perception.

It is well to keep in mind these steps on the path to illumi¬
nation: faith, valor, right mindfulness, one-pointedness, per¬
ception. Not one can be dispensed with; all must be won.
First faith; and then from faith, valor; from valor, right mind¬
fulness ; 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 in¬
tense.

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.

13

PATANJALI'S YOGA SUTRAS

F

23. The will 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 Masters 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 has conquered
sorrow, bondage to works, and the accumulation of evils.

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 has conquered
sin and made an end of servitude and sorrow.

25. In the Master is the seed of perfect Omniscience.

The Soul of the Master is in essence one with the Over¬
sold, 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.

14

BOOK I

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 realis¬
ing their oneness with the Oversoul, have inherited the king¬
dom 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 medita=
tion 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 realisation of the high essences
thus symbolised. Thus we rise step by step to the Eternal.

15

PATANJALl’s YOGA SUTRAS

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 recog¬
nition of the three worlds as resting in the Soul leads us to
realise 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
barriers 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.

16

BOOK I

30. The barriers to interior consciousness, which drive the
psychic nature this way and that, are these: sickness, inertia,
doubt, light-mindedness, laziness, intemperance, false notions,
inability to hold the ground gained, unsteadiness.

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 draw¬
ing 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 how 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 breath¬
ing; the deeper meaning is a life of harsh and irregular im¬
pulses.

17

PATAN JALI'S YOGA SUTRAS

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 vigor, has
been steadily corrupted by self-indulgence, the seeking of
moods and sensations for sensations’ 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 sor¬
rowful, 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 sor¬
row. 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 rend¬
ing 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, with¬
out harsh or dissonant impulses, which brings stillness to the
heart.

18

B O 0 K I

35. Faithful, persistent application to any object, if com¬
pletely 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 climb 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.

19

A

PATANJALI'S YOGA SUTRAS

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 dream-land. 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 per¬
sonal 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 be¬
come 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.

20

BOOK I

41. When the perturbations of the psychic nature have all
been stilled, then the consciousness, like a pure crystal, takes
the color of what it rests on, whether that be the perceiver, per=
ceiving, 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 per¬
ceiver, 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 conscious¬
ness, 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
I planetary motions or atomic structure.

42 . When the consciousness, in perceiving, is successively
occupied by the name, the idea, and the understanding of what
it is dwelling on, this is the distributive action of the mind.

We are now to trace the ascending stages of perception,
from the most external observation to pure intuitive vision.
We begin with the perception of gross substance, or as we
might say, external and objective things, observed by the
physical senses. In perceiving these external things, the mind’s
action may be either distributive and analytical, or non-dis¬
tributive and intuitive, the second being the higher, as nearer to
unity. Thus we may think analytically of something, say, a
cow, first by name, then according to its appearance, and then
through what we know of its nature; or we may think non-
distributively, entering into the idea of the cow, as a famous
painter of the Netherlands entered into the inmost being of the
sheep he so lovingly depicted.

21

1

PATANJALI'S YOGA SUTRAS

43. When the object dwells in the mind, clear of memory-
pictures, devoid of any form, as a pure luminous idea, this is non¬
distributive perception.

We are still considering external, visible objects. Such
perception as is here described is of the nature of that penetrat¬
ing 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 de¬
scribed 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.

22

BOO K I

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 per¬
meated 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 princi¬
ples, 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 separa¬
tion 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 psychi¬
cal, the inner genius is still expressed through the outer, per¬
sonal man. The spiritual man has yet to come completely to
consciousness as himself, in his own realm, the psychical veils
laid aside.

23

PATANJALl's YOGA SUTRAS

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 sym¬
bol, 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 per¬
ception 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 than being nothing can be more true.
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.

BOOK I

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 cer¬
tain 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 impres¬
sions 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.

25

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 disen¬
tangling 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 etemalness and
divine power? And the second book sets itself to answer this
very question, and to detail the means in a way entirely prac¬
tical 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.

26

_

BOOK II

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 practises
these, even though ignorant of spiritual things, is laying up
treasure against the time to come.

27

BOOK II.

i. 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 conform in all ways 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.

29

PATANJALIS YOGA SUTRAS

2. Their aim is, to bring soul«vision, and to wear away
barriers.

The aim of fervor, spiritual reading and obedience to the
Master, is , to bring soul-vision, and to wear away barriers.
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 en¬
meshing 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, de¬
manding fine courage and persistent toil. Fervor, 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.

30

BOOK II

3. These are the barriers: 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, Jiis complete preoccu¬
pation 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 him¬
self 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 crav¬
ing 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-absorp¬
tion; 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 so we blind
ourselves to the presence of the prisoner, the enmeshed and
fettered spiritual man.

3i

PATANJALI'S YOGA SUTRAS

4. The darkness of unwisdom is the field of the others.
These barriers 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 dor¬
mant, 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-absorp¬
tion of the psychical, personal man, to the exclusion of the
spiritual man. It is the belief, carried into action, that the per¬
sonal 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.

32

-1

BOOK II

6. SeIf=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 per¬
sonalities, 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.

33

I

PATANJALI'S YOGA SUTRAS

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, repro¬
duces 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 subtle barriers are to be removed by a counter-
current.

The darkness of unwisdom is to be removed by the light
of wisdom, pursued through fervor, 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 sensa¬
tions.

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.

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 self¬
ishness, 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.

34

BOOK II

12. The burden of bondage to sorrow has its root in these
barriers. It will be felt in this life, or in a life not yet man¬
ifested.

The burden of bondage to sorrow has its root in the dark¬
ness 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 de¬
termined ; 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.

35

PATANJALI'S YOGA SUTRAS

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; be¬
cause there is no expectation without its shadow, fear. The life
of the psychic self is misery, because it is afflicted with restless¬
ness ; 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 satisfac¬
tion 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 absorp¬
tion 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.

36

BOOK II

18. Things seen have as their property manifestation, act=
ion, 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 phenomenal, 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.

37

I

PATANJALX’S YOGA SUTRAS

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 altogether 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 colored 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 colored veil
remains, and therefore the world thus colored 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 dis¬
cipline, 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. But all these laws are but reflec¬
tions, but projections outward, of the laws of the soul; there¬
fore in learning these, the soul learns to know itself. All life
is but the mirror wherein the soul learns to know its own face.

38

_

BOOK II

24 . The cause of this association is the darkness of un¬
wisdom.

The darkness of unwisdom is the absorption of conscious¬
ness 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 perpetually is the
means of liberation.

Here we come close to the pure Vedanta, with its dis¬
cernment between the eternal and the temporal. St. Paul,
following after Philo and Plato, lays down the same funda¬
mental 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 dis¬
criminating 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 in¬
dulgence. This true discernment, carried out constantly,
makes for liberation.

39

PATANJALl'S YOGA SUTRAS

27. The soul vision which is the final goal of liberation is
sevenfold.

The sevenfold consciousness of the spiritual man, who
stands forth liberated from psychic trammels, is more fully set
forth in the later sutras. It is a consciousness of the eternal,
the blissful, the pure. In the text, we are not told what the
seven qualities of this consciousness are, so that for explana¬
tion we must have recourse to the commentary. There we are
told that the temporal mind, not yet liberated, has these seven
characteristics: first, the desire to know; second, the desire to
be free; third, the desire of bliss; fourth, the desire to fulfill all
duties; fifth, the quality of sorrow; sixth, the touch of fear;
seventh, the chill paralysis of doubt.

These are the shadows of the sevenfold consciousness, of
the liberated spiritual man, who, instead of the first, has firmly
established wisdom; instead of the second, realized liberation;
instead of the third, a deep and ever increasing delight; instead
of the fourth, the certainty that all duties are fulfilled: I have
finished the work which thou gavest me to do; and, for the
fifth, sixth and seventh, joy, fearlessness and the firm-set being
of the Eternal.

28. From steadfastly following after the means of Yoga,
until impurity is worn away, there comes the light of wisdom in
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 shall be aston¬
ished at their simplicity. There is little that is mysterious in
them. They are very familiar. The essence of the matter lies
in carrying them out.

40

BOOK II

29. The eight means of Yoga are: the Commandments, the
Rules, right Poise, right Control of the life-force, Withdrawal,
Concentration, Meditation, Illumination.

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: non-injury, truthful¬
ness, 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 com¬
mit 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 man having great possessions, who asked, What shall
I do to be saved, and received the reply: Keep the Command¬
ments.

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 sys¬
tem of Patanjali rest.

41

PATANJALI'S YOGA SUTRAS

31. The Commandments are not limited to any race, place,
time or age. They are universal; they 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 confusion. 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 all times, for all mankind.

32 . The Rules are these: purity, serenity, fervent aspira¬
tion, spiritual reading, and perfect 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 obed¬
ience of the heart and spirit, a far more awakened and more
positive consciousness. The Rules are the spiritual counter¬
part of the Commandments; and they themselves have finer
degrees, for more advanced spiritual growth.

42

BOOK II

33. To conquer transgressions, the weight of the imagina¬
tion should be thrown on the opposite side.

Let us take a simple case, that of a thief, a habitual crim¬
inal, 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 dis¬
advantages, 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 should be 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 evolu¬
tion, rather than of opposition.

43

PATAN J ALl's YOGA SUTRAS

34. Transgressions are injury, falsehood, theft, incon¬
tinence, 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. There¬
fore 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 con¬
tention.

44

BOOK II

36. Where truth is perfected, it brings the reward of all
rites.

Here is implied the belief that all sacrificial rites and acts
of worship win a necessary reward from the celestial powers;
and we are told that he who is perfected in truth wins these
rewards without rites. The power of truth in his soul, his
oneness with the truth and reality of things, is a strong, inev¬
itable force, to which all things respond, as he who has faith
can remove mountains.

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 sup¬
porting 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
valor and virility.

The creative power, strong and full of vigor, 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.

45

PATANJALl's YOGA SUTRAS

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 covet¬
ousness 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 coveteousness.

40. Through purity comes 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 glamor, and we seek rather the deep infini¬
tudes. 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 cham¬
ber 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.

46

BOOK II

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 un¬
bridled 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.

47

PATANJALI'S YOGA SUTRAS

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
vigor 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 in themselves 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, and share in the atmo¬
sphere of their wisdom and power.

48

T

BOOK II

45. Soul=vision is perfected through perfect obedience to
the Master.

The sorrow and darkness of life come of the erring per¬
sonal 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 con¬
cerns 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 every¬
where 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 with¬
out 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.

49

PATANJALI'S YOGA SUTRAS

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 twofold 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 covered by the
wording of the original, this sentence means that wise effort
establishes such bodily poise that the accidents of things cannot
disturb it, as the captain remains steady, though disaster over¬
take 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.

50

m

BOOK II

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 bal=
anced; it is regulated according to place, time, number; it is
either long or short.

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
bulletin 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

I

P A T A N J A L Ts YOGA SUTRAS

51. The fourth degree is concerned with external and in¬
ternal objects.

The traditional interpretation of this is, that it is concerned
with the relation of the breath to certain centers in the body, in
which are nerve-forces related to exceptional astral powers;
and the commentators detail the centers and their forces.

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 con¬
sciousness in the psychic realm. When hopes and fears are
reckoned at their true worth, in comparison with lasting pos¬
sessions 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.

5 2

I

BOOK II

53. Thence conies 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 con¬
sciousness 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 Command¬
ments 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 con¬
sciousness thereto; thus by degrees transferring the center of
consciousness from the psychical to the spiritual. It is a ques¬
tion, first, of love, and then of attention.

53

PATANJALI'S YOGA SUTRAS

54. The right Withdrawal is the disengaging of the powers
from entanglement in outer things, and their return to the quality
of consciousness.

To understand this, let us reverse the process, and think
of the one consciousness, centered in the Soul, gradually ex¬
panding 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 con¬
sciousness, as against psychical consciousness, of love and at¬
tention. 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 com- I
plete 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 Saint 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.

54

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 abnor¬
mal 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 keep¬
ing the commandments and rules, and gradually, as the in¬
version is overcome, the spiritual man is extricated, and comes
into possession and free exercise of his powers.

55

PATAN JALI'S YOGA SUTRAS

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 dis¬
cerned and taught that all force is one and eternal, so co¬
ordinated throughout the whole universe that whatever affects
any atom measurably affects the whole boundless realm of mat¬
ter and force to the most distant star or nebula on the dim con¬
fines 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 re¬
sources. The Son, if he would work miracles, whether of per¬
ception 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

56

BOOK III

no wise be detached from what has gone before. The being,
the very inception, of the spiritual man depends on the purifi¬
cation 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-con-
quest 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;
vet, 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.

5Z

BOOK III.

i. 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 thinking
of something else. At the end of the 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.

59

PATANJALI'S YOGA SUTRAS

2. A prolonged holding of the perceiving consciousness in
that region is Contemplation (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 contempla¬
tion, is wholly given to illuminating the essential meaning of the
object contemplated, and is freed from the sense of separateness
and personality, this is Meditation (samadhi).

Let us review the steps so far taken. First, the beam of
perceiving consciousness is focussed on a certain region or sub¬
ject, through the effort of attention. Then this attending con¬
sciousness is held on its object. Thirdly, there is the ardent will
to know its meaning, to illumine it with comprehending
thought. Fourthly, all personal bias, all desire merely to in¬
dorse 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.

60

J

BOOK III

4. When these three, Attention, Contemplation, Medita¬
tion, are exercised at once, this is perfectly concentrated Medi¬
tation (sanyama).

When the personal limitation of the perceiving conscious¬
ness 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 dis¬
coveries, and without which no discovery can be made, how¬
ever 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, righjtly continued,
will in time infallibly lead to growth and visiorf. 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 Over¬
soul, 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 conscious¬
ness 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 idiosyncracies; there must be purity, for to the pure in heart
is the promise, that they shall see God.

61

5 . By mastering this perfectly concentrated Meditation,
there comes the illumination of the perceiving consciousness.

The meaning of this is illustrated by what has been said
before. When the spiritual man is able to throw aside the tram¬
mels 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 even been full of the spirit of reverence, of selfless devo¬
tion 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.

62

BOOK III

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 hin¬
drances, its opportunities, its duties. I do what I can to solve
it, to fulfill 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.

63

PATANJALI'S YOGA SUTRAS

7. This threefold power, of Attention, Contemplation,
Meditation, is more interior than the means of growth previously
described.

Very naturally so; because the means of growth prev¬
iously 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 analysis.

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 manifest¬
ing 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.

64

BOOK III

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.

This is a difficult sentence. Its 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.

65

PATANJALIS YOGA SUTRAS

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 repeti¬
tion.

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. Innumer¬
able small efforts of attention will make a result which seems
well-nigh miraculous; which, for the novice, is really mirac¬
ulous. 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 accu¬
mulate 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 Meditation.

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 friv¬
olous detail to another, till we suddenly come back to consci¬
ousness 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 Over¬
soul. This is the true one-pointedness, the bringing of our
consciousness to a focus in the Soul.

66

BOOK III

12 . When, following this, the controlled manifold tendency
and the aroused one=pointedness are equally balanced parts of
the perceiving consciousness, this is 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 charac¬
teristics 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 one-
pointedness 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 develop=
ment, 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 in¬
dividual 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
color 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.

67

PATAN JALl's YOGA SUTRAS

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 but¬
terfly. 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 de¬
velopment.

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.

68

BOOK III

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 per¬
ception, acts of perception by the spiritual man, even though
they are generally unconscious.

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 to-day, and the
heart of to-day, knows its parent yesterday, and its child to¬
morrow. Past, present and future are all in the Eternal. He
who dwells in the Eternal knows all three.

69

PATANJALI'S YOGA SUTRAS

17. Sound and meaning and the thought called up by a
word are confounded because they are all blurred together in the
mind. By perfectly concentrated Meditation on each separately,
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. Everyone 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.

70

BOOK III

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. 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 them¬
selves remaining invisible. It is all a question of being able to
see and control the mind-images.

31. 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 got 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 in¬
sight 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 off.

71

PATANJALl'S YOGA SUTRAS

22. 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.

23. 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 fine¬
ness and poise; the ability to handle with equal mastery things
small and great, concrete and abstract alike.

24. By bending upon them the awakened inner light, there
comes a knowledge of things subtle, or obscure, or remote.

As was said at the outset, each consciousness is related
to all consciousness; and, through it, has a potential conscious¬
ness of all things; whether subtle or obscure, or remote. 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.

72

BOOK III

25. 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 kin¬
dred 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.

26. 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 symbolises
the analytic mind, with its divided realms; and these, too, may
be understood through perfectly concentrated Meditation.

27. 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 dost 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
pole-star 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.

73

PATANJALI'S YOGA SUTRAS

28. Perfectly concentrated Meditation on the center 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 colors 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 opera¬
tive 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 spirit¬
ual 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 overpressure, so general and
such a fruitful source of misery in our day, is abated, and
purity takes the place of passion. This overpressure, 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,

74

BOOK III

and ignorance even of his existence; for by this blind ignorance
are dosed 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 mis¬
ery and shame, but spiritual vision, spiritual aspiration, sacri¬
fice, 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.

75

PATANJALI'S YOGA SUTRAS

29. By perfectly concentrated Meditation on the center of
force in the well of the throat, there conies the cessation of
hunger and thirst.

We are continuing the study of the bodily powers and
centers 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 dis¬
tinctively 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 center 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, im¬
mortal, 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.”

76

BOOK III

30. By perfectly concentrated Meditation on the center of
force in the channel called the “tortoise-formed,” comes stead¬
fastness.

We are concerned now with the center of nervous or
psychical force below the cavity of the throat, in the chest, in
which is felt the sensation of fear; the center, 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-center 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.

77

PATANJALl's YOGA SUTRAS

31. Through perfectly concentrated Meditation on the
light in the head comes the vision of the Masters who have at¬
tained.

The tradition is, that there is a certain center of force in
the head, perhaps the “pineal gland/’ which some of our West¬
ern philosophers have supposed to be the dwelling of the
soul,—a center which is, as it were, the doorway 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 con¬
sciousness 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.”

78

BOOK III

32 . Or through the divining power of intuition he knows
all things.

This is really the supplement, the spiritual side, of the
sutra just translated. Step by step, as the beter conscious¬
ness, 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.”

33. By perfectly concentrated Meditation on the heart, the
interior being, conies 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 con¬
sciousness as the spiritual man, a perfect knowledge of con¬
sciousness will be attained. For the consciousness of the
spiritual man has this divine quality: while being and remain¬
ing 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 consciousnes 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.

79

PATANJALl's YOGA SUTRAS

34. The persona! self seeks to feast on life, through a fail¬
ure 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 per¬
sonality, which, through the stress and storm of life, is ham¬
mered 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, trans¬
ferring 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 concep¬
tion, 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 per¬
sonal 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.

80

BOOK III

35. 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 intu¬
ition, 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 certain knowledge which is
called intuition, divination, illumination.

81

PATAN JALI J S YOGA SUTRAS

36. These powers stand in contradistinction to the highest
spiritual vision. In manifestation they are called magical powers.

The present translator is not quite certain of the meaning
of the difficult sentence of which the above is offered as a
translation. It appears to be this: 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 the 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 splendor have
no limit. So that, if the spiritual powers we have been con¬
sidering 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.

82

BOOK III

37. Through the weakening of the causes of bondage, and
by learning the method of passing, the consciousness is trans¬
ferred to the other body.

In due time, after the spiritual man has been formed and
grown stable through the forces and virtues already enu¬
merated, 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 subordi¬
nate, 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 begin¬
ning of the greater way.

The means for this transfer are described as the weak¬
ening 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 detachment, 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 back- '
ground 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 per¬
sonality. Therefore it is said: “Lay not up for yourselves
treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and
where thieves break through and steal: but lay up for your¬
selves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth
corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal: for
where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.”

83

PATANJALl’s YOGA SUTRAS

38. 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 with¬
out 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.

84

BOOK III

39. 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
analogues in the 'Vital breaths” in the body. The thought in
the text seems to be, that, when the personality is brought
thoroughly under the control of the spiritual man, through the
life-currents which bind them" together, the personality is en¬
dowed 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 color 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 with eye-salve,
so that they see.

85

PATANJALl's YOGA SUTRAS

40. From perfectly concentrated Meditation on the corre¬
lation 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 there is a finer hearing, whose medium of transmission
would seem to be the ether; perhaps not that ether which car¬
ries 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 mathe¬
matically 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.

86

BOOK III

41. By perfectly concentrated Meditation on the correla¬
tion 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 acclima¬
tisation, so to speak, in the etheric body of the spiritual man, is
what our text seems to contemplate.

42. When that condition of consciousness is reached,
which is far-reaching and not confined to the body, which is out¬
side 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
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.

87

PATANJALl’s YOGA SUTRAS

43 • Mastery of the elements comes from perfectly con¬
centrated Meditation on their five forms: the gross, the elemen¬
tal, the subtle, the pervading, the essential or objective.

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 in¬
junction: “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.”

44. 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 ex¬
tension ; the power of boundless reach, so that, as the commen¬
tator 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.

88

BOOK III

45. 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.”

46. Mastery over the powers of perception and action „
comes through perfectly concentrated Meditation on their five®
fold forms; namely, their power to grasp, their distinctive nature,
the element of self-consciousness in them, their pervasiveness,
and their objectivity.

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 per¬
ceive” ; fourth, sight has the power of extension through the
whole field of vision, even to the utmost star; fifth, it presents
its reports as something objective to consciousness. 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.

47. Thence come the power swift as thought, independence
of instruments, and 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.

89

PATANJALl’S YOGA SUTRAS

48. 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.”

49. By absence of all self=indulgence at this point, also, the
seeds of bondage to sorrow are destroyed, and 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 par¬
ticular 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.

j

BOOK III

50. There should be complete overcoming of allurement
or pride in the invitations of the different regions 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 over-
cometh will I make a pillar in the temple of my God, and he
shall go no more out.”

51. From perfectly concentrated Meditation on the divis¬
ions 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.

91

PATANJALI'S YOGA SUTRAS

52. 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
Kantian doctrine that distinctions of order, time and space are
creations of the mind; the threefold prism through which the
thing-in-itself appears to us distorted and refracted. When
the prisim is withdrawn, the thing-in-itself returns to its primal 1
unity, no longer distinguishable by the mind, yet clearly know-
able by that high power of spiritual discernment, of illumina¬
tion, which is above the mind.

53. 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 Co- |
lumba: “Some there are, though very few, to whom Divine
grace has granted this: that they can clearly and most dis- 1
tinctly 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 marvelously enlarged.”

54. 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.

92

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 fullness of power, and prepares him for the splendid, toil¬
some 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 indicate 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, you 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 first at the very beginning?
It may seem so at first; but had it stood there, you would not
have comprehended it. The riddle of personality cannot be so
lightly read. If you have faithfully followed what has gone

93

PATAN JALI'S YOGA SUTRAS

before, and wrought it, as you would be wise to do, into the
fabric of your life, then you have already come to grips with
personality, and gained, let us hope, some preliminary victories.

If you have done this, you are now in a position to un¬
derstand the broad outlines of the teaching now set before you.
If not, go back over it, for the record of the teaching is extant,
and ready to your hand; and the task and the foe are also
ready to your hand; likely, indeed, so to remain for some time
yet. Therefore you can set about your lesson, and wage your
fight. And thus you will truly learn. For he who would know
the doctrine must lead the life, doing the will of his Father
which is in Heaven.

94

BOOK IV.

i. Psychic and spiritual powers may be inborn, or they
may be gained by the use of drugs, or by incantations, 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 con¬
sciousness of the restraining power of his divine nature, so

95

that his forces break forth exuberant, like the laughter of
drunkards, and he sees and hears things delusive. While sink¬
ing, 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, psychic wholly,
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.

BOOK IV

2. The transfer of powers from one plane to another comes
through the flow of the natural creative forces.

Here, if you 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 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-
colored rays. So may the will of the Self manifest itself in
the uttering of words, or in handling, or in moving, and what¬
ever powers of action there are throughout the seven worlds.
Where the Self is, there will its powers be. It is but a ques¬
tion 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.

97

I

PATANJALl's YOGA SUTRAS

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 flow 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 coloring 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.

98

BOOK IV

4. Vestures of consciousness are built up in conformity
with the position of the feeling of selfhood.

The Self, says a great Teacher, in turn attributes 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 splendor and everlasting¬
ness.

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.

99

PATANJALl's YOGA SUTRAS

5. In the different fields of manifestation, the Conscious¬
ness, though one, is the effective cause of many states of con¬
sciousness.

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
Meditation 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 conscious¬
ness run along the circle of birth and death.

With the psychic, the alteration 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 splendor have no limit. The good
passes to better, best.

100

If

BOOK IV

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 hap¬
pens 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.

101

PATANJALI’S YOGA SUTRAS

8 . From the force inherent in works comes the manifesta¬
tion 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 armor. 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.

102

BOOK IV

9. Works separated by different births, or place, or time,
may be brought together by uniformity of memory or 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 con¬
stantly 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 dif¬
ferent 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 are visible bodily
conditions or outward circumstances 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 ves¬
ture of the spiritual man.

103

PATANJALI'S YOGA SUTRAS

l

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 reflec¬
tion, to embody its powers in an outward form, to the end of
self-expression, self-realization, 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 beginning¬
less, 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 sub¬
stratum 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 true
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 physical body, a new body of
bondage, ceases with them.

104

BOOK IV

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 alway, 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 irri¬
tated 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.” One feels that there must be
something woefully wrong with words that can so far disturb
that high, urbane serenity.

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 undi-
videdly, 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 exist¬
ence, 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.”

105

I

PATANJALI'S YOGA SUTRAS

13. These properties, whether manifest or latent, are of
the nature of the Three Potencies.

The Three Potencies are the three manifested modifica¬
tions 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
coloring, Goodness, Passion, Inertness. Every material man¬
ifestation 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 conscious¬
ness are compounded of these three.

14. The external manifestation of an object takes place
when the transformations are 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 vibra¬
tions 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 manifesta¬
tion of the object takes place.

There seems to be a further suggestion that the appear¬
ance 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.

106

BOOK IV

15. The paths of material things and of states of conscious¬
ness 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, con¬
sistent, 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 exter-
nalization 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.

107

PATANJALI'S YOGA SUTRAS

17. An object is perceived, or not perceived, according as
the mind is, or is not, tinged with the color of the object.

The simplest manifestation of this is the matter of atten¬
tion. 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 re¬
mains 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 neigh¬
borhood, 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.”

108

BOOK IV

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 under¬
standing 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 com¬
paring, the doubt and questioning, which, for the same multi¬
tude, 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. Un¬
derstand this, therefore, and draw yourself 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 watch¬
ing 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.

109

PATANJALI'S YOGA SUTRAS

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 fain 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 obser¬
vation, 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 analysing, its hoping and fear¬
ing, 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 furiously,
craftily, for its supremacy. Its honor rooted in dishonor
stands, and faith unfaithful makes it falsely true.

no

BOOK IV

2i. If the Mind be thought of as seen by another more
inward Mind, then there would be ah endless series of perceiv¬
ing 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 philos¬
opher, that this would be no true solution, but only a post¬
ponement 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 picture-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 pure Spiritual Consciousness, which is free
from all succession or change, takes form in the Spiritual Man,
then does Consciousness realize its own luminous being.

True individuality is never reached in the “mind,” the
psychic being, with its ceaseless ebb and flow, its hating and
desiring, fearing and hoping, mapping and measuring. The
fluctuating being is no real self. The man is not yet born.

But when the Spiritual Man wins his long battle against
the “mind,” and the mind's world-view, and, rising, stands
firm in his own might, then true life and individuality begin.
Abstract spiritual Consciousness comes to a focus, as it were,
in a real being, a true individuality, who neither fears nor
hopes, but knows himself immortal, one of the Children of
Light.

hi

PATANJALI'S YOGA SUTRAS

23. The psychic nature, universally adaptive, takes on the
color either of things seen, or of the Seer.

In the unregenerate man, the psychic nature is saturated
with image^of material things, of things seen, or heard, or
tasted, or felt; and this web of dynamic images forms the ordi¬
nary material and driving power of life. The sensation of
sweet things tasted clamors 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 color of
the Soul, no longer stained, but suffused with golden light;
and the man regenerate gleams with the radiance of eternity.
Thus the Spiritual Man puts on fair raiment; for of this cleans¬
ing 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.

112

BOOK IV

24. The psychic nature, which has been printed with mind-
images of innumerable material things, exists now for the Spirit¬
ual Man, subordinate to 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 chil¬
dren of men, who stumble and sin in the dark. Finding sin¬
lessness, he finds also that the world’s sin and shame are his,
not to share, but to atone; finding kinship with angels, he like¬
wise finds his part in the toil of angels, the toil for the redemp¬
tion 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 strug¬
gles 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 work¬
ing the works of the Father.

113

PATANJAL l/s YOGA SUTRAS

25. For him who discerns between the Mind and the Spirit¬
ual 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 mad¬
man’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
world-view 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.

114

BOOK IV

26. Thereafter, the whole personal being bends toward
illumination, full of the spirit of 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 re¬
deemed, 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 o.f 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 intervals of the battle, 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, be¬
comes the servant, the Soul's minister to mankind.

And from these long past ages, in hours when the con¬
test 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, unre¬
served surrender of the vanquished.

US

PATANJALI'S YOGA SUTRAS

28. These are to be overcome as it was taught that sorrows
should be overcome.

These new enemies and fears are to be overcome by cease¬
lessly 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, more invincible
than all things; it is of the very nature of the Soul to be un¬
conquerable.

Therefore fight on, undaunted; knowing that the spiritual
will, once awakened, will, through the effort of the contest,
come to its full strength; that ground gained can be held per¬
manently ; that great as is the dead-weight of the adversary, it
is yet measurable, while he who fights for you, he for whom
you fight, is in might immeasurable, invincible, everlasting.

29. He who, after he has attained, is wholly free from self,
is set in a cloud of holiness which is called illumination. 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, hu¬
mility; that purity of heart which gives the vision of God.
Thereafter, he who has attained is wrapt about with holiness,
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 initi¬
ated into God's view of the universe, seeing all life as God
sees it.

116

BOOK IV

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 obed¬
ience, 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 per¬
manent 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.

11 7

PATANJALI'S YOGA SUTRAS

32 . Thereafter comes the completion of the series of trans¬
formations 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 do not teach a salvation which is preternatural,
a seeming violation of the course of nature, nor a salvation
which comes through a divine decree, almost a divine whim.
They teach rather that all nature is an orderly process of evolu¬
tion, 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,
and is to be regarded as the culmination of nature.

This is, perhaps, a philosophical subtlety, later inserted in
the teaching, in fuller expansion of the words “series of trans¬
formations” in the last sutra. The idea, however, is clear, and
is wholly in harmony with the rest of the teaching. There are
two kinds of eternity, says the commentary: the eternity of im¬
mortal 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 re¬
born. It is change evermore, a ceaseless series of transfor¬
mations.

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.

118

BOOK IV

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 philoso¬
pher, 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 everlast¬
ing hills, radiant with infinite Light.

You, too, reader, who have followed the thoughts of the
wise philosopher, be persuaded to take to your heart a like
counsel and admonition. The path is for you. The Spiritual
Man waits to be revealed in you, to initiate you into immor¬
tality, setting you amid the Children of Light. Be persuaded,
then, since the truth is before you, the holy message has come
to your ears. Heed the message, know that through it alone
is life, leave the shadows of yourself behind, enter the Light,
and hear the ringing Welcome that awaits you.

THE END

H 153 82

-!WV’

o

*b

^^ :a^r. ^ 9 vv *■ ^

.. Vv "' <&* °^ *•■•* A 0 ^ ^

k ^ v .♦JL^JL'^ c\ .<y * * * o* ^

: V* :|f& V :' 'A- •'

> \w/\ -ISS- - ' / \ ••’. -

r Cr %* !£« o n Vk O 4 ***# <*> n V . t»» # , H

V **dftv7/y^?S ^ o » c-C^\y * ^ /*vJ %* ^1^ » A. 1

^6* • strSs^* o .'jOfti^»- *b

-«<?* .

* °o ' 3 ‘ 0 0 -V *?^f . 4 «r O o . ^

f . V fM) v ;£S& V * 5

4 "^> 'JslllfiS^* A? °^. °»^jW*' a v **?

° ’ * * ,\* <* * / ~^' ' < 6 V "o

,-&■* ,«J^% % c o* .•‘V*. %

^ 0 * ‘ f <™P^’-

V >

<** <*^
o V

• * * .%>• <u .". •

> e°_l“* ■** -0

. _ o V

A°* v

.... V ^ /.i^S: ■■"'/,■■ ..V ^v*....

V «'’: V :A V** •' '

■o

^TVT* V 'o. T -

o -T^ 4 ^;* O o ^ *k cv , .

* * 0 A° £\ • - ’ • ,<?) V o. * .

’. Cv , 0 ^ * • • ®» 'b' j • * , "b-> n

W :{jjjfe: %£ {^, \f

+ m *

s % -sra

\ ,<^ %. °° T

O V Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process
^ « <0 v* Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide

^ k ^ ^ ^ Treatment Date: August 2004

v \* t ... * ” * *' 0 ^° ,. „ PreservationTechnologies

^ J * - ~ A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATION

111 Thomson Park Drive
Cranberry Township, PA 16066
(724) 779-2111

M . : < • . -■' l

:S'