INTRODUCTION TO BOOK IThe Yoga Sutras of Patanjali are in themselves exceedingly brief, lessthan ten pages of large type in the original. Yet they contain theessence of practical wisdom, set forth in admirable order and detail.The theme, if the prese... Read more

INTRODUCTION TO BOOK IThe Yoga Sutras of Patanjali are in themselves exceedingly brief, lessthan ten pages of large type in the original. Yet they contain theessence of practical wisdom, set forth in admirable order and detail.The theme, if the present interpreter be right, is the great regeneration,the birth of the spiritual from the psychical man: the same themewhich Paul so wisely and eloquently set forth in writing to his disciplesin Corinth, the theme of all mystics in all lands.We think of ourselves as living a purely physical life, in these materialbodies of ours. In reality, we have gone far indeed from pure physicallife; for ages, our life has been psychical, we have been centred andimmersed in the psychic nature. Some of the schools of India say thatthe psychic nature is, as it were, a looking-glass, wherein are mirroredthe things seen by the physical eyes, and heard by the physical ears.But this is a magic mirror; the images remain, and take a certain lifeof their own. Thus within the psychic realm of our life there grows upan imaged world wherein we dwell; a world of the images of thingsseen and heard, and therefore a world of memories; a world also ofhopes and desires, of fears and regrets. Mental life grows up amongthese images, built on a measuring and comparing, on the massing ofimages together into general ideas; on the abstraction of new notionsand images from these; till a new world is built up within, full ofdesires and hates, ambition, envy, longing, speculation, curiosity,self-will, self-interest.The teaching of the East is, that all these are true powers overlaid byfalse desires; that though in manifestation psychical, they are inessence spiritual; that the psychical man is the veil and prophecy of thespiritual man.The purpose of life, therefore, is the realizing of that prophecy; theunveiling of the immortal man; the birth of the spiritual from thepsychical, whereby we enter our divine inheritance and come toinhabit Eternity. This is, indeed, salvation, the purpose of all truereligion, in all times.Patanjali has in mind the spiritual man, to be born from the psychical.His purpose is, to set in order the practical means for the unveilingand regeneration, and to indicate the fruit, the glory and the power, ofthat new birth. Less