YOGA APHORISMS: CONCENTRATION I and recombine them, it is easy to follow, because these channels are present in everyone’s brain, and it is only necessary to recur to them. But whenever a new subject comes new channels have to be made, so it is not understood so readily. And that is why the brain (it is the brain, and not the people themselves) refuses unconsciously to be acted upon by new ideas. It resists. The Prana is trying to make new channels, and the brain will not allow it. This is the secret of conservatism. The less channels there have been in the brain, and the less the needle of the Prana has made these passages, the more conservative will be the brain, the more it will struggle against new thoughts. The more thoughtful the mane, the more complicated will be the streets in his brain, and the more easily he will take to new ideas, and understand them. So with every fresh idea; we make a new impression in the brain, cut new channels though the brain-stuff, and that is why we find that in the practice of Yoga (it being an entirely new set of thoughts and motives) there is so much physical resistance at first. That is why we find that the part of religion which deals with the world side of nature can be so widely accpeted, while the other part, the Philosophy, or the Psychology, which deals with the inner nature of man, is so frequently neglected. We must remember the definition of this world of ours; it is only the Infinite Existence projected into the plane of consciousness.
A little of the Infinite is projected into consciousness, and that we call our world. So there is an Infinite beyond, and religion has to deal with both, with th elittle lump we call our world, and with the Infinite beyond. Any religion which deals alone with either one of these two will be defective. It must deal with both. That part of religion which deals with this part of the Infinite which has come into this plane of consciousness, got itself caught, as it were, in the plane of RAJA YOGA consciousness, in the case of time, space, and causation, is quite familiar to us, because we are in that already, and ideas about this world have been with us almost from time immemorial. The part of religion which deals with the Infinite beyond comes entirely new to us, and getting ideas about it produces new channels in the brain, disturbing the whole system, and that is why you find in the practice of Yoga ordinary people are at first turned out of their groove. In order to lesson these disturbances as much as possible all these methods are devised by Patanjali, that we may practice any one of them best suited to us.
35. Those forms of concentration that bring extraordinary sense perceptions cause perseverance of the mind.
This naturally comes with Dharana, concentration; the Yogis say, if the mind becomes concentrated on the tip of the nose one begins to smell, after a few days, wonderful perfumes. If it becomes concentrated at the root of the tongue one begins to here sounds; if on the tip of the tongue one begins to taste wonderful flavours; if on the middle of the tongue, one feels as if he were coming in contact with something. If one concentrates his mind on the palate he begins to see peculiar things. If a man whose mind is disturbed wants to take up some of these practices of Yoga, yet doubts the truth of them, he will have his doubts set at rest, when, after a little practice, these things come to him, and he will persevere.
36. Or (by the meditation on) the Effulgent One which is beyond all sorrow.
YOGA APHORISMS: CONCENTRATION I n 5 This is another sort of concentration. Think of the lotus of the heart, with petals downwards, and ruunning through it the Susumna\ take in the breath, and while throwing the breat out imagine that the lotus is turned with the petals upwards, and inside that lotus is an effulgent light. Meditate on that.
37. Or (by meditation on) the heart that has given up all attachment to sense objects.
Take some holy person, some great person whom you revere, some saint whom you know to be perfectly non- attached, and think of his heart. That heart has become non- attached, and meditate on that heart; it will calm the mind. If you cannot do that, there is the next way.
38. Or by meditating on the knowledge that comes in sleep.
Sometimes a man dreams that he has seen angels coming to him and talking to him, that he is in an ecstatic condition, that he has heard music floating through the air. He is in a blissful condition in that dream, and when he awakes it makes a deep impression on him. Think of that dream as real, and meditate upon it. If you cannot do that, meditate on any holy thing that pleases you.
39. Or by meditation on anything that appeals to one as good.
This does not mean any wicked subject, but anything good that you like, any place that you like best, any scenery that you like best, any idea that you like best, anything that will concentrate the mind.
40. The YogV s mind thus meditating, becomes un-obstructed from te atomic to the Infinite.
n6 RAJA YOGA The mind, by this practice, easily contemplates the most minute thing, as well as the biggest thing. Thus the mind waves become fainter.
41. The Yogi whose Vrttis have thus become powerless (controlled) obtains in the receiver, receiving, and received (the self, the mind and external objects), concentratedness and sameness, like the crystal (before different coloured objects.)
What results from this constant meditation? We must remember how in a previous aphorism Patanjali went into the various states of meditation, and how the first will be the gross, and the second the fine objects, and from them the advance is to still finer objects of meditation, and how, in all these meditations, which are only of the first degree, not very high ones, we get as a result that we can meditate as easily on the fine as on the grosser objects. Here the Yogi sees the three things, the receiver, the received, and the receiving, corresponding to the Soul, the object, and the mind. There are three objects of meditation given us. Firs the gross things, as bodies, or material objects, second fine things, as the mind, the Chitta, and third the Purasa qualified, not the Purasa itself, but the egoism. By practice, the Yogi gets established in all these meditations. Whenever he meditates he can keep out all other thought; he becomes identified with that on which he mediates; when he meditates he is like a piece of crystal; before flowers the crystal becomes almost identified with flowers. If the flower is red, the crystal looks red, or if the flower is blue, the crystal looks blue.
YOGA APHORISMS: CONCENTRATION I 42. Sound, meaning, and resulting knowledge, being mixed up, is (called Samadhi) with reasoning.
Sound here means vibration; meaning, the nerve currents which conduct it; and knowledge, reaction. All the various meditations we have had so far, Patanjali calls Savitarka (meditations with reasoning). Later on he will give us higher and higher Dhydnas. In these that are called “with reasoning,” we keep the duality of subject and object, which results from the mixture of word, meaning, and knowledge. There is first the external vibration, the word; this, carried inward by the sense currents, is the meaning. After that there comes a reactionary wave in the Chitta, which is knowledge, but the mixture of these three makeup what we call knowledge. In all the meditations up to this we get this mixture as object of meditation. The next Samadhi is higher.
43. The Samadhi called without reasoning (comes) when the memory is purified, or devoid of qualities, expressing only the meaning (of the meditated object).
It is by practice of meditation of these three that we come to the state where these three do not mix. We can get rid of them. We will first try to understand what these three are. Here is the Chitta', you will always remember the simile of the lake, the mind-stuff, and the vibration, the word, the sound, like a pulsation coming over it. You have that calm lake in you, and I pronounce a word, “cow.” As soon as it enters through your ears there is a wave produced in your Chitta along with it. So that wave represents the idea of the cow, the form or the meaning as we call it. That apparent n8 RAJA YOGA n8 RAJA YOGA cow that you know is really that wave in the mind- stuff, and that comes as a reaction to the internal and external sound- vibrations, and with the sound, the wave dies away; that wave can never exist without a word. You may ask how it is when we only think of the cow, and do not hear a sound. You make that sound yourself. You are saying “cow” faintly in your mind, and with that comes a wave. There cannot be any wave without this impulse of sound, and when it is not from outside it is from inside, and when the sound dies, the wave dies. What remains? The result of the reaction, and that is knowledge. These three are so closely combined in our mind that we cannot separate them. When the sound comes, the senses vibrate, and the wave rises in reaction; they follow so closely upon one another that there is no discerning one from the other; when this meditation has been practiced for a long time, memory, the receptacle of all impressions, becomes purified, and wwe are able clearly to distinguish them from one another. This is called “ Nirvitarka,” concentration without reasoning.
44. By this process (the concentrations) with discrim-ination and without discrimination, whose objects are finer, are (also) explained.
A process similar to the preceding is applied again, only, the objects to be taken up in the former meditations are gross; in this they are fine.
45. The finer objects end with the Pradhana.
The gross objects are only the elements, and everything manufactured out of them. The fine objects begin with the YOGA APHORISMS: CONCENTRATION I Tanmatras or fine particles. The organs, the mind,* egoism, the mind-stuff (the cause of all manifestion) the equilibrium state of Sattva, Rajas and Tamas materials — called Pradhana (chief), Prakrti (nature), or Avyakta (unmanifest), are all included within the category of fine objects. The Purusa (the Soul) alone is excepted from this definition.
46. These concentrations are with seed.
These do not destroy the seeds of past actions, thus cannot give liberation, but what they bring to the Yogi is stated in the following aphorisms.
47. The concentration “without reasoning” being purified, the Chitta becomes firmly fixed.
48. The knowledge in that is called “filled with Truth.”
The next aphorism will explain this.
49. The knowledge that is gained from test- imony and inference is about common objects. That from the Samadhi just men- tioned is of a much higher order, being able to penetrate where inference and testimony cannot go.
The idea is that we have to get our knowledge of ordinary objects by direct perception, and by inference therefrom, and from testimony of people who are competent. By “people who are competent,” the Yogis always mean the Rishis, or the Seers of the thoughts recorded in the Scriptures — the Vedas. According to them, the only proof of the Scriptures The mind, or commony sensory, the aggregate of all senses.
RAJA YOGA is that they were the testimony of competent persons, yet they say the Scriptures cannot take us to realisation. We can read all the Vedas, and yet will not realise anything, but when we practise their teachings, then we attain to that state which realises what the Scriptures say, which penetrates where reason cannot go, and where the testimony of others cannot avail. This is what is meant by this aphorism, that realisation is real religion, and all the rest is only preparation — hearing lectures, or reading books, or reasoning, is merely preparing the ground; it is not religion. Intellectual assent, and intellectual dissent are not religion. The central idea of the Yogis is that just as we come in direct contact with the objects of the senses, so religion can be directly perceived in a far more intense sense. The truths of religion, as God and Soul, cannot be perceived by the external senses. I cannot see God with my eyes, nor can I touch Him with my hands, and we also know that neither can we reason beyond the senses. Reason leaves us at a point quite indecisive; we may reason all our lives, as the world has been doing for thousands of years, and the result is that we find we are incompetent to prove or disprove the facts of religion. What we perceive directly we take as the basis, and upon that basis we reason. So it is obvious that reasoning has to run within these bounds of perception. It can never go beyond: the whole scope of realisation, therefore, is beyond sense perception. The Yogis say that man can go beyond his direct sense perception, and beyond his reason also. Man has in him the faculty, the power, of transcending his intellect even, and that power is in every being, every creature. By the practice of Yoga that power is aroused, and then man transcends the ordinary limits of reason, and directly perceives things which are beyond all reason.
YOGA APHORISMS: CONCENTRATION I 50. The resulting impression from this Samadhi obstructs all other impressions.
We have seen in the foregoing aphorism that the only way of attaining to that super-consciousness is by concentration, and we have also seen that what hinder the mind from concentration are the past Samskaras, impressions. All of you have observed that when you are trying to concentrate your mind, your thoughts wander. When you are trying to think of God, that is the very time which all these Samskaras take to appear. At other times they are not so active, but when you want them not to be they are sure to be there, trying their best to crowd inside your mind. Why should that be so? Why should they be much more potent at the time of concentration? It is because you are repressing them and they react with all their force. At other times they do not react. How countless these old past impressions must be, all lodge somewhere in the China, ready, waiting like tigers to jump up. These have to be suppressed that the one idea which we like may arise, to the exclusion of the others. Instead, they are all struggling to come up at the same time. These are the various powers of the Samskaras in hindering concentration of the mind, so this Samadhi which has just been given is the best to be practised, on account of its power of suppressing the Samskaras. The Samskara which will be raised by this sort of concentration will be so powerful that it will hinder the action of the others, and hold them in check.
51. By the restraint of even this (impression, which obstructs all other impressions), all being restrained, comes the “seedless” Samadhi.
RAJA YOGA You remember that our goal is to perceive the Soul iself. We cannot perceive the Soul because it has got mingled up with nature, with the mind, with the body. The most ignorant man thinks his body is the Soul. The more learned man thinks his mind is the Soul, but both of these are mistaken. What makes the Soul get mingled up with all this, these different waves in the Chitta rise and cover the Soul, and we only are a little reflection of the Soul through these waves, so, if the wave be one of anger, we see the Soul as angry: “I am angry,” we say. If the wave is a wave of love we see ourselves reflected in that wave, and say we are loving. If that wave is one of weakness, and the Soul is reflected in it, we think we are weak. These various ideas come from these impressions, these Samskaras covering the Soul. The real nature of the Soul is not perceived until all the waves have subsided; so, first, Patanjali teaches us the meaning of these waves; secondly, the best way to repress them; and thirdly, how to make one wave so strong as to suppress all other waves, fire eating fire as it were. When only one remains, it will be easy to suppress that also, and when that is gone, this Samadhi of concentration is called seedless; it leaves nothing, and the Soul is manifested just as It is, in Its own glory. Then alone we know that the Soul is not a compound, It is the only eternal simple in the universe, and, as such, It cannot be born, It cannot die. It is immortal, indestructible, the Ever-living Essence of intelligence.
CHAPTER II.
CONCENTRATION — ITS PRACTICE i. Mortification, study, and surrendering fruits of work to God are called Kriya Yoga.
Those Samadhis with which we ended our last chapter are very difficult to attain; so we must take them up slowly. The first step, the preliminary step, is called Kriya Yoga. Literally this means work, working towards Yoga. The organs are the horses, the mind is the reins, the intellect is the charioteer, the soul is the rider, and this body is the chariot. The master of the household, the King, the Self of man, is sitting in this chariot. If the horses are very strong, and do not obey the reins, if the charioteer, the intellect, does not know how to control the horses, then this chariot will come to grief. But if the organs, the horses, are well controlled, and if the reins, the mind, are well held in the hands of the charioteer, the intellect, the chariot, reaches the goal. What is meant, therefore, by mortification? Holding the reins firmly while guiding this body and mind: not letting the body do anything it likes, but keeping them both in proper control. Study. What is meant by study in this case? Not study of novels, or fiction, or story books, but study of those books which teach the liberation of the soul. Then again this study does not mean controversial studies at all. The Yogi is supposed to have finished his period of controversy. He has had enough of all that, and has become satisfied. He only studies to intensify his convictions. Vada and Siddhanta. These are the two sorts of Scriptural knowledge, Vada (the argumentative) and Siddhanta (the RAJA YOGA decisive). When a man is entirely ignorant he takes up the first part of this, the argumentative fighting, and reasoning, pro and con.; and when he has finished that he takes up the Siddhanta, the decisive, arriving at a conclusion. Simply arriving at this conclusion will not do. It must be intensified. Books are infinite in number, and time is short; thereofre this is the secret of knowledge, to take that which is essential. Take that out, and then try to live up to it. There is an old simile in India that if you place a cup of milk before a Raja Hamsa (swan) with plenty of water in it, he will take all the milk and leave the water. In that way we should take what is of value in knowledge, and leave the dross. All these intellectual gymnastics are necessary at first. We must not go blindly into anything. The Yogi has passed the argumentative stage, and has come to a conclusion, which is like the rocks, immovable. The only thing he now seeks to do is to intensify that conclusion. Do not argue, he say; if one forces arguments upon you, be silent. Do not answer any argument, but go away free, because arguments only disturb the mind. The only thing is to train the intellect, so what is the use of disturbing it any more. The intellect is but a weak instrument, and can give only knowledge limited by the senses; the Yogi wants to go beyond the senses; therefore the intellect is of no use to him. He is certain of this, and therefore is silent, and does not argue. Every argument throws his mind out of balance, creates a disturbance in the Chitta, and this disturbance is a drawback. These argumentations and searchings of the reason are only on the way. There are much higher things behind them. The whole of life is not for schoolboy fights and debating societies. By “surrendering the fruits of work to God” is to take to ourselves neither credit nor blame, but to give both up to the Lord, and be at peace.
YOGA APHORISMS: CONCENTRATION II 125 2. (They are for) the practice of Samadhi and minimising the pain-bearing obstructions.
Most of us make our minds like spoiled children, allowing them to do whatever they want. Therefore it is necessary that there should be constant practice of the previous mortifications, in order to gain control of the mind, and bring it into subjection. The obstructions to Yoga arise from lack of this control, and cause us pain. They can only be removed by denything the mind, and holding it in check, through these various means.
3. The pain-bearing obstructions are — ignorance, egoism, attachment, aversion, and clinging to life.
These are the five pains, the fivefold tie that binds us down. Of course ignorance is the mother of all the rest. She is the only cause of all our misery. What else can make us miserable? The nature of the Soul is eternal bliss. What can make it sorrowful except ignorance, hallucination, delusion; all this pain of the soul is simply delusion.
4. Ignorance is the productive field of all them that follow, whether they are dormant, attenuated, overpowered, or expanded.
Impressions are the cause of these, and these impressions exist in different degrees. There are the dormant. You often hear the expression “innocent as a baby,” yet in the baby may be the state of a demon or of a god which will come out by and by. In the Yogi these impressions, the Samskdras left by past actions, are attenuated; that is, in a very fine state, and he can control them, and not allow them to become RAJA YOGA manifest. Overpowered means that sometimes one set of impressions is held down for a while by those that are stronger, but they will come out when that repressing cause is removed. The last state is the expanded, when the Samskdras, having helpful surroundings, have attained to great activity, either as good or evil.
5. Ignorance is taking that which is non- eternal, impure, painful, and non-Self, for the eternal, pure, happy, Atman (Self).
All these various sorts of impression have one source: ignorance. We have first to learn what ignorance is. All of us think that “I am the body,” and not the Self, the pure, the effulgent, the ever blissful, and that is ignorance. We think of man, and see man as body. This is the great delusion.
6. Egoism is the identification of the seer with the instrument of seeing.
The seer is really the Self, the pure one, the ever holy, the infinite, the immortal. That is the Self of man. And what are the instruments? The Chitta, or mind-stuff, the Buddhi, determinative faculty, the Manas, or mind, and the Indriyani, or sense organs. These are the instruments for him to see the external world, and the identification of the Self with the instruments is what is called the ignorance of egoism. We say ”1 am the mind, I am thought; 1 am angry, or I am happy.” How can we be angry, and how can we hate? We should identify ourselves with the Self; that cannot change. If it is unchangeable, how can it be one moment happy, and one moment unhappy? It is formless, infinite, omnipresent. What can change it? Beyond all law. What can affect it? Nothing in the universe can produce an effect on it, yet, YOGA APHORISMS: CONCENTRATION II 127 through ignorance, we identify ourselves with the mind- stuff, and think we feel pleasure or pain.
7. Attachment is that which dwells on pleasure.
We find pleasure in certain things, and the mind, like a current, flows towards them, and that, following the pleasure centre, as it were, is attachment. We are never attached to anyone in whom we do not find pleasure. We find pleasure in very queer things sometimes, but the definition is just the same; wherever we find pleasure, there we are attached.
8. Aversion is that which dwells on pain.
That which gives us pain we immediately seek to get away from.
9. Flowing through its own nature, and established even in the learned, is the clinging to life.
This clinging to life you see manifested in every animal, and upon it many attempts have been made to build the theory of a future life, because men like their lives so much that they desire a future life also. Of course it goes without saying that this argument is without much value, but the most curious part of it is that, in Western Countries, the idea that this clinging to life indicates a possibility of a future life applies only to men, but does not include animals. In India this clinging to life has been one of the arguments to prove past experience and existence. For instance, if it be true that all our knowledge has come from experience, then it is sure that that which we never experienced we cannot imagine, or understand. As soon as chickens are hatched they begin to RAJA YOGA pick up food. Many times it has been seen where ducks have been hatched by hens, that, as soon as they come out of the eggs, they flew to water, and the mother thought they would be drowned. If experience be the only source of knowledge, where did these chickens learn to pick up food, or the ducklings that the water was their natural element? If you say it is instinct, it means nothing — it is simply giving it a word, but is no explanation. What is this instinct? We have many instincts in ourselves. For instance, most of you ladies play the piano, and remember, when you first learned, how carefully you had to put your fingers on the black and the white keys, one after the other, but now, after long years of practice, you can talk with your friends, and your hand goes on just the same. It has become instinct, it becomes automatic, but so far as we know, all the cases which we now regard as automatic are degenerated reason. In the language of the Yogi, instinct is involved reason. Discrimination becomes involved, and gets to be automatic Samskdras. Therefore it is perfectly logical to think that all we call instinct in this world is simply involved reason. As reason cannot come without experience, all instinct is, therefore, the result of past experience. Chickens fear the hawk, and ducklings love the water, and these are both the result of past experience, and these are both the result of past experience. Then the question is whether that experience belongs to a particular soul, or to the body simply, whether this experience which comes to the duck is the duck’s forefather’s experience, or the duck’s own experience. Modern scientific menhold that it belongs to the body, but the Yogis hold that it is the experience of the soul, transmitted through the body. This is called the theory of reincarnation. We have seen that all of our knowledge, whether we call it perception or reason, or instinct, must YOGA APHORISMS: CONCENTRATION II 129