Mind and Self

Mind and Self

You cannot be surprised that under these conditions of continueddisappearance of functions, the unfortunate student asks: " Whatbecomes of the mind itself? If you suppress all the functions,what is left?" In the Indian way of teaching, when you come to adifficulty, someone jumps up and asks a question. And in thecommentaries, the question which raises the difficulty is alwaysput.

The answer of Patanjali is: "Then the spectator remains inhis own form."

Theosophy answers: "The Monad remains." It is theend of the human pilgrimage. That is the highest point to whichhumanity may climb: to suppress all the reflections in thefivefold universe through which the Monad has manifested hispowers, and then for the Monad to realise himself, enriched bythe experiences through which his manifested aspects have passed.But to the Samkhyan the difficulty is very great, for when he hasonly his spectator left, when spectacle ceases, the spectatorhimself almost vanishes. His only function was to look on at theplay of mind. When the play of mind is gone, what is left? He canno longer be a spectator, since there is nothing to see.

The onlyanswer is: " He remains in his own form." He is now out ofmanifestation, the duality is transcended, and so the Spiritsinks back into latency, no longer capable of manifestation.There you come to a very serious difference with the Theosophicalview of the universe, for according to that view of the universe,when all these functions have been suppressed, then the Monad isruler over matter and is prepared for a new cycle of activity, nolonger slave but master.

more next week

Yoga Is a Science

Yoga Is a Science For yoga beginner

ext, Yoga is a science. That is the second thing to grasp. Yogais a science, and not a vague, dreamy drifting or imagining. Itis an applied science, a systematized collection of laws appliedto bring about a definite end. It takes up the laws ofpsychology, applicable to the unfolding of the wholeconsciousness of man on every plane, in every world, and appliesthose rationally in a particular case.
This rational applicationof the laws of unfolding consciousness acts exactly on the sameprinciples that you see applied around you every day in otherdepartments of science.

You know, by looking at the world around you, how enormously theintelligence of man, co-operating with nature, may quicken"natural" processes, and the working of intelligence is as"natural" as anything else. We make this distinction, andpractically it is a real one, between "rational" and "natural"growth, because human intelligence can guide the working ofnatural laws; and when we come to deal with Yoga, we are in thesame department of applied science as, let us say, is thescientific farmer or gardener, when he applies the natural lawsof selection to breeding.

The farmer or gardener cannot transcendthe laws of nature, nor can he work against them. He has no otherlaws of nature to work with save universal laws by which natureis evolving forms around us, and yet he does in a few years whatnature takes, perhaps, hundreds of thousands of years to do. Andhow? By applying human intelligence to choose the laws that servehim and to neutralize the laws that hinder. He brings the divineintelligence in man to utilise the divine powers in nature thatare working for general rather than for particular ends.