BOOK 2  23-33

The Book of the Spiritual Man  1-11   12-22   22-33   34- 44   45-55

23. The association of the Seer with things seen is the cause of the
realizing of the nature of things seen, and also of the realizing of the
nature of the Seer.

Life is educative. All life's infinite variety is for discipline, for the
development of the soul. So passing through many lives, the Soul
learns the secrets of the world, the august laws that are written in the
form of the snow-crystal or the majestic order of the stars. Yet all
these laws are but reflections, but projections outward, of the laws of
the soul; therefore in learning these, the soul learns to know itself. All
life is but the mirror wherein the Soul learns to know its own face.

24. The cause of this association is the darkness of unwisdom.

The darkness of unwisdom is the absorption of consciousness in the
personal life, and in the things seen by the personal life. This is the fall,
through which comes experience, the learning of the lessons of life.
When they are learned, the day of redemption is at hand.

25. The bringing of this association to an end, by bringing the
darkness of unwisdom to an end, is the great liberation; this is the
Seer's attainment of his own pure being.

When the spiritual man has, through the psychical, learned all life's
lessons, the time has come for him to put off the veil and disguise of
the psychical and to stand revealed a King, in the house of the Father.
So shall he enter into his kingdom, and go no more out.

26. A discerning which is carried on without wavering is the means of
liberation.

Here we come close to the pure Vedanta, with its discernment
between the eternal and the temporal. St. Paul, following after Philo
and Plato, lays down the same fundamental principle: the things seen
are temporal, the things unseen are eternal.

Patanjali means something more than an intellectual assent, though
this too is vital. He has in view a constant discriminating in act as well
as thought; of the two ways which present themselves for every deed
or choice, always to choose the higher way, that which makes for the
things eternal: honesty rather than roguery, courage and not
cowardice, the things of another rather than one's own, sacrifice and
not indulgence. This true discernment, carried out constantly, makes
for liberation.

27. His illuminations is sevenfold, rising In successive stages.

Patanjali's text does not tell us what the seven stages of this
illumination are. The commentator thus describes them;

First, the danger to be escaped is recognized; it need not be
recognized a second time. Second, the causes of the danger to be
escaped are worn away; they need not be worn away a second time.
Third, the way of escape is clearly perceived, by the contemplation
which checks psychic perturbation. Fourth, the means of escape, clear
discernment, has been developed. This is the fourfold release
belonging to insight. The final release from the psychic is three-fold:
As fifth of the seven degrees, the dominance of its thinking is ended;
as sixth, its potencies, like rocks from a precipice, fall of themselves;
once dissolved, they do not grow again. Then, as seventh, freed from
these potencies, the spiritual man stands forth in his own nature as
purity and light. Happy is the spiritual man who beholds this
seven-fold illumination in its ascending stages.

28. From steadfastly following after the means of Yoga, until impurity
is worn away, there comes the illumination of thought up to full
discernment.

Here, we enter on the more detailed practical teaching of Patanjali,
with its sound and luminous good sense. And when we come to detail
the means of Yoga, we may well be astonished at their simplicity.
There is little in them that is mysterious. They are very familiar. The
essence of the matter lies in carrying them out.

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

These eight means are to be followed in their order, in the sense which
will immediately be made clear. We can get a ready understanding of
the first two by comparing them with the Commandments which must
be obeyed by all good citizens, and the Rules which are laid on the
members of religious orders. Until one has fulfilled the first, it is futile
to concern oneself with the second. And so with all the means of
Yoga. They must be taken in their order.

30. The Commandments are these: nom injury, truthfulness, abstaining
from stealing, from impurity, from covetousness.

These five precepts are almost exactly the same as the Buddhist
Commandments: not to kill, not to steal, not to be guilty of
incontinence, not to drink intoxicants, to speak the truth. Almost
identical is St. Paul's list: Thou shalt not commit adultery, thou shalt
not kill, thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not covet. And in the same
spirit is the answer made to the young map having great possessions,
who asked, What shall I do to be saved? and received the reply: Keep
the Commandments.

This broad, general training, which forms and develops human
character, must be accomplished to a very considerable degree, before
there can be much hope of success in the further stages of spiritual
life. First the psychical, and then the spiritual. First the man, then the
angel. On this broad, humane and wise foundation does the system of
Patanjali rest.

31. The Commandments, not limited to any race, place, time or
occasion, universal, are the great obligation.

The Commandments form the broad general training of humanity.
Each one of them rests on a universal, spiritual law. Each one of them
expresses an attribute or aspect of the Self, the Eternal; when we
violate one of the Commandments, we set ourselves against the law
and being of the Eternal, thereby bringing ourselves to inevitable con
fusion. So the first steps in spiritual life must be taken by bringing
ourselves into voluntary obedience to these spiritual laws and thus
making ourselves partakers of the spiritual powers, the being of the
Eternal Like the law of gravity, the need of air to breathe, these great
laws know no exceptions They are in force in all lands, throughout al
times, for all mankind.

32. The Rules are these: purity, serenity fervent aspiration, spiritual
reading, and per feet obedience to the Master.

Here we have a finer law, one which humanity as a whole is less ready
for, less fit to obey. Yet we can see that these Rules are the same in
essence as the Commandments, but on a higher, more spiritual plane.
The Commandments may be obeyed in outer acts and abstinences; the
Rules demand obedience of the heart and spirit, a far more awakened
and more positive consciousness. The Rules are the spiritual
counterpart of the Commandments, and they have finer degrees, for
more advanced spiritual growth.

33. When transgressions hinder, the weight of the imagination should
be thrown' on the opposite side.

Let us take a simple case, that of a thief, a habitual criminal, who has
drifted into stealing in childhood, before the moral consciousness has
awakened. We may imprison such a thief, and deprive him of all
possibility of further theft, or of using the divine gift of will. Or we
may recognize his disadvantages, and help him gradually to build up
possessions which express his will, and draw forth his self-respect. If
we imagine that, after he has built well, and his possessions have
become dear to him, he himself is robbed, then we can see how he
would come vividly to realize the essence of theft and of honesty, and
would cleave to honest dealings with firm conviction. In some such
way does the great Law teach us. Our sorrows and losses teach us the
pain of the sorrow and loss we inflict on others, and so we cease to
inflict them.

Now as to the more direct application. To conquer a sin. let heart and
mind rest, not on the sin, but on the contrary virtue. Let the sin be
forced out by positive growth in the true direction, not by direct
opposition. Turn away from the sin and go forward courageously,
constructively, creatively, in well-doing. In this way the whole nature
will gradually be drawn up to the higher level, on which the sin does
not even exist. The conquest of a sin is a matter of growth and
evolution, rather than of opposition.
 

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