A Series of Lessons in Gnani Yoga: The Yoga of WisdomAtkinson, William Walker
Religion
A Series of Lessons in Gnani Yoga: The Yoga of Wisdom
Atkinson, William Walker
Yoga, Jñana
The next highest form among the mammals are known as the _placentals_,
or those which bring forth mature young. In this class are found the
ant-eaters, sloth, manatee, the whale and porpoise, the horse, cow,
sheep, and other hoofed animals; the elephant, seal, the dog, wolf,
lion, tiger, and all flesh eating animals; the hares, rats, mice, and
ail other gnawing animals; the bats, moles, and other insect-feeders;
then come the great family of apes, from the small monkeys up to the
orang-outang, chimpanzee, and other forms nearly approaching man. And
then comes the highest, Man, from the Kaffir, Bush-man, Cave-man, and
Digger Indian, up through the many stages until the highest forms of
our own race are reached.
From the Monera to Man is a long path, containing many stages, but it
is a path including all the intermediate forms. The Yogi Teachings hold
to the theory of evolution, as maintained by modern Science, but it
goes still further, for it holds not only that the physical forms are
subject to the evolutionary process, but that also the "souls" embodied
in these forms are subject to the evolutionary process. In other words
the Yogi Teachings hold that there is a twin-process of evolution under
way, the main object of which is to develop "souls," but which also
finds it necessary to evolve higher and higher forms of physical bodies
for these constantly advancing souls to occupy.
Let us take a hasty glance at the ascending forms of animal life, as
they rise in the evolutionary scale. By so doing we can witness the
growth of the soul, within them, as manifested by the higher and higher
physical forms which are used as channels of expression by the souls
within. Let us first study soul-evolution from the outer viewpoint,
before we proceed to examine it from the inner. By so doing we will
have a fuller idea of the process than if we ignored the outer and
proceed at once to the inner. Despise not the outer form, for it has
always been, and is now, the Temple of the Soul, which the latter is
remodelling and rebuilding in order to accommodate its constantly
increasing needs and demands.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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