A Series of Lessons in Raja YogaAtkinson, William Walker
Religion
A Series of Lessons in Raja Yoga
Atkinson, William Walker
Yoga; Yoga, Raja
But we must caution our students from hastily adopting the several
theories of Western writers, advanced during the past few years,
regarding these out-of-conscious states. The trouble has been that the
Western writers dazzled by the view of the subconscious planes of
mentation that suddenly burst upon the Western thought, hastily adopted
certain theories, which they felt would account for all the phenomena
known as "psychic," and which they thought would fully account for all
the problems of the subject. These writers while doing a most valuable
work, which has helped thousands to form new ideas regarding the nature
and workings of the mind, nevertheless did not sufficiently explore the
nature of the problem before them. A little study of the Oriental
philosophies might have saved them and their readers much confusion.
For instance, the majority of these writers hastily assumed that because
there _was_ an out-of-conscious plane of mentation, therefore all the
workings of the mind might be grouped under the head of "conscious" and
"sub-conscious," and that all the out-of-conscious phenomena might be
grouped under the head of "subconscious mind," "subjective mind," etc.,
ignoring the fact that this class of mental phenomena embraced not
only the highest but the lowest forms of mentation In their newly found
"mind" (which they called "subjective" or "sub-conscious"), they placed
the lowest traits and animal passions; insane impulses; delusions;
bigotry; animal-like intelligence, etc., etc., as well as the inspiration
of the poet and musician, and the high spiritual longings and feelings
that one recognizes as having come from the higher regions of the soul.
This mistake was a natural one, and at first reading the Western world
was taken by storm, and accepted the new ideas and theories as Truth. But
when reflection came, and analysis was applied there arose a feeling of
disappointment and dissatisfaction, and people began to feel that there
was something lacking. They intuitively recognized that their higher
inspirations and intuitions came from a different part of the mind than
the lower emotions, passions, and other sub-conscious feelings, and
instincts.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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