The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali: The Book of the Spiritual Man — John Shaqi
The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali: The Book of the Spiritual ManPatañjali
Religion
The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali: The Book of the Spiritual Man
Patañjali
Yoga -- Early works to 1800
The tradition is, that there is a certain centre of force in the head,
perhaps the “pineal gland,” which some of our Western philosophers have
supposed to be the dwelling of the soul, a centre which is, as it were,
the door way between the natural and the spiritual man. It is the seat
of that better and wiser consciousness behind the outward looking
consciousness in the forward part of the head; that better and wiser
consciousness of “the back of the mind,” which views spiritual things,
and seeks to impress the spiritual view on the outward looking
consciousness in the forward part of the head. It is the spiritual man
seeking to guide the natural man, seeking to bring the natural man to
concern himself with the things of his immortality. This is suggested
in the words of the Upanishad already quoted: “There, where the
dividing of the hair turns, extending upward to the crown of the head”;
all of which may sound very fantastical, until one comes to understand
it.
It is said that when this power is fully awakened, it brings a vision
of the great Companions of the spiritual man, those who have already
attained, crossing over to the further shore of the sea of death and
rebirth. Perhaps it is to this divine sight that the Master alluded,
who is reported to have said: “I counsel you to buy of me eye-salve,
that you may see.” It is of this same vision of the great Companions,
the children of light, that a seer wrote:
“Though inland far we be,
Our souls have sight of that immortal sea
Which brought us hither,
Can in a moment travel thither,
And see the Children sport upon the shore
And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore.”
33. Or through the divining power of tuition he knows all things.
This is really the supplement, the spiritual side, of the Sutra just
translated. Step by step, as the better consciousness, the spiritual
view, gains force in the back of the mind, so, in the same measure, the
spiritual man is gaining the power to see: learning to open the
spiritual eyes. When the eyes are fully opened, the spiritual man
beholds the great Companions standing about him; he has begun to “know
all things.”
This divining power of intuition is the power which lies above and
behind the so-called rational mind; the rational mind formulates a
question and lays it before the intuition, which gives a real answer,
often immediately distorted by the rational mind, yet always embodying
a kernel of truth. It is by this process, through which the rational
mind brings questions to the intuition for solution, that the truths of
science are reached, the flashes of discovery and genius. But this
higher power need not work in subordination to the so-called rational
mind, it may act directly, as full illumination, “the vision and the
faculty divine.”
34 By perfectly concentrated Meditation on the heart, the interior
being, comes the knowledge of consciousness.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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