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
When, in virtue of the perpetual sacrifice of the personal man, daily
and hourly giving his life for his divine brother the spiritual man,
and through the radiance ever pouring down from the Higher Self,
eternal in the Heavens, the spiritual man comes to birth,-there awake
in him those powers whose physical counterparts we know in the personal
man. The spiritual man begins to see, to hear, to touch, to taste. And,
besides the senses of the spiritual man, there awakes his mind, that
divine counterpart of the mind of the physical man, the power of direct
and immediate knowledge, the power of spiritual intuition, of
divination. This power, as we have seen, owes its virtue to the unity,
the continuity, of consciousness, whereby whatever is known to any
consciousness, is knowable by any other consciousness. Thus the
consciousness of the spiritual man, who lives above our narrow barriers
of separateness, is in intimate touch with the consciousness of the
great Companions, and can draw on that vast reservoir for all real
needs. Thus arises within the spiritual man that certain knowledge
which is called intuition, divination, illumination.
37. These powers stand in contradistinction to the highest spiritual
vision. In manifestation they are called magical powers.
The divine man is destined to supersede the spiritual man, as the
spiritual man supersedes the natural man. Then the disciple becomes a
Master. The opened powers of tile spiritual man, spiritual vision,
hearing, and touch, stand, therefore, in contradistinction to the
higher divine power above them, and must in no wise be regarded as the
end of the way, for the path has no end, but rises ever to higher and
higher glories; the soul’s growth and splendour have no limit. So that,
if the spiritual powers we have been considering are regarded as in any
sense final, they are a hindrance, a barrier to the far higher powers
of the divine man. But viewed from below, from the standpoint of normal
physical experience, they are powers truly magical; as the powers
natural to a four-dimensional being will appear magical to a
three-dimensional being.
38. Through the weakening of the causes of bondage, and by learning the
method of sassing, the consciousness is transferred to the other body.
In due time, after the spiritual man has been formed and grown stable
through the forces and virtues already enumerated, and after the senses
of the spiritual man have awaked, there comes the transfer of the
dominant consciousness, the sense of individuality, from the physical
to the spiritual man. Thereafter the physical man is felt to be a
secondary, a subordinate, an instrument through whom the spiritual man
works; and the spiritual man is felt to be the real individuality. This
is, in a sense, the attainment to full salvation and immortal life; yet
it is not the final goal or resting place, but only the beginning of
the greater way.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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