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
Lastly, there are the true powers of the spiritual man, built up and
realized in Meditation, through reverent obedience to spiritual law, to
the pure conditions of being, in the divine realm.
2. The transfer of powers from one venture to another comes through the
flow of the natural creative forces.
Here, if we can perceive it, is the whole secret of spiritual birth,
growth and life Spiritual being, like all being, is but an expression
of the Self, of the inherent power and being of Atma. Inherent in the
Self are consciousness and will, which have, as their lordly heritage,
the wide sweep of the universe throughout eternity, for the Self is one
with the Eternal. And the consciousness of the Self may make itself
manifest as seeing, hearing, tasting, feeling, or whatsoever perceptive
powers there may be, just as the white sunlight may divide into
many-coloured rays. So may the will of the Self manifest itself in the
uttering of words, or in handling, or in moving, and whatever powers of
action there are throughout the seven worlds. Where the Self is, there
will its powers be. It is but a question of the vesture through which
these powers shall shine forth. And wherever the consciousness and
desire of the ever-creative Self are fixed, there will a vesture be
built up; where the heart is, there will the treasure be also.
Since through ages the desire of the Self has been toward the natural
world, wherein the Self sought to mirror himself that he might know
himself, therefore a vesture of natural elements came into being,
through which blossomed forth the Self’s powers of perceiving and of
will: the power to see, to hear, to speak, to walk, to handle; and when
the Self, thus come to self-consciousness, and, with it, to a knowledge
of his imprisonment, shall set his desire on the divine and real world,
and raise his consciousness thereto, the spiritual vesture shall be
built up for him there, with its expression of his inherent powers. Nor
will migration thither be difficult for the Self, since the divine is
no strange or foreign land for him, but the house of his home, where he
dwells from everlasting.
3. The apparent, immediate cause is not the true cause of the creative
nature-powers; but, like the husbandman in his field, it takes
obstacles away.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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