Notwithstanding the various significations of Yoga and the different lights in which it is viewed by several schools, as we shall see afterwards, it is most commonly understood in the sense of the esoteric faith of the Hindus, and the occult adoration of God by spiritual meditation. This is considered on all hands as the only means of one’s ultimate liberation from the general doom of birth and death and the miseries of this world, and the surest way towards the final absorption of one’s-self in the Supreme,—the highest state of perfection and the _Summum bonum_ of the Hindu. The subject of Yoga Vasishtha is no other than the effecting of that union of the human with the Divine Soul, amidst all the trials and tribulations of life. III. THE YOGA OF ENGLISH WRITERS. The yoga considered merely as a mode or system of meditation is variously described by European authors, as we shall see below. Monier Williams says “According to Patanjali—the founder of the system, the word yoga is interpreted to mean the act of “fixing or concentration of the mind in abstract meditation”. Its aim is to teach the means by which the human soul may attain complete union with the Supreme Soul, and of effecting the complete fusion of the individual with the universal spirit even in the body”, Indian Wisdom p. 102. Weber speaking of the yoga of the Atharvan Upanishads says; “It is the absorption in _átman_, the stages of this absorption and the external means of attaining it.” Again says he; “The yoga in the sense of union with the Supreme Being, is absorption therein by means of meditation. It occurs first in the latter Upanishads, especially the tenth book of the Taittiríya and the Katha Upanishads, where the very doctrine is itself enunciated”, Hist. Ind Lit p. 153-171. Müllins in his prize essay on Vedanta says, the Sankhya yoga is the union of the body and mind, p. 183. In its Vedantic view, it is the joining of the individual with the Supreme Spirit by holy communion of the one with the other through intermediate grades, whereby the limited soul may be led to approach its unlimited fountain and lose itself in the same. IV. YOGA-CHARACTERISTIC OF THE HINDUS. Max Müller characterises the Hindu as naturally disposed to _Yoga_ or a contemplative turn of his mind for his final beatitude in the next life, amidst all his cares, concerns and callings in this world, which he looks upon with indifference as the transient shadows of passing clouds, that serve but to dim for a moment but never shut out from his view the full blaze of his luminous futurity. This description is so exactly graphic of the Hindu mind, that we can not with-hold giving it entire as a mirror of the Hindu mind to our readers on account of the scarcity of the work in this country.