“It is ecstasy the faculty by which the soul divests itself of its personality. In this state the soul becomes loosened from its material prison, separated from individual consciousness, and becomes absorbed in the Infinite Intelligence from which it emanated. In this ecstasy it contemplates real existence; and identifies itself with that which it contemplates.” (Lewes. Hist. of Philosophy Vol. I. p. 389). XVI. CRITICISM ON YOGA PRACTICE. [Sidenote: Disbelief in yoga.] Notwithstanding all that we have said and the authorities we have cited in the preceding article on the efficacy of yoga, we find some scholars in Europe and many educated men in this country, are disposed to discredit the efficiency of yoga to effect supernatural results or to be good for any thing. We shall state some of these objections which will be found to bear their own refutation on the grounds of their misrepresentation and self-contradiction. [Sidenote: Its painful practices.] Professor Monier Williams says that, “yoga system appears, in fact, to be a mere contrivance of getting rid of all thought, or at least of concentrating the mind with the utmost intensity upon nothing in particular. It is a strange compound of mental and bodily exercises consisting of unnatural restraint, forced and painful postures, twistings and contortions of the limbs, suppression of breath and utter absence of mind”. (Indian wisdom p. 103) (so also Wilson’s Hindu Religion p. 132). [Sidenote: Its questionable Features.] He then starts the question, “How is it that faith in a false system can operate with sufficient force upon the Hindu, to impel him to submit voluntarily to almost incredible restraints, mortifications of the flesh and physical tortures? How is it that an amount of physical endurance may be exhibited by an apparently weakly and emaciated Asiatic, which would be impossible to a European, the climate and diet in one case tending to debilitate and in the other to invigorate?” (Ibid p. 104). [Sidenote: Their Illegitimacy.] Professor Monier’s statement of the existence of the aforesaid self mortifications and voluntary contortions of the limbs of the yogis for two thousand years or since the invention of yoga philosophy, is open to refutation on the ground of there being no mention of them in the old systems of yoga inculcated either in the Vedánta or Patanjali’s philosophy, or even in the yoga Vásishtha, as it is evident from the practices and processes of yoga we have already given before. Those processes are seen to be simply moral restraints, and no physical torture of any kind, and such moral restraints must be acknowledged on all hands, to be indispensable to the concentration of the mind on any subject of far less importance than the contemplation of the inscrutable nature of the Divinity. [Sidenote: Abuses of Hatha yoga.]