The Doctrine and Practice of Yoga eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 110 pages of information about The Doctrine and Practice of Yoga.

The Doctrine and Practice of Yoga eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 110 pages of information about The Doctrine and Practice of Yoga.
We “live there.”  There are some men who consider their “clothes” too as being a part of themselves.  But as consciousness rises in the scale of evolution, man begins to “dissociate” his idea of “me” from the body and he begins to regard his body as a beloved companion and as “belonging to” him.  He then identifies himself with his mental states, emotions, feelings, likes and dislikes, habits, qualities and characteristics.  But, by and by, he begins to realize how even these moods also are subject to change, born and die and are subject to the Principles of Rhythm and Polarity.  He realizes faintly that he can change them by an effort of will and “transmute” them into mental states of an exactly opposite nature.  Then he again begins to “dissociate” himself from his emotions and feelings and at last through mental analysis, introspection and concentration, he sets them apart into the “not I” collection.  He begins then to realize that he is something above his body and emotions.  So also with the intellectual functions.  The intellectual man is very apt to think that although his physical and emotional selves are something different from him and under his control, still his intellect is himself.  This is the stage of “Self-Consciousness”.  “I control my body and emotions.”  But as consciousness unfolds intellectual man finds that he can practically stand aside and see (mentally, of course) his mind going through various processes of intellection.  Study of Psychology and Logic will enable you to see how all your intellectual processes may be held at arm’s length, examined, analysed, labelled and discussed quite with the same ease as the professor talks of a solid, liquid and acriform substances in his laboratory.  So at last he finds that even the wonderful powers of the Intellect must go into the “not I” collection.  This is almost as far as the average man can realize.  You can realize and say “I am not the body, not the emotions, not the intellect.”  Therefore you see, that side of consciousness which is the sum-total of your physical, emotional and intellectual functions comprises the “me” or Feminine or Passive mental principle.  That which can separate itself in thought from all the above is the “I” or the Masculine Function.  But another step must be taken.  That which you have been taught to regard as the Spiritual Consciousness (see “Spiritual Consciousness”) will also eventually go into the “Not-I” or “me” collection.  In brief, the spiritual mind may be said to comprise all that is GOOD, NOBLE and GREAT in the field of consciousness.  It is the “Super-Conscious” mind, just now.  But, mark this, when through further evolution, the “I” has mastered this field of consciousness also and is able to regard it as being the last of the “me” collections, then it will lose its sense of relativity and separation and the real individuality, the “I AM” consciousness, will have been realized.  What do I mean?  This “I AM” is not the
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The Doctrine and Practice of Yoga from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.