We have written a work on “Hatha Yoga,” and a course on “Raja Yoga” which is now in book form.  We have told you something regarding “Gnani Yoga” in our Fourteen Lessons, and also in our Advanced Course.  We have written something regarding “Bhakti Yoga” in our Advanced Course, and, we hope, have taught it also all through our other lessons, for we fail to see how one can teach or study any of the branches of Yoga without being filled with a sense of Love and Union with the Source of all Life.  To know the Giver of Life, is to love him, and the more we know of him, the more love will we manifest.

In this course of lessons, of which this is the first, we shall take up the subject of “Gnani Yoga”—­the Yoga of Wisdom, and will endeavor to make plain some of its most important and highest teachings.  And, we trust that in so doing, we shall be able to awaken in you a still higher realization of your relationship with the One, and a corresponding Love for that in which you live, and move and have your being.  We ask for your loving sympathy and cooperation in our task.

Let us begin by a consideration of what has been called the “Questions of Questions”—­the question:  “What is Reality?” To understand the question we have but to take a look around us and view the visible world.  We see great masses of something that science has called “matter.”  We see in operation a wonderful something called “force” or “energy” in its countless forms of manifestations.  We see things that we call “forms of life,” varying in manifestation from the tiny speck of slime that we call the Moneron, up to that form that we call Man.

But study this world of manifestations by means of science and research—­and such study is of greatest value—­still we must find ourselves brought to a point where we cannot progress further.  Matter melts into mystery—­Force resolves itself into something else—­the secret of living-forms subtly elude us—­and mind is seen as but the manifestation of something even finer.  But in losing these things of appearance and manifestation, we find ourselves brought up face to face with a Something Else that we see must underlie all these varying forms, shapes and manifestations.  And that Something Else, we call Reality, because it is Real, Permanent, Enduring.  And although men may differ, dispute, wrangle, and quarrel about this Reality, still there is one point upon which they must agree, and that is that Reality is One—­that underlying all forms and manifestations there must be a One Reality from which all things flow.  And this inquiry into this One Reality is indeed the Question of Questions of the Universe.

The highest reason of Man—­as well as his deepest intuition—­has always recognized that this Reality or Underlying Being must be but one, of which all Nature is but varying degrees of manifestation, emanation, or expression.  All have recognized that Life is a stream flowing from One great fount, the nature and name of which is unknown—­some have said unknowable.  Differ as men do about theories regarding the nature of this one, they all agree that it can be but One.  It is only when men begin to name and analyze this One, that confusion results.