Raja Yoga (the Yoga Sūtras with commentary) — trans. Swami Vivekananda (1896)

THE FIRST STEPS.

sage and said, " Sir, I do not think that the mind is the Self; did you mean that?" " No," repHed the sage, *' thou art That ; find out for yourself." The god went back, and, at last, found that he was the Self, beyond all thought ; One, without birth or death, whom the sword cannot pierce, or the fire burn, whom the air cannot dry, or the water melt, the beginningless and birthless, the immovable, the intangible, the omniscient, the omnipotent Being, and that it was neither the body nor the mind, but beyond them all. So he was satisfied, but the poor demon did not get the truth, owing to his fondness for the body.

This world has a good many of these demoniac natures, but there are some gods too. If one propose to teach any science to increase the power of sense enjoyment, he finds multitudes ready for it. If one undertake to show mankind the supreme goal, they care nothing for that. Very few have the power to grasp the highest, fewer still the patience to attain to it, but a few also know that if the body be kept for a thousand years the result will be the same in the end. When the forces that hold it together go away the body must fall. No man was ever born who could stop his body one moment from changing. Body is the name of a series of changes. " As in a river the masses of water are changing before you every moment, and new masses are coming, yet taking similar form, so is it with this body." Yet the body must be kept strong and healthy ; it is the best instrument we have.

This human body is the <,aeatest body in the universe, and a human being the greatest being. Man is higher than all animals, than all angels; none is greater than man. Even the Devas (gods) will have to come down again and attain to salvation through a human body. Man alone attains to perfection, not even the devas. .According to the Jews and Mohammedans God created man after creating the angels and everything else, and after creating man He asked the angels to come and salute Him, and all did except Iblis ; so God cursed him and he became Satan. Behind this allegory is the great truth, that this human birth is the greatest birth we can have. The lower creation, the animal, is dull, and manufactured mostly out of Tamas. Animals cannot have any high thoughts ; nor can the angels, or Devas, attain to direct freedom without human birth. In human society, in the same way, too much wealth, or tot) much poverty, is a great impediment to the higher development of the soul. It is from the middle classes that the great ones of the world come. Here the forces are very equally adjusted and balanced.