Raja Yoga (the Yoga Sūtras with commentary) — trans. Swami Vivekananda (1896)
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The translator’s English as printed (Swami Vivekananda). The original-language text is not held; names are romanised as the translator printed them.
produced. Others are mere talking machines. If we really want to be blessed, and make others blessed, we must go deeper, and, for the first step, do not disturb the mind, and do not associate with persons whose ideas are disturbing. All of you know that certain persons, certain places, certain foods, repel you. Avoid them ; and those who want to go to the highest, must avoid all company, good or bad. Practise hard ; whether you live or die it does not matter. You have to plunge in and work, without thinking of the result. If you are brave enough, in six months you will be a perfect Yogi. But, for others, those who take up just a bit of it, a little of everything, they get no higher. It is of no use to simply take a course of lessons. Those who are full of Tamas, ignorant and dull, those whose minds never get fixed on any idea, who only crave for something to entertain them — religion and philosophy are simply entertainments to them. They come to religion as to an entertainment, and get that little bit of entertainment. These are the unpersevering. They hear a talk, think it very nice, and then go home and forget all about it. To succeed, you must have tremendous perseverance, tremendous will. " I will drink the ocean," says the persevering soul. " At my will mountains will crumble up." Have that sort of energy, that sort of will, work hard, and you will reach the goal.
CHAPTER VII.
DHYANA AND SAMADHI.
WE^have finished a cursory view of the different steps in Raja Yoga, except the finer ones, the training in concentration, which is the aim, the goal, to which Raja Yoga will lead us. We see, as human beings, that all our knowledge which is called rational is referred to consciousness. I am conscious of this table, I am conscious of your presence, and so forth, and that makes me know that you are here, and that the table is here, and things I see, feel and hear, are here. At the same time, there is a very great part of my existence of which I am not conscious— all the different organs inside the body, the different parts of the brain, the brain itself ; nobody is conscious of these things.
W hen I eat food I do it consciously, when I assimilate it I do it unconsciously, when the food is manufactured into blood it is done unconsciously ; when out of the blood all the different parts of my body are made, it is done unconsciously ; and yet it is I who am doing this ; there cannot be twenty people in this one body. How do I know that I do it, and nobody else ? It may be urged that my business is only in eating the food, and assimilating the food, and that manufacturing the body out of the food is done for me by somebody else. That cannot be, because it can be demonstrated that almost every action of which we are unconscious now can be again brought up to the plane of consciousness. The heart is beating apparently without our control ; we none of us here can control the heart ; it goes on its own way. But by practice men can bring even the heart under control, until it will just beat at will, slowly, or quickly, or almost stop. Nearly every part of the body can be brought under control. What does this show ? That these things which are beneath consciousness are also worked by us, only we are doing it unconsciously. We have, then, two planes in which the human mind is working. First is the conscious plane ; that is to say that sort of work which is always accompanied with the feeling of egoism. Next comes the unconscious plane, the work beneath, that which is unaccompanied by the feeling of egoism. That part of mind-work which is unaccompanied with feeling of egoism is unconscious work, and that part which is accompanied witli the feeling of egoism is conscious work. In the lower animals this unconscious work is called instinct. In higher animals, and in the highest of all animals, man, the second part, that which is accompanied with the feeling of egoism, prevails, and is called conscious work.