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

another ? Why should there be mercy, justice, or fellow feeling ? The best thing for this world would be to make hay while the sun shines, each man for himself. If there is no hope, why should I love my brother, and not cut his throat ? If there is nothing beyond, if there is no freedom, but only rigorous dead laws, I should only try to make myself happy here. You will find people saying, now-a-days, that they have utilitarian grounds as the basis of all morality. What is this basis ? Procuring the greatest amount of happiness to the greatest number. Why should I do this ? Why should I not produce the greatest unhappiness to the greatest number, if that serves my purpose ? How will utilitarians answer this question ? How do you know what is right, or what is wrong ? I am impelled by my desire for happiness and I fulfil it, and it is in my nature ; I know nothing beyond. I have these desires, and must fulfil them ; why should you complain ? Whence come all these truths about human life, about morahty, about the immortal soul, about God, about love and sympathy, about being good, and, above all, about being unselfish ?

All ethics, all human action, and all human thought, hang upon this one idea of unselfishness ; the whole idea of human life can be put in that one word, unselfishness. Why should we be unselfish ? Where is the necessity, the force, the power, of my being unselfish ? Why should I be ? You call yourself a rational man, a utilitarian, but, if you do not show me a reason, I say you are irrational. Show me the reason why I should yS Rk]A YOGA.

not be selfish, why I should not be like a brute, acting without reason ? It may be good as poetry, but poetry is not reason. Show me a reason. W'liy shall I be unselfish, and why be good ? Because Mr. and Mrs. So-and-so say so does not weigh with me. Where is the utility of my being unselfish ? My utility is to be selfish, if utility means the greatest amount of happiness. I may get the greatest amount of happiness by cheating and robbing others. What is the answer ? The utilitarian can never give it. The answer is that this world is only one drop in an infinite ocean, one link in an infinite chain. Where did those that preached unselfishness, and taught it to the human race, get this idea ? We know it is not instinctive ; the animals, which have instinct, do not know it. Neither is it reason ; reason does not know anything about these ideas. Whence then did they come ?

We find, in studying history, one fact held in common by all the great teachers of religion the world ever had ; they all claim to have got these truths from beyond, only many of them did not know what they were getting. For instance, one would say that an angel came down in the form of a human being, with wings, and said to him, " Hear, oh man, this is the message." Another says that a Deva, a bright being, appeared to him. Another says he dreamed that his ancestor came and told him all these things. He did not know anything beyond that. But this thing is common, that all claim either that they saw angels, or

DHYANA AND SAMADHI. yg

heard the voice of God, or saw some wonderful vision. All claim that this knowledge has come to them from beyond, not through their reasoning power. What does the science of Yoga teach ? It teaches that they were right in claiming that all this knowledge came to them from beyond reasoning, but that it came from within themselves.