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

to Him again. If our present state is the higher one, then why is there so much horror and misery, and why is there an end to it ? If this is the higher state, why does it end ? That which corrupts and degenerates cannot be the highest state. Why should it be so diaboHcal, so unsatisfying ? It is only excusable, inasmuch as, through it, we are taking a higher groove ; we have to pass through it in order to become regenerate again. Put a seed into the ground and it disintegrates, dissolves after a time, and out of that dissolution comes the splendid tree. Every soul must degenerate to become the stately tree. So it follows that the sooner we get out of this state we call " man " the better for us. Is it by committing suicide that we get out of this state ? Not at all. That will be making it all the worse. Torturing ourselves, or condemning the world, is not the way to get out. We have to pass through the Slough of Despond, and the sooner we are through the better. But it must always be remembered that this is not the highest state.

The really difficult 'part to understand is that this state, the Absolute, which has been called the highest, is not, as some fear, that of the zoophite, or of the stone. That would be a dangerous thing to think. According to these thinkers there are only two states of existence, one of the stone, and the other of thought. W^hat right have they to limit existence to these two ? Is there not something infinitely superior to thought ? The vibrations of light, when they are very low, we do not lOo RAJA YOGA.

see ; when they become a Httle more intense they become light to us ; when they become still more intense we do not see them ; it is dark to us. Is the darkness in the end the same as in the beginning ? Certainly not ; it is the difference of the two poles. Is the thoughtlessness of the stone the same as the thoughtlessness of God ? Certainly not. God does not think ; He does not reason ; why should He ? Is anything unknown to Him, that He sliould reason ? The stone cannot reason ; God ' does not. Such is the difference. These philosophers think it is awful if we go beyond thought ; they find nothing beyond thought.

There are much higher states of existence beyond reasoning. It is really beyond the intellect that the first state of religious life is to be found. When you step beyond thought and intellect and all reasoning, then you have made the first step towards God ; and that is the beginning of life. This that is commonly called life is but an embryo state.

The next question will be, what proof is there that this state beyond thought and reasoning is the highest state? In the first place, all the great men of the world, much greater than those that only talk, men who moved the world, men who never thought of any selfish ends whatever, have declared that this is but a little stage on the way, that the Infinite is beyond. In the second place, they not only say so, but lay it open to everyone, they leave their methods,

INTRODUCTION. lOi