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.
forest pleasure will follow him there. Another man, wherever he goes, pain follows him ; everything becomes painful. It is all the result of their own past. According to the philosophy of the Yogis all virtuous actions bring pleasure, and all vicious actions bring pain. Any man who does wicked deeds is sure to reap the fruit of them in the form of pain,
14. They bear fruit as pleasure or pain, caused by irirtue or vice.
15. To the discriminating, all is, as it were, painfull on account of everything bringing pain, either in the consequence, or in apprehension, or in attitude caused by impressions, also on account of the counter action of qualities.
The Yogis say that the man who has discriminating powers, the man of good sense, sees through all these various things, which are called pleasure and pain, and knows that they are always equally distributed, and that one follows the other, and melts into the other ; he sees that men are following an ignis fatints all their lives, and never succeed in fulfilling their desires. There was never a love in this world which did not knowdecay. The great king Yudisthira once said that the most wonderful thing in life is that every moment we see people dying around us, and yet we think we shall never die. Surrounded by fools on every side, we think we are the only exceptions, the only learned men. Surl6o KAJA YOGA.
rounded by all sorts of experiences of fickleness, we think our love is the only lasting love. How can that be ? Even love is selfish, and the Yogi says that, in the end, we shall find that even the love of husbands and wives, and children and friends, slowly decays. Decadence seizes everything in this life. It is only when everything, even love, fails, that, with a flash, man finds out how vain, how dream-like is this world. Then he catches a glimpse of Vairagyam (renunciation), catches a glimpse of the beyond. It is only by giving up this world that the other comes ; never through holding on to this one. Never yet was there a great soul who had not to reject sense pleasures and enjoyments to become such. The cause of misery is the clash between the difTerent forces of nature, one dragging one way, and another dragging another, rendering permanent happiness impossible.
16. The misery which is not yet come is to be avoided.
Some Karma we have worked out already, some we are working out now in the present, and some is waiting to bear fruit in the future. That which we have worked out already is past and gone.
That which we are experiencing now we will have to work out, and it is only that which is waiting to bear fruit in the future that we can conquer and control, so all our forces should be directed towards the control of that Karma which has not yet borne fruit. That is meant in
YOGA APHORISMS. l6l
the previous aphorism, when Patanjali says that these various Samskaras are to be controlled by counteracting
17. The cause of that which is to be avoided is the junction of the seer and the seen.
Who is the seer ? The Self of Man, the Purusa. What is the seen ? The whole of nature, beginning with the mind, down to gross matter. All this pleasure and pain arises from the junction between this Purusa and the mind. The Purusa, you must remember, according to this philosophy, is pure ; it is when it is joined to nature, and by reflection, that it appears to feel either pleasure or pain.
18. The experienced is composed of elements and organs, is of the nature of illumination, action, and inertia, and is for the purpose of experience and release (of the experiencer).
The experienced, that is nature, is composed of elements and organs — the elements gross and fine which compose the whole of nature, and the organs of the senses, mind, etc., and is of the nature of illumination, action, and inertia. These are what in Sanskrit are called Sattva (illumination). Rajas (action), and Tamas (inertia) ; each is for the purpose of experience and release. What is the purpose of the whole of nature ? That the Purusa may gain experience. The Purusa
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