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.
dom to the intelligence, and immediately find that intelligence is not free ; you attribute that freedom to the body, and immediately nature tells you that you are again mistaken. That is why there is this mingled sense of freedom and bondage at the same time. The Yogi analyses both what is free and what is bound, and his ignorance vanishes. He finds that the Purusa is free, is the essence of that knowledge which, coming through the Buddhi, becomes intelligence, and, as such, is bound.
21. The nature of the experienced is for him.
Nature has no light of its own. As long as the Purusa is present in it, it appears light, but the light is borrowed ; just as the moon's light is reflected. All the manifestations of nature are caused by this nature itself, according to the Yogis ; but nature has no purpose in view, except to free the Purusa.
22. Though destroyed for him whose goal has been gained, yet it is not destroyed, being common to others.
The whole idea of this nature is to make the Soul know that it is entirely separate from nature, and when the Soul knows this, nature has no more attractions for it. But the whole of nature vanishes only for that man who has become free. There will always remain an infinite number of others, for whom nature will go on working.
23. Junction is the cause of the realisation of the nature of both the powers, the experienced and its Lord.
According to this aphorism, when this Soul comes into conjunction with nature, both the power of the Soul and the power of nature become manifest in this conjunction, and all these manifestations are thrown out. Ignorance is the cause of this conjunction. We see every day that the cause of our pain or pleasure is always our joining ourselves with the body. If 1 were perfectly certain that I am not this body, I should take no notice of heat and cold, or anything of the kind. This body is a combination. It is only a fiction to say that I have one body, you another, and the sun another. The whole universe is one ocean of matter, and you are the name of a little particle, and I of another, and the sun of another. We know that this matter is continuously changing, what is forming the sun one day, the next day may form the matter of our bodies.
24. Ignorance is its cause.
Through ignorance we have joined ourselves with a particular body, and thus opened ourselves to misery. This idea of body is a simple superstition. It is superstition that makes us happy or unhappy. It is superstition caused by ignorance that makes us feel heat and cold, pain and pleasure. It is our business to rise abo\e this superstition, and the Yogi shows us how we can do this. It has been demonstrated that, under certain mental conditions, a man may be burned, yet, while that condition lasts, he will feel no pain. The difficulty is that this sudden upheaval of the mind comes like a whirlwind one minute, and goes away the next. If, however, we attain it scientifically, through Yoga, we shall permanently attain to that separation of Self from the body.
25. There being absence of that (ignorance) there is absence of junction, which is the thing-tobe-avoided; that is the independence of the seer.
According to this Yoga philosophy it is through ignorance that the Soul has been joined with nature, and the idea is to get rid of nature's control over us. That is the goal of all religions. Each Soul is potentially divine. The goal is to manifest this Divinity within, by controlling nature, external and internal. Do this either by work, or worship, or psychic control, or philosophy, by one, or more, or all of these — and be free. This is the whole of religion. Doctrines, or dogmas, or rituals, or books, or temples, or forms, are but secondary details. The Yogi tries to reach this goal through psychic control. Until we can free ourselves from nature we are slaves ; as she dictates so we must go. The Yogi claims that he who controls mind controls matter also. The internal nature is much higher than the external, and much more difficult to grapple with,
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