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.
2o8 RAJA YOGA.
their old bodies. Patanjali, the great authonty on Yoga, does not deny this. The power of words. There are certain sacred words called Mantrams, which have power, when repeated under proper conditions, to produce these extraordinary powers. We are living in the midst of such a mass of miracles, day and night, that we do not think anything of them. There is no limit to man's power, the power of words and the power of mind. Mortification. You find that in every religion mortifications and asceticisms have been practised. In these religious conceptions the Hindus always go to the extremes. You will find men standing with their hands up all their lives, until their hands wither and die. Men sleep standing, day and night, until their feet swell, and, if they live, the legs become so stiff in this position that they can no more bend them, but have to stand all their lives. I once saw a man who had raised his hands in this way, and I asked him how it felt when he did it first. He said it was awful torture. It was such torture that he had to go to a river and put himself in water, and that allayed the pain for a little. After a month he did not suffer much. Through such practices powers (Siddhis) can be attained. Concentration. The concentration is Samadhi, and that is Yoga proper ; that is the principal theme of this science, and it is the highest means. The preceding ones are only secondary, and ■we cannot attain to the highest through them. Samadhi is the means through which we can gain anything and everything, mental, moral or spiritual.
2. The change into another species is by the filling in of nature.
Patanjali has advanced the proposition that these powers come by birth, sometimes by chemical means, or they may be got by mortification, and he has admitted that this body can be kept for any length of time. Now he goes on to state what is the cause of the change of the body into another species, which he says is by the filling in of nature. In the next aphorism he will explain this.
3. Good deeds, etc., are not the direct causes in the transformations of nature, but they act as breakers of obstacles to the eYoIutions of nature : as a farmer breaks the obstacles to the course of water, v^hich then runs dovirn by its owrn nature.
When a farmer is irrigating his field the water is already in the canals, only there are gates which keep the water in. The farmer opens these gates, and the water flows in by itself, by the law of gravitation. So, all human progress and power are already in everything ; this perfection is every man's nature, only it is barred in and prevented from taking its proper course. If anyone can take the bar off in rushes nature. Then the man attains the powers which are his already. Those we called wicked become saints, as soon as the bar is o