INTRODUCTION TO BOOK I The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali are in themselves exceedingly brief, lessthan ten pages of large type in the original. Yet they contain theessence of practical wisdom, set forth in admirable order and detail.The theme, if the present interpreter be right, is the great regeneration,the birth of the spiritual from the psychical man: the same themewhich Paul so wisely and eloquently set forth in writing to his disciplesin Corinth, the theme of all mystics in all lands.
We think of ourselves as living a purely physical life, in these materialbodies of ours. In reality, we have gone far indeed from pure physicallife; for ages, our life has been psychical, we have been centred andimmersed in the psychic nature. Some of the schools of India say thatthe psychic nature is, as it were, a looking-glass, wherein are mirroredthe things seen by the physical eyes, and heard by the physical ears.But this is a magic mirror; the images remain, and take a certain lifeof their own. Thus within the psychic realm of our life there grows upan imaged world wherein we dwell; a world of the images of thingsseen and heard, and therefore a world of memories; a world also ofhopes and desires, of fears and regrets. Mental life grows up amongthese images, built on a measuring and comparing, on the massing ofimages together into general ideas; on the abstraction of new notionsand images from these; till a new world is built up within, full ofdesires and hates, ambition, envy, longing, speculation, curiosity,self-will, self-interest.
The teaching of the East is, that all these are true powers overlaid byfalse desires; that though in manifestation psychical, they are inessence spiritual; that the psychical man is the veil and prophecy of thespiritual man.
The purpose of life, therefore, is the realizing of that prophecy; theunveiling of the immortal man; the birth of the spiritual from thepsychical, whereby we enter our divine inheritance and come toinhabit Eternity. This is, indeed, salvation, the purpose of all truereligion, in all times.
Patanjali has in mind the spiritual man, to be born from the psychical.His purpose is, to set in order the practical means for the unveilingand regeneration, and to indicate the fruit, the glory and the power, ofthat new birth.
Through the Sutras of the first book, Patanjali is concerned with thefirst great problem, the emergence of the spiritual man from the veilsand meshes of the psychic nature, the moods and vestures of themental and emotional man. Later will come the consideration of thenature and powers of the spiritual man, once he stands clear of thepsychic veils and trammels, and a view of the realms in which thesenew spiritual powers are to be revealed.
At this point may come a word of explanation. I have been asked whyI use the word Sutras, for these rules of Patanjali's system, when theword Aphorism has been connected with them in our minds for ageneration. The reason is this: the name Aphorism suggests, to me atleast, a pithy sentence of very general application; a piece ofproverbial wisdom that may be quoted in a good many sets ofcircumstance, and which will almost bear on its face the evidence ofits truth. But with a Sutra the case is different. It comes from the sameroot as the word "sew," and means, indeed, a thread, suggesting,therefore, a close knit, consecutive chain of argument. Not only haseach Sutra a definite place in the system, but further, taken out of thisplace, it will be almost meaningless, and will by no means beself-evident. So I have thought best to adhere to the original word.The Sutras of Patanjali are as
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