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Updated: June 12, 2025
Happy is the spiritual man who beholds this seven-fold illumination in its ascending stages. From steadfastly following after the means of Yoga, until impurity is worn away, there comes the illumination of thought up to full discernment. Here, we enter on the more detailed practical teaching of Patanjali, with its sound and luminous good sense.
People who have studied the ancient philosophy of India with a firm resolve to penetrate the hidden meaning of its aphorisms have for the most part grown convinced that electricity and its effects were known to a considerable extent to some philosophers, as, for instance, to Patanjali.
Vedanta, particularly as interpreted by Sri Ramakrishna and his successors, offers a wider field of effort, and a more intellectual consideration of Hindu religion than that of the Yoga system as interpreted from the original Sankhya system by Patanjali, about 300 B.C.
This broad, general training, which forms and develops human character, must be accomplished to a very considerable degree, before there can be much hope of success in the further stages of spiritual life. First the psychical, and then the spiritual. First the man, then the angel. On this broad, humane and wise foundation does the system of Patanjali rest.
Also in consequence of the ill-foundedness of reasoning. This latter point is proved by the fact that the arguments set forth by Buddha, Kanada, Akshapada, Jina, Kapila and Patanjali respectively are all mutually contradictory. Let us then view the matter as follows.
"The KRIYA YOGA which I am giving to the world through you in this nineteenth century," Babaji told Lahiri Mahasaya, "is a revival of the same science which Krishna gave, millenniums ago, to Arjuna, and which was later known to Patanjali, and to Christ, St. John, St. Paul, and other disciples." Thus neutralizing decay and growth, by quieting the heart, the yogi learns life control."
Therefore Patanjali, like every great spiritual teacher, meets the question: What must I do to be saved? with the age-old answer: Keep the Commandments. Only after the disciple can say, These have I kept, can there be the further and finer teaching of the spiritual Rules.
To this system belong the doctrines of Patanjali, which teach that man must emancipate himself from metempsychosis through contemplation and ecstasy to be attained by the calm of the senses, by corporeal penance, suspension of breath, and immobility of position. The followers of this school pass their lives in solitude, absorbed in this mystic contemplation.
Modern scholars, blithely believing that 10,000 years ago all men were sunk in a barbarous Stone Age, summarily dismiss as "myths" all records and traditions of very ancient civilizations in India, China, Egypt, and other lands. In using the words KRIYA YOGA, Patanjali was referring to either the exact technique taught by Babaji, or one very similar to it.
They hold that the Purusha, or Spirit, not the Mind, is the Real Self, and the source of consciousness and the real intelligence. The practical teachings of the school of Patanjali is a system by which the Purusha may escape from and overcome the Prakriti, and thus gain emancipation, freedom, and a return to its natural and original purity and power.
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