Some
Definitions
There are a few words,
constantly recurring, which need brief definitions, in order to
avoid confusion; they are: Unfolding, Evolution, Spirituality, Psychism,
Yoga and Mysticism.
"Unfolding"
always refers to consciousness, "evolution" to forms.
Evolution is the homogeneous becoming the heterogeneous, the simple
becoming complex. But there is no growth and no perfectioning for
Spirit, for consciousness; it is all there and always, and all that
can happen to it is to turn itself outwards instead of remaining
turned inwards. The God in you cannot evolve, but He may show forth
His powers through matter that He has appropriated for the purpose,
and the matter evolves to serve Him. He Himself only manifests what
He is. And on that, many a saying of the great mystics may come
to your mind: "Become," says St. Ambrose, "what you
are"--a paradoxical phrase; but one that sums up a great truth:
become in outer manifestation that which
you are in inner reality. That is the object of the whole process
of Yoga.
"Spirituality"
is the realisation of the One. "Psychism" is the manifestation
of intelligence through any material vehicle.[FN#5: See London Lectures
of 1907, "Spirituality and Psychism".]
"Yoga" is the
seeking of union by the intellect, a science; "Mysticism"
is the seeking of the same union by emotion.[FN#6: The word yoga
may, of course, be rightly used of all union with the self, whatever
the road taken. I am using it here in the narrower sense, as peculiarly
connected with the intelligence, as a Science, herein following
Patanjali.]
See the mystic. He fixes
his mind on the object of devotion; he loses self-consciousness,
and passes into a rapture of love and adoration, leaving all external
ideas, wrapped in the object of his love, and a great surge of emotion
sweeps him up to God. He does not know how he has reached that lofty
state. He is conscious only of God and his love for Him. Here is
the rapture of the mystic, the triumph of the saint.
The yogi does not work
like that. Step after step, he realises what he is doing. He works
by science and not by emotion, so that any who do not care for science,
finding it dull and dry, are not at present unfolding that part
of their nature which will find its best help in the practice of
Yoga. The yogi may use devotion as a means. This comes out very
plainly in Patanjali. He has given many means whereby Yoga may be
followed, and curiously,
"devotion to Isvara'' is one of several means. There comes
out the spirit of the scientific thinker. Devotion to Isvara is
not for him an end in itself, but means to an endÄthe concentration
of the mind. You see there at once the difference of spirit. Devotion
to Isvara is the path of the mystic. He attains communion by that.
Devotion to Isvara as a means of concentrating the mind is the scientific
way in which the yogi regards devotion. No number of words would
have brought out the difference of spirit between Yoga and Mysticism
as well as this. The one looks upon devotion to Isvara as a way
of reaching the Beloved; the other looks upon it as a means of reaching
concentration. To the mystic, God, in Himself is the object of search,
delight in Him is the reason for approaching Him, union with Him
in consciousness is his goal; but to the yogi, fixing the attention
on God is merely an effective way of concentrating the mind. In
the one, devotion is used to obtain an end; in the other, God is
seen as the end and is reached directly by rapture.
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