Philosophy of Yoga

 Philosophy of Yoga
The Yoga system assumes the same cosmological doctrines as set forth in the Samkhya system. The only difference between the two is that the Samkhya system pertains to the universal condition of nature, and the Yoga system pertains to the individual condition of nature. The process of evolution and involution of both is the same. Both are based on the fundamental logical premise that something cannot come out of nothing, that every shadow must have its substance. Therefore, the Yoga system maintains that the gross individual must have a subtle aspect from which it manifests itself and to which it will return. This subtle aspect is but a spark of the divine, and is the sole concern of Yoga.
Before it is possible to understand man fully, it is necessary to examine first the forces which sustain him and cause him to be what ·he is. The energies of nature operate in him according to the necessities of survival, yet man has the inherent quality of dissolution, for he is a compound being. He is constituted of both the gross and the subtle. The gross can be known by perception, but the subtle can be known only by the power of spiritual perception. The subtle aspect consists of the abstract energies of his nature; they are always invisible, for they are beyond the mind, beyond the senses, never to be seen, but to be known only through the practice of Yoga. The Yoga system is based upon the principle that there is but one law that governs a single force which operates in all conditions of nature, manifest and unmanifest. That force is called life. It is the invisible force that unites spirit and matter and brings all things into being. It is not the result of the chemical stimulation of protoplasm, yet protoplasm is a carrier of life. Death does take an inexorable grasp of the manifest individual, but the continuance of life is not defected. Life is actually the sensibility that precedes the senses.
Life is not the creation of something new; it is only an expansion of what is; therefore, it is linked to the unseen realities which constitute the essence of man before he becomes manifest in the gross form. We 5ee only the middle link in the chain of existence and call it life; we utterly fail to take notice of the preceding and succeeding invisible stages. Inasmuch as nothing can exist without being attached to its antecedents, the material manifestation called life must be linked to a finer and immaterial form; therefore, man is said to be the offspring of the invisible aspect of nature, appearing only when a condition for his manifestation has been created. Since the effect must always be uniform with the cause, life must proceed from life as light proceeds from light, and not from darkness.
Each conception is the influx of a new self, for the lifeless constituents of a human body cannot create a man, no matter how many chemicals or physiological actions are postulated. The manifestation in the visible world is not the creation of something new. The phenomenon of birth is merely the manifestation of an individual aspect of universal consciousness. Therefore, the soul can operate in both the visible and invisible world.
Those individuals who observe only the superficial appearances of nature confound the eternal order of things, and fail to perceive the true nature of man. Man is a combination of a self-conscious self and five kinds of matter formed into an organic body. He possesses infinite consciousness and is ever subject to the process of being evolved into a finite organic individual through the dynamics of the combined sperm and ovum. The soul is not corporeally and dimensionally present, but is spiritually present as one’s voice is present throughout the room. It has no inside or outside, but is only a mass of intelligence, just as a mass of sweetness has no inside or outside, but is simply a mass of taste.
The manifestation of an individual is the reduction of the universal force to an individual principle caused by a stress raised in the universal consciousness. Man as a genus is the result of the differentiation of the whole into an infinite multiplicity of correlated centers called individuals, effects of nature. In order to produce the differentiation, energy must become concentrated so as to create a field in which a stress can take place. This is caused by the dynamic energy of the individual’s past action (karma). As a section becomes enveloped, it operates as a limited and determining principle called man. This center of individual consciousness is cast into a mould and likened to a tightly wound spring. As the individual consciousness begins to manifest, it takes on forms and becomes a thinking, speaking and experiencing entity. Its experiences become logical only when circumscribed in review. The more compact and condensed this conscious energy becomes, the more power it manifests.