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Yoga Lessons for Developing Spiritual Consciousness, by A.P. Mukerji, [1911], at sacred-texts.com
In the foregoing papers, I have tried to enforce upon my readers the indispensable necessity of shifting our point of view from the lower to the higher planes of thought-life.
It may be with regard to our physical self or our intellectual self or our emotional self;—we must view and manipulate them all from but one standpoint—the plane of the Spirit. This is one of the most important principles of Yoga. Yoga means Union. The human will trying to come into the plane of the Divine Creative Principles practises Yoga. The Creative thought in the Divine Spirit must of necessity exist in our minds. Then why do we not act up to it? Why are not our efforts directed purely to the working out of the great plan? Why, if we are really Divine, do we grovel in the puppet-play of a false worldly life?
The answer is we have been thinking invertedly. We have been basing our conclusions upon the suggestions of the sense-born intellect—the mind of the Flesh. We have to pass from this standpoint to that of the Spirit—God—the Absolute. We have to translate our highest conception of our relation to the Spirit into conscious
values. The mere grasping of this relation would tend to their objective manifestation in us, through us and for us. A great saint of India said "the Summum bonum of Bodily existence is to realise in the human body the Supreme Personality of God;" that realisation is the magnum Opus of human existence and it is possible only when we transcend the Lower self and develop a correct appreciation of the spirit of the Great Will.
Man never creates anything; but when he seems to do so what he has done is this: He has specialised the Universal Energies under the directive power of his illumined intelligence by giving certain suggestions to the Universal Creative mind, which takes up the suggestions and moulds out the form from the Universal substance. Thus knowingly or unknowingly we are ever sending forth suggestions into the Creative Mind which at last start up before our vision as objective realities. From this we conclude that the Perfect thinker alone can create Perfect Forms; others must of necessity fail in this task. Hence our object is to come into conscious touch with the Perfect thought which gave the initial movement that developed this Universe. To accomplish this means the reproduction of the Perfect thought in ourselves. For the Universal tries to find expression on the plane of the Particular. Indeed this is the motive behind evolution, the development of individualised centres of consciousness resting in perfect recognition of their relation to the Absolute. Each
soul is the centre of consciousness; a ray of Divine Light shot into matter; a reflection of the Divine Mind. These centres of consciousness must develop the Cosmic consciousness.
What is Cosmic Consciousness? It is the actualization of the relation which the part bears to the whole. The reader must not commit the blunder of supposing God to be capable of being parcelled out into parts. So we are not thinking of material things along lines of physical observation, but of that which is behind matter—I mean spirit—which is the Life that ensouls material forms and of which those fauns are simply so many projections. Suppose we place two mirrors facing each other—a large one and a small one. Suppose further that the word "Life" is engraved on the former; then by the law of reflection the same word shall appear in the latter. That illustrates the relation between the human and the Divine minds. Another illustration given by a mental scientist is that of a self-influencing dynamo where the magnetism generates a current which intensifies the magnetism thus leading to the generation of a still stronger current till at last the saturation point is reached. Only between the human and the Divine minds there is no such thing as saturation point, but the recognition of the latter by the former simply renders the former a medium for the specialization of the latter. Now suppose any illustration of the two mirrors, a quantity of dust accumulates upon the small one. Then, necessarily, no reproduction of the image on the
large mirror can take place, in the small one. By evident analogy if the human mind is clouded it cannot awaken unto a realization of the Divine thought-image existing in the mind of the perfect thinker—God.
That is exactly our trouble. We are labouring under the hypnotic spell of thoughts not in consonance with the true spiritual laws of the Universe as well as our true self. This is the result of the inversion of thought. We have been under the impression that from external conditions we can develop inner stage of consciousness. This is the master-spell which is an illusion or Maya. Our entire thought-life has been rusting under the vitiating, poisoning effect of this idea. This is the poison seed which has developed the mighty tree of Maya. To pluck it out we must draw inwards and realise that inner states of consciousness wield an evermoulding influence upon matter and hew out ever varying forms, just as the image projected upon the specular screen of a magic lantern is really determined by the slide in the lantern. Change the slide images and you have other images on the screen. Change the thought in your mind and you change the form materialised thereby. Influence the lower self from this standpoint and your thought-life shall take on newer, more beautiful forms—which in reality form the grand and noble stuff composing the life of every highly evolved soul. The self has de-hypnotised itself from the illusion of forms. It has found its place in life—sees itself as the principle of life and is free and immortal.