CHAPTER V
“The fourth truth is the way. It openeth wide, Plain for all feet to tread, easy and near, The noble eight-fold path, it goeth straight To peace and refuge, Hear !” * Arnold’s Light of Asia.
NOW we enter upon the most well known and practical part of Yoga, viz., Yama, Niyama, Asana, Pranayama, Pratyahara, Dharana, Dhyana, and Samadhi, The five first belong to the Bahiranga, i.e., external Yoga, while the latter three to internal Yoga. These eight steps lead to the final goal of Kaivalyam or isolation, otherwise called emancipation, Mokhsha or Nirvana.
1.—Yama.
It consists of five parts, and is the universal duty of all. It enjoins ahinsa (not-killing), satya (truth), asteya (not-stealing), Brahmacharya (continence, and perfect chastity), aperigraha (not coveting). It is a duty incumbent on all persons whatever be their rank, nationality or country. It forms the first step of the universal code of morality. Almost all the evils of the world may be traced, directly, or indirectly, to a breach of some one of these laws. Strict observance of these rules bring with it its own reward; however, we shall mention some of the perfections which a Yogi acquires, who adheres firmly to them. When a Yogi becomes completely harmless and has no hinsa whatever, then in his presence all ferocious animals forget their ferocity, none of them dare injure him, nor cause harm to each other while under his influence. When a Yogi becomes a perfect lover of truth, and practises always veracity, he amasses a good store of karma without performing the usual sacrifices, alms, &c. When his abstinence from theft is complete, all jewels of the earth, in whatever quarter they may be hid, come to him unasked, that is, he can command wealth if he leaves off totally the desire of wealth. If he practises perfect Brahmacharya, he gains strength. And it is but reasonable that it should be so: for every act of unchastity is destructive to self and power. If his un-covetousness is complete, he regains the knowledge of all his former states of existence. That this should be so is mystery apparently. But the word covetousness should be taken in its largest sense, i.e., the soul should not covet the body, which is its tabernacle and temporary home, and thus when it becomes free from the body by discarding it, it gains the knowledge of its past lives and deaths, and of the bodies of which it had once filled. Of course virtue must be practised for its own sake without looking to any ulterior end, but in the economy of nature good acts are ever followed by good fruits. Nor must the above perfections, resulting from the practice of Yama, be regarded as fictitious and imaginary. Lives of holy Rishis and saints, hierophants and adepts of every country and age, bear ample testimony to the truth of this doctrine. A person who loves all creatures, whose soul is in sympathy with all animate creation, emits a magnetic aura of great potentiality, and every creature, however ferocious, must feel its influence. The most ferocious brute dares not lift its eyes in his presence, for the law of sympathy requires it so. Thus ahinsa made Pythagoras and Buddha tamers of the brute creation. We read in Manu:—“He who injures no animated creature shall attain without hardship whatever he thinks of, whatever he strives for, whatever he fixes his mind on.”
Similarly, we can understand that a person who practices veracity acquires a store of good karma, though he may not perform a single yajna. Of all virtues, truth is the most divine, and one who adheres to it has no need of sacrifices and ablutions. He will never do wrong or injustice, and thus, though not performing karma, will get its fruits.
“When abstinence from theft is complete, all jewels come near him.” Let it not be thought to be an inducement for not-stealing; non-commission of theft is after all not a great virtue. But what the author means is probably this, that a Yogi should not even entertain the thought of possessing, by unlawful means, the property of another. The word steya, translated into theft, includes fraud, misrepresentation, cheating, and even adultery; for wife is said to be property of her husband.
Similarly, that the practice of Brahmacharya (chastity) should give strength is very clear. There is a class of medical men who think total abstinence from sexual intercourse is productive of as injurious results as excessive venereal or sexual indulgence. They argue that every organ must have its normal and healthy usage, while disuse must result in the atrophy of that part. From considerations like these they assert that celibacy is prejudical to longevity and Brahmacharya a violation of the creative and reproductive law of nature. There is much truth in these remarks; but do we not think that celibacy is meant by the word Brahmacharya? Though for our own part, we believe celibacy unnatural, yet we are not prepared to admit that it is injurious to longevity. We have seen perfect celibates enjoying the best health possible and attaining old age. However, we think with Manu that it is not total abstinence only which constitutes Brahmacharya, but moderation. “He who abstains from conjugal embraces on the six reprehended nights and on eight others, is equal in chastity to a Brahmachari, in whichever of the two next orders he may live.” Nor is total abstinence a sine qua non of Yoga. We can enumerate scores of Hindus, Sikhs, Mahomedans and who were married men with wives and children as Yogis. The best of them, in fact the teacher and discoverer of Yoga, the very ideal of a Yogi—stands the sublime picture of Shiva. Him the students of the Indian Yoga worship as the param guru—the great teacher—and a large class of people contemplate nothing but his attributes in their Dhyan. He, the founder and discoverer of this spiritual science, showed by his life that marriage, instead of being an obstacle in the path of spiritual enlightenment, positively facilitates the development. He is represented not only as a Yogi-raj, but the most loving of husbands and the kindest of fathers. Therefore it is but reasonable to conclude that by Brahmacharya the author Patanjali, does not mean celibacy but continence.
The fifth part of Yama is “non-coveting.” Its fruit is the knowledge of past lives. It has been already explained what is meant by aperigraha, whose English equivalent, in the absence of anything better, we have given as above. It is that state in which the soul does not desire to have anything which is not its own; and as body is no part of the soul, but is only a temporary house in which the soul resides, or rather a wonderful instrument on which the soul plays, a love therefore of body is a love of a thing which is notsoul, and therefore amounts to perigraha, or covetousness. That aperigraha produces knowledge of past existences, establishes through implication a much contested point in metaphysics, viz., that the human soul had to pass through successive stages before it becomes human. Many of us have been nurtured in the belief that the soul is created with the body, and thus though it has a beginning, it is nevertheless eternal. The position taken up by Patanjali and almost every school of Indian philosophy is that not only the soul has no end, but it has no beginning as well. It had experienced many existences before it became human. The Yogi knows his past lives, which an ordinary man does not. But the question arises—did our souls exist before as human, or had it any other body, e.g., of beast or brute? The principal of progress, as evidenced throughout the works of nature, proves to demonstration that human soul has become so by passing through the lower stages of existence,—stages of mineral, vegetable, and animal and that this progress is in a spiral line, and not in a circle. The theory of transmigration is reasonable only in so far as it propounds the doctrine of previous and subsequent existences, but it is grossly in error if it inculcates that man, however depraved, will ever revert to a brute of beast again. Those who quote Patanjali in support of the latter doctrine seem not to have grasped the full spirit of his philosophy. He, no doubt, believes in the previous existences of the soul, but there is no mention in his writings of this retrogression. The soul of a beast after a course of ages may become human, it can under no circumstances ever revert to beasthood. Taking it then as reasonable that man had previous existences in the shape of lower animals, the next difficulty that arises is how does one gain back the reminiscences of those long forgotten ages by simple non-coveting of his body. To understand this properly the enquirer should realize that there is no past, present, or future in eternity; nothing perhaps explains it so clearly as the phenomena of light. Suppose two persons A and B quarrel in a dark room, and A strikes down B dead. Just at the moment when B falls, a light is brought into the room, when a third person C, whom we suppose to be standing near the door of
the room, will see B fall just actually at the very moment when B fell. How did he see it? Because the light, which was introduced into the room, carried with it the picture of B from the room into the eye of C standing outside. Suppose the distance from B to the eye of C to be 18 feet, the time which light will take to travel from B to C will be so very inappreciable that we may call it instantaneous. But suppose C is situated at the distance of 180,000,000 miles instead of 18 feet, now the light which will reach his eyes will do so, ten seconds after it was brought into the room, and C will see B falling ten seconds after the actual event. Again, suppose C is standing on the star named Serius, and looking towards the room in which A and B fight. Now astronomers have calculated that light takes about three years to travel from Serius to earth and vice versa. So C will see B falling some three years after the event i.e., if B was killed in 1880, C will see it in 1883. Thus what passed with us three years ago will be present to C. To take another example,— Suppose we wish to see the Durbar of Delhi which took place in 1879, in the month of January. On our earth it is past six years. If we go to a distance of about twice that of Serius and then look towards the spot on the earth where Delhi is, we shall see the whole Durbar passing before our sight. In fact light carries for ever through space the pictures of things, and it is a calculation involving simple multiplication to find out at what distance a particular picture will be found at a particular time. The original may have perished long ago, but its picture is retained for eternity in light. Under certain circumstances the picture of the past is possible to be seen on this earth. Taking the above example of the Durbar, light travelled from the Earth to the Serius in three years, and reached that star in 1880; if this light be reflected from it by some polished surface back towards three years after 1880, that is, in 1883, so that even in this earth, if we will know the proper ray and catch it, we shall see the Durbar of Delhi six years after it actually took place. Thus by reading the pictures of the akas (ether) one can know the past. Physical science may perhaps discover some day the means of developing these pictures impressed in the akas; but spiritual science has already attained it. Psychometry is a standing proof of this. And the means for attaining this end, as proposed by Yoga, is “no-covet to the body.” Let the human soul free itself from this mortal coil this prison house of body, and in its Linga sarira (the etherial duplicate), it will be enabled as easily to read pictures impressed in ether, as in its material body it perceives phenomena.
Thus we have enumerated all the five parts of yama. They have been very aptly called the maha vratas or the great duties. These vratas must have precedence over all other vratas. Those ceremonies which we now-a-days call vratas, such as fasting on the eleventh day of the moon, giving alms to Brahmans, &c., are all inferior to them. One who does not kill the most insignificant of the living creatures of God, commits no theft, violates not the law of chastity, tells no falsehood, and covets not anything of the world, needs not perform any other vrata or ceremony. He needs not the guidance of priests, for he is a guide to himself. He may defy all the opposition of the ignorant so-called Brahmans of the age, and bravely go on in his path of duty.