Great Systems of Yoga

THERE are many people in America and Europe who want to know what yoga is, and they say, "Do not tell us about the yoga of one particular school; we want a concise survey of the whole field."

This need I have tried to fill in the present small volume. In doing so I have endeavored to preserve the perfect authenticity and clearness of the original teachings of ten different well-known Oriental schools of yoga teaching and practice.

This I am doing mainly direct from the original texts and with an extensive knowledge of their actual operation, acquired largely during my thirty-eight-years residence in the East.

Then comes the remark: "We want to find out whether there is anything in these forms of yoga which we can use in our present civilization. Has it anything for us?" It certainly has. In explanation of this reply, I will first mention that it will be seen by the reader of this book that reflectiveness and meditation play a large part in most of the yoga systems, and then add,

"Half an hour spent in meditation or even in reflection in the morning is not time wasted. It is not even time spent. It is time gained, because it will make the rest of the day far more fruitful than it would otherwise have been."

"How so?"

"It will do this in four ways:

EXCERPT

THERE is great interest in the Western world at the present time on the subject of Oriental Occultism, and very rightly so, for the time has come for it to be blended in with the practical material civilization which has been so wonderfully developed in the modern world. There will be two benefits in this blending-more success in the outer world and more peace in the inner life.

The time has gone for any of us-East or West-to think of Occultism as an escape from material reality and responsibility into some vague inner condition in which one retreats from all that material life stands for. Rather it is concerned in the purpose voiced by Emerson when he wrote: "To make in matter home for mind." To make of this world a place where consciousness can enjoy to the full all the powers of its own mind and at the same time discover that there is more to the mind than is commonly known-that is practical Occultism. To know how the mind works we cannot do better than turn to the ancient writers on what is called yoga-looking at all the principal ancient schools of yoga, not only one or two of them. Of these there are seven well-known surviving schools in India today, and in addition to these our survey of Oriental Occultism would be incomplete without allusion to three others-the Persian Sufis, the Buddhist "Noble Way," and the Chinese and Japanese Zen. This makes ten in all.

Many are the modern teachers of practical occultism or yoga, but all of them can be classed as especially devoted to the methods of one or other of these modes of practice.

Why have we at the outset associated the word yoga with occultism? Because yoga is the practice of occult powers-or rather the discovery and use of those powers residing unseen in the depths of the human mind. The practice could begin with the formula, "We are only part alive," and from that standpoint proceed to investigate the Introspectional Psychology of the ancients, which they said united them-yoga means union-with the latent possibilities and unseen actualities of and beyond the mind. The Introspectional Psychology, all the ancient teachers asserted, is justified by its results; it works.

That it should have been developed in elder times, in very peaceful times, in the Orient, was very natural. In those very settled days there were whole classes of society who had leisure to give to these matters. There were not only solitary and silent hermit-investigators, but also teachers with small schools, and travelling lecturers, and occasional conferences of teachers organized by the ancient rulers.

But nowadays we have a phase of material activity, most fully developed in America and now invading the Orient itself, which leaves people with little energy or time to carry on the studies in Introspectional Psychology in which many people formerly immersed themselves-in which they were often at fault when they made the delights of the mind a substitute for the valuable experience of the whole estate of man. This modern activity is such that very often people have nervous breakdowns of various kinds. Many must be the material achievements left unfulfilled because of the collapse of those who could originate them but could not bear the strain of carrying them to their completion.

CONTENTS