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The Fifth Lesson: Patanjali’s Yoga System.1205
along with the individual Purushas, and the principle of Prakriti, and all else
that has been emanated or manifested, into the nature of that or Brahman.
Patanjali, of course, teaches that the Purushas, entangled in Prakriti, and
entering into the long journey of Samsara, undergo many and repeated
successive incarnations or rebirths, just as all Hindu philosophies and
religions teach. The general teachings of this system regarding Rebirth
agrees almost precisely with that of the other systems—in fact, there is but
little difference in this fundamental teaching among the various philosophies.
This is also true of the teachings regarding Karma, or Spiritual Cause and
Effect, the teachers holding that the law of causation binds all things in
Samsara, from atom to man, and that each precedes sowing and reaping,
effect following cause. The Yogin is taught to concern himself little about
past lives, but to dismiss them as outlived tasks, the memory of which will
serve only to bind him to material life. He is urged to divest himself, one
by one, of the material sheaths that are holding him, that in the end he may
awaken from his nightmare of material existence, and pass to the blissful
state of freedom and emancipation, gaining liberation from “the pairs of
opposites”; the “gunas or qualities”; from time and space and causation—
thus gaining Liberation in Truth.
As will have been seen, the animating principle of Patanjali’s teaching is
the Method of Deliverance of the Individual Purusha from the bonds of
Prakriti, or material existence, by means of the knowledge of the Truth, and
by the exercise of proper methods and exercise, practices and work, which
lead to Union with God, or an absorption of the Individual Purusha with the
Universal Purusha, Ishwara, or Personal God—or as some hold, instead of
the Union being an “absorption” it is in the nature of a “drawing together”
or “yoking-up,” or true Yoga. This union is held to be possible of attainment
by several roads, the principal and best of which is that of the Absolute
concentration of the Raja Yoga methods—which Yoga is called the Royal
Yoga, or the King of Yoga. And therefore, the study of the Yoga System of