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A Series of Lessons on the Inner Teachings of the Philosophies and Religions of India1218
remember that Patanjali’s Yogi System does not include the entire Yoga
Teachings of India. Far from it, for the entire Hindu Philosophy is permeated
with Yoga, which means “Union,” or methods leading to that Union—and
also methods of attaining Mental Control. Patanjali’s System is called the
“Yoga System” merely because of the importance he placed upon the
Yoga methods as laid down by him. And in justice to him it should be said
that the decline of the importance of his system is due not so much to his
original teachings, or the change of public opinion, but to the additions
and changes wrought by the more extreme and unphilosophical of his
followers, as above described. To read the Aphorisms of Patanjali one may
see how different a thing may become from the original plans of its architect.
The Yoga System of Patanjali to-day is kept alive in India principally by
reason of the interest in certain of its methods, exercise, and practices—its
philosophical importance has departed, and outside of the schools of its
teachers one hears but little of its original philosophy, which, after all, was
merely Kapila’s—plus a Personal God, and with a super-added System of
Methods. And, by the irony of Change, much of the really valuable part of
the Yoga Methods was afterward absorbed into the body of the Vedanta
System, which finds room for all that is valuable and useful—which “takes its
own wherever it finds it.”
“Yoga” in its formerly generally understood and commonly accepted
meaning in India meant “union”; “yoking-up”; “joining,” etc., being symbolic
of the union of the individual soul with the divine—the relative with the real—
the finite with the infinite—that is the original meaning of “Yoga” and “Yogi”
in the Hindu Philosophies. But the prevalence of Patanjali’s Yoga System,
and particularly the methods and practice enjoined therein, has caused
the term to acquire a secondary meaning among the Hindus, and it is now
commonly used in the sense of “effort; exercise; exertion; concentration,”
etc., the spirit being lost sight of by reason of the consideration of methods,
and means. In Patanjali’s First Aphorism, the term is used in the sense of:
“The control, or suppression, of Chitta (mind-stuff or mental principle).”