The Yoga of Patanjali

40 Lessons on The Yoga of PatanjaliThen the Guru took out the vessel from his bag and said,“When the vessel is here in my bag, when it is not there in thehouse, how could you search for it? You say it is not there andyou say you have searched. When it is not there how couldyou search for it? You have searched the house and you say,you searched for the vessel. In the absence of a thing howcould you make a search of it? That means it is existingsomewhere else. Where does it exist? It existed in my mind asmemory. By the power of my word it began to exist in yourmind. With the help of it you made a search. So the vesselexists in your mind by the power of the word. This is how weuse the power of word as measure. The vessel can exist as aname, a noun or an adjective. All the things in the world canexist in you as nouns or adjectives. These words act as measures.You have the measures which serve as vehicles of measures.Anything can exist and can be conveyed through the utteranceof a word, the sentence spoken, the sentence written etc,.Knowledge is conveyed through books and persons whenproperly used. This is what we call, the measure of authoritywhich supplements the first two uses of the measure, better.Often we use words in conversations and lessons.When we do it properly we have the import of truth. Inthe classroom, the teacher says, “Once upon a time there liveda King.” He need not bring the king to the class room. Thestudent understands the lesson. When he teaches about tiger,it is not desirable to bring the tiger into the class room. Thestudents can understand the lesson about the tiger. We canunderstand anything without direct perception. Inference servesbetter than direct perception, and authority or the power ofword serves better than inference. When all the three methodsof using the measure are employed in the proper places, theyserve to enlighten us completely. Using the measure directly ispossible only to a limited number of things. When you are here