Raja-Yoga

RAJA YOGA.
Soul and the power of nature become manifest in this
conjunction, and all these manifestations are thrown
out. Ignorance is the cause of this conjunction. We
see every day that the cause of our pain or pleasure
is
always our joining ourselves with the body. If I
were perfectly certain that I am not this body, I should
take no notice of heat and cold, or anything
of the
kind. This body is a combination. It is only a fiction
to say that I have one body, you another, and the sun
another. The whole universe is one ocean of matter,
and you are the name of a little particle, and I of
another, and the sun of another. We know that this
matter is
continuously changing, what is
forming the
sun one day, the next day may form the matter of our
bodies.
24. Ignorance is its cause.
Through ignorance we have joined ourselves with a
particular body, and thus opened ourselves to misery.
This idea of body is a simple superstition. It is
super
stition that makes us happy or unhappy. It is
super
stition caused by ignorance that makes us feel heat
and cold, pain and pleasure. It is our business to rise
above this superstition, and the Yogi shows us how we
can do this. It has been demonstrated that, under
certain mental conditions, a man may be burned, yet,
while that condition lasts, he will feel no pain. The
difficulty is that this sudden upheaval of the mind
comes like a whirlwind one minute, and goes away the
next. If, however, we attain it scientifically, through