Great Systems of Yoga by Ernest Wood

Author:Ernest Wood [Wood, Ernest]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Global Grey ebooks
Published: 2019-09-21T23:00:00+00:00

1. Tapas

(Will)

1. Pranipāta

(Love)

1. Viveka

(Thought)

2. Swādhyāya

(Thought)

2. Pariprashna

(Thought)

2. Vairāgya

(Love)

3. Ishwara-pranidhāna

(Love)

3. Sevā

(Will)

3. Shatsampatti

(Will)

When the student has followed this preliminary training with some success he will be ready for two things (1) the understanding of the doctrine of māyā, and (2) the direct visioning of the Self.

Māyā has often been translated "illusion," whence it has been thought that Shankara teaches that all this world does not exist, and people only imagine that it does so—that there is nothing there. That is not so. He does not deny the existence of objects, but affirms that we see them wrongly—just as a man may see a piece of rope on the ground and mistake it for a snake, or as he may see a post in the distance and think it to be a man.

It is necessary to know that māyā has two functions: "covering-up" (āvarana) and "throwing-out" (vikshepa). The first is declared to be the effect of tamas, which hides or obstructs the life, and the second the result of rajas, or energy. "Covering-up" implies that although we are—every one—universal in our essential nature, our attention is now given to less than the whole. Most of the reality is covered up, and since we see only the remainder, it must necessarily become unsatisfying and stupid and even painful, when we have played with it long enough to exhaust its lessons for us. When we have read a book and absorbed the ideas in it, we do not want to read it again. If it is forced upon us, the experience will be painful. We may laugh at a good joke told by a friend to-day, but if he persists in telling us the same story again and again it will be far from a joke. Our life must be moving on, and overcoming the āvarana; there is no long-lasting pleasure or gain in standing still on any platform of knowledge that we may have gained at any time or stage.

"Covering-up" does not mean that objects of experience lack reality. The māyā or illusion is that we do not see their full reality; we see too little, not too much. So far as they go they have an excellent flavor of reality, but their incompleteness is unsatisfying.

The second function of māyā, "throwing-out" (vikshepa), means that we put forth our thought and energy in reference to that part of reality which for us individually has not been covered up, and thereby we produce the world of māyā or created things, which are only temporary (anitya).

The power of "throwing-out" is not merely of the mind, but is actually creative, and this it is which produces all the forms around us, the world of manifestation. The objects therein are very much like pictures painted by an artist. They represent his expression of such part of the reality as is not covered up. As he looks at the picture and realizes how defective and even nonsensical it is,

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