Some Definitions
There are a few words, constantly recurring, which need brief
definitions, in order to avoid confusion; they are: Unfolding,
Evolution, Spirituality, Psychism, Yoga and Mysticism.
"Unfolding" always refers to consciousness, "evolution" to forms.
Evolution is the homogeneous becoming the heterogeneous, the simple
becoming complex. But there is no growth and no perfectioning for
Spirit, for consciousness; it is all there and always, and all that
can happen to it is to turn itself outwards instead of remaining
turned inwards. The God in you cannot evolve, but He may show forth
His powers through matter that He has appropriated for the purpose,
and the matter evolves to serve Him. He Himself only manifests what He
is. And on that, many a saying of the great mystics may come to your
mind: "Become," says St. Ambrose, "what you are"--a paradoxical
phrase; but one that sums up a great truth: become in outer
manifestation that which you are in inner reality. That is the object
of the whole process of Yoga.
"Spirituality" is the realisation of the One. "Psychism" is the
manifestation of intelligence through any material vehicle.[FN#5: See
London Lectures of 1907, "Spirituality and Psychism".]
"Yoga" is the seeking of union by the intellect, a science;
"Mysticism" is the seeking of the same union by emotion.[FN#6: The
word yoga may, of course, be rightly used of all union with the self,
whatever the road taken. I am using it here in the narrower sense, as
peculiarly connected with the intelligence, as a Science, herein
following Patanjali.]
See the mystic. He fixes his mind on the object of devotion; he
loses self-consciousness, and passes into a rapture of love and
adoration, leaving all external ideas, wrapped in the object of his
love, and a great surge of emotion sweeps him up to God. He does not
know how he has reached that lofty state. He is conscious only of God
and his love for Him. Here is the rapture of the mystic, the triumph
of the saint. The yogi does not work like that. Step after step, he
realises what he is doing. He works by science and not by emotion, so
that any who do not care for science, finding it dull and dry, are not
at present unfolding that part of their nature which will find its
best help in the practice of Yoga. The yogi may use devotion as a
means. This comes out very plainly in Patanjali. He has given many
means whereby Yoga may be followed, and curiously, "devotion to Isvara''
is one of several means. There comes out the spirit of the scientific
thinker. Devotion to Isvara is not for him an end in itself, but means
to an endÄthe concentration of the mind. You see there at once the
difference of spirit. Devotion to Isvara is the path of the mystic. He
attains communion by that. Devotion to Isvara as a means of
concentrating the mind is the scientific way in which the yogi regards
devotion. No number of words would have brought out the difference of
spirit between Yoga and Mysticism as well as this. The one looks upon
devotion to Isvara as a way of reaching the Beloved; the other looks
upon it as a means of reaching concentration. To the mystic, God, in
Himself is the object of search, delight in Him is the reason for
approaching Him, union with Him in consciousness is his goal; but to
the yogi, fixing the attention on God is merely an effective way of
concentrating the mind. In the one, devotion is used to obtain an end;
in the other, God is seen as the end and is reached directly by
rapture.
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