/

Great Systems of Yoga: Chapter One. The Ten Oriental Yogas

THE TEN ORIENTAL YOGAS

THERE is great interest in the Western world at the present time on the subject of Oriental Occultism, and very rightly so, for the time has come for it to be blended in with the practical material civilization which has been so wonderfully developed in the modern world. There will be two benefits in this blending—more success in the outer world and more peace in the inner life. The time has gone for any of us—East or West—to think of Occultism as an escape from material reality and responsibility into some vague inner condition in which one retreats from all that material life stands for. Rather it is concerned in the purpose voiced by Emerson when he wrote: "To make in matter home for mind." To make of this world a place where consciousness can enjoy to the full all the powers of its own mind and

Many are the modern teachers of practical occultism or yoga, but all of them can be classed as especially devoted to the methods of one or other of these modes of practice.

Why have we at the outset associated the word yoga with occultism? Because yoga is the practice of occult powers—or rather the discovery and use of those powers residing unseen in the depths of the human mind. The practice could begin with the formula, "We are only part alive," and from that standpoint proceed to investigate the Introspectional Psychology of the ancients, which they said united them—yoga means union—with the latent possibilities and unseen actualities of and beyond the mind. The

In my book The Occult Training of the Hindus, published some years ago in Madras, and recently

The rāja-yogī maintains that the inner powers of the mind can never be enhanced by any external means, but only by their own exercise.

Here the law of growth from within is paramount. By the use of thought, thought grows. This is true also of love and the will. There is no other way in which these growths can be obtained. A realization of this fact sets the novice on his own feet, and cures him at the outset of any tendency to lean or depend upon others, even upon experts and teachers he may admire.

Still, this exercise can be hindered or at least made very difficult by any bad condition of the body in such matters as nervous disorders, irregular breathing, bad balance, and undue tension. The hatha-yogīs of the more intellectual kind accede to the proposition that all higher growth is from within, but still say "No rāja without hatha" because they find that