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SANKHYA AND YOGA
tional gales, unfurrowed by feeling-illuminates the consciousness. This is the releasing, trans-human illumination which is the goal of all the cruel, and otherwise inexplicable, practices of Yoga.
2. “Learning in the holy teaching" means, first, getting the sacred texts by heart, and then, keeping them alive in the memory through a methodical recitation of holy prayers, sentences, formulae, and the various symbolical syllables of the religious tradition. This practice imbues the mind with the essence of the teaching, and so draws it away from worldly things, steeping it in a pious atmosphere of religious detachment.
3. Complete surrender to the will and grace of God is the adoption by the whole personality of an attitude of devotion toward the tasks and events of daily life. Every act of one's diurnal routine is to be performed with disinterest. in a detached way, and without concern for its effect upon, or relationship to, one's conscious cgo. It should be performed as a service to God, prompted as it were by God's will, executed for the sake of God, and carried through by God's own cncrgy, which is the life-energy of the devotee. By regarding duties in this light, one gradually eliminates egoism and selfishness both from one's actions and from their results. Every task becomes part of a sacred ritual, ceremoniously fulfilled for its own sake, with no regard to the profit that might redound to the individual. This type of preliminary “devotion" (bhakti) is taught in the Bhagavad Gitā and in many of the later, classical texts of Ilinduism. It is a practical exercise, or technique, of spiritual development, based on the device of regarding all work as done through God, and then offering it to Him, together with its results, as an oblation.
The Yoga-sūtras teach that through a life perfectly conducted according to these principles, one can attain to a state where the five impairments-that is to say, the whole human personality, together with the unconscious and animal layers that are its foundation and ever-welling source-are reduced to practically nothing.
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