THE NATURE OF YOGA.

...animal, and appear as the human. In the human being they still grow and accumulate with ever-increasing force, and exert greater pressure against the barrier; and then out of the human, they press into the super-human A state of consciousness that transcends ordinary human experience, often associated with spiritual enlightenment.. This last process of evolution is called Yoga.

Coming to the individual. The man of our own globe has behind him his long evolution in other chains In theosophical and esoteric traditions, "chains" refer to a series of planetary environments through which life evolves over vast periods of time. than ours—this same evolution through mineral to vegetable, through vegetable to animal, through animal to man, and then from our last dwelling-place in the lunar orb The Moon; here referring to the belief that the soul's earlier stages of development occurred on a lunar planetary chain before arriving on Earth. on to this terrene globe original Latin: "terrenus," meaning belonging to the Earth. that we call the earth. Our evolution here has all the force of the last evolution in it, and hence, when we come to this shortest cycle of evolution which is called Yoga, the man has behind him the whole of the forces accumulated in his human evolution, and it is the accumulation of these forces which enables him to make the passage so rapidly. We must connect our Yoga with the evolution of consciousness everywhere, else we shall not understand it at all; for the laws of evolution of consciousness in a universe are exactly the same as the laws of Yoga, and the principles whereby consciousness unfolds itself in the great evolution of humanity are the same principles that we take in Yoga and deliberately apply to the more rapid unfolding of our own consciousness. So that Yoga, when it is definitely begun, is not a new thing, as some people imagine.

Vocabulary from this section:

• Yoga: The deliberate practice of accelerating one's spiritual evolution.
• Evolution: The gradual unfolding of consciousness through various forms.
• Consciousness: The inner awareness or essence of being.
• Human/Super-human: The current stage of development and the divine stage that follows it.
• Lunar orb: The previous home of our evolutionary life-cycle.
• Terrene globe: The Earth, our current physical world.