An Introduction to Yoga

THE NATURE OF YOGA.

result of the scientific culture of the five-petalled rose of the hedge-row, the wild product of nature. A gardener who chooses the pollen from one plant and places it on the carpels The female reproductive parts of a flower that receive pollen. of another is simply doing deliberately what is done every day by the bee and the fly. But he chooses his plants, and he chooses those that have the qualities he wants intensified, and from those again he chooses those that show the desired qualities still more clearly, until he has produced a flower so different from the original stock that only by tracing it back can you tell the stock whence it sprang.

So is it in the application of the laws of psychology that we call Yoga A systematic practice of mental and spiritual discipline aimed at achieving union with the divine or the higher Self.. Systematised knowledge of the unfolding of consciousness applied to the individualised self, that is Yoga. As I have just said, it is by the world that consciousness has been unfolded, and the world is admirably planned by the Universal Reason original: "LOGOS"; in ancient philosophy, the divine reason or creative word that gives order to the universe. for this unfolding of consciousness; hence the would-be Yoga practitioner original: "Yogī", choosing out his objects and applying his laws, finds in the world exactly the things he wants to make his practice of Yoga a real, a vital thing, a quickening process for the knowledge of the Self The eternal, divine essence of a person, distinguished from the temporary personality or ego.. There are many laws. You can choose those which you require, you can evade those you do not require, you can utilise those you need, and thus you can bring about the result that nature, without that application of human intelligence, cannot so swiftly effect.

Take it, then, that Yoga is within your reach.