INTRODUCTION TO YOGA.

...the life-forces of the universe, or, in other words, the life-side of the universe.

"I am Life-Force original: "Prāṇa"; the vital energy or "breath" that animates all living things.," says Indra In this context, the Vedic King of the Gods acts as a personification of the cosmic consciousness.. Life-Force original: "Prāṇa" here means the totality of the life-forces. They are taken as consciousness, mind. Primary Matter original: "Pradhāna"; the root substance from which the material world is formed. is the term used for matter. Body, or the opposite of mind, means for the Yogi original: "Yogī"; a practitioner of Yoga. in practice so much of the appropriated matter of the outer world as he is able to put away from himself, to distinguish from his own consciousness.

This division is very significant and useful, if you can catch clearly hold of the root idea. Of course, looking at the thing from beginning to end, you will see Life-Force original: "Prāṇa", the great Life, the great Self, always present in all, and you will see the envelopes, the bodies, the sheaths, present at the different stages, taking different forms; but from the standpoint of Yogic practice, that is called Life-Force original: "Prāṇa", or Self, with which the man identifies himself for the time, including every sheath of matter from which the man is unable to separate himself in consciousness. That unit, to the Yogi, is the Self, so that it is a changing quantity. As he drops off one sheath after another and says: "That is not myself," he is coming nearer and nearer to his highest point, to consciousness in a single film, in a single atom of matter, a Monad An indivisible, ultimate unit of life or consciousness; a term used to describe the individual spirit at its highest level.. For all practical purposes of Yoga, the man, the working, conscious man, is so much of him as he cannot separate from the matter enclosing him, or with which he is connected. Only that is body which the man is able to put