“The Hindu” says he “enters the world as a stranger; all his thoughts are directed to another world, he takes no part even where he is driven to act, and even when he sacrifices his life, it is but to be delivered from it.” Again “They shut their eyes to this world of outward seeming activity, to open them full on the world of thought and rest. Their life was a yearning for eternity; their activity was a struggle to return to that divine essence from which this life seemed to have severed them. Believing as they did in a really existing and eternal Being to ontos-onton they could not believe in the existence of this passing world.”
“If the one existed, the other could only seem to exist; if they lived in the one they could not live in the other. Their existence on earth was to them a problem, their eternal life a certainty. The highest object of their religion was to restore that bond by which their own self (átman) was linked to the eternal self (paramátman); to recover that unity which had been clouded and obscured by the magical illusions of reality, by the so-called Máyá of creation.”
“It scarcely entered their mind to doubt or to affirm the immortality of the soul (pretya-bháva). Not only their religion and literature, but their very language reminded them daily of that relation between the real and seeming world.” (Hist A. S. Lit. p. 18). In the view of Max Müller as quoted above, the Hindu mind would seem to be of that realistic cast as the Platonic, whose theory of Ontology viewed all existence as mere phantoms and precepta of sense, and very short of that perfection, which the mind realizes in its meditation or Yoga reveries.
The Hindu Yogi views the visible world exactly in the same light as we have said before, that Plato has represented it in the simile commencing the seventh book of his Republic. “He compares mankind to prisoners in a cave, chained in one particular attitude, so as to behold only an ever-varying multiplicity of shadows, projected through the opening of the cave upon the wall before them, by some unseen realities behind. The philosopher alone, who by training or inspiration, is enabled to turn his face from these visions, and contemplate with his mind, that can at once see the unchangeable reality amidst these transient shadows”, Baine on Realism pp. 6 and 7.
V. Various Significations of Yoga.
The Váchaspati lexicon gives us about fifty different meanings of the word Yoga, according to the several branches of art or science to which it appertains, and the multifarious affairs of life in which the word is used either singly or in composition with others. We shall give some of them below, in order to prevent our mistaking any one of these senses for the special signification which the term is made to bear in our system of Yoga meditation.
The word Yoga from the root “jung” (Lat.) Jungere means the joining of any two things or numbers together. Amara Kosha gives five different meanings of it as, संयोगे मेलने ध्याने धारने उपायेच; the other Koshas give five others, viz., भैषज्ये देह स्थैर्ये कर्म्मकौशले विश्वासघातकेच ।
1. In Arithmetic it is अङ्क योग or addition, and योग बिभाग is addition and subtraction. 2. In Astronomy the conjunction of planets and stars ग्रहनक्षत्रादि संयोगः 3. In Grammar it is the joining of letters and words सन्धिः समासः । 4. In Nyáya it means the power of the parts taken together अबयब शक्तिः, तर्क दीपिका । 5. In Mímánsa it is defined to be the force conveyed by the united members of a sentence.
In contemplative philosophy it means; 1. According to Pátanjali,—the suppression of mental functions चित्तवृत्ति निरोधः । 2. The Buddhists mean by it—the abstraction of the mind from all objects. सर्ब्बबिषयेभ्यः चित्तनिबृत्ति निरोधः । 3. The Vedanta meaning of it is—जीबात्मा परमात्मनोरैक्यं the union of the human soul with the Supreme spirit. 4. Its meaning in the Yoga system is nearly the same, i. e., the joining of the vital spirit with the soul; संयोगं योगमित्याहुर्ज्जीबमात्मनोरिति । 5. Every process of meditation is called also as Yoga. योगाङ्ग योग उच्यते ।
Others again use it in senses adapted to their own views and subjects; such as the Vaiseshika philosophy uses it to mean, the fixing of the attention to only one subject by abstracting it from all others आत्मनो व्यावृत्त मनसः संयोगो योग उच्यते । 2. The Rámánuja sect define it as the seeking of one’s particular Deity स्वस्व देवतानु सन्धानमिति रामानुजाः ।