An Introduction to Yoga | Page 8

the human constitution, divides man
into many parts and pieces. We talk of physical, astral, mental, etc. Or
we talk about Sthula-sarira, Sukshma-sarira, Karana-sarira, and so on.
Sometimes we divide man into Anna-maya-kosa, Prana-maya-kosa,
Mano-maya-kosa, etc. We divide man into so many pieces in order to
study him thoroughly, that we can hardly find the man because of the
pieces. This is, so to say, for the study of human anatomy and
physiology.
But Yoga is practical and psychological. I am not complaining of the
various sub-divisions of other systems. They are necessary for the
purpose of those systems. But Yoga, for its practical purposes,
considers man simply as a dualityÄmind and body, a unit of
consciousness in a set of envelopes. This is not the duality of the Self
and the Not-Self. For in Yoga, "Self" includes consciousness plus such
matter as it cannot distinguish from itself, and Not-Self is only the
matter it can put aside.
Man is not pure Self, pure consciousness, Samvid. That is an
abstraction. In the concrete universe there are always the Self and His
sheaths, however tenuous the latter may be, so that a unit of
consciousness is inseparable from matter, and a Jivatma, or Monad, is
invariably consciousness plus matter.
In order that this may come out clearly, two terms are used in Yoga as
constituting manÄPrana and Pradhana, life-breath and matter. Prana is
not only the life-breath of the body, but the totality of the life forces of

the universe or, in other words, the life-side of the universe.
"I am Prana," says Indra. Prana here means the totality of the life-forces.
They are taken as consciousness, mind. Pradhana is the term used for
matter. Body, or the opposite of mind, means for the yogi 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 Prana, 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 Prana, 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. 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 aside and say: "This is
not I, but mine." We find we have a whole series of terms in Yoga
which may be repeated over and over again. All the states of mind exist
on every plane, says Vyasa, and this way of dealing with man enables
the same significant words, as we shall see in a moment, to be used
over and over again, with an ever subtler connotation; they all become
relative, and are equally true at each stage of evolution.
Now it is quite clear that, so far as many of us are concerned, the
physical body is the only thing of which we can say: " It is not myself ";
so that, in the practice of Yoga at first, for you, all the words that would
be used in it to describe the states of consciousness, the states of mind,
would deal with the waking consciousness in the body as the lowest
state, and, rising up from that, all the words would be relative terms,
implying a distinct and recognisable state of the mind in relation to that

which is the lowest. In order to know how you shall begin to apply to
yourselves the various terms used to describe the states of mind, you
must carefully analyse your own consciousness, and find out how much
of it is really consciousness, and how much is matter so closely
appropriated that you cannot separate it from yourself.

States of Mind

Let us take it in detail. Four states of consciousness are spoken of
amongst us. "Waking" consciousness or Jagrat; the "dream"
consciousness, or Svapna; the "deep sleep" consciousness, or Sushupti;
and the state beyond that, called Turiya[FN#3: It is impossible to