The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali | Page 3

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THE YOGA SUTRAS OF PATANJALI "The Book of the Spiritual
Man"
An Interpretation By
Charles Johnston
Bengal Civil Service, Retired; Indian Civil Service, Sanskrit Prizeman;
Dublin University, Sanskrit Prizeman
INTRODUCTION TO BOOK I
The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali are in themselves exceedingly brief, less
than ten pages of large type in the original. Yet they contain the essence
of practical wisdom, set forth in admirable order and detail. The theme,
if the present interpreter be right, is the great regeneration, the birth of
the spiritual from the psychical man: the same theme which Paul so
wisely and eloquently set forth in writing to his disciples in Corinth, the
theme of all mystics in all lands.
We think of ourselves as living a purely physical life, in these material
bodies of ours. In reality, we have gone far indeed from pure physical
life; for ages, our life has been psychical, we have been centred and
immersed in the psychic nature. Some of the schools of India say that
the psychic nature is, as it were, a looking-glass, wherein are mirrored
the things seen by the physical eyes, and heard by the physical ears.
But this is a magic mirror; the images remain, and take a certain life of
their own. Thus within the psychic realm of our life there grows up an
imaged world wherein we dwell; a world of the images of things seen
and heard, and therefore a world of memories; a world also of hopes

and desires, of fears and regrets. Mental life grows up among these
images, built on a measuring and comparing, on the massing of images
together into general ideas; on the abstraction of new notions and
images from these; till a new world is built up within, full of desires
and hates, ambition, envy, longing, speculation, curiosity, self-will,
self-interest.
The teaching of the East is, that all these are true powers overlaid by
false desires; that though in manifestation psychical, they are in essence
spiritual; that the psychical man is the veil and prophecy of the spiritual
man.
The purpose of life, therefore, is the realizing of that prophecy; the
unveiling of the immortal man; the birth of the spiritual from the
psychical, whereby we enter our divine inheritance and come to inhabit
Eternity. This is, indeed, salvation, the purpose of all true religion, in
all times.
Patanjali has in mind the spiritual man, to be born from the psychical.
His purpose is, to set in order the practical means for the unveiling and
regeneration, and to indicate the fruit, the glory and the power, of that
new birth.
Through the Sutras of the