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MYSTICISM IN INDIA
distraction no doubt, for there is yet something which the mind entirely transforms itself into. When the mind ceases to transform itself, the highest Samadhi is reached.
In the intermediate stages between contemplation, absorption and Samadhi, the student of Yoga can if he likes so fix his mind as to put it into direct communion with nature and in this state it obtains all the
occult powers that are ascribed to the Yogis of India. As our time this evening is limited and as the author of the Yoga Sutras himself says that these Occult powers are after all positive obstacles in the way of highest Samadhi whose proper nature and import is that state in which the soul sees itself, I shall at once pass to the summum bonum, the end and aim of Yoga-the Kaivalya. One who has the desire to know what the soul is and what relation his mind and the universe bear to it is said to be desirous of Kaivalya. When such a person clearly experiences the distinction between mind and soul and understands the powers and nature of either, that desire is extinguished within him, Kaivalya is in fact a state in which there is entire cessation of all desire and when the nafure of the essence of all consciousness is known, there is no room for any action of the mind, the scurce of phenomena. The mind, before such knowledge, was bert towards worldly objects; but now it is entirely bent on discriminative knowledge. This knowledge is of the kind of
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