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THE YOGA PHILOSOPHY
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very first essential of yoga is a kind of such transformation. Yoga is a complete suppression of the tendency of the thinking principle to transform itself into objects, thoughts etc. It is possible that there should be degrees among these transformations and the higher ones may assist to check the lower ones, but yoga is acquired only when there is complete cessation of the one or the other. It should distinctly be borne in mind that the thinking principle in this philosophy is not the soul who is the source of all consciousness and knowledge. The suppression of the transformations of the thinking principle does not therefore mean that the yogi-the practiser of the yoga--is enjoined to become nil which is certainly impossible. The thinking principle has three properties passivity, activity and grossness. When the action of the last two is checked the mind stands steady like the jet of a lamp in a place protected from the least breeze. When all the transformations of the thinking principle are suppressed there remains only the never changing eternal soul—the purusha-in the perfect to passivity.8 Otherwise when the thinking principle transforms itself into objective and subjective phenomena the Purusha is for the time obscured by it or which is the same thing assimilated into it. It is only when the state of yoga is reached that the consciousness becomes quite pure and ready to receive all knowledge and all impressions from any source whatever. If this state is to be acquired by suppressing the transformations of the thinking principle, let us see what these transformations are
7. In Yoga philosophy the thinking principle is modified in five ways. First when there comes to it the right knowledge, second when there comes to it
8. YS 1.3 9. YS 1.4
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