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THE YOGA PHILOSOPHY
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dream. Sleep itself has no cognition. Memory may be (may depend on ?) any of them. 8. Now the suppression of all these transformations is the yoga which leads to the realization of the Self. What are the means of suppressing them? The author of the Yoga Sutras says that complete suppression of the transformation of the mind is secured only by sustained application and non-attachment.11 Application is of course steady sustained effort to reach that state and non-attachment is the consciousness of having mastered every desire for any object. And further rules are given for the purpose of rising to that high state of self-knowledge. 9. But in the meantime I will draw your attention to the fact that some scholars like Monier Williams and others have thought that this systen of Yoga is nothing but a mere contrivance of getting rid of all thought and that it is a strange compound of mental and bodily exercises, consisting in unnatural restraint, forced and painful postures, twisting and contortions of the limbs, suppression of the breath and utter absence of mind. In the opinion of such scholars it is not possible that a man should actually know any thing transcending his sensual perception unless it is told to him by some supposed authority. In their opinion the power of intuition cannot be developed to such an extent as to become actual knowledge without any possibility of error and we shall always be doomed to depend upon hearsay and opinions. To them extra-ordinary powers of the soul are mere dreams. The author of the 'Modern Science and Modern Thought' says : “Almost the entire world of the supernatural fades away of itself with an extension of our knowledge of the laws of
11. YS 1.12
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