Yoga Aphorisms of Patanjali

Author(s): Prabhavnanda Swami, Christopher Isherwood
Publisher: Ramkrishna Math Madras

Page 11

YOGA AND ITS AIMS
Every perception arouses the ego-sense, which says: “I know this.” But this is the ego speaking, not the Atman, the real Self. The ego-sense is caused by the identification of the Atman with the mind, senses etc. It is as if a little electric light bulb would declare: “I am the electric current" and then proceed to describe electricity as a pear-shaped glass object containing filaments of wire. Such identification is absurd-as absurd as the ego's claim to be the real Self. Nevertheless, the electric current is present in the light bulb, and the Atman is in all things, everywhere.
When an event or object in the external world is recorded by the senses, a thought-wave is raised in the mind. The ego-sense identifies itself with this wave. If the thought-wave is pleasant, the ego-sense feels, "I am happy”; if the wave is unpleasant, “I am unhappy.” This false identification is the cause of all our misery-for even the ego's temporary sensation of happiness brings anxiety, a desire to cling to the object of pleasure, and this prepares future possibilities of becoming unhappy. The real Self, the Atman, remains forever outside the power of thought-waves; it is eternally pure, enlightened and free—the only true, unchanging happiness. It follows, therefore, that man can never know his real Self as long as the thought-waves and the ego-sense are being identified. In order to become enlightened we must bring the thought-waves under control, so that this false identification may cease. The Gita teaches us that “Yoga is the breaking of contact with
pain.”
Describing the action of the thought-waves, the commentators employ a simple image—the image of a lake. If the surface of a lake is lashed into waves, the water becomes muddy and the bottom cannot be seen. The lake represents the mind and the bottom of the lake the Atman.