Yoga Aphorisms of Patanjali

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

Page 13

YOGA AND ITS AIMS
difference of interpretation which exists between yoga and Western science. Not all samskaras are acquired during the course of a single human life. A child is born with certain tendencies already present in its nature. Western science is inclined to ascribe such tendencies to heredity. Yoga psychology explains that they were acquired in former incarnations, as the result of thoughts and actions long since forgotten. It does not really matter, for practical purposes, which of these two theories one prefers. “Heredity," from the yoga viewpoint, may be only another way of saying that the individual soul is driven by existing samskaras to seek rebirth in a certain kind of family, of parents whose samskaras are like its own, and thereby to "inherit” the tendencies which it already possesses. The yoga aspirant does not waste his time wondering where his samskaras came from or how long he has had them; he accepts full responsibility for them and sets about trying to change them.
There are, of course, many types of mind which are not yet ready for the higher yoga practices. If you have a flabby, neglected physique and try to take part in a class for ballet dancers, you will probably do yourself a great injury; you have to start with a few simple exercises. There are minds which may be described as "scattered”; they are restless, passionate and unable to concentrate. There are lazy, inert minds, incapable of constructive thought. There are also minds which, though they possess a certain degree of energy, can only dwell on what is pleasant; they shrink away from the disagreeable aspects of life. But every mind, no matter what its present nature, can ultimately be disciplined and transformed-can become, in Patanjali's phrase, “one-pointed” and fit to attain the state of perfect yoga.
तदा द्रष्टुः स्वरूपेऽवस्थानम् ॥३॥ 3. Then man abides in his real nature. When the lake of the mind becomes clear and still, man