Yoga Aphorisms of Patanjali

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

Page 54

44
PATANJALI YOGA SUTRAS
others; that is unimportant. All-important is our attitude toward it. Whatever we truly and purely worship, we make sacred.
Therefore, we should always feel reverence for the religions of others, and beware of bigotry. At the same time, howeveras has been remarked above in reference to aphorism 32-we must limit ourselves to one way of seeking and keep to that; otherwise we shall waste all our energies in mere spiritual "window-shopping." We can find nothing in a shrine or a place of pilgrimage if we bring nothing into it, and we must never forget, in the external practice of a cult, that, though the Reality is everywhere, we can only make contact with it in our own hearts.
As the great Hindu saint Kabir says in one of his most famous poems,
I laugh when I hear that the fish in the water is thirsty.
You wander restlesly from forest to forest while the Reality
will
is within your own dwelling. The truth is here! Go where you to Benares or to Mathura; until you have found God in your own soul, the whole world will seem meaningless to you.
परमाणु - परममहत्त्वान्तोऽस्य वशीकारः ॥ ४० ॥
40. The mind of a yogi can concentrate upon any object of any size, from the atomic to the infinitely great.
"A yogi," here, does not merely mean "one who practises yoga," but one who has already achieved the power of undivided ("one-pointed") concentration. This power can, of course, only be achieved through complete self-mastery. When a spiritual aspirant begins to practise concentration, he meets