Yoga Aphorisms of Patanjali

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

Page 64

54
PATANJALI YOGA SUTRAS
nationalistic power; and so he has the secret of a energy–a secret which, in proper hands, would be har and beneficial to all, but which, in his present unreger state, may destroy him. The danger, as many of our serious thinkers have pointed out, is not in the fission atom, it is in the human mind.
What is the simplest way to acquire non-attachment desires, objects and ambitions of this world? We must by cultivating attachment to the highest object we can co of, to God himself. We can do this, first of all, on the level, the level of gross phenomena. Take some great sp teacher, a Christ, a Ramakrishna, or any major saint country or religion. These men actually lived on this ea human form. You can read about their lives. You can apr them as human beings. It is easy to grow to love them, to to be like them, to try to serve them and spread their me by modelling your life upon theirs. Through this servi this love, non-attachment to other, lesser loves and obje comes naturally. It is not that we become indifferent to people or to our own work and duties. But our love for is included in our Ideal; it ceases to be exclusive and posse And our work, because it is now done as service to that takes on a new meaning; we shall feel more enthusiasm than ever before.
Through devotion to our ideal teacher and meditation his life, we shall gradually come to an understanding spirit within the man; and so we pass from the level of phenomena to the subtle or spiritual level. We shall no 1 admire a Christ or a Ramakrishna as human beings time, but we shall worship them as eternal, spiritual b We shall know them in their divine aspect. That is the s stage.
There is, however, a third stage, a third level of cons