Yoga Aphorisms of Patanjali

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

Page 83

PATANJALI YOGA SUTRAS
स्वरसवाही विदुषोऽपि तथारूढोऽभिनिवेशः ॥६॥
The desire to cling to life is inherent both in the ignorant and in the learned. This is because the mind retains impressions of the death experience from many previous incarnations.
The doctrine of reincarnation is, of course, common to Hinduism and Buddhism; and it was entertained, though finally rejected, by early Christianity. It has already been referred to in this commentary (chapter I, aphorisms 2, 18, and 19), but now we must discuss it more fully.
Prakriti has been defined (I, 17) as the effect or power of Brahman, the Reality. In other words, this illusion (in Sanskrit, maya) of an objective, spatiotemporal universe is projected by the Reality itself. Therefore, it follows that Prakriti and Brahman must be co-existent, and that Prakriti, like Brahman, had no beginning and will have no end. Prakriti will continue to spin the web of a universe, to draw that web into itself, to spin the web again, over and over, forever.
At the same time, within the universe, another process is at work. For it is in the nature of the individual ego-sense to struggle slowly upward toward self-realization, from the inanimate to the animate, from the vegetable to the animal, from the animal to the human, through thousands and even millions of births, deaths and rebirths. The Atman is within the stone, no less than within the man. But the stone can never know itself as the Atman so long as it remains a stone. It must evolve through higher forms until, at last, it reaches humanity, for it is only within the human mind-body that the individual ego can know its real nature, and thus be liberated from the cycle of reincarnation.
Throughout this enormous journey toward total consciousness, the individual is subject to the Law of Karma. His desires