Yoga Philosophy

Author(s): Virchand R Gandhi, Bhagu F Karbhari
Publisher: Devchand Lalbhai Pustakoddhar Fund

Page 44

Practical Rules for SoulCulture.
Τ
HE most important point in this practical subject is to understand the distinction between the ordinary life that we live and the real soul-life which we ought to live so that the ultimatum may be attained
sooner.
The idea with ordinary people in regard to life is as Prof. Max Muller has well put it, "a struggle for existence, a struggle for beauty, a struggle for enjoyment." This idea of life implies the correlative idea of competition and a struggle to live at the sacrifice of our fellowbrother. It also implies that one part of the sentient universe is to advance at the destruction of another. The doctrine of the survival of the fittest leads us to the barbarous code of morality of cutting each other's throat. This law of the survival of the fittest is true in the physical and lower animate world. A being who has no idea of protecting his fellow-beings lengthens his duration of life at the cost of his fellow-beings. We find this law exemplified in the vegetable kingdom and even in the case of animals and human beings so far as their bodily nature is concerned. We destroy the growth of another being that our bodily growth may be accelerated. And we call it the real growth. If that is the real growth a murderer is justified in his crime because in many instances he is justified by reason of his peculiar circumstances.