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The Object of Our Yoga

The object of our Yoga is self-perfection, not self-annulment.

There are two paths set for the feet of the Yogin, withdrawal from the universe and
perfection in the Universe; the first comes by asceticism, the second is effected by tapasya;
the first receives us when we lose God in Existence, the second is attained when we fulfil
existence in God. Let ours be the path of perfection, not of abandonment; let our aim be
victory in the battle, not the escape from all conflict.

Buddha and Shankara supposed the world to be radically
false and miserable; therefore escape from the world was
to them the only wisdom. But this world is Brahman, the
world is God, the world is Satyam, the world is Ananda;
it is our misreading of the world through mental egoism
that is a falsehood and our wrong relation with God in
the world that is a misery. There is no other falsity and
no other cause of sorrow.

God created the world in Himself through Maya; but the
Vedic meaning of Maya is not illusion, it is wisdom,
knowledge, capacity, wide extension in consciousness.
Prajna prasrita purani. Omnipotent Wisdom created the
world, it is not the organised blunder of some Infinite
Dreamer; omniscient Power manifests or conceals it in
Itself or Its own delight, it is not a bondage imposed by
His own ignorance on the free and absolute Brahman.

If the world were Brahman’s self-imposed nightmare, to awake from it would be the
natural and only goal of our supreme endeavour; or if life in the world were irrevocably
bound to misery, a means of escape from this bondage would be the sole secret worth
discovering. But perfect truth in world-existence is possible, for God here sees all things
with the eye of truth; and perfect bliss in the world is possible, for God enjoys all things
with the sense of unalloyed freedom. We also can enjoy this truth and bliss, called by the
Veda amritam, Immortality, if by casting away our egoistic existence into perfect unity
with His being we consent to receive the divine perception and the divine freedom.

The world is a movement of God in His own being; we are the centres and knots of divine
consciousness which sum up and support the processes of His movement. The world
is His play with His own self-conscious delight, He who alone exists, infinite, free and

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