Vedanta Philosophy Raja Yoga: Being Lectures by the Swami Vivekananda

About The Book : It teaches that desires and wants are in man, that the power of supply is also in man; and that whatever and whenever a desire, a want, a prayer, has been fulfilled, it was out of this infinite magazine that the supply came, and not from any supernatural being. The idea of supernatural beings may rouse to a certain extent the power of action in man, but it also brings spiritual decay. It brings dependence; it brings fear; it brings superstition. It degenerates into a horrible belief in the natural weakness of man. There is no supernatural, says the Yogi, but there are in nature gross manifestations and subtle manifestations. The subtle are the causes, the gross the effects. The gross can be easily perceived by the senses; not so the subtle. The practice of Raja Yoga will lead to the acquisition of the more subtle perceptions. All the orthodox systems of Indian philosophy have one goal in view, the liberation of the soul through perfection. The method is by Yoga. The word Yoga covers an immense ground, but both the Sdnkhya and the Veddntist Schools point to Yoga in some form or other. The subject of the first lectures in the present book is that form of Yoga known as Raja Yoga. The aphorisms of Patanjali are the highest authority and text book on Raja Yoga. Our knowledge is based upon experience. What we call inferential knowledge, in which we go from the less general to the more general, or from the general to the particular, has experience as its basis. In what are called the exact sciences.