| From The River Of Heaven |
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| Books By David Frawley |
| THE PATHS OF YOGA : YOGA | |
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Attention naturally
leads to meditation, which results in absorption or the unification of the
perceiver and the perceived. In the process of Yoga various
siddhis or occult powers may be attained. They may also arise
through the use of drugs and powerful herbs, mantras, or through
karma. They are usually considered to be obstacles on the path of
Yoga and are usually thought to be avoided. The prime siddhi or
attainment of Yoga is the abidance in the state of the seer. For the practice of Yoga two main qualities are necessary. These are discrimination (viveka) and detachment (vairagya). Discrimination is the ability to discern the difference between truth and falsehood, reality and unreality, the Self and the not-Self, happiness and sorrow, the inner and the outer. Detachment is the ability to release the mind from its mental and emotional biases that serve to color our perception. Detachment leads to renunciation. Renunciation is not giving things up but no longer believing in external realities. It means no longer investing name and form with any ultimate reality but seeing the sacred presence as the real being and value of things. The goal of Yoga is to return to the inner Self or the Divine, the Purusha. To do this we must seperate from the outer process of the world, Prakriti. We must cease to identify ourselves with any external state or quality. Eventually we must detach our sense of identity from the thoughts of the mind, from our very self-image itself. We must return to the state of the Seer, to the state of pure seeing in which all is one and one is all. This is not to abandon the world but to no longer seeing it as possessing any seperate reality, to see it as a play of consciousness rather than an external thing.
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