DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.45392#0271
Yoga
particular and exalted purusha, or individual soul, by
whom the devotee may be aided on the way of emanci-
pation; but this Isvara is by no means essential to the
system, and is but one of the many objects of meditation
which are suggested to the student. The spiritual exercises
of the Buddhist contemplative are taken over almost
unchanged from Brahmanical sources, and for this reason
it is not necessary to repeat here what has already been
said on this subject; but it may be useful to illustrate
from a quite distinct source what is the significance
of accomplished Yoga, in the following passage from
Schelling’s Philosophical Letters upon Dogmatism and
Criticism:
“ In all of us there dwells a secret marvellous power
of freeing ourselves from the changes of time, of with-
drawing to our secret selves away from external things,
and of so discovering to ourselves the eternal in us in the
form of unchangeability. This presentation of ourselves
to ourselves is the most truly personal experience, upon
which depends everything that we know of the supra-
sensual world. This presentation shows us for the first
time what real existence is, whilst all else only appears to
be. It differs from every presentation of the sense in its
perfect freedom, whilst all other presentations are bound,
being overweighted by the burden of the object. . . .
This intellectual presentation occurs when we cease to be
our own object, when, withdrawing into ourselves, the
perceiving image merges in the self-perceived. At that
moment we annihilate time and duration of time : we are
no longer in time, but time, or rather eternity itself (the
timeless) is in us. The external world is no longer an
object for us, but is lost in us.”
197
particular and exalted purusha, or individual soul, by
whom the devotee may be aided on the way of emanci-
pation; but this Isvara is by no means essential to the
system, and is but one of the many objects of meditation
which are suggested to the student. The spiritual exercises
of the Buddhist contemplative are taken over almost
unchanged from Brahmanical sources, and for this reason
it is not necessary to repeat here what has already been
said on this subject; but it may be useful to illustrate
from a quite distinct source what is the significance
of accomplished Yoga, in the following passage from
Schelling’s Philosophical Letters upon Dogmatism and
Criticism:
“ In all of us there dwells a secret marvellous power
of freeing ourselves from the changes of time, of with-
drawing to our secret selves away from external things,
and of so discovering to ourselves the eternal in us in the
form of unchangeability. This presentation of ourselves
to ourselves is the most truly personal experience, upon
which depends everything that we know of the supra-
sensual world. This presentation shows us for the first
time what real existence is, whilst all else only appears to
be. It differs from every presentation of the sense in its
perfect freedom, whilst all other presentations are bound,
being overweighted by the burden of the object. . . .
This intellectual presentation occurs when we cease to be
our own object, when, withdrawing into ourselves, the
perceiving image merges in the self-perceived. At that
moment we annihilate time and duration of time : we are
no longer in time, but time, or rather eternity itself (the
timeless) is in us. The external world is no longer an
object for us, but is lost in us.”
197