synthesis of yoga

THESE relations between the different psychological divisions of the
human being and these various utilities and objects of effort
founded on them, such as we have seen them in our brief survey of
the natural evolution, we shall find repeated in the fundamental
principles andmethods of the different schools of Yoga. And if we
seek to combine and harmonise their central practices and their
predominant aims, we shall find that the basis provided by Nature is
still our natural basis and the condition of their synthesis.

In one respect Yoga exceeds the normal operation of cosmic Nature
and climbs beyond her. For the aim of the Universal Mother is to
embrace the Divine in her own play and creations and there to
realise It. But in the highest flights of Yoga she reaches beyond
herself and realises the Divine in Itself exceeding the universe and
even standing apart from the cosmic play. Therefore by some it is
supposed that this is not only the highest but also the one true or
exclusively preferable object of Yoga.

Yet it is always through something which she has formed in
her evolution that Nature thus overpasses her evolution. It is the
individual heart that by sublimating its highest and purest emotions
attains to the transcendent Bliss or the ineffable Nirvana,
the individual mind that by converting its ordinary functionings
into a knowledge beyond mentality knows its oneness with the
Ineffable and merges its separate existence in that transcendent
unity. And always it is the individual, the Self conditioned in its
experience by Nature and working through her formations, that
attains to the Self unconditioned, free and transcendent.

In practice three conceptions are necessary before there can be any
possibility of Yoga; there must be, as it were, three consenting
parties to the effort,—God, Nature and the human soul or, in more
abstract language, the Transcendental, the Universal and the
Individual. If the individual and Nature are left to themselves, the
one is bound to the other and unable to exceed appreciably her
lingering march. Something transcendent is needed, free from her and
greater, which will act upon us and her, attracting us upward to
Itself and securing from her by good grace or by force her consent
to the individual ascension.