There are a few words, constantly recurring, which need brief
definitions, in order to avoid confusion; they are: Unfolding,
Evolution, Spirituality, Psychism, Yoga and Mysticism.
“Unfolding” always refers to consciousness, “evolution” to forms.
Evolution is the homogeneous becoming the heterogeneous, the simple
becoming complex. But there is no growth and no perfectioning for
Spirit, for consciousness; it is all there and always, and all that can
happen to it is to turn itself outwards instead of remaining turned
inwards. The God in you cannot evolve, but He may show forth His powers
through matter that He has appropriated for the purpose, and the matter
evolves to serve Him. He Himself only manifests what He is. And on
that, many a saying of the great mystics may come to your mind:
“Become,” says St. Ambrose, “what you are”—a paradoxical phrase; but
one that sums up a great truth: become in outer manifestation that
which you are in inner reality. That is the object of the whole process
of Yoga.
“Spirituality” is the realisation of the One. “Psychism” is the
manifestation of intelligence through any material vehicle.[4]
[4] See _London Lectures_ of 1907, “Spirituality and Psychism”.
“Yoga” is the seeking of union by the intellect, a science; “Mysticism”
is the seeking of the same union by emotion.[5]
[5] The word yoga may, of course, be rightly used of all union with
the self, whatever the road taken. I am using it here in the narrower
sense, as peculiarly connected with the intelligence, as a Science,
herein following Patanjali.
See the mystic. He fixes his mind on the object of devotion; he loses
self-consciousness, and passes into a rapture of love and adoration,
leaving all external ideas, wrapped in the object of his love, and a
great surge of emotion sweeps him up to God. He does not know how he
has reached that lofty state. He is conscious only of God and his love
for Him. Here is the rapture of the mystic, the triumph of the saint.
The yogi does not work like that. Step after step, he realises what he
is doing. He works by science and not by emotion, so that any who do
not care for science, finding it dull and dry, are not at present
unfolding that part of their nature which will find its best help in
the practice of Yoga. The yogi may use devotion as a means. This comes
out very plainly in Patanjali. He has given many means whereby Yoga may
be followed, and curiously, “devotion to Isvara” is one of several
means. There comes out the spirit of the scientific thinker. Devotion
to Isvara is not for him an end in itself, but means to an end—the
concentration of the mind. You see there at once the difference of
spirit. Devotion to Isvara is the path of the mystic. He attains
communion by that. Devotion to Isvara as a means of concentrating the
mind is the scientific way in which the yogi regards devotion. No
number of words would have brought out the difference of spirit between
Yoga and Mysticism as well as this. The one looks upon devotion to
Isvara as a way of reaching the Beloved; the other looks upon it as a
means of reaching concentration. To the mystic, God, in Himself is the
object of search, delight in Him is the reason for approaching Him,
union with Him in consciousness is his goal; but to the yogi, fixing
the attention on God is merely an effective way of concentrating the
mind. In the one, devotion is used to obtain an end; in the other, God
is seen as the end and is reached directly by rapture.