Raja Yoga
- Language:
- English
- Status:
- Complete work
- Authorship:
- Written by the author
- Condition of the text:
- Clean text
- Extent:
- ~78,300 words · 372 passages
Cite this work
- APASwami Vivekananda. (n.d.). Raja Yoga. SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/swami-vivekananda/raja-yoga
- MLASwami Vivekananda. "Raja Yoga." SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/swami-vivekananda/raja-yoga.
- ChicagoSwami Vivekananda. Raja Yoga. SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/swami-vivekananda/raja-yoga.
What it is about
Raja Yoga (1896): Patanjali's Yoga Sutras with commentary.
Context and history
The book that brought yoga to the West, and that explains what it was before it became physical exercise: control of the mind, eight limbs, and samadhi at the end. The whole twentieth-century diffusion of yoga starts here.
Editorial context, not a citable source: unlike the passages of the work itself, these statements cannot be checked against the corpus.
Witnesses are not wanting in modern times to attest the fact of such events, even in societies living under the full blaze of modern science. The vast mass of such evidence is unreliable, as coming from ignorant, superstitious, or fraudulent persons. In many instances the so-called miracles are imitations. But what do they imitate? It is not the sign of a candid and scientific mind to throw overboard anything without proper investigation. Surface scientists, unable to explain the various extraordinary mental phenomena, strive to ignore their very existence. They are, therefore, more culpable than those who think that their prayers are answered by a being, or beings, above the clouds, or than those who believe that their petitions will make such beings change the course of the universe. The latter have the excuse of ignorance, or at least of a false system of education in their childhood, which has taught them to depend upon such beings for help, and this dependence has no become a part of their degenerate nature. The former have no such excuse.← Back to Swami Vivekananda