Schools of Thought

SCHOOLS OF THOUGHT

In studying psychology anyone who is acquainted with the Sanskrit

tongue must know how valuable that language is for precise and

scientific dealing with the subject. The Sanskrit, or the

well-made, the constructed, the built-together, tongue, is one

that lends itself better than any other to the elucidation of

psychological difficulties. Over and over again, by the mere form

of a word, a hint is given, an explanation or relation is

suggested. The language is constructed in a fashion which enables

a large number of meanings to be connoted by a single word, so

that you may trace all allied ideas, ,or truths, or facts, by

this verbal connection, when you are speaking or using Sanskrit.

It has a limited number of important roots, and then an immense

number of words constructed on those roots.

Now the root of the word yoga is a word that means " to join,"

yuj, and that root appears in many languages, such as the

English--of course, through the Latin, wherein you get jugare,

jungere, "to join"--and out of that a number of English words are

derived and will at once suggest themselves to you: junction,

conjunction, disjunction, and so on. The English word "yoke"

again, is derived from this same Sanskrit root so that all

through the various words, or thoughts, or facts connected with

this one root, you are able to gather the meaning of the word

yoga and to see how much that word covers in the ordinary

processes of the mind and how suggestive many of the words

connected with it are, acting, so to speak, as sign-posts to

direct you along the road to the meaning. In other tongues, as in

French, we have a word like rapport, used constantly in English;

" being en rapport," a French expression, but so Anglicized that

it is continually heard amongst ourselves. And that term, in some

ways, is the closest to the meaning of the Sanskrit word yoga;

"to be in relation to"; "to be connected with"; "to enter into";

"to merge in"; and so on: all these ideas are classified together

under the one head of "Yoga". When you find Sri Krishna saying

that "Yoga is equilibrium," in the Sanskrit He is saying a

perfectly obvious thing, because Yoga implies balance, yoking and

the Sanskrit of equilibrium is "samvata--togetherness"; so that

it is a perfectly simple, straightforward statement, not

connoting anything very deep, but merely expressing one of the

fundamental meanings of the word He is using. And so with another

word, a word used in the commentary on the Sutra I quoted before,

which conveys to the Hindu a perfectly straightforward meaning:

"Yoga is Samadhi." To an only English-knowing person that does

not convey any very definite idea; each word needs explanation.

To a Sanskrit-knowing man the two words are obviously related to

one another. For the word yoga, we have seen, means "yoked

together," and Samadhi derived from the root dha, "to place,"

with the prepositions sam and a, meaning "completely together".

Samadhi, therefore, literally means " fully placing together,"

and its etymological equivalent in English would be " to compose

" (com=sam; posita= place). Samadhi therefore means "composing

the mind," collecting it together, checking all distractions.

Thus by philological, as well as by practical, investigation the

two words yoga and samadhi are inseparably linked together. And

when Vyasa, the commentator, says: "Yoga is the composed mind,"

he is conveying a clear and significant idea as to what is

implied in Yoga. Although Samadhi has come to mean, by a natural

sequence of ideas, the trance-state which results from perfect

composure, its original meaning should not be lost sight of.

Thus, in explaining Yoga, one is often at a loss for the English

equivalent of the manifold meanings of the Sanskrit tongue, and I

earnestly advise those of you who can do so, at least to acquaint

yourselves sufficiently with this admirable language, to make the

literature of Yoga more intelligible to you than it can be to a

person who is completely ignorant of Sanskrit.