INTRODUCTORY.(5/10)

The science of Raya Yoga, in the first place, proposes to give men such a means of observing the internal states, and the instrument is the mind itself. The power of attention of mind, when properly guided, and directed towards the internal world, will analyse the mind, and illumine facts for us.The powers of mind are like rays of light being dissipated; when they are concentrated they illumine everything. This is the only source of knowledge that we have. Everyone is using it, both in the external and the internal world,but, for the psychologist, this minute observation which the scientific man can throw upon the external world, will have to be thrown on the internal world, and this requires a great deal of practice. From our childhood upwards we have been taught only to pay attention to things external, never to pay attention to things internal, and most of us have nearly lost the faculty of observing the internal mechanism. To turn the mind, as it were, inside, stop it from going outside, and thenm to concentrate all its powers, and throw them upon the mind itself, in order that it may know its own nature, analyse itself, is very hard work. Yet theat is the only way to anything which will be a scientific approach to the subject.
What is the use of such knowledge? In the first place, knowledge itself is the highest reward of knowledge, and, in the second place, there is also utility in it. It will take away our misery. When, by analysing his own mind, man comes face to face, as it were, with something which is never destroyed, something which is, by its own nature, eternally pure and perfect, he will no more be miserable, no more unhappy. All misery comes from fear, from unsatisfied desire.Man will find that he never dies, and then he will have no more fear of death. When he knows that he is perfect, he will have no more vain desires, and both these causes being absent, there will be no more misery—there will be perfect bliss, even while in this body.