The Equinox (Volume I, Number IV)

THE TEMPLE OF SOLOMON THE KING Every child is aware that the mind possesses a power known as the reflective faculty. We hear ourselves talk; and we stand apart and see ourselves work and think. We stand aside from ourselves and anxiously or fearlessly watch and criticize our lives. There are two persons in us,—the thinker (or the worker) and the seer. The unwinding of the hoodwink from the eyes of the seer, for in most men the seer is, like a mummy, wrapped in the countless rags of thought, is what Yoga purposes to do: in other words, to accomplish no less a task than the mastering of the forces of the Universe, the sur- render of the gross vibrations of the external world to the finer vibrations of the internal, and then to become one with the subtle Vibrator—the Seer Himself. We have mentioned the six chief systems of Yoga, and now before entering upon what for us at present must be the two most important of them,—namely, Hatha Yoga and Raja Yoga, we intend, as briefly as possible, to explain the remain- ing four, and also the necessary conditions under which all methods of Yoga should be practised. GNANA YOGA. Union through Knowledge. Gnana Yoga is that Yoga which commences with a study of the impermanent wisdom of this world and ends with the knowledge of the permanent wisdom of the Atman. Its first stage is Viveka, the discernment of the real from the unreal. Its second Vairagya, indifference to the knowledge of the world, its sorrows and joys. Its third Mukti, release, and unity with the Atman. In the fourth discourse of the Bhagavad-Gita we find Gnana Yoga praised as follows: 69