Page 14 - All India Magazine May-2022

cret of the Rajayoga that mind is the master of the body, creates it and
conditions it, body is not the master, creator or lawgiver of the mind.
CWSA 1: 508

Moral purification through yama and niyama
Rajayoga also uses the Pranayama and for the same principal
psychic purposes as the Hathayoga, but being in its whole principle
a psychical system, it employs it only as one stage in the series of its
practices and to a very limited extent, for three or four large utilities.

It does not start with Asana and Pranayama, but insists first on a
moral purification of the mentality. This preliminary is of supreme im-

portance; without it the course of the rest of the Rajayoga is likely to
be troubled, marred and full of unexpected mental, moral and physi-

cal perils. This moral purification is divided in the established system

under two heads, five yamas and five niyamas. The first are rules of

moral self-control in conduct such as truth-speaking, abstinence from
injury or killing, from theft etc.; but in reality these must be regarded
as merely certain main indications of the general need of moral self-
control and purity. Yama is, more largely, any self-discipline by which
the rajasic egoism and its passions and desires in the human being
are conquered and quieted into perfect cessation. The object is to
create a moral calm, a void of the passions, and so prepare for the
death of egoism in the rajasic human being. The Niyamas are equally
a discipline of the mind by regular practices of which the highest is
meditation on the divine Being, and their object is to create a sattwic
calm, purity and preparation for concentration upon which the se-
cure pursuance of the rest of the Yoga can be founded.
It is here, when this foundation has been secured, that the prac-
tice of Asana and Pranayama come in and can then bear their perfect
fruits. By itself the control of the mind and moral being only puts our
normal consciousness into the right preliminary condition; it cannot
bring about that evolution or manifestation of the higher psychic be-
ing which is necessary for the greater aims of Yoga.
CWSA 23: 538-39

All India Magazine, May 2022