1. The practices which make for union with the Soul are: fervent
aspiration, spiritual reading, and complete obedience to the Master.
The word which I have rendered "fervent aspiration' means primarily
"fire"; and, in the Eastern teaching, it means the fire which gives life
and light, and at the same time the fire which purifies. We have,
therefore, as our first practice, as the first of the means of spiritual
growth, that fiery quality of the will which enkindles and illumines,
and, at the same time, the steady practice of purification, the burning
away of all known impurities. Spiritual reading is so universally
accepted and understood, that it needs no comment. The very study
of Patanjali's Sutras is an exercise in spiritual reading, and a very
effective one. And so with all other books of the Soul. Obedience to
the Master means, that we shall make the will of the Master our will,
and shall confirm in all wave to the will of the Divine, setting aside the
wills of self, which are but psychic distortions of the one Divine Will.
The constant effort to obey in all the ways we know and understand,
will reveal new ways and new tasks, the evidence of new growth of
the Soul. Nothing will do more for the spiritual man in us than this, for
there is no such regenerating power as the awakening spiritual will.
2. Their aim is, to bring soul-vision, and to wear away hindrances.
The aim of fervour, spiritual reading and obedience to the Master, is,
to bring soulvision, and to wear away hindrances. Or, to use the
phrase we have already adopted, the aim of these practices is, to help
the spiritual man to open his eyes; to help him also to throw aside the
veils and disguises, the enmeshing psychic nets which surround him,
tying his hands, as it were, and bandaging his eyes. And this, as all
teachers testify, is a long and arduous task, a steady up-hill fight,
demanding fine courage and persistent toil. Fervour, the fire of the
spiritual will, is, as we said, two-fold: it illumines, and so helps the
spiritual man to see; and it also burns up the nets and meshes which
ensnare the spiritual man. So with the other means, spiritual reading
and obedience. Each, in its action, is two-fold, wearing away the
psychical, and upbuilding the spiritual man.
3. These are the hindrances: the darkness of unwisdom, self-assertion,
lust hate, attachment.
Let us try to translate this into terms of the psychical and spiritual
man. The darkness of unwisdom is, primarily, the self-absorption of
the psychical man, his complete preoccupation with his own hopes and
fears, plans and purposes, sensations and desires; so that he fails to
see, or refuses to see, that there is a spiritual man; and so doggedly
resists all efforts of the spiritual man to cast off his psychic tyrant and
set himself free. This is the real darkness; and all those who deny the
immortality of the soul, or deny the soul's existence, and so lay out
their lives wholly for the psychical, mortal man and his ambitions, are
under this power of darkness. Born of this darkness, this psychic self-
absorption, is the dogged conviction that the psychic, personal man
has separate, exclusive interests, which he can follow for himself
alone; and this conviction, when put into practice in our life, leads to
contest with other personalities, and so to hate. This hate, again,
makes against the spiritual man, since it hinders the revelation of the
high harmony between the spiritual man and his other selves, a
harmony to be revealed only through the practice of love, that perfect
love which casts out fear.