A Series of Lessons in Gnani Yoga eBook

Yogi Ramacharaka
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 278 pages of information about A Series of Lessons in Gnani Yoga.

A Series of Lessons in Gnani Yoga eBook

Yogi Ramacharaka
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 278 pages of information about A Series of Lessons in Gnani Yoga.

Those individuals of a race who have outstripped their fellows in spiritual unfoldment, are still bound by the Karma of the particular race to which they belong, up to a certain point.  And as the entire race, or at least a large proportion of it, must move forward as a whole, such individuals must needs wait also.  But they are not compelled to suffer a tiresome round of continued rebirths amid environments and conditions which they have outgrown.  On the contrary, the advanced individual soul is allowed to wait until the race reaches its own stage of advancement, when it again joins in the upward movement, in full consciousness, however.  In the interim he may pass his well earned rest either on some of the higher planes of rest, or else in conscious temporary sojourn in other material spheres helping in the great work as a Teacher and worker for Good and Spiritual Evolution among those who need such help.  In fact there are in the world to-day, individual souls which have reached similar stages on other planets, and who are spending their rest period here amidst the comparatively lower Earth conditions, striving to lift up the Earth souls to greater heights.

So long as people allow themselves to become attached to material objects, so long will they be reborn in conditions in which these objects bind them fast.  It is only when the soul frees itself from these entangling obstructions that it is born in conditions of freedom.  Some outgrow these material attachments by right thinking and reasoning, while others seem to be compelled to live them out, and thus outlive them, before they are free.  At last when the soul realizes that these things are merely incidents of the lower personality, and have naught to do with the real individuality, then, and then only, do they fall from it like a wornout cloak, and are left behind while it bounds forward on The Path fresh from the lighter weight being carried.

The Yogi Philosophy teaches that Man will live forever, ascending from higher to higher planes, and then on and on and on.  Death is but the physical symbol of a period of Soul Rest, similar to sleep of the tired body, and is just as much to be welcomed and greeted with thanks.  Life is continuous, and its object is development, unfoldment and growth.  We are in Eternity now as much as we ever shall be.  Our souls may exist out of the body as well as in it, although bodily incarnation is necessary at this stage of our development.  As we progress on to higher planes of life, we shall incarnate in bodies far more ethereal than those now used by us, just as in the past we used bodies almost incredibly grosser and coarser than those we call our own to-day.  Life is far more than a thing of three-score and ten years—­it is really a succession of such lives, on an ascending scale, that which we call our personal self to-day being merely the essence of the experiences of countless lives in the past.

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Project Gutenberg
A Series of Lessons in Gnani Yoga from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.