Page 435 - Complete Works of Dr. KCV Volume 1

situation in Yoga and mystic life leads many to postulate that the mystic and the Yogic life are merely due to neurosis and this is not an explanation at all. It states the disease or it calls what some think as the highest consciousness - the perception of true spirit and the finding of true Individuality by a name and seeks to explain them away. In order to avoid such a summary treatment of mystic, William James writes in his Varieties of Religious Experience that "the states of consciousness of the mystics have a right and are true to those who have that experience."
The Psychological phases of motive or sankalpa which plays such a part in psychic life have indeed as yet no active counterpart physiologically and but for the barest instincts we cannot show the physiological situation or organ of reception of ideas and location of ideas, in a portion of the brain and the cortex. We have as yet no shade of distinctions drawn between one idea and another corresponding superficially to it. We have for all of them the same kind of response and the same stimulation, provided the circumstances are similar though this similarity is as superficial as mere identity of dress.
This is atleast the criticism of K. S. Lashley against the theory of visceral connection to emotion. The basic neural mechanism differentiates neither between one set of incidents and another set of incidents having but a slight similarity: nor does it vary even its intentive response with the shades of intensity of the circumstances. It is inhibition by the intellectual functions that inhibits also the intensities of reaction of neural mechanism.
True yoga consists in ordering all things and functions within the body. With the consciousness or purposiveness of a harmony which can only arise out of deep contemplation of all forms and their relations and their bearing to the making of a cosmos. It means the attempt at a synthesis of all levels of individual life, all planes of consciousness, all organs of activity and all activities of senses and sensory functions and emotive influence. Direct perception does not jump into being of a sudden. All the fatalities of life and conception and embryonic growth have to take full course, the normal period of human gestation must take place and then will be brought out the finest flower of intellect and feeling, the direct perception which is the most intrinsic function of the self. It is something having birth in congenial