WHAT is Raja Yoga after all? To describe it briefly, yoga means stabilising the mind in the consciousness of God, or having a mental link with God. This is something based on sound psychologi- cal principles. It can be observed from daily experience that the state of mind or the various moods of man’s mind are determined by the consciousness one has at that particular moment. This is made clearer by reference to Wordsworth’s poem on “Daffodils”. He says in that poem that he chanced to go to a lake and there he saw the daffodils dancing and the ripples rising high in the lake due to the wind, and his mind became filled with ecstasy. He was so charmed with the beauty of Nature that, even on other occasions in his life, when he was in a vacant or pensive mood, the vivid memory and reflections of the past would refresh him. His mind would again dance with the daffodils. This illustrates how a scene of joy will create joy in the mind even when a person be in an unhappy frame of mind.
Take another example. A man is sitting in his drawing room. Suddenly, he sees a man entering his room. He knows that this man is inimical to him and wants to shoot him. This thought creates disturbance or fear in his mind. If, on the other hand, this man is not his enemy but his old friend, who has come after a long time, the sight or thought of him brings happiness to his mind. So, it shows that the state of man’s mind depends on the quality or contents of his thoughts.
Applying this principle, a yogi keeps in his mind the divine qualities of God so that his mind also always feels a kind of divine ecstasy which is different from the worldly joy in three respects: (1) His source of ecstasy is unvanishing, (2) it is ennobling and ele- vating, (3) one does not get enslaved to the worldly objects which, at certain stages of his life he may not be able to acquire, or may fail in his senses to establish contact with those objects, and be unable to extract pleasure from those sources because of old age, physical debi- lity, disease or death. So, it is for our permanent good that we take to the practice of Raja yoga.