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JOURNAL, R.A.S. (CEYLON). [VOL. XXI. 



important form of yoga called Bhakti Yoga, the Way of 

 Love, which is fostered by the ordinary worship of the temples 

 and churches, is but lightly touched in this work. 



It is difficult to give an adequate idea of the J nana Vdsish- 

 tarn in a summary or even in a translation. I have, however, 

 attempted to summarize a few discourses and to translate a 

 few others, adding to each some explanatory comments. One 

 of the most memorable of the discourses, entitled " The Wor- 

 ship of God," is included in the translations. 



In reading them it should be borne in mind that interpreta- 

 tion from one language to another is seldom successful and 

 never easy. The difficulty is in this case greatly increased by 

 the nature of the subject, a metaphysical one so profound as 

 confessedly to be beyond the reach of word or even thought. 

 The Hindu system of metaphysics, moreover, is in many 

 respects different from modern European systems, and suitable 

 English equivalents are not easily found for its technical terms. 

 For example, the word manas, though philologically the same 

 as the Latin mens and the English mind, cannot be translated 

 as mind without serious confusion of ideas. Mind, in 

 modern European metaphysics, is understood to mean the 

 sum total of the intellectual, volitional, and emotional 

 faculties of man and to be antithetical to matter. But manas 

 is regarded by Hindu philosophers as a subtle form of matter, 

 an organ by which the soul receives from the gates of the senses 

 impressions of external objects, and is enabled to know them 

 and thereby to experience pains and pleasures, which it utilizes 

 for its development and progress to God. The antithesis of 

 matter according to Hindu philosophers would thus be not 

 mind, but the soul or spirit (dtman), which is conscious 

 of thought and for its salvation has to free itself from the 

 fetters of thought. 



The great gulf between the two systems is the doctrine that 

 consciousness may exist without thought, which to European 

 philosophers, at least of modern times, appears to be an 

 absurdity and an impossibility. However , Hindu sages declare , 

 and declare not as a speculation but as actual experience, 

 that when thought is completely suppressed and also its 



