Highs Mindedness

And then, when there is mind-cleanliness, come (in orders highs mindedness, attentiveness (or one pointedness), mastery of this senses, and fitness for the vision of the self.

From Contentment comes the obtaining of the highest form of pleasure.

From Body-conditioning, with the decline of impurity, come fug powers of the body and the senses.

From Self-study arises contact with the desired divinity. From Attentiveness to God comes the power at contemplation.

To appreciate these results of the ten virtues, or abstentions (yamas) and observances (niyamas), we need to understand the outlook and background of the Hindu mind of old times, prior to the influx of modern machinery, mass production and mass education for material ends.

Non injury. By the 'law of karma' no injury can come in future to the non-injurer, except what comes as a result of his injurious doings prior to his seeing and following the true path. On this theory and belief people are receiving what they have given or done to others. The blessing of this law is also to be taken into account, for the lesson is at all times appropriate to the person. If a person, for example, robbed others in the past, perhaps with violence, it must have been because he was insensitive to their suffering, and now the repercussion of that upon himself may be expected to make him feel what suffering is, with the result that in the course of time he will feel it even when applying it to others.

This belief might fill people with the fear that they may have an immense back-log of painful experience 'in the bank' as it were, ready to pounce on them as an incalculable or unseen factor in their present and future plans. But these fears must be discounted for two reasons. One reason is the fact that our lives are a mixture of pleasure and pain, of what we may call good and bad, most of the time, which shows that the incurring and the paying of these debts has been and is being more or less equal all the time, so that one cannot suppose oneself to have been a terrible monster with a dreadful quantity and quality of sins behind one (flattering to one's vanity as the thought may be). The other reason against fear is the doctrine and belief that what we now do with genuine unselfishness cancels out an equal amount of old 'bad karma' which has not yet come into effect in our present lives. The logic of this is that one has somehow learnt the lesson by study and thought and wisdom, and does not need to learn it the hard way, but sill the same pays off the old karma by the good actions one spontaneously does.