enthusiastic over Yoga. If we are to make any progress in its study, we 
need clear heads and the impersonal scientific attitude. It is especially 
important not to bedevil ourselves with Oriental jargon. We may have to 
use a few Sanskrit words; but that is only because they have no English 
equivalents; and any attempt to translate them burdens us with the 
connotations of the existing English words which we employ. However, 
these words are very few; and, if the definitions which I propose to give 
you are carefully studied, they should present no difficulty. 
     (12) Having now understood that Yoga is the essence of all 
phenomena whatsoever, we may ask what is the special meaning of the 
word in respect of our proposed investigation, since the process and the 
results are familiar to every one of us; so familiar indeed that there is 
actually nothing else at all of which we have any knowledge. It is 
knowledge. 
     What is it we are going to study, and why should we study it? 
     (13) The answer is very simple. 
     All this Yoga that we know and practice, this Yoga that produced these 
ecstatic results that we call phenomena, includes among its spiritual 
emanations a good deal of unpleasantness. The more we study this 
universe produced by our Yoga, the more we collect and synthesize our 
experience, the nearer we get to a perception of what the Buddha 
declared to be characteristic of all component things: 
     Sorrow, Change, and Absence of any permanent principle. We 
constantly approach his enunciation of the first two 'Noble Truths,' as he 
called them. 'Everything is Sorrow'; and 'The cause of Sorrow is Desire.' 
By the word 'Desire' he meant exactly what is meant by 'Love' in The 
Book of the Law which I quoted a few moments ago. 'Desire' is the need 
of every unit to extend its experience by combining with its opposite. 
     (14) It is easy enough to construct the whole series of arguments 
which lead up to the first 'Noble Truth.' 
     Every operation of Love is the satisfaction of a bitter hunger, but the 
appetite only grows fiercer by satisfaction; so that we can say with the 
Preacher: 'He that increaseth knowledge increaseth Sorrow.' The root of 
all this sorrow is in the sense of insufficiency; the need to unite, to lose 
oneself in the beloved object, is the manifest proof of this fact, and it is 
clear also that the satisfaction produces only a temporary relief, because 
the process expands indefinitely. The thirst increases with drinking. The 
only complete satisfaction conceivable would be the Yoga of the atom with 
the entire universe. This fact is easily perceived, and has been constantly 
expressed in the mystical philosophies of the West; the only goal is 'Union 
with God.' Of course, we only use the word 'God' because we have been 
brought up in superstition, and the higher philosophers both in the East 
and in the West have preferred to speak of union with the All or with the 
Absolute. More superstitions! 
     (15) Very well, then, there is no difficulty at all; since every thought in 
our being, every cell in our bodies, every electron and proton of our 
atoms, is nothing but Yoga and the result of Yoga. All we have to do to