obtain emancipation, satisfaction, everything we want is to perform this 
universal and inevitable operation upon the Absolute itself. Some of the 
more sophisticated members of my audience may possibly be thinking 
that there is a catch in it somewhere. They are perfectly right. 
     (16) The snag is simply this. Every element of which we are composed 
is indeed constantly occupied in the satisfaction of its particular needs by 
its own particular Yoga; but for that very reason it is completely obsessed 
by its own function, which it must naturally consider as the Be-All and 
End-All of its existence. For instance, if you take a glass tube open at 
both ends and put it over a bee on the windowpane it will continue 
beating against the window to the point of exhaustion and death, instead 
of escaping through the tube. We must not confuse the necessary 
automatic functioning of any of our elements with the true Will which is 
the proper orbit of any star. A human being only acts as a unit at all 
because of countless generations of training. Evolutionary processes have 
set up a higher order of Yogic action by which we have managed to 
subordinate what we consider particular interests to what we consider the 
general welfare. We are communities; and our well-being depends upon 
the wisdom of our Councils, and the discipline with which their decisions 
are enforced. The more complicated we are, the higher we are in the 
scale of evolution, the more complex and difficult is the task of legislation 
and of maintaining order. 
     (17) In highly civilised communities like our own (loud laughter), the 
individual is constantly being attacked by conflicting interests and 
necessities; his individuality is constantly being assailed by the impact of 
other people; and in a very large number of cases he is unable to stand 
up to the strain. 'Schizophrenia,' which is a lovely word, and may or may 
not be found in your dictionary, is an exceedingly common complaint. It 
means the splitting up of the mind. In extreme cases we get the 
phenomena of multiple personality, Jekyll and Hyde, only more so. At the 
best, when a man says 'I' he refers only to a transitory phenomenon. His 
'I' changes as he utters the word. But—philosophy apart—it is rarer and 
rarer to find a man with a mind of his own and a will of his own, even in 
this modified sense. 
     (18) I want you therefore to see the nature of the obstacles to union 
with the Absolute. For one thing, the Yoga which we constantly practice 
has not invariable results; there is a question of attention, of 
investigation, of reflexion. I propose to deal in a future instruction with 
the modifications of our perception thus caused, for they are of great 
importance to our science of Yoga. For example, the classical case of the 
two men lost in a thick wood at night. One says to the other: 'That dog 
barking is not a grasshopper; it is the creaking of a cart.' Or again, 'He 
thought he saw a banker's clerk descending from a bus. He looked again, 
and saw it was a hippopotamus.' 
     Everyone who has done any scientific investigation knows painfully 
how every observation must be corrected again and again. The need of