The objectification of the mind is made possible by the mind's functioning on varying levels of consciousness. Three of these levels are clearly differentiated—the physical (cognition of the world around us) 5 the emotional (passion, anger, greed, etc.); and the mental (intellectual). Freud, the great psycho-analyst, has mapped out the mind into three levels—conscious, pre-conscious, and sub-conscious.
The Indian mind accepts with ease, as an axiom, the extension of planes of consciousness; the Westerner in the majority of cases has difficulty in accepting so alien a conception. The yogi does not postulate a different mind for each level of consciousness, but one mind capable of working at different levels. To retain consciousness of the mind at one level and see it working on another allows, if necessary, mental observation of any distorted activity. It is obvious that one cannot get accurate powers of mental perception from the lowest level of a mind working on a higher plane, so the yogi raises his mind to its highest level in order to study its activities on lower levels of consciousness. Yoga aims at that command over the body and mind that is the state of individual existence in which the mind, working smoothly in a physically fit body on a high level of consciousness, can observe and control all mental activities on the lower levels.
It must be remembered that although there are different levels of consciousness, the mind is one, pervading all, but working through different levels of consciousness, its activity restricted by the limitations of each receding level or plane. That is what makes this idea so difficult to assimilate in the West—that a mind pervading and activating all levels of consciousness can on a high level rectify the working of itself on a lower level.
Yoga must be recognized for what it is and not for what so many think it is—a mysterious, unhallowed religion linked with extreme mortification of the flesh, sitting on nails, the Indian rope-trick, fire-eating, and bloody sacrifices at midnight in the jungle. Yoga is a system devised and practised for over two thousand years, with a therapeutic basis for its physical and mental objective. Much of it has been disguised by the symbolism so beloved by the East, but stripped of this it stands revealed as a rational system of culture, both physical and mental, and as such warrants attention by the Western world. Here it is intended to bring to some sections of the Western peoples a realization of Yoga's great value to the individual, and, through the individual, to the nations.
The extraordinary powers of mind and body have long compelled recognition by scientists, and in many cases these powers, not being understood, have been condemned as clever trickery. Fortunately, to-day, as never before, the East and West are meeting, and earnest workers on both sides are striving for a common ground on which to develop research for mutual advantage. Yoga is making slow but steady progress into the minds of Western men of science, and is providing adequate answers to many of the marvels and miracles of the East.