Note 3 — Chapter XI · “Tauhid-i-Ilahi.”1

“I do not think so unfavourably of the system of Patanjali,”3 answered Kulluka; “although I do not for a moment believe it can boast the possession of absolute truth. The union with, and resolution of the mortal into the immortal, of human existence into the spiritual, according to the Yogi view, is in itself not so great a folly. But no doubt this teaching is erroneous when it seeks, through absorption or union, to solve the mystery of the existence of the mind of man, by which in a kind of ecstasy the mortal is absorbed into the immortal. If this absorption were possible, it would in truth be self-annihilation. I do not think that the fundamental idea is to be so entirely rejected, or at least a part of it, of which all this is the result. Is it not a truth that, just because men find themselves so weighed down and bound within narrow limits, their spirits know no higher exaltation than that to which they rise in those rare moments when they lose the sense of their personality in nobler or higher and more comprehensive ideas? Provided the ideas remain no empty abstraction, but take their being from strong human life, from knowledge, art, and the contemplation of the social existence of men, what, I ask, can you place higher than so to lose the finite and self-seeking I in the universal good? From the place whence the individual drew the true spirit of life, to that place it should return if it in truth accomplished its destiny.”