Ancient Indian Education (Brahmanical and Buddhist) c16.116

c16.116

**Assumptions.** Thus the Science of Yoga seeks so to treat the Mind as to render it the vehicle and instrument of supreme knowledge by relieving it of the tension and depression, both physical and mental, arising from the continuous process of sensory and motor adjustments to stimuli, to which it is normally exposed. The Mind is thus led to a state of equipoise and placidity which belong to its true nature and is restored to its innate strength and clarity of vision. Thus the scheme is to effect a complete change in the trends and activities of the mind, a transformation of the psychic organism, so as to raise the level of consciousness. Thus the fundamental assumption of *Yoga* is that mental life is not entirely bound up with or completely dependent upon the realm of objects, and that our faculties of perception are not necessarily confined to the five senses. It thus seeks to open up other avenues of knowledge than the mere brain, or the outer senses, through sustained concentration and meditation, in silence and solitude, in the life of the spirit, which is dead to the external world of objective realities. In a word, Yoga believes that the universe is not what is revealed by our bodily senses which we share with the lower animals, and that man is capable of infinite development by tapping the limitless resources of the soul.