by them in great detail. It was thought sufficient to have a general idea of the funda-
mental principles. They never lost sight of the limitations of the intellect and probably
did not consider it worthwhile wasting their time and energy on the accumulation of
unnecessary details with regard to the general principles which at best could be under-
stood very imperfectly through the medium of the illusion-bound intellect. It was
thought that the energy which would be needed for gaining knowledge of the non-
essential details had better be employed in unravelling the Great Mystery of Life itself,
for when that mystery was unravelled all the problems of life were understood auto-
matically and simultaneously and in a way they could never be understood by a proc-
ess of intellectual analysis and reasoning.
But while these adepts in the Science of Life did not think it worth their while
descending to non-essential details with regard to the facts of the phenomenal worlds
they tried and managed to get a wonderfully complete and true picture of the funda-
mental principles. It is this clear and firm grasp of the fundamental principles and laws
which enabled them to put these principles and generalizations in the form of Sutras.
What a modern writer would take a chapter or book to convey was condensed in a
masterly manner in a single Sutra. There are many examples of such condensed
knowledge in the Yoga-Sutras, and II-23 which we shall now consider is a striking
instance of this nature. In one Sutra Patanjali has put the essential and fundamental
idea underlying the theory of Evolution and also managed to bring into his generaliza-
tion the most important aspect of evolution which unfortunately is missing in the mod-
ern scientific theory. So absorbed are most of our modern scientists with details, so
full of their own achievements, so obsessed by their materialistic outlook that they
often miss the most important aspects of their researches, aspects which are under their
very noses and which they could not fail to recognize if they were at all open-minded.
The theory of Evolution which we are now considering is a case in point.
According to the modern theory, considered in a very general way, there is an
evolutionary trend discernible in the bodies of plants and animals, and the bodies in
their effort to adapt themselves to their environment develop new powers and capaci-
ties. Putting the idea in a different way we may say that the study of the form side of
living creatures shows that these forms are steadily, though slowly, becoming more
and more complex and capable of expressing the powers which are inherent in life.
Life and form are always found together. The forms are found to evolve. What about
the life? Modern Science does not know and what is more surprising does not care to
ben green
(Ben Green)
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