Maha Yoga - WHO

happiness. The disciple is not asked to surrender his reason, until he finds one to whom he can surrender it with the prospect of incalculable gain. The Sage to whom he makes this surrender becomes his Guru or Master.

It is not possible to lay down clear rules to guide the novice in the delicate business of recognising a Sage. And it may be said that no rules are really necessary. He that is destined to find a Sage and to become his disciple will find no practical difficulty in recognising him when he finds him.

For those that are not so destined, rules will be of little use.

Divine Grace plays a decisive part in the process by which the Sage is recognised as such and accepted as one’s own Guru. But when once the choice is made, the disciple can use the available tests of sagehood, in order to confirm his choice. The chief test is serenity and unruffled happiness, which is the same as perfect peace. Another test is egolessness, and this is proved chiefly by indifference to praise and censure, as noted before. Other tests will appear in the course of this exposition.

We shall now discuss the notion of authority, which is upheld by the orthodox pandit, who has not sat at the feet of a Sage. This notion is as follows. There are certain books which are unquestionably authoritative in their entirety, because they are of divine origin. Every sentence or clause of a sentence in them is divine, and it is not permissible to us to doubt their authenticity and authority. It is said that the books ‘prove themselves’ — that they are ‘svatahpramanam.’ In this sense authority is a kind of spiritual dictatorship imposed from without. The subservience of the seeker of the Truth goes further still. Not only must he accept the sacred lore as authoritative, but he must also bind himself in advance to accept the interpretations of disputed passages which these pandits offer.

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