I reread Patanjali’s sutras, this time commented by an Indian mystic. What a difference! What an abyss separates him from the master doctor specialized in metaethics and philosophy of language! I lack words… The mystic’s concise comments are intended to facilitate the practical understanding of the sutras; they aim, in short, to uncomplicate any ambiguity they may contain in the work. The confrontation with the master doctor is heartbreaking… It seems that the Western specialist puts himself in an intellectual distance that borders on stupidity. He isolates himself from what he analyzes, draws endless comparisons, as if he were aiming for perfect knowledge of the etymology of the words studied, but indifferent to grasping what they represent. He loses himself in an irrational subjectivity, because it is simply absurd to cut the link with reality from a serious study. It is the scientist who knows the technical details of an experiment whose purpose he ignores, the meditation expert who has never meditated. The three hundred pages of commentary to my Yoga Sutra teach less about yoga than Crowley’s one-line summary: “Sit still. Stop thinking. Shut up. Get out!”—a summary which, I bet my right arm, never crossed the master doctor’s mind.
The Western Specialist
