Yoga is the effort to experience one's divinity personally and then to hold on to that experience forever. Yoga is about self-mastery and the dedicated effort to haul your attention away from your endless brooding over the past and your nonstop worrying about the future so that you can seek, instead, a place of eternal presence from which you may regard yourself and your surroundings with poise. Only from that point of even-mindedness will the true nature of the world (and yourself) be revealed to you. True Yogis, from their seat of equipoise, see all this world as an equal manifestation of God's creative energy—men, women, children, turnips, bedbugs, coral: it's all God in disguise. But the Yogis believe a human life is a very special opportunity, because only in a human form and only with a human mind can Godrealization ever occur. The turnips, the bedbugs, the coral—they never get a chance to find out who they really are. But we do have that chance.
瑜伽是致力于亲身体验自身的神性，而后抓住此种体验。瑜伽是一种自我控制，努力不让自己的注意力集中于思索过去、担心未来，让你去寻找一个恒在的处所，泰然自若地从那儿观察自己和周遭一切。唯有从这种平心静气的观点，才能明白世界的真实性质（以及你本身的真实性格）。真正的瑜伽士，从他们的平衡状态，把这个世界看作是神灵创造力的均一表现：男人、女人、孩童、芜菁、臭虫、珊瑚，都是神的化身。瑜伽士认为人生是非凡的机会，因为对神的了悟，只发生在人的身上和脑子里。芜菁、臭虫、珊瑚——它们没有机会发现自我。而我们却有机会。

"Our whole business therefore in this life," wrote Saint Augustine, rather Yogically, "is to restore to health the eye of the heart whereby God may be seen."
因此，我们整个一生，圣奥古斯丁（Saint Augustine）以相当带有瑜伽精神的口吻说，都是 为了让心灵的眼睛恢复健康，为了看见神。

Like all great philosophical ideas, this one is simple to understand but virtually impossible to imbibe. OK—so we are all one, and divinity abides within us all equally. No problem. Understood. But now try living from that place. Try putting that understanding into practice twenty-four hours a day. It's not so easy. Which is why in India it is considered a given that you need a teacher for your Yoga. Unless you were born one of those rare shimmering saints who come into life already fully actualized, you're going to need some guidance along your journey toward enlightenment. If you're lucky enough, you pilgrims have been coming to India to seek for ages. Alexander the Great sent an ambassador to India in the fourth century BC, with a request to find one of these famous Yogis and return with him to court. (The ambassador did report finding a Yogi, but couldn't convince the gentleman to travel.) In the first century AD, Apollonius of Tyrana, another Greek ambassador, wrote of his journey through India: "I saw Indian Brahmans living upon the earth and yet not on it, and fortified without fortifications, and possessing nothing, yet having the richness of all men." Gandhi himself always wanted to study with a Guru, but never, to his regret, had the time or opportunity to find one. "I think there is a great deal of truth," he wrote, "in the doctrine that true knowledge is impossible without a Guru."
如同每一种伟大的哲学观念，这观念不难了解，事实上却难于吸收。好吧——我们都是一家人，神性一视同仁地居住在我们内心。没问题。了解 。但现在试着从那个地方生活。试着把这种了解付诸一天二十四小时的实际行动。并非轻易之举。因此在印度的已知事实是，想练瑜伽，你需要老师。除非你是那些少数生而得道的圣哲、智者之一，否则在通往启蒙的路上，你需要某种指引。幸运的话，你能找到活在人间的导师。这正是多年来朝圣者前来印度寻找的事物。亚历山大大帝（Alexander the Great）在西元前四世纪曾派大使前往印度，寻找有名的瑜伽士，带他回宫。（大使报告说找到一位瑜伽士，却无法说服这位男士旅行。）公元一世纪，另一名希腊大使阿波罗尼奥斯（Apollonius of Tyrana）曾写文章描述他的印度之行我看见印度婆罗门虽然脚踩在土地上生活，却未生活在世间：心灵强固，却未设防；一无所有，却拥有最大的财富。甘地本人始终想追随精神导师学习，却遗憾没有时间或机会寻找导师。真理唯靠导师方可获得，他写道：此一教条大有真理。

A great Yogi is anyone who has achieved the permanent state of enlightened bliss. A Guru is a great Yogi who can actually pass that state on to others. The word Guru is composed of two Sanskrit syllables. The first means "darkness," the second means "light." Out of the darkness and into the light. What passes from the master into the disciple is something called mantravirya: "The potency of the enlightened consciousness." You come to your Guru, then, not only to receive lessons, as from any teacher, but to actually receive the Guru's state of grace.
所谓伟大的瑜伽士，是达到开朗常定之人。导师则是将此种常定传递给他人的伟大瑜伽士。导师（Guru）是由梵语的两个音节所组成。第一个音节是黑暗之意，第二则是光明。走出黑暗，迎向光明。导师传给弟子所谓的mantravirya（智慧的强度）；你去找自己的导师，并非为了上课，而是蒙受导师感召。