This present book contains thirty-four talks given in the year 1970 to students participating in special session of the yoga-Vedanta forest Academy. At the request of numerous Yoga students, especially from the west, Swami Krishnanandji Maharaj agreed to give these talks in the forms of lessons. The thirty-four lessons began on January 14 1970 and concluded on March 4, 1970. This book is Yoga manual. It is a handbook of Yoga. It contains everything that a Yoga student needs to know. Swamiji explains that Yoga, in the simplest terms, is a steady movement of individual soul toward the supreme soul. Yoga is a steady ascent to the Divine. Attunement with Reafity:- The studies that we are going to make using this particular method may be grouped into three stages: the philosophical, the psychological & the practical. I shall try to take our thoughts stage by stage from the most initial concepts & ideals, & the study will culminate in the practice of meditation—which is true yoga finally. This a very detailed technique of the development of the mind, manoeuvring through various processes which are all very, very important. We should attend to each description of the steps with attention because, as has been mentioned already, nothing can be regarded as totally unimportant. Every aspect will contribute finally to the superstructure of yoga. Which is a completeness in itself. Yoga is not merely the last stage. It is the name give to the completeness of the total picture which is present in the whole process from the beginning to the end. Conflict as an Unnatural State:- But conflict is not true & healthy state—it is an unnatural state. That which is unnatural cannot forever, because it is nature that continues, & nature is truth. That which is against untruth. Untruth dose not succeed—truth alone succeed. We may have heard the great adage, “Satyam eva jayate.” (Truth alone is victorious.) The truth of harmony tries to this establishment of truth we can come to see the expressions of conflict. Some of these conflicts are called defence mechanisms. These are certain contrivances which the mind makes use of in attempting to release itself from conflict. Some of these are the attempts of the mind to utilize other persons & the objects of the world as instruments in bringing about a release of conflict. When there is no peace within us, we often try to forget the fact of having outer phenomena. We then engage ourselves in hectic activity & try to forget the boredom of life. Yoga is Balance:- The phenomenon of sleep is not easy to study, because we have no consciousness in sleep. Nobody can know what is happening then, because there is no one consciously there to know what is happening. This has been a difficulty, due to which many psychologists have left out of consideration this subliminal aspect of our lives. Most of the psychologists have been busy with the study of waking life & waking phenomena. what generally goes by the name of “psychology” is only a study of waking phenomena, but human nature is not exhausted by waking experiences. We have many other things within us which are not entirely comprehended in our wakeful life. As we noticed previously in our study there is a difficulty in our waking life on account of which we are not able to know things properly. How We Perceive:- We are in a thoroughgoing misapprehension about ourselves in all our dealings with life. We start with errors & therefore we end with errors. The whole of our lives in this world has been a contradiction & a confusion, a kind of march towards an apparently unrealized destination, because of an erroneous notion that we have our own selves. We think we are something, and then we start acting based on this hypothesis. We are not this misapprehension—we are something else. The fact that we regard ourselves as different from what we really are is enough explanation for all our troubles in life. There is no need to go further into the details of our progress. Here is the answer to our question. We have started with the wrong premise & end therefore in a mess. God World & Soul:- In order to understand the meaning of adhidaiva, we had to go into an analysis of perception. We noticed that the perceptional process implies more than what seems to be on the surface. There is a need for a conscious connecting link between the seer & the seen, without which we can have no knowledge of the world outside. It is not the light rays, the retina of the eyes, the senses or the mind that are ultimately responsible for the phenomenon of perception. All these may be there, but if something else is not there, we will not know anything. A corpse has all the features of a human being, but one essential thing is not there, & therefore it is unable to perceive anything.