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The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali - Book 2 - The Steps to Union
9. Intense desire for sentient existence is attachment. This is inherent in every form, is self-perpetuating, and known even to the very wise. This form of attachment is the basic cause of all manifestation. It is inherent in the relationship of the two great opposites, spirit and matter; it is the governing factor in logoic, manifestation and this is the reason why even "the very wise" are subject to it. This form of attachment is an automatic self-reproducing, self-perpetuating faculty, and it should be remembered that the overcoming of this tendency, even when carried to its highest stage by the adept, is but a relative overcoming. As long as the Logos of our solar system, or the Absolute Spirit, incarnates through the medium of a solar system, this tendency will be present in the highest planetary Spirit and the most elevated spiritual existence. All that is possible in overcoming attachment, or killing out desire, is to develop the power to balance the pairs of opposites on any particular plane so that one is no longer held by the forms of that plane and withdrawal becomes possible. Very secondary meanings are given by the ordinary student to the words attachment, desire, and their killing out. They are interpreted in terms of the student's [138] small advancement. They are but English words which most inadequately and only symbolically seek to express an occult work. They can only be truly understood in terms of the law of Attraction and Repulsion and through an understanding of the system of occult vibrations. The will to live or to manifest is part of the divine Life impulse, and therefore is right. The will to be or to manifest upon any specific plane or through any specific group of forms is not right when that sphere of manifestation is outgrown, and when any peculiar set of forms have served their purpose of providing media for experience-contacts and can teach no further lessons, evil enters in, for a tendency to evil is but a tendency to revert to the use of forms and practices which the Indweller has outgrown. For this reason, the gross animal sins are universally regarded as evil because it is generally recognized that the dweller in the form of man has outgrown the third or animal kingdom. An adept, therefore, has transcended attachment to forms on three planes (physical, astral and mental) and has killed out all longing for the forms of those planes. When the life or Spirit withdraws itself, the form dies, occultly. When the thought of the ego or higher self is occupied with its own plane, there is no energy outgoing towards the matter of the three worlds and so no form-building and form-attachment is there possible. This is in line with the occult truism that "energy follows thought," and in line too with the teaching that the body of the Christ principle, [139] (the buddhic vehicle) only begins to coordinate as the lower impulses fade out. It is consistent also with the fact that the causal vehicle, the body of the higher self on the abstract levels of the mental plane gains in beauty, size and activity with greater rapidity during the stages of discipleship than was previously possible in the entire cycle of previous incarnations. Egoic energy is not strictly outgoing, but is directed more literally to its own self-development. Attachment to form or the attraction of form for Spirit is the great involutionary impulse. Repulsion of form and consequent form disintegration is the great evolutionary urge.
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