hich is still itself; it is the
religion of brotherhood, whose creed is love, whose ritual is service.

This transformed and transforming religion of the West, the tardy
fruit of the teachings of Christ, now secretly active in the hearts
of men, will receive enrichment from many sources. Science will reveal
the manner in which the spirit weaves its seven-fold veil of illusion;
nature, freshly sensed, will yield new symbols which art will organize
into a language; out of the experience of the soul will grow new
rituals and observances. But one precious tincture of this new
religion our civilization and our past cannot supply; it is the
heritage of Asia, cherished in her brooding bosom for uncounted
centuries, until, by the operation of the law of cycles, the time
should come for the giving of it to the West.

This secret is Yoga, the method of self-development whereby the seeker
for union is enabled to perceive the shining of the Inward Light. This
is achieved by daily discipline in stilling the mind and directing the
consciousness inward instead of outward. The Self is within, and
the mind, which is normally centrifugal, must first be arrested,
controlled, and then turned back upon itself, and held with perfect
steadiness. All this is naively expressed in the Upanishads in the
passage, "The Self-existent pierced the openings of the senses so that
they turn forward, not backward into himself. Some wise man, however,
with eyes closed and wishing for immortality, saw the Self behind."
This stilling of the mind, its subjugation and control whereby it may
be concentrated on anything at will, is particularly hard for persons
of our race and training, a race the natural direction of whose
consciousness is strongly outward, a training in which the practice of
introspective meditation finds no place.

Yoga--that "union" which brings inward vision, the contribution of the
East to the spiritual life of the West--will bring profound changes
into the art of the West, since art springs from consciousness. The
consciousness of the West now concerns itself with the visible world
almost exclusively, and Western art is therefore characterized by an
almost slavish fidelity to the ephemeral appearances of things--the
record of particular moods and moments. The consciousness of the East
on the other hand, is subjective, introspective. Its art accordingly
concerns itself with eternal aspects, with a world of archetypal
ideas in which thin