For serious yoga practitioners curious to know the ancient origins of the art, Phillips lays out the philosophy of action, knowledge, and devotion, as well as the processes of meditation, reasoning, and self-analysis, that formed the basis of yoga in ancient and classical India.

The ancient seers of India realized the highest non-dual Truth and thus attained to unity in the religious field; they succeeded in bringing religion to the rank of a perfect and complete science. The methods adopted by them to come to this result were the same as those followed by all the sciences of the present day. This book discusses how the philosophers of India applied these rational methods in coming to their respective discoveries, thus establishing the scientific character of Indian philosophy and religion. The book chiefly makes a comparative study of Samkhya, Vedanta and other systems of thought. Published by Advaita Ashrama, a publication house of Ramakrishna Math, Belur Math, India.

“Karma Yoga” (The Yoga of action) is an English book of Swami Vivekananda, the book was first published in February 1896 from New York. Swami Vivekananda delivered a number of lectures in his rented rooms at 228 W 39th Street in New York City from December in 1895 and January, 1896. In 1895-1895, friends and supporters of Swami Vivekananda hired a professional stenographer Joseph Josiah Goodwin (who later became a follower of Vivekananda). Goodwin recorded some of the lectures of Vivekananda, and those lectures were published as the book Karma Yoga. It is said in the practice of Vedanta that we have a right to work, but don't have a right to the results of our actions. We have to work as hard as we can, give the work our best quality effort, then step back and let the results take care of themselves. Or in the practice of yoga, offer the results to God.Work purifies the soul. This concept is a bit different than many of us have been taught in the West, but the book offers an interesting approach that can save us from a lot of misery and bring us closer to God. In fact, you don't even need to believe in God to practice this yoga.

The goal of life is really knowledge, of the reality of things. We are apt to think that it is pleasure, and seeking pleasure in sense-gratification, we meet with so many disappointments and sorrows that we sometimes almost despair and are led to believe that all life is a vain dream with no sure foundation anywhere. It is an endless chain of cause and effect in which we are involved, and from which only knowledge of how to act without producing reaction can ever free us. Karma Yoga is meant to teach us exactly this, to make clear to us first the causes of our bondage, and secondly the method of getting rid of the causes and to avoid the effects.