An Introduction to Yoga
by
Annie Besant
Theosophical
Publishing House, Adyar
Foreword
These lectures[FN#1: Delivered at
the 32nd Anniversary of the Theosophical Society held at Benares, on Dec. 27th,
28th, 29th, and 30th, 1907.] are intended to give an outline of Yoga, in order
to prepare the student to take up, for practical purposes, the Yoga sutras of Patanjali, the chief treatise on Yoga. I have on hand, with
my friend Bhagavan Das as collaborateur,
a translation of these Sutras, with Vyasa's
commentary, and a further commentary and elucidation written in the light of
Theosophy.[FN#2: These have never been finished or printed.] To prepare the
student for the mastering of that more difficult task, these lectures were
designed; hence the many references to Patanjali.
They may, however, also serve to give to the ordinary lay reader some idea of
the Science of sciences, and perhaps to allure a few towards its study.
Annie Besant
Table of Contents
Lecture I.
The Nature of Yoga 1. The Meaning of
the Universe 2. The Unfolding of Consciousness 3.
The Oneness of the Self 4. The
Quickening of the Process of Self-Unfoldment 5.
Yoga is a Science 6. Man a Duality 7. States of Mind 8.
Samadhi 9. The Literature of Yoga
10. Some Definitions 11. God Without and God Within 12. Changes of Consciousness and
Vibrations of Matter 13. Mind 14. Stages of Mind 15. Inward and
Outward-turned Consciousness 16. The Cloud
Lecture II. Schools
of Thought 1. Its Relation to Indian
Philosophies 2. Mind 3. The Mental
Body 4. Mind and Self
Lecture III. Yoga
as Science 1. Methods of Yoga 2. To the Self by the Self 3. To the Self
through the Not-Self 4. Yoga and Morality 5. Composition of States of the Mind 6. Pleasure and Pain
Lecture IV. Yoga
as Practice 1. Inhibition of States of Mind 2. Meditation with and without Seed 3. The
Use of Mantras 4. Attention 5. Obstacles to Yoga 6.
Capacities for Yoga 7. Forthgoing and Returning 8. Purification of Bodies 9. Dwellers on the
Threshold 10. Preparation for Yoga 11. The End
Lecture I
THE NATURE OF YOGA
1.
In
this first discourse we shall concern ourselves with the gaining of a general idea
of the subject of Yoga, seeking its place in nature, its own character, its
object in human evolution.
2.
The
Meaning of the Universe
3.
Let
us, first of all, ask ourselves, looking at the world around us, what it is
that the history of the world signifies. When we read history, what does the
history tell us? It seems to be a moving panorama of people and events, but it
is really only a dance of shadows; the people are shadows, not realities, the
kings and statesmen, the ministers and armies; and the events the battles and
revolutions, the rises and falls of states are the most shadowlike dance of
all. Even if the historian tries to go deeper, if he deals with economic
conditions, with social organisations, with the study
of the tendencies of the currents of thought, even then he is in the midst of
shadows, the illusory shadows cast by unseen realities. This world is full of
forms that are illusory, and the values are all wrong, the proportions are out
of focus. The things which a man of the world thinks valuable, a spiritual man
must cast aside as worthless. The diamonds of the world, with their glare and
glitter in the rays of the outside sun, are mere fragments of broken glass to
the man of knowledge. The crown of the king, the sceptre
of the emperor, the triumph of earthly power, are less than nothing to the man
who has had one glimpse of the majesty of the Self. What is, then, real? What
is truly valuable? Our answer will be very different from the answer given by
the man of the world.
4.
"The
universe exists for the sake of the Self." Not for what the outer world
can give, not for control over the objects of desire, not for the sake even of
beauty or pleasure, does the Great Architect plan and build His worlds. He has
filled them with objects, beautiful and pleasure-giving. The great arch of the
sky above, the mountains with snow-clad peaks, the valleys soft with verdure
and fragrant with blossoms, the oceans with their vast depths, their surface
now calm as a lake, now tossing in fury, they all exist, not for the objects
themselves, but for their value to the Self. Not for themselves because they
are anything in themselves but that the purpose of the Self may be served, and
His manifestations made possible.
5.
The
world, with all its beauty, its happiness and suffering, its joys and
pains" is planned with the utmost ingenuity, in order that the powers of
the Self may be shown forth in manifestation. From the fire-mist to the LOGOS,
all exist for the sake of the Self. The lowest grain of dust, the mightiest deva in his heavenly regions, the plant that grows out of
sight in the nook of a mountain, the star that shines aloft over us-all these
exist in order that the fragments of the one Self, embodied in countless forms,
may realize their own identity, and manifest the powers of the Self through the
matter that envelops them.
6.
There
is but one Self in the lowliest dust and the loftiest deva.
"Mamamsaha" My portion," a portion of
My Self," says Sri Krishna, are all these Jivatmas,
all these living spirits. For them the universe exists; for them the sun
shines, and the waves roll, and the winds blow, and the rain falls, that the
Self may know Himself as manifested in matter, as embodied in the universe.
7.
The
Unfolding of Consciousness
8.
One
of those pregnant and significant ideas which Theosophy scatters so lavishly
around is this Ä that the same scale is repeated over and over again, the same
succession of events in larger or smaller cycles. If you understand one cycle,
you understand the whole. The same laws by which a solar system is builded go to the building up of the system of man. The
laws by which the Self unfolds his powers in the universe, from the fire-mist
up to the LOGOS, are the same laws of consciousness which repeat themselves in
the universe of man. If you understand them in the one, you can equally
understand them in the other. Grasp them in the small, and the large is
revealed to you. Grasp them in the large, and the small becomes intelligible to
you.
9.
The
great unfolding from the stone to the God goes on through millions of years,
through aeons of time. But the long unfolding that
takes place in the universe, takes place in a shorter time-cycle within the
limit of humanity, and this in a cycle so brief that it seems as nothing beside
the longer one. Within a still briefer cycle a similar unfolding takes place in
the individual rapidly, swiftly, with all the force of its past behind it.
These forces that manifest and unveil themselves in evolution are cumulative in
their power. Embodied in the stone, in the mineral world, they grow and put out
a little more of strength, and in the mineral world
accomplish their unfolding. Then they become too strong for the mineral, and
press on into the vegetable world. There they unfold more and more of their
divinity, until they become too mighty for the vegetable, and become animal.
10.
Expanding
within and gaining experiences from the animal, they again overflow the limits
of the animal, and appear as the human. In the human being they still grow and
accumulate with ever-increasing force, and exert greater pressure against the
barrier; and then out of the human, they press into the super-human. This last
process of evolution is called "Yoga."
11.
Coming
to the individual, the man of our own globe has behind him his long evolution
in other chains than ours this same evolution through mineral to vegetable,
through vegetable to animal, through animal to man, and then from our last
dwelling-place in the lunar orb on to this terrene globe that we call the
earth. Our evolution here has all the force of the last evolution in it, and
hence, when we come to this shortest cycle of evolution which is called Yoga,
the man has behind him the whole of the forces accumulated in his human
evolution, and it is the accumulation of these forces which enables him to make
the passage so rapidly. We must connect our Yoga with the evolution of
consciousness everywhere, else we shall not understand it at all; for the laws
of evolution of consciousness in a universe are exactly the same as the laws of
Yoga, and the principles whereby consciousness unfolds itself in the great
evolution of humanity are the same principles that we take in Yoga and
deliberately apply to the more rapid unfolding of our own consciousness. So
that Yoga, when it is definitely begun, is not a new thing, as some people
imagine.
12.
The
whole evolution is one in its essence. The succession is the same, the
sequences identical. Whether you are thinking of the unfolding of consciousness
in the universe, or in the human race, or in the individual, you can study the
laws of the whole, and in Yoga you learn to apply those same laws to your own
consciousness rationally and definitely. All the laws are one, however
different in their stage of manifestation.
13.
If
you look at Yoga in this light, then this Yoga, which seemed so alien and so
far off, will begin to wear a familiar face, and come to you in a garb not
wholly strange. As you study the unfolding of consciousness, and the
corresponding evolution of form, it will not seem so strange that from man you
should pass on to superman, transcending the barrier of humanity, and finding
yourself in the region where divinity becomes more manifest.
14.
The
Oneness of the Self
15.
The
Self in you is the same as the Self Universal. Whatever powers are manifested
throughout the world, those powers exist in germ, in latency, in you. He, the
Supreme, does not evolve. In Him there are no additions or subtractions. His
portions, the Jivatmas, are as Himself, and they only
unfold their powers in matter as conditions around them draw those powers
forth. If you realize the unity of the Self amid the diversities of the
Not-Self, then Yoga will not seem an impossible thing to you.
16.
The
Quickening of the Process of Self-unfoldment
17.
Educated
and thoughtful men and women you already are; already you have climbed up that
long ladder which separates the present outer form of the Deity in you from His
form in the dust. The manifest Deity sleeps in the mineral and the stone. He
becomes more and more unfolded in vegetables and animals, and lastly in man He
has reached what appears as His culmination to ordinary men. Having done so
much, shall you not do more ? With the consciousness
so far unfolded, does it seem impossible that it should unfold in the future
into the Divine?
18.
As
you realize that the laws of the evolution of form and of the unfolding of
consciousness in the universe and man are the same, and that it is through
these laws that the yogi brings out his hidden powers, then you will understand
also that it is not necessary to go into the mountain or into the desert, to
hide yourself in a cave or a forest, in order that the union with the Self may
be obtained He who is within you and without you. Sometimes for a special
purpose seclusion may be useful. It may be well at times to retire temporarily
from the busy haunts of men. But in the universe planned by Isvara,
in order that the powers of the Self may be brought out there is your best
field for Yoga, planned with Divine wisdom and sagacity. The world is meant for
the unfolding of the Self: why should you then seek to run away from it? Look
at Shri Krishna Himself in that great Upanishad of yoga, the Bhagavad-Gita. He
spoke it out on a battle-field, and not on a mountain peak. He spoke it to a Kshattriya ready to fight, and not to a Brahmana
quietly retired from the world. The Kurukshetra of
the world is the field of Yoga. They who cannot face the world have not the
strength to face the difficulties of Yoga practice. If the outer world
out-wearies your powers, how do you expect to conquer the difficulties of the
inner life? If you cannot climb over the little troubles of the world, how can
you hope to climb over the difficulties that a yogi has to scale? Those men
blunder, who think that running away from the world is
the road to victory, and that peace can be found only in certain localities.
19.
As a
matter of fact, you have practised Yoga unconsciously
in the past, even before your self- consciousness had separated itself, was
aware of itself. Sand knew itself to be different, in temporary matter at
least, from all the others that surround it. And that is the first idea that
you should take up and hold firmly: Yoga is only a quickened process of the
ordinary unfolding of consciousness.
20.
Yoga
may then be defined as the "rational application of the laws of the
unfolding of consciousness in an individual case". That is what is meant
by the methods of Yoga. You study the laws' of the unfolding of consciousness
in the universe, you then apply them to a special case and that case is your
own. You cannot apply them to another. They must be self-applied. That is the
definite principle to grasp. So we must add one more word to our definition:
"Yoga is the rational application of the laws of the unfolding of
consciousness, self-applied in an individual case."
21.
Yoga
Is a Science
22.
Next,
Yoga is a science. That is the second thing to grasp. Yoga is a science, and
not a vague, dreamy drifting or imagining. It is an applied science, a
systematized collection of laws applied to bring about a definite end. It takes
up the laws of psychology, applicable to the unfolding of the whole
consciousness of man on every plane, in every world, and applies those
rationally in a particular case. This rational application of the laws of
unfolding consciousness acts exactly on the same principles that you see
applied around you every day in other departments of science.
23.
You
know, by looking at the world around you, how enormously the intelligence of
man, co-operating with nature, may quicken "natural" processes, and
the working of intelligence is as "natural" as anything else. We make
this distinction, and practically it is a real one, between
"rational" and "natural" growth, because human intelligence
can guide the working of natural laws; and when we come to deal with Yoga, we
are in the same department of applied science as, let us say, is the scientific
farmer or gardener, when he applies the natural laws of selection to breeding.
The farmer or gardener cannot transcend the laws of nature, nor can he work against
them. He has no other laws of nature to work with save universal laws by which
nature is evolving forms around us, and yet he does in a few years what nature
takes, perhaps, hundreds of thousands of years to do. And how? By applying
human intelligence to choose the laws that serve him and to neutralize the laws
that hinder. He brings the divine intelligence in man to utilise
the divine powers in nature that are working for general rather than for
particular ends.
24.
Take
the breeder of pigeons. Out of the blue rock pigeon he develops the pouter or
the fan-tail; he chooses out, generation after generation, the forms that show
most strongly the peculiarity that he wishes to develop. He mates such birds
together, takes every favouring circumstance into
consideration and selects again and again, and so on and on, till the
peculiarity that he wants to establish has become a well-marked feature. Remove
his controlling intelligence, leave the birds to themselves, and they revert to
the ancestral type.
25.
Or
take the case of the gardener. Out of the wild rose of the hedge has been
evolved every rose of the garden. Many-petalled roses
are but the result of the scientific culture of the five-petalled
rose of the hedgerow, the wild product of nature. A gardener who chooses the
pollen from one plant and places it on the carpers of another is simply doing
deliberately what is done every day by the bee and the fly.
But he chooses his plants, and he chooses those that have the qualities he
wants intensified, and from those again he chooses those that show the desired
qualities still more clearly, until he has produced a flower so different from
the original stock that only by tracing it back can you tell the stock whence
it sprang.
26.
So is
it in the application of the laws of psychology that we call Yoga. Systematized
knowledge of the unfolding of consciousness applied to the individualized Self, that is Yoga. As I have just said, it is by the world
that consciousness has been unfolded, and the world is admirably planned by the
LOGOS for this unfolding of consciousness; hence the would-be yogi, choosing
out his objects and applying his laws, finds in the world exactly the things he
wants to make his practice of Yoga real, a vital thing, a quickening process
for the knowledge of the Self. There are many laws. You can choose those which
you require, you can evade those you do not require, you can utilize those you
need, and thus you can bring about the result that nature, without that
application of human intelligence, cannot so swiftly effect.
27.
Take
it, then, that Yoga is within your reach, with your powers, and that even some
of the lower practices of Yoga, some of the simpler applications of the laws of
the unfolding of consciousness to yourself, will benefit you in this world as well
as in all others. For you are really merely quickening your growth, your
unfolding, taking advantage of the powers nature puts within your hands, and
deliberately eliminating the conditions which would not help you in your work,
but rather hinder your march forward. If you see it in that light, it seems to
me that Yoga will be to you a far more real, practical thing, than it is when
you merely read some fragments about it taken from Sanskrit books, and often
mistranslated into English, and you will begin to feel that to be a yogi is not
necessarily a thing for a life far off, an incarnation far removed from the
present one.
28.
Man a
Duality
29.
Some
of the terms used in Yoga are necessarily to be known. For Yoga takes man for a
special purpose and studies him for a special end and, therefore, only troubles
itself about two great facts regarding man, mind and body. First, he is a unit,
a unit of consciousness. That is a point to be definitely grasped. There is
only one of him in each set of envelopes, and sometimes the Theosophist has to
revise his ideas about man when he begins this practical line. Theosophy quite
usefully and rightly, for the understanding of the human constitution, divides
man into many parts and pieces. We talk of physical, astral, mental, etc. Or we
talk about Sthula-sarira, Sukshma-sarira,
Karana-sarira, and so on. Sometimes we divide man
into Anna-maya-kosa, Prana-maya-kosa,
Mano-maya-kosa, etc. We divide man into so many
pieces in order to study him thoroughly, that we can hardly find the man
because of the pieces. This is, so to say, for the study of human anatomy and
physiology.
30.
But
Yoga is practical and psychological. I am not complaining of the various
sub-divisions of other systems. They are necessary for the purpose of those
systems. But Yoga, for its practical purposes, considers man simply as a dualityÄmind and body, a unit of consciousness in a set of
envelopes. This is not the duality of the Self and the Not-Self. For in Yoga,
"Self" includes consciousness plus such matter as it cannot
distinguish from itself, and Not-Self is only the matter it can put aside.
31.
Man
is not pure Self, pure consciousness, Samvid. That is
an abstraction. In the concrete universe there are always the Self and His
sheaths, however tenuous the latter may be, so that a unit of consciousness is
inseparable from matter, and a Jivatma, or Monad, is
invariably consciousness plus matter.
32.
In
order that this may come out clearly, two terms are used in Yoga as
constituting manÄPrana and Pradhana,
life-breath and matter. Prana is not only the
life-breath of the body, but the totality of the life forces of the universe
or, in other words, the life-side of the universe.
33.
"I
am Prana," says Indra.
Prana here means the totality of the life-forces.
They are taken as consciousness, mind. Pradhana is
the term used for matter. Body, or the opposite of
mind, means for the yogi in practice so much of the appropriated matter of the
outer world as he is able to put away from himself, to distinguish from his own
consciousness.
34.
This
division is very significant and useful, if you can catch clearly hold of the
root idea. Of course, looking at the thing from beginning to end, you will see Prana, the great Life, the great Self, always present in
all, and you will see the envelopes, the bodies, the sheaths, present at the
different stages, taking different forms; but from the standpoint of yogic
practice, that is called Prana, or Self, with which
the man identifies himself for the time, including every sheath of matter from
which the man is unable to separate himself in consciousness. That unit, to the
yogi, is the Self, so that it is a changing quantity. As he drops off one
sheath after another and says: " That is not
myself," he is coming nearer and nearer to his highest point, to
consciousness in a single film, in a single atom of matter, a Monad. For all
practical purposes of Yoga, the man, the working, conscious man, is so much of
him as he cannot separate from the matter enclosing him, or with which he is
connected. Only that is body which the man is able to put aside and say:
"This is not I, but mine." We find we have a whole series of terms in
Yoga which may be repeated over and over again. All the states of mind exist on
every plane, says Vyasa, and this way of dealing with
man enables the same significant words, as we shall see in a moment, to be used
over and over again, with an ever subtler connotation; they all become
relative, and are equally true at each stage of evolution.
35.
Now
it is quite clear that, so far as many of us are concerned, the physical body
is the only thing of which we can say: " It is not myself "; so that,
in the practice of Yoga at first, for you, all the words that would be used in
it to describe the states of consciousness, the states of mind, would deal with
the waking consciousness in the body as the lowest state, and, rising up from
that, all the words would be relative terms, implying a distinct and recognisable state of the mind in relation to that which is
the lowest. In order to know how you shall begin to apply to yourselves the
various terms used to describe the states of mind, you must carefully analyse your own consciousness, and find out how much of it
is really consciousness, and how much is matter so closely appropriated that
you cannot separate it from yourself.
36.
States
of Mind
37.
Let
us take it in detail. Four states of consciousness are spoken of amongst us.
"Waking" consciousness or Jagrat; the
"dream" consciousness, or Svapna; the
"deep sleep" consciousness, or Sushupti;
and the state beyond that, called Turiya[FN#3: It is impossible to avoid the use of these technical
terms, even in an introduction to Yoga. There are no exact English equivalents,
and they are no more troublesome to learn than any other technical
psychological terms.] How are those related to the body?
38.
Jagrat is
the ordinary waking consciousness, that you and I are
using at the present time. If our consciousness works in the subtle, or astral,
body, and is able to impress its experiences upon the brain, it is called Svapna, or in English, dream consciousness; it is more
vivid and real than the Jagrat state. When working in
the subtler form--the mental body--it is not able to impress its experiences on
the brain, it is called Sushupti or deep sleep
consciousness; then the mind is working on its own
contents, not on outer objects. But if it has so far separated itself from
connection with the brain, that it cannot be readily recalled by outer means, then it is, called Turiya, a lofty
state of trance. These four states, when correlated to the four planes,
represent a much unfolded consciousness. Jagrat is
related to the physical; Svapna to the astral; Sushupti to the mental; and Turiya
to the buddhic. When passing from one world to
another, we should use these words to designate the consciousness working under
the conditions of each world. But the same words are repeated in the books of
Yoga with a different context. There the difficulty occurs, if we have not
learned their relative nature. Svapna is not the same
for all, nor is Sushupti the same for everyone.
39.
Above
all, the word samadhi, to be explained in a moment,
is used in different ways and in different senses. How then are we to find our
way in this apparent tangle? By knowing the state which is the starting-point,
and then the sequence will always be the same. All of you are familiar with the
waking consciousness in the physical body. You can find four states even in
that, if you analyse it, and a similar sequence of
the states of the mind is found on every plane.
40.
How
to distinguish them, then ? Let us take the waking
consciousness, and try to see the four states in that. Suppose I take up a book
and read it. I read the words; my eyes arc related to the outer physical
consciousness. That is the Jagrat state. I go behind
the words to the meaning of the words. I have passed from the waking state of
the physical plane into the Svapna state of waking consciousness, that sees through the outer form, seeking the
inner life. I pass from this to the mind of the writer; here the mind touches
the mind; it is the waking consciousness in its Sushupti
state. If I pass from this contact and enter the very mind of the writer, and
live in that man's mind, then I have reached the Turiya
state of the waking consciousness.
41.
Take
another illustration. I look at any watch; I am in Jagrat.
I close my eyes and make an image of the watch; I am in Svapna.
I call together many ideas of many watches, and reach the ideal watch; I am in Sushupti. I pass to the ideal of time in the abstract; I am
in Turiya. But all these are stages in the physical
plane consciousness; I have not left the body.
42.
In
this way, you can make states of mind intelligible and real, instead of mere
words.
43.
Samadhi
44.
Some
other important words, which recur from time to time in the Yoga-sutras, need
to be understood, though there are no exact English equivalents. As they must
be used to avoid clumsy circumlocutions, it is necessary to explain them. It is
said: "Yoga is Samadhi." Samadhi is a state in which the
consciousness is so dissociated from the body that the latter remains
insensible. It is a state of trance in which the mind is fully self-conscious,
though the body is insensitive, and from which the mind returns to the body
with the experiences it has had in the superphysical
state, remembering them when again immersed in the physical brain. Samadhi for
any one person is relative to his waking consciousness, but implies
insensitiveness of the body. If an ordinary person throws himself into trance
and is active on the astral plane, his Samadhi is on the astral. If his
consciousness is functioning in the mental plane, Samadhi is there. The man who can so withdraw from the body as to leave it
insensitive, while his mind is fully self-conscious, can practice Samadhi.
45.
The
phrase "Yoga is Samadhi" covers facts of the highest significance and
greatest instruction. Suppose you are only able to reach the astral world when
you are asleep, your consciousness there is, as we have seen, in the Svapna state. But as you slowly unfold your powers, the
astral forms begin to intrude upon your waking physical consciousness until
they appear as distinctly as do physical forms, and thus become objects of your
waking consciousness. The astral world then, for you, no longer belongs to the Svapna consciousness, but to the Jagrat;
you have taken two worlds within the scope of your Jagrat
consciousness--the physical and the astral worlds--and the mental world is in
your Svapna consciousness. "Your body" is
then the physical and the astral bodies taken together. As you go on, the
mental plane begins similarly to intrude itself, and
the physical, astral and mental all come within your waking consciousness; all
these are, then, your Jagrat world. These three
worlds form but one world to you; their three corresponding bodies but one
body, that perceives and acts. The three bodies of the ordinary man have become
one body for the yogi. If under these conditions you want to see only one world
at a time, you must fix your attention on it, and thus focus it. You can, in
that state of enlarged waking, concentrate your attention on the physical and
see it; then the astral and mental will appear hazy. So you can focus your
attention on the astral and see it; then the physical and the mental, being out
of focus, will appear dim. You will easily understand this if you remember
that, in this hall, I may focus my sight in the middle of the hall, when the
pillars on both sides will appear indistinctly. Or I may concentrate my
attention on a pillar and see it distinctly, but I then see you only vaguely at
the same time. It is a change of focus, not a change of body. Remember that all
which you can put aside as not yourself is the body of the yogi, and hence, as
you go higher, the lower bodies form but a single body and the consciousness in
that sheath of matter which it still cannot throw away, that becomes the man.
46.
"Yoga
is Samadhi." It is the power to withdraw from all that
you know as body, and to concentrate yourself within. That is Samadhi.
No ordinary means will then call you back to the world that you have
left.[FN#4: An Indian yogi in Samadhi, discovered in a forest by some ignorant
and brutal Englishmen, was so violently ill used that he returned to his
tortured body, only to leave it again at once by death.] This will also explain
to you the phrase in The Secret Doctrine that the Adept "
begins his Samadhi on the atmic plane "
When a Jivan-mukta enters into Samadhi, he begins it
on the atmic plane. All planes below the atmic are one plane for him. He begins his Samadhi on a
plane to which the mere man cannot rise. He begins it on the atmic plane, and thence rises stage by stage to the higher
cosmic planes. The same word, samadhi, is used to
describe the states of the consciousness, whether it rises above the physical
into the astral, as in self-induced trance of an ordinary man, or as in the
case of a Jivan-mukta when, the consciousness being
already centred in the fifth, or atmic
plane, it rises to the higher planes of a larger world.
47.
The
Literature of Yoga
48.
Unfortunately
for non-Sanskrit-knowing people, the literature of Yoga is not largely
available in English. The general teachings of Yoga are to be found in the
Upanishads, and the Bhagavad-Gita; those, in many translations, are within your
reach, but they are general, not special; they give you the main principles,
but do not tell you about the methods in any detailed way. Even in the
Bhagavad-Gita, while you are told to make sacrifices, to become indifferent,
and so on, it is all of the nature of moral precept, absolutely necessary
indeed, but still not telling you how to reach the conditions put before you.
The special literature of Yoga is, first of all, many of the minor Upanishads,
"the hundred-and-eight" as they are called. Then comes
the enormous mass of literature called the Tantras.
These books have an evil significance in the ordinary English ear, but not
quite rightly. The Tantras are very useful books,
very valuable and instructive; all occult science is to be found in them. But
they are divisible into three classes: those that deal with white magic, those
that deal with black magic, and those that deal with what we may call grey
magic, a mixture of the two. Now magic is the word which covers the methods of
deliberately bringing about super-normal physical states by the action of the
will.
49.
A
high tension of the nerves, brought on by anxiety or disease, leads to ordinary
hysteria, emotional and foolish. A similarly high tension, brought about by the
will, renders a man sensitive to super-physical vibrations Going
to sleep has no significance, but going into Samadhi is a priceless power. The
process is largely the same, but one is due to ordinary conditions, the other
to the action of the trained will. The Yogi is the man who has learned the
power of the will, and knows how to use it to bring about foreseen and foredetermined results. This knowledge has ever been called
magic; it is the name of the Great Science of the past, the one Science, to
which only the word " great " was given in
the past. The Tantras contain the whole of that; the
occult side of man and nature, the means whereby discoveries may be made, the
principles whereby the man may re-create himself, all these are in the Tantras. The difficulty is that without a teacher they are
very dangerous, and again and again a man trying to practice the Tantric methods without a teacher makes himself very ill.
So the Tantras have got a bad name both in the West
and here in India.
A good many of the American " occult " books
now sold are scraps of the Tantras which have been
translated. One difficulty is that these Tantric
works often use the name of a bodily organ to represent an astral or mental
centre. There is some reason in that because all the centres
are connected with each other from body to body; but no reliable teacher would
set his pupil to work on the bodily organs until he had some control over the
higher centres, and had carefully purified the
physical body. Knowing the one helps you to know the other, and the teacher who
has been through it all can place his pupil on the right path; but it you take
up these words, which are all physical, and do not know to what the physical
word is applied, then you will only become very confused, and may injure
yourself. For instance, in one of the Sutras it is said that if you meditate on
a certain part of the tongue you will obtain astral sight. That means that if
you meditate on the pituitary body, just over this part of the tongue, astral
sight will be opened. The particular word used to refer to a centre has a
correspondence in the physical body, and the word is often applied to the
physical organs when the other is meant. This is what is called a "
blind," and it is intended to keep the people away from dangerous
practices in the books that are published; people may meditate on that part of
their tongues all their lives without anything coming of it; but if they think
upon the corresponding centre in the body, a good dealÄmuch
harmÄmay come of it. "
Meditate on the navel," it is also said. This means the solar
plexus, for there is a close connection between the two. But to meditate on
that is to incur the danger of a serious nervous disorder, almost impossible to
cure. All who know how many people in India suffer through these practices, ill-understood,
recognize that it is not wise to plunge into them without some one to tell you
what they mean, and what may be safely practiced and what not. The other part
of the Yoga literature is a small book called the sutras of Patanjali.
That is available, but I am afraid that few are able to make much of it by
themselves. In the first place, to elucidate the Sutras, which are simply
headings, there is a great deal of commentary in Sanskrit, only partially
translated. And even the commentaries have this peculiarity, that all the most
difficult words are merely repeated, not explained, so that the student is not
much enlightened.
50.
Some
Definitions
51.
There
are a few words, constantly recurring, which need brief definitions, in order
to avoid confusion; they are: Unfolding, Evolution, Spirituality, Psychism, Yoga and Mysticism.
52.
"Unfolding"
always refers to consciousness, "evolution" to forms. Evolution is
the homogeneous becoming the heterogeneous, the simple becoming complex. But
there is no growth and no perfectioning for Spirit,
for consciousness; it is all there and always, and all that can happen to it is
to turn itself outwards instead of remaining turned inwards. The God in you
cannot evolve, but He may show forth His powers through matter that He has appropriated
for the purpose, and the matter evolves to serve Him. He Himself only manifests
what He is. And on that, many a saying of the great mystics may come to your
mind: "Become," says St. Ambrose, "what you are"--a
paradoxical phrase; but one that sums up a great truth: become in outer
manifestation that which you are in inner reality. That is the object of the
whole process of Yoga.
53.
"Spirituality"
is the realisation of the One. "Psychism" is the manifestation of intelligence through
any material vehicle.[FN#5: See London Lectures of
1907, "Spirituality and Psychism".]
54.
"Yoga"
is the seeking of union by the intellect, a science; "Mysticism" is
the seeking of the same union by emotion.[FN#6: The
word yoga may, of course, be rightly used of all union with the self, whatever
the road taken. I am using it here in the narrower sense, as peculiarly
connected with the intelligence, as a Science, herein following Patanjali.]
55.
See
the mystic. He fixes his mind on the object of devotion; he loses
self-consciousness, and passes into a rapture of love and adoration, leaving
all external ideas, wrapped in the object of his love, and a great surge of
emotion sweeps him up to God. He does not know how he has reached that lofty
state. He is conscious only of God and his love for Him. Here is the rapture of
the mystic, the triumph of the saint.
56.
The
yogi does not work like that. Step after step, he realises
what he is doing. He works by science and not by emotion, so that any who do
not care for science, finding it dull and dry, are not at present unfolding
that part of their nature which will find its best help in the practice of
Yoga. The yogi may use devotion as a means. This comes out very plainly in Patanjali. He has given many means whereby Yoga may be
followed, and curiously, "devotion to Isvara''
is one of several means. There comes out the spirit of the scientific thinker.
Devotion to Isvara is not for him an end in itself,
but means to an endÄthe concentration of the mind.
You see there at once the difference of spirit. Devotion to Isvara
is the path of the mystic. He attains communion by that. Devotion to Isvara as a means of concentrating the mind is the
scientific way in which the yogi regards devotion. No number of words would
have brought out the difference of spirit between Yoga and Mysticism as well as
this. The one looks upon devotion to Isvara as a way
of reaching the Beloved; the other looks upon it as a means of reaching
concentration. To the mystic, God, in Himself is the object of search, delight
in Him is the reason for approaching Him, union with Him in consciousness is
his goal; but to the yogi, fixing the attention on God is merely an effective
way of concentrating the mind. In the one, devotion is used to obtain an end;
in the other, God is seen as the end and is reached directly by rapture.
57.
God
Without and God Within
58.
That
leads us to the next point, the relation of God without to God within. To the
yogi, who is the very type of Hindu thought, there is no definite proof of God
save the witness of the Self within to His existence, and his idea of finding
the proof of God is that you should strip away from your consciousness all
limitations, and thus reach the stage where you have pure consciousness--save a
veil of the thin nirvanic matter. Then you know that
God is. So you read in the Upanishad: "Whose only
proof is the witness of the Self." This is very different from Western
methods of thought, which try to demonstrate God by a process of argument. The
Hindu will tell you that you cannot demonstrate God by any argument or
reasoning; He is above and beyond reasoning, and although the reason may guide
you on the way, it will not prove to demonstration that God is. The only way
you can know Him is by diving into yourself. There you will find Him, and know
that He is without as well as within you; and Yoga is a system that enables you
to get rid of everything from consciousness that is not God, save that one veil
of the nirvanic atom, and so to know that God is,
with an unshakable certainty of conviction. To the Hindu that inner conviction
is the only thing worthy to be called faith, and this gives you the reason why
faith is said to be beyond reason, and so is often confused with credulity.
Faith is beyond reason, because it is the testimony of the Self to himself,
that conviction of existence as Self, of which reason is only one of the outer
manifestations; and the only true faith is that inner conviction, which no
argument can either strengthen or weaken, of the innermost Self of you, that of
which alone you are entirely sure. It is the aim of Yoga to enable you to reach
that Self constantly not by a sudden glimpse of intuition, but steadily,
unshakably, and unchangeably, and when that Self is reached, then the question:
"Is there a God?" can never again come into the. human
mind.
59.
Changes
of Consciousness and Vibrations of Matter
60.
It is
necessary to understand something about that consciousness which is your Self,
and about the matter which is the envelope of consciousness, but which the Self
so often identifies with himself. The great characteristic of consciousness is
change, with a foundation of certainty that it is. The consciousness of
existence never changes, but beyond this all is change, and only by the changes
does consciousness become Self-consciousness. Consciousness is an everchanging thing, circling round one idea that never
changes--Self-existence. The consciousness itself is not changed by any change
of position or place. It only changes its states within itself.
61.
In
matter, every change of state is brought about by change of place. A change of
consciousness is a change of a state; a change of matter is a change of place.
Moreover, every change of state in consciousness is related to vibrations of
matter in its vehicle. When matter is examined, we find three fundamental
qualities--rhythm, mobility, stability--sattva,
rajas, tamas. Sattva is rhythm, vibration. It is more than; rajas, or
mobility. It is a regulated movement, a swinging from one side to the other
over a definite distance, a length of wave, a vibration.
62.
The
question is often put: "How can things in such different categories, as
matter and Spirit, affect each other? Can we bridge that great gulf which some
say can never be crossed?" Yes, the Indian has crossed it, or rather, has
shown that there is no gulf. To the Indian, matter and Spirit are not only the
two phases of the One, but, by a subtle analysis of the relation between
consciousness and matter, he sees that in every universe the LOGOS imposes upon
matter a certain definite relation of rhythms, every vibration of matter
corresponding to a change in consciousness. There is no change in
consciousness, however subtle, that has not appropriated to it a vibration in
matter; there is no vibration in matter, however swift or delicate, which has
not correlated to it a certain change in consciousness. That is the first great
work of the LOGOS, which the Hindu scriptures trace out in the building of the
atom, the Tanmatra, " the
measure of That," the measure of consciousness. He who is consciousness
imposes on his material the answer to every change in consciousness, and that
is an infinite number of vibrations. So that between the Self and his sheaths
there is this invariable relation: the change in consciousness and the
vibration of matter, and vice versa. That makes it possible for the Self to
know the Not-Self.
63.
These
correspondences are utilised in Raja Yoga and Hatha
Yoga, the Kingly Yoga and the Yoga of Resolve. The Raja Yoga seeks to control
the changes in consciousness, and by this control to rule the material
vehicles. The Hatha Yoga seeks to control the vibrations of matter, and by this
control to evoke the desired
64.
changes
in consciousness. The weak point in Hatha Yoga is that action on this line
cannot reach beyond the astral plane, and the great strain imposed on the
comparatively intractable matter of the physical plane sometimes leads to
atrophy of the very organs, the activity of which is necessary for effecting
the changes in consciousness that would be useful. The Hatha Yogi gains control
over the bodily organs with which the waking consciousness no longer concerns
itself, having relinquished them to its lower part, the " subconsciousness', This is often useful as regards the
prevention of disease, but serves no higher purpose. When he begins to work on
the brain centres connected with ordinary
consciousness, and still more when he touches those connected with the
super-consciousness, he enters a dangerous region, and is more likely to paralyse than to evolve.
65.
That
relation alone it is which makes matter cognizable; the change in the thinker
is answered by a change outside, and his answer to it and the change in it that
he makes by his. answer re-arrange again the matter of
the body which is his envelope. Hence the rhythmic changes in matter are
rightly called its cognizability. Matter may be known
by consciousness, because of this unchanging relation between the two sides of
the manifest LOGOS who is one, and the Self becomes aware of changes within
himself, and thus of those of the external words to which those changes are
related.
66.
Mind
67.
What
is mind ? From the yogic standpoint it is simply the
individualized consciousness, the whole of it, the whole of your consciousness
including your activities which the Western psychologist puts outside mind.
Only on the basis of Eastern psychology is Yoga possible. How shall we describe
this individualized consciousness? First, it is aware of things. Becoming aware
of them, it desires them. Desiring them, it tries to attain them. So we have
the three aspects of consciousness-- intelligence, desire, activity. On the
physical plane, activity predominates, although desire and thought are present.
On the astral plane, desire predominates, and thought and activity are subject
to desire. On the mental plane; intelligence is the dominant note, desire and
activity are subject to it. Go to the buddhic plane,
and cognition, as pure reason, predominates, and so on. Each quality is present
all the time, but one predominates. So with the matter that belongs to them. In
your combinations of matter you get rhythmic, active, or stable ones; and
according to the combinations of matter in your bodies will be the conditions
of the activity of the whole of these in consciousness. To practice Yoga you
must build your bodies of the rhythmic combinations, with activity and inertia
less apparent. The yogi wants to make his body match his mind.
68.
Stages
of Mind
69.
The
mind has five stages, Patanjali tells us, and Vyasa comments that "these stages of mind are on every
plane". The first stage is the stage in which the mind is flung about, the
Kshipta stage; it is the butterfly mind, the early
stage of humanity, or, in man, the mind of the child, darting constantly from
one object to another. It corresponds to activity on the physical plane. The
next is the confused stage, Mudha, equivalent to the
stage of the youth, swayed by emotions, bewildered by them; he begins to feel
he is ignorant--a state beyond the fickleness of the child--a characteristic
state, corresponding to activity in the astral world. Then comes the state of
preoccupation, or infatuation, Vikshipta, the state
of the man possessed by an idea--love, ambition, or what not. He is no longer a
confused youth, but a man with a clear aim, and an idea possesses him. It may
be either the fixed idea of the madman, or the fixed
idea which makes the hero or the saint; but in any case he is possessed by the
idea. The quality of the idea, its truth or falsehood, makes the difference
between the maniac and the martyr.
70.
Maniac
or martyr, he is under the spell of a fixed idea. No reasoning avails against
it. If he has assured himself that he is made of glass, no amount of argument
will convince him to the contrary. He will always regard himself as being as brittle
as glass. That is a fixed idea which is false. But there is a fixed idea which
makes the hero and the martyr. For some great truth dearer than life is
everything thrown aside. He is possessed by it,
dominated by it, and he goes to death gladly for it. That state is said to be
approaching Yoga, for such a man is becoming concentrated, even if only
possessed by one idea. This stage corresponds to activity on the lower mental
plane. Where the man possesses the idea, instead of being possessed by it, that
one-pointed state of the mind, called Ekagrata in
Sanskrit, is the fourth stage. He is a mature man, ready for the true life.
When the man has gone through life dominated by one idea, then he is
approaching Yoga; he is getting rid of the grip of the world, and is beyond its
allurements. But when he possesses that which before possessed him, then he has
become fit for Yoga, and begins the training which makes his progress rapid.
This stage corresponds to activity on the higher mental plane.
71.
Out
of this fourth stage or Ekagrata, arises the fifth
stage, Niruddha or Self-controlled. When the man not
only possesses one idea but, rising above all ideas, chooses as he wills, takes or does not take according to the illumined
Will, then he is Self-controlled and can effectively practice Yoga. This stage
corresponds to activity on the buddhic plane.
72.
In
the third stage, Vikshipta, where he is possessed by
the idea, he is learning Viveka or discrimination
between the outer and the inner, the real and the unreal. When he has learned
the lesson of Viveka, then he advances a stage
forward; and in Ekagrata he chooses one idea, the
inner life; and as he fixes his mind on that idea he learns Vairagya
or dispassion. He rises above the desire to possess objects of enjoyment, belonging
either to this or any other world. Then he advances towards the fifth stage--
Self-controlled. In order to reach that he must practice the six endowments,
the Shatsamapatti. These six endowments have to do
with the Will-aspect of consciousness as the other two, Viveka
and Vairagya, have to do with the cognition and
activity aspects of it.
73.
By a
study of your own mind, you can find out how far you are ready to begin the
definite practice of Yoga. Examine your mind in order to recognize these stages
in yourself. If you are in either of the two early stages, you are not ready
for Yoga. The child and the youth are not ready to become yogis, nor is the
preoccupied man. But if you find yourself possessed by a single thought, you
are nearly ready for Yoga; it leads to the next stage of one-pointedness, where you can choose your idea, and cling to
it of your own will. Short is the step from that to the complete control, which
can inhibit all motions of the mind. Having reached that stage, it is
comparatively easy to pass into Samadhi.
74.
Inward
and Outward-Turned Consciousness
75.
Samadhi
is of two kinds: one turned outward, one turned inward. The outward-turned
consciousness is always first. You are in the stage of Samadhi belonging to the
outward-turned waking consciousness, when you can pass beyond the objects to
the principles which those objects manifest, when through the form you catch a
glimpse of the life. Darwin
was in this stage when he glimpsed the truth of evolution. That is the
outward-turned Samadhi of the physical body.
76.
This
is technically the Samprajnata Samadhi, the
"Samadhi with consciousness," but to be better regarded, I think, as
with consciousness outward-turned, i.e. conscious of objects. When the object
disappears, that is, when consciousness draws itself away from the sheath by
which those objects are seen, then comes the Asamprajnata
Samadhi; called the "Samadhi without consciousness". I prefer to call
it the inward-turned consciousness, as it is by turning away from the outer
that this stage is reached.
77.
These
two stages of Samadhi follow each other on every plane; the intense
concentration on objects in the first stage, and the piercing thereby through
the outer form to the underlying principle, are followed by the turning away of
the consciousness from the sheath which has served its purpose, and its
withdrawal into itself, i.e., into a sheath not yet recognised
as a sheath. It is then for a while conscious only of itself and not of the
outer world. Then comes the "cloud," the dawning sense again of an
outer, a dim sensing of "something" other than itself; that again is
followed by the functioning of the nigher sheath and
the Recognition of the objects of the next higher plane, corresponding to that
sheath. Hence the complete cycle is: Samprajnata
Samadhi, Asamprajnata Samadhi, Megha
(cloud), and then the Samprajnata Samadhi of the next
plane, and so on.
78.
The
Cloud
79.
This
term--in full, Dharma-megha, cloud of righteousness, or of religion--is one which is very scantily
explained by the commentators. In fact, the only explanation they give is that
all the man's past karma of good gathers over him, and pours down upon him a
rain of blessing. Let us see if we cannot find something more than this meagre interpretation.
80.
The
term "cloud" is very often used in mystic literature of the West; the
"Cloud on the Mount," the "Cloud on the Sanctuary," the
"Cloud on the Mercy-Seat," are expressions familiar to the student.
And the experience which they indicate is familiar to all mystics in its lower
phases, and to some in its fullness. In its lower phases, it is the experience
just noted, where the withdrawal of the consciousness into a sheath not yet recognised as a sheath is followed by the beginning of the
functioning of that sheath, the first indication of which is the dim sensing of
an outer. You feel as though surrounded by a dense mist, conscious that you are
not alone but unable to see. Be still; be patient; wait. Let your consciousness
be in the attitude of suspense. Presently the cloud will thin, and first in
glimpses, then in its full beauty, the vision of a higher plane will dawn on
your entranced sight. This entrance into a higher plane will repeat itself
again and again, until your consciousness, centred on
the buddhic plane and its splendouis
having disappeared as your consciousness withdraws even from that exquisite
sheath, you find yourself in the true cloud, the cloud on the sanctuary, the
cloud that veils the Holiest, that hides the vision of
the Self. Then comes what seems to be the draining away of the very life, the
letting go of the last hold on the tangible, the hanging in a void, the horror
of great darkness, loneliness unspeakable. Endure, endure. Everything must go.
"Nothing out of the Eternal can help you." God only shines out in the
stillness; as says the Hebrew: "Be still, and know that I am God." In
that silence a Voice shall be heard, the voice of the Self, In
that stillness a Life shall be felt, the life of the Self. In that void a
Fullness shall be revealed, the fullness of the Self. In that darkness a Light
shall be seen, the glory of the Self. The cloud shall vanish, and the shining
of the Self shall be made manifest. That which was a glimpse of a far-off
majesty shall become a perpetual realisation and,
knowing the Self and your unity with it, you shall enter into the Peace that
belongs to the Self alone.
81.
Lecture
II
82.
SCHOOLS
OF THOUGHT
83.
In
studying psychology anyone who is acquainted with the Sanskrit tongue must know
how valuable that language is for precise and scientific dealing with the
subject. The Sanskrit, or the well-made, the constructed, the built-together,
tongue, is one that lends itself better than any other to the elucidation of
psychological difficulties. Over and over again, by the mere form of a word, a
hint is given, an explanation or relation is
suggested. The language is constructed in a fashion which enables a large
number of meanings to be connoted by a single word, so that you may trace all
allied ideas, ,or truths, or facts, by this verbal
connection, when you are speaking or using Sanskrit. It has a limited number of
important roots, and then an immense number of words constructed on those
roots.
84.
Now
the root of the word yoga is a word that means " to join," yuj, and that root appears in many languages, such as the
English--of course, through the Latin, wherein you get jugare,
jungere, "to join"--and out of that a
number of English words are derived and will at once suggest themselves to you:
junction, conjunction, disjunction, and so on. The English word
"yoke" again, is derived from this same Sanskrit root so that all
through the various words, or thoughts, or facts connected with this one root,
you are able to gather the meaning of the word yoga and to see how much that
word covers in the ordinary processes of the mind and how suggestive many of
the words connected with it are, acting, so to speak, as sign-posts to direct
you along the road to the meaning. In other tongues, as in French, we have a
word like rapport, used constantly in English; " being
en rapport," a French expression, but so Anglicized that it is continually
heard amongst ourselves. And that term, in some ways, is the closest to the
meaning of the Sanskrit word yoga; "to be in relation to"; "to
be connected with"; "to enter into"; "to merge in";
and so on: all these ideas are classified together under the one head of
"Yoga". When you find Sri Krishna saying that "Yoga is
equilibrium," in the Sanskrit He is saying a perfectly obvious thing,
because Yoga implies balance, yoking and the Sanskrit of equilibrium is "samvata--togetherness"; so that it is a perfectly
simple, straightforward statement, not connoting anything very deep, but merely
expressing one of the fundamental meanings of the word He is using. And so with
another word, a word used in the commentary on the Sutra I quoted before, which
conveys to the Hindu a perfectly straightforward meaning: "Yoga is
Samadhi." To an only English-knowing person that does not convey any very
definite idea; each word needs explanation. To a Sanskrit-knowing man the two
words are obviously related to one another. For the word yoga, we have seen,
means "yoked together," and Samadhi derived from the root dha, "to place," with the prepositions sam and a, meaning "completely together".
Samadhi, therefore, literally means " fully
placing together," and its etymological equivalent in English would be
" to compose " (com=sam; posita= place). Samadhi therefore means "composing the
mind," collecting it together, checking all distractions. Thus by
philological, as well as by practical, investigation the two words yoga and samadhi are inseparably linked together. And when Vyasa, the commentator, says: "Yoga is the composed
mind," he is conveying a clear and significant idea as to what is implied
in Yoga. Although Samadhi has come to mean, by a natural sequence of ideas, the
trance-state which results from perfect composure, its original meaning should
not be lost sight of.
85.
Thus,
in explaining Yoga, one is often at a loss for the English equivalent of the
manifold meanings of the Sanskrit tongue, and I earnestly advise those of you
who can do so, at least to acquaint yourselves sufficiently with this admirable
language, to make the literature of Yoga more intelligible to you than it can
be to a person who is completely ignorant of Sanskrit.
86.
Its
Relation to Indian Philosophies
87.
Let
me ask you to think for a while on the place of Yoga in its relation to two of
the great Hindu schools of philosophical thought, for neither the Westerner nor
the non-Sanskrit-knowing Indian can ever really understand the translations of
the chief Indian books, now current here and in the West, and the force of all
the allusions they make, unless they acquaint themselves in some degree with
the outlines of these great schools of philosophy, they being the very
foundation on which these books are built up. Take the Bhagavad-Gita. Probably
there are many who know that book fairly well, who use it as the book to help
in the spiritual life, who are not familiar with most
of its precepts. But you must always be more or less in a fog in reading it,
unless you realise the fact that it is founded on a
particular Indian philosophy and that the meaning of nearly all the technical
words in it is practically limited by their meaning in philosophy known as the Samkhya. There are certain phrases belonging rather to the
Vedanta, but the great majority are Samkhyan, and it is taken for granted that the people
reading or using the book are familiar with the outline of the Samkhyan philosophy. I do not want to take you into
details, but I must give you the leading ideas of the philosophy. For if you
grasp these, you will not only read your Bhagavad-Gita with much more
intelligence than before, but you will be able to use it practically for yogic
purposes in a way that, without this knowledge, is almost impossible.
88.
Alike
in the Bhagavad-Gita and in the Yoga-sutras of Patanjali
the terms are Samkhyan, and historically Yoga is
based on the Samkhya, so far as its philosophy is concerned.
Samkhya does not concern itself with, the existence
of Deity, but only with the becoming of a universe, the order of evolution.
Hence it is often called Nir-isvara Samkhya, the Samkhya without God.
But so closely is it bound up with the Yoga system, that the latter is called Sesvara Samkhya, with God. For
its understanding, therefore, I must outline part of the Samkhya
philosophy, that part which deals with the relation of Spirit and matter; note
the difference from this of the Vedantic conception of
Self and Not-Self, and then find the reconciliation in the Theosophic
statement of the facts in nature. The directions which fall from the lips of
the Lord of Yoga in the Gita may sometimes seem to
you opposed to each other and contradictory, because they sometimes are phrased
in the Samkhyan and sometimes in the Vedantic terms, starting from different standpoints, one
looking at the world from the standpoint of matter, the other from the
standpoint of Spirit. If you are a student of Theosophy, then the knowledge of
the facts will enable you to translate the different phrases. That
reconciliation and understanding of these apparently contradictory phrases is
the object to which I would ask your attention now.
89.
The Samkhyan
School starts with the
statement that the universe consists of two factors, the first pair of
opposites, Spirit and Matter, or more accurately Spirits and Matter. The Spirit
is called Purusha--the Man; and each Spirit is an
individual. Purusha is a unit, a unit of
consciousness; they are all of the same nature, but distinct everlastingly the
one from the other. Of these units there are many; countless Purushas are to be found in the world of men. But while
they are countless in number they are identical in nature, they are
homogeneous. Every Purusha has three characteristics,
and these three are alike in all. One characteristic is awareness; it will
become cognition. The second of the characteristics is life or prana; it will become activity. The third characteristic is
immutability, the essence of eternity; it will become will. Eternity is not, as
some mistakenly think, everlasting time. Everlasting time has nothing to do
with eternity. Time and eternity are two altogether different things. Eternity
is changeless, immutable, simultaneous. No succession
in time, albeit everlasting--if such could be--could give eternity. The fact
that Purusha has this attribute of immutability tells
us that He is eternal; for changelessness is a mark of the eternal.
90.
Such
are the three attributes of Purusha, according to the
Samkhya. Though these are not the same in
nomenclature as the Vedantic Sat, Chit, Ananda, yet they are practically identical. Awareness or
cognition is Chit; life or force is Sat; and
immutability, the essence of eternity, is Ananda.
91.
Over against
these Purushas, homogeneous units, countless in
number, stands Prakriti, Matter, the
second in the Samkhyan duality. Prakriti
is one; Purushas are many. Prakriti
is a continuum; Purushas are discontinuous, being
innumerable, homogeneous units. Continuity is the mark of Prakriti.
Pause for a moment on the name Prakriti. Let us
investigate its root meaning. The name indicates its essence. Pra means "forth," and kri
is the root "make". Prakriti thus means
"forth-making ". Matter is that which enables the essence of Being to become. That which is Being--is-tence,
becomes ex-is-tence--outbeing,
by Matter, and to describe Matter as "forth-making" is to give its
essence in a single word. Only by Prakriti can
Spirit, or Purusha, "forth-make" or
"manifest" himself. Without the presence of Prakriti,
Purusha is helpless, a mere abstraction. Only by the
presence of, and in Prakriti, can Purusha
make manifest his powers. Prakriti has also three
characteristics, the well-known gunas--attributes or
qualities. These are rhythm, mobility and inertia. Rhythm enables awareness to
become cognition. Mobility enables life to become activity. Inertia enables
immutability to become will.
92.
Now
the conception as to the relation of Spirit to Matter is a very peculiar one,
and confused ideas about it give rise to many misconceptions. If you grasp it,
the Bhagavad-Gita becomes illuminated, and all the phrases about action and
actor, and the mistake of saying "I act," become easy to understand,
as implying technical Samkhyan ideas.
93.
The
three qualities of Prakriti, when Prakriti
is thought of as away from Purusha, are in
equilibrium, motionless, poised the one against the other, counter-balancing
and neutralizing each other, so that Matter is called jada,
unconscious, "dead". But in the presence of Purusha
all is changed. When Purusha is in propinquity to
Matter, then there is a change in Matter--not outside, but in it.
94.
Purusha
acts on Prakriti by propinquity, says Vyasa. It comes near Prakriti,
and Prakriti begins to live. The "coming
near" is a figure of speech, an adaptation to our ideas of time and space,
for we cannot posit "nearness" of that which is timeless and spaceless--Spirit. By the word propinquity is indicated an
influence exerted by Purusha on Prakriti,
and this, where material objects are concerned, would be brought about by their
propinquity. If a magnet be brought near to a piece of
soft iron or an electrified body be brought near to a neutral one, certain
changes are wrought in the soft iron or in the neutral body by that bringing
near. The propinquity of the magnet makes the soft iron a magnet; the qualities
of the magnet are produced in it, it manifests poles, it attracts steel, it
attracts or repels the end of an electric needle. In the presence of a postively electrified body the electricity in a neutral
body is re-arranged, and the positive retreats while the negative gathers near
the electrified body. An internal change has occurred in both cases from the
propinquity of another object. So with Purusha and Prakriti. Purusha does nothing,
but from Purusha there comes out an influence, as in
the case of the magnetic influence. The three gunas,
under this influence of Purusha, undergo a marvellous change. I do not know what words to use, in
order not to make a mistake in putting it. You cannot say that Prakriti absorbs the influence. You can hardly say that it
reflects the Purusha. But the presence of Purusha brings about certain internal changes, causes a
difference in the equilibrium of the three gunas in Prakriti. The three gunas were in
a state of equilibrium. No guna was manifest. One guna was balanced against another. What happens when Purusha influences Prakriti? The
quality of awareness in Purusha is taken up by, or
reflected in, the guna called Sattva--
rhythm, and it becomes cognition in Prakriti. The
quality that we call life in Purusha is taken up by,
or reflected, in the guna called Rajas--mobility, and
it becomes force, energy, activity, in Prakriti. The
quality that we call immutability in Purusha is taken
up by, or reflected, in the guna called Tamas--inertia, and shows itself out as will or desire in Prakriti. So that, in that balanced equilibrium of Prakriti, a change has taken place by the mere propinquity
of, or presence of, the Purusha. The Purusha has lost nothing, but at the same time a change has
taken place in matter. Cognition has appeared in it. Activity, force, has
appeared in it. Will or desire has appeared in it. With this change in Prakriti another change occurs. The three attributes of Purusha cannot be separated from each other, nor can the
three attributes of Prakriti be separated each from
each. Hence rhythm, while appropriating awareness, is under the influence of
the whole three-in-one Purusha and cannot but also
take up subordinately life and immutability as activity and will. And so with
mobility and inertia. In combinations one quality or another may predominate,
and we may have combinations which show preponderantly awareness-rhythm, or
life- mobility, or immutability-inertia. The combinations in which
awareness-rhythm or cognition predominates become "mind in nature,"
the subject or subjective half of nature. Combinations in which either of the
other two predominates become the object or objective half of nature, the " force and matter " of the western
scientist.[FN#7: A friend notes that the first is the Suddha
Sattva of the Ramanuja School, and the second and third the Prakriti, or spirit-matter, in the lower sense of the
same.]
95.
We
have thus nature divided into two, the subject and the object. We have now in
nature everything that is wanted for the manifestation of activity, for the
production of forms and for the expression of consciousness. We have mind, and
we have force and matter. Purusha has nothing more to
do, for he has infused all powers into Prakriti and
sits apart, contemplating their interplay, himself remaining unchanged. The
drama of existence is played out within Matter, and all that Spirit does is to
look at it. Purusha is the spectator before whom the
drama is played. He is not the actor, but only a spectator. The actor is the
subjective part of nature, the mind, which is the reflection of awareness in
rhythmic matter. That with which it works--objective
nature, is the reflection of the other qualities of Purusha--life
and immutability--in the gunas, Rajas and Tamas. Thus we have in nature everything that is wanted for
the production of the universe. The Putusha only
looks on when the drama is played before him. He is spectator, not actor. This
is the predominant note of the Bhagavad-Gita. Nature does everything. The gunas bring about the universe. The man who says: "I
act," is mistaken and confused; the gunas act,
not he. He is only the spectator and looks on. Most of the Gita
teaching is built upon this conception of the Samkhya,
and unless that is clear in our minds we can never discriminate the meaning
under the phrases of a particular philosophy.
96.
Let
us now turn to the Vedantic idea. According to the Vedantic view the Self is one, omnipresent, all-permeating,
the one reality. Nothing exists except the Self--that is the starting-point in
Vedanta. All permeating, all-controlling, all- inspiring, the Self is
everywhere present. As the ether permeates all matter, so does the One Self
permeate, restrain, support, vivify all. It is written
in the Gita that as the air goes everywhere, so is
the Self everywhere in the infinite diversity of objects. As we try to follow
the outline of Vedantic thought, as we try to grasp
this idea of the one universal Self, who is existence, consciousness, bliss,
Sat-Chit-Ananda, we find that we are carried into a
loftier region of philosophy than that occupied by the Samkhya.
The Self is One. The Self is everywhere conscious, the
Self is everywhere existent, the Self is everywhere blissful. There is no
division between these qualities of the Self. Everywhere, all-embracing, these
qualities are found at every point, in every place. There is no spot on which
you can put your finger and say "The Self is not here." Where the
Self is--and He is everywhere--there is existence, there is consciousness, and
there is bliss. The Self, being consciousness, imagines limitation, division.
From that imagination of limitation arises form,
diversity, manyness. From that thought of the Self,
from that thought of limitation, all diversity of the many is born. Matter is
the limitation imposed upon the Self by His own will to limit Himself. "Eko'ham, bahu syam,"
"I am one; I will to he many"; "let me be many," is the
thought of the One; and in that thought, the manifold universe comes into
existence. In that limitation, Self-created, He exists, He is conscious, He is
happy. In Him arises the thought that He is Self-existence, and behold! all existence becomes possible. Because in Him is the will
to manifest, all manifestation at once comes into existence. Because in Him is
all bliss, therefore is the law of life the seeking for happiness, the
essential characteristic of every sentient creature. The universe appears by
the Self-limitation in thought of the Self. The moment the Self ceases to think
it, the universe is not, it vanishes as a dream. That is the fundamental idea
of the Vedanta. Then it accepts the spirits of the Samkhya--
the Purushas; but it says that these spirits are only
reflections of the one Self, emanated by the activity of the Self and that they
all reproduce Him in miniature, with the limitations which the universal Self
has imposed upon them, which are apparently portions of the universe, but are
really identical with Him. It is the play of the Supreme Self that makes the
limitations, and thus reproduces within limitations the qualities of the Self;
the consciousness of the Self, of the Supreme Self; becomes, in the particularised Self, cognition, the power to know; and the
existence of the Self becomes activity, the power to manifest; and the bliss of
the Self becomes will, the deepest part of all, the longing for happiness, for
bliss; the resolve to obtain it is what we call will. And so in the limited,
the power to know, and the power to act, and the power to will, these are the
reflections in the particular Self of the essential qualities of the universal
Self. Otherwise put: that which was universal awareness becomes now cognition
in the separated Self; that which in the universal Self was awareness of itself
becomes in the limited Self awareness of others; the awareness of the whole
becomes the cognition of the individual. So with the existence of the Self: the
Self-existence of the universal Self becomes, in the limited Self,
activity, preservation of existence. So does the bliss of the universal Self,
in the limited expression of the individual Self, become the will that seeks
for happiness, the Self-determination of the Self, the seeking for Self-realisation, that deepest essence of human life.
97.
The
difference comes with limitation, with the narrowing of the universal qualities
into the specific qualities of the limited Self; both
are the same in essence, though seeming different in manifestation. We have the
power to know, the power to will, and the power to act. These are the three
great powers of the Self that show themselves in the separated Self in every diversity of forms, from the minutes" organism
to the loftiest Logos.
98.
Then
just as in the Samkhya, if the Purusha,
the particular Self, should identify himself with the matter in which he is
reflected, then there is delusion and bondage, so in the Vedanta, if the Self,
eternally free, imagines himself to be bound by matter, identifying himself
with his limitations, he is deluded, he is under the domain of Maya; for Maya
is the self-identification of the Self with his limitations. The eternally free
can never be bound by matter; the eternally pure can never be tainted by
matter; the eternally knowing can never be deluded by matter; the eternally Self-determined
can never be ruled by matter, save by his own ignorance. His own foolish fancy
limits his inherent powers; he is bound, because he imagines himself bound; he
is impure, because he imagines himself impure; he is ignorant, because he
imagines himself ignorant. With the vanishing of delusion he finds that he is
eternally pure, eternally wise.
99.
Here
is the great difference between the Samkhya and the
Vedanta. According to the Samkhya, Purusha is the spectator and never the actor. According to
Vedanta the Self is the only actor, all else is maya:
there is no one else who acts but the Self, according to the Vedanta teaching.
As says the Upanishad: the Self willed to see, and there were eyes; the Self
willed to hear, and there were ears; the Self willed to think, and there was
mind. The eyes, the ears, the mind exist, because the Self has willed them into
existence. The Self appropriates matter, in order that He may manifest His
powers through it. There is the distinction between the Samkhya
and the Vedanta: in the Samkhya the propinquity of
the Purusha brings out in matter or Prakriti all these characteristics, the Prakriti
acts and not the Purusha; in the Vedanta, Self alone
exists and Self alone acts; He imagines limitation and matter appears; He appropriates
that matter in order that He may manifest His own capacity.
100.
The Samkhya is the view of the universe of the scientist: the
Vedanta is the view of the universe of the metaphysician. Haeckel unconsciously
expounded the Samkhyan philosophy almost perfectly.
So close to the Samkhyan is his exposition, that
another idea would make it purely Samkhyan; he has
not yet supplied that propinquity of consciousness which the Samkhya postulates in its ultimate duality. He has Force
and Matter, he has Mind in Matter, but he has no Purusha.
His last book, criticised by Sir Oliver Lodge, is
thoroughly intelligible from the Hindu standpoint as an almost accurate
representation of Samkhyan philosophy. It is the view
of the scientist, indifferent to the "why" of the facts which he
records. The Vedanta, as I said, is the view of the metaphysician he seeks the
unity in which all diversities are rooted and into which they are resolved.
101.
Now,
what light does Theosophy throw on both these systems? Theosophy enables every thinker
to reconcile the partial statements which are apparently so contradictory.
Theosophy, with the Vedanta, proclaims the universal Self. All that the Vedanta
says of the universal Self and the Self- limitation, Theosophy repeats. We call
these Self-limited selves Monads, and we say, as the Vedantin says, that these
Monads reproduce the nature of the universal Self whose portions they are. And
hence you find in them the three qualities which you find in the Supreme. They
are units' and these represent the Purushas of the Samkhya; but with a very great difference, for they are not
passive watchers, but active agents in the drama of the universe, although,
being above the fivefold universe, they are as spectators who pull the strings
of the players of the stage. The Monad takes to himself from the universe of
matter atoms which show out the qualities corresponding to his three qualities,
and in these he thinks, and wills and acts. He takes to himself rhythmic
combinations, and shows his quality of cognition. He takes to himself
combinations that are mobile; through those he shows out his activity. He takes
the combinations that are inert, and shows out his quality of bliss, as the
will to be happy. Now notice the difference of phrase and thought. In the Samkhya, Matter changed to reflect the Spirit; in fact, the
Spirit appropriates portions of Matter, and through those expresses his own
characteristics--an enormous difference. He creates an actor for
Self-expression, and this actor is the "spiritual man" of the
Theosophical teaching, the spiritual Triad, the Atma-buddhi-manas,
to whom we shall return in a moment.
102.
The
Monad remains ever beyond the fivefold universe, and in that sense is a
spectator. He dwells beyond the five planes of matter. Beyond the Atmic, or Akasic; beyond the Buddhic plane, the plane of Vayu;
beyond the mental plane, the plane of Agni; beyond the astral plane, the plane
of Varuna; beyond the physical plane, the plane of Kubera. Beyond all these planes the Monad, the Self, stands
Self-conscious and Self-determined. He reigns in changeless peace and lives in
eternity. But as said above, he appropriates matter. He takes to himself an
atom of the Atmic plane, and in that he, as it were,
incorporates his will, and that becomes Atma. He
appropriates an atom of the Buddhic plane, and
reflects in that his aspect of cognition, and that becomes buddhi.
He appropriates an atom of the manasic plane and
embodies, as it were, his activity in it, and it becomes Manas.
Thus we get Atma, plus Buddhi,
plus Manas. That triad is the reflection in the
fivefold universe of the Monad beyond the fivefold universe. The terms of
Theosophy can be easily identified with those of other schools. The Monad of
Theosophy is the Jivatma of Indian philosophy, the Purusha of the Samkhya, the particularised Self of the Vedanta. The threefold
manifestation, Atma-buddhi-manas, is the result of
the Purusha's propinquity to Prakriti,
the subject of the Samkhyan philosophy, the Self
embodied in the highest sheaths, according to the Vedantic
teaching. In the one you have this Self and His sheaths, and in the other the
Subject, a reflection in matter of Purusha. Thus you
can readily see that you are dealing with the same concepts but they are looked
at from different standpoints. We are nearer to the Vedanta than to the Samkhya, but if you know the principles you can put the
statements of the two philosophies in their own niches and will not be
confused. Learn the principles and you can explain all the theories. That is
the value of the Theosophical teaching; it gives you the principles and leaves
you to study the philosophies, and you study them with a torch in your hand
instead of in the dark.
103.
Now
when we understand the nature of the spiritual man, or Triad, what do we find
with regard to all the manifestations of consciousness? That they are duads, Spirit-Matter everywhere, on every plane of our
fivefold universe. If you are a scientist, you will call it spiritualised
Matter; if you are a metaphysician you will call it materialised
Spirit. Either phrase is equally true, so long as you remember that both are
always present in every manifestation, that what you see is not the play of
matter alone, but the play of Spirit-Matter, inseparable through the period of
manifestation. Then, when you come, in reading an ancient book, to the
statement "mind is material," you will not be confused; you will know
that the writer is only speaking on the Samkhyan
line, which speaks of Matter everywhere but always implies that the Spirit is
looking on, and that this presence makes the work of Matter possible. You will
not, when reading the constant statement in Indian philosophies that "mind
is material," confuse this with the opposite view of the materialist which
says that "mind is the product of matter"--a very different thing.
Although the Samkhyan may use materialistic terms, he
always posits the vivifying influence of Spirit, while the materialist makes
Spirit the product of Matter. Really a gulf divides them, although the language
they use may often be the same.
104.
Mind
105.
"Yoga
is the inhibition of the functions of the mind," says Patanjali.
The functions of the mind must be suppressed, and in order that we may be able
to follow out really what this means, we must go more closely into what the
Indian philosopher means by the word "mind".
106.
Mind,
in the wide sense of the term, has three great properties or qualities:
cognition, desire or will, activity. Now Yoga is not immediately concerned with
all these three, but only with one, cognition, the Samkhyan subject. But you cannot separate cognition, as we
have seen, completely from the others, because consciousness is a unit, and
although we are only concerned with that part of consciousness which we
specifically call cognition, we cannot get cognition all by itself. Hence the
Indian psychologist investigating this property, cognition, divides it up into
three or, as the Vedanta says, into four (with all submission, the Vedantin
here makes a mistake). If you take up any Vedantic
book and read about mind, you will find a particular word used for it which. translated, means "internal organ". This antah-karana is the word always used where in English we
use "mind"; but it is only used in relation to cognition, not in
relation to activity and desire. It is said to be fourfold, being made up of Manas, Buddhi, Ahamkara, and Chitta; but this
fourfold division is a very curious division. We know what Manas
is, what Buddhi is, what Ahamkara
is, but what is this Chitta? What is Chitta, outside Manas, Buddhi and Ahamkara? Ask anyone
you like. and record his answer; you will find that it
is of the vaguest kind. Let us try to analyse it for
ourselves, and see whether light will come upon it by using the Theosophic idea of a triplet summed up in a fourth, that is
not really a fourth, but the summation of the three. Manas,
Buddhi and Ahamkara are the
three different sides of a triangle,' which triangle is called Chitta. The Chitta is not a
fourth, but the sum of the three: Manas, Buddhi and Ahamkara. This is the
old idea of a trinity in unity. Over and over again H. P. Blavatsky uses this
summation as a fourth to her triplets, for she follows the old methods. The
fourth, which sums up the three but is not other than they,
makes a unity out of their apparent diversity. Let us apply that to Antahkarana.
107.
Take
cognition. Though in cognition that aspect of the Self is predominant, yet it
cannot exist absolutely alone, The whole Self is there
in every act of cognition. Similarly with the other two. One cannot exist
separate from the others. Where there is cognition the other two are present,
though subordinate to it. The activity is there, the will is there. Let us
think of cognition as pure as it can be, turned on itself, reflected in itself,
and we have Buddhi, the pure reason, the very essence
of cognition; this in the universe is represented by Vishnu, the sustaining
wisdom of the universe. Now let us think of cognition looking outwards, and as
reflecting itself in activity, its brother quality, and we have a mixture of
cognition and activity which is called Manas, the
active mind; cognition reflected in activity is Manas
in man or Brahma, the creative mind, in the universe. When cognition similarly
reflects itself in will, then it becomes Ahamkara,
the "I am I" in man, represented by Mahadeva
in the universe. Thus wee have found within the limits of this cognition a
triple division, making up the internal organ or Antahkarana--Manas, plus Buddhi, plus Ahamkara--and we can find no fourth. What is then Chitta? It is the summation of the three, the three taken
together, the totality of the three. Because of the
old way of counting these things, you get this division of Antahkarana
into four.
108.
The
Mental Body
109.
We
must now deal with the mental body, which is taken as equivalent to mind for practical
purposes. The first thing for a man to do in practical Yoga is to separate
himself from the mental body, to draw away from that into the sheath next above
it. And here remember what I said previously, that in Yoga the Self is always
the consciousness plus the vehicle from which the consciousness is unable to
separate itself. All that is above the body you cannot leave is the Self for
practical purposes, and your first attempt must be to draw away from your
mental body. Under these conditions, Manas must be
identified with the Self, and the spiritual Triad, the Atma-buddhi-manas,
is to be realised as separate from the mental body.
That is the first step. You must be able to take up and lay down your mind as
you do a tool, before it is of any use to consider the further progress of the
Self in getting rid of its envelopes. Hence the mental body is taken as the
starting point. Suppress thought. Quiet it. Still it. Now what is the ordinary
condition of the mental body? As you look upon that body from a higher plane,
you see constant changes of colours playing in it.
You find that they are sometimes initiated from within, sometimes from without.
Sometimes a vibration from without has caused a change in consciousness, and a
corresponding change in the colours in the mental
body. If there is a change of consciousness, that
causes vibration in the matter in which that consciousness is functioning. The
mental body is a body of ever-changing hues and colours,
never still, changing colour with swift rapidity
throughout the whole of it. Yoga is the stopping of all these, the inhibition
of vibrations and changes alike. Inhibition of the change of consciousness
stops the vibration of the mental body; the checking of the vibration of the
mental body checks the change in consciousness. In the mental body of a Master
there is no change of colour save as initiated from
within; no outward stimulus can produce any answer, any vibration,ùin that perfectly controlled mental body. The colour of the mental body of a Master is as moonlight on
the rippling ocean. Within that whiteness of moon-like refulgence lie all
possibilities of colour, but nothing in the outer
world can make the faintest change of hue sweep over its steady radiance. If a
change of consciousness occurs within, then the change will send a wave of
delicate hues over the mental body which responds only in colour
to changes initiated from within and never to changes stimulated from without.
His mental body is never His Self, but only His tool or instrument, which He
can take up or lay down at His will. It is only an outer sheath that He uses
when He needs to communicate with the lower world.
110.
By
that idea of the stopping of all changes of colour in
the mental body you can realise what is meant by
inhibition. The functions of mind are stopped in Yoga. You have to begin with
your mental body. You have to learn how to stop the whole of those vibrations,
how to make the mental body colourless, still and
quiet, responsive only to the impulses that you choose to put upon it. How will
you be able to tell when the mind is really coming under control, when it is no
longer a part of your Self? You will begin to realise
this when you find that, by the action of your will, you can check the current
of thought and hold the mind in perfect stillness. Sheath after sheath has to
be transcended, and the proof of transcending is that it can no longer affect
you. You can affect it, but it cannot affect you. The moment that nothing
outside you can harass you, can stir the mind, the moment that the mind does
not respond to the outer, save under your own impulse, then can you say of it:
"This is not my Self." It has become part of the outer,
it can no longer be identified with the Self.
111.
From
this you pass on to the conquest of the causal body in a similar way. When the
conquering of the causal body is complete then you go to the conquering of the Buddhic body. When mastery over the Buddhic
body is complete, you pass on to the~conquest of the Atmic body.
112.
Mind
and Self
113.
You cannot
be surprised that under these conditions of continued disappearance of
functions, the unfortunate student asks: " What
becomes of the mind itself? If you suppress all the functions, what is
left?" In the Indian way of teaching, when you come to a difficulty,
someone jumps up and asks a question. And in the commentaries, the question
which raises the difficulty is always put. The answer of Patanjali
is: "Then the spectator remains in his own form." Theosophy answers:
"The Monad remains." It is the end of the human pilgrimage. That is
the highest point to which humanity may climb: to suppress all the reflections
in the fivefold universe through which the Monad has manifested his powers, and
then for the Monad to realise himself, enriched by
the experiences through which his manifested aspects have passed. But to the Samkhyan the difficulty is very great, for when he has only
his spectator left, when spectacle ceases, the spectator himself almost
vanishes. His only function was to look on at the play of mind. When the play
of mind is gone, what is left? He can no longer be a spectator, since there is
nothing to see. The only answer is: " He remains
in his own form." He is now out of manifestation, the duality is
transcended, and so the Spirit sinks back into latency, no longer capable of
manifestation. There you come to a very serious difference with the
Theosophical view of the universe, for according to that view of the universe,
when all these functions have been suppressed, then the Monad is ruler over matter
and is prepared for a new cycle of activity, no longer slave but master.
114.
All
analogy shows us that as the Self withdraws from sheath after sheath, he does
not lose but gains in Self- realisation. Self-realisation becomes more and more vivid with each
successive withdrawal; so that as the Self puts aside one veil of matter after
another, recognises in regular succession that each
body in turn is not himself, by that process of
withdrawal his sense of Self-reality becomes keener, not less keen. It is important
to remember that, because often Western readers, dealing with Eastern ideas, in
consequence of misunderstanding the meaning of the state of liberation, or the
condition of Nirvana, identify it with nothingness or unconsciousness--an
entirely mistaken idea which is apt to colour the
whole of their thought when dealing with Yogic processes. Imagine the condition
of a man who identifies himself completely with the body, so that he cannot,
even in thought, separate himself from it--the state of the early undeveloped
man--and compare that with the strength, vigour and
lucidity of your own mental consciousness.
115.
The
consciousness of the early man limited to the physical body, with occasional
touches of dream consciousness, is very restricted in its range. He has no idea
of the sweep of your consciousness, of your abstract thinking. But is that
consciousness of the early man more vivid, or less vivid, than yours? Certainly you will say, it is less vivid. You have largely
transcended his powers of consciousness. Your consciousness is astral rather
than physical, but has thereby increased its vividness. AS the Self withdraws himself from sheath after sheath, he realises
himself more and more, not less and less; Self-realisation
becomes more intense, as sheath after sheath is cast aside. The centre grows
more powerful as the circumference becomes more permeable, and at last a stage
is reached when the centre knows itself at every point of the circumference.
When that is accomplished the circumference vanishes, but not so the centre.
The centre still remains. Just as you are more vividly conscious than the early
man, just as your consciousness is more alive, not less, than that of an
undeveloped man, so it is as we climb up the stairway of life and cast away garment
after garment. We become more conscious of existence, more conscious of
knowledge, more conscious of Self-determined power. The faculties of the Self
shine out more strongly, as veil after veil falls away. By analogy, then, when
we touch the Monad, our consciousness should be mightier, more vivid, and more
perfect. As you learn to truly live, your powers and feelings grow in strength.
116.
And
remember that all control is exercised over sheaths, over portions of the
Not-Self. You do not control your Self; that is a misconception; you control
your Not-Self. The Self is never controlled; He is the Inner Ruler Immortal. He
is the controller, not the controlled. As sheath after sheath becomes subject
to your Self, and body after body becomes the tool of your Self, then shall you
realise the truth of the saying of the Upanishad,
that you are the Self, the Inner Ruler, the immortal.
117.
Lecture
III
118.
YOGA
AS SCIENCE
119.
I
propose now to deal first with the two great methods of Yoga, one related to
the Self and the other to the Not-Self. Let me remind you, before I begin, that
we are dealing only with the science of Yoga and not with other means of
attaining union with the Divine. The scientific method, following the old
Indian conception, is the one to which I am asking your attention. I would
remind you, however, that, though I am only dealing with this, there remain
also the other two great ways of Bhakti and Karma.
The Yoga we are studying specially concerns the Marga
of Jnanam or knowledge, and within that way, within that
Marga or path of knowledge, we find that three
subdivisions occur, as everywhere in nature.
120.
Methods
of Yoga
121.
With
regard to what I have just called the two great methods in Yoga, we find that
by one of these a man treads the path of knowledge by Buddhi--the
pure reason; and the other the same path by Manas--the
concrete mind. You may remember that in speaking yesterday of the sub-
divisions of Antah-karana, I pointed out to you that
there we had a process of reflection of one quality in another; and within the
limits of the cognitional aspect of the Self, you find Buddhi,
cognition reflected in cognition; and Ahamkara,
cognition reflected in will; and Manas, cognition
reflected in activity. Bearing those three sub-divisions in mind, you will very
readily be able to see that these two methods of Yoga fall naturally under two
of these heads. But what of the third? What of the will, of which Ahamkara is the representative in cognition? That certainly
has its road, but it can scarcely be said to be a "method". Will
breaks its way upwards by sheer unflinching determination, keeping its eyes
fixed on the end, and using either buddhi or manes
indifferently as a means to that end. Metaphysics is used to realise the Self; science is used to understand the
Not-Self; but either is grasped, either is thrown aside, as it serves, or fails
to serve, the needs of the moment. Often the man, in whom will is predominant,
does not know how he gains the object he is aiming at; it comes to his hands,
but the "how" is obscure to him; he willed to have it, and nature
gives it to him. This is also seen in Yoga in the man of Ahamkara,
the sub-type of will in cognition. Just as in the man of Ahamkara,
Buddhi and Manas are
subordinate, so in the man of Buddhi, Ahamkara and Manas are not
absent, but are subordinate; and in the man of Manas,
Ahamkara and Buddhi are
present, but play a subsidiary part. Both the metaphysician and the scientist
must be supported by Ahamkara. That Self-determining
faculty, that deliberate setting of oneself to a chosen end,
that is necessary in all forms of Yoga. Whether a Yogi is going to
follow the purely cognitional way of Buddhi, or
whether he is going to follow the more active path of Manas,
in both cases he needs the self-determining will in order to sustain him in his
arduous task. You remember it is written in the Upanishad that the weak man
cannot reach the Self. Strength is wanted. Determination is wanted.
Perseverance is wanted. And you must have, in every successful Yogi, that
intense determination which is the very essence of individuality.
122.
Now
what are these two great methods? One of them may be described as seeking the
Self by the Self; the other may be described as seeking the Self by the
Not-Self; and if you will think of them in that fashion, I think you will find
the idea illuminative. Those who seek the Self by the Self, seek him through
the faculty of Buddhi; they turn ever inwards, and
turn away from the outer world. Those who seek the Self by the Not-Self, seek
him through the active working Manas; they are
outward-turned, and by study of the Not-Self, they learn to realise
the Self. The one is the path of the metaphysician; the other is the path of
the scientist.
123.
To
the Self by the Self
124.
Let
us look at this a little more closely, with its appropriate methods. The path
on which the faculty of Buddhi is used predominantly
is, as just said, the path of the metaphysician. It is the path of the
philosopher. He turns inwards, ever seeking to find the Self by diving into the
recesses of his own nature. Knowing that the Self is within him, he tries to
strip away vesture after vesture, envelope after envelope, and by a process of
rejecting them he reaches the glory of the unveiled Self. To begin this, he
must give up concrete thinking and dwell amidst abstractions. His method, then,
must be strenuous, long-sustained, patient meditation. Nothing else will serve
his end; strenuous, hard thinking, by which he rises away from the concrete
into the abstract regions of the mind; strenuous, hard thinking, further
continued, by which he reaches from the abstract region of the mind up to the
region of Buddhi, where unity is sensed; still by
strenuous thinking, climbing yet further, until Buddhi
as it were opens out into Atma, until the Self is
seen in his splendour, with only a film of atmic matter, the envelope of Atma
in the manifested fivefold world. It is along that difficult and strenuous path
that the Self must be found by way of the Self.
125.
Such
a man must utterly disregard the Not-Self. He must shut his senses against the
outside world. The world must no longer be able to touch him. The senses must
be closed against all the vibrations that come from without, and he must turn a
deaf ear, a blind eye, to all the allurements of matter, to all the diversity of
objects, which make up the universe of the Not-Self. Seclusion will help him,
until he is strong enough to close himself against the outer stimuli or
allurements. The contemplative orders in the Roman Catholic Church offer a good
environment for this path. They put the outer world away, as far away as
possible. It is a snare, a temptation, a hindrance. Always turning away from
the world, the Yogi must fix his thought, his attention, upon the Self. Hence
for those who walk along this road, what are called the Siddhis
are direct obstacles, and not helps. But that statement that you find so often,
that the Siddhis are things to be avoided, is far
more sweeping than some of our modern Theosophists are apt to imagine. They
declare that the Siddhis are to be avoided, but
forget that the Indian who says this also avoids the use of the physical
senses. He closes physical eyes and ears as hindrances. But some Theosophists
urge avoidance of all use of the astral senses and mental senses, but they do
not object to the free use of the physical senses, or dream that they are
hindrances. Why not? If the senses are obstacles in their finer forms, they are
also obstacles in their grosser manifestations. To the man who would find the
Self by the Self, every sense is a hindrance and an obstacle, and there is no
logic, no reason, in denouncing the subtler senses only, while forgetting the
temptations of the physical senses, impediments as much as the other. No such
division exists for the man who tries to understand the universe in which he
is. In the search for the Self by the Self, all that is not Self
is an obstacle. Your eyes, your ears, everything that puts you into contact
with the outer world, is just as much an obstacle as the subtler forms of the
same senses which put you into touch with the subtler worlds of matter, which
you call astral and mental. This exaggerated fear of the Siddhis
is only a passing reaction, not based on understanding but on lack of
understanding; and those who denounce the Siddhis
should rise to the logical position of the Hindu Yogi, or of the Roman Catholic
recluse, who denounces all the senses, and all the objects of the senses, as
obstacles in the way. Many Theosophists here, and more in the West, think that
much is gained by acuteness of the physical senses, and of the other faculties
in the physical brain; but the moment the senses are acute enough to be astral,
or the faculties begin to work in astral matter, they treat them as objects of
denunciation. That is not rational. It is not logical. Obstacles, then, are all
the senses, whether you call them Siddhis or not, in
the search for the Self by turning away from the Not-Self.
126.
It is
necessary for the man who seeks the Self by the Self to have the quality which
is called "faith," in the sense in which I defined it before--the
profound, intense conviction, that nothing can shake, of the reality of the
Self within you. That is the one thing that is worthy to be dignified by the
name of faith. Truly it is beyond reason, for not by reason may the Self be
known as real. Truly it is not based on argument, for not by reasoning may the
Self be discovered. It is the witness of the Self within you to his own supreme
reality, and that unshakable conviction, which is shraddha,
is necessary for the treading of this path. It is necessary, because without it
the human mind would fail, the human courage would be daunted, the human perseverance would break, with the difficulties of
the seeking for the Self. Only that imperious conviction that the Self is, only
that can cheer the pilgrim in the darkness that comes down upon him, in the
void that he must cross before--the life of the lower being thrown away--the
life of the higher is realised. This imperious faith
is to the Yogi on this path what experience and knowledge are to the Yogi on
the other.
127.
To
the Self Through the Not-self
128.
Turn
from him to the seeker for the Self through the Not- Self. This is the way of
the scientist, of the man who uses the concrete, active Manas,
in order scientifically to understand the universe; he has to find the real
among the unreal, the eternal among the changing, the Self amid the diversity
of forms. How is he to do it? By a close and rigorous study of every changing
form in which the Self has veiled himself. By studying the Not-Self around him
and in him, by understanding his own nature, by analysing
in order to understand, by studying nature in others as well as in himself, by
learning to know himself and to gain knowledge of others; slowly, gradually,
step by step, plane after plane, he has to climb upwards, rejecting one form of
matter after another, finding not in these the Self he seeks. As he learns to
conquer the physical plane, he uses the keenest senses in order to understand,
and finally to reject. He says: "This is not my Self. This changing
panorama, these obscurities, these continual transformations, these are
obviously the antithesis of the eternity, the lucidity, the stability of the
Self. These cannot be my Self." And thus he constantly rejects them. He
climbs on to the astral plane and, using there the finer astral senses, he
studies the astral world, only to find that that also is changing and manifests
not the changelessness of the Self. After the astral world is conquered and
rejected, he climbs on into the mental plane, and there still studies the
ever-changing forms of that Manasic world, only once
more to reject them: "These are not the Self." Climbing still higher,
ever following the track of forms, he goes from the mental to the Buddhic plane, where the Self begins to show his radiance
and beauty in manifested union. Thus by studying diversity he reaches the
conception of unity, and is led into the understanding of the One. To him the realisation of the Self comes through the study of the
Not-Self, by the separation of the Not-Self from the Self. Thus he does by
knowledge and experience what the other does by pure thinking and by faith. In
this path of finding the Self through the Not-Self, the so-called Siddhis are necessary. Just as you cannot study the physical
world without the physical senses, so you cannot study the astral world without
the astral senses, nor the mental world without the
mental senses. Therefore, calmly choose your ends, and then think out your
means, and you will not 'be in any difficulty about the method you should
employ, the path you should tread.
129.
Thus
we see that there are two methods, and these must be kept separate in your
thought. Along the line of pure thinking--the metaphysical line--you may reach
the Self. So also along the line of scientific observation and experiment--the
physical line, in the widest sense of the term physical--you may reach the
Self. Both are ways of Yoga. Both are included in the directions that you may
read in the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. Those
directions will cease to be self-contradictory, if you will only separate in
your thought the two methods. Patanjali has given, in
the later part of his Sutras, some hints as to the way in which the Siddhis may be developed. Thus you may find your way to the
Supreme.
130.
Yoga
and Morality
131.
The
next point that I would pause upon, and ask you to realise,
is the fact that Yoga is a science of psychology. I want further to point out
to you that it is not a science of ethic, though ethic is certainly the
foundation of it. Psychology and ethic are not the same. The science of
psychology is the result of the study of mind. The science of ethic is the
result of the study of conduct, so as to bring about the harmonious relation of
one to another. Ethic is a science of life, and not an investigation into the
nature of mind and the methods by which the powers of the mind may be developed
and evolved. I pause on this because of the confusion that exists in many
people as regards this point. If you understand the scope of Yoga aright, such a confusion ought not to arise. The confused idea makes
people think that in Yoga they ought to find necessarily what are called
precepts of morality, ethic. Though Patanjali gives
the universal precepts of morality and right conduct in the first two angas of Yoga, called yama and niyama, yet they are subsidiary to the main topic, are the
foundation of it, as just said. No practice of Yoga is possible unless you
possess the ordinary moral attributes summed up in yama
and niyama; that goes without saying. But you should
not expect to find moral precepts in a scientific text book of psychology, like
Yoga. A man studying the science of electricity is not shocked if he does not
find in it moral precepts; why then should one studying Yoga, as a science of psychology,
expect to find moral precepts in it? I do not say that morality is unimportant
for the Yogi. On the contrary, it is all-important. It is absolutely necessary
in the first stages of Yoga for everyone. But to a Yogi who has mastered these,
it is not necessary, if he wants to follow the left-hand path. For you must
remember that there is a Yoga of the left-hand path,
as well as a Yoga of the right-hand path. Yoga is there also followed, and
though asceticism is always found in the early stages, and sometimes in the
later, true morality is absent. The black magician is often as rigid in his
morality as any Brother of the White Lodge.[FN#8:
Terms while and black as used here have no relation to race or colour.] Of the disciples of the black and white magicians,
the disciple of the black magician is often the more ascetic. His object is not
the purification of life for the sake of humanity, but the purification of the
vehicle, that he may be better able to acquire power. The difference between
the white and the black magician lies in the motive. You might have a white
magician, a follower of the right-hand path, rejecting meat because the way of
obtaining it is against the law of compassion. The follower of the left-hand
path may also reject meat, but for the reason that be would not be able to work
so well with his vehicle if it were full of the rajasic
elements of meat. The difference is in the motive. The outer action is the
same. Both men may be called moral, if judged by the outer action alone. The
motive marks the path, while the outer actions are often identical.
132.
It is
a moral thing to abstain from meat, because thereby you are lessening the
infliction of suffering; it is not a moral act to abstain from meat from the
yogic standpoint, but only a means to an end. Some of the greatest yogis in
Hindu literature were, and are, men whom you would rightly call black
magicians. But still they are yogis. One of the greatest yogis of all was Ravana, the anti-Christ, the Avatara
of evil, who summed up all the evil of the world in his own person in order to
oppose the Avatara of good. He was a great, a marvellous yogi, and by Yoga he gained his power. Ravana was a typical yogi of the left-hand path, a great
destroyer, and he practiced Yoga to obtain the power of destruction, in order
to force from the hands of the Planetary Logos the boon that no man should be
able to kill him. You may say: "What a strange thing that a man can force
from God such a power." The laws of Nature are the expression of Divinity,
and if a man follows a law of Nature, he reaps the result which that law
inevitably brings; the question whether he is good or bad to his fellow men
does not touch this matter at all. Whether some other law is or is not obeyed,
is entirely outside the question. It is a matter of dry fact that the
scientific man may be moral or immoral, provided that his immorality does not
upset his eyesight or nervous system. It is the same with Yoga. Morality
matters profoundly, but it does not affect these particular things, and if you
think it does, you are always getting into bogs and changing your moral
standpoint, either lowering or making it absurd. Try to understand; that is
what the Theosophist should do; and when you understand, you will not fall into
the blunders nor suffer the bewilderment many do, when you expect laws
belonging to one region of the universe to bring about results in another. The
scientific man understands that. He knows that a discovery in chemistry does
not depend upon his morality, and he would not think of doing an act of charity
with a view to finding out a new element. He will not fail in a well-wrought
experiment, however vicious his private life may be. The things are in
different regions, and he does not confuse the laws of the two. As Ishvara is absolutely just, the man who obeys a law reaps
the fruit of that law, whether his actions, in any other fields, are beneficial
to man or not. If you sow rice, you will reap rice; if you sow weeds, you will
reap weeds; rice for rice, and weed for weed. The harvest is according to the
sowing. For this is a universe of law. By law we conquer, by law we succeed.
Where does morality come in, then? When you are dealing with a magician of the
right-hand path, the servant of the White Lodge, there morality is an all-important
factor. Inasmuch as he is learning to be a servant of humanity, he must observe
the highest morality, not merely the morality of the world, for the white
magician has to deal with helping on harmonious relations between man and man.
The white magician must be patient. The black magician may quite well be harsh.
The white magician must be compassionate; compassion widens out his nature, and
he is trying to make his consciousness include the whole of humanity. But not
so the black magician. He can afford to ignore compassion.
133.
A
white magician may strive for power. But when he is striving for power, he
seeks it that he may serve humanity and become more useful to mankind, a more
effective servant in the helping of the world. But not so the brother of the
dark side. When he strives for power, he seeks if for himself, so that he may
use it against the whole world. He may be harsh and cruel. He wants to be
isolated; and harshness and cruelty tend to isolate him. He wants power; and
holding that power for himself, he can put himself temporarily, as it were,
against the Divine Will in evolution.
134.
The
end of the one is Nirvana, where all separation has ceased. The end of the
other is Avichi--the uttermost isolation--the kaivalya of the black magician. Both are yogis, both follow
the science of yoga, and each gets the result of the
law he has followed: one the kaivalya of Nirvana, the
other the kaivalya of Avichi.
135.
Composition
of States of the Mind
136.
Let
us pass now to the "states of the mind" as they are called. The word
which is used for the states of the mind by Patanjali
is Vritti. This admirably constructed language
Sanskrit gives you in that very word its own meaning. Vrittis
means the "being" of the mind; the ways in which mind can exist; the
modes of the mind; the modes of mental existence; the ways of existing. That is
the literal meaning of this word. A subsidiary meaning is a "turning
around," a "moving in a circle". You have to stop, in Yoga,
every mode of existing in which the mind manifests itself. In order to guide
you towards the power of stopping them--for you cannot stop them till you
understand them--you are told that these modes of mind are fivefold in their
nature. They are pentads. The Sutra, as usually translated, says " the Vrittis are fivefold (panchatayyah)," but pentad is a more accurate
rendering of the word pancha-tayyah, in the original,
than fivefold. The word pentad at once recalls to you the way in which the
chemist speaks of a monad, triad, heptad, when he
deals with elements. The elements with which the chemist is dealing are related
to the unit-element in different ways. Some elements are related to it in one
way only, and are called monads; others are related in two ways, and are called
duads, and so on.
137.
Is
this applicable to the states of mind also? Recall the shloka
of the Bhagavad-Gita in which it is said that the Jiva
goes out into the world, drawing round him the five senses and mind as sixth.
That may throw a little light on the subject. You have five senses, the five ways
of knowing, the five jnanendriyas or organs of
knowing. Only by these five senses can you know the outer world. Western
psychology says that nothing exists in thought that does not exist in
sensation. That is not true universally; it is not true of the abstract mind, nor wholly of the concrete. But there is a great deal of
truth in it. Every idea is a pentad. It is made up of five elements. Each
element making up the idea comes from one of the senses, and of these there are
at present five. Later on every idea will be a heptad,
made up of seven elements. For the present, each has five qualities, which
build up the idea. The mind unites the whole together into a single thought, synthesises the five sensations. If you think of an orange
and analyse your thought of an orange, you will find
in it: colour, which comes through the eye;
fragrance, which comes through the nose; taste, which comes through the tongue;
roughness or smoothness, which comes through the sense of touch; and you would
hear musical notes made by the vibrations of the molecules, coming through the
sense of hearing, were it keener. If you had a perfect sense of hearing. you would hear the sound of the orange also, for wherever
there is vibration there is sound. All this, synthesised
by the mind into one idea, is an orange. That is the root reason for the
"association of ideas". It is not only that a fragrance recalls the
scene and the circumstances under which the fragrance was observed, but because
every impression is made through all the five senses and, therefore, when one
is stimulated, the others are recalled. The mind is like a prism. If you put a
prism in the path of a ray of white light, it will break it up into its seven
constituent rays and seven colours will appear. Put
another prism in the path of these seven rays, and as they pass through the
prism, the process is reversed and the seven become one white light. The mind
is like the second prism. It takes in the five sensations that enter through
the senses, and combines them into a single precept. As at the present stage of
evolution the senses are five only, it unites the five sensations into one
idea. What the white ray is to the seven- coloured
light, that a thought or idea is to the fivefold sensation. That is the meaning
of the much controverted Sutra: "Vrittayah panchatayych,"
"the vrittis, or modes of the mind, are
pentads." If you look at it in that way, the later teachings will be more
clearly understood.
138.
As I
have already said, that sentence, that nothing exists in thought which is not
in sensation, is not the whole truth. Manas, the sixth sense, adds to the sensations its own pure
elemental nature. What is that nature that you find thus added? It is the
establishment of a relation, that is really what the
mind adds. All thinking is the "establishment of relations," and the
more closely you look into that phrase, the more you will realise
how it covers all the varied processes of the mind. The very first process of
the mind is to become aware of an outside world. However dimly at first, we
become aware of something outside ourselves--a process generally called
perception. I use the more general term "establishing a relation,"
because that runs through the whole of the mental processes, whereas perception
is only a single thing. To use a well-known simile, when a little baby feels a
pin pricking it, it is conscious of pain, but not at first conscious of the
pin, nor yet conscious of where exactly the pin is. It does not recognise the part of the body in which the pin is. There is
no perception, for perception is defined as relating a sensation to the object
which causes the sensation. You only, technically speaking,
"perceive" when you make a relation between the object and yourself.
That is the very first of these mental processes, following on the heels of
sensation. Of course, from the Eastern standpoint, sensation is a mental
function also, for the senses are part of the cognitive faculty, but they are
unfortunately classed with feelings in Western psychology. Now having established
that relation between yourself and objects outside, what is the next process of
the mind? Reasoning: that is, the establishing of relations between different
objects, as perception is the establishment of your relation with a single
object. When you have perceived many objects, then you begin to reason in order
to establish relations between them. Reasoning is the establishment of a new
relation, which comes out from the comparison of the different objects that by
perception you have established in relation with yourself, and the result is a
concept. This one phrase, "establishment of relations," is true all
round. The whole process of thinking is the establishment of relations, and it
is natural that it should be so, because the Supreme Thinker, by establishing a
relation, brought matter into existence. Just as He, by establishing that
primary relation between Himself and the Not-Self, makes a universe possible,
so do we reflect His powers in ourselves, thinking by the same method,
establishing relations, and thus carrying out every intellectual process.
139.
Pleasure
and Pain
140.
Let
us pass again from that to another statement made by this great teacher of
Yoga: "Pentads are of two kinds, painful and non-painful." Why did he
not say: "painful and pleasant"? Because he was an accurate thinker,
a logical thinker, and he uses the logical division that includes the whole
universe of discourse, A and Not-A, painful and
non-painful. There has been much controversy among psychologists as to a third
kind --indifferent. Some psychologists divide all feelings into three: painful,
pleasant and indifferent. Feelings cannot be divided merely into pain and pleasure, there is a third class, called indifference, which
is neither painful nor pleasant. Other psychologists say that indifference is
merely pain or pleasure that is not marked enough to be called the one or the
other. Now this controversy and tangle into which psychologists have fallen
might be avoided if the primary division of feelings were a logical division. A
and Not-A--that is the only true and logical division. Patanjali
is absolutely logical and right. In order to avoid the quicksand into which the
modern psychologists have fallen, he divides all vrittis,
modes of mind, into painful and nonpainful.
141.
There
is, however, a psychological reason why we should say "pleasure and
pain," although it is not a logical division. The reason why there should
be that classification is that the word pleasure and the word pain express two
fundamental states of difference, not in the Self, but in the vehicles in which
that Self dwells. The Self, being by nature unlimited, is ever pressing, so to
say, against any boundaries which seek to limit him. When these limitations
give way a little before the constant pressure of the Self, we feel
"pleasure," and when they resist or contract, we feel
"pain". They are not states of the Self so much as states of the
vehicles, and states of certain changes in consciousness. Pleasure and pain
belong to the Self as a whole, and not to any aspect of the Self separately
taken. When pleasure and pain are marked off as belonging only to the desire
nature, the objection arises: "Well, but in the exercise of the cognitive
faculty there is an intense pleasure. When you use the creative faculty of the
mind you are conscious of a profound joy in its exercise, and yet that creative
faculty can by no means be classed with desire." The answer is:
"Pleasure belongs to the Self as a whole. Where the vehicles yield
themselves to the Self, and permit it to 'expand' as is its eternal nature,
then what is called pleasure is felt." It has been rightly said:
"Pleasure is a sense of moreness." Every
time you feel pleasure, you will find the word "moreness"
covers the case. It will cover the lowest condition of pleasure, the pleasure
of eating. You are becoming more by appropriating to yourself a part of the
Not-Self, food. You will find it true of the highest condition of bliss, union
with the Supreme. You become more by expanding yourself to His infinity. When
you have a phrase that can be applied to the lowest and highest with which you
are dealing, you may be fairly sure it is all-inclusive, and that, therefore,
"pleasure is moreness" is a true statement.
Similarly, pain is "lessness".
142.
If
you understand these things your philosophy of life will become more practical,
and you will be able to help more effectively people who fall into evil ways.
Take drink. The real attraction of drinking lies in the fact that, in the first
stages of it, a more keen and vivid life is felt. That stage is overstepped in
the case of the man who gets drunk, and then the attraction ceases. The
attraction lies in the first stages, and many people have experienced that, who
would never dream of becoming drunk. Watch people who are taking wine and see
how much more lively and talkative they become. There lies the attraction, the
danger.
143.
The
real attraction in most coarse forms of excess is that they give an added sense
of life, and you will never be able to redeem a man from his excess unless you
know why he does it. Understanding the attractiveness of the first step, the
increase of life, then you will be able to put your finger on the point of
temptation, and meet that in your argument with him. So that this sort of
mental analysis is not only interesting, but practically useful to every helper
of mankind. The more you know, the greater is your power to help.
144.
The
next question that arises is: "Why does he not divide all feelings into
pleasurable and not-pleasurable, rather than into 'painful and
not-painful'?" A Westerner will not be at a loss to answer that: "Oh,
the Hindu is naturally so very pessimistic, that he naturally ignores pleasure
and speaks of painful and not-painful. The universe is full of pain." But
that would not be a true answer. In the first place the Hindu is not
pessimistic. He is the most optimistic of men. He has not got one solitary
school of philosophy that does not put in its foreground that the object of all
philosophy is to put an end to pain. But he is profoundly reasonable. He knows
that we need not go about seeking happiness. It is already ours, for it is the
essence of our own nature. Do not the Upanishads say: "The Self is
bliss"? Happiness exists perennially within you. It is your normal state.
You have not to seek it. You will necessarily be happy if you get rid of the
obstacles called pain, which are in the modes of mind. Happiness is not a
secondary thing, but pain is, and these painful things are obstacles to be got
rid of. When they are stopped, you must be happy. Therefore Patanjali
says: "The vrittis are painful and
non-painful." Pain is an excrescence. It is a transitory thing. The Self,
who is bliss, being the all-permeating life of the universe, pain has no
permanent place in it. Such is the Hindu position, the most optimistic in the
world.
145.
Let
us pause for a moment to ask: "Why should there be pain at all if the Self
is bliss?" Just because the nature of the Self is bliss. It would be
impossible to make the Self turn outward, come into manifestation, if only
streams of bliss flowed in on him. He would have remained unconscious of the
streams. To the infinity of bliss nothing could be added. If you had a stream
of water flowing unimpeded in its course, pouring more water into it would
cause no ruffling, the stream would go on heedless of
the addition. But put an obstacle in the way, so that the free flow is checked,
and the stream will struggle and fume against the obstacle, and make every endeavour to sweep it away. That which is contrary to it,
that which will check its current's smooth flow, that
alone will cause effort. That is the first function of pain. It is the only
thing that can rouse the Self. It is the only thing that can awaken his
attention. When that peaceful, happy, dreaming, inturned
Self finds the surge of pain beating against him, he awakens: "What is
this, contrary to my nature, antagonistic and repulsive, what is this?" It
arouses him to the fact of a surrounding universe, an outer world. Hence in
psychology, in yoga, always basing itself on the ultimate analysis of the fact
of nature, pain is the thing that asserts itself as the most important factor
in Self-realisation; that which is other than the
Self will best spur the Self into activity. Therefore we find our commentator,
when dealing with pain, declares that the karmic receptacle the causal body,
that in which all the seeds of karma are gathered Up, has for its builder all
painful experiences; and along that line of thought we come to the great generalisation: the first function of pain in the universe
is to arouse the Self to turn himself to the outer world, to evoke his aspect
of activity.
146.
The
next function of pain is the organisation of the
vehicles. Pain makes the man exert himself, and by that exertion the matter of
his vehicles gradually becomes organised. If you want
to develop and organise your muscles, you make
efforts, you exercise them, and thus more life flows into them and they become
strong. Pain is necessary that the Self may force his vehicles into making
efforts which develop and organise them. Thus pain
not only awakens awareness, it also organises the
vehicles.
147.
It
has a third function also. Pain purifies. We try to get rid of that which
causes us pain. It is contrary to our nature, and we endeavour
to throw it away. All that is against the blissful nature of the Self is shaken
by pain out of the vehicles; slowly they become purified by suffering, and in
that way become ready for the handling of the Self.
148.
It
has a fourth function. Pain teaches. All the best lessons of life come from
pain rather than from joy. When one is becoming old, as I am and I look on the
long life behind me, a life of storm and stress, of difficulties and efforts, I
see something of the great lessons pain can teach. Out of my life story could efface
without regret everything that it has had of joy and happiness, but not one
pain would I let go, for pain is the teacher of wisdom.
149.
It
has a fifth function. Pain gives power. Edward Carpenter said, in his splendid
poem of "Time and Satan," after he had described the wrestlings and the overthrows: 'Every pain that I suffered
in one body became a power which I wielded in the next." Power is pain
transmuted.
150.
Hence
the wise man, knowing these things, does not shrink from pain; it means
purification, wisdom, power.
151.
It is
true that a man may suffer so much pain that for this incarnation he may be
numbed by it, rendered wholly or partially useless. Especially is this the case
when the pain has deluged in childhood. But even then, he shall reap his
harvest of good later. By his past, he may have rendered present pain
inevitable, but none the less can he turn it into a golden opportunity by
knowing and utilising its functions.
152.
You
may say: "What use then of pleasure, if pain is so splendid a thing?"
From pleasure comes illumination. Pleasure enables the Self to manifest. In
pleasure all the vehicles of the Self are made harrnonious;
they all vibrate together; the vibrations are rhythmical, not jangled as they
are in pain, and those rhythmical vibrations permit that expansion of the Self
of which I spoke, and thus lead up to illumination, the knowledge of the Self.
And if that be true, as it is true, you will see that pleasure plays an immense
part in nature, being of the nature of the Self, belonging to him. When it harmonises the vehicles of the Self from outside, it
enables the Self more readily to manifest himself through the lower selves
within us. Hence happiness is a condition of illumination. That is the
explanation of the value of the rapture of the mystic; it is an intense joy. A
tremendous wave of bliss, born of love triumphant, sweeps over the whole of his
being, and when that great wave of bliss sweeps over him, it harmonises the whole of his vehicles, subtle and gross
alike, and the glory of the Self is made manifest and he sees the face of his
God. Then comes the wonderful illumination, which for
the time makes him unconscious of all the lower worlds. It is because for a
moment the Self is realising himself as divine, that
it is possible for him to see that divinity which is cognate to himself. So you should not fear joy any more than you fear
pain, as some unwise people do, dwarfed by a mistaken religionism.
That foolish thought which you often find in an ignorant religion, that
pleasure is rather to be dreaded, as though God grudged joy to His children, is
one of the nightmares born of ignorance and terror. The Father of life is
bliss. He who is joy cannot grudge Himself to His children, and every
reflection of joy in the world is a reflection of the Divine Life, and a
manifestation of the Self in the midst of matter. Hence pleasure has its
function as well as pain and that also is welcome to the wise, for he
understands and utilises it. You can easily see how
along this line pleasure and pain become equally welcome. Identified with
neither, the wise man takes either as it comes, knowing its purpose. When we
understand the places of joy and of pain, then both lose their power to bind or
to upset us. If pain comes, we take it and utilise
it. If joy comes, we take it and utilise it. So we
may pass through life, welcoming both pleasure and
pain, content whichever may come to us, and not wishing for that which is for
the moment absent. We use both as means to a desired end; and thus we may rise
to a higher indifference than that of the stoic, to the true vairagya; both pleasure and pain are transcended, and the
Self remains, who is bliss.
153.
LECTURE
IV
154.
YOGA
AS PRACTICE
155.
In
dealing with the third section of the subject, I drew your attention to the
states of mind, and pointed out to you that, according to the Samskrit word vritti, those
states of mind should be regarded as ways m which the mind exists, or, to use
the philosophical phrase of the West, they are modes of mind, modes of mental
existence. These are the states which are to be inhibited, put an end to,
abolished, reduced into absolute quiescence. The
reason for this inhibition is the production of a state which allows the higher
mind to pour itself into the lower. To put it in another way: the lower mind,
unruffled, waveless, reflects the higher, as a waveless lake reflects the stars. You will remember the
phrase used in the Upanishad, which puts it less technically and
scientifically, but more beautifully, and declares that in the quietude of the
mind and the tranquility of the senses, a man may behold the majesty of the
Self. The method of producing this quietude is what we have now to consider.
156.
Inhibition
of States of Mind
157.
Two
ways, and two ways only, there are of inhibiting these modes, these ways of
existence, of the mind. They were given by Sri Krishna in the Bhagavad-Gita,
when Arjuna complained that the mind was impetuous,
strong, difficult to bend, hard to curb as the wind. His answer was definite:
" Without doubt, O mighty-armed, the mind is hard to curb and restless;
but it may be curbed by constant practice (abhyasa)
and by dispassion (vai-ragya)."[FN#9: loc. cit.,
VI. 35, 35]
158.
These
are the two methods, the only two methods, by which this restless, storm-tossed
mind can be reduced to peace and quietude. Vai-ragya
and abhyasa, they are the only two methods, but when
steadily practiced they inevitably bring about the result.
159.
Let
us consider what these two familiar words imply. Vai-ragya,
or dispassion, has as its main idea the clearing away of all passion for,
attraction to, the objects of the senses, the bonds which are made by desire
between man and the objects around him. Raga is "passion, addiction,"
that which binds a man to things. The prefix "vi"--changing to "vai" by a grammatical rule --means
"without," or "in opposition to". Hence vai-ragya
is "non-passion, absence of passion," not bound, tied or related to
any of these outside objects. Remembering that thinking is the establishing of
relations, we see that the getting rid of relations will impose on the mind the
stillness that is Yoga. All raga must be entirely put
aside. We must separate ourselves from it. We must acquire the opposite
condition, where every passion is stilled, where no attraction for the objects
of desire remains, where all the bonds that unite the man to surrounding
objects are broken. "When the bonds of the heart are broken, then the man
becomes immortal."
160.
How
shall this dispassion be brought about? There is only one right way of doing
it. By slowly and gradually drawing ourselves away from outer objects through
the more potent attraction of the Self. The Self is ever attracted to the Self.
That attraction alone can turn these vehicles away from the alluring and
repulsive objects that surround them; free from all raga, no more establishing
relations with objects, the separated Self finds
himself liberated and free, and union with the one Self becomes the sole object
of desire. But not instantly, by one supreme effort, by one endeavour,
can this great quality of dispassion become the characteristic of the man bent
on Yoga. He must practice dispassion constantly and steadfastly. That is
implied in the word joined with dispassion, abhyasa
or practice. The practice must be constant, continual and unbroken.
"Practice" does not mean only meditation, though this is the sense in
which the word is generally used; it means the deliberate, unbroken carrying
out of dispassion in the very midst of the objects that attract.
161.
In
order that you may acquire dispassion, you must practice it in the everyday
things of life. I have said that many confine abhyasa
to meditation. That is why so few people attain to Yoga. Another error is to
wait for some big opportunity. People prepare themselves for some tremendous
sacrifice and forget the little things of everyday life, in which the mind is
knitted to objects by a myriad tiny threads. These
things, by their pettiness, fail to attract attention, and in waiting for the
large thing, which does not come, people lose the daily practice of dispassion
towards the little things that are around them. By curbing desire at every
moment, we become indifferent to all the objects that surround us. Then, when
the great opportunity comes, we seize it while scarce aware that it is upon us.
Every day, all day long, practice--that is what is demanded from the aspirant
to Yoga, for only on that line can success come; and it is the wearisomeness of this strenuous, continued endeavour that tires out the majority of aspirants.
162.
I
must here warn you of a danger. There is a rough-and- ready way of quickly
bringing about dispassion. Some say to you: "Kill out all love and
affection; harden your hearts; become cold to all around you; desert your wife
and children, your father and mother, and fly to the desert or the jungle; put
a wall between youself and all objects of desire;
then dispassion will be yours." It is true that it is comparatively easy
to acquire dispassion in that way. But by that you kill more than desire. You
put round the Self, who is love, a barrier through which he is unable to
pierce. You cramp yourself by encircling yourself with a thick shell, and you
cannot break through it. You harden yourself where you ought to be softened;
you isolate yourself where you ought to be embracing others; you kill love and
not only desire, forgetting that love clings to the Self and seeks the Self,
while desire clings to the sheaths of the Self, the bodies in which the Self is
clothed. Love is the desire of the separated Self for union with all other
separated Selves. Dispassion is the non-attraction to matter--a very different
thing. You must guard love--for it is the very Self of the Self. In your
anxiety to acquire dispassion do not kill out love. Love is the life in everyone of us, separated Selves. It draws every separated
Self to the other Self. Each one of us is a part of one mighty whole. Efface
desire as regards the vehicles that clothe the Self, but do not efface love as
regards the Self, that never-dying force which draws Self
to Self. In this great up-climbing, it is far better to suffer from love rather
than to reject it, and to harden your hearts against all ties and claims of
affection. Suffer for love, even though the suffering be
bitter. Love, even though the love be an avenue of
pain. The pain shall pass away, but the love shall continue to grow, and in the
unity of the Self you shall finally discover that love is the great attracting
force which makes all things one.
163.
Many
people, in trying to kill out love, only throw themselves back, becoming less
human, not superhuman; by their mistaken attempts. It is by and through human
ties of love and sympathy that the Self unfolds. It is said of the Masters that
They love all humanity as a mother loves her firstborn
son. Their love is not love watered down to coolness, but love for all raised
to the heat of the highest particular loves of smaller souls. Always mistrust
the teacher who tells you to kill out love, to be indifferent to human
affections. That is the way which leads to the left-hand path.
164.
Meditation
With and Without Seed
165.
The
next step is our method of meditation. What do we mean by meditation?
Meditation cannot be the same for every man. Though the same in principle,
namely, the steadying of the mind, the method must vary with the temperament of
the practitioner. Suppose that you are a strong-minded and intelligent man,
fond of reasoning. Suppose that connected links of thought and argument have
been to you the only exorcise of the mind. Utilise
that past training. Do not imagine that you can make your mind still by a
single effort. Follow a logical chain of reasoning, step by step, link after
link; do not allow the mind to swerve a hair's breadth from it. Do not allow
the mind to go aside to other lines of thought. Keep it rigidly along a single
line, and steadiness will gradually result. Then, when you have worked up to
your highest point of reasoning and reached the last link of your chain of argument, and your mind will carry you no further, and
beyond that you can see nothing, then stop. At that highest point of thinking,
cling desperately to the last link of the chain, and there keep the mind
poised, in steadiness and strenuous quiet, waiting for what may come. After a
while, you will be able to maintain this attitude for a considerable time.
166.
For
one in whom imagination is stronger than the reasoning faculty, the method by
devotion, rather than by reasoning, is the method. Let him call imagination to
his help. He should picture some scene, in which the object of his devotion
forms the central figure, building it up, bit by bit, as a painter paints a
picture, putting in it gradually all the elements of the scene He must work at
it as a painter works on his canvas, line by line, his brush the brush of
imagination. At first the work will be very slow, but the picture soon begins
to present itself at call. Over and over he should picture the scene, dwelling
less and less on the surrounding objects and more and more on the central
figure which is the object of his heart's devotion. The drawing of the mind to a
point, in this way, brings it under control and steadies it, and thus
gradually, by this use of the imagination. he brings
the mind under command. The object of devotion will be according to the man's
religion. Suppose--as is the case with many of you--that his object of devotion
is Sri Krishna; picture Him in any scene of His earthly life, as in the battle
of Kurukshetra. Imagine the armies arrayed for battle
on both sides; imagine Arjuna on the floor of the
chariot, despondent, despairing; then come to Sri Krishna, the Charioteer, the
Friend and Teacher. Then, fixing your mind on the central figure,
let your heart go out to Him with onepointed
devotion. Resting on Him, poise yourself in silence and, as before, wait for
what may come.
167.
This
is what is called "meditation with seed". The central figure, or the last link in reasoning, that is "the
seed". You have gradually made the vagrant mind steady by this process of
slow and gradual curbing, and at last you are fixed on the central thought, or
the central figure, and there you are poised. Now let even that go. Drop the
central thought, the idea, the seed of meditation. Let
everything go. But keep the mind in the position gained, the highest point
reached, vigorous and alert. This is meditation without a seed. Remain poised,
and wait in the silence and the void. You are in the "cloud," before
described, and pass through the condition before sketched. Suddenly there will
be a change, a change unmistakable, stupendous, incredible.
In that silence, as said, a Voice shall be heard. In that void, a Form shall
reveal itself. In that empty sky, a Sun shall rise, and in the light of that
Sun you shall realise your own identity with it, and
know that that which is empty to the eye of sense is full to the eye of Spirit,
that that which is silence to the ear of sense is full of music to the ear of
Spirit.
168.
Along
such lines you can learn to bring into control your mind, to discipline your
vagrant thought, and thus to reach illumination. One word of warning. You cannot
do this, while you are trying meditation with a seed. until
you are able to cling to your seed definitely for a considerable time, and
maintain throughout an alert attention. It is the emptiness of alert
expectation. not the emptiness of impending sleep. If
your mind be not in that condition, its mere emptiness is dangerous. It leads
to mediumship, to possession, to obsession. You can
wisely aim at emptiness, only when you have so disciplined the mind that it can
hold for a considerable time to a single point and remain alert when that point
is dropped.
169.
The
question is sometimes asked: "Suppose that I do this and succeed in
becoming unconscious of the body; suppose that I do rise into a higher region;
is it quite sure that I shall come back again to the body? Having left the
body, shall I be certain to return?" The idea of non-return makes a man
nervous. Even if he says that matter is nothing and Spirit is everything, he
yet does not like to lose touch with his body and, losing that touch, by sheer
fear, he drops back to the earth after having taken so much trouble to leave
it. You should, however, have no such fear. That which will draw you back again
is the trace of your past, which remains under all these conditions.
170.
The
question is of the same kind as: "Why should a state of Pralaya ever come to an end, and a new
state of Manvantara begin?" And the
answer is the same from the Hindu psychological standpoint; because, although
you have dropped the very seed of thought, you cannot destroy the traces which
that thought has left, and that trace is a germ, and it tends to draw again to
itself matter, that it may express itself once more. This trace is what is
called the privation of matter-- samskara. Far as you
may soar beyond the concrete mind, that trace, left in the thinking principle,
of what you have thought and have known, that remains and will inevitably draw
you back. You cannot escape your past and, until your life-period is over, that
samskara will bring you back. It is this also which,
at the close of the heavenly life, brings a man back to rebirth. It is the
expression of the law of rhythm. In Light on the Path, that wonderful occult
treatise, this state is spoken of and the disciple is pictured as in the
silence. The writer goes on to say: "Out of the silence that is peace a
resonant voice shall arise. And this voice will say: 'It is not well; thou hast
reaped, now thou must sow.' And knowing this voice to be the silence itself,
thou wilt obey."
171.
What
is the meaning of that phrase: "Thou hast reaped, now thou must sow?"
It refers to the great law of rhythm which rules even the Logoi,
the Ishvaras --the law of the Mighty Breath, the
out-breathing and the in-breathing, which compels every fragment which is
separated for a time. A Logos may leave His universe, and it may drop away when
He turns His gaze inward, for it was He who gave reality to it.
172.
He
may plunge into the infinite depths of being, but even then there is the samskara of the past universe, the shadowy latent memory,
the germ of maya from which He cannot escape. To
escape from it would be to cease to be Ishvara, and
to become Brahma Nirguna. There is no Ishvara without maya, there is no maya without Ishvara. Even in pralaya, a time
comes when the rest is over and the inner life again demands manifestation;
then the outward turning begins and a new universe comes forth. Such is the law
of rest and activity: activity followed by rest; rest followed again by the
desire for activity; and so the ceaseless wheel of the universe, as well as of human
lives, goes on. For in the eternal, both rest and activity are ever present,
and in that which we call Time, they follow each other, although in eternity
they be simultaneous and ever-existing.
173.
The
Use of Mantras
174.
Let
us see how far we can help ourselves in this difficult work. I will draw your
attention to one fact which is of enormous help to the beginner.
175.
Your
vehicles are ever restless. Every vibration in the vehicle produces a
corresponding change in consciousness. Is there any way to check these
vibrations, to steady the vehicle, so that consciousness may be still? One
method is the repeating of a mantra. A mantra is a mechanical way of checking
vibration. Instead of using the powers of the will and of imagination, you save
these for other purposes, and use the mechanical resource of a mantra. A mantra
is a definite succession of sounds. Those sounds, repeated rhythmically over
and over again in succession, synchronise the
vibrations of the vehicles into unity with themselves. Hence a mantra cannot be
translated; translation alters the sounds. Not only in Hinduism, but in
Buddhism, in Roman Catholicism, in Islam, and among the Parsis,
mantras are found, and they are never translated, for when you have changed the
succession and order of the sounds, the mantra ceases to be a mantra. If you
translate the words, you may have a very beautiful prayer, but not a mantra.
Your translation may be beautiful inspired poetry, but it is not a living
mantra. It will no longer harmonise the vibrations of
the surrounding sheaths, and thus enable the consciousness to become still. The
poetry, the inspired prayer, these are mentally translatable. But a mantra is
unique and untranslatable. Poetry is a great thing: it is often an inspirer of
the soul, it gives gratification to the ear, and it may be sublime and
beautiful, but it is not a mantra.
176.
Attention
177.
Let
us consider concentration. You ask a man if he can concentrate. He at once
says: "Oh! it is very difficult. I have often
tried and failed." But put the same question in a different way, and ask
him: "Can you pay attention to a thing?" He will at once say:
"Yes, I can do that."
178.
Concentration
is attention. The fixed attitude of attention, that is
concentration. If you pay attention to what you do, your mind will be
concentrated. Many sit down for meditation and wonder why they do not succeed.
How can you suppose that half an hour of meditation and twenty- three and a
half hours of scattering of thought throughout the day and night, will enable
you to concentrate during the half hour? You have undone during the day and
night what you did in the morning, as Penelope unravelled
the web she wove. To become a Yogi, you must be attentive all the time. You
must practice concentration every hour of your active life. Now you scatter
your thoughts for many hours, and you wonder that you do not succeed. The
wonder would be if you did. You must pay attention every day to everything you
do. That is, no doubt, hard to do, and you may make it easier in the first
stages by choosing out of your day's work a portion only, and doing that
portion with perfect, unflagging attention. Do not let your mind wander from
the thing before you. It does not matter what the thing is. It may be the
adding up of a column of figures, or the reading of a book. Anything will do.
It is the attitude of the mind that is important and not the object before it.
This is the only way of learning concentration. Fix your mind rigidly on the
work before you for the time being, and when you have done with it, drop it. Practise steadily in this way for a few months, and you
will be surprised to find how easy it becomes to concentrate the mind.
Moreover, the body will soon learn to do many things automatically. If you
force it to do a thing regularly, it will begin to do it, after a time, of its
own accord, and then you find that you can manage to do two or three things at
the same time. In England,
for instance, women are very fond of knitting. When a girl first learns to
knit, she is obliged to be very intent on her fingers. Her attention must not
wander from her fingers for a moment, or she will make a mistake. She goes on
doing that day after day, and presently her fingers have learnt to pay
attention to the work without her supervision, and they may be left to do the
knitting while she employs the conscious mind on something else. It is further
possible to train your mind as the girl has trained her fingers. The mind also,
the mental body, can be so trained as to do a thing automatically. At last,
your highest consciousness can always remain fixed on the Supreme, while the
lower consciousness in the body will do the things of the body, and do them
perfectly, because perfectly trained. These are practical lessons of Yoga.
179.
Practice
of this sort builds up the qualities you want, and you become stronger and
better, and fit to go on to the definite study of Yoga.
180.
Obstacles
to Yoga
181.
Before
considering the capacities needed for this definite practice, let us run over
the obstacles to Yoga as laid down by Patanjali.
182.
The
obstacles to Yoga are very inclusive. First, disease: if you are diseased you
cannot practice Yoga; it demands sound health, for the physical strain entailed
by it is great. Then languor of mind: you must be alert, energetic, in your
thought. Then doubt: you must have decision of will, must be able to make up
your mind. Then carelessness: this is one of the greatest difficulties with
beginners; they read a thing carelessly, they are inaccurate. Sloth: a lazy man
cannot be a Yogi; one who is inert, who lacks the power and the will to exert himself; how shall he make the desperate exertions wanted
along this line? The next, worldly-mindedness, is obviously an obstacle. Mistaken ideas is another great obstacle, thinking wrongly
about things. One of the great qualifications for Yoga is "right
notion" "Right notion" means that the thought shall correspond
with the outside truth; that a man shall he fundamentally true, so that his
thought corresponds to fact; unless there is truth in a man, Yoga is for him
impossible. Missing the point, illogical, stupid, making the important,
unimportant and vice versa. Lastly, instability: which makes Yoga impossible,
and even a small amount of which makes Yoga futile; the unstable man cannot be
a yogi.
183.
Capacities
of Yoga
184.
Can
everybody practise Yoga? No. But every well-educated
person can prepare for its future practice. For rapid progress you must have
special capacities, as for anything else. In any of the sciences a man may
study without being the possessor of very special capacity, although he cannot
attain eminence therein; and so it is with Yoga. Anybody with a fair
intelligence may learn something from Yoga which he may advantageously
practice, but he cannot hope unless he starts with certain capacities, to be a
success in Yoga in this life. It is only right to say that; for if any special
science needs particular capacities in order to attain eminence therein, the
science of sciences certainly cannot fall behind the ordinary sciences in the
demands that it makes on its students.
185.
Suppose
I am asked: "Can I become a great mathematician?" What must be my
answer? "You must have a natural aptitude and capacity for mathematics to
be a great mathematician. If you have not that capacity, you cannot be a great
mathematician in this life." But this does not mean that you cannot learn
any mathematics. To be a great mathematician you must be born with a special
capacity for mathematics. To be born with such a special capacity means that
you have practiced it in very many lives and now you are born with it
ready-made. It is the same with Yoga. Every man can learn a little of it. But
to be a great Yogi means lives of practice. If these are behind you, you will
have been born with the necessary faculties in the present birth.
186.
There
are three faculties which one must have to obtain success in Yoga. The first is
a strong desire. "Desire ardently." Such a desire is needed to break
the strong links of desire which knit you to the outer world. Moreover, without
that strong desire you will never go through all the difficulties that bat your
way. You must have the conviction that you will ultimately succeed, and the
resolution to go on until you do succeed. It must be a desire so ardent and so
firmly rooted, that obstacles only make it more keen.
To such a man an obstacle is like fuel that you throw on a fire. It burns but
the more strongly as it catches hold of it and finds it fuel for the burning.
So difficulties and obstacles are but fuel to feed the fire of the yogi's
resolute desire. He only becomes the more firmly fixed, because he finds the
difficulties.
187.
If
you have not this strong desire, its absence shows that you are new to the
work, but you can begin to prepare for it in this life. You can create desire
by thought; you cannot create desire by desire. Out of the desire nature, the
training of the desire nature cannot come.
188.
What
is it in us that calls out desire? Look into your own
mind, and you will find that memory and imagination are the two things that
evoke desire most strongly. Hence thought is the means whereby all the changes
in desire can be brought about. Thought, imagination,
is the only creative power in you, and by imagination your powers are to be
unfolded. The more you think of a desirable object, the stronger becomes the
desire for it. Then think of Yoga as desirable, if you want to desire Yoga.
Think about the results of Yoga and what it means for the world when you have
become a yogi, and you will find your desire becoming stronger and stronger.
For it is only by thought that you can manage desire. You can do nothing with
it by itself. You want the thing, or you do not want it, and within the limits
of the desire nature you are helpless in its grasp. As just said, you cannot
change desire by desire. You must go into another region of your being, the
region of thought, and by thought you can make yourself desire or not desire,
exactly as you like, if only you will use the right means, and those means,
after all, are fairly simple. Why is it you desire to possess a thing? Because you
think it will make you happier. But suppose you know by past experience that in
the long run it does not make you happier, but brings you sorrow, trouble,
distress. You have at once, ready to your hands, the way to get rid of that
desire. Think of the ultimate results. Let your mind dwell carefully on all the
painful things. Jump over the momentary pleasure, and fix your thought steadily
on the pain which follows the gratification of that desire. And when you have
done that for a month or so, the very sight of those objects of desire will
repel you. You will have associated it in your mind with suffering, and will
recoil from it instinctively. You will not want it. You have changed the want,
and have changed it by your power of imagination. There is no more effective
way of destroying a vice than by deliberately picturing the ultimate results of
its indulgence. Persuade a young man who is inclined to be profligate to keep
in his mind the image of an old profligate; show him the profligate worn out,
desiring without the power to gratify; and if you can get him to think in that
way, unconsciously he will begin to shrink from that which before attracted
him; the very hideousness of the results frightens away the man from clinging
to the object of desire. And the would-be yogi has to use his thought to mark
out the desires he will permit, and the desires that he is determined to slay.
189.
The
next thing after a strong desire is a strong will. Will is desire. transmuted, its directing is changed from without to within.
If your will is weak, you must strengthen it. Deal with it as you do with other
weak things: strengthen it by practice. If a boy knows that he has weak arms,
he says: "My arms are weak, but I shall practice gymnastics, work on the
parallel bars: thus my arms. will grow strong."
It is the same with the will. Practice will make strong the little, weak will
that you have at present.
190.
Resolve,
for example, saying: "I will do such and such thing every morning,"
and do it. One thing at a time is enough for a feeble will. Make yourself a
promise to do such and such a thing at such a time, and you will soon find that
you will be ashamed to break your promise. When you have kept such a promise to
yourself for a day, make it for a week, then for a fortnight. Having succeeded,
you can choose a harder thing to do, and so on. By this forcing of action, you
strengthen the will. Day after day it grows greater in power, and you find your
inner strength increases. First have a strong desire. Then transmute it into a
strong will.
191.
The
third requisite for Yoga is a keen and broad intelligence. You cannot control
your mind, unless you have a mind to control. Therefore you must develop your
mind. You must study. By study, I do not mean the reading of books. I mean
thinking. You may read a dozen books and your mind may be as feeble as in the
beginning. But if you have read one serious book properly, then, by slow
reading and much thinking, your intelligence will be nurtured and your; mind
grow strong.
192.
These
are the things you want--a strong desire, an indomitable will, a keen. intelligence. Those are the capacities that you must unfold
in order that the practice of Yoga may be possible to you. If your mind is very
unsteady, if it is a butterfly mind like a child's, you must make it steady.
That comes by close study and thinking. You must unfold the mind by which you
are to work.
193.
Forthgoing
and Returning
194.
It
will help you, in doing this and in changing your desire, if you realise that the great evolution of humanity goes on along
two paths--the Path of Forthgoing, and the Path of
Return.
195.
On
the Path, or marga, of Pravritti--forthgoing on which are the vast majority of human beings,
desires are necessary and useful. On that path, the more desire a man has, the better for his evolution. They are the motives that
prompt to activity. Without these the stagnates, he is
inert. Why should Isvara have filled the worlds with
desirable objects if He did not intend that desire should be an ingredient in
evolution? He deals with humanity as a sensible mother deals -with her child.
She does not give lectures to the child on the advantages of walking nor
explain to it learnedly the mechanism of the muscles of the leg. She holds a
bright glittering toy before the child, and says: "Come and get it."
Desire awakens, and the child begins to crawl, and so it learns to walk. So Isvara has put toys around us, but always just out of our
reach, and He says: "Come, children, take these. Here are
love, money, fame, social consideration; come and get them. Walk, make
efforts for them." And we, like children, make great efforts and struggle
along to snatch these toys. When we seize the toy, it breaks into pieces and is
of no use. People fight and struggle and toil for wealth, and, when they become
multi-millionaires, they ask: "How shall we spend this wealth?" I
read of a millionaire in America,
who was walking on foot from city to city, in order to distribute the vast
wealth which he accumulated. He learned his lesson. Never in another life will
that man be induced to put forth efforts for the toy of wealth. Love of fame,
love of power, stimulate men to most strenuous effort.
But when they are grasped and held in the hand, weariness is the result. The
mighty statesman, the leader of the nation, the man idolised
by millions--follow him home, and there you will see the weariness of power,
the satiety that cloys passion. Does then God mock us with all the objects? No.
The object has been to bring out the power of the Self to develop the capacity
latent in man, and in the development of human faculty, the result of the great
lila may be seen. That is
the way in which we learn to unfold the God within us; that is the result of
the play of the divine Father with His children.
196.
But sometimes
the desire for objects is lost too early, and the lesson is but half learned.
That is one of the difficulties in the India of today. You have a mighty
spiritual philosophy, which was the natural expression for the souls who were
born centuries ago. They were ready to throw away the fruit of action and to
work for the Supreme to carry out His Will.
197.
But
the lesson for India
at the present time is to wake up the desire. It may look like going back, but
it is really a going forward. The philosophy is true, but it belonged to those
older souls who were ready for it, and the younger souls now being born into
the people are not ready for that philosophy. They repeat it by rote, they are hypnotised by it, and they sink down into inertia, because
there is nothing they desire enough to force them to exertion. The consequence
is that the nation as a whole is going downhill. The old lesson of putting
different objects before souls of different ages, is
forgotten, and every one is now nominally aiming at ideal perfection, which can
only be reached when the preliminary steps have been successfully mounted. It
is the same as with the "Sermon on the Mount" in Christian countries,
but there the practical common sense of the people bows to it and--ignores it.
No nation tries to live by the "Sermon on the Mount
" It is not meant for ordinary men and women, but for the saint.
For all those who are on the Path of Forthgoing,
desire is necessary for progress.
198.
What
is the Path of Nivritti? It is the Path of Return.
There desire must cease; and the Self-determined will must take its place. The
last object of desire in a person commencing the Path of Return is the desire
to work with the Will of the Supreme; he harmonises
his will with the Supreme Will, renounces all separate desires, and thus works
to turn the wheel of life as long as such turning is needed by the law of Life.
Desire on the Path of Forthgoing becomes will on the
Path of Return; the soul, in harmony with the Divine, works with the law.
Thought on the Path of Forthgoing is ever alert,
flighty and changing; it becomes reason on the Path of Return; the yoke of
reason is placed on the neck of the lower mind, and reason guides the bull.
Work, activity, on the Path of Forthgoing, is
restless action by which the ordinary man is bound; on the Path of Return work
becomes sacrifice, and thus its binding force is broken. These are, then, the
manifestations of three aspects, as shown on the Paths of Forthgoing
and Return.
199.
Bliss
manifested as desire is changed into will Wisdom manifested as thought is
changed into reason. Activity manifested as work is changed into sacrifice.
200.
People
very often ask with regard to this: "Why is will placed in the human being
as the correspondence of bliss in the Divine?" The three great Divine
qualities are: chit or consciousness; ananda or
bliss; sat or existence. Now it is quite clear that the consciousness is
reflected in intelligence in man--the same quality, only in miniature. It is
equally clear that existence and activity belong to each other. You can only
exist as you act outwards. The very form of the word shows It --"ex, out
of"; it is manifested life. That leaves the third, bliss, to correspond
with will, and some people are rather puzzled with that, and they ask: "What
is the correspondence between bliss and will?" But if you come down to
desire, and the objects of desire, you will be able to solve the riddle. The
nature of the Self is bliss. Throw that nature down into matter and what will
be the expression of the bliss nature? Desire for happiness, the seeking after
desirable objects, which it imagines will give it the happiness which is of its
own essential nature, and which it is continually seeking to realise amid the obstacles of the world. Its nature being
bliss, it seeks for happiness and that desire for happiness is to be transmuted
into will. All these correspondences have a profound meaning if you will only
look into them, and that universal "will-to-live" translates itself
as the "desire for happiness" that you find in every man and woman,
in every sentient creature. Has it ever struck you how surely you are
justifying that analysis of your own nature by the way you accept happiness as
your right, and resent misery, and ask what you have done to deserve it? You do
not ask the same about happiness, which is the natural result of your own
nature. The thing that has to be explained is not happiness but pain, the
things that are against the nature of the Self that is bliss. And so, looking
into this, we see how desire and will are both the determination to be happy.
But the one is ignorant, drawn out by outer objects; the other is
self-conscious, initiated and ruled from within. Desire is evoked and directed
from outside; and when the same aspect rules from within, it is will. There is
no difference in their nature. Hence desire on the Path of Forthgoing
becomes will on the Path of Return.
201.
When
desire, thought and work are changed into will, reason and sacrifice, then the
man is turning homewards, then he lives by renunciation.
202.
When
a man has really renounced, a strange change takes place. On the Path of Forthgoing, you must fight for everything you want to get;
on the Path of Return, nature pours her treasures at your feet. When a man has
ceased to desire them, then all treasures pour down upon him, for he has become
a channel through which all good gifts flow to those around him. Seek the good,
give up grasping, and then everything will be yours. Cease to ask that your own
little water tank may be filled, and you will become a pipe, joined to the
living source of all waters, the source which never runs dry, the waters which
spring up unfailingly. Renunciation means the power of unceasing work for the
good of all, work which cannot fail, because wrought by the Supreme Worker through
His servant.
203.
If
you are engaged in any true work of charity, and your means are limited and the
wealth does not flow into your hands, what does it mean? It means that you have
not yet learnt the true renunciation. You are clinging to the visible, to the
fruit of action, and so the wealth does not pour through your hands.
204.
Purification
of Bodies
205.
The
unfolding of powers belongs to the side of consciousness; purification of
bodies belongs to the side of matter. You must purify each of your three
working bodies--mental, astral and physical. Without that purification you had
better leave yoga alone. First of all, how shall you purify the thought body?
By right thinking. Then you must use imagination, your great creative tool,
once more. Imagine things, and, imagining them, you will form your thought-body
into the organisation that you desire. Imagine
something strongly, as the painter imagines when he is going to paint. Visualise an object if you have the power of visualisation at all: if you have not, try to make it. It
is an artistic faculty, of course, hut most people have it more or less. See
how far you can reproduce perfectly a face you see daily. By such practice you
will be strengthening your imagination, and by strengthening your imagination
you will be making the great tool with which you have to practice in Yoga.
206.
There
is another use of the imagination which is very valuable. If you will imagine
in your thought-body the presence of the qualities that you desire to have, and
the absence of those which you desire not to have, you are half-way to having
and not having them. Also, many of the troubles of your life might be weakened
if you would imagine them on right lines before you have to go through them.
Why do you wait helplessly until you meet them in the physical world. If you thought of your coming trouble in the morning,
and thought of yourself as acting perfectly in the midst of it (you should
never scruple to imagine yourself perfect), when the thing turned up in the
day, it would have lost its power, and you would no longer feel the sting to
the same extent. Now each of you must have in your life something that troubles
you. Think of yourself as facing that trouble and not minding it, and when it
comes, you will be what you have been thinking. You might get rid of half your
troubles and your faults, if you would deal with them through your imagination.
207.
As
the thought body, becomes purified in this way, you must turn to the astral
body. The astral body is purified by right desire. Desire nobly, and the astral
body will evolve the organs of good desires instead of the organs of evil ones.
The secret of all progress is to think and desire the highest, never dwelling
on the fault, the weakness, the error, but always on the perfected power, and
slowly in that way you will be able to build up perfection in yourself. Think
and desire, then, in order to purify the thought body and the astral body.
208.
And
how shall you purify the physical body? You must regulate it in all its
activities--in sleep, in food, in exercise, in everything. You cannot have a
pure physical body with impure mental and astral bodies so that the work of
imagination helps also in the purification of the physical. But you must also
regulate the physical body in all its activities. Take for instance, food. The
Indian says truly that every sort of food has a dominant quality in it, either
rhythm, or activity, or inertia, and that all foods fall under one of these
heads. Now the man who is to be a yogi must not touch any food which is on the way
to decay. Those things belong to the tamasic
foods--all foods, for instance, of the nature of game, of venison, all food
which is showing signs of decay (all alcohol is a product of decay), are to be
avoided. Flesh foods come under the quality of activity. All flesh foods are
really stimulants. All forms in the animal kingdom are built up to express
animal desires and animal activities. The yogi cannot afford to use these in a
body meant for the higher processes of thought. Vitality, yes, they will give
that; strength, which does not last, they will give that; a sudden spurs of
energy, yes, meat will give that; but those are not the things which the yogi
wants; so he puts aside all those foods as not available for the work he
desires, and chooses his food out of the most highly vitalised
products. All the foods which tend to growth, those are the most highly vitalised, grain, out of which the new plant will grow, is
packed full of the most nutritious substances; fruits; all those things which
have growth as their next stage in the life cycle, those are the rhythmic
foods, full of life, and building up a body sensitive and strong at the same
time.
209.
Dwellers
on the Threshold
210.
Of
these there are many kinds. First, elementals. They try to bar the astral plane
against man. And naturally so, because they are concerned with the building up
of the lower kingdoms, these elementals of form, the Rupa
Devas; and to them man is a really hateful creature,
because of his destructive properties. That is why they dislike him so much. He
spoils their work wherever he goes, tramples down vegetable things, and kills
animals, so that the whole of that great kingdom of nature hates the name of
man. They band themselves together to stop the one who is just taking his first
conscious steps on the astral plane, and try to frighten him, for they fear
that he is bringing destructiveness into the new world. They cannot do
anything, if you do not mind them. When that rush of elemental force comes
against the man entering on the astral plane, he must remain quiet,
indifferent, taking up the position: "I am a higher product of evolution
than you are; you can do nothing to me. I am your friend, not your enemy,
Peace!" If he be strong enough to take up that position, the great wave of
elemental force will roll aside and let him through. The seemingly causeless
fears which some feel at night are largely due to this hostility. You are, at
night, more sensitive to the astral plane than during the day, and the dislike
of the beings on the plane for man is felt more strongly. But when the
elementals find you are not destructive, not an embodiment of ruin, they become
as friendly to you as they were before hostile. That is the first form of the
dweller on the threshold. Here again the importance of pure and rhythmic food
comes in; because if you use meat and alcohol, you attract the lower elementals
of the plane, those that take pleasure in the scent of blood and spirits, and
they will inevitably prevent your seeing and understanding things clearly. They
will surge round you, impress their thoughts upon you, force their impressions
on your astral body, so that you may have a kind of shell of objectionable
hangers-on to your aura, who will much obstruct you in
your efforts to see and hear correctly. That is the chief reason why every one
who is teaching Yoga on the right-hand path absolutely forbids indulgence in
meat and alcohol.
211.
The
second form of the dweller on the threshold is the thought forms of our own
past. Those forms, growing out of the evil of lives that lie behind us, thought
forms of wickedness of all kinds, those face us when we first come into touch
with the astral plane, really belonging to us, but appearing as outside forms,
as objects; and they try to scare back their creator. You can only conquer them
by sternly repudiating them: "You are no longer mine; you belong to my
past, and not to my present. I will give you none of my life." Thus you
will gradually exhaust and finally annihilate them. This is perhaps one of the
most painful difficulties that one has to face in treading the astral plane in
consciousness for the first time. Of course, where a person has in any way been
mixed up with objectionable thought forms of the stronger kind, such as those
brought about by practicing black magic, there this particular form of the
dweller will be much stronger and more dangerous, and often desperate is the
struggle between the neophyte and these dwellers from his past backed up by the
masters of the black side.
212.
Now
we come to one of the most terrible forms of the dwellers on the threshold.
Suppose a case in which a man during the past has steadily identified himself
with the lower part of his nature and has gone against the higher, paralysing himself, using higher powers for lower purposes,
degrading his mind to be the mere slave of his lower desires. A curious change
takes place in him. The life which belongs to the Ego in him is taken up by the
physical body, and assimilated with the lower lives of which the body is
composed. Instead of serving the purposes of the Spirit, it is dragged away for
tile purposes of the lower, and becomes part of the animal life belonging to
the lower bodies, so that the Ego and his higher bodies are weakened, and the
animal life of the lower is strengthened. Now under those conditions, the Ego
will sometimes become so disgusted with his vehicles that when death relieves
him of the physical body he will cast the others quite aside. And even
sometimes during physical life he will leave the desecrated temple. Now after
death, in these cases, the man generally reincarnates very quickly; for, having
torn himself away from his astral and mental bodies, he has no bodies with
which to live in the astral and mental worlds, and he must quickly form new
ones and come again to rebirth here. Under these conditions the old astral and
mental bodies are not disintegrated when the new mental and astral bodies are
formed and born into the world, and the affinity between the old and new, both
having had the same owner, the same tenant, asserts itself, and the highly vitalised old astral and mental bodies will attach
themselves to the new astral and mental bodies, and become the most terrible
form of the dweller on the threshold.
213.
These
are the various forms which the dweller may assume, and all are spoken of in
books dealing with these particular subjects, though I do not know that you
will find anywhere in a single book a definite classification like the above.
In addition to these there are, of course, the direct attacks of the Dark Brothers, taking up various forms and aspects, and the most
common form they will take is the form of some virtue which is a little bit in
excess in the yogi. The yogi is not attacked through his vices, but through his
virtues; for a virtue in excess becomes a vice. It is the extremes which are
ever the vices; the golden mean is the virtue. And thus, virtues become
tempters in the difficult regions of the astral and mental worlds, and are utilised by the Brothers of the Shadow in order to entrap
the unwary.
214.
I am
not here speaking of the four ordinary ordeals of the astral plane: the ordeals
by earth, water, fire and air. Those are mere trifles, hardly worth considering
when speaking of these more serious difficulties. Of course, you have to learn
that you are entirely master of astral matter, that earth cannot crush you, nor
water drown you, etc. Those are, so to speak, very easy lessons. Those who
belong to a Masonic body will recognise these ordeals
as parts of the language they are familiar with in their Masonic ritual.
215.
There
is one other danger also. You may injure yourself by repercussion. If on the
astral plane you are threatened with danger which belongs to the physical, but
are unwise enough to think it can injure you, it will injure your physical
body. You may get a wound, or a bruise, and so on, out of astral experiences. I
once made a fool of myself in this way. I was in a ship going down and, as I
was busy there, I saw that the mast of the ship was going to fall and, in a
moment's forgetfulness, thought: "That mast will fall on me" that
momentary thought had its result, for when I came back to the body in the
morning, I had a large physical bruise where the mast fell. That is a frequent
phenomenon until you have corrected the fault of the mind, which thinks
instinctively the things which it is accustomed to think down here.
216.
One
protection you can make for yourself as you become more sensitive. Be
rigorously truthful in thought, in word, in deed. Every thought, every desire,
takes form in the higher world. If you are careless of truth here, you are
creating a whole host of terrifying and deluding forms. Think truth, speak
truth, live truth, and then you shall be free from the illusions of the astral
world.
217.
Preparation
for Yoga
218.
People
say that I put the ideal of discipleship so very high that nobody can hope to
become a disciple. But I have not said that no one can become a disciple who
does not reproduce the description that is given of the perfect disciple. One
may. But we do it at our own peril. A man may be thoroughly capable along one
line, but have a serious fault along another. The serious fault will not
prevent him from becoming a disciple, but he must suffer for it. The initiate
pays for his faults ten times the price he would have had to pay for them as a
man of the world. That is why I have put the ideal so high. I have never said
that a person must come utterly up to the ideal before becoming a disciple, but
I have said that the risks of becoming a disciple without these qualifications
are enormous. It is the duty of those who have seen the results of going
through the gateway with faults in character, to point out that it is well to
get rid of these faults first. Every fault you carry through the gateway with
you becomes a dagger to stab you on the other side. Therefore it is well to
purify yourself as much as you can, before you are sufficiently evolved on any
line to have the right to say: "I will pass through that gateway."
That is what I intended to be understood when I spoke of qualifications for
discipleship. I have followed along the ancient road which lays down these
qualifications which the disciple should bring with him; and if he comes
without them, then the word of Jesus is true, that he will be beaten with many
stripes; for a man can afford to do in the outer world with small result what
will bring terrible results upon him when once he is treading the Path.
219.
The
End
220.
What
is to be the end of this long struggle? What is the goal of the upward
climbing, the prize of the great battle? What does the yogi reach at last? He
reaches unity. Sometimes I am not sure that large numbers of people, if they realised what unity means, would really desire to reach it.
There are many "virtues" of your ordinary life which will drop
entirely away from you when you reach unity. Many things you admire will be no
longer helps but hindrances, when the sense of unity begins to dawn. All those
qualities so useful in ordinary life--such as moral indignation, repulsion from
evil, judgment of others--have no room where unity is realised.
When you feel repulsion from evil, it is a sign that your Higher Self is
beginning to awaken, is seeing the dangers of evil: he drags the body forcibly
away from it. That is the beginning of the conscious moral life. Hatred of evil
is better at that stage than indifference to evil. It is a necessary stage. But
repulsion cannot be felt when a man has realised
unity, when he sees God made manifest in man. A man who knows unity cannot
judge another. "I judge no man," said the Christ. He cannot be
repelled by anyone. The sinner is himself, and how shall he be repelled from
himself? For him there is no "I" or "Thee," for we are one.
221.
This
is not a thing that many honestly wish for. It is not a thing that many
honestly desire. The man who has realised unity knows
no difference between himself and the vilest wretch that walks the earth. He
sees only the God that walks in the sinner, and knows that the sin is not in
the God but in the sheath. The difference is only there. He who has realised the inner greatness of the Self never pronounces
judgment upon another, knows that other as himself, and he himself as that
other--that is unity. We talk brotherhood, but how many of us really practice
it? And even that is not the thing the yogi aims at. Greater than brotherhood
are identity and realisation of the Self as one. The
Sixth Root Race will carry brotherhood to the highest point. The Seventh Root
Race will know identity, will realise the unity of
the human race. To catch a glimpse of the beauty of that high conception, the
greatness of the unity in which "I" and "mine,"
"you" and "yours" have vanished, in which we are all one
life, even to do that lifts the whole nature towards divinity, and those who can
even see that unity is fair; they are the nearer to the realisation
of the Beauty that is God.
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