find is that there is a tendency to perceive a sensation of the natural 
phenomena. 
     20. The former stages are easy to assimilate intellectually; one 
assents to them immediately that one discovers them, but with regard to 
the 'tendency,' this is not the case, at least it was not so for my own part. 
It took me a long while before I understood what was meant by 
'tendency.' To help you to realise this I should like to find a good 
illustration. For instance, a clock does nothing at all but offer indications 
of the time. It is so constructed that this is all we can know about it. We 
can argue about whether the time is correct, and that means nothing at 
all, unless, for example, we know whether the clock is controlled 
electrically from an astronomical station where the astronomer happens 
to be sane, and in what part of the world the clock is, and so on. 
     21. I remember once when I was in Teng-Yueh, just inside the 
Chinese frontier in Yunnan. The hour of noon was always telegraphed to 
the Consulate from Pekin. This was a splendid idea, because electricity is 
practically 
instantaneous. 
The 
unfortunate 
thing 
was, 
if 
it 
was 
unfortunate, which I doubt, that the messages had to be relayed at a 
place called Yung Chang. The operators there had the good sense to 
smoke opium most of the time, so occasionally a batch of telegrams 
would arrive, a dozen or so in a bunch, stating that it was noon at Pekin 
on various dates! So all the gross phenomena, all these sensations and 
perceptions, are illusion. All that one could really say was that there was a 
tendency on the part of some lunatic in Pekin to tell the people at Teng-
Yueh what o'clock it was. 
     22. But even this Fourth Skandha is not final. With practice, it also 
appears as an illusion, and one remains with nothing but the bare 
consciousness of the existence of such a tendency. 
     I cannot tell you very much about this, because I have not worked it 
out 
very 
thoroughly 
myself, 
but 
I 
very 
much 
doubt 
whether 
'consciousness' has any meaning at all, as a translation of the word 
Vinnanam. I think that a better translation would be 'experience,' used in 
the sense in which we have been using it hitherto, as the direct reality 
behind and beyond all remark. 
     23. I hope you will appreciate how difficult it is to give a reasoned 
description, however tentative, of these phenomena, still less to classify 
them properly. They have a curious trick of running one into the other. 
This, I believe, is one of the reasons why it has been impossible to find 
any really satisfactory literature about Yoga at all. The more advanced 
one's progress, the less one knows, and the more one understands. The 
effect is simply additional evidence of what I have been saying all this 
time: that it is very little use discussing things; what is needed is 
continuous devotion to the practice. 
     Love is the law, love under will.