The Equinox (Volume I, Number I)

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF HASHISH In the beginner’s concentration—though he is hardly to be called a beginner at this stage—Sankhara presents a terrible obstacle. For the distraction to his even flow of thought is that very flow itself ; not as in Safifia, the accidents necessarily arising from that flow, as it were the rocks in the bed of the stream, but the law of gravitation itself, its necessary tendency to follow its own course. So that the good young Yogi finds himself thus awkwardly placed ; that having created a mighty engine and removed all conceivable impediments to its smooth working, he is now confronted by the inertia of all that majesty and might. Frankenstein | The mystic states of Sankhara are more awful and tremen- dous than any we have yet noticed. Atmadarshana, for instance, is only to be described feebly (yet I fear unintelligibly, even so) by speaking of a consciousness of the entire Universe as One, and as All, in Its necessary relation to Itself in and out of Time and Space. Here, too, is the result of Sammasati, a comprehension of one’s own self and its relation to, and identity with, everything. . .. But I feel that I am drivelling. The effort to think of these things, to translate them into the language of philosophy, gives the feeling—I grope and find no other expression—that one’s head is going to blow off. One feels inclined to get up and shout for very feebleness, and only the utter fatuity of that or any other method of obtaining relief keeps one quietly writing. One feels, too, like the old woman in Thérése Raquin, dumb and paralysed even while bursting with the tremendous secret. Small wonder then if the adepts demand years of training before the things themselves are 75