The Equinox (Volume I, Number IV)

THE EQUINOX so the Karma, released from the body of the dead man, will circle round until it finds the body of a new-born child tuned or syntonized to its particular waves. Now we are not concerned here with stray children who like the receivers of a wireless telegraph pick up either good or evil messages; but it is an interesting fact to learn that at least certain orthodox Buddhists attribute so complex and con- siderable a power to the brain, that by the fact of leaving one body that body perishes, and of entering another that body revives. Can it be that we have got back to our old friend the Prana which in its individual form so closely resembles the individual Karma, and in its entirety the totality of Nibbana? Let us turn to Brihaddranyaka Upanishad. There in 1, 6, 3. we find a mystical formula which reads Amritam satyena channam. This means “The immortal (Brahman) veiled by the (empirical) reality;” and immediately afterwards this is explained as follows: “ The Prana (.e. the Atman) to wit is the immortal, name and form are the reality; by these the Prana is veiled.” Once again we are back at our starting-point. To become one with the Prana or Atman is to enter NibbAna, and as the means which lead to the former consisted of concentra- tion exercises such as Pranayama, etc.; so now shall we find almost identical exercises used to hasten the Aspirant into Nibbana. Frater P. by now was well acquainted with the Yoga Philosophy, further he was beginning to feel that the crude Animism employed by many of its expounders scarcely tallied with his attainments. The nearer he approached the Atman the less did it appear to him to resemble what he had been 138