The Equinox (Volume I, Number IV)

THE AGNOSTIC POSITION Direct experience is the key to Yoga; direct experience of that Soul (Atman) or Essence (Purusha) which acting upon Energy (Prana) and Substance (Akasa) differentiates a plant from a stone, an animal from a plant, a man from an animal, a man from a man, and man from God, yet which ultimately is the underlying Equilibrium of all things; for as the Bhaga- vad-Gita says: ‘“ Equilibrium is called Yoga.” Chemically the various groups in the organic and inorganic worlds are similar in structure and composition. One piece of limestone is very much like another, and so also are the actual bodies of any two men, but not so their minds. There- fore, should we wish to discover and understand that Power which differentiates, and yet ultimately balances all appearances, which are derived by the apparently unconscious object and received by the apparently conscious subject, we must look for it in the workings of man’s brain.* * Verworn in his “General Physiology” says: “It was found that the sole reality that we are able to discover in the world is mind. The idea of the physical world is only a product of the mind. . . . But this idea is not the whole of mind, for we have many mental constituents, such as the simple sensations of pain and of pleasure, that are not ideas of bodies . . . every process of know- ledge, including scientific knowledge, is merely a psychical event. . . . This fact cannot be banished by the well-known method of the ostrich ” (pp. 39, 40). “The real mystery of mysteries is the mind of man. Why, with a pen or brush, one man sits down and makes a masterpiece, and yet another, with the self-same instruments and opportunities, turns out a daub or botch, is twenty 48