The Equinox (Volume I, Number III)

THE EQUINOX they would progress through would be in all cases essentially the same, the differences, if any, being due to the mental limitations of the experimenter, his education and prejudices, and not because the roads were dissimilar. Thus by this law could he with certainty predict that if a certain exercise were undertaken certain stages would be passed through, and what these stages meant relative to the final result, irrespective of the creed, caste, or sect of the practicer. Further, he had proved beyond doubt or quibble, that the terrific strain caused by the Eastern breathing exercises was no whit greater or less than that resulting from The Acts of Worship in an operation of Ceremonial Magic, that Dharana and the Mantra Yoga were in effect none other than a para- phrase of the Sacred Magic and the Acts of Invocation; and ultimately that the whole system of Eastern Yoga was but a synonym of Western Mysticism. Starting from the root, he had by now crept sufficiently far through the darkness of the black earth to predict a great tree above, and to prophecy concerning a Kingdom of Light and Loveliness; and, as a worm will detect its approach to the earth surface by the warmth of the mould, so did he detect by a sense, new and unknown to him, a world as different from the world he lived in as the world of awakenment differs from the world of dreams. Further, did he grow to understand, that, though as a sustenance to the tree itself one root might not be as im- portant as another, yet that they all drew their strength from the self-same soil, and ultimately united in the one trunk above. Some were rotten with age, some dying, some again but feeders of useless shoots, but more sympathetically, more scientifically, they were all of one kind, the roots of one actual 188