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Page 1 of 21939 · PDF PAGE 41
… Anglo-Saxons) a sort of joke, that lovers are lunatics. Everything at their command is pressed into the service of their passion; every kind of sacrifice, every kind of humiliation, every kind of discomfortthese all count for nothing. Every energy is strained and twisted, every energy is directed to the single object of its end. The pain of a momentary separation seems intolerable; the joy of consummation impossible to describe: indeed, almost impossible to bear! 7. Now this is exactly what the Yogi has to do. All the books they disagree on e…
1939 · PDF PAGE 64
…ad yet arrived at an identical impasse. And the general conclusion was that there could be no reality in any intellectual concept of any kind, that the only reality must lie in direct experience of such a kind that it is beyond the scope of the critical apparatus of our minds. It cannot be subject to the laws of Reason; it cannot be found in the fetters of elementary mathematics; only transfinite and irrational conceptions in that subject can possibly shadow forth the truth in some such paradox as the identity of contradictories. We found furth…
1939 · PDF PAGE 46
…urse, such hallucinations are infrequent, and are recognised for what they are. Otherwise the student had better see a doctor. The usual kind consists of odd sentences, or fragments of sentences, which are quite distinctly heard in a recognisable human voice, not the student's own voice, or that of anyone he knows. A similar phenomenon is observed by wireless operators, who call such messages 'atmospherics.' There is a further kind of break, which is the desired result itself. 21. I have already indicated how tedious these practices become; how…
1939 · PDF PAGE 38
…(or unconsciousness, if you prefer it, not that either would give the slightest idea of what is meant) which is without condition of any kind, and therefore represents in perfection the consummation of Yoga. Love is the law, love under will. 1In coitu, of course.ED. 2One Yeats-Brown. What are Yeats? Brown, of course, and Kennedy. 3Some Great Thinker once said: 'Time marches on.' What felicity of phrase!
1939 · PDF PAGE 67
… mistaken in the quality of their observation of any phenomenon, and men a little more advanced are almost certain to attain to a placid kind of speculation as to whether the objects of sense are not mere shadows on a screen. I take off my glasses. Now I cannot read my manuscript. I had two sets of lenses, one natural, one artificial. If I had been looking through a telescope of the old pattern I should have had three sets of lenses, two artificial. If I go and put on somebody else's glasses I shall get another kind of blur. As the lenses of my…
1939 · PDF PAGE 10
…ned. Hydrogen has no love for Hydrogen; it is not the nature, or the 'true Will' of Hydrogen to seek to unite with a molecule of its own kind. Add Hydrogen to Hydrogen: nothing happens to its quality: it is only its quantity that changes. It rather seeks to enlarge its experience of its possibilities by union with atoms of opposite character, such as Oxygen; with this it combines (with an explosion of light, heat, and sound) to form water. The result is entirely different from either of the component elements, and has another kind of 'true Will…
1939 · PDF PAGE 68
…dismiss them? Because their contents are incoherent, because the order of nature to which they belong does not properly conform with the kind of experience which does hang together after a fashion. Why do we criticise the reality of waking experience? On precisely similar grounds. Because in certain respects it fails to conform with our deep instinctive consciousness of the structure of the mind. Tendency! We happen to be that kind of animal. 14. The result is that we accept waking experience for what it is within certain limits. At least we d…
1939 · PDF PAGE 53
…aningless. It is like the well known circular definition of an obscene book, which is: one that arouses certain ideas in the mind of the kind of person in whom such ideas are excited by that kind of book. 23. I notice that my excellent chairman is endeavouring to stifle a yawn and to convert it into a smile, and he will forgive me for saying that I find the effect somewhat sinister. But he has every right to be supercilious about it. These are indeed 'old, fond paradoxes to amuse wives in ale-houses.' Since philosophy began, it has always been …
1939 · PDF PAGE 21
…rom our premise that nothing which might weaken or destroy the beauty and harmony of the mind must be permitted. Social existence of any kind renders any serious Yoga absolutely out of the question; domestic life is completely incompatible with even elementary practices. No doubt many of you will say, 'That's all very well for him; let him speak for himself; as for me, I manage my home and my business so that everything runs on ball bearings.' Echo answers . . .
1939 · PDF PAGE 39
…ion was the cause of all phenomena. Consciousness results from the conjunction of a mysterious stimulus with a mysterious sensorium. The kind of Yoga which is the subject of these remarks is merely an expansion of this, the union of self-consciousness with the universe. We spoke of the eight limbs of Yoga, and dealt with the four which refer to physical training and experiences. The remaining four deal with mental training and experiences, and these form the subject of the ensuing remarks. 2. Before we deal with these in detail, I think it woul…
1939 · PDF PAGE 58
…he conclusion to which we were led in my last lecture. Nothing is any use to us unless it be a certainty unshakeable by criticism of any kind, and there is only one thing in the universe which complies with these conditions: the direct experience of spiritual truth. Here, and here only, do we find a position in which the great religious minds of all times and all climes coincide. It is necessarily above dogma, because dogma consists of a collection of intellectual statements, each of which, and also its contradictory, can easily be disputed and…
1939 · PDF PAGE 14
…nd generally speaking, one cannot see the wood for the trees. But from the Indian system, overloaded though it is by accretions of every kind, it is comparatively easy to extract a method which is free from unnecessary and undesirable implications, and to make an interpretation of it intelligible to, and acceptable by, European minds. It is this system, and this interpretation of it, which I propose to put before you. 4. The great classic of Sanskrit literature is the Aphorisms of Patanjali. He is at least mercifully brief, and not more than ni…
1939 · PDF PAGE 23
… keep water at 99 degrees Centigrade under normal barometric pressure, it will not boil. I shall probably be accused of advertising some kind of motor spirit in talking about the little extra something that the others haven't got, but I assure you that I am not being paid for it.
1939 · PDF PAGE 44
…i. Subject and object unite and disappear with ecstasy mounting to indifference, and so forth, but there is still a presentation of some kind in the new genus of consciousness. In this view Dhyana would be rather like an explosion of gunpowder carelessly mixed; most of it goes off with a bang, but there is some débris of the original components. These discussions are not of very great importance in themselves, because the entire series of the three states of meditation proper is summed up in the word Samyama; you can translate it quite well for…
1939 · PDF PAGE 43
11. Dharana is meditation proper, not the kind of meditation which consists of profound consideration of the subject with the idea of clarifying it or gaining a more comprehensive grasp of it, but the actual restraint of the consciousness to a single imaginary object chosen for the purpose. These two limbs of Yoga are therefore in a sense the two methods employed mentally by the Yogi. For, long after success in Samadhi has been attained, one has to conduct the most extensive explorations into the recesses of the mind. 12. The word Dhyana is dif…
1939 · PDF PAGE 32
… experiments, some posture which meets these conditions. I should very much rather have you do this than come to me for some mumbo-jumbo kind of authority. I am no pig-sticking pukka sahibnot even from Poonato put my hyphenated haw-haw humbug over on the B. Public.[2] I would rather you did the thing 'wrong' by yourselves, and learned from your errors, than get it 'right' from the teacher, and atrophied your initiative and your faculty of learning anything at all. It is, however, perfectly right that you should have some idea of what happens …
1939 · PDF PAGE 69
…people like St. John of the Cross. All Christian Mystics are tarred with the same brush. Their abominable religion compels them to every kind of sentimentality; and the theory of original sin vitiates their whole position, because instead of the noble and inspiring Trance of Sorrow they have nothing but the miserable, cowardly, and selfish sense of guilt to urge them to undertake the Work. 15. I think we may dismiss altogether from our minds every claim to experience made by any Christian of whatever breed of spiritual virus as a mere morbid re…
1939 · PDF PAGE 62
…ssiduously, you get another shock. You have no right to say that there is a breathing. All you know is that there is a sensation of that kind. Again you change your conception of your observation, and one day make the discovery that the sensation has disappeared. All you know is that there is perception of a sensation of breathing in or breathing out. Continue, and that is once more discovered to be an illusion. What you
1939 · PDF PAGE 17
…aws.' 10. This is, of course, what every man of science has to do in every experiment. This is what constitutes an experiment. The other kind of man has only bad habits. When you explore a new country, you don't know what the conditions are going to be; and you have to master those conditions by the method of trial and error. We start to penetrate the stratosphere; and we have to modify our machines in all sorts of ways which were not altogether foreseen. I wish to thunder forth once more that no questions of right or wrong enter into our probl…
1939 · PDF PAGE 16
… fixed proscriptions. There are quite a lot of prohibitions grouped under the heading of Yama, which are perhaps quite necessary for the kind of people contemplated by the Teacher, but they have been senselessly elevated into universal rules. Everyone is familiar with the prohibition of pork as an article of diet by Jews and Mohammedans. This has nothing to do with Yama, or abstract righteousness. It was due to the fact that pork in eastern countries was infected with the trichina; which killed people who ate pork improperly cooked. It was no g…