FOLLOW A WORD THROUGH THE COLLECTION
Search the corpus.
Phrase search ignores case and repeated whitespace. All-words search finds whole words anywhere on the same page. OCR errors can affect results.
21 matching pages
Page 1 of 21939 · PDF PAGE 10
… or wonderful about all this. The study of the principles of Yoga is very useful to the average man, if only to make him think about the nature of the world as he supposes that he knows it. Let us consider a piece of cheese. We say that this has certain qualities, shape, structure, colour, solidity, weight, taste, smell, consistency and the rest; but investigation has shown that this is all illusory. Where are these qualities? Not in the cheese, for different observers give quite different accounts of it. Not in ourselves, for we do not perceiv…
1939 · PDF PAGE 24
…and harmony of ordered motion. 12. The next of the planets is Venus. In her, for the first time, we come into contact with a part of our nature which is none the less quintessential because it has hitherto been masked by our preoccupation with more active qualities. Venus resembles Jupiter, but on a lower scale, standing to him very much as Mars does to Saturn. She is close akin in nature to the Sun, and she may be considered an externalisation of his influence towards beauty and harmony. Venus is Isis, the Great Mother; Venus is Nature herself…
1939 · PDF PAGE 68
…ven when awake, of their reality. Why then do we criticise and 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…
1939 · PDF PAGE 34
…, by standing on one leg throughout the centuries. If you go to the Dragon he will devour you. 19. It is through the perversity of human nature that the most acute agony seems to occur when you are within a finger's breadth of full success. Remember Gallipoli! I am inclined to think that it may be a sort of symptom that one is near the critical point when the anguish becomes intolerable. You will probably ask what 'intolerable' means. I rudely answer: 'Find out!' But it may give you some idea of what is, after all, not too bad, when I say that …
1939 · PDF PAGE 28
…cannot argue it away. 21. I have treated Yama and Niyama at great length because their importance has been greatly underrated, and their nature completely misunderstood. They are definitely magical practices, with hardly a tinge of mystical flavour. The advantage to us here is that we can very usefully exercise and develop ourselves in this way in this country where the technique of Yoga is for all practical purposes impossible. Incidentally, one's real countrythat is, the conditions in which one happens to be born is the only one in which Yam…
1939 · PDF PAGE 48
…bounds, and we go on reasoning within arbitrarily appointed limits. It is subject to these conditions that we may proceed to examine the nature of our fundamental ideas; and this is necessary, because since we began to
1939 · PDF PAGE 9
…e the truth is patent in the word itself. (7) Yoga means Union. We may now consider what Yoga really is. Let us go for a moment into the nature of consciousness with the tail of an eye on such sciences as mathematics, biology, and chemistry. In mathematics the expression a plus b plus c is a triviality. Write a plus b plus c equals 0, and you obtain an equation from which the most glorious truths may be developed. In biology the cell divides endlessly, but never becomes anything different; but if we unite cells of opposite qualities, male and f…
1939 · PDF PAGE 56
…the others. The primary entities of the theory are defined in terms of one another. In the course of this exercise we derive the laws of Nature studied in physics. At a certain point in the chain of deductions, at matter, for example, we judge that we are talking about something which is an objective concrete embodiment of our abstractions. But matter, as it occurs in physics, is no more than a particular set of abstractions, and our subsequent reasoning is concerned only with these abstractions. Such other characteristics as the objective real…
1939 · PDF PAGE 45
… the consciousness. The moving systems must be regular and harmonious. "6. Note carefully the duration of the experiment, the number and nature of the intruding thoughts; the tendency of the object itself to depart from the course laid out for it, and any other phenomena which may present themselves. Avoid overstrain; this is very important. "7. Proceed to imagine living objects; as a man, preferably some man known to, and respected by, you. "8. In the intervals of these experiments you might try to imagine the objects of the other senses, and …
1939 · PDF PAGE 71
… 25. I say this because one of the most frequent troubles is that people who are doing excellent work throw it up because they find that Nature is not what they thought it was going to be. But this is the best test of the reality of any experience. All those which conform with your idea, which flatter you, are likely to be illusions. So you become a Neophyte; and attack the Task of a Zelator. There are further grades in this system, but the general principles are always the samethe principles of scientific study and research. 26. We end where …
1939 · PDF PAGE 54
…n any direction without ever coming to an end. I said above that Riemann's Geometry was not quite sufficient to explain the phenomena of nature. We have to postulate different kinds of curvature in different parts of the continuum. And even then we are not happy! 26. Now for a spot of Sullivan! 'The geometry is so general that it admits of different degrees of curvature in different parts of space-time. It is to this curvature that gravitational effects are due. The curvature of space-time is most prominent, therefore, around large masses, for …
1939 · PDF PAGE 46
…how much is really observed by the senses without the mind becoming conscious of it. Thirdly, there is a class of break partaking of the nature of reverie or 'day-dreaming.' These are very insidiousone may go on for a long time without realising that one has wandered at all. Fourthly, we get a very high class of break, which is a sort of abberation of the control itself. You think, 'How well I am doing it!' or perhaps that it would be rather a good idea if you were on a desert island, or if you were in a sound-proof house, or if you were sitti…
1939 · PDF PAGE 52
… point we may well be led to consider once more what we call the objective universe, and what we call our subjective experience. What is Nature? Immanuel Kant, who founded an epoch-making system of subjective idealism, is perhaps the first philosopher to demonstrate clearly that space, time, causality (in short, all conditions of existence) are really no more than conditions of thought. I have tried to put it more simply by defining all possible predicates as so many dimensions. To describe an object properly it is not sufficient to determine i…
1939 · PDF PAGE 12
… and rarer to find a man with a mind of his own and a will of his own, even in this modified sense. (18) I want you therefore to see the nature of the obstacles to union with the Absolute. For one thing, the Yoga which we constantly practice has not invariable results; there is a question of attention, of investigation, of reflexion. I propose to deal in a future instruction with the modifications of our perception thus caused, for they are of great importance to our science of Yoga. For example, the classical case of the two men lost in a thic…
1939 · PDF PAGE 26
… in this world are infinite pleasure, infinite perils. The True Niyama of Neptune is the imaginative faculty, the shadowing forth of the nature of the illimitable light. He has another function. The Yogi who understands the influence of Neptune, and is attuned to Neptune, will have a sense of humour, which is the greatest safeguard for the Yogi. Neptune is, so to speak, in the front line; he has got to adapt himself to difficulties and tribulations; and
1939 · PDF PAGE 36
…subtle qualities which are at present insusceptible to any properly scientific methods of investigation. We can imitate the processes of nature in the laboratory, but the imitation is not always exactly identical with the original. For instance, Professor J. B. S. Haldane attempted some of the experiments suggested in 'The Equinox' in this matter of Pranayama, and very nearly killed himself in the process. He did not see the difference between the experiment with the dog and the phenomena which supervene as the climax of a course of gentle oper…
1939 · PDF PAGE 50
…machine. Since that machine is the only machine that we possess, our arguments must be valid in some sense or other conformable with the nature of this machine. What machine? That is a perfectly real object. It contains innumerable parts, powers and faculties. And they are as much a nightmare as the external universe which it has created. Gad, sir, Patanjali is right! 15. Now how do we get over this difficulty of something coming from Nothing? Only by enquiring what we mean by Nothing. We shall find that this idea is totally inconceivable to th…
1939 · PDF PAGE 65
…lowing the silence of starlight to reach the ear. It is the emancipation of the exalted from the thrall of the commonplace expression of Nature. 5. Now what is Magick? Magick is the science and art of causing change to occur in conformity with the Will. How do we achieve this? By exalting the will to the point where it is master of circumstance. And how do we do this? By so ordering every thought, word and act, in such a way that the attention is constantly recalled to the chosen object. 6. Suppose I want to evoke the 'Intelligence' of Jupiter.…
1939 · PDF PAGE 22
…possible to explain what I mean by this; if I could, you would know it already. How can one explain to a person who has never skated the nature of the pleasure of executing a difficult figure on the ice? He has in himself the whole apparatus ready for use; but experience, and experience only, can make him aware of the results of such use. 7. At the same time, in a general exposition of Yoga, it may be useful to give some idea of the functions on which those peaks that pierce the clouds of the limitations of our intellectual understanding are ba…
1939 · PDF PAGE 53
badger us! Kant himself put it, after his fashion: 'The laws of nature are the laws of our own minds.' Why? It is not the contents of the mind itself that we can cognise, but only its structure. But Kant has not gone to this length. He would have been extremely shocked if it had ever struck him that the final term in his sorites was 'Reason itself is the only reality.' On further examination, even this ultimate truth turns out to be meaningless. It is like the well known circular definition of an obscene book, which is: one that arouses certain…