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Page 1 of 11939 · PDF PAGE 35
…at words are entirely unsuitable. The complete and joyous awakening from the lifelong and unbroken nightmare of physical discomfort is impossible to describe. 21. The results and mastery of Asana are of use not only in the course of attainment of Yoga, but in the most ordinary affairs of life. At any time when fatigued, you have only to assume your Asana, and you are completely rested. It is as if the attainment of the mastery has worn down all those possibilities of physical pain which are inherent in that particular position. The teachings of…
1939 · PDF PAGE 62
… understanding, or rather the appreciation, of sensuous pleasure. This, however, is infinitely refined, exquisitely intense. It is often possible to acquire a technique by which the skilled artist can produce this pleasure in another person. Map out, say, three square inches of skin anywhere, and it is possible by extreme gentle touches to excite in the patient all the possible sensations of pleasure of which that person is capable. I know that this is a very extraordinary claim, but it is a very easy one to substantiate. The only thing I am af…
1939 · PDF PAGE 38
…jects, I should like to add a few words on the subject of Mantra-Yoga, because this is really a branch of Pranayama, and one which it is possible to practise quite thoroughly in this country. In Book IV., Part I., I have described it, with examples, quite fully enough. I need here only say that its constant use, day and night, without a moment's cessation, is probably as useful a method as one could find of preparing the current of thought for the assumption of a rhythmical form, and rhythm is the great cure for irregularity. Once it is establi…
1939 · PDF PAGE 32
…ry.) Alternatively, freeze the water and dance on it! A great deal of Hindu endeavour seems to consist in discovering the most difficult possible way to attain the most undesirable end. 10. When you start tying yourself into a knot, you will find that some positions are much more difficult and inconvenient than others; but that is only the beginning. If you retain any posture long enough, you get cramp. I forget the exact statistics, but I gather that the muscular exertion made by a man sleeping peacefully in bed is sufficient to raise fourteen…
1939 · PDF PAGE 50
…e by the idea of sequence. 12. Now it will be perfectly clear to all of you that this is all nonsense. In order to conceive the simplest possible object, we have to keep on inventing ideas, which even in the proud moment of invention are seen to be unreal. How are we to get away from the world of phantasmagoria to the common universe of sense? We shall require quite a lot more acts of imagination. We have got to endow our mathematical conceptions with three ideas which Hindu philosophers call Sat, Chit and Ananda, which are usually translated B…
1939 · PDF PAGE 39
…ting a small point in the letter.) This is also a reference to the elements, fire, water, air, earth. I may go further, and say that all possible existing things are to be classed as related to one or more of these elements for convenience in certain operations. But these four letters, though in one sense they represent the eternal framework, are not, so to speak, original. For instance, when we place Tetragrammaton on the Tree of Life, the Ten Sephiroth or numbers, we do not include the first Sephira. Yod is referred to the second, He to the t…
1939 · PDF PAGE 56
…gible only serves to fortify our ingrained conviction that experience itself is reality. 32. We may then ask ourselves whether it is not possible to obtain experience of a higher order, to discover and develop the faculty of mind which can transcend analysis, stable against all thought by virtue of its own self-evident assurance. In the language of the Great White Brotherhood (whom I am here to represent) you cross the abyss. 'Leave the poor old stranded wreck'Ruach'and pull for the shore' of Neschamah. For above the abyss, it is said, as you…
1939 · PDF PAGE 71
… out the other in an emergency. 23. Of course, nobody understands better than I do that, although nobody can do your work for you, it is possible to make useto a certain very limited extentof other people's experience, and the Great Order which I have the honour to serve has appointed what I think you will agree is a very satisfactory and practical curriculum. 24. You are expected to spend three months at least on the study of some of the classics on the subject. The chief object of this is not to instruct you, but to familiarise you with the…
1939 · PDF PAGE 30
…coordinate axes. On the terrasse of the Cafe des Deux Magots it was once necessary to proclaim the entire doctrine of Yoga in the fewest possible words 'with a shout, and with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God.' St. Paul's First Epistle to the Thessalonians, the Fourth Chapter and the Sixteenth Verse. I did so. "Sit still. Stop thinking. Shut up. Get out!" The first two of these instructions comprise the whole of the technique of Yoga. The last two are of a sublimity which it would be improper to expound in this present elem…
1939 · PDF PAGE 37
… not think it proves anything. These practices, Asana and Pranayama, are, to a certain extent, mechanical, and to that extent it is just possible for a man of extraordinary will power, with plenty of leisure and no encumbrances, to do a good deal of the spade-work of Yoga even in England. But I should advise him to stick very strictly to the purely physical preparation, and on no account to attempt the practices of concentration proper, until he is able to acquire suitable surroundings. But do not let him imagine that in making this very except…
1939 · PDF PAGE 41
…very 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 every other point, but they agree on this stupiditytell him that he has to give up this and give up that, sometimes on sensible grounds, more often on grounds of prejudice and superstition. In the advanced stages one has to give up the very virtues which have brought one to t…
1939 · PDF PAGE 44
… of normal thought is A is A: the law of identity, it is called. So we can divide the universe into A and not-A; there is no third thing possible. Now, quite early in the meditation practices, the Yogi is likely to get as a direct experience the consciousness that these laws are not true in any ultimate way. He has reached a world where intellectual conceptions are no longer valid; they remain true for the ordinary affairs of life, but the normal laws of thought are seen to be no more than a mere mechanism. A code of conventions. The students o…
1939 · PDF PAGE 55
…Thus the mere existence of space, besides its metrical properties, depends upon the existence of matter. With this conception it becomes possible to regard all motion, including rotation, as purely relative.' Where do we go from here, boys? 28. 'The present tendency of physics is towards describing the universe in terms of mathematical relations between unimaginable entities.' We have got a long way from Lord Kelvin's too-often and too-unfairly quoted statement that he could not imagine anything of which he could not construct a mechanical mode…
1939 · PDF PAGE 52
…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 its position in the space-time continuum of four dimensions, but we must enquire how it stands in all the categories and scales, its values in all 'kinds' of possibility. What do we know about it in respect of its greenness, its hardness, its mobility, and so on? And then we find out that what we imagine…
1939 · PDF PAGE 18
…ition your rule of daily life in the valleys of Sikkim or the Upper Indus will have to be changed when you get to the glacier. But it is possible to indicate (in general terms expressed with the greatest caution) the 'sort' of thing that is likely to be bad for you. Anything that weakens the body, that exhausts, disturbs or inflames the mind is deprecable. You are pretty sure to find as you progress that there are some conditions that cannot be eliminated at all in your particular circumstances; and then you have to find a way of dealing with t…
1939 · PDF PAGE 51
…ng the fact directly, although perhaps alluding to the matter often enough. It appears very essential to describe this vision as well as possible, considering the difficulty of language, and the fact that the phenomena involved logical contradictions, the conditions of consciousness being other than those obtaining normally. The vision developed gradually. It was repeated on so many occasions that I am unable to say at what period it may be called complete. The beginning, however, is clear enough in my memory. 19. I was on a Great Magical Retir…
1939 · PDF PAGE 25
…ade among you between any one thing and any other thing, for thereby there cometh hurt." Venus represents the ecstatic acceptance of all possible experience, and the transcendental assumption of all particular experience into the one experience. Oh yes, by the way, don't forget this. In a lesser sense Venus represents tact. Many of the problems that confront the Yogi are impracticable to intellectual manipulation. They yield to graciousness. 13. Our next planet is Mercury, and the Niyama which correspond to him are as innumerable and various as…
1939 · PDF PAGE 60
with the practical politics of the world, which it is impossible to conduct on any but an atheistic basis; it is brainless hypocrisy to pretend otherwise, and should be restricted to the exclusive use of the Foreign Office. It would, perhaps, be more sensible to suppose that the heads of the Order have really attained the greatest heights of spiritual knowledge and freedom, and it is quite possible that the best term to describe their attitude would be either Pantheistic or Gnostic. 7. These considerations should be of the greatest use to us no…