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.
22 matching pages
Page 1 of 21939 · PDF PAGE 9
…pation of the individual who studies and practises it from the less pleasing features of his life on this planet? I say Hindustan, but I really mean anywhere on the earth; for research has shown that similar methods producing similar results are to be found in every country. The details vary, but the general structure is the same. Because all bodies, and so all minds, have identical Forms. (6) Yoga means Union. In the mind of a pious person, the inferiority complex which accounts for his piety compels him to interpret this emancipation as union…
1939 · PDF PAGE 57
…x, an idea is only true in so far as it contains its contradictory in itself. 33. It is such states of mind as this which constitute the really important results of Samyama, and these results are not to be destroyed by philosophical speculation, because they are not susceptible of analysis, because they have no component parts, because they exist by virtue of their very Unreason"certum est quia ineptum!" They cannot be expressed, for they are above knowledge. To some extent we can convey our experience to others familiar with that experience t…
1939 · PDF PAGE 63
…t was noon at Pekin on various dates! So all the gross phenomena, all these sensations and perceptions, are illusion. All that one could really say was that there was a tendency on the part of some lunatic in Pekin to tell the people at Teng- Yueh what o'clock it was. 22. But even this Fourth Skandha is not final. With practice, it also appears as an illusion, and one remains with nothing but the bare consciousness of the existence of such a tendency. I cannot tell you very much about this, because I have not worked it out very thoroughly mysel…
1939 · PDF PAGE 46
…on; gets out of shape. And one of the essential difficulties in practice is that it takes a great deal of skill and experience to become really alert to what is happening. You can go on day-dreaming for quite long periods before realising that your thoughts have wandered at all. This is why I insist so strongly on the practices described above as producing alertness and watchfulness, and you will obviously realise that it is quite evident that one has to be in the pink of condition and in the most favourable mental state in order to make any he…
1939 · PDF PAGE 38
…y brilliant exposition of these most difficult subjects, 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 t…
1939 · PDF PAGE 50
…tions with three ideas which Hindu philosophers call Sat, Chit and Ananda, which are usually translated Being, Knowledge and Bliss. This really means: Sat, the tendency to conceive of an object as real; Chit, the tendency to pretend that it is an object of knowledge; and Ananda, the tendency to imagine that we are affected by it. 13. It is only after we have endowed the object with these dozen imaginary properties, each of which, besides being a complete illusion, is an absurd, irrational, and self-contradictory notion, that we arrive at even t…
1939 · PDF PAGE 59
…antasies in the will of the Superior. 6. I should like to mention here that the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius are in their essence really admirable Yoga practices. They have, it is true, a tinge of magical technique, and they have been devised to serve a dogmatic end. That was, however, necessary, and it was good magic too, at that, because the original will of the Founder was to produce a war engine as a counterblast to the Reformation. He was very wise to devise a plan, irrespective of its abstract merits as philosophy, which would most…
1939 · PDF PAGE 8
…ga to imply a system of religious training or a description of religious experience? You may note incidentally that the word Religion is really identifiable with Yoga. It means a binding together.
1939 · PDF PAGE 64
…t there is a sort of faint glimmering to the effect that the general subject of the series was the mental exercises of the Yogi; and the really remarkable feature was that I found it impossible to discuss them at all thoroughly without touching upon, first of all, ontology; secondly, ordinary science; and thirdly, the high Magick of the true initiates of the light. 2. We found that both Ontology and Science, approaching the question of reality from entirely different standpoints, and pursuing their researches by entirely different methods, had …
1939 · PDF PAGE 14
…d the methods. The Chinese system is perhaps the most sublime and the most simple; but, unless one is born a Chinese, the symbols are of really unclimbable difficulty. The Buddhist system is in some ways the most complete, but it is also the most recondite. The words are excessive in length and difficult to commit to memory; and 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…
1939 · PDF PAGE 45
…In the earliest stages of all it is not necessary to have got very far with Asana, because all you can get out of the early practices is really a foreshadowing of the difficulties of doing it. 18. I began by taking a simple geometrical object in one colour, such as a yellow square. I will quote the official instructions in The Equinox. "DharanaControl of thought." "1. Constrain the mind to concentrate itself upon a single simple object imagined. The five tatwas are useful for this purpose; they are: a black oval; a blue disk; a silver crescent…
1939 · PDF PAGE 30
…d unconscious, so that no messages from the body can reach the mind. Asana is concerned with the static aspect of the body. Pranayama is really the control of the dynamic aspect of the body.
1939 · PDF PAGE 35
… by him by the expedient of constant flitting from one to another. He is at ease; because, for the first time in his life, he has become really unconscious of the body. Life has been one endless suffering; and now, so far as this particular Asana is concerned, the plague is abated. I feel that I have failed to convey the full meaning of this. The fact is that 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 A…
1939 · PDF PAGE 27
…it may be urged that one has to reckon with unseen forces. The most impossible things begin to happen when once you get going. It is not really satisfactory to start serious Yoga unless you are in a country where the climate is reliable, and where the air is not polluted by the stench of civilisation. It is extremely important, above all things important, unless one is an exceedingly rich man, to find a country where the inhabitants understand the Yogin mode of life, where they are sympathetic with its practices, treat the aspirant with respect…
1939 · PDF PAGE 55
…too-unfairly quoted statement that he could not imagine anything of which he could not construct a mechanical model. The Victorians were really a little inclined to echo Dr. Johnson's gross imbecile stamp on the ground when the ideas of Bishop Berkeley penetrated to the superficial strata of the drink-sodden grey cells of that beef-witted brute. 29. Now, look you, I ask you to reflect upon the trouble we have taken to calculate the distance of the fixed stars, and hear Professor G. N. Lewis, who 'suggests that two atoms connected by a light ray…
1939 · PDF PAGE 52
…dealism, 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 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 i…
1939 · PDF PAGE 69
…e who practise Magick and Yoga as they should. 17. The same is true of plastic art, but evidently in much less degree; and all those who really know and love art are well aware that classical painting and sculpture are rarely capable of producing these transcendent orgasms of ecstasy, as in the case of the higher arts. One is bound to the impressions of the eye; one is drawn back to the contemplation of a static object. And this fact has been so well understood in modern times by painters that they have endeavoured to create an art within an ar…
1939 · PDF PAGE 62
… by the shock of the discovery that what you have been thinking is not true. You have no right to say: 'I am breathing in.' All that you really know is that there is a breathing in. 19. You therefore change your note, and you say: 'There is a breathing in; there is a breathing out,' and so on. And very soon, if you practise assiduously, 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 disco…
1939 · PDF PAGE 60
…e 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 now that we come to discuss in more detail the results of the Yoga practices. There is, it is true, a general similarity between the ecstatic outbursts of the great myst…
1939 · PDF PAGE 17
… mouth, so that a mahsir was able to swallow his soul. It would never have done for a Sahiba Mlecha!to catch that mahsir. This story is really typical of 90% of the precepts usually enumerated under the heading Yama. The rest are for the most part based on local and climatic conditions, and they may or may not be applicable to your own case. And, on the other hand, there are all sorts of good rules which have never occurred to a teacher of Yoga; because those teachers never conceived the condition in which many people live today. It never occu…