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Page 1 of 21939 · PDF PAGE 65
…g 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. I base my work upon the correspondences of Jupiter. I base my mathematics on the number 4 and its subservient numbers 16, 34, 136. I employ the square or rhombus. For my sacred animal I choose the eagle, or some other sacred to Jupiter. For my perfume, saffronfor my libation some prepa…
1939 · PDF PAGE 61
… Very early during my retirement in Kandy, I had been trying to concentrate by slanting my eyes towards the tip of my nose. This, by the way, is not a good practice; one is liable to strain the eyes. But what happened was that I woke up in the night; my hand touched a nose; I immediately concluded that some one was in the room. Not at all; I only thought so because my nose had passed away from the region of my observation by the practice of concentrating upon it. 12. The same sort of thing occurs with adequate concentration on any object. It is…
1939 · PDF PAGE 28
…hen he picks up an untried weapon; either it comes up sweet to the hand, or it does not. You cannot explain it, and you 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 impossibl…
1939 · PDF PAGE 40
usually considered a sort of consolidation of the three; but that is rather an unsatisfactory way of regarding it, because if we admit the reality of the universe at all we are in philosophical chaos. However, this does not concern us for the moment. 3. When we apply these symbols to Yoga, we find that fire represents the Yogi, and water the object of his meditation. ((You can, if you like, reverse these attributions. It makes no difference except to the metaphysician. And precious little to him!) The Yod and the He combine, the Father and Moth…
1939 · PDF PAGE 50
only occur in one way instead of in three different ways. We compare two phenomena in time 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…
1939 · PDF PAGE 16
combine enthusiastically with hydrogen, and only in a very surly way with oxygen. It is not virtuous of a hydra to be hermaphrodite, or contumacious on the part of an elbow not to move freely in all directions. Anybody who knows what his job is has only one duty, which is to get that job done. Anyone who possesses a function has only one duty to that function, to arrange for its free fulfilment. Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. 8. We shall not be surprised therefore if we find that the perfectly simple term Yama (or Control) has…
1939 · PDF PAGE 64
…e or the orgies of Pan. It suggests that Yoga is ultimately a sublimation of philosophy, even as Magick is a sublimation of science. The way is open for a reconciliation between these lower elements of thought by virtue of their tendency to flower into these higher states beyond thought, in which the two have become one. And that, of course, is Magick; and that, of course, is Yoga. 4. We may now consider whether, in view of the final identification of these two elements in their highest, there may not be something more practical than sympathy i…
1939 · PDF PAGE 58
…sabused of its confidence in its own rightness, or even in the possibility of being right. 4. The rationalist, in his shallow fashion, always contends that this training is the abnegation of mental freedom. On the contrary, it is the only way to obtain that freedom. In the same Society the training in obedience is based on a similar principle. The priest has to do what his Superior orders himperinde ac cadaver. Protestants always represent that this is the most outrageous and indefensible tyranny. 'The poor devil,' they say, 'is bludgeoned int…
1939 · PDF PAGE 14
…lf. I might here note, in parenthesis, that one of the difficulties of doing this is that all the elements of the Yogi increase in every way exactly as he progresses, and by reason of that progress. However, it is no use crossing our bridges until we come to them, and we shall find that by laying down serious scientific principles based on universal experience they will serve us faithfully through every stage of the journey. 2. When I first undertook the investigation of Yoga, I was fortunately equipped with a very sound training in the fundame…
1939 · PDF PAGE 42
…the manner recommended in Liber Resh) four times daily, and he shall salute the Moon on her appearance with the Mantra Gayatri. The best way is to say the Mantra instantly one sees the Moon, to note whether the attention wavers, and to repeat the Mantra until it does not waver at all. He should also practise assiduously Liber III. vel Jugorum. The essence of this practice is that you select a familiar thought, word or gesture, one which automatically recurs fairly often during the day, and every time you are betrayed into using it, cut yourself…
1939 · PDF PAGE 37
… perfectly normal. There is, however, one particuliar point of consciousness, the sensation of almost total loss of weight. This, by the way, may sound a little alarming to the instructed alienist. There is a similar feeling which occurs in certain types of insanity. 27. The fourth state is Levitation. The Hindus claim that 'jumping about like a frog' implies a genuine loss of weight, and that the jumping is mainly lateral because you have not perfected the process. If you were absolutely balanced, they claim that you would rise quietly into th…
1939 · PDF PAGE 35
…p. So much for the obstacle of the body considered as static. Let us now turn our attention to the conquest of its dynamics. 22. It is always pleasing to turn to a subject like Pranayama. Pranayama means control of force. It is a generalised term. In the Hindu system there are quite a lot of subtle sub-strata of the various energies of the body which have all got names and properties. I do not propose to deal with the bulk of them. There are only two which have much practical importance in life. One of these is not to be communicated to the pub…
1939 · PDF PAGE 44
…he 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 of higher mathematics and metaphysics have often a certain glimmering of these facts. They are compelled to use irrational conceptions for greater convenience in conduct…
1939 · PDF PAGE 55
…ency 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 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…
1939 · PDF PAGE 43
…secutive things, that of space two non-coincident things, that of causality two connected things.' 13. Samadhi, on the contrary, is in a way very easy to define. Etymology, aided by the persistence of the religious tradition, helps us here. Sam is a prefix in Sanskrit which developed into the prefix 'syn' in Greek without changing the meaning'syn' in 'synopsis,' 'synthesis,' 'syndrome.' It means 'together with.' 'Adhi' has also come down through many centuries and many tongues. It is one of the oldest words in human language; it dates from th…
1939 · PDF PAGE 18
…u 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 these so that they make a minimum of trouble. And you will find that you cannot conquer the obstacle of Yama, and dismiss it from your mind once and for all. Conditions favourable for the beginner may become an intolerable nuisance to the adept, while, on the other hand, things which matter very little in the beginning become most serious obstacles later on. Another point is that quite unsu…
1939 · PDF PAGE 32
…rnatively, 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 elephant…
1939 · PDF PAGE 36
…because it is much better for you to perform the practices, obtain the experience, and come to me yourself with the information. In this way you will know that you have got the right thing, whereas if I were to tell you now, you would very likely imagine it. 2. Automatic rigidity: the body becomes still, as the result of a spasm. This is perfectly normal and predictable. It is customary to do it with a dog. You stick him in a bell-jar, pump in oxygen or carbonic acid or something, and the dog goes stiff. You can take him out and wave him around…
1939 · PDF PAGE 33
… it is necessary, in order to hold a position, to pay attention to it. That is to say: you are going to become conscious of your body in ways of which you are not conscious if you are engaged in some absorbing mental pursuit, or even in some purely physical activity, such as running. It sounds paradoxical at first sight, but violent exercise, so far from concentrating attention on the body, takes it away. That is because exercise has its own rhythm; and, as I said, rhythm is half-way up the ridge to Silence. Very good, then; in the comparative …
1939 · PDF PAGE 67
…ons which are so readily shaken by the first breath of the wind of intellectual analysis? Well, to answer first of all in a common-sense way, the difference is simply that the impression is deeper, is less to be shaken. Men of sense and education are always ready to admit that they may have been 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…