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Page 1 of 11912 · PDF PAGE 66
…go on to this, however, we must consider what is meant by success in Pratyahara. This is a very extensive subject, and different authors take widely divergent views. One writer means an analysis so acute that every thought is resolved into a number of elements (see “The Psychology of Hashish,” Section V, in Equinox II). Others take the View that supcess in this practice is something like the experience which Sir Humphrey Davy had as a result of taking nitrous oxide, in which he exclaimed: “The universe is composed exclusively of ideas.” , Other…
1912 · PDF PAGE 106
Q. A. Q. A. pus SUMMARY What is genius, and how is it produced? Let us take several specimens of the species, and try to find some one thing common to all which is not found in other species. Is there any such thing? Yes: all geniuses have the habit of concentration of thought, and usually needlongperiodsofsolitude to acquirethis habit. Inparticular, the greatest religious geniuses have all retired from the world at one time or another in their lives, and begun to preach immediately on their return. . Of what advantage is such a retirement? One …
1912 · PDF PAGE 7
…k,” is more advanced in style than Part I ; the student is expected to know a little of the literature of the subject, and to be able to take an intelligent View of it. This part is, however, really explanatory of Part I, which is a crude outline sketch only. If both parts are thoroughly studied and understood, the pupil will have obtained a real graspof all the fundamentals and essentialsof both Magick and Mysticism. I wrote this book down from Frater Perdurabo’s dictation at the Villa Caldarazzo, Posilippo, Naples, where I was studying under …
1912 · PDF PAGE 59
…ast tend to excite his mind; but once he has for- mulated it, let him stick to it, avoiding opportunism ; and let him be very careful to take no credit for what he does or refrains from doing—— it is a purely practical code, of no value in itself. The cleanliness which assists the surgeon in his work would prevent the engineer from doing his at all. (Ethical questions are adequately dealt with in “Thien Tao” in “ Konx Om Pax," and should be there studied. Also see Liber XXX of the A. A. Also in Liber CCXX, the “Book of the Law,” it is said: “ D…
1912 · PDF PAGE 76
… only trifling variations from the vigilance itself. Afifl/z class of&reaks seems to have no discoverable source in the mind. Such may even take the form of actual hallucination, usually auditory. Of course, such hallucinations are infrequent, and are recog— nized for what they are; otherwise the student had better see his doctor. The usual kind consists of odd sentences or fragments of sentences, which are heard quite distinctly in a recognizable human voice, not the student’s own voice, or that of any one he knows. A similar phenomenon is observ…
1912 · PDF PAGE 97
…se instead—in all probability something just beyond his means. Such is the splendid history of all spiritual advance! One never stops to take the reward. We shall therefore not trouble at all about what any Samadhi may or may not bring as far as its results in our lives are concerned. We began this book, it will be remembered, with considerations of death. Death has now lost all meaning. The idea of death depends on those of the ego, and of time; these ideas have been destroyed; and so “ Death is swallowed up in victory.” We shall now only be i…
1912 · PDF PAGE 42
… wonder what all the fuss is about, perhaps to think that he is specially gifted. Similarly a man who has never touched a golf club will take his umbrella and carelessly hole a putt which would frighten the best putter alive. In a few days, however, in all cases, the discomforts will begin. As you go on, they will begin earlier in the course of the hour’s exercise. The disinclination to practise at all may become almost unconquerable. One must warn the student against imagining that some other position would be easier to master than the one he …
1912 · PDF PAGE 102
…ee meditative methods in Liber HHH (Equinox VI).1 At the same time, one would not like to deny positively that it is very much easier to take some idea towards which the mind would naturally flow. The Hindus assert that the nature of the object determines the Samadhi; that is, the nature of those lower Samadhis which confer so— called “magic powers.” For example, there are the Yogapravritti. Meditating on the tip of the nose, one obtains what may be called the “ideal smell”; that is, a smell which is not any particular smell, but is the archetyp…
1912 · PDF PAGE 98
…ol a nervous storm breaks: this we call Dhyana. Samadhi is but an expansion of this, so far as I can see.” Five years later he would not take this view. He would say perhaps that Dhyana was “ a flowing of the mind in one unbroken current from the ego to the non-ego without consciousnessof either, accompanied by a crescent wonder and bliss.” He can understand how that is the
1912 · PDF PAGE 99
…ith Samadhi this is unfortunately not the case. He probably can get it at will, but could not say exactly how, or tell how long it might take him?,־and he could not be sure of getting it at all. One feels sure that one can walk a mile along a level road. One knows the conditions, and it would have to be a very extraordinary set of circumstances that would stop one. But though it would be equally fair to say: “I have climbed the Matterhorn and I know I can climb “it again,” yet there are all sorts of more or less probable circumstances any one o…
1912 · PDF PAGE 26
12 external influences are likely to be unfavourable. New faces, new scenes will disjturb us ; even the new habits of life which we undertake for this very purpose of controlling the mind will at first tend to upset it. Still, we must give up our habit of eating too much, and follow the natural rule of only eating when we are hungry, listening to the interior voice which tells us that we have had enough. The same rule applies to sleep. We have determined to control our minds, and so our time for meditation must take precedence of other hours. We …
1912 · PDF PAGE 87
… of the nitrogen of the air. This had often been done, but no one had sufficiently fine instruments even to per- ceive the discrepancy. To take another example, a famous man of science asserted not so long, ago that science could never discover the chemical composition of the fixed stars. Yet this has been done, and with certainty. If you were to ask your man of science for his “theory of the real,”
1912 · PDF PAGE 103
…air, earth, and water, and you can do whatever in natural life they prevent you from doing. For instance, by conquering earth, one could take a short cut to Australia; or by conquering water, one can live at the bottom of the Ganges. They say there is a holy man at Benares who does this, coming up only once a year to comfort and in- struct his disciples. But nobody need believe this unless he wants to; and you are even advised to conquer that desire should it arise. It will be interesting when science really determines the variables and constan…