| Dr. Jai Maharaj 2006-05-10, 11:26 am |
| 1/5 'AN INTRODUCTION TO YOG' BY ANNIE BESANT
An Introduction to Yog
Annie Besant
Foreword
These lectures[FN#1: Delivered at the 32nd Anniversary of
the Theosophical Society held at Benares, on Dec. 27th,
28th, 29th, and 30th, 1907.] are intended to give an
outline of Yog, in order to prepare the student to take
up, for practical purposes, the Yog sootras of Patanjali,
the chief treatise on Yog. I have on hand, with my friend
Bhagavan Das as collaborateur, a translation of these
Sootras, with Vyaas's commentary, and a further
commentary and elucidation written in the light of
Theosophy.[FN#2: These have never been finished or
printed.] To prepare the student for the mastering of
that more difficult task, these lectures were designed;
hence the many references to Patanjali. They may,
however, also serve to give to the ordinary lay reader
some idea of the Science of sciences, and perhaps to
allure a few towards its study.
Annie Besant
Table of Contents
Lecture I. The Nature of Yog
1. The Meaning of the Universe
2. The Unfolding of Consciousness
3. The Oneness of the Self
4. The Quickening of the Process of Self-Unfoldment
5. Yog is a Science
6. Man a Duality
7. States of Mind
8. Samadhi
9. The Literature of Yog
10. Some Definitions
11. God Without and God Within
12. Changes of Consciousness and Vibrations of Matter
13. Mind
14. Stages of Mind
15. Inward and Outward-turned Consciousness
16. The Cloud
Lecture II. Schools of Thought
1. Its Relation to Indian Philosophies
2. Mind
3. The Mental Body
4. Mind and Self
Lecture III. Yog as Science
1. Methods of Yog
2. To the Self by the Self
3. To the Self through the Not-Self
4. Yog and Morality
5. Composition of States of the Mind
6. Pleasure and Pain
Lecture IV. Yog as Practice
1. Inhibition of States of Mind
2. Meditation with and without Seed
3. The Use of Mantras
4. Attention
5. Obstacles to Yog
6. Capacities for Yog
7. Forthgoing and Returning
8. Purification of Bodies
9. Dwellers on the Threshold
10. Preparation for Yog
11. The End
Lecture I
THE NATURE OF YOG
In this first discourse we shall concern ourselves with
the gaining of a general idea of the subject of Yog,
seeking its place in nature, its own character, its
object in human evolution.
The Meaning of the Universe
Let us, first of all, ask ourselves, looking at the world
around us, what it is that the history of the world
signifies. When we read history, what does the history
tell us? It seems to be a moving panorama of people and
events, but it is really only a dance of shadows; the
people are shadows, not realities, the kings and
statesmen, the ministers and armies; and the events --the
battles and revolutions, the rises and falls of states --
are the most shadowlike dance of all. Even if the
historian tries to go deeper, if he deals with economic
conditions, with social organisations, with the study of
the tendencies of the currents of thought, even then he
is in the midst of shadows, the illusory shadows cast by
unseen realities. This world is full of forms that are
illusory, and the values are all wrong, the proportions
are out of focus. The things which a man of the world
thinks valuable, a spiritual man must cast aside as
worthless. The diamonds of the world, with their glare
and glitter in the rays of the outside sun, are mere
fragments of broken glass to the man of knowledge. The
crown of the king, the sceptre of the emperor, the
triumph of earthly power, are less than nothing to the
man who has had one glimpse of the majesty of the Self.
What is, then, real? What is truly valuable? Our answer
will be very different from the answer given by the man
of the world.
"The universe exists for the sake of the Self." Not for
what the outer world can give, not for control over the
objects of desire, not for the sake even of beauty or
pleasure, does the Great Architect plan and build His
worlds. He has filled them with objects, beautiful and
pleasure-giving. The great arch of the sky above, the
mountains with snow-clad peaks, the valleys soft with
verdure and fragrant with blossoms, the oceans with their
vast depths, their surface now calm as a lake, now
tossing in furyJhey all exist, not for the objects
themselves, but for their value to the Self. Not for
themselves because they are anything in themselves but
that the purpose of the Self may be served, and His
manifestations made possible.
The world, with all its beauty, its happiness and
suffering, its joys and pains" is planned with the utmost
ingenuity, in order that the powers of the Self may be
shown forth in manifestation. From the fire-mist to the
LOGOS, all exist for the sake of the Self. The lowest
grain of dust, the mightiest deva in his heavenly
regions, the plant that grows out of sight in the nook of
a mountain, the star that shines aloft over us-all these
exist in order that the fragments of the one Self,
embodied in countless forms, may realize their own
identity, and manifest the powers of the Self through the
matter that envelops them.
There is but one Self in the lowliest dust and the
loftiest deva. "Mamamsaha"cy portion,G a portion of My
Self," says Shri Krishna, are all these Jivatmas, all
these living spirits. For them the universe exists; for
them the sun shines, and the waves roll, and the winds
blow, and the rain falls, that the Self may know Himself
as manifested in matter, as embodied in the universe.
The Unfolding of Consciousness
One of those pregnant and significant ideas which
Theosophy scatters so lavishly around is thisJhat the
same scale is repeated over and over again, the same
succession of events in larger or smaller cycles. If you
understand one cycle, you understand the whole. The same
laws by which a solar system is builded go to the
building up of the system of man. The laws by which the
Self unfolds his powers in the universe, from the fire-
mist up to the LOGOS, are the same laws of consciousness
which repeat themselves in the universe of man. If you
understand them in the one, you can equally understand
them in the other. Grasp them in the small, and the large
is revealed to you. Grasp them in the large, and the
small becomes intelligible to you.
The great unfolding from the stone to the God goes on
through millions of years, through aeons of time. But the
long unfolding that takes place in the universe, takes
place in a shorter time-cycle within the limit of
humanity, and this in a cycle so brief that it seems as
nothing beside the longer one. Within a still briefer
cycle a similar unfolding takes place in the
individualGrapidly, swiftly, with all the force of its
past behind it. These forces that manifest and unveil
themselves in evolution are cumulative in their power.
Embodied in the stone, in the mineral world, they grow
and put out a little more of strength, and in the mineral
world accomplish their unfolding. Then they become too
strong for the mineral, and press on into the vegetable
world. There they unfold more and more of their divinity,
until they become too mighty for the vegetable, and
become animal.
Expanding within and gaining experiences from the animal,
they again overflow the limits of the animal, and appear
as the human. In the human being they still grow and
accumulate with ever-increasing force, and exert greater
pressure against the barrier; and then out of the human,
they press into the super-human. This last process of
evolution is called "Yog."
Coming to the individual, the man of our own globe has
behind him his long evolution in other chains than
oursJhis same evolution through mineral to vegetable,
through vegetable to animal, through animal to man, and
then from our last dwelling-place in the lunar orb on to
this terrene globe that we call the earth. Our evolution
here has all the force of the last evolution in it, and
hence, when we come to this shortest cycle of evolution
which is called Yog, the man has behind him the whole of
the forces accumulated in his human evolution, and it is
the accumulation of these forces which enables him to
make the passage so rapidly. We must connect our Yog with
the evolution of consciousness everywhere, else we shall
not understand it at all; for the laws of evolution of
consciousness in a universe are exactly the same as the
laws of Yog, and the principles whereby consciousness
unfolds itself in the great evolution of humanity are the
same principles that we take in Yog and deliberately
apply to the more rapid unfolding of our own
consciousness. So that Yog, when it is definitely begun,
is not a new thing, as some people imagine.
The whole evolution is one in its essence. The succession
is the same, the sequences identical. Whether you are
thinking of the unfolding of consciousness in the
universe, or in the human race, or in the individual, you
can study the laws of the whole, and in Yog you learn to
apply those same laws to your own consciousness
rationally and definitely. All the laws are one, however
different in their stage of manifestation.
If you look at Yog in this light, then this Yog, which
seemed so alien and so far off, will begin to wear a
familiar face, and come to you in a garb not wholly
strange. As you study the unfolding of consciousness, and
the corresponding evolution of form, it will not seem so
strange that from man you should pass on to superman,
transcending the barrier of humanity, and finding
yourself in the region where divinity becomes more
manifest.
The Oneness of the Self
The Self in you is the same as the Self Universal.
Whatever powers are manifested throughout the world,
those powers exist in germ, in latency, in you. He, the
Supreme, does not evolve. In Him there are no additions
or subtractions. His portions, the Jivatmas, are as
Himself, and they only unfold their powers in matter as
conditions around them draw those powers forth. If you
realize the unity of the Self amid the diversities of the
Not-Self, then Yog will not seem an impossible thing to
you.
The Quickening of the Process of Self-unfoldment
Educated and thoughtful men and women you already are;
already you have climbed up that long ladder which
separates the present outer form of the Deity in you from
His form in the dust. The manifest Deity sleeps in the
mineral and the stone. He becomes more and more unfolded
in vegetables and animals, and lastly in man He has
reached what appears as His culmination to ordinary men.
Having done so much, shall you not do more ? With the
consciousness so far unfolded, does it seem impossible
that it should unfold in the future into the Divine?
As you realize that the laws of the evolution of form and
of the unfolding of consciousness in the universe and man
are the same, and that it is through these laws that the
yogi brings out his hidden powers, then you will
understand also that it is not necessary to go into the
mountain or into the desert, to hide yourself in a cave
or a forest, in order that the union with the Self may be
obtainedCe who is within you and without you. Sometimes
for a special purpose seclusion may be useful. It may be
well at times to retire temporarily from the busy haunts
of men. But in the universe planned by Isvara, in order
that the powers of the Self may be brought outJhere is
your best field for Yog, planned with Divine wisdom and
sagacity. The world is meant for the unfolding of the
Self: why should you then seek to run away from it? Look
at Shri Krishna Himself in that great Upanishad of yog,
the Bhagavad-Gita. He spoke it out on a battle-field, and
not on a mountain peak. He spoke it to a Kshattriya ready
to fight, and not to a Brahmana quietly retired from the
world. The Kurukshetra of the world is the field of Yog.
They who cannot face the world have not the strength to
face the difficulties of Yog practice. If the outer world
out-wearies your powers, how do you expect to conquer the
difficulties of the inner life? If you cannot climb over
the little troubles of the world, how can you hope to
climb over the difficulties that a yogi has to scale?
Those men blunder, who think that running away from the
world is the road to victory, and that peace can be found
only in certain localities.
As a matter of fact, you have practised Yog unconsciously
in the past, even before your self- consciousness had
separated itself, was aware of itself. Sand knew itself
to be different, in temporary matter at least, from all
the others that surround it. And that is the first idea
that you should take up and hold firmly: Yog is only a
quickened process of the ordinary unfolding of
consciousness.
Yog may then be defined as the "rational application of
the laws of the unfolding of consciousness in an
individual case". That is what is meant by the methods of
Yog. You study the laws' of the unfolding of
consciousness in the universe, you then apply them to a
special casegnd that case is your own. You cannot apply
them to another. They must be self-applied. That is the
definite principle to grasp. So we must add one more word
to our definition: "Yog is the rational application of
the laws of the unfolding of consciousness, self-applied
in an individual case."
Yog Is a Science
Next, Yog is a science. That is the second thing to
grasp. Yog is a science, and not a vague, dreamy drifting
or imagining. It is an applied science, a systematized
collection of laws applied to bring about a definite end.
It takes up the laws of psychology, applicable to the
unfolding of the whole consciousness of man on every
plane, in every world, and applies those rationally in a
particular case. This rational application of the laws of
unfolding consciousness acts exactly on the same
principles that you see applied around you every day in
other departments of science.
You know, by looking at the world around you, how
enormously the intelligence of man, co-operating with
nature, may quicken "natural" processes, and the working
of intelligence is as "natural" as anything else. We make
this distinction, and practically it is a real one,
between "rational" and "natural" growth, because human
intelligence can guide the working of natural laws; and
when we come to deal with Yog, we are in the same
department of applied science as, let us say, is the
scientific farmer or gardener, when he applies the
natural laws of selection to breeding. The farmer or
gardener cannot transcend the laws of nature, nor can he
work against them. He has no other laws of nature to work
with save universal laws by which nature is evolving
forms around us, and yet he does in a few years what
nature takes, perhaps, hundreds of thousands of years to
do. And how? By applying human intelligence to choose the
laws that serve him and to neutralize the laws that
hinder. He brings the divine intelligence in man to
utilise the divine powers in nature that are working for
general rather than for particular ends.
Take the breeder of pigeons. Out of the blue rock pigeon
he develops the pouter or the fan-tail; he chooses out,
generation after generation, the forms that show most
strongly the peculiarity that he wishes to develop. He
mates such birds together, takes every favouring
circumstance into consideration and selects again and
again, and so on and on, till the peculiarity that he
wants to establish has become a well-marked feature.
Remove his controlling intelligence, leave the birds to
themselves, and they revert to the ancestral type.
Or take the case of the gardener. Out of the wild rose of
the hedge has been evolved every rose of the garden.
Many-petalled roses are but the result of the scientific
culture of the five-petalled rose of the hedgerow, the
wild product of nature. A gardener who chooses the pollen
from one plant and places it on the carpers of another is
simply doing deliberately what is done every day by the
bee and the fly. But he chooses his plants, and he
chooses those that have the qualities he wants
intensified, and from those again he chooses those that
show the desired qualities still more clearly, until he
has produced a flower so different from the original
stock that only by tracing it back can you tell the stock
whence it sprang.
So is it in the application of the laws of psychology
that we call Yog. Systematized knowledge of the unfolding
of consciousness applied to the individualized Self, that
is Yog. As I have just said, it is by the world that
consciousness has been unfolded, and the world is
admirably planned by the LOGOS for this unfolding of
consciousness; hence the would-be yogi, choosing out his
objects and applying his laws, finds in the world exactly
the things he wants to make his practice of Yog real, a
vital thing, a quickening process for the knowledge of
the Self. There are many laws. You can choose those which
you require, you can evade those you do not require, you
can utilize those you need, and thus you can bring about
the result that nature, without that application of human
intelligence, cannot so swiftly effect.
Take it, then, that Yog is within your reach, with your
powers, and that even some of the lower practices of Yog,
some of the simpler applications of the laws of the
unfolding of consciousness to yourself, will benefit you
in this world as well as in all others. For you are
really merely quickening your growth, your unfolding,
taking advantage of the powers nature puts within your
hands, and deliberately eliminating the conditions which
would not help you in your work, but rather hinder your
march forward. If you see it in that light, it seems to
me that Yog will be to you a far more real, practical
thing, than it is when you merely read some fragments
about it taken from Sanskrit books, and often
mistranslated into English, and you will begin to feel
that to be a yogi is not necessarily a thing for a life
far off, an incarnation far removed from the present one.
Man a Duality
Some of the terms used in Yog are necessarily to be
known. For Yog takes man for a special purpose and
studies him for a special end and, therefore, only
troubles itself about two great facts regarding man, mind
and body. First, he is a unit, a unit of consciousness.
That is a point to be definitely grasped. There is only
one of him in each set of envelopes, and sometimes the
Theosophist has to revise his ideas about man when he
begins this practical line. Theosophy quite usefully and
rightly, for the understanding of the human constitution,
divides man into many parts and pieces. We talk of
physical, astral, mental, etc. Or we talk about Sthula-
sarira, Sukshma-sarira, Karana-sarira, and so on.
Sometimes we divide man into Anna-maya-kosa, Prana-maya-
kosa, Mano-maya-kosa, etc. We divide man into so many
pieces in order to study him thoroughly, that we can
hardly find the man because of the pieces. This is, so to
say, for the study of human anatomy and physiology.
But Yog is practical and psychological. I am not
complaining of the various sub-divisions of other
systems. They are necessary for the purpose of those
systems. But Yog, for its practical purposes, considers
man simply as a dualityiind and body, a unit of
consciousness in a set of envelopes. This is not the
duality of the Self and the Not-Self. For in Yog, "Self"
includes consciousness plus such matter as it cannot
distinguish from itself, and Not-Self is only the matter
it can put aside.
Man is not pure Self, pure consciousness, Samvid. That is
an abstraction. In the concrete universe there are always
the Self and His sheaths, however tenuous the latter may
be, so that a unit of consciousness is inseparable from
matter, and a Jivatma, or Monad, is invariably
consciousness plus matter.
In order that this may come out clearly, two terms are
used in Yog as constituting manÐrana and Pradhana, life-
breath and matter. Prana is not only the life-breath of
the body, but the totality of the life forces of the
universe or, in other words, the life-side of the
universe.
"I am Prana," says Indra. Prana here means the totality
of the life-forces. They are taken as consciousness,
mind. Pradhana is the term used for matter. Body, or the
opposite of mind, means for the yogi in practice so much
of the appropriated matter of the outer world as he is
able to put away from himself, to distinguish from his
own consciousness.
This division is very significant and useful, if you can
catch clearly hold of the root idea. Of course, looking
at the thing from beginning to end, you will see Prana,
the great Life, the great Self, always present in all,
and you will see the envelopes, the bodies, the sheaths,
present at the different stages, taking different forms;
but from the standpoint of yogic practice, that is called
Prana, or Self, with which the man identifies himself for
the time, including every sheath of matter from which the
man is unable to separate himself in consciousness. That
unit, to the yogi, is the Self, so that it is a changing
quantity. As he drops off one sheath after another and
says: " That is not myself," he is coming nearer and
nearer to his highest point, to consciousness in a single
film, in a single atom of matter, a Monad. For all
practical purposes of Yog, the man, the working,
conscious man, is so much of him as he cannot separate
from the matter enclosing him, or with which he is
connected. Only that is body which the man is able to put
aside and say: "This is not I, but mine." We find we have
a whole series of terms in Yog which may be repeated over
and over again. All the states of mind exist on every
plane, says Vyaasa, and this way of dealing with man
enables the same significant words, as we shall see in a
moment, to be used over and over again, with an ever
subtler connotation; they all become relative, and are
equally true at each stage of evolution.
Now it is quite clear that, so far as many of us are
concerned, the physical body is the only thing of which
we can say: "It is not myself"; so that, in the practice
of Yog at first, for you, all the words that would be
used in it to describe the states of consciousness, the
states of mind, would deal with the waking consciousness
in the body as the lowest state, and, rising up from
that, all the words would be relative terms, implying a
distinct and recognisable state of the mind in relation
to that which is the lowest. In order to know how you
shall begin to apply to yourselves the various terms used
to describe the states of mind, you must carefully
analyse your own consciousness, and find out how much of
it is really consciousness, and how much is matter so
closely appropriated that you cannot separate it from
yourself.
States of Mind
Let us take it in detail. Four states of consciousness
are spoken of amongst us. "Waking" consciousness or
Jagrat; the "dream" consciousness, or Svapna; the "deep
sleep" consciousness, or Sushupti; and the state beyond
that, called Turiya[FN#3: It is impossible to avoid the
use of these technical terms, even in an introduction to
Yog. There are no exact English equivalents, and they are
no more troublesome to learn than any other technical
psychological terms.] How are those related to the body?
Jagrat is the ordinary waking consciousness, that you and
I are using at the present time. If our consciousness
works in the subtle, or astral, body, and is able to
impress its experiences upon the brain, it is called
Svapna, or in English, dream consciousness; it is more
vivid and real than the Jagrat state. When working in the
subtler form -- the mental body -- it is not able to
impress its experiences on the brain, it is called
Sushupti or deep sleep consciousness; then the mind is
working on its own contents, not on outer objects. But if
it has so far separated itself from connection with the
brain, that it cannot be readily recalled by outer means,
then it is, called Turiya, a lofty state of trance. These
four states, when correlated to the four planes,
represent a much unfolded consciousness. Jagrat is
related to the physical; Svapna to the astral; Sushupti
to the mental; and Turiya to the buddhic. When passing
from one world to another, we should use these words to
designate the consciousness working under the conditions
of each world. But the same words are repeated in the
books of Yog with a different context. There the
difficulty occurs, if we have not learned their relative
nature. Svapna is not the same for all, nor is Sushupti
the same for everyone.
Above all, the word samadhi, to be explained in a moment,
is used in different ways and in different senses. How
then are we to find our way in this apparent tangle? By
knowing the state which is the starting-point, and then
the sequence will always be the same. All of you are
familiar with the waking consciousness in the physical
body. You can find four states even in that, if you
analyse it, and a similar sequence of the states of the
mind is found on every plane.
How to distinguish them, then ? Let us take the waking
consciousness, and try to see the four states in that.
Suppose I take up a book and read it. I read the words;
my eyes arc related to the outer physical consciousness.
That is the Jagrat state. I go behind the words to the
meaning of the words. I have passed from the waking state
of the physical plane into the Svapna state of waking
consciousness, that sees through the outer form, seeking
the inner life. I pass from this to the mind of the
writer; here the mind touches the mind; it is the waking
consciousness in its Sushupti state. If I pass from this
contact and enter the very mind of the writer, and live
in that man's mind, then I have reached the Turiya state
of the waking consciousness.
Take another illustration. I look at any watch; I am in
Jagrat. I close my eyes and make an image of the watch; I
am in Svapna. I call together many ideas of many watches,
and reach the ideal watch; I am in Sushupti. I pass to
the ideal of time in the abstract; I am in Turiya. But
all these are stages in the physical plane consciousness;
I have not left the body.
In this way, you can make states of mind intelligible and
real, instead of mere words.
Samadhi
Some other important words, which recur from time to time
in the Yog-sootras, need to be understood, though there
are no exact English equivalents. As they must be used to
avoid clumsy circumlocutions, it is necessary to explain
them. It is said: "Yog is Samadhi." Samadhi is a state in
which the consciousness is so dissociated from the body
that the latter remains insensible. It is a state of
trance in which the mind is fully self-conscious, though
the body is insensitive, and from which the mind returns
to the body with the experiences it has had in the
superphysical state, remembering them when again immersed
in the physical brain. Samadhi for any one person is
relative to his waking consciousness, but implies
insensitiveness of the body. If an ordinary person throws
himself into trance and is active on the astral plane,
his Samadhi is on the astral. If his consciousness is
functioning in the mental plane, Samadhi is there. The
man who can so withdraw from the body as to leave it
insensitive, while his mind is fully self-conscious, can
practice Samadhi.
The phrase "Yog is Samadhi" covers facts of the highest
significance and greatest instruction. Suppose you are
only able to reach the astral world when you are asleep,
your consciousness there is, as we have seen, in the
Svapna state. But as you slowly unfold your powers, the
astral forms begin to intrude upon your waking physical
consciousness until they appear as distinctly as do
physical forms, and thus become objects of your waking
consciousness. The astral world then, for you, no longer
belongs to the Svapna consciousness, but to the Jagrat;
you have taken two worlds within the scope of your Jagrat
consciousness -- the physical and the astral worlds --
and the mental world is in your Svapna consciousness.
"Your body" is then the physical and the astral bodies
taken together. As you go on, the mental plane begins
similarly to intrude itself, and the physical, astral and
mental all come within your waking consciousness; all
these are, then, your Jagrat world. These three worlds
form but one world to you; their three corresponding
bodies but one body, that perceives and acts. The three
bodies of the ordinary man have become one body for the
yogi. If under these conditions you want to see only one
world at a time, you must fix your attention on it, and
thus focus it. You can, in that state of enlarged waking,
concentrate your attention on the physical and see it;
then the astral and mental will appear hazy. So you can
focus your attention on the astral and see it; then the
physical and the mental, being out of focus, will appear
dim. You will easily understand this if you remember
that, in this hall, I may focus my sight in the middle of
the hall, when the pillars on both sides will appear
indistinctly. Or I may concentrate my attention on a
pillar and see it distinctly, but I then see you only
vaguely at the same time. It is a change of focus, not a
change of body. Remember that all which you can put aside
as not yourself is the body of the yogi, and hence, as
you go higher, the lower bodies form but a single body
and the consciousness in that sheath of matter which it
still cannot throw away, that becomes the man.
"Yog is Samadhi." It is the power to withdraw from all
that you know as body, and to concentrate yourself
within. That is Samadhi. No ordinary means will then call
you back to the world that you have left.[FN#4: An Indian
yogi in Samadhi, discovered in a forest by some ignorant
and brutal Englishmen, was so violently ill used that he
returned to his tortured body, only to leave it again at
once by death.] This will also explain to you the phrase
in The Secret Doctrine that the Adept " begins his
Samadhi on the atmic plane " When a Jivan-mukta enters
into Samadhi, he begins it on the atmic plane. All planes
below the atmic are one plane for him. He begins his
Samadhi on a plane to which the mere man cannot rise. He
begins it on the atmic plane, and thence rises stage by
stage to the higher cosmic planes. The same word,
samadhi, is used to describe the states of the
consciousness, whether it rises above the physical into
the astral, as in self-induced trance of an ordinary man,
or as in the case of a Jivan-mukta when, the
consciousness being already centred in the fifth, or
atmic plane, it rises to the higher planes of a larger
world.
The Literature of Yog
Unfortunately for non-Sanskrit-knowing people, the
literature of Yog is not largely available in English.
The general teachings of Yog are to be found in the
Upanishads, and the Bhagavad-Gita; those, in many
translations, are within your reach, but they are
general, not special; they give you the main principles,
but do not tell you about the methods in any detailed
way. Even in the Bhagavad-Gita, while you are told to
make sacrifices, to become indifferent, and so on, it is
all of the nature of moral precept, absolutely necessary
indeed, but still not telling you how to reach the
conditions put before you. The special literature of Yog
is, first of all, many of the minor Upanishads, "the
hundred-and-eight" as they are called. Then comes the
enormous mass of literature called the Tantras. These
books have an evil significance in the ordinary English
ear, but not quite rightly. The Tantras are very useful
books, very valuable and instructive; all occult science
is to be found in them. But they are divisible into three
classes: those that deal with white magic, those that
deal with black magic, and those that deal with what we
may call grey magic, a mixture of the two. Now magic is
the word which covers the methods of deliberately
bringing about super-normal physical states by the action
of the will.
A high tension of the nerves, brought on by anxiety or
disease, leads to ordinary hysteria, emotional and
foolish. A similarly high tension, brought about by the
will, renders a man sensitive to super-physical
vibrations Going to sleep has no significance, but going
into Samadhi is a priceless power. The process is largely
the same, but one is due to ordinary conditions, the
other to the action of the trained will. The Yogi is the
man who has learned the power of the will, and knows how
to use it to bring about foreseen and foredetermined
results. This knowledge has ever been called magic; it is
the name of the Great Science of the past, the one
Science, to which only the word " great " was given in
the past. The Tantras contain the whole of that; the
occult side of man and nature, the means whereby
discoveries may be made, the principles whereby the man
may re-create himself, all these are in the Tantras. The
difficulty is that without a teacher they are very
dangerous, and again and again a man trying to practice
the Tantric methods without a teacher makes himself very
ill. So the Tantras have got a bad name both in the West
and here in India. A good many of the American " occult "
books now sold are scraps of the Tantras which have been
translated. One difficulty is that these Tantric works
often use the name of a bodily organ to represent an
astral or mental centre. There is some reason in that
because all the centres are connected with each other
from body to body; but no reliable teacher would set his
pupil to work on the bodily organs until he had some
control over the higher centres, and had carefully
purified the physical body. Knowing the one helps you to
know the other, and the teacher who has been through it
all can place his pupil on the right path; but it you
take up these words, which are all physical, and do not
know to what the physical word is applied, then you will
only become very confused, and may injure yourself. For
instance, in one of the Sootras it is said that if you
meditate on a certain part of the tongue you will obtain
astral sight. That means that if you meditate on the
pituitary body, just over this part of the tongue, astral
sight will be opened. The particular word used to refer
to a centre has a correspondence in the physical body,
and the word is often applied to the physical organs when
the other is meant. This is what is called a " blind,"
and it is intended to keep the people away from dangerous
practices in the books that are published; people may
meditate on that part of their tongues all their lives
without anything coming of it; but if they think upon the
corresponding centre in the body, a good dealiuch harmiay
come of it. " Meditate on the navel," it is also said.
This means the solar plexus, for there is a close
connection between the two. But to meditate on that is to
incur the danger of a serious nervous disorder, almost
impossible to cure. All who know how many people in India
suffer through these practices, ill-understood, recognize
that it is not wise to plunge into them without some one
to tell you what they mean, and what may be safely
practiced and what not. The other part of the Yog
literature is a small book called the sootras of
Patanjali. That is available, but I am afraid that few
are able to make much of it by themselves. In the first
place, to elucidate the Sootras, which are simply
headings, there is a great deal of commentary in
Sanskrit, only partially translated. And even the
commentaries have this peculiarity, that all the most
difficult words are merely repeated, not explained, so
that the student is not much enlightened.
Continued in Part 2
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