Eight Lectures on Yoga

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 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 mystics all over the world. Comparisons have often been drawn by students of the subject. I will only detain you with one example: 'Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.' What is this injunction? It is a generalisation of St. Augustine's 'Love, and do what thou wilt.' But in The Book of the Law, lest the hearer should be deluded into a spasm of antinomianism, there is a further explanation: 'Love is the law, love under will.' 8. However, the point is that it is no use discussing the results of Yoga, whether that Yoga be the type recommended by Lao-Tze, or Patanjali, or St. Ignatius Loyola, because for our first postulate we have: that these subjects are incapable of discussion. To argue about them only causes us to fall into the pit of Because, and there to perish with the dogs of Reason. The only use, therefore, of describing our experiences is to enable students to get some sort of idea of the sort of thing that is going to happen to them when they attain success in the practices of Yoga. We have David saying in the Psalms: 'I hate thoughts, but Thy law do I love.' We have St. Paul saying: 'The carnal mind is enmity against God.' One might almost say that the essence of St. Paul's Epistles is a struggle against mind: 'We war not against flesh and blood'—you know the rest—I can't be bothered to quote it all—Eph. vi. 12. 9. It is St. Paul, I think, who describes Satan, which is his name for the enemy, owing to his ignorance of the history of the world, as the Prince of the Power of the Air; that is, of the Ruach, of the intellect; and we must never forget that what operated the conversion of St. Paul was the Vision on the road to Damascus. It is particularly significant that he disappeared into the Desert of Arabia for three years before coming forward as the Apostle to the Gentiles. St. Paul was a learned Rabbi; he was the favourite pupil of the best expositor of the Hebrew Law, and in the single moment of his Vision all his arguments were shattered at a single stroke! 10. We are not told that St. Paul said anything at the time, but went quietly on his journey. That is the great lesson: not to discuss the results. Those of you who possess a copy of The Equinox of the Gods may have been very much surprised at the extraordinary injunction in the Comment: the prohibition of all discussion of the Book. I myself did not fully understand that injunction; I do so now.