Book 4 (Part I)

70 and we have tumbled too. Yet this ruin is like the opening of the Gates of Heaven! Here is a tremendous problem, and there is something within us which ravins for its solution. Let us see what explanations we can find. The first suggestion which would enter a well-balanced mind, versed in the study of nature, is that we have experienced a mental cata- strophe. Just as a blow on the head will make a man “see stars,” so one might suppose that the terrific mental strain of Dharana has some— how over-excited the brain, and caused a spasm, or possibly even the breaking of a small vessel. There seems no reason to reject this ex- planation altogether, though it would be quite absurd to suppose that to accept it would be to condemn the practice. Spasm is a normal func- tion of at least one of the organs of the body. That the brain is not damaged by the practice is proved by the fact that many people who claim to have had this experience repeatedly continue to exercise the ordinary avocations of life without diminished activity. We may dismiss, then, the physiologicalquestion. It throws no light on the main problem, which is the value of the testimony of the experience. Now this is a very difficult question, and raises the much larger question as to the value of any testimony. Every possible thought has been doubted at some time or another, except the thought which can