1939 · PDF PAGE 72
Eight Lectures on Yoga
ERRATUM Note * page 37. Browne, of course (not Brown, of course) and Kennedy (Apologies to Majah Browne)
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Page 1 of 21939 · PDF PAGE 38
Eight Lectures on Yoga
…condition of any kind, and therefore represents in perfection the consummation of Yoga. Love is the law, love under will. 1In coitu, of course.ED. 2One Yeats-Brown. What are Yeats? Brown, of course, and Kennedy. 3Some Great Thinker once said: 'Time marches on.' What felicity of phrase!
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1939 · PDF PAGE 68
Eight Lectures on Yoga
… do so to this extent, that we base our action upon the belief that, even if it is not philosophically real, it is real enough to base a course of action upon it. What is the ultimate practical test of conviction? Just this, that it is our standard of conduct. I put on these glasses in order to read. I am quite certain that the blurred surface will become clear when I do so. Of course, I may be wrong. I may have picked up some other body's glasses by mistake. I might go blind before I could get them into position. Even such confidence has limit…
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1939 · PDF PAGE 64
Eight Lectures on Yoga
…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 in their lower elementsI mean mutual assistance. I am glad to think that the Path of the Wise has become much smoother and shorter than it was when I first trod it; for this very reason
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1939 · PDF PAGE 57
Eight Lectures on Yoga
…into the technique of obtaining these results, and also give a more detailed account of the sort of thing that is likely to occur in the course of the preliminary practices. Love is the law, love under will. 4Tannhäuser, written in Mexico, O.F., August, 1900. See also my Berashith, written in Delhi, April, 1901.
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1939 · PDF PAGE 42
Eight Lectures on Yoga
This is, of course, merely concentration in daily life, and it is the habit of such concentration that prepares one for the much severer task of the deeper concentration of the Yoga practices. For those who are undertaking a preliminary course there is nothing better, while they are still living more or less ordinary lives, than the practices recommended in The Equinox. There should bethere must bea definite routine of acts calculated to remind the student of the Great Work. 9. The classic of the subject is Liber Astarte vel Berylli, the Book…
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1939 · PDF PAGE 35
Eight Lectures on Yoga
…and unbroken nightmare of physical discomfort is impossible to describe. 21. The results and mastery of Asana are of use not only in the course of attainment of Yoga, but in the most ordinary affairs of life. At any time when fatigued, you have only to assume your Asana, and you are completely rested. It is as if the attainment of the mastery has worn down all those possibilities of physical pain which are inherent in that particular position. The teachings of physiology are not contradictory to this hypothesis. The conquest of Asana makes for …
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1939 · PDF PAGE 50
Eight Lectures on Yoga
…an absurd, irrational, and self-contradictory notion, that we arrive at even the simplest object of experience. And this object must, of course, be constantly multiplied. Otherwise our experience would be confined to a single object incapable of description. 14. We have also got to attribute to ourselves a sort of divine power over our nightmare creation, so that we can compare the different objects of our experience in all sorts of different manners. Incidentally, this last operation of multiplying the objects stands evidently invalid, because…
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1939 · PDF PAGE 56
Eight Lectures on Yoga
…is, from any one of these terms we can deduce the others. The primary entities of the theory are defined in terms of one another. In the course of this exercise we derive the laws of Nature studied in physics. At a certain point in the chain of deductions, at matter, for example, we judge that we are talking about something which is an objective concrete embodiment of our abstractions. But matter, as it occurs in physics, is no more than a particular set of abstractions, and our subsequent reasoning is concerned only with these abstractions. Su…
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1939 · PDF PAGE 45
Eight Lectures on Yoga
…ly the duration of the experiment, the number and nature of the intruding thoughts; the tendency of the object itself to depart from the course laid out for it, and any other phenomena which may present themselves. Avoid overstrain; this is very important. "7. Proceed to imagine living objects; as a man, preferably some man known to, and respected by, you. "8. In the intervals of these experiments you might try to imagine the objects of the other senses, and to concentrate upon them. For example, try to imagine the taste of chocolate, the smell…
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1939 · PDF PAGE 71
Eight Lectures on Yoga
… discriminate between the two methods as if they were opposing schools, but to use the one to help out the other in an emergency. 23. Of course, nobody understands better than I do that, although nobody can do your work for you, it is possible to make useto a certain very limited extentof other people's experience, and the Great Order which I have the honour to serve has appointed what I think you will agree is a very satisfactory and practical curriculum. 24. You are expected to spend three months at least on the study of some of the classic…
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1939 · PDF PAGE 46
Eight Lectures on Yoga
…ss of break seems to have no discoverable source in the mindsuch might even take the form of actual hallucination, usually auditory. Of course, such hallucinations are infrequent, and are recognised for what they are. Otherwise the student had better see a doctor. The usual kind consists of odd sentences, or fragments of sentences, which are quite distinctly heard in a recognisable human voice, not the student's own voice, or that of anyone he knows. A similar phenomenon is observed by wireless operators, who call such messages 'atmospherics.'…
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1939 · PDF PAGE 41
Eight Lectures on Yoga
…by the sophistications of religious and moral fanatics. To hell with the Archbishops! 8. You will readily appreciate that to undertake a course of this kind requires careful planning. You have got to map out your life in advance for a considerable period so far as it is humanly possible to do so. If you have failed in this original strategical disposition, you are simply not going to carry through the campaign. Unforeseen contingencies are certain to arise, and therefore one of our precautions is to have some sort of reserve of resource to flin…
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1939 · PDF PAGE 52
Eight Lectures on Yoga
…th each other star. In the world of ideas, each thought possessed a necessary relation with each other thought; each such relation is of course a thought in itself; each such ray is itself a star. It is here that logical difficulty first presents itself. The seer has a direct perception of infinite series. Logically, therefore, it would appear as if the entire space must be filled up with a homogeneous blaze of light. This is not, however, the case. The space is completely full, yet the monads which fill it are perfectly distinct. The ordinary …
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1939 · PDF PAGE 11
Eight Lectures on Yoga
…t is easily perceived, and has been constantly expressed in the mystical philosophies of the West; the only goal is 'Union with God.' Of course, we only use the word 'God' because we have been brought up in superstition, and the higher philosophers both in the East and in the West have preferred to speak of union with the All or with the Absolute. More superstitions! (15) Very well, then, there is no difficulty at all; since every thought in our being, every cell in our bodies, every electron and proton of our atoms, is nothing but Yoga and the…
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1939 · PDF PAGE 18
Eight Lectures on Yoga
…atter very little in the beginning become most serious obstacles later on. Another point is that quite unsuspected problems arise in the course of the training. The whole question of the sub-conscious mind can be dismissed almost as a joke by the average man as he goes about his daily business; it becomes a very real trouble when you discover that the tranquillity of the mind is being disturbed by a type of thought whose existence had previously been unsuspected, and whose source is unimaginable. Then again there is no perfection of materials; …
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1939 · PDF PAGE 36
Eight Lectures on Yoga
…f in the process. He did not see the difference between the experiment with the dog and the phenomena which supervene as the climax of a course of gentle operation. It is the difference between the exhilaration produced by sipping Clos Vougeot '26 and the madness of swilling corn whiskey. It is the same foolishness as to think that sniffing cocaine is a more wholesome process than chewing coca leaves. Why, they exclaim, cocaine is chemically pure! Cocaine is the active principle! We certainly do not want these nasty leaves, where our sacred dru…
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1939 · PDF PAGE 65
Eight Lectures on Yoga
…taneous and, so to speak, automatic. You may begin in the most modest way with the evocation of some simple elemental spirit; but in the course of the operation you are compelled, in order to attain success, to deal with higher entities. Your ambition grows, like every other organism, by what it feeds on. You are very soon led to the Great Work itself; you are led to aspire to the Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel, and this ambition in turn arouses automatically further difficulties the conquest of which confers new powers. …
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1939 · PDF PAGE 67
Eight Lectures on Yoga
…ses, two artificial. If I go and put on somebody else's glasses I shall get another kind of blur. As the lenses of my eyes change in the course of my life, what my sight tells me is different. The point is that we are quite unable to judge what is the truth of the vision. Why then do I put on my glasses to read? Only because the particular type of illusion produced by wearing them is one which enables me to interpret a prearranged system of hieroglyphics in a particular sense which I happen to imagine I want. It tells me nothing whatever about …
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1939 · PDF PAGE 70
Eight Lectures on Yoga
…on. For instance, with regard to the power of vision on the astral plane, I have been privileged to train many hundreds of people in the course of my life, and only about a dozen of them were incapable of success. In one case this was because the man had already got beyond all such preliminary exercise; his mind immediately took on the formless condition which transcends all images, all thought. Other failures were stupid people who were incapable of making an experiment of any sort. They were a mass of intellectual pride and prejudice, and I s…
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