FOLLOW A WORD THROUGH THE COLLECTION
Search the corpus.
Phrase search ignores case and repeated whitespace. All-words search finds whole words anywhere on the same page. OCR errors can affect results.
19 matching pages
Page 1 of 11939 · PDF PAGE 45
…o deal with the new conditions which are established in the mind by realisation of Dhyana and Samadhi. I can now describe the elementary practices. You should begin with very short periods; it is most important not to overstrain the apparatus which you are using; the mind must be trained very slowly. In my early days I was often satisfied with a minute or two at a time; three or four such periods twice or three times a day. In the earliest stages of all it is not necessary to have got very far with Asana, because all you can get out of the earl…
1939 · PDF PAGE 42
…aily 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 of Devotion to a Particular Deity. This book…
1939 · PDF PAGE 37
…ee occasions at least comparatively reliable people have said that they saw it happening to me. I do not think it proves anything. These practices, Asana and Pranayama, are, to a certain extent, mechanical, and to that extent it is just possible for a man of extraordinary will power, with plenty of leisure and no encumbrances, to do a good deal of the spade-work of Yoga even in England. But I should advise him to stick very strictly to the purely physical preparation, and on no account to attempt the practices of concentration proper, until he …
1939 · PDF PAGE 66
…ttained by the initiations which were conferred by the Angel of each Aethyr in its turn. There was this further identification with Yoga practices recorded in this book. At times the concentration necessary to dwell in the Aethyr became so intense that definitely Samadhic results were obtained. We see then that the exaltation of the mind by means of magical practices leads (as one may say, in spite of itself) to the same results as occur in straightforward Yoga. I think I ought to tell you a little more about these visions. The method of obtain…
1939 · PDF PAGE 28
…reat length because their importance has been greatly underrated, and their nature completely misunderstood. They are definitely magical practices, with hardly a tinge of mystical flavour. The advantage to us here is that we can very usefully exercise and develop ourselves in this way in this country where the technique of Yoga is for all practical purposes impossible. Incidentally, one's real countrythat is, the conditions in which one happens to be born is the only one in which Yama and Niyama can be practised. You cannot dodge your Karma. Y…
1939 · PDF PAGE 57
…ining 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.
1939 · PDF PAGE 71
… to be useful to every human being. I have tried to do this by combining the two paths of Magick and Yoga. If we perform the preliminary practices, each according to his capacity, the result will surely be the acquisition of a certain technique. And this will become much easier as we advance, especially if we bear it well in mind not to attempt to 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 nobod…
1939 · PDF PAGE 46
…on day-dreaming for quite long periods before realising that your thoughts have wandered at all. This is why I insist so strongly on the practices described above as producing alertness and watchfulness, and you will obviously realise that it is quite evident that one has to be in the pink of condition and in the most favourable mental state in order to make any headway at all. But when you have had a little practice in detecting and counting the breaks in your concentration, you will find that they themselves are useful, because their characte…
1939 · PDF PAGE 44
…tity, it is called. So we can divide the universe into A and not-A; there is no third thing possible. Now, quite early in the meditation practices, the Yogi is likely to get as a direct experience the consciousness that these laws are not true in any ultimate way. He has reached a world where intellectual conceptions are no longer valid; they remain true for the ordinary affairs of life, but the normal laws of thought are seen to be no more than a mere mechanism. A code of conventions. The students of higher mathematics and metaphysics have oft…
1939 · PDF PAGE 60
… 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 th…
1939 · PDF PAGE 29
YOGA FOR YAHOOS FOURTH LECTURE. ASANA AND PRANAYAMA. The Technical Practices of Yoga. Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. 1. Last week we were able to go away feeling that the back of the job had been broken. We had got rid of bad ways, bad wives, and bad weather. We are comfortably installed in the sunshine, with no one to bother us. We have nothing to do but our work. Such being our fortunate state, we may usefully put in an hour considering our next step. Let us recall, in the first place, what we decided to be the quintessence …
1939 · PDF PAGE 21
…tence of any kind renders any serious Yoga absolutely out of the question; domestic life is completely incompatible with even elementary practices. No doubt many of you will say, 'That's all very well for him; let him speak for himself; as for me, I manage my home and my business so that everything runs on ball bearings.' Echo answers . . .
1939 · PDF PAGE 35
…in, the theory being that breathing out quickly may bring a loss of energy. I think there may be something in this.) 23. There are other practices. For instance, one can make the breathing as quick and shallow as possible. Any good practice is likely to produce its own phenomena, but in accordance with the general thesis of these lectures I think it will be obvious that the proper practice will aim at holding the breath for as long a period as possiblebecause that condition will represent as close an approximation to complete stillness of the …
1939 · PDF PAGE 27
… an exceedingly rich man, to find a country where the inhabitants understand the Yogin mode of life, where they are sympathetic with its practices, treat the aspirant with respect, and unobtrusively assist and protect him. In such circumstances, the exigency of Yama and Niyama is not so serious a stress. There is, too, something beyond all these practical details which it is hard to emphasise without making just those mysterious assumptions which we have from the first resolved to avoid. All I can say is that I am very sorry, but this particula…
1939 · PDF PAGE 61
11. Let us now deal with a few of the phenomena which occur during the practices of Pratyahara. Very early during my retirement in Kandy, I had been trying to concentrate by slanting my eyes towards the tip of my nose. This, by the way, is not a good practice; one is liable to strain the eyes. But what happened was that I woke up in the night; my hand touched a nose; I immediately concluded that some one was in the room. Not at all; I only thought so because my nose had passed away from the region of my observation by the practice of concentrat…
1939 · PDF PAGE 36
…nt exercise; it has peculiar properties, and I am not going to tell you what these are, because it is much better for you to perform the practices, obtain the experience, and come to me yourself with the information. In this way you will know that you have got the right thing, whereas if I were to tell you now, you would very likely imagine it. 2. Automatic rigidity: the body becomes still, as the result of a spasm. This is perfectly normal and predictable. It is customary to do it with a dog. You stick him in a bell-jar, pump in oxygen or carb…
1939 · PDF PAGE 59
…f the Superior. 6. I should like to mention here that the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius are in their essence really admirable Yoga practices. They have, it is true, a tinge of magical technique, and they have been devised to serve a dogmatic end. That was, however, necessary, and it was good magic too, at that, because the original will of the Founder was to produce a war engine as a counterblast to the Reformation. He was very wise to devise a plan, irrespective of its abstract merits as philosophy, which would most efficiently serve tha…
1939 · PDF PAGE 70
…could quote you the case of a mana very inferior and wishy- washy poetwho undertook for a time very strenuously the prescribed magical practices. He was very fortunate, and attained admirable results. No sooner had he done so that his poetry itself became flooded with supernal light and energy. He produced masterpieces. And then he gave up his Magick because the task of further progress appalled him. The result was that his poetry fell completely away to the standard of wet blotting paper. 20. Let me tell you also of one man almost illiterate…
1939 · PDF PAGE 22
…ng in the room; for all I know, you could sleep peacefully through an air-raid. That has nothing to do with it. As soon as you start the practices you will find, if you are doing them properly, that you are hearing sounds which you never heard before in your life. You become hypersensitive. And as you have five external batteries bombarding you, you get little repose. You feel the air on your skin with about the same intensity as you would previously have felt a fist in your face. 5. To some extent, no doubt, this fact will be familiar to all o…