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.
28 matching pages
Page 1 of 21939 · PDF PAGE 46
…actice is that it takes a great deal of skill and experience to become really alert to what is happening. You can go 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…
1939 · PDF PAGE 68
places they have seen in dreams repeatedly are places that they have known in a waking life. But they are quite capable of criticising this illusion by memory, and they admit the deception. Well, in the same way the phenomena of high Magick and Samadhi have an authenticity, and confer an interior certainty, which is to the experience of waking life as that is to a dream. But, apart from all this, experience is experience; and the real guarantee that we have of the attainment of reality is its rank in the hierarchy of the mind. 13. Let us ask ou…
1939 · PDF PAGE 38
…to add a few words on the subject of Mantra-Yoga, because this is really a branch of Pranayama, and one which it is possible to practise quite thoroughly in this country. In Book IV., Part I., I have described it, with examples, quite fully enough. I need here only say that its constant use, day and night, without a moment's cessation, is probably as useful a method as one could find of preparing the current of thought for the assumption of a rhythmical form, and rhythm is the great cure for irregularity. Once it is established, no interference…
1939 · PDF PAGE 16
…nt ingenuity of the pious Hindu. He has interpreted the word 'control' as meaning compliance with certain fixed proscriptions. There are quite a lot of prohibitions grouped under the heading of Yama, which are perhaps quite necessary for the kind of people contemplated by the Teacher, but they have been senselessly elevated into universal rules. Everyone is familiar with the prohibition of pork as an article of diet by Jews and Mohammedans. This has nothing to do with Yama, or abstract righteousness. It was due to the fact that pork in eastern …
1939 · PDF PAGE 54
…ite object, yet you can go over the surface in any direction without ever coming to an end. I said above that Riemann's Geometry was not quite sufficient to explain the phenomena of nature. We have to postulate different kinds of curvature in different parts of the continuum. And even then we are not happy! 26. Now for a spot of Sullivan! 'The geometry is so general that it admits of different degrees of curvature in different parts of space-time. It is to this curvature that gravitational effects are due. The curvature of space-time is most pr…
1939 · PDF PAGE 44
…in themselves, because the entire series of the three states of meditation proper is summed up in the word Samyama; you can translate it quite well for yourselves, since you already know that 'sam' means 'together,' and that 'Yama' means 'control.' It represents the merging of minor individual acts of control into a single gesture, very much as all the separate cells, bones, veins, arteries, nerves, muscles and so forth, of the arm combine in unconscious unanimity to make a single stroke. 16. Now the practice of Pratyahara, properly speaking, i…
1939 · PDF PAGE 36
…f the highest results of Yoga. It is certainly a fact that when you are doing a cycle of 20 seconds out, 10 in, and 30 holding, there is quite a long period during the holding period when the mind does tend to stop its malignant operations. By the time this cycle has become customary, you are able to recognise instinctively the arrival of the moment when you can throw yourself suddenly into the mental act of concentration. In other words, by Asana and Pranayama you have worked yourself into a position where you are free, if only for a few secon…
1939 · PDF PAGE 33
…melt with maudlin good feeling. I have known pupils who have actually been betrayed into sparing a kindly thought for the Teacher! It is quite clear that there is something wrong about this. Fortunately, Time, the great healer, is on the job as usual; Time takes no week-ends off; Time does not stop to admire himself; Time keeps right on.[3] Before very long, you forget all about the pleasantness of things, and it would not be at all polite to give you any idea of what you are going to think of the Teacher. 14. Perhaps the first thing you notice…
1939 · PDF PAGE 28
acquires a feelinga quite irrational feelingthat a given place or a given method is right or wrong for its purposes. The intimation is as assured as that of the swordsman when he picks up an untried weapon; either it comes up sweet to the hand, or it does not. You cannot explain it, and you cannot argue it away. 21. I have treated Yama and Niyama at great 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 ad…
1939 · PDF PAGE 21
…he Hindus mean; if one soaks oneself in Oriental thought for a sufficient number of years, one gets a spiritual apprehension which it is quite impossible to express in terms applicable to the objects of intellectual apprehension; it is therefore much better to content ourselves with the words as they stand, and get down to brass tacks about the practical steps to be taken to master these preliminary exercises. 2. It will hardly have escaped the attentive listener that in my previous lectures I have combined the maximum of discourse with the min…
1939 · PDF PAGE 39
…s called the Ineffable Name; it is alleged that when pronounced accurately its vibrations would destroy the universe; and this is indeed quite true, when we take the deeper interpretation. Tetragrammaton is so called from the four letters in the word: Yod, Hé, Vau, and Hé. This is compared with the relations of a familyYod, the Father, Hé, the Mother; Vau, the Son; and the final Hé, the Daughter. (In writing she is sometimes distinguished from her mother by inserting a small point in the letter.) This is also a reference to the elements, fire,…
1939 · PDF PAGE 14
…d were identical; this was masked by religious prejudice and local custom. But in their quiddityidentical! This simple principle proved quite sufficient to disentangle the subject from the extraordinary complexities which have confused its expression. 3. When it came to the point of preparing a simple analysis of the matter, the question arose: what terms shall we use? The mysticisms of Europe are hopelessly muddled; the theories have entirely overlaid the methods. The Chinese system is perhaps the most sublime and the most simple; but, unless…
1939 · PDF PAGE 37
… up on the floor, and you begin to be wafted here and there, much as dead leaves are moved by a little breeze. This does happen; you are quite normal mentally, and you can watch yourself doing it. The natural explanation of this is that your muscles are making very quick short spasmodic jerks without your being conscious of the fact. The dog helps us again by making similar contortions. As against this, it may be argued that your mind appears to be perfectly normal. There is, however, one particuliar point of consciousness, the sensation of alm…
1939 · PDF PAGE 23
…ment. 10. The next planet is Mars. Mars represents the muscular system; it is the lowest form of energy, and in Niyama it is to be taken quite literally as the virtue which enables one to contend with, and to conquer, the physical difficulties of the Work. The practical point is this: 'The little more and how much it is, the little less and what worlds away!' No matter how long you keep water at 99 degrees Centigrade under normal barometric pressure, it will not boil. I shall probably be accused of advertising some kind of motor spirit in talki…
1939 · PDF PAGE 35
… pleasing to turn to a subject like Pranayama. Pranayama means control of force. It is a generalised term. In the Hindu system there are quite a lot of subtle sub-strata of the various energies of the body which have all got names and properties. I do not propose to deal with the bulk of them. There are only two which have much practical importance in life. One of these is not to be communicated to the public in a rotten country like this; the other is the well-known 'control of breath.' This simply means that you get a stop watch, and choose a…
1939 · PDF PAGE 43
…the most extensive explorations into the recesses of the mind. 12. The word Dhyana is difficult to define; it is used by many writers in quite contrary senses. The question is discussed at some length in Part I. of my Book IV. I will quote what I have written about it in conclusion 'Let us try a final definition. Dhyana resembles Samadhi in many respects. There is a union of the ego and the non-ego, and a loss of the sense of time and space and causality. Duality in any form is abolished. The idea of time involves that of two consecutive thing…
1939 · PDF PAGE 18
…while, on the other hand, things which matter 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 aga…
1939 · PDF PAGE 50
…vention are seen to be unreal. How are we to get away from the world of phantasmagoria to the common universe of sense? We shall require quite a lot more acts of imagination. We have got to endow our mathematical conceptions with three ideas which Hindu philosophers call Sat, Chit and Ananda, which are usually translated Being, Knowledge and Bliss. This really means: Sat, the tendency to conceive of an object as real; Chit, the tendency to pretend that it is an object of knowledge; and Ananda, the tendency to imagine that we are affected by it.…
1939 · PDF PAGE 67
…er 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 the object of my visionwhat I call the paper and the ink. Which is the dream? Th…
1939 · PDF PAGE 10
… rest; but investigation has shown that this is all illusory. Where are these qualities? Not in the cheese, for different observers give quite different accounts of it. Not in ourselves, for we do not perceive them in the absence of the cheese. All 'material things,' all impressions, are phantoms. In reality the cheese is nothing but a series of electric charges. Even the most fundamental quality of all, mass, has been found not to exist. The same is true of the matter in our brains which is partly responsible for these perceptions. What then a…