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Page 1 of 11939 · PDF PAGE 8
…abit produced by generations of systematic sectarian training. (3) We must then begin the study of Yoga by looking at the meaning of the word. It means Union, from the same Sanskrit root as the Greek word Zeugma, the Latin word Jugum, and the English word yoke. (Yeug to join.) When a dancing girl is dedicated to the service of a temple there is a Yoga of her relations to celebrate. Yoga, in short, may be translated 'tea fight,' which doubtless accounts for the fact that all the students of Yoga in England do nothing but gossip over endless lib…
1939 · PDF PAGE 15
…dings are: 1. Yama. 2. Niyama. 3. Asana. 4. Pranayama. 5. Pratyahara. 6. Dharana. 7. Dhyana. 8. Samadhi. Any attempt to translate these words will mire us in a hopeless quag of misunderstanding. What we can do is to deal with each one in turn, giving at the outset some sort of definition or description which will enable us to get a fairly complete idea of what is meant. I shall accordingly begin with an account of Yama. Attend! Perpend! Transcend! 7. Yama is the easiest of the eight limbs of Yoga to define, and corresponds pretty closely to ou…
1939 · PDF PAGE 9
(5) Yoga means Union. What are the elements which are united or to be united when this word is used in its common sense of a practice widely spread in Hindustan whose object is the emancipation of the individual who studies and practises it from the less pleasing features of his life on this planet? I say Hindustan, but I really mean anywhere on the earth; for research has shown that similar methods producing similar results are to be found in every country. The details vary, but the general structure is the same. Because all bodies, and so all…
1939 · PDF PAGE 43
…ng after success in Samadhi has been attained, one has to conduct 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 …
1939 · PDF PAGE 11
…ersonal scientific attitude. It is especially important not to bedevil ourselves with Oriental jargon. We may have to use a few Sanskrit words; but that is only because they have no English equivalents; and any attempt to translate them burdens us with the connotations of the existing English words which we employ. However, these words are very few; and, if the definitions which I propose to give you are carefully studied, they should present no difficulty. (12) Having now understood that Yoga is the essence of all phenomena whatsoever, we may …
1939 · PDF PAGE 39
… my text-book on Magick, Chapter III., the formula of Tetragrammaton. This formula covers the entire universe of magical operations. The word usually pronounced Jehovah is 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 fin…
1939 · PDF PAGE 57
…ee by the aesthetic method. And this explains why all the good work on Yoga- alchemy, magick and the restnot doctrinal but symbolicthe word of God to man, is given in Poetry and Art. In my next lecture I shall endeavour to go a little deeper 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, Apri…
1939 · PDF PAGE 12
…e impact of other people; and in a very large number of cases he is unable to stand up to the strain. 'Schizophrenia,' which is a lovely word, and may or may not be found in your dictionary, is an exceedingly common complaint. It means the splitting up of the mind. In extreme cases we get the phenomena of multiple personality, Jekyll and Hyde, only more so. At the best, when a man says 'I' he refers only to a transitory phenomenon. His 'I' changes as he utters the word. Butphilosophy apartit is rarer and rarer to find a man with a mind of his…
1939 · PDF PAGE 21
…The subject of my third lecture is Niyama. Niyama? H'm! The inadequacy of even the noblest attempts to translate these wretched Sanskrit words is now about to be delightfully demonstrated. The nearest I can get to the meaning of Niyama is 'virtue'! God help us all! This means virtue in the original etymological sense of the wordthe quality of manhood; that is, to all intents and purposes, the quality of godhead. But since we are translating Yama 'control,' we find that our two words have not at all the same relationship to each other that the …
1939 · PDF PAGE 58
…s us that faith is 'the substance of things hoped for; the evidence of things unseen.' I do not think, then, that we are to imagine this word faith to mean what that lecherous gross-bellied boor, Martin Luther, maintained. The faith of which he speaks is anything but a substance, and as for evidence, it is nothing but the power, as the schoolboy said, of believing that which we know to be untrue. To have any sensible meaning at all, faith must mean experience, and that view is in exact accord with the conclusion to which we were led in my last …
1939 · PDF PAGE 63
… not worked it out very thoroughly myself, but I very much doubt whether 'consciousness' has any meaning at all, as a translation of the word Vinnanam. I think that a better translation would be 'experience,' used in the sense in which we have been using it hitherto, as the direct reality behind and beyond all remark. 23. I hope you will appreciate how difficult it is to give a reasoned description, however tentative, of these phenomena, still less to classify them properly. They have a curious trick of running one into the other. This, I belie…
1939 · PDF PAGE 42
… at all. He should also practise assiduously Liber III. vel Jugorum. The essence of this practice is that you select a familiar thought, word or gesture, one which automatically recurs fairly often during the day, and every time you are betrayed into using it, cut yourself sharply upon the wrist or forearm with a convenient instrument. There is also a practice which I find very useful when walking in a christian citythat of exorcising (with the prescribed outward and downward sweep of the arm and the words Apo pantos kakodaimonos) any person i…
1939 · PDF PAGE 37
…. The third stage is marked by Buchari-siddhi: 'the power of jumping about like a frog' would be a rough translation of this fascinating word. This is a very extraordinary phenomenon. You are sitting tied 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 he…
1939 · PDF PAGE 44
…ent that Dhyana stands to Samadhi rather as the jumping about like a frog, described in a previous lecture, does to Levitation. In other words, Dhyana is an unbalanced or an impure approximation to Samadhi. Subject and object unite and disappear with ecstasy mounting to indifference, and so forth, but there is still a presentation of some kind in the new genus of consciousness. In this view Dhyana would be rather like an explosion of gunpowder carelessly mixed; most of it goes off with a bang, but there is some débris of the original components…
1939 · PDF PAGE 65
…achieve this? By exalting the will to the point where it is master of circumstance. And how do we do this? By so ordering every thought, word and act, in such a way that the attention is constantly recalled to the chosen object. 6. Suppose I want to evoke the 'Intelligence' of Jupiter. I base my work upon the correspondences of Jupiter. I base my mathematics on the number 4 and its subservient numbers 16, 34, 136. I employ the square or rhombus. For my sacred animal I choose the eagle, or some other sacred to Jupiter. For my perfume, saffronfo…
1939 · PDF PAGE 25
…. Our next planet is Mercury, and the Niyama which correspond to him are as innumerable and various as his own qualities. Mercury is the Word, the Logos in the highest; he is the direct medium of connection between opposites; he is electricity, the very link of life, the Yogic process itself, its means, its end. Yet he is in himself indifferent to all things, as the electric current is indifferent to the meaning of the messages which may be transmitted by its means. The Niyama corresponding to Mercury in its highest forms may readily be divined…
1939 · PDF PAGE 16
…ama (or Control) has been bedevilled out of all sense by the mistaken and malignant 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 w…