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Page 1 of 121929 · PDF PAGE 139
139 Asana, "position", is the art of sitting perfectly still, so that the body can no longer send messages to the mind. Pranayama, "control of breath force", consists in learning to breathe as slowly, deeply and regularly as possible. The slightest mental irritation or excitement always makes one breathe quickly and unevenly; thus one is able to detect any disturbance of calm by observing this system. Also, by forcibly controlling the breath one can banish such ideas. Also one reduces to a minimum the consciousness that one is breathing. One ma…
1929 · PDF PAGE 419
…aris, probably during August. I was at 50 rue Vavin and the idea of a dramatic poem or allegory to be {668} called "Adonis" came into my mind. I went out for a citron pressé at the Café do Dôme de Montparnasse, preliminary to settling down to write. The argument was almost complete in my mind and the rhythm was beginning to flow through me. But at the Dôme were sitting my old mistress, Nina Olivier, and her latest conquest, an unpleasant and cadaverous hypocrite named Hener-Skene, whom I knew slightly from 1902, when he was posing as an earnest…
1929 · PDF PAGE 113
…d. I should have discovered the truth if I had looked at a newspaper; but I did not read them. I had already learnt that even the finest mind is bound to perish if it suffers the infection of journalism. It is not merely that one defiles the mind by inflicting upon it slipshod and inaccurate English, shallow, commonplace, vulgar, hasty and prejudiced thought, and deliberate dissipation. Apart from these positive pollutions, there is the negative effect. To read a newspaper is to refrain from reading something worth while. The natural laziness o…
1929 · PDF PAGE 196
…ence! I could not even bother to study Islam from the religious point of view, but I undertook a course in ethnology which remains in my mind as the one study where the roses have no thorns. I got a typist and dictated an account of my various wanderings in my better moments, but most of the time I was earnestly pursuing my researches in the fish market. My mind began, moreover, to flow back into its accustomed channels. For one thing, I came to the conclusion that "the most permanent poetry is perhaps love songs for real country folk --- about…
1929 · PDF PAGE 197
197 to wander among business and family details, and putrefies it by reading newspapers. In the East, an active mind cannot go sprawling over the shallows. It is compelled by its relatively limited intellectual furniture to cut itself a constantly deepening course. Thus it occurs that very few people indeed, outside Asia and Africa, are aware of the existence of any of the higher states of mind. The imagine that consciousness connotes a single level of sanity; that is, that is consists in the mechanical movement of its elements in repose to the…
1929 · PDF PAGE 418
…idow lady in Paris who could beat him at his own game." {667} I am passionately indignant that the persistent beastliness of the average mind insists that the woodcutter violated the girl. Such a suggestion completely ruins the point of the story, which is that his mind had room for no idea of any kind except chopping. "His Secret Sin" was written on an idea given me by Neuburg. I heard afterwards it had already been used by Punch. It is admitted, of course, that this kind of plagiarism is allowable. A prosperous English grocer is in Paris on b…
1929 · PDF PAGE 416
…ifferent results. My own errors of judgment, due to the annihilation of my ego and the consequent lack of leadership felt by my body and mind, produced their own immediate effect. I did not yet understand the extent of my fault, or even its real cause and character, but I felt myself forced back into my proper orbit. I was the Spirit of solitude, the Wander in the Wilderness. I had no business to take part in the affairs of men by personal contact with them in their sheepfolds, monkey houses and pigstys. My sole link with them was to guide such…
1929 · PDF PAGE 316
316 It was from him that he received the instructions which were to help him to reach the great and terrible pinnacle of the mind whence the adept must plunge into the Abyss, to emerge naked, a babe --- the Babe of the Abyss. {515} "Explore the River of the Soul," said Ananda Metteya, "Whence and in what order you have come." For three days --- the longest period allowed by the Buddhist law --- he remained in the choung, meditating on this matter; but nothing seems to have come of it. He set his teeth and settled down doggedly to this considera…
1929 · PDF PAGE 138
…llan taught me the principles of Yoga; fundamentally, there is only one. The problem is how to stop thinking; for the theory is that the mind is a mechanism for dealing symbolically with impressions; its construction is such that one is tempted to take these symbols for reality. Conscious thought, therefore, is fundamentally false and prevents one from perceiving reality. The numerous practices of yoga are simply dodges to help one to acquire the knack of slowing down the current of thought and ultimately stopping at altogether. This fact has n…
1929 · PDF PAGE 145
…--- anything that makes a blaze of a noise, and let them all loose at once. The effect is of impromptu excitement. Poor, serious, single-minded Allan, with his whole soul set on alleviating the sufferings of humanity and helping them to reach a higher plane of existence, was saddened and disillusioned. One incident was somewhat scandalously amusing. He was doing his {250} best to enter into the spirit of the thing and called my attention to the "strains of wild oriental music". I knew better. I had read Herrick's poem abut the young lady who le…
1929 · PDF PAGE 433
433 "Mind is a disease of semen" asserts a theory of the relations between the conscious and subconscious, whose main thesis is that the true ego lurks silent in the quintessence of physical form, whereas the conscious self is no more than the murmur of its moods whenever its supremacy is challenged by environment. In Chapter 37, thought is compared to the darkness of a {687} lunar and spiritual ecstasy to that of a solar eclipse. Both shadows are rare accidents in a universe of light. Again, "In the Wind of the mind arises the turbulence calle…
1929 · PDF PAGE 325
…on that we are man. When one has crossed the Abyss, especially, one should be altogether free from the prepossession that one's body and mind are more than inconvenient instruments through which we perceive the universe. To increase our understanding of the cosmos, we must constantly endeavour to counteract the limitations which the fact that our instrument is a human being seeks to impose upon us. I do not, however, wish to represent the Operation of Abra-Melin which I was now performing as a retrogression; but I had to undertake it in order t…
1929 · PDF PAGE 291
…chant in comparison. It was certainly the limit to think of the animals being sold for human food! One must be resolute to prevent one's mind from dwelling on such subjects; one must take one's precautions so far as possible without thinking about the threatened calamity. Another disquieting incident was as follows. Tengyueh was supposed to be ion direct telegraphic communication with Peking. One of the most absurdly characteristic arrangements was that the observatory at Peking telegraphed to us daily the correct time. Now at Yunchang there wa…
1929 · PDF PAGE 339
…might stir his stagnant stupidity. To me every new scene, every new point of view, is welcome. I want to be taught. I want to enlarge my mind. Nihil humani a me alienum puto. Even so, humani is one word too many. As I wrote in The Book of Lies. The Chinese cannot help thinking that the octave has five notes. The more necessary anything appears to my mind the more certain it is that I only assert a limitation. It is natural that my attitude should be utterly abhorrent to my fellow countrymen. But they are quite wrong to think that my ideas are a…
1929 · PDF PAGE 202
…n his family; enjoyed everything, worried about nothing --- it was not at all one's idea of a great artist. I had already got it into my mind that the life of the artist must be a sequence of pungent pangs either of pleasure or pain; that his nature obliged him to regard commonplace circumstances rather as the average man regards deep sleep. But Thäulow lived every line of his life; he had somehow attained that supreme philosophy which contemplates all things alike with cheerful calm. Marcel Schwob excited my unbounded admiration. He was admitt…
1929 · PDF PAGE 386
… seek satisfaction in spiritual spheres, the religious instincts to realize their sublimity through ritual, and to assist the scientific mind to see that even the most materialistic concept of the cosmos was ultimately mystical, that though mind might be merely a function of matter, yet that matter might equally well be represented as a manifestation of mind. The sequel will show how I fared in this ambitious adventure.
1929 · PDF PAGE 153
… recover my ordinary health. I lived on a low level, {263} without desire even to die. I began to understand the psychology of Allan. My mind was abnormally clear: I was cleansed of the contamination of desire. Nothing was worth wishing for; I did not even complain of suffering. This state of mind is a useful experience. Something very similar can be induced artificially by fasting. I recovered quite suddenly, though the cachexia continued. I was quite well, but felt extraordinarily weak. The curious thing about malaria is that one seems to lac…
1929 · PDF PAGE 144
…med to him that they were insidious obstacles to true spiritual progress; that their occurrence, in reality, broke up the control of the mind which he was trying toe establish and prevented him from reaching the ultimate truth which he sought. He had the strength of mind to resist the appeal of even these intense spiritual joys. Like physical love, they persuade their dupe to put up with the essential evil of existence. As for myself, I had become impatient with the whole business. Dhyana had washed my brain completely out. I went on this pilgr…
1929 · PDF PAGE 474
…her credit for perceiving the limitations of Viereck. Brilliant though he was, he was not old enough, solid enough or unselfish and high-minded enough to be trustworthy enough to handle a propaganda involving the destiny of a people. I looked for what the Americans call the "man higher up". I did not look in the direction of honest, well-meaning, sentimental von Bernstorff with all his capacity for routine, his noble credulity, his quite genuine desire to arrange everything amicably, and his hackneyed training in the diplomatic service with its…
1929 · PDF PAGE 121
…I would take advantage of his unintelligence by talking to him in terms which I knew he would not understand. I find that it relieves my mind and helps me to clarify my thoughts if I inflict my jargon on some harmless stranger haphazard. As will be told in due course, Eckenstein and I made a very thorough exploration of the mountains of Mexico. During this time, my magical distress again increased. I could not relieve it by the narcotic of preparing and performing actual ceremonies, of silencing the voice of the demons by absorption in active w…