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Page 1 of 21912 · PDF PAGE 11
…First, let the body of thee be still, Bound by the cerements of will, Corpse-rigid; thus thou mayst abort The fidget-babes that tease the thought. Next, let the breath-rhythmbe low, Easy, regular, and slow; So that thy being be in tune With the great sea’s Pacific swoon. Third, let thy life be pure and calm, Swayed softly as a windless palm. Fourth, let the will-to-live be bound To the one love of the profound. Fifth, let the thought, divinely free From sense, observe its entity. Watch every thoughtthat springs; enhance Hour after hour thy vigila…
1912 · PDF PAGE 24
…at they are only one. For what is the state of either prayer or meditation? It is the restraining of the mind to a single act, state, or thought. If we sit down quietly and investigate the contents of our minds, we shall find that even at the best 05 times the principal characteristics are wandering and distraction. Any one who has had anything to do with children and untrained minds generally knows that fixity of attention is never present, even when there is a large amount of intelligence and good will. If then we, with our well-trained minds, …
1912 · PDF PAGE 108
?=\-© tuo rues © 92 But in sleep thought is stilled? True, perhaps, roughly speaking; but the perceiving function is stilled also. Then you wish to obtain a perfect vigilance and attention of the mind, uninterrupted by the rise of thoughts? Yes. . And how do you proceed? . Firstly, we still the body by the practice called.Asana, and secure its ease and the regularity of its functions by Pranayama. Thus no messages from the body will disturb the mind. Secondly, by Yamaand Niyama, we still the emotionsand passions, and thus prevent them arising t…
1912 · PDF PAGE 66
50 course the unhappy youth spends a disgusted week in thinking of little else. It is positively amazingwith what persistence a thought, even a whole train of thoughts, returns again and again to the charge. It becomes a positive nightmare. It is intensely annoying, too, to find that one does not become consciousthat one has got on to the forbidden subject until one has gone right through with it. However, one continues day after day investigating thoughts and trying to check them; and sooner or later one proceeds to the next stage, Dharana, the…
1912 · PDF PAGE 64
48 Arab can tell him the family history of each of the fifty persons in View, because he has learnt how to look, so with practice the thoughts will become more numerous and more insistent. As soon as the body was accurately observed it was found to be terribly restless and painful; now that we ob- serve the mind it is seen to be more restless and painful still. (See 0722137627” opposite.) A similar curve might be plotted for the real and apparent painful- ness of Asana. Conscious of this fact, we begin to try to control it: “Not quite so many th…
1912 · PDF PAGE 86
…e experience. Now this is a very difficult question, and raises the much larger question as to the value of any testimony. Every possible thought has been doubted at some time or another, except the thought which can
1912 · PDF PAGE 48
…the breathing, once some little skill has been acquired, with a watch to bear witness, is by the use of a mantra. The mantra acts on the thoughts very much as Pranayama does upon the breath. The thought is bound down to a recurring cycle; any intruding thoughts are thrown off by the mantra, just as pieces of putty would be from a fly-wheel; and the swifter the wheel the more difficult would it be for anything to stick. This is the proper way to practise a mantra. Utter it as loudly and slowly as possible ten times, then not quite so loudly and a …
1912 · PDF PAGE 73
…six months, meditations of four minutes and less are still being recorded. The student is supposed to count the number of times that his thought wanders; this he can do on his fingers or on a string of beads.1 If these breaks seem to become more frequent instead 1 This counting can easily become quite mechanical. With the thought that reminds you of a break associate the notion of counting. The grosser kind of break can be detected by another person. It is accompanied
1912 · PDF PAGE 106
…e thing common to all which is not found in other species. Is there any such thing? Yes: all geniuses have the habit of concentration of thought, and usually needlongperiodsofsolitude to acquirethis habit. Inparticular, the greatest religious geniuses have all retired from the world at one time or another in their lives, and begun to preach immediately on their return. . Of what advantage is such a retirement? One would expect that a man who so acted would find himself on his return out of touch with his civilization, and in every way less capab…
1912 · PDF PAGE 67
SI However, the main point is to acquire some sort of in- hibitory power over the thoughts. Fortunately there is an unfailing method of acquiring this power. It is given in Liber III. If Sections I and 2 are practised (if necessary with the assistance of another person to aid your vigilance) you will soon be able to master the final section. In some people this inhibitory power may flower suddenly in very much the same way as occurred with Asana. Quite without any relaxa- tion of vigilance, the mind will suddenly he stilled. There will be a marve…
1912 · PDF PAGE 37
CHAPTER I ASANA ΗΕ problem before us may be stated thus simply. A man wishes to control his mind, to be able to think one chosen thought for as long as he will without interruption As previously remarked, the first difficulty arises from the body, which keeps on asserting its presence by causing its victim to itch, and in other ways to be distracted. He wants to stretch, scratch, sneeze. This nuisance is so persistent that the Hindus (in their scientific way) devised a special practice for quieting it. The word Asana means [505126763 but, as with …
1912 · PDF PAGE 7
…ter Perdurabo. Ex- perience shows that his writing is too concentrated, too abstruse, too occult, for ordinary minds to apprehend. It is thought that this record of disjointed fragments of his casual conversation may prove alike more intelligible and more convincing, and at least provide a pre- liminary study which will enable the student to attack his real work from a standpoint of some little general knowledge and understanding of his ideas, and of the form in which he figures them. Part II, “ Magick,” is more advanced in style than Part I ; t…
1912 · PDF PAGE 53
…e serious student. 1 Emphatically. Emphatically. Emphatically. It is impossible to combine Prana- yama properly performed with emotional thought. It should be resorted to immedi- ately, at all times during life, when calm is threatened.
1912 · PDF PAGE 104
…ine our- selves as suddenly recognizing that this universal blazeis darkness; not 1 Here the dictation was interrupted by very prolonged thought due to the difficulty of making the image clear. Virakam.
1912 · PDF PAGE 82
…ent that this “ Sun” is far more brilliant than the sun of nature. The whole thing takes place on a higher level. Also the conditions of thought, time, and space are abolished. It is impossible to explain what this really means :i only experience can furnish you with apprehension. (This, too, has its analogies in ordinary life; the conceptions of higher mathematics cannot be grasped by the beginner, cannot be explained to the layman.) Α further development is the appearance of the Form which has been universallydescribed as human; although the …
1912 · PDF PAGE 22
… (and in a much less degree by Islam) that fresh miracles have been manufactured almost daily to support the tottering structure. Modern thought, rejecting these miracles, has adopted theories involving epilepsy and madness. As if organization could spring from disorganization! Even if epilepsy were the cause of these great movements which have caused civilization after civilization to arise from barbarism, it would merely form an argument for cultivating epilepsy. Of course great men will never conform with the standards. of little men, and he…
1912 · PDF PAGE 29
…tioning well do so in silence. The best sleep is dreamless. Even in the case of games of skill our very best strokes are followed by the thought, “I don’t know how I did it ; ” and we cannot repeat those strokes at will. The moment we begin to think consciously about a stroke we get “nervous,” and are lost. In fact, there are three main classes of stroke; the bad stroke, which we associate, and rightly, with wandering attention ; the good stroke which we associate, and rightly, with fixed attention ,' and the perfect stroke, which we do not unde…
1912 · PDF PAGE 97
…gs, that of space two non-coincident things, that of causality two connected things; These Dhyanic conditions contradict those of normal thought; but G
1912 · PDF PAGE 91
75 Another rationalist consideration is this. The student has not been trying to excite the mind but to calm it, not to produce any one thought but to exclude all thoughts; for there is no connection between the object of meditation and the Dhyana. Why must we suppose a breaking down of the whole process, especially as the mind bears no subsequent traces of any interference, such as pain or fatigue? Surely this once, if never again, the Hindu image expressesthe simplest theory! That image is that of a lake into which five glaciers move. These gl…
1912 · PDF PAGE 99
…in,” yet there are all sorts of more or less probable circumstances any one of which would prevent success. Now we do know this, that if thought is kept single and steady, Dhyana results. We do not know whether an intensification of this is sufficient to cause Samadhi, or whether some other circumstances are required. One is science, the other empiricism. One author says (unless memory deceives) that twelve seconds’ steadiness is Dharana, a hundred and forty-four Dhyana, and seven- teen hundred and twenty-eight Samadhi. And Vivekananda, comment- …