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Page 1 of 21912 · PDF PAGE 97
…s of different ways.- Power grows faster than desire. The boy who wants money to buy lead soldiers sets to work to obtain it, and by the time he has got it wants Something else instead—in all probability something just beyond his means. Such is the splendid history of all spiritual advance! One never stops to take the reward. We shall therefore not trouble at all about what any Samadhi may or may not bring as far as its results in our lives are concerned. We began this book, it will be remembered, with considerations of death. Death has now los…
1912 · PDF PAGE 76
… percentage of primaries and secondaries will diminish, even though the total number of breaks in a meditation remain stationary. By the time that you are meditating two or three hours-a day, and filling up most of the rest of the day with other practices de- signed to assist, when nearly every time something or other happens,and there is constantly a feeling of being “ on the brink of something pretty big,” one may expect to proceed to the next state—Dhyana.
1912 · PDF PAGE 88
…never be forgotten is the 22%/?»!?ש”מקThe first death among the people that one loves (for example) would neverbe forgotten; for the first time one would realize what one had previously merely known. Such an ex- perience sometimes drives people insane. Men of science have been known to commit suicide when their pet theory has been shattered. This problem has been discussed freely in “ Science and Buddhism,” 1 “Time,” “ he Camel,” and other papers. This much only need we 1 See Crowley, “ Collected Works.”
1912 · PDF PAGE 84
…r, the annihilation of the Ego. Our conception of the universe must be completely overturned if we are to admit this as valid; and it is time that we considered what is really happening. It will be conceded that we have given a very rational explanation of the greatness of great men. They had an experience so overwhelming, so out of proportion to the rest of things, that they were freed from all the petty hindrances which prevent the normal man from carrying out his projects. Worrying about clothes, food, money, what people may think, how and w…
1912 · PDF PAGE 48
32 The best way to time 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 no…
1912 · PDF PAGE 72
56 the mind, so that the object is altogether forgotten, perhaps for whole minutes at a time; and at other times the object itselfwill begin to play all sorts of tricks. Suppose you have chosen a white cross. It will move its bar up and down, elongate the bar, turn the bar oblique, get its arms unequal, turn upside down, grow branches, get a crack around it or a figure upon it, change its shape altogether like an Amoeba,change its size and distance as a whole, change the degree of its illumination, and at the same time change its colour. It will…
1912 · PDF PAGE 73
…d to have note-book and pencil by your side, and a watch in front of you. You are not to practise at first for more than ten minutes at a time, so as to avoid risk of overtiring the brain. In fact you will probably find that the Whole of your will-power is not equal to keeping to a sub- ject at all for so long as three minutes, or even apparently con— centrating on it for so long as three seconds, or three-fifths of one second. By “keeping to it at all” is meant the mere attempt to keep to it. The mind becomes so fatigued, and the object so incred…
1912 · PDF PAGE 12
…ion steep and strong, Slaying even God, should He distract Thy attention from the chosen act! Last, all these things in one o’erpowered, Time that the midnight blossom flowered! The oneness is. Yet even in this, My son, thou shalt not do amiss If thou restrain the expression, shoot Thy glance to rapture’s darkling root, Discarding name, form, sight, and stress Even of this high consciousness; Pierce to the heart! I leave thee here: Thou art the Master. I revere Thy radiance that rolls afar, O Brother of the Silver Star! CROWLEY“ AHA l”
1912 · PDF PAGE 106
…lly 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 capable than when he left. . But each claims, though in different language, to have gained in his absence some superhuman power. . Do you believe this? It beco…
1912 · PDF PAGE 109
… 4. Collected Works of A. Crowley; Tannhause‘r,‘ The Sword of י=!י0.`ז The Equinox, No. I to the current number; KonX Om Pax. Ios. Song, Time, Eleusis. 3 vols, £2 25. Raja Yoga, by Swami Vivekananda. 35. 6d. The Shiva Sanhita, or the Hathayoga Pradipika. 5s. . The Tao Teh King and the writings of Kwang Tze: S.B.E. xxxix, ΧΙ. 155. 8. The Spiritual Guide, by Miguel de Molinos. 15. 9. Rituel et Dogme de la Haute Magic, by Eliphas Lévi, or its IO. translation by A. E. Waite. 7s. 6d. The Goetia of the Lemegeton of Solomon the King. £I 15. These book…
1912 · PDF PAGE 63
…very likely flatter ourselves that our minds are pretty calm; this is a defect of observation. Just as the European standing for the first time on the edge of the desert will see nothing there, while his 47
1912 · PDF PAGE 19
…med disappeared into a cave. Buddha left his palace, and went for a long while into the desert. Each of them, perfectly silent up to the time of the dis- appearance, came back and immediately began to preach a new law. This is so curious that it leaves us to inquire whether the histories of other great teachers contradict or confirm. Moses led a quiet lifeuntil his slaying of the Egyptian. He then
1912 · PDF PAGE 107
…, and so confirm or dis- prove their results. . But their instructions differ widely! . Only in so far as each was bound by conditions of time, race, climate and language. There is an essential identity in the method. . Indeed! . It was the great work of the life of Frater Perdurabo to prove this. Studying each religious practice of each great religion on the spot, he was able to show the Identity-in-diversityof all, and to formulate a method free from all dogmatic bias, and based only on the ascer- tained facts of anatomy, physiology, and psych…
1912 · PDF PAGE 8
… refuse them. He wants an independent and self—reliant body of students to follow out their own methods of research. If he can save them time and trouble by giving a few useful “tips,” his work will have been done to his own satisfaction. Those who have wished men to believe in them were absurd. A per- suasive tongue or pen, or an efficient sword, with rack and stake, pro- duced this “belief,” which is contrary to, and destructive of, all real religious experience. The whole life of Frater Perdurabo is now devoted to seeing that you obtain this …
1912 · PDF PAGE 82
…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 persons d…
1912 · PDF PAGE 49
…r as the beginner is concerned. If the mantra is too long, one is apt to forget it, unless one practises very hard for a great length of time. On the other hand, mantras of a single syllable, such as Aumf are rather jerky; the rhythmical idea is lost. Here are a few useful mantras: ᾿See Part II. 2 However, in saying a mantra containing the word Azmz, one sometimes forgets the other words, and remains concentrated, repeating the ΑΜ]; at intervals; but this is the result of a practice already begun, not the beginning of a practice. . D
1912 · PDF PAGE 75
…9 will disgust you with yourself. You will completely forget who you are, what you are, and what you are doing. A similar phenomenon sometimeshappens when one is half awake in the morning, and one cannot think what town one is living in. The similarity of these two things is rather significant. It suggests that what is really happening is that you are waking up from the sleep which men call waking, the sleep Whose dreams are life. There is another way to test one’s progress in this practice, and that is by the character of the breaks. Breaks are…
1912 · PDF PAGE 58
…indu, who would be thoroughly upset for weeks if any one gave him a coconut: but the average Euro— pean takes things as they come by the time that he has been put into long trousers.
1912 · PDF PAGE 90
…nto “normal” life. It is probably rare for a single experience to upset thus radically the whole conception of the Universe, just as sometimes, in the first moments of waking, there remains a half-doubt as to whether dream or waking is real. But as one gains further experience, when Dhyana is no longer a shock, when the student has had plenty of time to make himself at home in the new world, this conviction will become absolute.1 ᾽It should be remembered that at present there are no data for determining the
1912 · PDF PAGE 86
…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