Aleister Crowley - Eight Lectures On Yoga
Yoga con-scious-ness Con-scious-ness righteous-ness
Eight Lectures On Yoga
Mahatma Guru
Sri Paramahansa Shivaji
Aleister Crowley
Preface
Aleister Crowley has achieved the reputation of being a master
of the English language. This book which is as fresh and vibrant
today as when it was penned over thirty years ago demonstrates
this fact. It shows how impossible it is to categorize him
as a particular kind of stylist. At turns he can be satirical,
poetical, sarcastic, rhetorical, philosophical or mystical,
gliding so easily from one to the other that the average reader
is hard put to determine whether or not to take him at face
value.
His description of mystical states of consciousness
clarifies what tomes of more erudite writing fails to elucidate.
It is in effect a continuation of Part I of Book 4 brought
to maturity.
Nearly three decades had elapsed between the writing of these
two books, in which time his own inner development had soared
ineffably. A great deal of what he has to say may seem prosaic
at first sight, but do not be fooled by this. Other of his
comments are profound beyond belief, requiring careful and
long meditation if full value is to be derived from them.
This is not a book to be read while standing
or running. It is a high water mark of Crowley's literary
career, incorporating all that we should expect from one who
had experimented with and mastered most technical forms of
spiritual growth. There is humor here, a great deal of sagacity,
and much practical advice. This book cannot be dispensed with
for the student for whom Yoga is 'the way'.
Israel Regardie
March 21, 1969
Studio City, Calif.
Yoga For Yahoos
_ First Lecture First Principles_
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the
Law.
It is my will to explai the subject of Yoga
in clear language, without resort to jargon or the enunciation
of fantastic hypotheses, in order that this great science
may be thoroughly understood as of universal importance.
For, like all great things, it is simple;
but, like all great things, it is masked by confused thinking;
and, only too often, brought into contempt by the machinations
of knavery.
There is more nonsense talked and written
about Yoga than about anything else in the world. Most of
this nonsense, which is fostered by charlatans, is based upon
the idea that there is something mysterious and Oriental about
it. There isn't. Do not look to me for obelisks and odalisques,
Rahat Loucoum, bul-buls, or any other tinsel imagery of the
Yoga-mongers. I am neat but not gaudy. There is nothing mysterious
or Oriental about anything, as everybody knows who has spent
a little time intelligently in the continents of Asia and
Africa. I propose to invoke the most remote and elusive of
all Gods to throw clear light upon the subject -- the light
of common sense.
All phenomena of which we are aware take
place in our own minds, and therefore the only thing we have
to look at is the mind; which is a more constant quantity
over all the species of humanity than is generally supposed.
What appear to be radical differences, irreconcilable by argument,
are usually found to be due to the obstinacy of habit produced
by generations of systematic sectarian training.
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 zeta-epsilon-upsilon-gamma-mu-alpha,
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 libations of Lyons'.
Yoga means Union
In what sense are we to consider this? How
is the word Yoga to imply a system of religious training or
a description of religious experience?
You may note incidentally that the word Religion
is really identifiable with Yoga. It means a binding together.
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 minds, have identical Forms.
In the mind of a pious person, the inferiority
complex which accounts for his piety compels him to interpret
this emancipation as union with the gaseous vertebrae whom
he has invented and called God. On the cloudy vapour of his
fears his imagination has thrown a vast distorted shadow of
himself, and he is duly terrified; and the more he cringes
before it, the more the spectre seems to stoop to crush him.
People with these ideas will never get to anywhere but Lunatic
Asylums and Churches.
It is because of this overwhelming miasma
of fear that the whole subject of Yoga has become obscure.
A perfectly simple problem has been complicated by the most
abject ethical and superstitious nonsense. Yet all the time
the truth is patent in the word itself.
We may now consider what Yoga really is.
Let us go for a moment into the nature of consciousness with
the tail of an eye on such sciences as mathematics, biology,
and chemistry.
In mathematics the expression a + b + c is
a triviality.
Write a + b + c = 0, and you obtain an equation from which
the most glorious truths may be developed.
In biology the cell divides endlessly, but
never becomes anything different; but if we unite cells of
opposite qualities, male and female, we lay the foundations
of a structure whose summit is unattainably fixed in the heavens
of imagination.
Similar facts occur in chemistry. The atom
by itself has few constant qualities, none of them particulary
significant; but as soon as an element combines with the object
of its hunger we get not only the ecstatic production of light,
heat, and so forth, but a more complex structure having few
or none of the qualities of its elements, but capable of further
combination into complexities of astonishing sublimity. All
these combinations, these unions, are Yoga.
How are we to apply this word to the phenomena
of mind?
What is the first characteristic of everything in thought?
How did it come to be a thought at all? Only by making a distinction
between it and the rest of the world.
The first proposition, the type of all propositions,
is: S is P.
There must be two things -- different things
-- whose relation forms knowledge.
Yoga is first of all the union of the subject
and the object of consciousness: of the seer with the thing
seen.
Now, there is nothing strange of wonderful about all this.
The study of the principles of Yoga is very useful to the
average man, if only to make him think about the nature of
the world as he supposes that he knows it.
Let us consider a piece of cheese. We say
that this has certain qualities, shape, structure, colour,
solidity, weight, taste, smell, consistency and the 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 are these qualities of which we are
all so sure? They would not exist without our brains; they
would not exist without the cheese. They are the results of
the union, that is of the Yoga, of the seer and the seen,
of subject and object in consciousness as the philosophical
phrase goes. They have no material existence; they are only
names given to the ecstatic results of this particular form
of Yoga.
I think that nothing can be more helpful
to the student of Yoga than to get the above proposition firmly
established in his subconscious mind. About nine-tenths of
the trouble in understanding the subject is all this ballyhoo
about Yoga being mysterious and Oriental. The principles of
Yoga, and the spiritual results of Yoga, are demonstrated
in every conscious and unconscious happening. This is that
which is written in _The Book of the Law_ -- Love is the law,
love under will -- for Love is the instinct to unite, and
the act of uniting. But this cannot be done indiscriminately,
it must be done 'under will', that is, in accordance with
the nature of the particular units concerned. Hydrogen has
no love for Hydrogen; it is not the nature, or the 'true Will'
of Hydrogen to seek to unite with a molecule of its own kind.
Add Hydrogen to Hydrogen: nothing happens to its quality:
it is only its quantity that changes. It rather seeks to enlarge
its experience of its possibilities by union with atoms of
opposite character, such as Oxygen; with this it combines
(with an explosion of light, heat, and sound) to form water.
The result is entirely different from either of the component
elements, and has another kind of 'true Will', such as to
unite (with similar disengagement of light and heat) with
Potassium, while the resulting 'caustic Potash' has in its
turn a totally new series of qualities, with still another
'true Will' of its own; that is, to unite explosively with
acids. And so on.
It may seem to some of you that these explanations
have rather knocked the bottom out of Yoga; that I have reduced
it to the category of common things. That was my object. There
is no sense in being frightened of Yoga, awed by Yoga, muddled
and mystified by Yoga, or enthusiastic over Yoga. If we are
to make any progress in its study, we need clear heads and
the impersonal 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.
Having now understood that Yoga is the essence
of all phenomena whatsoever, we may ask what is the special
meaning of the word in respect of our proposed investigation,
since the process and the results are familiar to every one
of us; so familiar indeed that there is actually nothing else
at all of which we have any knowledge.
_It is knowledge_.
What is it we are going to study, and why
should we study it?
The answer is very simple.
All this Yoga that we know and practice, this Yoga that produced
these ecstatic results that we call phenomena, includes among
its spiritual emanations a good deal of unpleasantness. The
more we study this universe produced by our Yoga, the more
we collect and synthesize our experience, the nearer we get
to a perception of what the Buddha declared to be characteristic
of all component things:
Sorrow, Change, and Absence of any permanent principle. We
constantly approach his enunciation of he first two 'Noble
Truths', as he called them. 'Everything is Sorrow'; and 'The
cause of Sorrow is Desire'. By the word 'Desire' he meant
exactly what is meant by 'Love' in _The Book of the Law_ which
I quoted a few moments ago. 'Desire' is the need of every
unit to extend its experience by combining with its opposite.
It is easy enough to construct the whole
series of arguments which lead up to the first 'Noble Truth'.
Every operation of Love is the satisfaction
of a bitter hunger, but the appetite only grows fiercer by
satisfaction; so that we can say with the Preacher: 'He that
increaseth knowledge increaseth Sorrow.' The root of all this
sorrow is in the sense of insufficiency; the need to unite,
to lose oneself in the beloved object, is the manifest proof
of this fact, and it is clear also that the satisfaction produces
only a temporary relief, because the process expands indefinitely.
The thirst increases with drinking. The only complete satisfaction
conceivable would be the Yoga of the atom with the entire
universe. This fact is easily perceived, and has been constantly
expressed in the mystical philosophies of the West; the only
goal is 'Union with God'. Of course, we only use the word
'God' because we have been brought up in superstition, and
the higher philosophers both in the East and in the West have
preferred to speak of union with the All or with the Absolute.
More superstitions!
Very well, then, there is no difficulty at
all; since every thought in our being, every cell in our bodies,
every electron and proton of our atoms, is nothing but Yoga
and the result of Yoga. All we have to do to obtain emancipation,
satisfaction, everything we want is to perform this universal
and inevitable operation upon the Absolute itself. Some of
the more sophisticated members of my audience may possibly
be thinking that there is a catch in it somewhere. They are
perfectly right.
The snag is simply this. Every element of
which we are composed is indeed constantly occupied in the
satisfaction of its particular needs by its own particular
Yoga; but for that very reason it is completely obsessed by
its own function, which it must naturally consider as the
Be-All and End-All of its existence. For instance, if you
take a glass tube open at both ends and put it over a bee
on the windowpanel it will continue beating against the window
to the point of exhaustion and death, instead of escaping
through the tube. We must not confuse the necessary automatic
functioning of any of our elements with the true Will which
is the proper orbit of any star. A human being only acts as
a unit at all because of countless generations of training.
Evolutionary processes have set up a higher order of Yogic
action by which we have managed to subordinate what we consider
particular interests to what we consider the general welfare.
We are communities; and our well-being depends upon the wisdom
of our Councils, and the discipline with which their decisions
are enforced. The more complicated we are, the higher we are
in the scale of evolution, the more complex and difficult
is the task of legislation and of maintaining order.
In highly civilised communities like our
own, (loud laughter) the individual is constantly being attacked
by conflicting interests and necessities; his individuality
is constantly being assailed by the 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. But -- philosophy apart -- it is rarer
and rarer to find a man with a mind of his own and a will
of his own, even in this modified sense.
I want you therefore to see the nature of
the obstacles to union with the Absolute. For one thing, the
Yoga which we constantly practice has not invariable results;
there is a question of attention, of investigation, of reflexion.
I propose to deal in a future instruction with the modifications
of our perception thus caused, for they are of great importance
to our science of Yoga. For example, the classical case of
the two men lost in a thick wood at night. One says to the
other: 'That dog barking is not a grasshopper; it is the creaking
of a cart'. Or again, 'He thought he saw a banker's clerk
descending from a bus. He looked again, and saw it was a hippopotamus'.
Everyone who has done any scientific investigation
knows painfully how every observation must be corrected again
and again. The need of Yoga is so bitter that it blinds us.
We are constantly tempted to see and hear what we want to
see and hear.
It is therefore incumbent upon us, if we
wish to make the universal and final Yoga with the Absolute,
to master every element of our being, to protect it against
all civil and external war, to intensify every faculty to
the utmost, to train outselves in knowledge and power to the
utmost; so that at the proper moment we may be in perfect
condition to fling ourselves up into the furnace of ecstasy
which flames from the abyss of annihilation.
Love is the law, love under will.
_Second Lecture: Yama_
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the
Law. Stars and placental amniotes! And ye inhabitants of the
ten thousand worlds!
The conclusion of our researches last week
was that the ultimate Yoga which gives emancipation, which
destroys the sense of separateness which is the root of Desire,
is to be made by the concentration of every element of one's
being, and annihilating it by intimate combustion with the
universe itself.
I might here note, in parenthesis, that one
of the difficulties of doing this is that all the elements
of the Yogi increase in every way exactly as he progresses,
and by reason of that progress.
However, it is no use crossing our bridges
until we come to them, and we shall find that by laying down
serious scientific principles based on universal experience
they will serve us faithfully through every stage of the journey.
When I first undertook the investigation
of Yoga, I was fortunately equipped with a very sound training
in the fundamental principles of modern science. I saw immediately
that if we were to put any common sense into the business
(science is nothing but instructed common sense), the first
thing to do was to make a comparative study of the different
systems of mysticism. It was immediately apparent that the
results all over the world were identical.
They were masked by sectariantheories. The methods all over
the world were identical; this was masked by religious prejudice
and local custom. But in their quiddity -- identical! This
simple principle proved quite sufficient to disentangle the
subject from the extraordinary complexities which have confused
its expression.
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 one is born a Chinese, the symbols are of really unclimbable
difficulty. The Buddhist system is in some ways the most complete,
but it is also the most recondite. The words are excessive
in length and difficult to commit to memory; and generally
speaking, one cannot see the wood for the trees. But from
the Indian system, overloaded though it is by accretions of
every kind, it is comparatively easy to extract a method which
is free from unnecessary and undesirable implications, and
to make an interpretation of it intelligible to, and acceptable
by, European minds. It is this system, and this interpretation
of it, which I propose to put before you.
The great classic of Sanskrit literature
is the Aphorisms of Patanjali. He is at least mercifully brief,
and not more than ninety or ninety-five percent of what he
writes can be dismissed as the ravings of a disordered mind.
What remains is twenty-four carat gold. I now proceed to bestow
it.
It is said that Yoga has eight limbs. Why
limbs I do not know. But I have found it convenient to accept
this classification, and we can cover the ground very satisfactorily
by classing our remarks under these eight headings.
These headings 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!
Yama is the easiest of the eight limbs of
Yoga to define, and corresponds pretty closely to our word
'control'. When I tell you that some have translated it 'morality',
you will shrink appalled and aghast at this revelation of
the brainless baseness of humanity.
The word 'control' is here not very different
from the word 'inhibition' as used by biologists. A primary
cell, such as the amoeba, is in one sense completely free,
in another completely passive. All parts of it are alike.
Any part of its surface can ingest its food. If you cut it
in half, the only result is that you have two perfect amoebae
instead of one. How far is this condition removed in the evolutionary
scale from trunk murders!
Organisms developed by specialising their
component structures have not achieved this so much by an
acquisition of new powers, as by a restriction of part of
the general powers. Thus, a Harley Street specialist is simply
an ordinary doctor who says: 'I won't go out and attend to
a sick person; I won't, I won't, I won't'.
Now what is true of cells is true of all
already potentially specialised organs. Muscular power is
based upon the rigidity of bones, and upon the refusal of
joints to allow any movement in any but the appointed directions.
The more solid the fulcrum,the more efficient the lever. The
same remark applies to moral issues. These issues are in themselves
perfectly simple; but they have been completely overlaid by
the sinister activities of priests and lawyers.
There is no question of right or wrong in
any abstract sense about any of these problems. It is absurd
to say that it is 'right' for chlorine to combine enthusiastically
with hydrogen, and only in a very surly way with oxygen. It
is not virtuous of a hydra to be hermaphrodite, or contumacious
on the part of an elbow not to move freely in all directions.
Anybody who knows what his job is has only one duty, which
is to get that job done. Anyone who possesses a function has
only one duty to that function, to arrange for its free fulfilment.
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the
Law.
We shall not be surprised therefore if we
find that the perfectly simple term Yama (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 with Yama, or abstract righteousness.
It was due to the fact that pork in eastern countries was
infected with the trichina; which killed people who ate pork
improperly cooked. It was no good telling the savages that
fact. Any way, they would only have broken the hygienic command
when greed overcame them. The advice had to be made a universal
rule, and supported with the authority of a religious sanction.
They had not the brains to believe in trichinosis; but they
were afraid of Jehovah and Jehannum. Just so, under the grouping
of Yama we learn that the aspiring Yogi must become 'fixed
in the non-receiving of gifts', which means that if anyone
offers you a cigarette or a drink of water, you must reject
his insidious advances in the most Victorian manner. It is
such nonsense as this which brings the science of Yoga into
contempt. But it isn't nonsense if you consider the class
of people for whom the injunction was promulgated; for, as
we will be shown later, preliminary to the concentration of
the mind is the control of the mind, which means the calm
of the mind, and the Hindu mind is so constituted that if
you offer a man the most trifling object, the incident is
a landmark in his life. It upsets him completely for years.
In the East, an absolutely automatic and
thoughtless act of kindness to a native is liable to attach
him to you, body and soul, for the rest of his life. In other
words, it is going to upset him; and as a budding Yogi he
has got to refuse it. But even the refusal is going to upset
him quite a lot; and therefore he has got to become 'fixed'
in refusal; that is to say, he has got to erect by means of
habitual refusal a psychological barrier so strong that he
can really dismiss the temptation without a quiver, or a quaver,
or even a demisemiquaver of thought. I am sure you will see
that an absolute rule is necessary to obtain this result.
It is obviously impossible for him to try to draw the line
between what he may receive and what he may not; he is merely
involved in a Socratic dilemma; whereas if he goes to the
other end of the line and accepts everything, his mind is
equally upset by the burden of the responsibility of dealing
with the things he has accepted. However, all these considerations
do not apply to the average European mind. If someone gives
me 200,000 pounds sterling, I automatically fail to notice
it. It is a normal circumstance of life. Test me!
There are a great many other injunctions,
all of which have to be examined independently in order to
find whether they apply to Yoga in general, and to the particular
advantage of any given student. We are to exclude especially
all those considerations based on fantastic theories of the
universe, or on the accidents of race or climate.
For instance, in the time of the late Maharajah
of Kashmir, mahsir fishing was forbidden throughout his territory;
because, when a child, he had been leaning over the parapet
of a bridge over the Jhilam at Srinagar, and inadvertently
opened his mouth, so that a mahsir was able to swallow his
soul. It would never have done for a Sahib -- a Mlecha! --
to catch that mahsir. This story is really typical of 90%
of the precepts usually enumerated under the heading Yama.
The rest are for the most part based on local and climatic
conditions, and they may or may not be applicable to your
own case.
And, on the other hand, there are all sorts of good rules
which have never occurred to a teacher of Yoga; because those
teachers never conceived the condition in which many people
live today. It never occurred to the Buddha or Patanjali or
Mansur el-Hallaj to advise his pupils not to practise in a
flat with a wireless set next door.
The result of all this is that all of you
who are worth your salt will be absolutely delighted when
I tell you to scrap all the rules and discover your own. Sir
Richard Burton said: {\it 'He noblest lives and noblest dies,
who makes and keeps his self-made laws'}.
This is, of course, what every man of science
has to do in every experiment. This is what constitutes an
experiment. The other kind of man has only bad habits. When
you explore a new country, you don't know what the conditions
are going to be; and you have to master those conditions by
the method of trial and error. We start to penetrate the stratosphere;
and we have to modify our machines in all sorts of ways which
were not altogether foreseen. I wish to thunder forth once
more that no questions of right or wrong enter into our problems.
But in the stratosphere it is 'right' for a man to be shut
up in a pressure-resisting suit electrically heated, with
an oxygen supply, whereas it would be 'wrong' for him to wear
it if he were running the three miles in the summer sports
in the Tanezrouft.
This is the pit into which all the great
religious teachers have hitherto fallen, and I am sure you
are all looking hungrily at me in the hope of seeing me do
likewise. But no! There is one principle which carries us
through all conflicts concerning conduct, because it is perfectly
rigid and perfectly elastic: -- 'Do what thou wilt shall be
the whole of the law'.
So: it is not the least use to come and pester
me about it.
Perfect mastery of the violin in six easy lessons by correspondence!
Should I have the heart to deny you? But Yama is different.
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the
Law. _That is Yama_.
Your object is to perform Yoga. Your True
Will is to attain the consummation of marriage with the universe,
and your ethical code must constantly be adapted precisely
to the conditions of your experiment. Even when you have discovered
what your code is, you will have to modify it as you progress;
it 'remould it nearer to the heart's desire' -- Omar Khayyam.
Just so, in a Himalayan expedition your rule of daily life
in the valleys of Sikkim or the Upper Indus will have to be
changed when you get to the glacier. But it is possible to
indicate (in general terms expressed with the greatest caution)
the 'sort' of thing that is likely to be bad for you.
Anything that weakens the body, that exhausts, disturbs or
inflames the mind is deprecable. You are pretty sure to find
as you progress that there are some conditions that cannot
be eliminated at all in your particular circumstances; and
then you have to find a way of dealing with these so that
they make a minimum of trouble. And you will find that you
cannot conquer the obstacle of Yama, and dismiss it from your
mind once and for all. Conditions favourable for the beginner
may become an intolerable nuisance to the adept, 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 again there is no perfection of materials;
there will always be errors and weaknesses, and the man who
wins through is the man who manages to carry on with a defective
engine. The actual strain of the work develops the defects;
and it is a matter of great nicety of judgment to be able
to deal with the changing conditions of life. It will be seen
that the formula -- 'Do what thou wilt shall be the whole
of the Law' has nothing to do with 'Do as you please'.
It is much more difficult to comply with
the Law of Thelema than to follow out slavishly a set of dead
regulations. Almost the only point of emancipation, in the
sense of relief from a burden, is just the difference between
Life and Death.
To obey a set of rules is to shift the whole
responsibility of conduct on to some superannuated Bodhisattva,
who would resent you bitterly if he could see you, and tick
you off in no uncertain terms for being such a fool as to
think you could dodge the difficulties of research by the
aid of a set of conventions which have little or nothing to
do with actual conditions.
Formidable indeed are the obstacles we have
created by the simple process of destroying our fetters. The
analogy of the conquest of the air holds excellently well.
The things that worry the pedestrian worry us not at all;
but to control a new element your Yama must be that biological
principle of adaptation to the new conditions, adjustment
of the faculties to those conditions, and consequent success
in those conditions, which were enunciated in respect of planetary
evolution by Herbert Spencer and now generalised to cover
all modes of being by the Law of Thelema.
But now let me begin to unleash my indignation.
My job -- the establishment of the Law of Thelema -- is a
most discouraging job.
It is the rarest thing to find anyone who has any ideas at
all on the subject of liberty. Because the Law of Thelema
is the law of liberty, everybody's particulr hair stands on
end like the quills of the fretful porpentine; they scream
like an uprooted mandrake, and flee in terror from the accursed
spot. Because: the exercise of liberty means that you have
to think for yourself, and the natural inertia of mankind
wants religion and ethics ready-made. However ridiculous or
shameful a theory or practice is, they would rather comply
than examine it. Sometimes it is hook-swinging or Sati; sometimes
cunsubstantiation or supra-lapsarianism; they do not mind
what they are brought up in, as long as they are well brought
up. They do not want to be bothered about it. The Old School
Tie wins through. They never suspect the meaning of the pattern
on the tie: the Broad Arrow.
You remember Dr. Alexandre Manette in _ A
Tale of Two Cities_.
He had been imprisoned for many years in the Bastille, and
to save himself from going mad had obtained permission to
make shoes. When he was released, he disliked it. He had to
be approached with the utmost precaution; he fell into an
agony of fear if his door was left unlocked; he cobbled away
in a frenzy of anxiety lest the shoes should not be finished
in time -- the shoes that nobody wanted.
Charles Dickens lived at a time and in a country such that
this state of mind appeared abnormal and even deplorable,
but today it is a characteristic of 95 per cent of the people
of England. Subjects that were freely discussed under Queen
Victoria are now absolutely taboo; because everyone knows
subconsciously that to touch them, however gently, is to risk
precipitating the catastrophe of their dry-rot.
There are not going to be many Yogis in England,
because there will not be more than a very few indeed who
will have the courage to tackle even this first of the eight
limbs of Yoga: Yama.
I do not think that anything will save the
country: unless through war and revolution, when those who
wish to survive will have to think and act for themselves
according to their desperate needs, and not by some rotten
yard-stick of convention. Why, even the skill of the workman
has almost decayed within a generation! Forty years ago there
were very few jobs that a man could not do with a jackknife
and a woman with a hair-pin; today you have to have a separate
gadget for every trivial task.
If you want to become Yogis, you will have
to get a move on.
Lege! Judica! Tace!
Love is the law, love under will.
_Third Lecture: Niyama_
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the
Law.
The subject of my third lecture is Niyama.
Niyama? Hm!
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 word -- the 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
words have in the original Sanskrit; for the prefix 'ni' in
Sanskrit gives the meaning of turning everything upside down
and backwards forwards, -- as YOU would say, Hysteron Proteron
-- at the same time producing the effect of transcendental
sublimity. I find that I cannot even begin to think of a proper
definition, although I know in my own mind perfectly well
what the 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.
It will hardly have escaped the attentive
listener that in my previous lectures I have combined the
maximum of discourse with the minimum of information; that
is all part of my training as a Cabinet Minister. But what
does emerge tentatively from my mental fog is that Yama, taking
it by long and by large, is mostly negative in its effects.
We are imposing inhibitions on the existing current of energy,
just as one compresess a waterfall in turbines in order to
control and direct the natural gravitational energy of the
stream.
It might be as well, before altogether leaving
the subject of Yama, to enumerate a few of the practical conclusions
which follow from our premiss that nothing which might weaken
or destroy the beauty and harmony of the mind must be permitted.
Social existence of any kind renders any serious Yoga absolutely
out of the question; domestic life is completely incompatible
with even elementary practices.
No doubt many of you will say, 'That's all very well for him;
let him speak for himself; as for me, I manage my home and
my business so that everything runs on ball bearings'. Echo
answers ...
Until you actually start the practice of
Yoga, you cannot possibly imagine what constitutes a disturbance.
You most of you think that you can sit perfectly still; you
tell me what artists' models can do for over thirty-five minutes.
They don't. You do not hear the ticking of the clock; perhaps
you do not even know whether a typewriter is going in the
room; for all I know, you could sleep peacefully through an
air-raid. That has nothing to do with it. As soon as you start
the practices you will find, if you are doing them properly,
that you are hearing sounds which you never heard before in
your life. You become hypersensitive. And as you have five
external batteries bombarding you, you get little repose.
You feel the air on your skin with about the same intensity
as you would previously have felt a fist in your face.
To some extent, no doubt, this fact will
be familiar to all of you. Probably most of you have been
out at some time or other in what is grotesquely known as
the silence of the night, and you will have become aware of
infinitesimal movements of light in the darkness, of elusive
sounds in the quiet. They will have soothed you and pleased
you; it will never have occurred to you that these changes
could each one be felt as a pang. But, even in the earliest
months of Yoga, this is exactly what happens, and therefore
it is best to be prepared by arranging, before you start at
all, that your whole life will be permanently free from all
the grosser causes of trouble. The practical problem of Yama
is therefore, to a great extent, 'How shall I settle down
to the work?' Then, having complied with the theoretically
best conditions, you have to tackle each fresh problem as
it arises in the best way you can.
You are are now in a better position to consider
the meaning of Niyama, or virtue. To most men the qualities
which constitute Niyama are not apprehended at all by their
self-consciousness. These are positive powers, but they are
latent; their development is not merely measurable in terms
of quantity and efficiency. As we rise from the coarse to
the fine, from the gross to the subtle, we enter a new (and
what appears on first sight to be an immeasurable) region.
It is quite impossible to explain what I mean by this; if
I could, you would know it already. How can one explain to
a person who has never skated the nature of the pleasure of
executing a difficult figure on the ice? He has in himself
the whole apparatus ready for use; bu experience, and experience
only, can make him aware of the results of such use.
At the same time, in a general exposition
of Yoga, it may be
useful to give some idea of the functions on which those peaks
that
pierce the clouds of the limitations of our intellectual understanding
are based.
I have found it very useful in all kinds
of thinking to employ a
sort of Abacus. The schematic representation of the universe
given
by astrology and the Tree of Life is extremely valuable, especially
when reinforced and amplified by the Holy Qabalah. This Tree
of Life
is susceptible to infinite ramifications, and there is no
need in
this connectin to explore its subtleties. We ought to be able
to
make a fairly satisfactory diagram for elementary purposes
by taking
as the basis of our illustration the solar system as conceived
by the
astrologers.
I do not know whether the average student
is aware that in
practice the significations of the planets are based generally
upon
the philosophical conceptions of the Greek and Roman gods.
Let us
hope for the best, and go on!
The planet Saturn, which represents anatomy,
is the skeleton:
it is a rigid structure upon which the rest of the body is
built. To what moral qualities does this correspond? The first
point of virtue in a bone is its rigidity, its resistance
to pressure.
And so in Niyama we find that we need the qualities of absolute
simplicity in our regimen; we need insensibility; we need
endurance; we need patience. It is simply impossible for anyone
who
has not practised Yoga to understand what boredom means. I
have
known Yogis, men even holier than I, footnote:{no! no!} who,
to escape from
the intolerable tedium, would fly for refuge to a bottle party!
It
is a 'physiological' tedium which becomes the acutest agony.
The
tension becomes cramp; nothing else matters but to escape
from the
self-imposed constraint.
But every evil brings its own remedy. Another
quality of Saturn
is melancholy; Saturn represents the sorrow of the universe;
it is
the Trance of sorrow that has determined one to undertake
the task of
emancipation. This is the energising force of Law; it is the
rigidity
of the fact that everything is sorrow which moves one to the
task,
and keeps one on the Path.
The next planet is Jupiter. This planet is
in many ways the
opposite of Saturn; it represents expansion as Saturn represents
contraction; it is the universal love, the selfless love whose
object
can be no less than the universe itself. This comes to reinforce
the
powers of Saturn when they agonise; success is not for self
but for
all; one might acquiesce in one's own failure, but one cannot
be
unworthy of the universe. Jupiter, too, represents the vital,
creative, genial element of the cosmos. He has Ganymede and
Hebe to
his cupbearers. There is an immense and inaccessible joy in
the
Great Work; and it is the attainment of the trance, of even
the
intellectual foreshadowing of that trance, of joy, which reassures
the Yogi that his work is wort while.
Jupiter digests experiences; Jupiter is the
Lord of the Forces
of Life; Jupiter takes common matter and transmutes it into
celestial
nourishment.
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 on 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 talking about the little extra something that the
others
haven't got, but I assure you that I am not being paid for
it.
Let us take the example of Pranayama, a subject
with which I
hope to deal in a subsequent lucubration. Let us suppose that
you
are managing your breath so that your cycle, breathing in,
holding,
and breathing out, lasts exactly a minute. That is pretty
good work
for most people, but it may be or may not be good enough to
get you
going. No one can tell you until you have tried long enough
(and no
one can tell you how long 'long enough' may be) whether that
is going
to ring the bell. It may be that if you increase your sixty
seconds
to sixty-four the phenomena would begin immediately. That
sounds all
right but as you have nearly burst your lungs doing the sixty,
you
want this ADDED energy to make the grade. That is only one
example
of the difficulty which arises with every practice.
Mars, morever, is the flaming energy of passion,
it is the male
quality in its lowest sense; it is the courage which goes
berserk,
and I do not mind telling you that, in my own case at least,
one of
the inhibitions with which I had most frequently to contend
was the
fear that I was going mad. This was especially the case when
those
phenomena began to occur, which, recorded in cold blood, did
seem
like madness. And the Niyama of Mars is the ruthless rage
which
jests at scars while dying of one's wounds.
.... the grim Lord of Colonsay
Hath turned him on the ground,
And laughed in death-pang that his blade
The mortal thrust so well repaid
The next of the heavenly bodies is the centre
of all, the
Sun. The Sun is the heart of the system; he harmonises all,
energises
all, orders all. His is the courage and energy which is the
source of all the other lesser forms of motion, and it is
because of
this that in himself he is calm. They are planets; he is a
star.
For him all planets come; around him they all move, to him
they all
tend. It is this centralisation of faculties, their control,
their
motivation, which is the Niyama of the Sun. He is not only
the heart
but the brain of the system; but he is not the 'thinking'
brain, for
in him all thought has been resolved into the beauty and harmony
of
ordered motion.
The next of the planets is Venus. In her,
for the first
tim, we come into contact with a part of our nature which
is none
the less quintessential because it has hitherto been masked
by our
pre-occupation with more active qualities. Venus resembles
Jupiter,
but on a lower scale, standing to him very much as Mars does
to
Saturn. She is close akin in nature to the Sun, and she may
be
considered an externalisation of his influence towards beauty
and
harmony. Venus is Isis, the Great Mother; Venus is Nature
herself;
Venus is the sum of all possibilities.
The Niyama corresponding to Venus is one
of the most important,
and one of the most difficult of attainment. I said the sum
of all
possibilities, and I will ask you to go back in your minds
to what I
said before about the definition of the Great Work itself,
the aim of
the Yogi to consummate the marriage of all that he is with
all that
he is not, and ultimately to realise, insofar as the marriage
is
consummated, that what he is and what he is not are identical.
Therefore we cannot pick and choose in our Yoga. It is written
in
the _Book of the Law_, Chapter 1, verse 22,
'Let there be no difference made among you between any one
thing
and any other thing, for thereby there cometh hurt.'
Venus represents the ecstatic acceptance
of all possible experience,
and the transcendental assumption of all particular experience
into the one experience.
Oh yes, by the way, don't forget this. In
a lesser sense Venus
represents tact. Many of the problems that confront the Yogi
are
impracticable to intellectual manipulation. They yield to
graciousness.
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 from what I have already said, but in the
technique
of Yoga he represents the fineness of the method which is
infinitely adaptable to all problems, and only so because
he is
supremely indifferent. He is the adroitness and ingenuity
which
helps us in our difficulties; he is the mechanical system,
the
symbolism which helps the human mind of the Yogi to take cognisance
of what is coming.
It must here be remarked that because of
his complete indifference
to anything whatever (and that thought is -- when you get
far enough -- only a primary point of wisdom) he is entirely
unreliable.
One of the most unfathomably dreadful dangers of the Path
is
that you must trust Mercury, and yet that if you trust him
you are
certain to be deceived. I can only explain this, if at all,
by
pointing out that, since all truth is relative, all truth
is falsehood.
In one sense Mercury is the great enemy; Mercury is mind,
and
it is the mind that we have set out to conquer.
The last of the seven sacred planets is the
Moon. The Moon
represents the totality of the female part of us, the passive
principle
which is yet very different to that of Venus, for the Moon
corresponds to the Sun much as Venus does to Mars. She is
more
purely passive than Venus, and although Venus is so universal
the
Moon is also universal in another sense. The Moon is the highest
and
the lowest; the Moon is the aspiration, the link of man and
God; she
is the supreme purity: Isis the Virgin, Isis the Virgin Mother;
but
she comes right down at the other end of the scale, to be
a symbol of
the senses themselves, the mere instrument of the registration
of
phenomena, ncapable of discrimination, incapable of choice.
The
Niyama corresponding to her influence, the first of all, is
that
quality of aspiration, the positive purity which refuses union
with
anything less than the All. In Greek mythology Artemis, the
Goddess
of the Moon, is virgin; she yielded only to Pan. Here is one
particular
lesson: as the Yogi advances, magic powers (Siddhi the teachers
call them) are offered to the aspirant; if he accepts the
least
of these -- or the greatest -- he is lost.
At the other end of the scale of the Niyama
of the Moon are
the fantastic developments of sensibility which harass the
Yogi.
These are all help and encouragement; these are all intolerable
hindrances; these are the greatest of the obstacles which
confront
the human being, trained as he is by centuries of evolution
to
receive his whole consciousness through the senses alone.
And they
hit us hardest because they interfere directly with the technique
of
our work; we are constantly gaining new powers, despite ourselves,
and every time this happens we have to invent a new method
for
bringing their malice to naught. But, as before, the remedy
is of
the same stuff as the disease; it is the unswerving purity
of aspiration
that enables us to surmount all these difficulties. The Moon
is
the sheet-anchor of our work. It is the Knowledge and Conversation
of the Holy Guardian Angel that enables us to overcome, at
all times
and in all manners, as the need of the moment may be.
There are two other planets, not counted
as among the
sacred seven. I will not say that they were known to the ancients
and deliberately concealed, though much in their writing suggests
that this may be the case. I refer to the planet Herschel,
or
Uranus, and Neptune. Whatever may have been the knowledge
of the
ancients, it is at least certain that they left gaps in their
system
which were exactly filled by these two planets, and the newly
discovered Pluto. They fill these gaps just as the newly discovered
chemical elements discovered in the last fifty years fill
the gaps in
Mendelejeff's table of the Periodic Law.
Herschel represents the highest form of the
True Will, and
it seems natural and right that this should not rank with
the seven
sacred planets, because the True Will is the sphere which
transcends
them. 'Every man and every woman is a star'. Herschel defines
the
orbit of the star, your star. But Herschel is dynamic; Herschel
is
explosive; Herschel, astrologically speaking, does not move
in an
orbit; he has his own path. So the Niyama which corresponds
to this
planet is, first and last, the discovery of the True Will.
This
knowledge is secret and most sacred; each of you must incorporate
for
yourself the incidence and quality of Herschel. It is the
most
important of the tasks of the Yogi, because, until he has
achieved
it, he can have no idea who he is or where he is going.
Still more remote and tenuous is the influence
of Neptune.
Here we have a Niyama of infinite delicacy, a spiritual intuition
far, far removed from any human quality whatever. Here all
is
fantasy, and in this world are infinite pleasure, infinite
perils.
The True Niyama of Neptune is the imaginative faculty, the
shadowing
forth of the nature of the illimitable light.
He has another function. The Yogi who understands
the influence
of Neptune, and is attuned to Neptune, will have a sense of
humour,
which is the greatest safeguard for the Yogi. Neptune is,
so to
speak, in the front line; he has got to adapt himself to difficulties
and tribulations; and when the recruit asks 'What made that
'ole?' he
has got to say, unsmiling, 'Mice'.
Pluto is the utmost sentinel of all; of him
it is not wise to
speak.
.... Having now given vent to this sybillie,
obscure and sinister
utterance, it may well be asked by the greatly daring: Why
is it not
wise to speak of Pluto? The answer is profound. It is because
nothing at all is known about him.
Anyhow it hardly matters; we have surely
had enough of Niyama
for one evening!
It is now proper to sum up briefly what we
have learnt
about Yama and Niyama. They are in a sense the moral, logical
preliminaries of the technique of Yoga proper. They are the
strategical
as opposed to the tactical dispositions which must be made
by
the aspirant before he attempts anything more serious than
the five
finger exercises, as we may call them -- the recruit's drill
of
postures, breathing exercises and concentration which the
shallow
confidently suppose to constitute this great science and art.
We have seen that it is presumptuous and
impractical to lay down
definite rules as to what we are to do. What does concern
us is so
to arrange matters that we are free to do anything that may
become
necessary or expedient, allowing for that development of super-normal
powers which enables us to carry out our plans as they form
in the
mutable bioscope of events.
If anyone comes to me for a rough and ready
practical plan I
say: Well, if you must stay in England, you may be able to
bring it
off with a bit of luck in an isolated cottage, remote from
roads, if
you have the services of an attendant already well trained
to deal
with the emergencies that are likely to arise. A good disciplinarian
might carry on fairly well, at a pinch, in a suite in Claridge's.
But against this it may be urged that one
has to reckon with
unseen forces. The most impossible things begin to happen
when once
you get going. It is not really satisfactory to start serious
Yoga
unless you are in a country where the climate is reliable,
and where
the air is not polluted by the stench of civilisation. It
is
extremely important, above all things important, unless one
is an
exceedingly rich man, to find a country where the inhabitants
understand
the Yogin mode of life, where they are sympathetic with its
practices, treat the aspirant with respect, and unobtrusively
assist
and protect him. In such circumstances, the exigency of Yama
and
Niyama is not so serious a stress.
There is, too, something beyond all these
practical details
which it is hard to emphasise without making just those mysterious
assumptions which we have from the first resolved to avoid.
All I
can say is that I am very sorry, but this particular fact
is going to
hit you in the face before you have started very long, and
I do not
see why we should bother about the mysterious assumptions
underlying
the acceptance of the fact any more than in the case of what
is after
all equally mysterious and unfathomable: any object of any
of the
senses. The fact is this; that one acquires a feeling -- a
quite
irrational feeling -- that 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 weaon; either it
comes up
sweet to the hand, or it does not. You cannot explain it,
and you
cannot argue it away.
I have treated Yama and Niyama at great length
because
their importance has been greatly under-rated, and their nature
completely misunderstood. They are definitely magical practices,
with hardly a tinge of mystical flavour. The advantage to
us here is
that we can very usefully exercise and develop ourselves in
this way
in this country where the technique of Yoga is for all practical
purposes impossible. Incidentally, one's real country -- that
is,
the conditions -- in which one happens to be born is the only
one in
which Yama and Niyama can be practised. You cannot dodge your
Karma.
You have got to earn the right to devote yourself to Yoga
proper by
arranging for that devotion to be a necessary stage in the
fulfilment
of your True Will. In Hindustan one is now allowed to become
'Sanyasi' -- a recluse -- until one has fulfilled one's duty
to one's
own environment -- rendered to Caesar the things which are
Caesar's
before rendering to God the things which are God's.
Woe to that seven months' abortion who thinks
to take advantage
of the accidents of birth, and, mocking the call of duty,
sneaks off
to stare at a blank wall in China! Yama and Niyama are only
the more
critical stages of Yoga because they cannot be translated
in terms of
a schoolboy curriculum. Nor can schoolboy tricks adequately
excuse
the aspirant from the duties of manhood. Do what thou wilt
shall be
the whole of the Law.
Rejoice, true men, that this is thus!
For this at least may be said, that there
are results to be
obtained in this way which will not only fit the aspirant
for the
actual battle, but will introduce him to classes of hitherto
unguessed phenomena whose impact will prepare his mind for
that terrific
shock of its own complete overthrow which marks the first
critical
result of the practices of Yoga.
Love is the law, love under will.
_Fourth Lecture: Asana and Pranayama_
THE TECHNICAL PRACTICES OF YOGA.
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the
Law.
Last week we were able to go away feeling
that the back of
the job had been broken. We had got rid of bad ways, bad wives,
and
bad weather. We are comfortably installed in the sunshine,
with no
one to bother us. We have nothing to do but our work.
Such being our fortunate state, we may usefully
put in an hour
considering our next step. Let us recall, in the first place,
what
we decided to be the quintessence of our task. It was to annihilate
dividuality. 'Make room for me', cries the Persian poet whose
name I
have forgotten, the fellow Fitzgerald translated, not Omar
Khayyam,
'Make room for me on that divan which has no room for twain'
-- a
remarkable prophetic anticipation of the luxury flatlet.
We are to unite the subject and object of
consciousness in the
ecstasy which soon turns, as we shall find later on, into
the more
sublime state of indifference, and then annihilate both the
party of
the first part aforesaid and the party of the second part
aforesaid.
This evidently results in further parties -- one might almost
say
cocktail parties -- constantly increasing until we reach infinity,
and annihilate that, thereby recovering our original Nothing.
Yet is
that identical with the original Nothing? Yes -- and No! No!
No!
A thousand times no! For, having fulfilled all the possibilities
of
that original Nothing to manifest in positive terms, we have
thereby
killed for ever all its possibilities of mischief.
Our task being thus perfectly simple, we
shall not require the
assistance of a lot of lousy rishis and sanyasis. We shall
not apply
to a crwd of moth-eaten Arahats, of betel-chewing Bodhisattvas,
for
instruction. As we said in the first volume of _The Equinox_,
in the
first number:
We place no reliance
On Virgin or Pigeon;
Our method is science,
Our aim is religion
Our common sense, guided by experience based
on observation,
will be sufficient.
We have seen that the Yogic process is implicit
in every
phenomenon of existence. All that we have to do is to extend
it
consciously to the process of thought. We have seen that thought
cannot exist without continual change; all that we have to
do is to
prevent change occurring. All change is conditioned by time
and
space and other categories; any existing object must be susceptible
of description by means of a system of co-ordinate axes.
On the 'terrasse' of the Cafe des Deux Magots
it was once
necessary to proclaim the entire doctrine of Yoga in the fewest
possible words 'with a shout, and with the voice of the archangel,
and with the trump of God. St. Paul's First Epistle to the
Thessalonians, the Fourth Chapter and the Sixteenth Verse.
I did so.
Sit still. Stop thinking. Shut up. Get out!
The first two of these instructions comprise
the whole of the
technique of Yoga. The last two are of a sublimity which it
would be
improper to expound in this present elementary stage.
The injunction 'Sit still' is intended to
include the inhibition
of all bodily stimuli capable of creating movement in consciousness.
The injunction 'Stop thinking' is the extension of this to
all mental
stimuli. It is unnecessary to discuss here whether the latter
can
exist apart from the former. It is at least evident that many
mental
processes arise from physical processes; and so we shall at
least be
getting a certain distance along the road if we have checked
the
body.
Let me digress for a moment, and brush away
one misunderstanding
which is certain to occur to every Anglo-Saxon mind. About
the worst inheritance of the emasculate school of mystics
is the
abominable confusion of thought which arises from the idea
that
bodily functions and appetites have some moral implications.
This is
a confusion of the planes. There is no true discrimination
between
good and evil. The only question that arises is that of convenience
in respect of any proposed operation. The whole of the moral
and
religious lumber of the ages must be discarded for ever before
attempting Yoga. You will find out only too soon what it means
to do
wrong; by our very thesis itself all action is wrong. Any
action is
only relatively right in so far as it may help us to put an
end to
the entire process of action.
These relatively useful actions are therefore
those which make
for control, or 'virtue.' They have been classified, entirely
regardless of trouble and expense, in enormous volume, and
with the
utmost complexity; to such a point, in fact, that merely to
permit
oneself to study the nomenclature of the various sysems can
have but
one result: to fuddle your brain for the rest of your incarnation.
I am going to try to simplify. The main headings
are:
1. Asana, usually translated 'posture', and
2. Pranayama, usually translated 'control of breath'.
These translations, as usual, are perfectly
wrong and inadequate.
The real object of Asana is control of the muscular system,
conscious
and unconscious, so that no messages from the body can reach
the
mind. Asana is concerned with the static aspect of the body.
Pranayama is really the control of the dynamic aspect of the
body.
There is something a little paradoxical in
the situation. The
object of the process of Yoga is to stop all processes, including
itself. But it is not sufficient for the Yogi to shoot himself,
because to do so would be to destroy the control, and so to
release
the pain-producing energies. We cannot enter into a metaphysical
discussion as to what it is that controls, or before we know
where we
are we shall be moonstruck by hypotheses about the soul.
Let us forget all this rubbish, and decide
what is to be
done. We have seen that to stop existing processes by an act
of
violence is merely to release the undesirable elements. If
we want
peace on Dartmoor, we do not open the doors of the prison.
What we
do is to establish routine. What is routine? Routine is rhythm.
If
you want to go to sleep, you get rid of irregular, unexpected
noises.
What is wanted is a lullaby. You watch sheep going through
a gate,
or voters at a polling station. When you have got used to
it, the
regularity of the engines of a train or steamship is soothing.
What
we have to do with the existing functions of the body is to
make them
so regular, with gradually increasing slowness, that we become
unconscious of their operation.
Let us deal first with the question of Asana.
It might be
thought that nothing would be more soothing than swinging
or gentle
massage. In a sense, and up to a certain point, this is so.
But the
activity cannot be continued because fatigue supervenes, and
sooner
or later the body protests by going to sleep. We must, therefore,
make up our minds from the start to reduce bodily rhythm to
its
minimum.
I am not quite sure whether it is philosophically
defensible,
whether it is logically justifiable, to assert the principles
of
Asana as they occur in our practice. We must break away from
our
sorites, turn to the empiricism of experiment, and trust that
one day
we may be able to work back from observed fact to a coherent
metaphysic.
The point is that by sitting still, in the
plain literal sense
of the words, the body does ultimately respond to the adjuration
of
that great Mahatma, Harry Lauder, 'Stop your ticklin', Jock!'
When we approach the details of Asana, we
are immediately
confronted with the refuse-heap of Hindu pedantry. We constantly
approach the traditional spiritual attitude of the late Queen
Victoria. The only types of Asana which offer even the most
transient
interest are those of which I am not going to speak at all,
because they have nothing whatever to do with the high-minded
type of
Yoga which I am presenting to this distinguished audience.
I should
blush to do otherwise. Anyhow, who wants to know about these
ridiculous
postures? If there is any fun in the subject at all, it is
the
fun of finding them out. I must admit that if you start with
a
problem such as that of juxtaposing the back of your head
and shoulders
with the back of the head and shoulders of the other person
concerned,footnote:{Incoitu, of course. -- ED}
the achievement does produce a certain satisfaction.
But this, I think, is mostly vanity, and it has nothing whatever
to
do, as I said before, with what we are tryng to talk about.
The various postures recommended by the teachers
of Yoga
depend for the most part upon the Hindu anatomy for their
value, and
upon mystic theories concerning the therapeutic and thaumaturgic
properties ascribed to various parts of the body. If, for
instance,
you can conquer the nerve Udana, you can walk on water. But
who the
devil wants to walk on water? Swimming is much better fun.
(I bar
sharks, sting-rays, cuttle-fish, electric eels and piranhas.
Also
trippers, bathing belles and Mr. Lansbury.) Alternatively,
freeze
the water and dance on it! A great deal of Hindu endeavour
seems to
consist in discovering the most difficult possible way to
attain the
most undesirable en.
When you start tying yourself into a knot,
you will find
that some positions are much more difficult and inconvenient
than
others; but that is only the beginning. If you retain 'any'
posture
long enough, you get cramp. I forget the exact statistics,
but I
gather that the muscular exertion made by a man sleeping peacefully
in bed is sufficient to raise fourteen elephants per hour
to the
stratosphere. Anyway, I remember that it is something rather
difficult
to believe, if only because I did not believe it myself.
Why then should we bother to choose a specially
sacred
position? Firstly, we want to be steady and easy. We want,
in
particular, to be able to do Pranayama in that position, if
ever we
reach the stage of attempting that practice. We may, therefore,
formulate (roughly speaking) the conditions to be desired
in the
posture as follows: --
1. We want to be properly balanced.
2. We want our arms free. (They are used in some Pranayama.)
3. We want our breathing apparatus as unrestrained as possible.
Now, if you will keep these points in mind,
and do not get
sidetracked by totally irrelevant ideas, such as to imagine
that you are
getting holier by adopting some attitude traditionally appropriate
to
a deity or holy man; and if you will refrain from the Puritan
abomination
that anything is good for you if it hurts you enough, you
ought to be able to find out for yourself, after a few experiments,
some posture which meets these conditions. I should very much
rather
have you do this than come to me for some mumbo-jumbo kind
of authority.
I am no pig-sticking pukka sahib -- not even from Poona --
to
put my hyphenated haw-haw humbug over on the B. Public.footnote{One
Yeats-Brown. What ARE Yeats? Brown, of course, and Kennedy.}
I would rather you did the thing 'wrong' by yourselves, and
learned
from your errors, than get it 'right' from the teacher, and
atrophied your
initiative and your faculty of learning anything at all.
It is, however, perfectly right that you
should have some idea
of what happens when you sit down to practise.
Let me digress for a moment and refer to
what I said in my
text-book on Magick with regard to the formula IAO. This formula
covers all learning. You begin with a delightful feeling as
of a
child with a new toy; you get bored, and you attempt to smash
it.
But if you are a wise child, you have had a scientific attitude
towards it, and you do NOT smash it. You pass through the
stage of
boredom, and arise from the inferno of torture towards the
stage of
resurrection, when the toy has become a god, declared to you
its
inmost secrets, and become a living part of your life. There
are no
longer these crude, savage reactions of pleasure and pain.
The new
knowledge is assimilated.
So it is with Asana. The chosen posture attracts
you; you
purr with self-satisfaction. How clever you have been! How
nicely
the posture suits all conditions! You absolutely melt with
maudlin
good feeling. I have known pupils who have actually been betrayed
int 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.
footnote{
Some Great Thinker once said: 'Time MARCHES on'. What felicity
of phrase!}
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.
Perhaps the first thing you notice is that,
although you
have started in what is apparently the most comfortable position,
there is a tendency to change that position without informing
you.
For example, if you are sitting in the 'god' position with
your knees
together, you will find in a few minutes that they have moved
gently
apart, without your noticing it. Freud would doubtless inform
you
that this is due to an instinctive exacerbation of infantile
sexual
theories. I hope that no one here is going to bother me with
that
sort of nauseating nonsense.
Now it is necessary, in order to hold a position,
to pay
attention to it. That is to say: you are going to become conscious
of your body in ways of which you are not conscious if you
are
engaged in some absorbing mental pursuit, or even in some
purely
physical activity, such as running. It sounds paradoxical
at first
sight, but violent exercise, so far from concentrating attention
on
the body, takes it away. That is because exercise has its
own
rhythm; and, as I said, rhythm is half-way up the ridge to
Silence.
Very good, then; in the comparative stillness
of the body, the
student becomes aware of minute sounds which did not disturb
him in
his ordinary life. At least, not when his mind was occupied
with
matters of interest. You will begin to fidget, to itch, to
cough.
Possibly your breathing will begin to play tricks upon you.
All
these symptoms must be repressed. The process of repressing
them is
extremely difficult; and, like all other forms of repression,
it
leads to a terrific exaggeration of the phenomena which it
is
intended to repress.
There are quite a lot of little tricks familiar
to most
scientific people from their student days. Some of them are
very
significant in this connection of Yoga. For instance, in the
matter
of endurance, such as holding out a weight at arm's length,
you can
usually beat a man stronger than yourself. If you attend to
your
arm, you will probably tire in a minute; if you fix your mind
resolutely
on something else, you can go on for five minutes or ten,
or
even longer. It is a question of active and passive; when
Asana
begins to annoy you the reply is to annoy it, to match the
active
thought of controlling the minute muscular movement against
the
passive thought of easing the irritation and disturbance.
Now I do not believe that there are any rules
for doing
this that will be any use to you. There are innumerable little
tricks that you might try; only it is, as in the case of the
posture
itself, ratherbetter if you invent your own tricks. I will
only
mention one: roll the tongue back towards the uvula, at the
same
time let the eyes converge towards an imaginery point in the
centre
of the forehead. There are all sorts of holinesses indicated
in this
attitude, and innumerable precedents on the part of the most
respectable
divinities. Do, please, forget all this nonsense! The advantage
is simply that your attention is forced to maintain the awkward
position. You become aware sooner than you otherwise would
of any
relaxation; and you thereby show the rest of the body that
it is no
use trying to disturb you by its irritability.
But there are no rules. I said there weren't,
and there aren't.
Only the human mind is so lazy and worthless that it is a
positive
instinct to try to find some dodge to escape hard work.
These tricks may help or they may hinder;
it is up to you to
find out which are good and which are bad, the why and the
what and
all the other questions. It all comes to the same thing in
the end.
There is only one way to still the body in the long run, and
that is
to keep it still. It's dogged as does it.
The irritations develop into extreme agony.
Any attempt to
alleviate this simply destroys the value of the practice.
I must
particularly warn the aspirant against rationalising I HAVE
known
people who were so hopelessly bat-witted that they rationalised.
They thought: 'Ah, well, this position is not suitable for
me, as I
thought it was. I have made a mess of the Ibis position; now
I'll
have a go at the Dragon position'. But the Ibis has kept his
job,
and attained his divinity, by standing on one leg throughout
the
centuries. If you go to the Dragon he will devour you.
It is through the perversity of human nature
that the most
acute agony seems to occur when you are within a finger's
breadth of
full success. Remember Gallipoli! I am inclined to think that
it
may be a sort of symptom that one is near the critical point
when the
anguish becomes intolerable.
You will probably ask what 'intolerable'
means. I rudely
answer: 'Find out!' But it may give you some idea of what
is, after
all, not TOO bad, when I say that in the last months of my
own work
it often used to take me ten minutes (at the conclusion of
the
practice) to straighten my left leg. I took the ankle in both
hands,
and eased it out a fraction of a millimetre at a time.
At this point the band begins to play. Quite
suddenly the
pain stops. An ineffable sense of relief sweeps over the Yogi
--
notice that I no longer call him 'student' or 'aspirant' --
and he
becomes aware of a very strange fact. Not only was that position
giving him pain, but all other bodily sensations that he has
ever
experienced are in the nature of pain, and were only borne
by him by
the expedient of constant flitting from one to another.
He is at ease; because, for the first time
in his life, he has
become really unconscious of the body. Life has been one endless
suffering; and now, so far as this particular Asana is concerned,
the
plague is abated.
I feel that I have failed to convey the full
meaning of this.
The fact is that words are entirely unsuitable. The complete
and
joyous awakening from the lifelong and unbroken nightmare
of physical
discomfort is impossible to describe.
The results and mastery of Asana are of use
not only in the
course of attainment of Yoga, but in the most ordinary affairs
of
life. At any time when fatigued, you have only to assume your
Asana,
and you are completely rested. It is as if the attainment
of the
mastery has worn down all those possibilities of physical
pain which
are inherent in that particular position. The teachings of
physiology
are not contradictory to this hypothsis.
The conquest of Asana makes for endurance.
If you keep in
constant practice, you ought to find that about ten minutes
in the
posture will rest you as much as a good night's sleep.
So much for the obstacle of the body considered
as static. Let
us now turn our attention to the conquest of its dynamics.
It is always 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 cycle
of breathing out and breathing in. Both operations should
be made as
complete as possible. The muscular system must be taxed to
its
utmost to assist the expansion and contraction of the lungs.
When you have got this process slow and regular,
for instance,
30 seconds breathing out and 15 in, you may add a few seconds
in
which the breath is held, either inside or outside the lungs.
(It is said, by the way, that the operation
of breathing out
should last about twice as long as that of breathing in, the
theory
being that breathing out quickly may bring a loss of energy.
I think
there may be something in this.)
There are other practices. For instance,
one can make the
breathing as quick and shallow as possible. Any good practice
is
likely to produce its own phenomena, but in accordance with
the
general thesis of these lectures I think it will be obvious
that the
proper practice will aim at holding the breath for as long
a period
as possible -- because that condition will represent as close
an
approximation to complete stillness of the physiological apparatus
as
may be. Of course we are not stilling it; we are doing nothing
of
the sort. But at least we are deluding ourselves into thinking
that
we are doing it, and the point is that, according to tradition,
if
you can hold the mind still for as much as twelve seconds
you will
get one of 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 seconds, to attempt actual Yoga processes, which
you have
previously been prevented from attempting by the distracting
activities
of the respiratory and muscular systems.
And so? Yes. Pranayama may be described as
nice clean
fun. Before youhave been doing it very long, things are pretty
certain to begin to happen, though this, I regret to remark,
is fun
to you, but death to Yoga.
The classical physical results of Pranayama
are usually divided
into four stages:
1. Perspiration. This is not the ordinary perspiration which
comes from violent exercise; it has peculiar properties, and
I am not
going to tell you what these are, because it is much better
for you
to perform the practices, obtain the experience, and come
to me
yourself with the information. In this way you will know that
you
have got the right thing, whereas if I were to tell you now,
you
would very likely imagine it.
2. Automatic rigidity: the body becomes still, as the result
of
a spasm. This is perfectly normal and predictable. It is customary
to do it with a dog. You stick him in a bell-jar, pump in
oxygen or
carbonic acid or something, and the dog goes stiff. You can
take him
out and wave him around by a leg as if he were frozen. This
is not
quite the same thing, but near it.
3. Men of science are terribly handicapped in every investigation
by having been trained to ignore the immeasurable. All phenomena
have subtle qualities which are at present insusceptible to
any
properly scientific methods of investigation. We can imitate
the
processes of nature in the laboratory, but the imitation is
not
always exactly identical with the original. For instance,
Professor
J. B. S. Haldane attempted some of the experiments suggested
in _The Equinox+ in this matter of Pranayama, and very nearly
killed himself
in the process. He did not see the difference between the
experiment
with the dog and the phenomena which supervene as the climax
of a
course of gentle operation. It is the difference between the
exhilaration
produced by sipping Clos Vougeot '26 and the madness of
swilling corn whiskey. It is the same foolishness as to think
that
sniffing cocaine is a more wholesome process than chewing
coca
leaves. Why, they exclaim, cocaine is chemically pure! Cocaine
is
the active principle! We certainly do not want these nasty
leaves,
where our sacred drug is mixed up with a lot of vegetable
stuff which
rather defies analysis, and which cannot possibly have any
use for
that reason! This automatic rigidity, or Shukshma Khumbakham,
is not
merely to be defined as the occurrence of physiological rigidity.
That is only the grosser symptom.
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 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 almost total loss of weight. This, by the
way, may
sound a little alarming to the instructed alienist. There
is a
similar feeling which occurs in certain types of insanity.
The fourth state is Levitation. The Hindus
claim that
'jumping about like a frog' implies a genuine loss of weight,
and
that the jumping is mainly lateral because you have not perfected
the
process. If you were absolutely balanced, they claim that
you would
rise quietly into the air.
I do not know about this at all. I never saw it happen. On
the
other hand, I have often felt as if it were happening; and
on tree
occasions at least comparatively reliable people have said
that they
saw it happening to me. I do not think it proves anything.
These practices, Asana and Pranayama, are,
to a certain extent,
mechanical, and to that extent it is just possible for a man
of
extraordinary will power, with plenty of leisure and no encumbrances,
to do a good deal of the spade-work of Yoga even in England.
But I
should advise him to stick very strictly to the purely physical
preparation, and on no account to attempt the practices of
concentration
proper, until he is able to acquire suitable surroundings.
But do not let him imagine that in making
this very exceptional
indulgence I am going to advocate any slipshod ways. If he
decides
to do, let us say, a quarter of an hour's Asana twice daily,
rising
to an hour four times daily, and Pranayama in proportion,
he has got
to stick to this -- no cocktail parties, football matches,
or funerals
of near relations, must be allowed to interfere with the routine.
The drill is the thing, the acquisition of the habit of control,
much
more important than any mere success in the practices themselves.
I
would rather you wobbled about for your appointed hour than
sat still
for fifty-nine minutes. The reason for this will only be apparent
when we come to the consideration of advanced Yoga, a subject
which
may be adequately treated in a second series of four lectures.
By
special request only, and I sincerely hope that nothing of
the sort
will happen.
Before proposing a vote of thanks to the
lecturer for his
extraordinarily brilliant exposition of these most difficult
subjects
jects, I should like 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 will prevent it. Its own natural
tendency is to slow down, like a pendulum, until time stops,
and the
sequence of impressions which constitutes our intellectual
apprehensions
of the universe is replaced by that form of consciousness
(or
unconsciousness, if you prefer it, not that either would give
the
slightest idea of what is meant) which is without condition
of any
kind, and therefore represents in perfection the consummation
of
Yoga.
Love is the law, love under will.
_Yoga For Yellowbellies_
First Lecture
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the
Law.
Let us begin this evening by going briefly
over the ground
covered by my first four lectures. I told you that Yoga meant
union,
and that this union was the cause of all phenomena. Consciousness
results from the conjunction of a mysterious stimulus with
a mysterious
sensorium. The kind of Yoga which is the subject of these
remarks is merely an expansion of this, the union of self-consciousness
with the universe.
We spoke of the eight limbs of Yoga, and
dealt with the four
which refer to physical training and experiences.
The remaining four deal with mental training
and experiences,
and these form the subject of the ensuing remarks.
Before we deal with these in detail, I think
it would be
helpful to consider the formula of Yoga from what may be called
the
mathematical, or magical standpoint. This formula has been
described
in my text-book on Magick, Chapter III., the formula of Tetragrammaton.
This fomula 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, He, Vau, and He This is compared with the relations of
a
family -- Yod, the Father, He, the Mother; Vau, the Son; and
the
final He 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, water, air, earth.
I may go
further, and say that all possible existing things are to
be classed
as related to one or more of these elements for convenience
in
certain operations. But these four letters, though in one
sense they
represent the eternal framework, are not, so to speak, original.
For
instance, when we place Tetragrammaton on the Tree of Life,
the Ten
Sephiroth or numbers, we do not include the first Sephira.
Yod is
referred to the second, He to the third, Vau to the group
from 4 to
9, and He final to the tenth. No. 1 is said to be symbolised
by the
top point of the Yod.
It is only in No. 10 that we get the manifested
universe, which
is thus shown as the result of the Yoga of the other forces,
the
first three letters of the name, the active elements, fire,
water and
air. (These are the three 'mother letters' in the Hebrew alphabet.)
The last element, earth, is usually considered a sort of consolidation
of the three; but that is rather an unsatisfactory way of
regarding it, because if we admit the reality of the universe
at all
we are in philosophical chaos. However, this does not concern
us for
the moment.
When we apply these symbols to Yoga, we find
that fire
represents the Yogi, and water the object of his meditation.
((You
can, if you like, reverse these attributions. It makes no
difference
except to the metaphysician. And precious little to him!)
The Yod and the He combine, the Father and
Mother unite, to
produce a son, Vau. This son is the exalted state of mind
produced
by the union of the subject and the object. This state of
mind is
called Samadhi in the Hindu terminology. It has many varieties,
of
constantly increasing sublimity; but it is the generic term
which
implies this union which is the subject of Yoga. At this point
we
ought to remember poor little He final, who represents the
ecstasy
-- shall I say the orgasm? -- and the absorption thereof:
the
compensation which cancels it. I find it excessively difficult
to
express myself. It is one of these ideas which is very deeply
seated
in my mind as a result of constant meditation, and I feel
that I am
being entirely feeble when I say that the best translation
of the
letter He final would be 'ecstasy rising into Silence'. Moral:
meditate yourselves, and work it out! Finally, there is no
other
way.
I think it is very important, since we are
studying Yoga
from a strictl scientific point of view, to emphasise the
exactness
of the analogy that exists between the Yogic and the sexual
process.
If you look at the Tree of Life, you see that the Number One
at the
top divides itself into Numbers Two and Three, the equal and
opposite
Father and Mother, and their union results in the complexity
of the
Son, the Vau Group, while the whole figure recovers its simplicity
in
the single Sephira of He final, of the Daughter.
It is exactly the same in biology. The spermatozoon
and the
ovum are biologically the separation of an unmanifested single
cell,
which is in its function simple, though it contains in itself,
in a
latent form, all the possibilities of the original single
cell.
Their union results in the manifestation of these qualities
in the
child. Their potentialities are expressed and developed in
terms of
time and space, while also, accompanying the act of union,
is the
ecstasy which is the natural result of the consciousness of
their
annihilation, the necessary condition of the production of
their
offspring.
It would be easy to develop this thesis by
analogies drawn
from ordinary human experiences of the growth of passion,
the hunger
accompanying it, the intense relief and joy afforded by satisfaction.
I like rather to think of the fact that all true religion
has been
the artistic, the dramatic, representation of the sexual process,
not
merely because of the usefulness of this cult in tribal life,
but as
the veil of this truer meaning which I am explaining to you
tonight.
I think that every experience in life should be regarded as
a symbol
of the truer experience of the deeper life. In the Oath of
a Master
of the Temple occurs the clause: 'I will interpret every phenomenon
as a particular dealing of God with my soul'.
It is not for us to criticise the Great Order
for expressing its
idea in terms readily understandable by the ordinary intelligent
person. We are to wave aside the metaphysical implications
of the
phrase, and grasp its obvious meaning. So every act should
be an act
of Yoga. And this leads us directly to the question which
we have
postponed until now -- Concentration.
Concentration! The sexual analogy still serves
us. Do you
remember the Abbe in Browning? Asked to preside at the Court
of
Love, he gave the prize to the woman the object of whose passion
was
utterly worthless, in this admirable judgement:
The love which to one, and one only, has
reference
Seems terribly like what perhaps gains God's preference.
It is a commonplace, and in some circumstances
(such as
constantly are found among foul-minded Anglo-Saxons) a sort
of joke,
that lovers are lunatics. Everything at their command is pressed
into the service of their passion; every kind of sacrifice,
every
kind of humiliation, every kind of discomfort -- these all
count for
nothing. Every energy is strained and twisted, every energy
is
directed to the single object of its end. The pain of a momentary
separation seems intolerable; the joy of consummation impossible
to
describe: indeed, almost impossible to bear!
Now this is exactly what the Yogi has to
do. All the books
-- they disagree on every other point, but they agree on this
stupidity
-- tell him that he has to give up this and give up that,
sometimes
on sensible grounds, more often on grounds of prejudice and
superstition. In the advanced stages one has to give up the
very
virtues which have brought one to that state! Every idea,
considered
as an idea, is lumber, dead weight, poison; but it is all
wrong to
represent these acts as acts of sacrifice. There is no question
of
depriving oneself of anything one wants. The process is rather
that
of learning to discard what one thought one wanted in the
darkness
before the dawn of the discovery of the real object of one's
passion.
Hence, note well! concentration has reduced our moral obligations
to
their simplest terms: there is a single standard to which
everything
is to be referred. To hell with the Pope! If Lobster Newburg
upsets
your digestion -- and good digestion is necessary to your
practice --
then you do not eat Lobster Newburg. Unless this is clearly
understood,
the Yogi will constantly be side-tracked by the sophistication
religious and moral fanatics. To hell with the Archbishops!
You will readily appreciate that to undertake
a course of
this kind requires careful planning. You have got to map out
your
life in advance for a considerable period so far as it is
humanly
possible to do so. If you have failed in this original strategical
disposition, you are simply not going to carry through the
campaign.
Unforeseen contingencies are certain to arise, and therefore
one of
our precautions is to have some sort of reserve of resource
to fling
against unexpected attacks.
This is, of course, merely concentration
in daily life, and it
is the habit of such concentration that prepares one for the
much
severer task of the deeper concentration of the Yoga practices.
For
those who are undertaking a preliminary course there is nothing
better, while they are still living more or less ordinary
lives, than
the practices recommended in _The Equinox_. There should be
-- there
must be -- a definite routine of acts calculated to remind
the
student of the Great Work.
The classic of the subject is _Liber Astarte
vel Berylli_,(see: Magick,p. 390)
the Book of Devotion to a Particular Deity. This book is admirable
beyond praise, reviewing the whole subject in every detail
with
flawless brilliancy of phrase. Its practice is enough in itself
to
bring the devotee to high attainment. This is only for the
few. But
every student should make a point of saluting the Sun (in
the manner
recommended in Liber Resh four times daily, and he shall salute
the Moon on her appearance with the Mantra Gayatri. The best
way is to
say the Mantra instantly one sees the Moon, to note whether
the
attention wavers, and to repeat the Mantra until it does not
waver at
all.
He should also practise assiduously Liber
III vel Jugorum(see: Magick,p.427).
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 city -- that of exorcising (with the prescribed
outward and downward sweep of the arm and the words:
alpha-pi o pi-alpha-nu-tau o sigma kappa-alpha-kappa o delta-alpha-iota-mu
o
nu o sigma towards any person in religious garb)(might be
incorrect here, but
not overly important-ED)
All these practices assist concentration,
and also serve to keep
one on the alert. They form an invaluale preliminary training
for
the colossal Work of genuine concentration when it comes to
be a
question of the fine, growing constantly finer, movements
of the
mind.
We may now turn to the consideration of Yoga
practices
themselves. I assume that in the fortnight which has elapsed
since
my last lecture you have all perfected yourselves in Asana
and
Pranayama; that you daily balance a saucer brimming with sulphuric
acid on your heads for twelve hours without accident, that
you all
jump about busily like frogs when not seriously levitated;
and that
your Mantra is as regular as the beating of your heart.
The remaining four limbs of Yoga are Pratyahara,
Dharana, Dhyana
and Samadhi.
I will give you the definition of all four
at a single stroke,
as each one to some extent explains the one following. Pratyahara
may be roughly described as introspection, but it also means
a
certain type of psychological experience. For instance, you
may
suddenly acquire a conviction, as did Sir Humphry Davy, that
the
universe is composed exclusively of ideas; or you may have
the direct
experience that you do not possess a nose, as may happen to
the best
of us, if we concentrate upon the tip of it.
Dharana is meditation proper, not the kind
of meditation
which consists of profound consideration of the subject with
the idea
of clarifying it or gaining a more comprehensive grasp of
it, but the
actual restraint of the consciousness to a single imaginery
object
chosen for the purpose.
These two limbs of Yoga are therefore in
a sense the two methods
employed mentally by the Yogi. For, long after success in
Samadhi
has been attained, one has to conduct the most extensive explorations
into the recesses of the mind.
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
things, that of space two non-coincident things, that of causality
two connected things.'
Samadhi, on the contrary, is in a way very
easy to define.
Etymology, aided by the persistence of the religious tradition,
helps
us here. "Sam is a prefix in Sanskrit which developed
into the
prefix 'syn' in Greek without changing the meaning -- 'syn'
in
'synopsis', 'synthesis', 'syndrome'. It means 'together with'.
'Adhi' has also come down through many centuries
and many
tongues. It is one of the oldest words in human language;
it dates
from the time when each sound had a definite meaning proper
to it, a
meaning suggested by the muscular movement made in producing
the
sound. Thus, the letter D originally means 'father'; so the
original
father, dead and made into a 'God', was called Ad. This name
came
down unchanged to Egypt, as you see in the Book of the Law.
The word
'Adhi' in Sanskrit was usually translated 'Lord'. In the Syrian
form
we get it duplicated Hadad. You remember Ben Hadad, King of
Syria.
The Hebrew word for 'Lord' is Adon or Adonai. Adonai, MY Lord,
is
constantly used in the Bible to replace the name Jehovah where
that
was too sacred to be mentioned, or for other reasons improper
to
write down. Adonai has also come to mean, through the Rosicrucian
tradition, the Holy Guardian Angel, and thus the object of
worship or
concentration. It is the same thing; worship is worth-ship,
means
worthiness; and anything but the chosen object is necessarily
an
unworthy object.
As Dhyana also represents the ondition of
annihilation of
dividuality, it is a little difficult to distinguish between
it and
Samadhi. I wrote in Part I., _Book IV_. --
' These Dhyanic conditions contradict those
of normal thought,
but in Samadhi they are very much more marked than in Dhyana.
And
while in the latter it seems like a simple union of two things,
in
the former it appears as if all things rush together and unite.
One
might say this, that in Dhyana there was still this quality
latent,
that the one existing was opposed to the many non-existing;
in
Samadhi the many and the one are united in a union of existence
with
non-existence. This definition is not made from reflection,
but from
memory.'
But that was written in 1911, and since then
I have had an
immense harvest of experience. I am inclined to say at this
moment
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 debris of the original
components.
These discussions are not of very great importance
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.
Now the practice of Pratyahara, properly
speaking, is
introspection, and the practice of Dharana, properly speaking,
is the
restraint of the thought to a single imaginary object. The
former is
a movement of the mind, the latter a cessation of all movement.
And
you are not likely to get much success in Pratyahara until
you have
made considerable advance in Dhyana, because by introspection
we mean
the exploration of the sub-strata of the consciousness which
are only
revealed when we have progressed a certain distance, and become
aware
of conditions which are utterly foreign to normal intellectual
conception. The first law of normal thought is A IS A the
law
of identity, it is called. So we can divide the universe into
A and
not-A; there is no third thing possible.
Now, quite early in the meditation practices,
the Yogi is likely
to get as a direct experience the consciousness that these
laws are
not true in any ultimate way. He has reached a world where
intellectual
conceptions are no longer valid; they remain true for the
ordinary affairs of life, but the normal laws of thought are
seen to
be no more than a mere mechanism. A code of conventions.
The students of higher mathematics and metaphysics
have often a
certain glimmering of these facts. They are compelled to use
irrational
conceptions for greater convenience in conducting their
rational investigations. for example, the square root of 2,
or the
square root of minus 1, is not in itself capable of comprehension
as
such; it pertains to an order of thinking beyond the primitive
man's
invention of counting on his fingers.
It will be just as well then for the student
to begin with
the practices of Dharana. If he does so he will obtain as
a byproduct
some of the results of Pratyahara, and he will also acquire
considerable insight into the methods of practising Pratyahara.
It
sounds perhaps, at first, as if Pratyahara were off the main
line of
attainment in Yoga. This is not so, because it enables one
to deal
with the new conditions which are established in the mind
by realisation
of Dhyana and Samadhi.
I can now describe the elementary practices.
You should begin with very short periods;
it is most important
not to overstrain the apparatus which you are using; the mind
must be
trained very slowly. In my early days I was often satisfied
with a
minute or two at a time; three or four such periods twice
or three
times a day. In the earliest stages of all it is not necessary
to
have got very far with Asana, because all you can get out
of the
early practices is really a foreshadowing of the difficulties
of
doing it.
I began by taking a simple geometrical object
in one
colour, such as a yellow square. I will quote the official
instructions
in _The Equinox_.
'Dharana -- Control of thought.
1. Constrain the mind to concentrate itself upon a single
simple
object imagined. The five tatwas are useful for this purpose;
they
are: a black oval; a blue disk; a silver crescent; a yellow
square;
a red triangle.
2. Proceed to combinations of single objects; e.g., a black
oval
within a yellow square, and so on.
3. Proceed to simple moving objects, such as a pendulum swinging;
a wheel revolving, etc. Avoid living objects.
4. Proceed to combinations of moving objects, e.g., a piston
rising and falling while a pendulum is swinging. The relation
between the two movements should be varied in different experiments.
(Or even a system of flywheels, eccentrics and governor.)
5. During these practices the mind must be absolutely confined
to the object determined on; no other thought must be allowed
to
intrude upon the consciousness. The moving systems must be
regular
and harmonious.
6. Note carefully the duration of the experiment, the number
and
nature of the intruding thoughts; the tendency of the object
itself
to depart from the course laid out for it, and any other phenomena
which may present themselves. Avoid overstrain; this is very
important.
7. Proceed to imagine living objects; as a man, preferably
some
man known to, and respected by, you.
8. In the intervals of these experiments you might try to
imagine the objects of the other senses, and to concentrate
upon
them. For example, try to imagine the taste of chocolate,
the smell
or roses, the feeling of velvet, the sound of a waterfall,
or the
ticking of a watch.
9. Endeavour finally to shut out all objects of any of the
senses, and prevent all thoughts arising in your mind. When
you feel
you have attained some success in these practices, apply for
examination,
and should you pass, more complex and difficult practices
will
be prescribed for you.
Now one of the most interesting and irritating
features of
your early experiments is: interfering thoughts. There is,
first of
all, the misbehaviour of the object which you are contemplating;
it
changes its colour and size; moves ts position; gets out of
shape.
And one of the essential difficulties in practice 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 and counting
the
breaks in your concentration, you will find that they themselves
are
useful, because their character is symptomatic of your state
of
progress.'(see: LIBER E vel EXERCITIORUM, Magick, p. 368 for
related
practices as well)
Breaks are classed as follows: --
1. Firstly, physical sensations; these should
have been overcome by
Asana.
2. Secondly, breaks that seem to be indicated by events immediately
preceding the meditation: their activity becomes tremendous.
Only
by this practice does one understand how much is really observed
by
the senses without the mind becoming conscious of it.
3. Thirdly, there is a class of break partaking of the nature
of
reverie or 'day-dreaming'. These are very insidious -- one
may go on
for a long time without realising that one has wandered at
all.
4. Fourthly, we get a very high class of break, which is a
sort of
abberation of the control itself. You think, 'How well I am
doing
it!' or perhaps that it would be rather a good idea if you
were on a
desert island, or if you were in a sound-proof house, or if
you were
sitting by a waterfall. But these are only trifling variations
from
the vigilance itself.
5. A fifth class of break seems to have no discoverable source
in
the mind. such might even take the form of actual hallucination,
usually auditory. Of course, such hallucinations are infrequent,
and
are recognised for what they are. Otherwise the student had
better
see a doctor. The usual kind consists of odd sentences, or
fragments
of sentences, which are quite distinctly heard in a recognisable
human voice, not the student's own voice, or that of anyone
he knows.
A similar phenomenon is observed by wireless operators, who
call such
messages 'atmospherics'.
-There is a further kind of break, which
is the desired result
itself-
I have already indicated how tedious these
practices
become; how great the bewilderment; how constant the disappointment.
Long before the occurrence of Dhyana, there are quite a number
of
minor results which indicate the breaking up of intellectual
limitation.
You must not be disturbed if these results
make you feel that
the very foundations of your mind are being knocked from under
you.
The real lesson is that, just as you learn in Asana, the normal
body
is in itself nothing but a vehicle of pain, so is the normal
itself
insane; by its own standards it IS insane. You have only got
to
read a quite simple and elementary work like Professor Joad's
_Guide
to Philosophy_ to find that any argument carried far enough
leads to
a contradiction in terms. There are dozens of ways of showing
that
if you begin 'A is A', you end 'A is not A'. The mind reacts
against
this conclusion; it anaesthetises itself against the self-inflicted
wound, and it regulates philosophy to the category of paradoxial
tricks. But that is a cowardly and disgraceful attitude. The
Yogi
has got to face the fact that we are all raving lunatics;
that sanity
exists -- if it exists at all -- in a mental state free from
dame's
school rules of intellect.
With an earnest personal appeal, therefore,
to come up frankly
to the mourners'bench and gibber, I will take my leave of
you for
this evening.
Love is the law, love under will.
_Second Lecture_
Mr. Chairman, Your Royal Highness, Your Grace,
my lords, ladies
and gentlemen.
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the
Law.
In my last lecture I led you into the quag
of delusion; I
smothered you in the mire of delusion; I brought you to thirst
in the
desert of delusion; I left you wandering in the jungle of
delusion, a
prey to all the monsters which are thoughts. It came into
my mind
that it was up to me to do something about it.
We have constantly been discussing mysterious
entities as if we
knew something about them, and this (on examination) always
turned
out not to be the case.
Knowledge itself is impossible, because if
we take the
simplest proposition of knowledge, S is P, we must attach
some
meaning to S and P, if our statement is to be intelligible.
(I say
nothing as to whether it is true!) And this involves definition.
Now the original proposition of identity, A = A, tells us
nothing at
all, unless the second A gives us further information about
the first
A. We shall therefore say that A is BC. Instead of one unknown
we
have two unknowns; we have to define B as DE, C as FG. Now
we have
four unknowns, and very soon we have used up the alphabet.
When we
come to define Z, we have to go back and use one of the other
letters,
so that all our arguments are arguments in a circle.
Any statement which we make is demonstrably
meaningless.
And yet we do mean something when we say that a cat has four
legs.
And we all know what we mean when we say so. We give our assent
to,
or withhold it from, the proposition on the grounds of our
experience.
But that experience is not intellectual, as above demonstrated.
It is a matter of immediate intuition. We cannot have any
warrant for that intuition, but at the same time any intellectual
argument which upsets it does not in the faintest degree shake
our
conviction.
The conclusion to be drawn from this is that
the instrument
of mind is not intellectual, not rational. Logic is merely
destructive,
a self-destructive toy. The toy, however, is in some ways
also
instructive, even though the results of its use will not bear
examination.
So we make a by-law that the particular sorites which
annihilate logic are out of bounds, and we go on reasoning
within
arbitrarily appointed limits. It is subject to these conditions
that
we may proceed to examine the nature of our fundamental ideas;
and
this is necessary, because since we began to consider the
nature of
the results of meditation, our conceptions of the backgrounds
of
thought are decided in quite a different manner; not by intellectual
analysis, which, as we have seen, carries no conviction, but
by
illumination, which does carry conviction. Let us, therefore,
proceed to examine the elements of our normal thinking.
I need hardly recapitulate the mathematical
theorem which
you all doubtless laid to heart when you were critcising Einstein's
theory of Relativity. I only want to recall to your minds
the
simplest element of that theorem; the fact that in order to
describe
anything at all, you must have four measurements. It must
be so far
east or west, so far north or south, so far up or down, from
a
standard point, and it must be after or before a standard
moment.
There are three dimensions of space and one of time.
Now what do we mean by space? Henri Poincare,
one of the
greatest mathematicians of the last generation, thought that
the idea
of space was invented by a lunatic, in a fantastic (and evidently
senseless and aimless) endeavour to explain to himself his
experience
of his muscular movements. Long before that, Kant had told
us that
space was subjective, a necessary condition of thinking; and
while
every one must agree with this, it is obvious that it does
not tell
us much about it.
Now let us look into our minds and see what
idea, if any, we
can form about space. Space is evidently a continuum. There
cannot
be any difference between any parts of it because it is wholly
WHERE. It is pure background, the area of possibilities, a
condition of quality and so of all consciousness. It is therefore
in
itself completely void. Is that right, sir?
Now suppose we want to fulfil one of these
possibilities.
The simplest thing we can take is a point, and we are told
that a
point has neither parts nor magnitude, but only position.
But, as
long as there is only one point, position means nothing. No
possibility
has yet been created of any positive statement. We will
therefore take two points, and from these we get the idea
of a line.
Our Euclid tells us that a line has length but no breadth.
But, as
long as there are only two points, length itself means nothing;
or,
at the most, it means separateness. All we can say about two
points
is that there are two of them.
Now we take a third point, and at last we
come to a more
positive idea. In the first place, we have a plane surface,
though
that in itself still means nothing, in the same way as length
means
nothing when there are only two points there. But the introduction
of the third point has given a meaning to our idea of length.
We can
say that the line AB is longer than the line BC, and we can
also
introduce the idea of an angle.
A fourth point, provided that it is not in
the original
plane, gives us the idea of a solid body. But, as before,
it tells
us nothing about the solid body as such, because there is
no other
solid body with which to compare it. We find also that it
is not
really a solid body at all as it stands, because it is merely
an
instantaneous kind of illusion. We cannot observe, or even
imagine,
anything, unless we have time for the purpose.
What, then is time? It is a phantasm, exactly
as tenuous
as space, but the possibilities of differentiation between
one thing
and another can only occur in one way instead of in three
different
ways. We compare two phenomena in time by the idea of sequence.
Now it will be perfectly clear to all of
you that this is
all nonsense. In order to conceive the simplest possible object,
we
have to keep on inventing ideas, which even in the proud moment
of
invention 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.
It is only after we have endowed the object with these
dozen imaginary properties, each of which, besides being a
complete
illusion, is an absurd, irrational, and self-contradictory
notion,
that we arrive at even the simplest object of experience.
And this
object must, of course, be constantly multiplied. Otherwise
our
experience would be confined to a single object incapable
of
description.
We have also got to attribute to ourselves
a sort of divine
power over our nightmare creation, so that we can compare
the different
objects of our experience in all sorts of different manners.
Incidentally, this last operation of multiplying the objects
stands
evidently invalid, because (after all) what we began with
was absolutely
Nothingness. Out of this we have somehow managed to obtain,
not merely one, but many; but, for all that, our process has
followed
the necessary operation of our intellectual machine. Since
that
machine is the only machine that we possess, our arguments
must be
valid in some sense or other conformable with the nature of
this
machine. What machine? That is a perfectly real object. It
contains
innumerable parts, powers and faculties. And they are as much
a nightmare as the external universe which it has created.
Gad, sir,
Patanjali is right!
Now how do we get over this difficulty of
something coming
from Nothing? Only by enquiring what we mean by Nothing. We
shall
find that this idea is totally inconceivable to the normal
mind. For
if Nothing is to be Nothing, it must be Nothing in every possible
way. (Of course, each of these ways is itself an imaginary
something
thing, and there are aleph -- a transfinite number -- of them.)
If, for example, we say that Nothing is a square triangle,
we have
had to invent a square triangle in order to say it. But take
a more
homely instance. We know what we mean by saying 'There are
cats in
the room.' We know what we mean when we say 'No cats are in
the
room'. But if we say 'NO cats are NOT in the room', we evidently
mean that SOME cats ARE in the room. This remark is not intended
to be a reflection upon this distinguished audience.
So then, if Nothing is to be really the absolute
Nothing,
we mean that Nothing does not enter into the category of existence.
To say that absolute Nothing exists is equivalent to saying
that
everything exists which exists, and the great Hebrew sages
of old
time noted this fact by giving it the title of the supreme
idea of
reality (behind their tribal God, Jehovah, who, as we have
previously
shown, is merely the Yoga of the 4 Elements, even at his highest,
--
the Demiourgos) Eheieh-Asher-Eheieh, -- I am that I am.
If there is any sense in any of this at all,
we may expect
to find an almost identical system of thought all over the
world.
There is nothing exclusively Hebrew about this theogony. We
find,
for example, in the teachings of Zoroaster and the neo-Platonists
very similar ideas. We have a Pleroma, the void, a background
of all
possibilities, and this is filled by a supreme Light-God,
from whom
drive in turn the seven Archons, who correspond closely to
the seven
planetary deities, Aratron, Bethor, Phaleg and the rest. These
in
their turn constitute a Demiurge in order to crate matter;
and this
Demiurge is Jehovah. Not far different are the ideas both
of the
classical Greeks and the neo-Platonists. The differences in
the
terminology, when examined, appear as not much more than the
differences
of local convenience in thinking. But all these go back to
the
still older cosmogony of the ancient Egyptians, where we have
Nuit,
Space, Hadit, the point of view; these experience congress,
and so
produce Heru-Ra-Ha, who combines the ideas of Ra-Hoor-Khuit
and
Hoor-paar-Kraat.
These are the same twin Vau andHe final which we know.
Here is evidently the origin of the system of the Tree of
Life.
We have arrived at this system by purely intellectual
examination, and it is open to criticism; but the point I
wish to
bring to your notice tonight is that it corresponds closely
to one of
the great states of mind which reflect the experience of Samadhi.
There is a vision of peculiar character which
has been of
cardinal importance in my interior life, and to which constant
reference is made in my Magical Diaries. So far as I know,
there is
no extant description of this vision anywhere, and I was surprised
on
looking through my records to find that I had given no clear
account
of it myself. The reason apparently is that it is so necessary
a
part of myself that I unconsciously assume it to be a matter
of
common knowledge, just as one assumes that everyone knows
that one
possesses a pair of lungs, and therefore abstains from mentioning
the
fact directly, although perhaps alluding to the matter often
enough.
It appears very essential to describe this
vision as well as
possible, considering the difficulty of langauge, and the
fact that
the phenomena involved logical contradictions, the conditions
of
consciousness being other than those obtaining normally.
The vision developed gradually. It was repeated
on so many
occasions that I am unable to say at what period it may be
called
complete. The beginning, however, is clear enough in my memory.
I was on a Great Magical Retirement in a
cottage overlooking
Lake Pasquaney in New Hampshire. I lost consciousness of everything
but an universal space in which were innumerable bright points,
and I realised that this was a physical representation of
the universe,
in what I may call its essential structure. I exclaimed:
'Nothingness, with twinkles!' I concentrated upon this vision,
with
the result that the void space which had been the principal
element
of it diminished in importance. Space appeared to be ablaze,
yet the
radiant points were not confused, and I thereupon completed
my
sentence with the exclamation: 'But WHAT Twinkles!'
The next stage of this vision led to an identification
of
the blazing points with the stars of the firmament, with ideas,
souls, etc. I perceived also that each star was connected
by a ray
of light with each other star. In the world of ideas, each
thought
possessed a necessary relation with each other thought; each
such
relation is of course a thought in itself; each such ray is
itself a
star. It is here that logical difficulty first presents itself.
The
seer has a direct perception of infinite series. Logically,
therefore,
it would appear as if the entire space must be filled up with
a
homogeneous blaze of light. This is not, however, the case.
The
space is completely full, yet the monads which fill it are
perfectly
distinct. The ordinary reader might well exclaim that such
statements
exhibit symptoms of mental confusion. The subject demands
more
than cursory examination. I can do no more than refer the
critic to
Bertran Russell's _Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy_,
where
the above position is thoroughly justified, as also certain
positions
which follow.
I want you to note in particular the astonishing
final
identification of this cosmic experience with the nervous
system as described
by the anatomist.
At this point we may well be led to consider
once more what
we call the objective universe, and what we call our subjective
experience. What is Nature? Immanuel Kant, who founded an
epoch-making
system of subjective idealism, is perhaps the first philosopher
to demonstrate clearly that space, time, causality (in short,
all conditions of existence) are really no more than conditions
of
thought. Ihave tried to put it more simply by defining all
possible
predicates as so many dimensions. To describe an object properly
it
is not sufficient to determine its position in the space-time
continuum
of four dimensions, but we must enquire how it stands in all
the categories and scales, its values in all 'kinds' of possibility.
What do we know about it in respect of its greenness, its
hardness,
its mobility, and so on? And then we find out that what we
imagine
to be the description of the object is in reality nothing
of the
sort.
All that we recorded is the behaviour of
our instruments.
What did our telescopes, spectroscopes, and balances tell
us? And
these again are dependent upon the behaviour of our senses;
for the
reality of our instruments, of our organs of sense, is just
as much
in need of description and demonstration as are the most remote
phenomena. And we find ourselves forced to the conclusion
that
anything we perceive is only perceived by us as such 'because
of our
tendency so to perceive it'. And we shall find that in the
fourth
stage of the great Buddhist practice, Mahasatipatthana, we
become
directly and immediately aware of this fact instead of digging
it out
of the holts of these interminable sorites which badger us!
Kant
himself put it, after his fashion: 'The laws of nature are
the laws
of our own minds'. Why? It is not the contents of the mind
itself
that we can cognise, but only its structure. But Kant has
not gone
to this length. He would have been extremely shocked if it
had ever
struck him that the final term in his sorites was 'Reason
itself is
the only reality'. On further examination, even this ultimate
truth
turns out to be meaningless. It is like the well known circular
definition of an obscene book, which is: one that arouses
certain
ideas in the mind of the kind of person in whom such ideas
are
excited by that kind of book.
I notice that my excellent chairman is endeavouring
to
stifle a yawn and to convert it into a smile, and he will
forgive me
for saying that I find the effect somewhat sinister. But he
has
every right to be supercilious about it. These are indeed
'old, fond
paradoxes to amuse wives in ale-houses'. Since philosophy
began, it
has always been a favourite game to prove your axioms absurd.
You will all naturally be very annoyed with
me for indulging in
these fatuous pastimes, especially as I started out with a
pledge
that I would deal with these subjects from the hard-headed
scientific
point of view. Forgive me if I have toyed with these shining
gossamers
of the thought-web! I have only been trying to break it to
you gently. I proceed to brush away with a sweep of my lily-white
hand all this tenuous, filmy stuff, 'such stuff as dreams
are made
of'. We will get down to modern science.
For general reading there is no better introduction
than
_The Bases of Modern Science_, by my old and valued friend
the late
J. W. N. Sullivan. I do not want to detain you too long with
quotations from this admirable book. I would much rather you
got it an
read it yourself; you could hardly make better use of your
time. But
let us spend a few moments on his remarks about the question
of geometry.
Our conceptions of space as a subjective
entity has been completely
upset by the discovery that the equations of Newton based
on
Euclidean Geometry are inadequate to explain the phenomena
of
gravitation.
It is instinctive to us to think of a straight
line; it is
somehow axiomatic. But we learn that this does not exist in
the
objective universe. We have to use another geometry, Riemann's
Geometry, which is one of the curved geometries. (There are,
of
course, as many systems of geometry as there are absurd axioms
to
build them on. Three lines make one ellipse: any nonsense
you like:
you can proceed to construct a geometry which is correct so
long as
it is coherent. And there is nothing right or wrong about
the
result: the only question is: which is the most convenient
system
for the purpose of describing phenomena? We found the idea
of
Gravitation awkward: we went to Riemann.)
This means that the phenomena are not taking
place against a
background of a flat surface; the surface itself is curved.
What we
have thought of as a straight line does not exist at all.
And this
is almost impossible to conceive; at least it is quite impossible
for
myself to visualise. The nearest one gets to it is by trying
to
imagine that you are a reflection on a polished door-knob.
I feel almost ashamed of the world that I
have to tell you
that in the year 1900, four years before the appearance of
Einstein's
world-shaking paper, I described space as 'finite yet boundless',
which is exactly the description in general terms that he
gave in
more mathematical detail. footnote{Tannhauser, written in
Mexico, O.F.,
August, 1900. See also my _Berashith_, written in Delhi, April,
1901.}
You will see at once that these three words do describe a
curved geometry;
a sphere, for instance, is a finite 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!
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 prominent, therefore, around large masses, for here the
gravitational
effects are most marked. If we take matter as fundamental,
we may say that
it is the presence of matter that causes the curvature of
space-time. But
there is a different school of thought that regards matter
as due to
the curvature of spce-time. That is, we assume as fundamental
a
space-time continuum manifest to our senses as what we call
matter.
Both points of view have strong arguments to recommend them.
But,
whether or not matter may be derived from the geometrical
peculiarities
of the space-time continuum, we may take it as an established
scientific fact that gravitation has been so derived. This
is
obviously a very great achievement, but it leaves quite untouched
another great class of phenomena, namely, electro-magnetic
phenomena.
In this space-time continuum of Einstein's the electro-magnetic
forces appear as entirely alien. Gravitation has been absorbed,
as
it were, into Riemannian geometry, and the notion of force,
so far as
gravitational phenomena are concerned, has been abolished.
But the
electro-magnetic forces still flourish undisturbed. There
is no hint
that they are manifestations of the geometrical peculiarities
of the
space-time continuum. And it can be shown to be impossible
to relate
them to anything in Riemann's Geometry. Gravitation can be
shown to
correspond to certain geometrical peculiarities of a Riemannian
space-time. But the electro-magnetic forces lie completely
outside
this scheme.'
Here is the great quag into which mathematical
physics has
led its addicts. Here we have two classes of phenomena, all
part of
a unity of physics. Yet the equations which describe and explain
the
one class are incompatible with those of the other class!
This is
not a question of philosophy at all, but a question of fact.
It does
not do to consider that the universe is composed of particles.
Such
a hypothesis underlies one class of phenomena, but it is nonsense
when applied to the electro-magnetic equations, which insist
upon our
abandoning the idea of particles for that of waves.
Here is another Welsh rabbit for supper!
'Einstein's finite universe is such that
its radius is dependent
upon the amount of matter in it. Were more matter to be created,
the
volume of the universe would increase. Were matter to be annihilated,
the volume of space would decrease. Without matter, space
would
not exist. Thus the mere existence of space, besides its metrical
properties, depends upon the existence of matter. With this
conception
it becomes possible to regard all motion, including rotation,
as
purely relative.'
Where do we go from here, boys?
'The present tendency of physics is towards
describing the
universe in terms of mathematical relations between unimaginable
entities.'
We have got a long way from Lord Kelvin's
too-often and too-unfairly
quoted statement that he could not imagine anything of which
he could not construct a mechanical model. The Victorians
were
really a little inclined to echo Dr. Johnson's gross imbecile
stamp
on the ground when the ideas of Bishop Berkeley penetrated
to the
superficial strata of the drink-sodden grey cells of that
beef-witted
brute.
Now, look you, I ask you to reflect upon
the trouble we
have taken to calculate the distance of the fixed stars, and
hear
Professr G. N. Lewis, who 'suggests that two atoms connected
by a
light ray may be regarded as in actual physical contact'.
The
INTERVAL between two ends of a light-ray is, on the theory
of
relativity, zero, and Professor Lewis suggests that this fact
should
be taken seriously. On this theory, light is not propagated
at all.
This idea is in conformity with the principle that none but
observable
factors should be used in constructing a scientific theory,
for
we can certainly never observe the passage of light in empty
space.
We are only aware of light when it encouters matter. Light
which
never encounters matter is purely hypothetical. If we do not
make
that hypothesis, then there is no empty space. On Professor
Lewis's
theory, when we observe a distant star, our eye as truly makes
physical contact with that star as our finger makes contact
with a
table when we press it.
And did not all of you think that my arguments
were arguments
in a circle? I certainly hope you did, for I was at the
greatest pains to tell you so. But it is not a question of
argument
in Mr. Sullivan's book; it is a question of facts. He was
talking
about human values. He was asking whether science could possibly
be
cognizant of them. Here he comes, the great commander! Cheer,
my
comrades, cheer!
But although consistent materialists were
probably always rare,
the humanistically important fact remained that science did
not find
it necessary to include values in its description of the universe.
For it appeared that science, in spite of this omission, formed
a
closed system. If values form an integral part of reality,
it seems
strange that science should be able to give a consistent description
of phenomena which ignores them.
At the present time, this difficulty is being met in two ways.
On the one hand, it is pointed out that science remains within
its
own domain by the device of cyclic definition, that is to
say, the
abstractions with which it begins are all it ever talks about.
It
makes no fresh contacts with reality, and therefore never
encounters
any possibly disturbing factors. This point of view is derived
from
the theory of relativity, particularly from the form of presentation
adopted by Eddington. This theory forms a closed circle. The
primary terms of the theory, POINT-EVENTS, POTENTIALS, MATTER
(etc. -- there are ten of them), lie at various points on
the
circumference of the circle. We may start at any point and
go round the
circle, that is, from any one of these terms we can deduce
the
others. The primary entities of the theory are defined in
terms of
one another. In the course of this exercise we derive the
laws of
Nature studied in physics. At a certain point in the cahin
of
deductions, at MATTER, for example, we judge that we are talking
about something which is an objective concrete embodiment
of our
abstractions. But matter, as it occurs in physics, is no more
than a
particular set of abstractions, and our subsequent reasoning
is
concerned only with these abstractions. Such other characteristics
as the bjective reality may possess never enter our scheme.
But the
set of abstractions called matter in relativity theory do
not seem to
be adequate to the whole of our scientific knowledge of matter.
There remain quantum phenomena.
Ah!
So we leave her, so we leave her,
Far from where her swarthy kindred roam -- kindred roam
In the Scarlet Fever, Scarlet Fever,
Scarlet Fever Convalescent Home.
So now, no less than that chivalrous gentleman,
His Grace,
the Most Reverend the Archbishop of Canterbury, who in a recent
broadcast confounded for ever all those infidels who had presumed
to
doubt the possibility of devils entering into swine, we have
met the
dragon science and conquered. We have seen that, however we
attack
the problem of mind, whether from the customary spiritual
standpoint,
or from the opposite corner of materialism, the result is
just the
same.
One last quotation from Mr. Sullivan. 'The
universe may ultimately
prove to be irrational. The scientific adventure may have
to
be given up.'
But that is all HE knows about science, bless
his little
heart! We do not give up. 'You lied, d'Ormea, I do not repent!'
The results of experiment are still valid for experience,
and the
fact that the universe turns out on enquiry to be unintelligible
only
serves to fortify our ingrained conviction that experience
itself is
reality.
We may then ask ourselves whether it is not
possible to
obtain experience of a higher order, to discover and develop
the
faculty of mind which can transcend analysis, stable against
all
thought by virtue of its own self-evident assurance. In the
language
of the Great White Brotherhood (whom I am here to represent)
you
cross the abyss. 'Leave the poor old stranded wreck' -- Ruach
--
'and pull for the shore' of Neschamah. For above the abyss,
it is
said, as you will see if you study the Supplement of the fifth
number
of the First Volume of _The Equinox_, an idea is only true
in so far
as it contains its contradictory in itself.
It is such states of mind as this which constitute
the
really important results of Samyama, and these results are
not to be
destroyed by philosophical speculation, because they are not
susceptible
of analysis, because they have no component parts, because
they
exist by virtue of their very Unreason -- 'certum est quia
ineptum!'
They cannot be expressed, for they are above knowledge. To
some
extent we can convey our experience to others familiar with
that
experience to a less degree by the aesthetic method. And this
explains why all the good work on Yoga -- alchemy, magick
and the
rest -- not doctrinal but symbolic -- the 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.
_Third Lecture_
Dear Children,
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
You will remember that last week our study of Yoga had led
us to the Fathers of the Church. We saw that their philosophy
and
science, in following an independent route, had brought us
to the
famous exclamation of Tertullian: 'certum est quia ineptum!'
How
right the Church has been to deny the authority of Reason!
We are almost tempted to enquire for a moment
what the
Church means by 'faith'. St. Paul tells 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
lecture.
Nothing is any use to us unless it be a certainty unshakeable
by
criticism of any kind, and there is only one thing in the
universe
which complies with these conditions: the direct experience
of
spiritual truth. Here, and here only, do we find a position
in which
the great religious minds of all times and all climes coincide.
It
is necessarily above dogma, because dogma consists of a collection
of
intellectual statements, each of which, and also its contradictory,
can easily be disputed and overthrown.
You are probably aware that in the Society
of Jesus the
postulants are trained to debate on all these highly controversial
subjects. They put up a young man to prove any startling blasphemy
that happens to occur to them. And the more shocked the young
man
is, the better the training for his mind, and the better service
will
he give to the Society in the end; but only if his mind has
been
completely disabused of its confidence in its own rightness,
or even
in the possibility of being right.
The rationalist, in his shallow fashion,
always contends
that this training is the abnegation of mental freedom. On
the
contrary, it is the only way to obtain that freedom. In the
same
Society the training in obedience is based on a similar principle.
The priest has to do what his Superior orders him -- perinde
ac
cadaver. Protestants always represent that this is the most
outrageous
and indefensible tyranny. "The poor devil', they say,
'is
bludgeoned into having no will of his own'. That is pure nonsense.
By abnegating his will through the practice of holy obedience
his
will has become enormously strong, so strong that none of
his natural
instincts, desires, or habits can intrude. He has freed his
will of
all these inhibitions. He is a perfect function of the machinery
of
the Order. In the General of the Society is concentrated the
power
of all those separate wills, just as in the human body every
cell
should be completely devoted in its particular quality to
the
concentrated will of the organism.
In other words, the Society of Jesus has
created a perfect
imitation of the skeleton of the original creation, living
man. It
has complied with the divinely instituted order of things,
and that
is why we see that the body, which was never numerically important,
has yet been one of the greatest influences in the development
of
Europe. It has not always worked perfectly, but that has not
been
the fault of the system; and, even as it is, its record has
been
extraordinary. And one of the most remarkable things about
it is
that its greatest and most important achievements have been
in the
domain of science and philosophy. It has done nothing in religion;
or, rather, where it has meddld with religion it has only
done harm.
What a mistake! And why? For the simple reason that it was
in a
position to take no notice of religion; all these matters
were
decided for it by the Pope, or by the Councils of the Church,
and the
Society was therefore able to free itself from the perplexities
of
religion, in exactly the same way as the novice obtains complete
freedom from his moral responsibilities by sinking his personal
phantasies in the will of the Superior.
I should like to mention here that the Spiritual
Exercises
of St. Ignatius are in their essence really admirable Yoga
practices.
They have, it is true, a tinge of magical technique, and they
have
been devised to serve a dogmatic en. That was, however, necessary,
and it was good magic too, at that, because the original will
of the
Founder was to produce a war engine as a counterblast to the
Reformation.
tion. He was very wise to devise a plan, irrespective of its
abstract
merits as philosophy, which would most efficiently serve that
single purpose. The only trouble has been that this purpose
was not
sufficiently cosmic in scope to resist internal forces. Having
attained the higher planes by practice of these exercises,
they found
that the original purpose of the Society was not really adequate
to
their powers; they were, so to speak, over-engined. They stupidly
invaded the spiritual sphere of the other authorities whom
they were
founded to support, and thus we see them actually quarrelling
with
the Pope, while failing signally to obtain possession of the
Papacy.
Being thus thwarted in their endeavours, and confused in their
purpose, they redoubled the ardour of their exercises; and
it is one
of the characteristics of all spiritual exercises, if honestly
and
efficiently performed, that they constantly lead you on to
higher
planes, where all dogmatic considerations, all intellectual
concepts,
are invalid. Hence, we found that it is not altogether surprising
that the General of the Order and his immediate circle have
been
supposed to be atheists. If that were true, it would only
show that
they have been corrupted by their preoccupation with the practical
politics of the world, which it is impossible to conduct on
any but
an atheistic basis; it is brainless hypocrisy to pretend otherwise,
and should be restricted to the exclusive use of the Foreign
Office.
It would, perhaps, be more sensible to suppose
that the heads of
the Order have really attained the greatest heights of spiritual
knowledge and freedom, and it is quite possible that the best
term to
describe their attitude would be either Pantheistic or Gnostic.
These considerations should be of the greatest
use to us now
that we come to discuss in more detail the results of the
Yoga
practices. There is, it is true, a general similarity between
the
ecstatic outbursts of the great mystics all over the world.
Comparisons
have often been drawn by students of the subject. I will only
detain you with one example: 'Do what thou wilt shall be the
whole
of the Law'. What is this injunction? It is a generalisation
of
St. Augustine's 'Love, and do what thou wilt'. But in _The
Book of
the Law_, lest the hearer should be deluded into a spasm of
antinomianism,
there is a further explanation: 'Love is the law, love under
will'.
However, the point is that it is no use discussing
the
results of Yoga, whether that Yoga be the type recommended
by Lao-Tze,
or Patanjali, or St. Ignatius Loyola, because for our first
postulate we have: that these subjects are incapable of discussion.
To argue about them only causes us to fall into the pit of
Because,
and there to perish with the dogs of Reason. The only use,
therefore,
of describing our experiences is to enable students to get
some
sor of idea of the sort of thing that is going to happen to
them
when they attain success in the practices of Yoga. We have
David
saying in the Psalms: 'I hate thoughts, but Thy law do I love.'
We
have St. Paul saying: 'The carnal mind is enmity against God.'
One
might almost say that the essence of St. Paul's Epistles is
a struggle
against mind: 'We war not against flesh and blood' -- you
know
the rest -- I can't be bothered to quote it all -- Eph. vi.
12.
It is St. Paul, I think, who describes Satan,
which is his
name for the enemy, owing to his ignorance of the history
of the
world, as the Prince of the Power of the Air; that is, of
the Ruach,
of the intellect; and we must never forget that what operated
the
conversion of St. Paul was the Vision on the road to Damascus.
It is
particularly significant that he disappeared into the Desert
of
Arabia for three years before coming forward as the Apostle
to the
Gentiles. St. Paul was a learned Rabbi; he was the favourite
pupil
of the best expositor of the Hebrew Law, and in the single
moment of
his Vision all his arguments were shattered at a single stroke!
We are not told that St. Paul said anything
at the time,
but went quietly on his journey. That is the great lesson:
not to
discuss the results. Those of you who possess a copy of _The
Equinox
of the Gods_ may have been very much surprised at the extraordinary
injunction in the Comment: the prohibition of all discussion
of the
Book. I myself did not fully understand that injunction; I
do so
now.
Let us now deal with a few of the phenomena
which occur
during the practices of Pratyahara.
Very early during my retirement in Kandy,
I had been trying to
concentrate by slanting my eyes towards the tip of my nose.
This, by
the way, is not a good practice; one is liable to strain the
eyes.
But what happened was that I woke up in the night; my hand
touched a
nose; I immediately concluded that some one was in the room.
Not at
all; I only thought so because my nose had passed away from
the
region of my observation by the practice of concentrating
upon it.
The same sort of thing occurs with adequate
concentration
on any object. It is connected, curiously enough, with the
phenomena
of invisibility. When your mind has gone so deeply into itself
that
it is unconscious of itself and its surroundings, one of the
most
ordinary results is that the body becomes invisible to other
people.
I do not think that it would make any difference for a photograph,
though I have no evidence for saying this; but it has happened
to me
on innumerable occasions. It was an almost daily occurrence
when I
was in Sicily.
A party of us used to go down to a very beautiful
bay of
sand, whence jutted fantastically-shaped islets of rock; it
is rimmed
by cliffs encrusted with jewels of marine life. The way was
over a
bare hillside; except for a few hundred yards of vineyard
there was
no cover -- nay, not for a rabbit. But it often happened that
one of
the party would turn to speak to me, and fail to see me. I
have
often known this to happen when I was dictating; my chair
was
apparently empty.
Incidentally, this faculty, which I think
is exercised, as a
rule, unconsciously, may become an actual magical power.
It happened to me on one occasion that a
very large number
of excited people were looking for me with no friendly intentions;
but I had a feeling of lightness, of ghostliness, as if I
were a
shadow moving soundlessly about the street; and in actual
fact none
of the people who were looking for me gave the slightest indication
that they were aware of my presence.
There is a curious parallel to this incident
in one of the
Gospels where we read that 'they picked up stones to stone
him, but
he, passing though the midst of them, went his way'.
There is another side to this business of
Pratyahara, one
that may be described as completely contradictory against
what we
have been talking about.
If you concentrate your attention upon one
portion of the body
with the idea of investigating it, that is, I suppose, allowing
the
mind to move within very small limits, the whole of your consciousness
becomes concentrated in that small part. I used to practise
this a good deal in my retirement by Lake Pasquaney. I would
usually
take a finger or a toe, and identify my whole consciousness
with the
small movements which I allowed it to make. It would be futile
to go
into much detail about this experience. I can only say that
until
you acquire the power you have no idea of the sheer wonder
and
delight of that endlessly quivering orgasm.
If I remember rightly, this practice and
its result were
one of the principal factors which enabled me afterwards to
attain
what is called the Trance of Wonder, which pertains to the
Grade of a
Master of the Temple, and is a sort of complete understanding
of the
organism of the universe, and an ecstatic adoration of its
marvel.
This Trance is very much higher than the
Beatific Vision, for
always in the latter it is the heart -- the Phren -- which
is involved;
in the former it is the Nous, the divine intelligence of man,
whereas the heart is only the centre of the intellectual and
moral
faculties.
But, so long as you are occupying yourself
with the physical,
your results will only be on that plane; and the principal
effect of these concentrations on small parts of the body
is the
understanding, or rather the appreciation, of sensuous pleasure.
This, however, is infinitely refined, exquisitely intense.
It is
often possible to acquire a technique by which the skilled
artist can
produce this pleasure in another person. Map out, say, three
square
inches of skin anywhere, and it is possible by extreme gentle
touches
to excite in the patient all the possible sensations of pleasure
of
which that person is capable. I know that this is a very extraordinary
claim, but it is a very easy one to substantiate. The only
thing I am afraid of is that experts may be carried away by
the
rewards, instead of getting the real value of the lesson,
which is
that the gross pleasures of the senses are absolutely worthless.
This practice, so far as it is useful to
all, should be regarded
as the first step towards emancipation from the thrall of
the bodily
desires, of the sensations self-destructive, of the thirst
for
pleasure.
I think this is a good opportunity to make
a little digression
in favour of Mahasatipatthana. This practice was recommended
by
the Buddha in very special terms, and it is the only one of
which he
speaks so highly. He told his disciples that if they only
stuck to
it, sooner or later they would reach full attainment. The
practice
consists of an analysis of the universe in terms of consciousness.
You begin by taking some very simple and regular bodily exercise,
such a the movement of the body in walking, or the movements
of the
lungs in breathing. You keep on noting what happens: 'I am
breathing
out; I am breathing in; I am holding my breath'. as the case
may
be. Quite without warning, one is appalled by the shock of
the
discovery that what you have been thinking is not true. You
have no
right to say: 'I am breathing in'. All that you really know
is that
there is a breathing in.
You therefore change your note, and you say:
'There is a
breathing in; there is a breathing out', and so on. And very
soon,
if you practise assiduously, you get another shock. You have
no
right to say that there is a breathing. All you know is that
there
is a sensation of tha kind. Again you change your conception
of
your observation, and one day make the discovery that the
sensation
has disappeared. All you know is that there is perception
of a
sensation of breathing in or breathing out. Continue, and
that is
once more discovered to be an illusion. What you find is that
there
is a tendency to perceive a sensation of the natural phenomena.
The former stages are easy to assimilate
intellectually;
one assents to them immediately that one discovers them, but
with
regard to the 'tendency', this is not the case, at least it
was not
so for my own part. It took me a long while before I understood
what
was meant by 'tendency'. To help you to realise this I should
like
to find a good illustration. For instance, a clock does nothing
at
all but offer indications of the time. It is so constructed
that
this is all we can know about it. We can argue about whether
the
time is correct, and that means nothing at all, unless, for
example,
we know whether the clock is controlled electrically from
an astronomical
station where the astronomer happens to be sane, and in what
part of the world the clock is, and so on.
I remember once when I was in Teng-Yueh,
just inside the
Chinese frontier in Yunnan. The hour of noon was always telegraphed
to the Consulate from Pekin. This was a splendid idea, because
electricity is practically instantaneous. The unfortunate
thing was,
if it WAS unfortunate, which I doubt, that the messages had
to be
relayed at a place called Yung Chang. The operators there
had the
good sense to smoke opium most of the time, so occasionally
a batch
of telegrams would arrive, a dozen or so in a bunch, stating
that it
was noon at Pekin on various dates! So all the gross phenomena,
all
these sensations and perceptions, are illusion. All that one
could
really say was that there was a tendency on the part of some
lunatic
in Pekin to tell the people at Teng-Yueh what o'clock it was.
But even this Fourth Skandha is not final.
With practice,
it also appears as an illusion, and one remains with nothing
but the
bare consciousness of the existence of such a tendency.
I cannot tell you very much about this, because
I have 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.
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 believe, is one of the reasons
why it
has been impossible to find any really satisfactory literature
about
Yoga at all. The more advanced one's progress, the less one
knows,
and the more one understands. The effect is simply additional
evidence of what I have been saying all this time: that it
is very
little use discusing things; what is needed is continuous
devotion
to the practice.
Love is the law, love under will.
Fourth Lecture
Salutation to the Sons of the Morning!
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the
Law.
I should like to begin this evening by recapitulating
very
briefly what has been said in the previous three lectures,
and this
would be easier if I had not completely forgotten everything
I said.
But there is a sort of faint glimmering to the effect that
the
general subject of the series was the mental exercises of
the Yogi;
and the really remarkable feature was that I found it impossible
to
discuss them at all thoroughly without touching upon, first
of all,
ontology; secondly, ordinary science; and thirdly, the high
Magick of
the true initiates of the light.
We found that both Ontology and Science,
approaching the
question of reality from entirely different standpoints, and
pursuing
their researches by entirely different methods, had yet arrived
at an
identical 'impasse'. And the general conclusion was that there
could
be no reality in any intellectual concept of any kind, that
the only
reality must lie in direct experience of such a kind that
it is
beyond the scope of the critical apparatus of our minds. It
cannot
be subject to the laws of Reason; it cannot be found in the
fetters
of elementary mathematics; only transfinite and irrational
conceptions
in that subject can possibly shadow forth the truth in some
such paradox as the identity of contradictories. We found
further
that those states of mind which result from the practice of
Yoga are
properly called trances, because they actually transcend the
conditions of normal thought.
At this point we begin to see an almost insensible
drawing
together of the path of Yoga which is straight (and in a sense
arid)
with that of Magick, which may be compared with the Bacchic
dance or
the orgies of Pan. It suggests that Yoga is ultimately a sublimation
of philosophy, even as Magick is a sublimation of science.
The way
is open for a reconciliation between these lower elements
of thought
by virtue of their tendency to flower into these higher states
beyond
thought, in which the two have become one. And that, of course,
is
Magick; and that, of course, is Yoga.
We may now consider whether, in view of the
final identification
of these two elements in their highest, there may not be
something more practical than sympathy in their lower elements
-- I
mean mutual assistance.
I am glad to think that the Path of the Wise
has become much
smoother and shorter than it was when I first trod it; for
this very
reason that the old antinomies of Magick and Yoga have been
completely resolved.
You all know what Yoga is. Yoga means union.
And you all know
how to do it by shutting off the din of the intellectual boiler
factory, and allowing the silence of starlight to reach the
ear. It
is the emancipation of the exalted from the thrall of the
commonplace
expression of Nature.
Now what is Magick? Magick is the science
and art of
causing change to occur in conformity with the Will. How do
we
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.
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, saffron
--
for my libation some preparation of opium or a generus yet
sweet and
powerful wine such as port. For my magical weapon I take the
sceptre;
in fact, I continue choosing instruments for every act in
such a
way that I am constantly reminded of my will to evoke Jupiter.
I
even constrain EVERY object. I extract the Jupiterian elements
from all the complex phenomena which surround me. If I look
at my
carpet, the blues and purples are the colours which stand
out as
Light against an obsolescent and indeterminate background.
And thus
I carry on my daily life, using every moment of time in constant
self-admonition to attend to Jupiter. The mind quickly responds
to
this training; it very soon automatically rejects as unreal
anything
which is not Jupiter. Everything else escapes notice. And
when the
time comes for the ceremony of invocation which I have been
consistently
preparing with all devotion and assiduity, I am quickly
inflamed. I am attuned to Jupiter, I am pervaded by Jupiter,
I am
absorbed by Jupiter, I am caught up into the heaven of Jupiter
and
wield his thunderbolts. Hebe and Ganymedes bring me wine;
the Queen
of the Gods is throned at my side, and for my playmates are
the
fairest maidens of the earth.
Now what is all this but to do in a partial
(and if I may
say so, romantic) way what the Yogi does in his more scientifically
complete yet more austerely difficult methods? And here the
advantage
of Magick is that the process of initiation is spontaneous
and,
so to speak, automatic. You may begin in the most modest way
with
the evocation of some simple elemental spirit; but in the
course of
the operation you are compelled, in order to attain success,
to deal
with higher entities. Your ambition grows, like every other
organism,
by what it feeds on. You are very soon led to the Great Work
itself; you are led to aspire to the Knowledge and Conversation
of
the Holy Guardian Angel, and this ambition in turn arouses
automatically
further difficulties the conquest of which confers new powers.
In the Book of the Thirty Aethyrs, commonly called _The Vision
and
the Voice_, it becomes progressively difficult to penetrate
each
Aethyr. In fact, the penetration was only attained by the
initiations
which were conferred by the Angel of each Aethyr in its turn.
There was this further identification with Yoga practices
recorded in
this book. At times the concentration necessary to dwell in
the
Aethyr became so intense that definitely Samadhic results
were
obtained. We see then that the exaltation of the mind by means
of
magical practices leads (as one may say, in spite of itself)
to the
same results as occur in straightforward Yoga.
I think I ought to tell you a little more
about these visions.
The method of obtaining them was to take a large topaz beautifully
engraved with the Rose and Cross of forty-nine petals, and
this topaz
was set in a wooden cross of oak painted red. I called this
the
shew-stone in memory of Dr. Dee's famous shew-stone. I took
this in
my hand and proceeded to recite in the Enochian or Angelic
language
the Call of the Thirty Aethyrs, using in each case the special
name
appropriate to the Aethyr. Now all this went very well until
about
the 17th, I think it was, and then the Angel, foreseeing difficulty
in the higher or remoter Aethyrs, gave me this instruction.
I was to
recite a chapter from the Q'uran: what the Mohammedans call
the
_Chapter of the Unity_. Qol: Hua Allahu achad; Allahu assamad:
lam yalid walam yulad; walam yakun lahu kufwan achad. I was
to say
this, bowing myself to the earth after each chapter, a thousand
and
one times a day, as I walked behind my camel in the Great
Eastern Erg
of the Sahara. I do not think that anyone will dispute that
this was
pretty good exercise; but my point is that it was certainly
ver good
Yoga.
From what I have said in previous lectures
you will all recognise
that this practice fulfils all the conditions of the earlier
stages of Yoga, and it is therefore not surprising that it
put my
mind in such a state that I was able to use the Call of the
Thirty
Aethyrs with much greater efficacy than before.
Am I then supposed to be saying that Yoga
is merely the
hand-maiden of Magick, or that Magick has no higher function
than to
supplement Yoga? By no means. it is the co-operation of lovers;
which is here a symbol of the fact. The practices of Yoga
are almost
essential to success in Magick -- at least I may say from
my own
experience that it made all the difference in the world to
my magical
success, when I had been thoroughly grounded in the hard drill
of
Yoga. But -- I feel absolutely certain that I should never
have
obtained success in Yoga in so short a time as I did had I
not spent
the previous three years in the daily practice of magical
methods.
I may go so far as to say that just before
I began Yoga
seriously, I had almost invented a Yogic method of practising
Magick
in the stress of circumstances. I had been accustomed to work
with
full magical apparatus in an admirably devised temple of my
own. Now
I found myself on shipboard, or in some obscure bedroom of
Mexico
City, or camped beside my horse among the sugar canes in lonely
tropical valleys, or couched with my rucksack for all pillow
on bare
volcanic heights. I had to replace my magical apparatus. I
would
take the table by my bed, or stones roughly piled, for my
altar. My
candle or my Alpine Lantern was my light. My ice-axe for the
wand,
my drinking flask for the chalice, my machete for the sword,
and a
chapati or a sachet of salt for the pantacle of art! Habit
soon
familiarised these rough and ready succedanea. But I suspect
that it
may have been the isolation and the physical hardship itself
that
helped, that more and more my magical operation became implicit
in my
own body and mind, when a few months later I found myself
performing
IN FULL operations involving the Formula of the Neophyte (for
which
see my treatise Magick}) without any external apparatus at
all.
A pox on all these formalistic Aryan sages!
Unless one
wants to be very pedantic, it is rather absurd to contend
that this
form of ritual forced upon me, first by external and next
by internal
circumstances, was anything else but a new form of Asana,
Pranayama,
Mantra-Yoga, and Pratyahara in something very near perfection;
and it
is therefore not surprising that the Magical exaltation resulting
from such ceremonies was in all essential respects the equivalent
of
Samyama.
On the other hand, the Yoga training was
an admirable aid to
that final concentration of the Will which operates the magical
ecstasy.
This then is reality: direct experience.
How does it
differ from the commonplace every-day experience of sensory
impressions
which are so readily shaken by the first breath of the wind
of
intellectual analysis?
Well, to answer first ofall in a common-sense
way, the difference
is simply that the impression is deeper, is less to be shaken.
Men of sense and education are always ready to admit that
they may
have been mistaken in the quality of their observation of
any phenomenon,
and men a little more advanced are almost certain to attain
to
a placid kind of speculation as to whether the objects of
sense are
not mere shadows on a screen.
I take off my glasses. Now I cannot read my manuscript. I
had
two sets of lenses, one natural, one artificial. If I had
been
looking through a telescope of the old pattern I should have
had
three sets of lenses, two artificial. If I go and put on somebody
else's glasses I shall get another 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 pre-arranged system
of
hieroglyphics in a particular sense which I happen to imagine
I want. It
tells me nothing whatever about the object of my vision --
what I
call the paper and the ink. Which is the dream? The clear
legible
type or the indecipherable blur?
But in any case any man who is sane at all
does make a
distinction between the experience of daily life and the experience
of dream. It is true that sometimes dreams are so vivid, and
their
character so persistently uniform that men are actully deceived
into
believing that 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.
Let us ask ourselves for a moment what is
the characteristic
of dream impressions as judged by the waking mind. Some dreams
are so powerful tht they convince us, even when awake, of
their
reality. Why then do we criticise and dismiss them? Because
their
contents are incoherent, because the order of nature to which
they
belong does not properly conform with the kind of experience
which
does hang together -- after a fashion. Why do we criticise
the
reality of waking experience? On precisely similar grounds.
Because
in certain respects it fails to conform with our deep instinctive
consciousness of the structure of the mind. TENDENCY! We HAPPEN
to be that kind of animal.
The result is that we accept waking experience
for what it
is within certain limits. At least we do so to this extent,
that we
base our action upon the belief that, even if it is not philosophically
real, it is real enough to base a course of actionupon it.
What is the ultimate practical test of conviction?
Just this,
that it is our standard of conduct. I put on these glasses
in order
to read. I am quite certain that the blurred surface will
become
clear when I do so. Of course, I may be wrong. I may have
picked up
some other body's glasses by mistake. I might go blind before
I
could get them into position. Even such confidence has limits;
but
it is a real confidence, and this is the explanation of why
we go
ahead with the business of life. When we think it over, we
know that
there are all sorts of snags, that it is impossible to formulate
any
proposition which is philosophically unassailable, or even
one which
is so from a practcal standpoint. We admit to ourselves that
there
are all sorts of snags; but we take our chance of that, and
go ahead
in the general principles inculcated by our experience of
nature. It
is, of course, quite easy to prove that experience is impossible.
To
begin with, our consciousness of any phenomenon is never the
thing
itself, but only a hieroglyphic symbol of it.
Our position is rather that of a man with
a temperamental motorcar;
he has a vague theory that it ought to go, on general principles;
but he is not quite sure how it will perform in any given
circumstances. Now the experience of Magick and Yoga is quite
above
all this. The possibility of criticising the other types of
experience
is based upon the possibility of expressing our impressions
in
adequate terms; and this is not at all the case with the results
of
Magick and Yoga. As we have already seen, every attempt at
expression
in ordinary language is futile. Where the hero of the adventure
is tied up with a religious theory, we get the vapid and unctuous
bilgewater of people like St. John of the Cross. All Christian
Mystics are tarred with the same brush. Their abominable religion
compels them to every kind of sentimentality; and the theory
of
original sin vitiates their whole position, because instead
of the
noble and inspiring Trance of Sorrow they have nothing but
the
miserable, cowardly, and selfish sense of guilt to urge them
to
undertake the Work.
I think we may dismiss altogether from our
minds every
claim to experience made by any Christian of whatever breed
of
spiritual virus as a mere morbid reflection, the apish imitation
of
the true ecstasies and trances. All expressions of the real
thing
must partake of the character of that thing, and therefore
only that
language is permissible which is itself released from the
canon of
ordinary speech, exactly as the trance is unfettered by the
laws of
ordinary consciousness. In other words, the only proper translation
is in poetry, art and music.
If you examine the highest poetry in the
light of common
sense, you can only say that it is rubbish; and in actual
fact you
cannot so examine it at all, because there is something in
poetry
which is not in the words themselves, which is not in the
images
suggested by the words 'O windy star blown sideways up the
sky!'
True poetry is itself a magic spell which is a key to the
ineffable.
With music this thesis is so obvious as hardly to need stating.
Music has no expressed intellectual content whatever, and
the sole
test of music is its power to exalt the soul. It is then evident
that the composer is himself attempting to express in sensible
form
some such sublimities as are attained by those who practise
Magick
and Yoga as they should.
The same is true of plastic art, but evidently
in much less
degree; and all those who really know and love art are well
aware
that classical painting and sculpture are rarely capable of
producing
these transcendent orgasms of ecstasy, as in the case of the
higher
arts. One is bound to the impressions of the eye; one is drawn
back
to the contemplation of a static object. And this fact has
been so
well understood in modern times by painters that they have
endeavoured
to create an art within an art; and this is the true explanation
such movements as 'surrealisme'. I want to impress upon you
that the artist is in truth a very much superior being to
the Yogi or
the Magician. He can reply as St. Paul replied to the centurion
who
boasted of his Roman citizenship 'With a great sum obtained
I this
freedom'; and Paul, fingering the Old School Tie, sneered:
"But I
was free born'.
It is not for us here to enquire as to how
it should happen
that certain human beings possess from birth this right of
intimacy
with the highest reality, but Blavatsky was of this same opinion
that
the natural gift marks the acquisition of the rank in the
spiritual
hierarchy to which the student of Magick and Yoga aspires.
He is, so
to speak, an artist in the making; and it is perhaps not likely
that
his gifts will have become sufficiently automatic in his present
incarntion to produce the fruits of his attainment. Yet, undoubtedly,
there have been such cases, and that within my own experience.
I could quote you the case of a man -- a
very inferior and
wishy-washy poet -- who undertook for a time very strenuously
the
prescribed magical practices. He was very fortunate, and attained
admirable results. No sooner had he done so that his poetry
itself
became flooded with supernal light and energy. He produced
masterpieces.
And then he gave up his Magick because the task of further
progress appalled him. The result was that his poetry fell
completely away to the standard of wet blotting paper.
Let me tell you also of one man almost illiterate,
a
Lancashire man who had worked in a mill from the age of nine
years.
He had studied for years with the Toshophists with no results.
Then
he corresponded with me for some time; he had still no results.
He
came to stay with me in Sicily. One day as we went down to
bathe we
stood for a moment on the brink of the cliff which led down
to the
little rocky cove with its beach f marvellous smooth sand.
I said something quite casually -- I have
never been able to
remember what it was -- nor could he ever remember -- but
he suddenly
dashed down the steep little path like a mountain goat, threw
off his
cloak and plunged into the sea. When he came back, his very
body had
become luminous. I saw that he needed to be alone for a week
to
complete his experience, so I fixed him up in an Alpine tent
in a
quiet dell under broad-spreading trees at the edge of a stream.
From
time to time he sent me his magical record, vision after vision
of
amazing depth and splendour. I was so gratified with his attainment
that I showed these records to a distinguished literary critic
who
was staying with me at the time. A couple of hours later,
when I
returned to the Abbey, he burst out upon me a flame of excitement.
'Do you know what this is?' he cried. I answered casually
that it
was a lot of very good visions. 'Bother your visions', he
exclaimed,
'didn't you notice the style? It's pure John Bunyan!' It was.
But all this is neither here nor there. There
is only one
thing for anybody to do on a path, and that is to make sure
of the
next step. And the fact which we all have to comfort us is
this:
that all human beings have capacities for attainment, each
according
to his or her present position.
For instance, with regard to the power of
vision on the astral
plane, I have been privileged to train many hundreds of people
in the
course of my life, and only about a dozen of them were incapable
of
success. In one case this was because the man had already
got beyond
all such preliminary exercise; his mind immediately took on
the
formless condition which transcends all images, all thought.
Other
failures were stupid people who were incapable of making an
experiment
of any sort. They were a mass of intellectual pride and prejudice,
and I sent them away with an injunction to go to Jane Austen.
But the ordinary man and woman get on very well, and by this
I do not
mean only the educated. It is, in fact, notorious that, among
many
of the primitive races of mankind, strange powers of all kinds
develop with amazing florescence.
The question for each one of us is then:
first of all, to
acertain our present positions; secondly, to determine our
proper
directions; and, thirdly, to govern ourselves accordingly.
The question for me is also to describe a
method of procedure
which will be sufficiently elastic to be useful to every human
being.
I have tried to do this by combining the two paths of Magick
and
Yoga. If we perform the preliminary practices, each according
to his
capacity, the result will surely be the acquisition of a certain
technique. And this will become much easier as we advance,
especially
if we bear it well in mind not to attempt to discriminate
between
the two methods as if they were opposing schools, but to use
the one
to help out the other in an emergency.
Of course, nobody understands better than
I do that,
although nobody can do your work for you, it is possible to
ake use
-- to a certain very limited extent -- of other people's experience,
and the Great Order which I have the honour to serve has appointed
what I think you will agree is a very satisfactory and practical
curriculum.
You are expected to spend three months at least on the
study of some of the classics on the subject. The chief object
of
this is not to instruct you, but to familiarise you with the
ground
work, and in particular to prevent you getting the idea that
there is
any right or wrong in matters of opinion. You pass an examination
intended to make sure that your mind is well grounded in this
matter,
and you become a Probationer. Your reading will have given
you some
indication as to he sort of thing you are likely to be good
at, and
you select such practices as seem to you to promise well.
You go
ahead with these, and keep a careful record of what you do,
and what
results occur. After eleven months you submit a record to
your
superior; it is his duty to put you right where you have gone
wrong,
and particularly to encourage you where you think you have
failed.
I say this because one of the most frequent
troubles is
that people who are doing excellent work throw it up because
they
find that Nature is not what they thought it was going to
be. But
this is the best test of the reality of any experience. All
those
which conform with your idea, which flatter you, are likely
to be
illusions. So you become a Neophyte; and attack the Task of
a
Zelator.
There are further grades in this system,
but the general principles
are always the same -- the principles of scientific study
and
research.
We end where we began. 'The wheel has come
full circle'.
We are to use the experience of the past to determine the
experience
of the future, and as that experience increases in quantity
it also
improves in quality. And the Path is sure. And the End is
sure.
For the End is the Path.
Love is the law, love under will.
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