The difference comes with limitation, with the narrowing of the universal qualities into the specific qualities of the limited Self; both are the same in essence, though seeming different in manifestation. We have the power to know, the power to will, and the power to act. These are the three great powers of the Self that show themselves in the separated Self in every diversity of forms, from the minutes" organism to the loftiest Logos.
Then just as in the Samkhya, if the Purusha, the particular Self, should identify himself with the matter in which he is reflected, then there is delusion and bondage, so in the Vedanta, if the Self, eternally free, imagines himself to be bound by matter, identifying himself with his limitations, he is deluded, he is under the domain of Maya; for Maya is the self-identification of the Self with his limitations. The eternally free can never be bound by matter; the eternally pure can never be tainted by matter; the eternally knowing can never be deluded by matter; the eternally Self-determined can never be ruled by matter, save by his own ignorance. His own foolish fancy limits his inherent powers; he is bound, because he imagines himself bound; he is impure, because he imagines himself impure; he is ignorant, because he imagines himself ignorant. With the vanishing of delusion he finds that he is eternally pure, eternally wise.
Here is the great difference between the Samkhya and the Vedanta. According to the Samkhya, Purusha is the spectator and never the actor. According to Vedanta the Self is the only actor, all else is maya: there is no one else who acts but the Self, according to the Vedanta teaching. As says the Upanishad: the Self willed to see, and there were eyes; the Self willed to hear, and there were ears; the Self willed to think, and there was mind. The eyes, the ears, the mind exist, because the Self has willed them into existence. The Self appropriates matter, in order that He may manifest His powers through it. There is the distinction between the Samkhya and the Vedanta: in the Samkhya the propinquity of the Purusha brings out in matter or Prakriti all these characteristics, the Prakriti acts and not the Purusha; in the Vedanta, Self alone exists and Self alone acts; He imagines limitation and matter appears; He appropriates that matter in order that He may manifest His own capacity.
The Samkhya is the view of the universe of the scientist: the Vedanta is the view of the universe of the metaphysician. Haeckel unconsciously expounded the Samkhyan philosophy almost perfectly. So close to the Samkhyan is his exposition, that another idea would make it purely Samkhyan; he has not yet supplied that propinquity of consciousness which the Samkhya postulates in its ultimate duality. He has Force and Matter, he has Mind in Matter, but he has no Purusha. His last book, criticised by Sir Oliver Lodge, is thoroughly intelligible from the Hindu standpoint as an almost accurate representation of Samkhyan philosophy. It is the view of the scientist, indifferent to the "why" of the facts which he records. The Vedanta, as I said, is the view of the metaphysician he seeks the unity in which all diversities are rooted and into which they are resolved.
Now, what light does Theosophy throw on both these systems? Theosophy enables every thinker to reconcile the partial statements which are apparently so contradictory. Theosophy, with the Vedanta, proclaims the universal Self. All that the Vedanta says of the universal Self and the Self- limitation, Theosophy repeats. We call these Self-limited selves Monads, and we say, as the Vedantin says, that these Monads reproduce the nature of the universal Self whose portions they are. And hence you find in them the three qualities which you find in the Supreme. They are units' and these represent the Purushas of the Samkhya; but with a very great difference, for they are not passive watchers, but active agents in the drama of the universe, although, being above the fivefold universe, they are as spectators who pull the strings of the players of the stage. The Monad takes to himself from the universe of matter atoms which show out the qualities corresponding to his three qualities, and in these he thinks, and wills and acts. He takes to himself rhythmic combinations, and shows his quality of cognition. He takes to himself combinations that are mobile; through those he shows out his activity. He takes the combinations that are inert, and shows out his quality of bliss, as the will to be happy. Now notice the difference of phrase and thought. In the Samkhya, Matter changed to reflect the Spirit; in fact, the Spirit appropriates portions of Matter, and through those expresses his own characteristics—an enormous difference. He creates an actor for Self-expression, and this actor is the "spiritual man" of the Theosophical teaching, the spiritual Triad, the Atma-buddhi-manas, to whom we shall return in a moment.
The Monad remains ever beyond the fivefold universe, and in that sense is a spectator. He dwells beyond the five planes of matter. Beyond the Atmic, or Akasic; beyond the Buddhic plane, the plane of Vayu; beyond the mental plane, the plane of Agni; beyond the astral plane, the plane of Varuna; beyond the physical plane, the plane of Kubera. Beyond all these planes the Monad, the Self, stands Self-conscious and Self-determined. He reigns in changeless peace and lives in eternity. But as said above, he appropriates matter. He takes to himself an atom of the Atmic plane, and in that he, as it were, incorporates his will, and that becomes Atma. He appropriates an atom of the Buddhic plane, and reflects in that his aspect of cognition, and that becomes buddhi. He appropriates an atom of the manasic plane and embodies, as it were, his activity in it, and it becomes Manas. Thus we get Atma, plus Buddhi, plus Manas. That triad is the reflection in the fivefold universe of the Monad beyond the fivefold universe. The terms of Theosophy can be easily identified with those of other schools. The Monad of Theosophy is the Jivatma of Indian philosophy, the Purusha of the Samkhya, the particularised Self of the Vedanta. The threefold manifestation, Atma-buddhi-manas, is the result of the Purusha's propinquity to Prakriti, the subject of the Samkhyan philosophy, the Self embodied in the highest sheaths, according to the Vedantic teaching. In the one you have this Self and His sheaths, and in the other the Subject, a reflection in matter of Purusha. Thus you can readily see that you are dealing with the same concepts but they are looked at from different standpoints. We are nearer to the Vedanta than to the Samkhya, but if you know the principles you can put the statements of the two philosophies in their own niches and will not be confused. Learn the principles and you can explain all the theories. That is the value of the Theosophical teaching; it gives you the principles and leaves you to study the philosophies, and you study them with a torch in your hand instead of in the dark.
Now when we understand the nature of the spiritual man, or Triad, what do we find with regard to all the manifestations of consciousness? That they are duads, Spirit-Matter everywhere, on every plane of our fivefold universe. If you are a scientist, you will call it spiritualised Matter; if you are a metaphysician you will call it materialised Spirit. Either phrase is equally true, so long as you remember that both are always present in every manifestation, that what you see is not the play of matter alone, but the play of Spirit-Matter, inseparable through the period of manifestation. Then, when you come, in reading an ancient book, to the statement "mind is material," you will not be confused; you will know that the writer is only speaking on the Samkhyan line, which speaks of Matter everywhere but always implies that the Spirit is looking on, and that this presence makes the work of Matter possible. You will not, when reading the constant statement in Indian philosophies that "mind is material," confuse this with the opposite view of the materialist which says that "mind is the product of matter"—a very different thing. Although the Samkhyan may use materialistic terms, he always posits the vivifying influence of Spirit, while the materialist makes Spirit the product of Matter. Really a gulf divides them, although the language they use may often be the same.
Mind
"Yoga is the inhibition of the functions of the mind," says Patanjali. The functions of the mind must be suppressed, and in order that we may be able to follow out really what this means, we must go more closely into what the Indian philosopher means by the word "mind".
Mind, in the wide sense of the term, has three great properties or qualities: cognition, desire or will, activity. Now Yoga is not immediately concerned with all these three, but only with one, cognition, the Samkhyan subject. But you cannot separate cognition, as we have seen, completely from the others, because consciousness is a unit, and although we are only concerned with that part of consciousness which we specifically call cognition, we cannot get cognition all by itself. Hence the Indian psychologist investigating this property, cognition, divides it up into three or, as the Vedanta says, into four (with all submission, the Vedantin here makes a mistake). If you take up any Vedantic book and read about mind, you will find a particular word used for it which. translated, means "internal organ". This antah-karana is the word always used where in English we use "mind"; but it is only used in relation to cognition, not in relation to activity and desire. It is said to be fourfold, being made up of Manas, Buddhi, Ahamkara, and Chitta; but this fourfold division is a very curious division. We know what Manas is, what Buddhi is, what Ahamkara is, but what is this Chitta? What is Chitta, outside Manas, Buddhi and Ahamkara? Ask anyone you like. and record his answer; you will find that it is of the vaguest kind. Let us try to analyse it for ourselves, and see whether light will come upon it by using the Theosophic idea of a triplet summed up in a fourth, that is not really a fourth, but the summation of the three. Manas, Buddhi and Ahamkara are the three different sides of a triangle,' which triangle is called Chitta. The Chitta is not a fourth, but the sum of the three: Manas, Buddhi and Ahamkara. This is the old idea of a trinity in unity. Over and over again H. P. Blavatsky uses this summation as a fourth to her triplets, for she follows the old methods. The fourth, which sums up the three but is not other than they, makes a unity out of their apparent diversity. Let us apply that to Antahkarana.
Take cognition. Though in cognition that aspect of the Self is predominant, yet it cannot exist absolutely alone, The whole Self is there in every act of cognition. Similarly with the other two. One cannot exist separate from the others. Where there is cognition the other two are present, though subordinate to it. The activity is there, the will is there. Let us think of cognition as pure as it can be, turned on itself, reflected in itself, and we have Buddhi, the pure reason, the very essence of cognition; this in the universe is represented by Vishnu, the sustaining wisdom of the universe. Now let us think of cognition looking outwards, and as reflecting itself in activity, its brother quality, and we have a mixture of cognition and activity which is called Manas, the active mind; cognition reflected in activity is Manas in man or Brahma, the creative mind, in the universe. When cognition similarly reflects itself in will, then it becomes Ahamkara, the "I am I" in man, represented by Mahadeva in the universe. Thus wee have found within the limits of this cognition a triple division, making up the internal organ or Antahkarana—Manas, plus Buddhi, plus Ahamkara—and we can find no fourth. What is then Chitta? It is the summation of the three, the three taken together, the totality of the three. Because of the old way of counting these things, you get this division of Antahkarana into four.
The Mental Body
We must now deal with the mental body, which is taken as equivalent to mind for practical purposes. The first thing for a man to do in practical Yoga is to separate himself from the mental body, to draw away from that into the sheath next above it. And here remember what I said previously, that in Yoga the Self is always the consciousness plus the vehicle from which the consciousness is unable to separate itself. All that is above the body you cannot leave is the Self for practical purposes, and your first attempt must be to draw away from your mental body. Under these conditions, Manas must be identified with the Self, and the spiritual Triad, the Atma-buddhi-manas, is to be realised as separate from the mental body. That is the first step. You must be able to take up and lay down your mind as you do a tool, before it is of any use to consider the further progress of the Self in getting rid of its envelopes. Hence the mental body is taken as the starting point. Suppress thought. Quiet it. Still it. Now what is the ordinary condition of the mental body? As you look upon that body from a higher plane, you see constant changes of colours playing in it. You find that they are sometimes initiated from within, sometimes from without. Sometimes a vibration from without has caused a change in consciousness, and a corresponding change in the colours in the mental body. If there is a change of consciousness, that causes vibration in the matter in which that consciousness is functioning. The mental body is a body of ever-changing hues and colours, never still, changing colour with swift rapidity throughout the whole of it. Yoga is the stopping of all these, the inhibition of vibrations and changes alike. Inhibition of the change of consciousness stops the vibration of the mental body; the checking of the vibration of the mental body checks the change in consciousness. In the mental body of a Master there is no change of colour save as initiated from within; no outward stimulus can produce any answer, any vibration,ùin that perfectly controlled mental body. The colour of the mental body of a Master is as moonlight on the rippling ocean. Within that whiteness of moon-like refulgence lie all possibilities of colour, but nothing in the outer world can make the faintest change of hue sweep over its steady radiance. If a change of consciousness occurs within, then the change will send a wave of delicate hues over the mental body which responds only in colour to changes initiated from within and never to changes stimulated from without. His mental body is never His Self, but only His tool or instrument, which He can take up or lay down at His will. It is only an outer sheath that He uses when He needs to communicate with the lower world.
By that idea of the stopping of all changes of colour in the mental body you can realise what is meant by inhibition. The functions of mind are stopped in Yoga. You have to begin with your mental body. You have to learn how to stop the whole of those vibrations, how to make the mental body colourless, still and quiet, responsive only to the impulses that you choose to put upon it. How will you be able to tell when the mind is really coming under control, when it is no longer a part of your Self? You will begin to realise this when you find that, by the action of your will, you can check the current of thought and hold the mind in perfect stillness. Sheath after sheath has to be transcended, and the proof of transcending is that it can no longer affect you. You can affect it, but it cannot affect you. The moment that nothing outside you can harass you, can stir the mind, the moment that the mind does not respond to the outer, save under your own impulse, then can you say of it: "This is not my Self." It has become part of the outer, it can no longer be identified with the Self.
From this you pass on to the conquest of the causal body in a similar way. When the conquering of the causal body is complete then you go to the conquering of the Buddhic body. When mastery over the Buddhic body is complete, you pass on to the~conquest of the Atmic body.
Mind and Self
You cannot be surprised that under these conditions of continued disappearance of functions, the unfortunate student asks: " What becomes of the mind itself? If you suppress all the functions, what is left?" In the Indian way of teaching, when you come to a difficulty, someone jumps up and asks a question. And in the commentaries, the question which raises the difficulty is always put. The answer of Patanjali is: "Then the spectator remains in his own form." Theosophy answers: "The Monad remains." It is the end of the human pilgrimage. That is the highest point to which humanity may climb: to suppress all the reflections in the fivefold universe through which the Monad has manifested his powers, and then for the Monad to realise himself, enriched by the experiences through which his manifested aspects have passed. But to the Samkhyan the difficulty is very great, for when he has only his spectator left, when spectacle ceases, the spectator himself almost vanishes. His only function was to look on at the play of mind. When the play of mind is gone, what is left? He can no longer be a spectator, since there is nothing to see. The only answer is: " He remains in his own form." He is now out of manifestation, the duality is transcended, and so the Spirit sinks back into latency, no longer capable of manifestation. There you come to a very serious difference with the Theosophical view of the universe, for according to that view of the universe, when all these functions have been suppressed, then the Monad is ruler over matter and is prepared for a new cycle of activity, no longer slave but master.
All analogy shows us that as the Self withdraws from sheath after sheath, he does not lose but gains in Self- realisation. Self-realisation becomes more and more vivid with each successive withdrawal; so that as the Self puts aside one veil of matter after another, recognises in regular succession that each body in turn is not himself, by that process of withdrawal his sense of Self-reality becomes keener, not less keen. It is important to remember that, because often Western readers, dealing with Eastern ideas, in consequence of misunderstanding the meaning of the state of liberation, or the condition of Nirvana, identify it with nothingness or unconsciousness—an entirely mistaken idea which is apt to colour the whole of their thought when dealing with Yogic processes. Imagine the condition of a man who identifies himself completely with the body, so that he cannot, even in thought, separate himself from it—the state of the early undeveloped man—and compare that with the strength, vigour and lucidity of your own mental consciousness.
The consciousness of the early man limited to the physical body, with occasional touches of dream consciousness, is very restricted in its range. He has no idea of the sweep of your consciousness, of your abstract thinking. But is that consciousness of the early man more vivid, or less vivid, than yours? Certainly you will say, it is less vivid. You have largely transcended his powers of consciousness. Your consciousness is astral rather than physical, but has thereby increased its vividness. AS the Self withdraws himself from sheath after sheath, he realises himself more and more, not less and less; Self-realisation becomes more intense, as sheath after sheath is cast aside. The centre grows more powerful as the circumference becomes more permeable, and at last a stage is reached when the centre knows itself at every point of the circumference. When that is accomplished the circumference vanishes, but not so the centre. The centre still remains. Just as you are more vividly conscious than the early man, just as your consciousness is more alive, not less, than that of an undeveloped man, so it is as we climb up the stairway of life and cast away garment after garment. We become more conscious of existence, more conscious of knowledge, more conscious of Self-determined power. The faculties of the Self shine out more strongly, as veil after veil falls away. By analogy, then, when we touch the Monad, our consciousness should be mightier, more vivid, and more perfect. As you learn to truly live, your powers and feelings grow in strength.
And remember that all control is exercised over sheaths, over portions of the Not-Self. You do not control your Self; that is a misconception; you control your Not-Self. The Self is never controlled; He is the Inner Ruler Immortal. He is the controller, not the controlled. As sheath after sheath becomes subject to your Self, and body after body becomes the tool of your Self, then shall you realise the truth of the saying of the Upanishad, that you are the Self, the Inner Ruler, the immortal.
Lecture III
I propose now to deal first with the two great methods of Yoga, one related to the Self and the other to the Not-Self. Let me remind you, before I begin, that we are dealing only with the science of Yoga and not with other means of attaining union with the Divine. The scientific method, following the old Indian conception, is the one to which I am asking your attention. I would remind you, however, that, though I am only dealing with this, there remain also the other two great ways of Bhakti and Karma. The Yoga we are studying specially concerns the Marga of Jnanam or knowledge, and within that way, within that Marga or path of knowledge, we find that three subdivisions occur, as everywhere in nature.
Methods of Yoga
With regard to what I have just called the two great methods in Yoga, we find that by one of these a man treads the path of knowledge by Buddhi—the pure reason; and the other the same path by Manas—the concrete mind. You may remember that in speaking yesterday of the sub- divisions of Antah-karana, I pointed out to you that there we had a process of reflection of one quality in another; and within the limits of the cognitional aspect of the Self, you find Buddhi, cognition reflected in cognition; and Ahamkara, cognition reflected in will; and Manas, cognition reflected in activity. Bearing those three sub-divisions in mind, you will very readily be able to see that these two methods of Yoga fall naturally under two of these heads. But what of the third? What of the will, of which Ahamkara is the representative in cognition? That certainly has its road, but it can scarcely be said to be a "method". Will breaks its way upwards by sheer unflinching determination, keeping its eyes fixed on the end, and using either buddhi or manes indifferently as a means to that end. Metaphysics is used to realise the Self; science is used to understand the Not-Self; but either is grasped, either is thrown aside, as it serves, or fails to serve, the needs of the moment. Often the man, in whom will is predominant, does not know how he gains the object he is aiming at; it comes to his hands, but the "how" is obscure to him; he willed to have it, and nature gives it to him. This is also seen in Yoga in the man of Ahamkara, the sub-type of will in cognition. Just as in the man of Ahamkara, Buddhi and Manas are subordinate, so in the man of Buddhi, Ahamkara and Manas are not absent, but are subordinate; and in the man of Manas, Ahamkara and Buddhi are present, but play a subsidiary part. Both the metaphysician and the scientist must be supported by Ahamkara. That Self-determining faculty, that deliberate setting of oneself to a chosen end, that is necessary in all forms of Yoga. Whether a Yogi is going to follow the purely cognitional way of Buddhi, or whether he is going to follow the more active path of Manas, in both cases he needs the self-determining will in order to sustain him in his arduous task. You remember it is written in the Upanishad that the weak man cannot reach the Self. Strength is wanted. Determination is wanted. Perseverance is wanted. And you must have, in every successful Yogi, that intense determination which is the very essence of individuality.
Now what are these two great methods? One of them may be described as seeking the Self by the Self; the other may be described as seeking the Self by the Not-Self; and if you will think of them in that fashion, I think you will find the idea illuminative. Those who seek the Self by the Self, seek him through the faculty of Buddhi; they turn ever inwards, and turn away from the outer world. Those who seek the Self by the Not-Self, seek him through the active working Manas; they are outward-turned, and by study of the Not-Self, they learn to realise the Self. The one is the path of the metaphysician; the other is the path of the scientist.
To the Self by the Self
Let us look at this a little more closely, with its appropriate methods. The path on which the faculty of Buddhi is used predominantly is, as just said, the path of the metaphysician. It is the path of the philosopher. He turns inwards, ever seeking to find the Self by diving into the recesses of his own nature. Knowing that the Self is within him, he tries to strip away vesture after vesture, envelope after envelope, and by a process of rejecting them he reaches the glory of the unveiled Self. To begin this, he must give up concrete thinking and dwell amidst abstractions. His method, then, must be strenuous, long-sustained, patient meditation. Nothing else will serve his end; strenuous, hard thinking, by which he rises away from the concrete into the abstract regions of the mind; strenuous, hard thinking, further continued, by which he reaches from the abstract region of the mind up to the region of Buddhi, where unity is sensed; still by strenuous thinking, climbing yet further, until Buddhi as it were opens out into Atma, until the Self is seen in his splendour, with only a film of atmic matter, the envelope of Atma in the manifested fivefold world. It is along that difficult and strenuous path that the Self must be found by way of the Self.
Such a man must utterly disregard the Not-Self. He must shut his senses against the outside world. The world must no longer be able to touch him. The senses must be closed against all the vibrations that come from without, and he must turn a deaf ear, a blind eye, to all the allurements of matter, to all the diversity of objects, which make up the universe of the Not-Self. Seclusion will help him, until he is strong enough to close himself against the outer stimuli or allurements. The contemplative orders in the Roman Catholic Church offer a good environment for this path. They put the outer world away, as far away as possible. It is a snare, a temptation, a hindrance. Always turning away from the world, the Yogi must fix his thought, his attention, upon the Self. Hence for those who walk along this road, what are called the Siddhis are direct obstacles, and not helps. But that statement that you find so often, that the Siddhis are things to be avoided, is far more sweeping than some of our modern Theosophists are apt to imagine. They declare that the Siddhis are to be avoided, but forget that the Indian who says this also avoids the use of the physical senses. He closes physical eyes and ears as hindrances. But some Theosophists urge avoidance of all use of the astral senses and mental senses, but they do not object to the free use of the physical senses, or dream that they are hindrances. Why not? If the senses are obstacles in their finer forms, they are also obstacles in their grosser manifestations. To the man who would find the Self by the Self, every sense is a hindrance and an obstacle, and there is no logic, no reason, in denouncing the subtler senses only, while forgetting the temptations of the physical senses, impediments as much as the other. No such division exists for the man who tries to understand the universe in which he is. In the search for the Self by the Self, all that is not Self is an obstacle. Your eyes, your ears, everything that puts you into contact with the outer world, is just as much an obstacle as the subtler forms of the same senses which put you into touch with the subtler worlds of matter, which you call astral and mental. This exaggerated fear of the Siddhis is only a passing reaction, not based on understanding but on lack of understanding; and those who denounce the Siddhis should rise to the logical position of the Hindu Yogi, or of the Roman Catholic recluse, who denounces all the senses, and all the objects of the senses, as obstacles in the way. Many Theosophists here, and more in the West, think that much is gained by acuteness of the physical senses, and of the other faculties in the physical brain; but the moment the senses are acute enough to be astral, or the faculties begin to work in astral matter, they treat them as objects of denunciation. That is not rational. It is not logical. Obstacles, then, are all the senses, whether you call them Siddhis or not, in the search for the Self by turning away from the Not-Self.
It is necessary for the man who seeks the Self by the Self to have the quality which is called "faith," in the sense in which I defined it before—the profound, intense conviction, that nothing can shake, of the reality of the Self within you. That is the one thing that is worthy to be dignified by the name of faith. Truly it is beyond reason, for not by reason may the Self be known as real. Truly it is not based on argument, for not by reasoning may the Self be discovered. It is the witness of the Self within you to his own supreme reality, and that unshakable conviction, which is shraddha, is necessary for the treading of this path. It is necessary, because without it the human mind would fail, the human courage would be daunted, the human perseverance would break, with the difficulties of the seeking for the Self. Only that imperious conviction that the Self is, only that can cheer the pilgrim in the darkness that comes down upon him, in the void that he must cross before—the life of the lower being thrown away—the life of the higher is realised. This imperious faith is to the Yogi on this path what experience and knowledge are to the Yogi on the other.
To the Self Through the Not-self
Turn from him to the seeker for the Self through the Not- Self. This is the way of the scientist, of the man who uses the concrete, active Manas, in order scientifically to understand the universe; he has to find the real among the unreal, the eternal among the changing, the Self amid the diversity of forms. How is he to do it? By a close and rigorous study of every changing form in which the Self has veiled himself. By studying the Not-Self around him and in him, by understanding his own nature, by analysing in order to understand, by studying nature in others as well as in himself, by learning to know himself and to gain knowledge of others; slowly, gradually, step by step, plane after plane, he has to climb upwards, rejecting one form of matter after another, finding not in these the Self he seeks. As he learns to conquer the physical plane, he uses the keenest senses in order to understand, and finally to reject. He says: "This is not my Self. This changing panorama, these obscurities, these continual transformations, these are obviously the antithesis of the eternity, the lucidity, the stability of the Self. These cannot be my Self." And thus he constantly rejects them. He climbs on to the astral plane and, using there the finer astral senses, he studies the astral world, only to find that that also is changing and manifests not the changelessness of the Self. After the astral world is conquered and rejected, he climbs on into the mental plane, and there still studies the ever-changing forms of that Manasic world, only once more to reject them: "These are not the Self." Climbing still higher, ever following the track of forms, he goes from the mental to the Buddhic plane, where the Self begins to show his radiance and beauty in manifested union. Thus by studying diversity he reaches the conception of unity, and is led into the understanding of the One. To him the realisation of the Self comes through the study of the Not-Self, by the separation of the Not-Self from the Self. Thus he does by knowledge and experience what the other does by pure thinking and by faith. In this path of finding the Self through the Not-Self, the so-called Siddhis are necessary. Just as you cannot study the physical world without the physical senses, so you cannot study the astral world without the astral senses, nor the mental world without the mental senses. Therefore, calmly choose your ends, and then think out your means, and you will not 'be in any difficulty about the method you should employ, the path you should tread.
Thus we see that there are two methods, and these must be kept separate in your thought. Along the line of pure thinking—the metaphysical line—you may reach the Self. So also along the line of scientific observation and experiment—the physical line, in the widest sense of the term physical—you may reach the Self. Both are ways of Yoga. Both are included in the directions that you may read in the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. Those directions will cease to be self-contradictory, if you will only separate in your thought the two methods. Patanjali has given, in the later part of his Sutras, some hints as to the way in which the Siddhis may be developed. Thus you may find your way to the Supreme.
Yoga and Morality
The next point that I would pause upon, and ask you to realise, is the fact that Yoga is a science of psychology. I want further to point out to you that it is not a science of ethic, though ethic is certainly the foundation of it. Psychology and ethic are not the same. The science of psychology is the result of the study of mind. The science of ethic is the result of the study of conduct, so as to bring about the harmonious relation of one to another. Ethic is a science of life, and not an investigation into the nature of mind and the methods by which the powers of the mind may be developed and evolved. I pause on this because of the confusion that exists in many people as regards this point. If you understand the scope of Yoga aright, such a confusion ought not to arise. The confused idea makes people think that in Yoga they ought to find necessarily what are called precepts of morality, ethic. Though Patanjali gives the universal precepts of morality and right conduct in the first two angas of Yoga, called yama and niyama, yet they are subsidiary to the main topic, are the foundation of it, as just said. No practice of Yoga is possible unless you possess the ordinary moral attributes summed up in yama and niyama; that goes without saying. But you should not expect to find moral precepts in a scientific text book of psychology, like Yoga. A man studying the science of electricity is not shocked if he does not find in it moral precepts; why then should one studying Yoga, as a science of psychology, expect to find moral precepts in it? I do not say that morality is unimportant for the Yogi. On the contrary, it is all-important. It is absolutely necessary in the first stages of Yoga for everyone. But to a Yogi who has mastered these, it is not necessary, if he wants to follow the left-hand path. For you must remember that there is a Yoga of the left-hand path, as well as a Yoga of the right-hand path. Yoga is there also followed, and though asceticism is always found in the early stages, and sometimes in the later, true morality is absent. The black magician is often as rigid in his morality as any Brother of the White Lodge.[FN#8: Terms while and black as used here have no relation to race or colour.] Of the disciples of the black and white magicians, the disciple of the black magician is often the more ascetic. His object is not the purification of life for the sake of humanity, but the purification of the vehicle, that he may be better able to acquire power. The difference between the white and the black magician lies in the motive. You might have a white magician, a follower of the right-hand path, rejecting meat because the way of obtaining it is against the law of compassion. The follower of the left-hand path may also reject meat, but for the reason that be would not be able to work so well with his vehicle if it were full of the rajasic elements of meat. The difference is in the motive. The outer action is the same. Both men may be called moral, if judged by the outer action alone. The motive marks the path, while the outer actions are often identical.
It is a moral thing to abstain from meat, because thereby you are lessening the infliction of suffering; it is not a moral act to abstain from meat from the yogic standpoint, but only a means to an end. Some of the greatest yogis in Hindu literature were, and are, men whom you would rightly call black magicians. But still they are yogis. One of the greatest yogis of all was Ravana, the anti-Christ, the Avatara of evil, who summed up all the evil of the world in his own person in order to oppose the Avatara of good. He was a great, a marvellous yogi, and by Yoga he gained his power. Ravana was a typical yogi of the left-hand path, a great destroyer, and he practiced Yoga to obtain the power of destruction, in order to force from the hands of the Planetary Logos the boon that no man should be able to kill him. You may say: "What a strange thing that a man can force from God such a power." The laws of Nature are the expression of Divinity, and if a man follows a law of Nature, he reaps the result which that law inevitably brings; the question whether he is good or bad to his fellow men does not touch this matter at all. Whether some other law is or is not obeyed, is entirely outside the question. It is a matter of dry fact that the scientific man may be moral or immoral, provided that his immorality does not upset his eyesight or nervous system. It is the same with Yoga. Morality matters profoundly, but it does not affect these particular things, and if you think it does, you are always getting into bogs and changing your moral standpoint, either lowering or making it absurd. Try to understand; that is what the Theosophist should do; and when you understand, you will not fall into the blunders nor suffer the bewilderment many do, when you expect laws belonging to one region of the universe to bring about results in another. The scientific man understands that. He knows that a discovery in chemistry does not depend upon his morality, and he would not think of doing an act of charity with a view to finding out a new element. He will not fail in a well-wrought experiment, however vicious his private life may be. The things are in different regions, and he does not confuse the laws of the two. As Ishvara is absolutely just, the man who obeys a law reaps the fruit of that law, whether his actions, in any other fields, are beneficial to man or not. If you sow rice, you will reap rice; if you sow weeds, you will reap weeds; rice for rice, and weed for weed. The harvest is according to the sowing. For this is a universe of law. By law we conquer, by law we succeed. Where does morality come in, then? When you are dealing with a magician of the right-hand path, the servant of the White Lodge, there morality is an all-important factor. Inasmuch as he is learning to be a servant of humanity, he must observe the highest morality, not merely the morality of the world, for the white magician has to deal with helping on harmonious relations between man and man. The white magician must be patient. The black magician may quite well be harsh. The white magician must be compassionate; compassion widens out his nature, and he is trying to make his consciousness include the whole of humanity. But not so the black magician. He can afford to ignore compassion.
A white magician may strive for power. But when he is striving for power, he seeks it that he may serve humanity and become more useful to mankind, a more effective servant in the helping of the world. But not so the brother of the dark side. When he strives for power, he seeks if for himself, so that he may use it against the whole world. He may be harsh and cruel. He wants to be isolated; and harshness and cruelty tend to isolate him. He wants power; and holding that power for himself, he can put himself temporarily, as it were, against the Divine Will in evolution.
The end of the one is Nirvana, where all separation has ceased. The end of the other is Avichi—the uttermost isolation—the kaivalya of the black magician. Both are yogis, both follow the science of yoga, and each gets the result of the law he has followed: one the kaivalya of Nirvana, the other the kaivalya of Avichi.
Composition of States of the Mind
Let us pass now to the "states of the mind" as they are called. The word which is used for the states of the mind by Patanjali is Vritti. This admirably constructed language Sanskrit gives you in that very word its own meaning. Vrittis means the "being" of the mind; the ways in which mind can exist; the modes of the mind; the modes of mental existence; the ways of existing. That is the literal meaning of this word. A subsidiary meaning is a "turning around," a "moving in a circle". You have to stop, in Yoga, every mode of existing in which the mind manifests itself. In order to guide you towards the power of stopping them—for you cannot stop them till you understand them—you are told that these modes of mind are fivefold in their nature. They are pentads. The Sutra, as usually translated, says " the Vrittis are fivefold (panchatayyah)," but pentad is a more accurate rendering of the word pancha-tayyah, in the original, than fivefold. The word pentad at once recalls to you the way in which the chemist speaks of a monad, triad, heptad, when he deals with elements. The elements with which the chemist is dealing are related to the unit-element in different ways. Some elements are related to it in one way only, and are called monads; others are related in two ways, and are called duads, and so on.
Is this applicable to the states of mind also? Recall the shloka of the Bhagavad-Gita in which it is said that the Jiva goes out into the world, drawing round him the five senses and mind as sixth. That may throw a little light on the subject. You have five senses, the five ways of knowing, the five jnanendriyas or organs of knowing. Only by these five senses can you know the outer world. Western psychology says that nothing exists in thought that does not exist in sensation. That is not true universally; it is not true of the abstract mind, nor wholly of the concrete. But there is a great deal of truth in it. Every idea is a pentad. It is made up of five elements. Each element making up the idea comes from one of the senses, and of these there are at present five. Later on every idea will be a heptad, made up of seven elements. For the present, each has five qualities, which build up the idea. The mind unites the whole together into a single thought, synthesises the five sensations. If you think of an orange and analyse your thought of an orange, you will find in it: colour, which comes through the eye; fragrance, which comes through the nose; taste, which comes through the tongue; roughness or smoothness, which comes through the sense of touch; and you would hear musical notes made by the vibrations of the molecules, coming through the sense of hearing, were it keener. If you had a perfect sense of hearing. you would hear the sound of the orange also, for wherever there is vibration there is sound. All this, synthesised by the mind into one idea, is an orange. That is the root reason for the "association of ideas". It is not only that a fragrance recalls the scene and the circumstances under which the fragrance was observed, but because every impression is made through all the five senses and, therefore, when one is stimulated, the others are recalled. The mind is like a prism. If you put a prism in the path of a ray of white light, it will break it up into its seven constituent rays and seven colours will appear. Put another prism in the path of these seven rays, and as they pass through the prism, the process is reversed and the seven become one white light. The mind is like the second prism. It takes in the five sensations that enter through the senses, and combines them into a single precept. As at the present stage of evolution the senses are five only, it unites the five sensations into one idea. What the white ray is to the seven- coloured light, that a thought or idea is to the fivefold sensation. That is the meaning of the much controverted Sutra: "Vrittayah panchatayych," "the vrittis, or modes of the mind, are pentads." If you look at it in that way, the later teachings will be more clearly understood.
As I have already said, that sentence, that nothing exists in thought which is not in sensation, is not the whole truth. Manas, the sixth sense, adds to the sensations its own pure elemental nature. What is that nature that you find thus added? It is the establishment of a relation, that is really what the mind adds. All thinking is the "establishment of relations," and the more closely you look into that phrase, the more you will realise how it covers all the varied processes of the mind. The very first process of the mind is to become aware of an outside world. However dimly at first, we become aware of something outside ourselves—a process generally called perception. I use the more general term "establishing a relation," because that runs through the whole of the mental processes, whereas perception is only a single thing. To use a well-known simile, when a little baby feels a pin pricking it, it is conscious of pain, but not at first conscious of the pin, nor yet conscious of where exactly the pin is. It does not recognise the part of the body in which the pin is. There is no perception, for perception is defined as relating a sensation to the object which causes the sensation. You only, technically speaking, "perceive" when you make a relation between the object and yourself. That is the very first of these mental processes, following on the heels of sensation. Of course, from the Eastern standpoint, sensation is a mental function also, for the senses are part of the cognitive faculty, but they are unfortunately classed with feelings in Western psychology. Now having established that relation between yourself and objects outside, what is the next process of the mind? Reasoning: that is, the establishing of relations between different objects, as perception is the establishment of your relation with a single object. When you have perceived many objects, then you begin to reason in order to establish relations between them. Reasoning is the establishment of a new relation, which comes out from the comparison of the different objects that by perception you have established in relation with yourself, and the result is a concept. This one phrase, "establishment of relations," is true all round. The whole process of thinking is the establishment of relations, and it is natural that it should be so, because the Supreme Thinker, by establishing a relation, brought matter into existence. Just as He, by establishing that primary relation between Himself and the Not-Self, makes a universe possible, so do we reflect His powers in ourselves, thinking by the same method, establishing relations, and thus carrying out every intellectual process.
Pleasure and Pain
Let us pass again from that to another statement made by this great teacher of Yoga: "Pentads are of two kinds, painful and non-painful." Why did he not say: "painful and pleasant"? Because he was an accurate thinker, a logical thinker, and he uses the logical division that includes the whole universe of discourse, A and Not-A, painful and non-painful. There has been much controversy among psychologists as to a third kind —indifferent. Some psychologists divide all feelings into three: painful, pleasant and indifferent. Feelings cannot be divided merely into pain and pleasure, there is a third class, called indifference, which is neither painful nor pleasant. Other psychologists say that indifference is merely pain or pleasure that is not marked enough to be called the one or the other. Now this controversy and tangle into which psychologists have fallen might be avoided if the primary division of feelings were a logical division. A and Not-A—that is the only true and logical division. Patanjali is absolutely logical and right. In order to avoid the quicksand into which the modern psychologists have fallen, he divides all vrittis, modes of mind, into painful and nonpainful.
There is, however, a psychological reason why we should say "pleasure and pain," although it is not a logical division. The reason why there should be that classification is that the word pleasure and the word pain express two fundamental states of difference, not in the Self, but in the vehicles in which that Self dwells. The Self, being by nature unlimited, is ever pressing, so to say, against any boundaries which seek to limit him. When these limitations give way a little before the constant pressure of the Self, we feel "pleasure," and when they resist or contract, we feel "pain". They are not states of the Self so much as states of the vehicles, and states of certain changes in consciousness. Pleasure and pain belong to the Self as a whole, and not to any aspect of the Self separately taken. When pleasure and pain are marked off as belonging only to the desire nature, the objection arises: "Well, but in the exercise of the cognitive faculty there is an intense pleasure. When you use the creative faculty of the mind you are conscious of a profound joy in its exercise, and yet that creative faculty can by no means be classed with desire." The answer is: "Pleasure belongs to the Self as a whole. Where the vehicles yield themselves to the Self, and permit it to 'expand' as is its eternal nature, then what is called pleasure is felt." It has been rightly said: "Pleasure is a sense of moreness." Every time you feel pleasure, you will find the word "moreness" covers the case. It will cover the lowest condition of pleasure, the pleasure of eating. You are becoming more by appropriating to yourself a part of the Not-Self, food. You will find it true of the highest condition of bliss, union with the Supreme. You become more by expanding yourself to His infinity. When you have a phrase that can be applied to the lowest and highest with which you are dealing, you may be fairly sure it is all-inclusive, and that, therefore, "pleasure is moreness" is a true statement. Similarly, pain is "lessness".
If you understand these things your philosophy of life will become more practical, and you will be able to help more effectively people who fall into evil ways. Take drink. The real attraction of drinking lies in the fact that, in the first stages of it, a more keen and vivid life is felt. That stage is overstepped in the case of the man who gets drunk, and then the attraction ceases. The attraction lies in the first stages, and many people have experienced that, who would never dream of becoming drunk. Watch people who are taking wine and see how much more lively and talkative they become. There lies the attraction, the danger.
The real attraction in most coarse forms of excess is that they give an added sense of life, and you will never be able to redeem a man from his excess unless you know why he does it. Understanding the attractiveness of the first step, the increase of life, then you will be able to put your finger on the point of temptation, and meet that in your argument with him. So that this sort of mental analysis is not only interesting, but practically useful to every helper of mankind. The more you know, the greater is your power to help.
The next question that arises is: "Why does he not divide all feelings into pleasurable and not-pleasurable, rather than into 'painful and not-painful'?" A Westerner will not be at a loss to answer that: "Oh, the Hindu is naturally so very pessimistic, that he naturally ignores pleasure and speaks of painful and not-painful. The universe is full of pain." But that would not be a true answer. In the first place the Hindu is not pessimistic. He is the most optimistic of men. He has not got one solitary school of philosophy that does not put in its foreground that the object of all philosophy is to put an end to pain. But he is profoundly reasonable. He knows that we need not go about seeking happiness. It is already ours, for it is the essence of our own nature. Do not the Upanishads say: "The Self is bliss"? Happiness exists perennially within you. It is your normal state. You have not to seek it. You will necessarily be happy if you get rid of the obstacles called pain, which are in the modes of mind. Happiness is not a secondary thing, but pain is, and these painful things are obstacles to be got rid of. When they are stopped, you must be happy. Therefore Patanjali says: "The vrittis are painful and non-painful." Pain is an excrescence. It is a transitory thing. The Self, who is bliss, being the all-permeating life of the universe, pain has no permanent place in it. Such is the Hindu position, the most optimistic in the world.
Let us pause for a moment to ask: "Why should there be pain at all if the Self is bliss?" Just because the nature of the Self is bliss. It would be impossible to make the Self turn outward, come into manifestation, if only streams of bliss flowed in on him. He would have remained unconscious of the streams. To the infinity of bliss nothing could be added. If you had a stream of water flowing unimpeded in its course, pouring more water into it would cause no ruffling, the stream would go on heedless of the addition. But put an obstacle in the way, so that the free flow is checked, and the stream will struggle and fume against the obstacle, and make every endeavour to sweep it away. That which is contrary to it, that which will check its current's smooth flow, that alone will cause effort. That is the first function of pain. It is the only thing that can rouse the Self. It is the only thing that can awaken his attention. When that peaceful, happy, dreaming, inturned Self finds the surge of pain beating against him, he awakens: "What is this, contrary to my nature, antagonistic and repulsive, what is this?" It arouses him to the fact of a surrounding universe, an outer world. Hence in psychology, in yoga, always basing itself on the ultimate analysis of the fact of nature, pain is the thing that asserts itself as the most important factor in Self-realisation; that which is other than the Self will best spur the Self into activity. Therefore we find our commentator, when dealing with pain, declares that the karmic receptacle the causal body, that in which all the seeds of karma are gathered Up, has for its builder all painful experiences; and along that line of thought we come to the great generalisation: the first function of pain in the universe is to arouse the Self to turn himself to the outer world, to evoke his aspect of activity.
The next function of pain is the organisation of the vehicles. Pain makes the man exert himself, and by that exertion the matter of his vehicles gradually becomes organised. If you want to develop and organise your muscles, you make efforts, you exercise them, and thus more life flows into them and they become strong. Pain is necessary that the Self may force his vehicles into making efforts which develop and organise them. Thus pain not only awakens awareness, it also organises the vehicles.
It has a third function also. Pain purifies. We try to get rid of that which causes us pain. It is contrary to our nature, and we endeavour to throw it away. All that is against the blissful nature of the Self is shaken by pain out of the vehicles; slowly they become purified by suffering, and in that way become ready for the handling of the Self.
It has a fourth function. Pain teaches. All the best lessons of life come from pain rather than from joy. When one is becoming old, as I am and I look on the long life behind me, a life of storm and stress, of difficulties and efforts, I see something of the great lessons pain can teach. Out of my life story could efface without regret everything that it has had of joy and happiness, but not one pain would I let go, for pain is the teacher of wisdom.
It has a fifth function. Pain gives power. Edward Carpenter said, in his splendid poem of "Time and Satan," after he had described the wrestlings and the overthrows: 'Every pain that I suffered in one body became a power which I wielded in the next." Power is pain transmuted.
Hence the wise man, knowing these things, does not shrink from pain; it means purification, wisdom, power.
It is true that a man may suffer so much pain that for this incarnation he may be numbed by it, rendered wholly or partially useless. Especially is this the case when the pain has deluged in childhood. But even then, he shall reap his harvest of good later. By his past, he may have rendered present pain inevitable, but none the less can he turn it into a golden opportunity by knowing and utilising its functions.
You may say: "What use then of pleasure, if pain is so splendid a thing?" From pleasure comes illumination. Pleasure enables the Self to manifest. In pleasure all the vehicles of the Self are made harrnonious; they all vibrate together; the vibrations are rhythmical, not jangled as they are in pain, and those rhythmical vibrations permit that expansion of the Self of which I spoke, and thus lead up to illumination, the knowledge of the Self. And if that be true, as it is true, you will see that pleasure plays an immense part in nature, being of the nature of the Self, belonging to him. When it harmonises the vehicles of the Self from outside, it enables the Self more readily to manifest himself through the lower selves within us. Hence happiness is a condition of illumination. That is the explanation of the value of the rapture of the mystic; it is an intense joy. A tremendous wave of bliss, born of love triumphant, sweeps over the whole of his being, and when that great wave of bliss sweeps over him, it harmonises the whole of his vehicles, subtle and gross alike, and the glory of the Self is made manifest and he sees the face of his God. Then comes the wonderful illumination, which for the time makes him unconscious of all the lower worlds. It is because for a moment the Self is realising himself as divine, that it is possible for him to see that divinity which is cognate to himself. So you should not fear joy any more than you fear pain, as some unwise people do, dwarfed by a mistaken religionism. That foolish thought which you often find in an ignorant religion, that pleasure is rather to be dreaded, as though God grudged joy to His children, is one of the nightmares born of ignorance and terror. The Father of life is bliss. He who is joy cannot grudge Himself to His children, and every reflection of joy in the world is a reflection of the Divine Life, and a manifestation of the Self in the midst of matter. Hence pleasure has its function as well as pain and that also is welcome to the wise, for he understands and utilises it. You can easily see how along this line pleasure and pain become equally welcome. Identified with neither, the wise man takes either as it comes, knowing its purpose. When we understand the places of joy and of pain, then both lose their power to bind or to upset us. If pain comes, we take it and utilise it. If joy comes, we take it and utilise it. So we may pass through life, welcoming both pleasure and pain, content whichever may come to us, and not wishing for that which is for the moment absent. We use both as means to a desired end; and thus we may rise to a higher indifference than that of the stoic, to the true vairagya; both pleasure and pain are transcended, and the Self remains, who is bliss.
In dealing with the third section of the subject, I drew your attention to the states of mind, and pointed out to you that, according to the Samskrit word vritti, those states of mind should be regarded as ways m which the mind exists, or, to use the philosophical phrase of the West, they are modes of mind, modes of mental existence. These are the states which are to be inhibited, put an end to, abolished, reduced into absolute quiescence. The reason for this inhibition is the production of a state which allows the higher mind to pour itself into the lower. To put it in another way: the lower mind, unruffled, waveless, reflects the higher, as a waveless lake reflects the stars. You will remember the phrase used in the Upanishad, which puts it less technically and scientifically, but more beautifully, and declares that in the quietude of the mind and the tranquility of the senses, a man may behold the majesty of the Self. The method of producing this quietude is what we have now to consider.
Inhibition of States of Mind
Two ways, and two ways only, there are of inhibiting these modes, these ways of existence, of the mind. They were given by Sri Krishna in the Bhagavad-Gita, when Arjuna complained that the mind was impetuous, strong, difficult to bend, hard to curb as the wind. His answer was definite: " Without doubt, O mighty-armed, the mind is hard to curb and restless; but it may be curbed by constant practice (abhyasa) and by dispassion (vai-ragya)."[FN#9: loc. cit., VI. 35, 35]
These are the two methods, the only two methods, by which this restless, storm-tossed mind can be reduced to peace and quietude. Vai-ragya and abhyasa, they are the only two methods, but when steadily practiced they inevitably bring about the result.
Let us consider what these two familiar words imply. Vai-ragya, or dispassion, has as its main idea the clearing away of all passion for, attraction to, the objects of the senses, the bonds which are made by desire between man and the objects around him. Raga is "passion, addiction," that which binds a man to things. The prefix "vi"—changing to "vai" by a grammatical rule —means "without," or "in opposition to". Hence vai-ragya is "non-passion, absence of passion," not bound, tied or related to any of these outside objects. Remembering that thinking is the establishing of relations, we see that the getting rid of relations will impose on the mind the stillness that is Yoga. All raga must be entirely put aside. We must separate ourselves from it. We must acquire the opposite condition, where every passion is stilled, where no attraction for the objects of desire remains, where all the bonds that unite the man to surrounding objects are broken. "When the bonds of the heart are broken, then the man becomes immortal."
How shall this dispassion be brought about? There is only one right way of doing it. By slowly and gradually drawing ourselves away from outer objects through the more potent attraction of the Self. The Self is ever attracted to the Self. That attraction alone can turn these vehicles away from the alluring and repulsive objects that surround them; free from all raga, no more establishing relations with objects, the separated Self finds himself liberated and free, and union with the one Self becomes the sole object of desire. But not instantly, by one supreme effort, by one endeavour, can this great quality of dispassion become the characteristic of the man bent on Yoga. He must practice dispassion constantly and steadfastly. That is implied in the word joined with dispassion, abhyasa or practice. The practice must be constant, continual and unbroken. "Practice" does not mean only meditation, though this is the sense in which the word is generally used; it means the deliberate, unbroken carrying out of dispassion in the very midst of the objects that attract.
In order that you may acquire dispassion, you must practice it in the everyday things of life. I have said that many confine abhyasa to meditation. That is why so few people attain to Yoga. Another error is to wait for some big opportunity. People prepare themselves for some tremendous sacrifice and forget the little things of everyday life, in which the mind is knitted to objects by a myriad tiny threads. These things, by their pettiness, fail to attract attention, and in waiting for the large thing, which does not come, people lose the daily practice of dispassion towards the little things that are around them. By curbing desire at every moment, we become indifferent to all the objects that surround us. Then, when the great opportunity comes, we seize it while scarce aware that it is upon us. Every day, all day long, practice—that is what is demanded from the aspirant to Yoga, for only on that line can success come; and it is the wearisomeness of this strenuous, continued endeavour that tires out the majority of aspirants.
I must here warn you of a danger. There is a rough-and- ready way of quickly bringing about dispassion. Some say to you: "Kill out all love and affection; harden your hearts; become cold to all around you; desert your wife and children, your father and mother, and fly to the desert or the jungle; put a wall between youself and all objects of desire; then dispassion will be yours." It is true that it is comparatively easy to acquire dispassion in that way. But by that you kill more than desire. You put round the Self, who is love, a barrier through which he is unable to pierce. You cramp yourself by encircling yourself with a thick shell, and you cannot break through it. You harden yourself where you ought to be softened; you isolate yourself where you ought to be embracing others; you kill love and not only desire, forgetting that love clings to the Self and seeks the Self, while desire clings to the sheaths of the Self, the bodies in which the Self is clothed. Love is the desire of the separated Self for union with all other separated Selves. Dispassion is the non-attraction to matter—a very different thing. You must guard love—for it is the very Self of the Self. In your anxiety to acquire dispassion do not kill out love. Love is the life in everyone of us, separated Selves. It draws every separated Self to the other Self. Each one of us is a part of one mighty whole. Efface desire as regards the vehicles that clothe the Self, but do not efface love as regards the Self, that never-dying force which draws Self to Self. In this great up-climbing, it is far better to suffer from love rather than to reject it, and to harden your hearts against all ties and claims of affection. Suffer for love, even though the suffering be bitter. Love, even though the love be an avenue of pain. The pain shall pass away, but the love shall continue to grow, and in the unity of the Self you shall finally discover that love is the great attracting force which makes all things one.
Many people, in trying to kill out love, only throw themselves back, becoming less human, not superhuman; by their mistaken attempts. It is by and through human ties of love and sympathy that the Self unfolds. It is said of the Masters that They love all humanity as a mother loves her firstborn son. Their love is not love watered down to coolness, but love for all raised to the heat of the highest particular loves of smaller souls. Always mistrust the teacher who tells you to kill out love, to be indifferent to human affections. That is the way which leads to the left-hand path.
Meditation With and Without Seed
The next step is our method of meditation. What do we mean by meditation? Meditation cannot be the same for every man. Though the same in principle, namely, the steadying of the mind, the method must vary with the temperament of the practitioner. Suppose that you are a strong-minded and intelligent man, fond of reasoning. Suppose that connected links of thought and argument have been to you the only exorcise of the mind. Utilise that past training. Do not imagine that you can make your mind still by a single effort. Follow a logical chain of reasoning, step by step, link after link; do not allow the mind to swerve a hair's breadth from it. Do not allow the mind to go aside to other lines of thought. Keep it rigidly along a single line, and steadiness will gradually result. Then, when you have worked up to your highest point of reasoning and reached the last link of your chain of argument, and your mind will carry you no further, and beyond that you can see nothing, then stop. At that highest point of thinking, cling desperately to the last link of the chain, and there keep the mind poised, in steadiness and strenuous quiet, waiting for what may come. After a while, you will be able to maintain this attitude for a considerable time.
For one in whom imagination is stronger than the reasoning faculty, the method by devotion, rather than by reasoning, is the method. Let him call imagination to his help. He should picture some scene, in which the object of his devotion forms the central figure, building it up, bit by bit, as a painter paints a picture, putting in it gradually all the elements of the scene He must work at it as a painter works on his canvas, line by line, his brush the brush of imagination. At first the work will be very slow, but the picture soon begins to present itself at call. Over and over he should picture the scene, dwelling less and less on the surrounding objects and more and more on the central figure which is the object of his heart's devotion. The drawing of the mind to a point, in this way, brings it under control and steadies it, and thus gradually, by this use of the imagination. he brings the mind under command. The object of devotion will be according to the man's religion. Suppose—as is the case with many of you—that his object of devotion is Sri Krishna; picture Him in any scene of His earthly life, as in the battle of Kurukshetra. Imagine the armies arrayed for battle on both sides; imagine Arjuna on the floor of the chariot, despondent, despairing; then come to Sri Krishna, the Charioteer, the Friend and Teacher. Then, fixing your mind on the central figure, let your heart go out to Him with onepointed devotion. Resting on Him, poise yourself in silence and, as before, wait for what may come.
This is what is called "meditation with seed". The central figure, or the last link in reasoning, that is "the seed". You have gradually made the vagrant mind steady by this process of slow and gradual curbing, and at last you are fixed on the central thought, or the central figure, and there you are poised. Now let even that go. Drop the central thought, the idea, the seed of meditation. Let everything go. But keep the mind in the position gained, the highest point reached, vigorous and alert. This is meditation without a seed. Remain poised, and wait in the silence and the void. You are in the "cloud," before described, and pass through the condition before sketched. Suddenly there will be a change, a change unmistakable, stupendous, incredible. In that silence, as said, a Voice shall be heard. In that void, a Form shall reveal itself. In that empty sky, a Sun shall rise, and in the light of that Sun you shall realise your own identity with it, and know that that which is empty to the eye of sense is full to the eye of Spirit, that that which is silence to the ear of sense is full of music to the ear of Spirit.
Along such lines you can learn to bring into control your mind, to discipline your vagrant thought, and thus to reach illumination. One word of warning. You cannot do this, while you are trying meditation with a seed. until you are able to cling to your seed definitely for a considerable time, and maintain throughout an alert attention. It is the emptiness of alert expectation. not the emptiness of impending sleep. If your mind be not in that condition, its mere emptiness is dangerous. It leads to mediumship, to possession, to obsession. You can wisely aim at emptiness, only when you have so disciplined the mind that it can hold for a considerable time to a single point and remain alert when that point is dropped.
The question is sometimes asked: "Suppose that I do this and succeed in becoming unconscious of the body; suppose that I do rise into a higher region; is it quite sure that I shall come back again to the body? Having left the body, shall I be certain to return?" The idea of non-return makes a man nervous. Even if he says that matter is nothing and Spirit is everything, he yet does not like to lose touch with his body and, losing that touch, by sheer fear, he drops back to the earth after having taken so much trouble to leave it. You should, however, have no such fear. That which will draw you back again is the trace of your past, which remains under all these conditions.
The question is of the same kind as: "Why should a state of Pralaya ever come to an end, and a new state of Manvantara begin?" And the answer is the same from the Hindu psychological standpoint; because, although you have dropped the very seed of thought, you cannot destroy the traces which that thought has left, and that trace is a germ, and it tends to draw again to itself matter, that it may express itself once more. This trace is what is called the privation of matter— samskara. Far as you may soar beyond the concrete mind, that trace, left in the thinking principle, of what you have thought and have known, that remains and will inevitably draw you back. You cannot escape your past and, until your life-period is over, that samskara will bring you back. It is this also which, at the close of the heavenly life, brings a man back to rebirth. It is the expression of the law of rhythm. In Light on the Path, that wonderful occult treatise, this state is spoken of and the disciple is pictured as in the silence. The writer goes on to say: "Out of the silence that is peace a resonant voice shall arise. And this voice will say: 'It is not well; thou hast reaped, now thou must sow.' And knowing this voice to be the silence itself, thou wilt obey."
What is the meaning of that phrase: "Thou hast reaped, now thou must sow?" It refers to the great law of rhythm which rules even the Logoi, the Ishvaras —the law of the Mighty Breath, the out-breathing and the in-breathing, which compels every fragment which is separated for a time. A Logos may leave His universe, and it may drop away when He turns His gaze inward, for it was He who gave reality to it.
He may plunge into the infinite depths of being, but even then there is the samskara of the past universe, the shadowy latent memory, the germ of maya from which He cannot escape. To escape from it would be to cease to be Ishvara, and to become Brahma Nirguna. There is no Ishvara without maya, there is no maya without Ishvara. Even in pralaya, a time comes when the rest is over and the inner life again demands manifestation; then the outward turning begins and a new universe comes forth. Such is the law of rest and activity: activity followed by rest; rest followed again by the desire for activity; and so the ceaseless wheel of the universe, as well as of human lives, goes on. For in the eternal, both rest and activity are ever present, and in that which we call Time, they follow each other, although in eternity they be simultaneous and ever-existing.
The Use of Mantras
Let us see how far we can help ourselves in this difficult work. I will draw your attention to one fact which is of enormous help to the beginner.
Your vehicles are ever restless. Every vibration in the vehicle produces a corresponding change in consciousness. Is there any way to check these vibrations, to steady the vehicle, so that consciousness may be still? One method is the repeating of a mantra. A mantra is a mechanical way of checking vibration. Instead of using the powers of the will and of imagination, you save these for other purposes, and use the mechanical resource of a mantra. A mantra is a definite succession of sounds. Those sounds, repeated rhythmically over and over again in succession, synchronise the vibrations of the vehicles into unity with themselves. Hence a mantra cannot be translated; translation alters the sounds. Not only in Hinduism, but in Buddhism, in Roman Catholicism, in Islam, and among the Parsis, mantras are found, and they are never translated, for when you have changed the succession and order of the sounds, the mantra ceases to be a mantra. If you translate the words, you may have a very beautiful prayer, but not a mantra. Your translation may be beautiful inspired poetry, but it is not a living mantra. It will no longer harmonise the vibrations of the surrounding sheaths, and thus enable the consciousness to become still. The poetry, the inspired prayer, these are mentally translatable. But a mantra is unique and untranslatable. Poetry is a great thing: it is often an inspirer of the soul, it gives gratification to the ear, and it may be sublime and beautiful, but it is not a mantra.