THE BUILDING OF THE KOSMOS/PART 4

 

YOGA.

 

 

 

 

 

BROTHERS, - In all ages, under every civilization, found within the limits of each religion, there has been an upward yearning of the Spirit of man - an attempt to find union with the Divine. It matters not what the special form of religion to which the devotee may belong; it matters not under what particular name he may worship Deity; it matters not, so far as the inner struggle is concerned, in what way he may try to express or to carry out these longings. The significant fact is that the yearning is there, a constant witness to the world of the reality of the Spirit, a constant witness of the truth of the spiritual life; the only witness, if you speak with accuracy, of the existence of the Divine, either in the universe or in man. For just as water will find its way through every obstruction, in order to rise to the level of its source, so does the Spirit in man strive upwards ever towards the source whence it came. Had it not come from the Divine, it would not seek to rise to the Divine. Were it not that it is the offspring of Deity, it would not strive to reunite itself with Deity; and the very fact that the yearning exists, the very fact that efforts, however ignorant, are made to realize it, is the constant and the perpetual witness of the Divine origin of man, is the perpetual proof of that which we were studying yesterday, that the Spark may re-become the Flame; being Flame in  its origin, it may expand again into Flame, no matter how cramped it has been within the limits of manifestation.

 

Now the word Yoga, as everyone knows, means “union”. It expresses in a single term everything which the Spirit can desire; for in this word “union” is implied everything; as everything comes from the Divine, so union with the Divine means possession of everything - all knowledge, all strength, all purity, all love; and the one word which implies that union marks the highest aspira­tion which is possible for man. I have said this as­piration is found in every religion. Take one of the most modern of religions, that which is prevalent in the West under the name of Christianity, and you will find there exactly the same attempt towards union that you find carried out so methodically in the most ancient of all religions, the Hindu. The great difference between the two is in the method. You have the aspiration in Christianity; you have not, as a rule, the training; although it is true that within the limits of a single body in the Roman Catholic Church there is some distinct knowledge as to the methods whereby union may be sought. But taking Christianity as a whole, you have aspiration, rather than sustained and deliberate effort. Yet still in reading the lives of the saints, as they are called, you will find from time to time descriptions of a state being reached, which any­one amongst you who has studied the matter would recognize as identical with the state known to us as that of Samadhi, where consciousness passes upward or rather inward, out of the normal and into the Divine. And although that be obtained as it were by the sheer force of devotion, it is still a testimony that under each religion there is the possibility of union; as indeed we might expect to find, when we remember that all Souls are essen­tially one, no matter how much they may be divided by differences of birthplace or by differ­ences of religion. And this, it seems to me, is important; important because it testifies continu­ally to the unity that underlies different faiths, and because it tends to break down the wall of separation, which is such a barrier as far as spirituality is concerned, while it is, to some extent, inevitable as long as we remain in the purely intellectual sphere.

 

But what I should be prepared to maintain, as a matter of argument and of experience, is the enor­mous advantage of the Hindu religion in that Yoga is there understood in method as well as in object. It is not only that what the Christian calls the “Beatific Vision” is desired, but it is that the method whereby that Vision may be reached is taught, so that the man of the world may, to a great extent, learn the steps which, taken in this life, may in a future incarnation make possible for him an advance in Yoga; while those that are pre­pared for further advance may, by gaining special instruction; learn step by step that which will take  them onwards to the Divine.

 

Now it is clear that in a lecture like this, which to all intents and purposes is a public lecture - it is clear that the inner side of Yoga must be left practically untouched. Yoga, in the strictest sense of the term, is never taught, save from mind to mind, from Guru to shishya; it is not a matter for the platform, it is not a matter for discussion. Dis­cussion has no place in true Yoga. Discussion belongs to the intellect, not to the Spirit; and Yoga is a matter of the Spirit and not of the intellect. So far as the preliminary stages go, we can deal with them from the platform; but the inner heart of Yoga is only for those who, having realized that spiritual truth is attainable, have set their whole heart on the discovery, and who go to seek it, not as controversialists into the intellectual arena, not as disputants who think themselves as good as the one to whom they nominally go as teacher, but  who are willing to go to the more highly advanced in spiritual matters to learn in silence and in sub­mission, grateful for every ray of light that comes to them, and who challenge not the light, because the Spirit in them has caught a glimpse of the source whence it comes. What I am going to try to do this morning, is to show you the preliminary stages which will gradually train a man to become capable of seeking instruction in Yoga - to point out to you what you might yourselves find out from your own Shastras as to the published steps - ­if I may call them so - which lead up to the gate of  the Temple; but into the Temple you must go alone to meet there your Teacher; only the path­way which leads to that gate may be shown to you, and you may begin to tread it whenever you resolve to do so.

 

Now in order that you may understand the in­tellectual side of this process of union, you need to understand your own constitution. That is the first step. It is true that the constitution of man to a very great extent only consists of the instru­ments whereby he may find himself. None the less must he be able to use these instruments, otherwise the preliminary steps cannot be taken; for, before you can enter on the Path at all, there are certain obstacles that have to be overcome. And those obstacles lie in your nature; they lie in the constitution of your own being. And these external obstacles must be destroyed before any real progress towards Yoga can be made. An understanding then - which will be intellectual - of your own constitution is the first step you have to take. In studying the constitution of man you need to know it, first from the standpoint of theory and then from that of practice. Because man’s constitution may be looked at according as he exists in relation to the different regions of the universe, or according as he can practically divide himself when he desires to investigate these regions. These divisions may be different; but you can learn how they are correlated one to the other.

 

The divisions are, as I say, first theoretical and then practical. Now the fullest theoretical divi­sion is that which you may know as the sevenfold division in man that you may read in any ordinary Theosophical book: you may trace it in your own Shastras, but you will trace it with some difficulty. Because there stress was laid rather on the fivefold division, that being the division of man as he is at present developed, the two higher stages being left out of account, inasmuch as man in his average present condition cannot possibly reach them; and it was thought not desirable at that period to con­fuse the mind by giving a division which could not be realizable in thought. Hints are however thrown out, so that those who passed beyond the average state of man might be able to seize the knowledge for which they had become ready; and so you will find suggestions, such as that I spoke of yesterday, the “seven-tongued flame”. So you will find suggestions of seven vowel sounds; so you will find that Agni is drawn in a chariot with seven horses. So you will find that the great ser­pent (more often spoken of as five-headed) is occa­sionally spoken of as seven-headed. In this way you will catch a hint from time to time of some­thing beyond the five - of that fivefold constitution typified by the pentacle, by the letter M, by the Zodiacal sign of Makara, the crocodile - these will hint to you that while you have these as practical reality ever to learn, there is something beyond if you have the intuition to follow the hints thus thrown out.

 

Now the sevenfold constitution takes Atma as the Self, which, gradually unfolding, runs outward through the successive envelopes that are only dif­ferentiations of the Atma. Thus you get Buddhi, spoken of as the spiritual soul; Manas, spoken of as the rational or human soul; Kama, spoken of as the animal soul, which includes all passions and desires; and Prana, life-principle, circulating through the ethereal body, which is unfortunately called Linga Sharira - I say unfortunately, because the same term has a different meaning in the Hindu Scriptures. Lastly, the body itself, the Sthula Sharira, the physical and material outside portion of man. That gives you the sevenfold division of man, or the six with Atma as the seventh, Atma being really the whole, but differen­tiating itself in its manifestation. “It willed, I will multiply.”

 

But come to the division which will be more familiar to many of you, in which man is regarded as Atma, taking on itself five different sheaths - ­an exceedingly luminous classification, because in each case you have this conception of the sheath that veils the true Self; so that the real process of Yoga will be to get rid of sheath after sheath until the Self stands alone once more as it did at the beginning. According to this, you have for the body the food-sheath, Annamaya Kosha; you have then, represented in the Theosophical category by the ethereal body and Prana - because the ethereal body is only the vehicle of Prana - you have the Pranamaya Kosha. Then you have the double di­vision which recognizes the duality of Manas, as you will find it taught in Theosophical books, and includes with the lower Manas, Kama, joining together that which after death perishes, and that which passes onward to Devaloka. So that you have the Manomaya Kosha, which includes Kamic elements, includes passions and desires, and which takes part in the formation of the body which lasts through the Kamalokic existence. Next as sheath for the discriminative powers of mind, comes the Vignyanamaya Kosha, thus named from Gnyanam, knowledge, with the prefix Vi, implying discrimi­nation and analysis, a process of cutting and breaking up all the separable portions of know­ledge, so that it is essentially discriminative know­ledge; thus it is occasionally used to cover over the sixty-four sciences, which are classed together under that name. This Kosha then includes what the Theosophist calls Manas, this discriminative faculty in man, without the argumentative side which belongs to Lower Manas. Then you get the last of the sheaths, the Bliss-sheath - Anandamaya Kosha - which is Buddhi - for Buddhi is essentially bliss.

 

Suppose instead of this classification, which deals with man as a sixfold entity, you want to know how man is going to deal with himself when he wants to investigate the different regions of the universe, you find you cannot divide him in this sevenfold or sixfold fashion. The sheaths are not all divisible the one from another. You have to take the division which is only triple. Man can only be divided into three for all practical purposes of Yoga. There are but three Upadhis in which these different principles or sheaths can work; there is the lowest which is spoken of as Sthulopadhi; that includes the physical body, but is itself essen­tially ethereal, because the physical body can be left out of account in this matter; it has neither part nor lot save that of an obstruction that bas to be gotten rid of. The real sense-organs lie in the ethereal body, and the outer casings only appear in the physical body, which to us seems so real. Then you have the Sukshmopadhi, or the subtle Upadhi that is sometimes described as Linga Sharira, or Linga Deha. It was for this reason that I said it was unfortunate that in the Theosophical nomenclature this name is applied to a lower Upadhi, the astral or ethereal body. This Sukshmopadhi is the vehicle for the Kamic and the Manasic principles, and it is in this Upadhi that the consciousness can make itself practically acquainted with the whole of the psychic plane. Then there is the Karano­padhi, which is the sheath really of Atma in Buddhi­-Manas, and answers to the Anandamaya Kosha, the permanent body in which what we call the immor­tal Triad lives throughout the Manvantara. These are the three practical divisions for Yoga, and they are correlated to the three planes of the manifested universe; the Astral plane, of which the physical is only, so to speak, the outer manifestation, so that for practical purposes the physical and astral may be regarded as one. To that the Sthulopadhi belongs. Then there is the psychic plane of the universe; that includes the range of passions and desires and also of intellect. To that Sukshmo­padhi belongs. Then there is the region above it - the spiritual plane; to that Karanopadhi belongs. So that these three Upadhis are correlated to the three regions of the universe - Astral plus physical - the two as one; Psychic - higher and lower; Spiritual - the highest. And the practical division is chosen for Yoga, because the consciousness may dwell in any one of these three planes, and in any one it must have a body, so to speak - a vehicle perhaps is a better word - in which it may dwell. Yoga is not possible save by the existence of these Upadhis in which the consciousness may work in the three great planes of the manifested Kosmos. Yoga brings about the development of these Upadhis and their reduction under the control of the Self, so that it may dwell in one or in the other, may experience the different planes, may unify the whole. For the process of manifestation of the universe is but for the development of this unify­ing consciousness; the universe exists, it is said in the Scriptures, for the sake of the Soul. All is good Karma that pleases Ishvara, all is bad Karma that is displeasing to Him. For Ishvara is but the term for the Supreme Spirit, which is one with the Spirit in man. Therefore these Upadhis are de­veloped, in order that in their development perfect union may be secured, and the Spirit may traverse at will every plane of the universe, and have in every plane of consciousness the knowledge which belongs separately to each. That understanding then is necessary for our work.

 

Now comes the question: how are these planes and these Upadhis correlated with what are called states of consciousness or conditions of Atma? You will find in your Shastras different terms applied according as the subject is taken up from the standpoint of the Atma and the conditions that it assumes, or according as it is studied from with­out as states of consciousness. Studying states of consciousness you have the three stages, waking,  dreaming, deep sleeping; or, to use the technical terms, Jagrat, which is the normal consciousness of normal waking life; Svapna, which is the state of consciousness in what we call dream; and Su­shupti, the sleep beyond dream - the dreamless sleep we call it. There is indeed a fourth, the Turiya state, but that is not a state of conscious­ness in manifestation. That is the widening out of the limited consciousness into the all. And therefore it lies beyond this question of vehicles, for in that Atma exists as Atma. It has thrown off every sheath until it has found itself. As long as we are dealing with the Upadhis, with sheaths, we have the three without the Turiya state; no con­dition remains in the Turiya state. Man may reach it, but he carries thither no vehicle. It is the state of liberation. It is the state which is entered by the Jivanmukta; but the Jiva either passes finally onwards out of all vehicles, or passing into it as  Jiva, pure and simple, returns to the vehicle on leaving it; the vehicle cannot be carried into it;  for it is beyond limitation; it is the One and the All. Now turn to the Mandukyopanishad, that one which is so short, but is so priceless, if you will take it and meditate upon it and so find its inner mean­ing. There you read not of states of consciousness but of conditions of Atma. First comes Vaish­vanara, correlated to the waking state, for in that Atma cognizes the external world. You are told it is in contact with external bodies, that is the nature of this condition. It is then of course in the Sthulopadhi, the lowest of the three vehicles. It passes out of that into the state of splendour, that is the Taijasa condition. In that it studies the internal objects, you are told. The Upadhi for this is the Sukshmopadhi; it dwells in the inner world. It passes once more out of that into the state of knowledge, Pragnya; then it is said that knowledge is uniform; then it is said that its nature is Bliss, its mouth is Knowledge.

 

A most significant and luminous statement, worthy of your careful consideration. Its nature Bliss; that implies the presence of the Ananda­maya Kosha. Its mouth Knowledge; that implies, if you will think of it, the suggestion of the pre­sence of that which may become, but is not, the spoken word; the potentiality of the speech with­out the speaking, for speech belongs to the lower plane. Its mouth is knowledge: the mouth is there, but the nature is bliss; when the Atma comes outwards from that state, then it passes downward into the realm of speech, and the mouth may utter the spoken word, but there is no word on that plane. There is the potentiality of sound, but not the sound itself. And then there is the fourth. Of that fourth there is nothing said save negatives, for it is indescribable. It is Atma in itself, Brahman in itself. It is the sacred Word as one; no longer as the separated letters. You are given the three  letters, A, U, M; each of these being correlated to a condition of the Atma; finally the one-sounded word is spoken; because the Atma has re-become the one and no separation of letters can then exist. So, see even by that outward explanation how much there is of teaching in the printed book. And that is only the outer explanation. You have to find out for yourselves what underlies suggestion after suggestion; but taking it in that form it puts you on the way towards Yoga, for it gives you the three stages, the three steps, the three conditions of the Atma.

 

And the practical way of realizing those? Of that also we may learn something; although not much when we are dealing with it in a fashion so imperfect as the present. Now let us seek the preparatory stages to make all this theoretical knowledge practical to some extent: at least so far as to make it possible, as I said in the beginning, for the man living in the world with household duties, social duties, and national duties, to prepare himself for the real life. This at least we may take into consideration, with a few hints of what lies beyond. Clearly it will be impossible for a man to spring from the average life of men into the prac­tice of real Yoga. To do that would only mean inevitable failure; for although intense desire might carry a man into the beginning of it, there would never be the tenacity which would hold through the shocks which follow the first enthusiastic springing forward into the inner life. You cannot make a sudden step without an equally sudden reaction. You cannot spring high without the shock of re-descending to the earth. Therefore the wisdom of the ancient Sages did not permit a man to enter straightway into the ascetic life. It was forbidden save in the exceptional case where an advanced Soul came into reincarnation, and from birth or earliest childhood special capacities were seen. The ordinary life was a carefully gradu­ated life, in which a man might take up just as much of religion as he felt the inner impulse to take up. The life was a religious life, and religious ceremonies accompanied it throughout, but a man might throw as much spiritual energy as he chose into the ceremonies. He might repeat them as a matter of form, and even then they would remind him of the life beyond the physical; or he might throw into them a little devotion, and then they would lead him a step further; or he might throw his whole heart into them, and then they would be a real preparation for the later life. If that were done, if the life of the Grihastha - the householder - were over, and every duty had been accomplished, then he might pass onwards, if he would, into the life of the hermit, into the life of the ascetic; because by these graduated practices he had pre­pared himself for the finding of the Guru and for the leading of a truly spiritual life.

 

The first step that is always laid down as a pre­paration for Yoga is the ceasing from wicked ways. A very commonplace step; a mere truism in every religion; but the fact that it is a truism does not make it less true. And since no Yoga is possible without it, save the Yoga that leads to destruction, the first step is purification of the life and the ceasing from wicked ways. Whosoever has not ceased from wicked ways, thus beginning the Yoga which goes on to the subduing of the senses and of the mind, whosoever has not ceased from wicked ways cannot find Atma. That, then, is the first and most commonplace step, and every one - if you tell them it is a necessary preliminary - almost every one shrugs his shoulders and says “of course”; but he does not practise it. Until he does, no practice in Yoga is possible. Nothing but talk is possible until a man has begun to purify his life; until he is truthful in thought as well as in speech; until he cannot be persuaded to swerve from the path of rectitude by any outside tempta­tions; until the whole of his thought and desire at least is towards the right; until, however often he falls he recognizes a fall as a fall, and tries to rise again; until he has made at least the attempt to form a righteous ideal and to carry out that ideal practically in life. I say this is the most common­place of all religious teachings, and the one which is the hardest at first to carry into practice. Now for the enormous majority of men who do not take up this as a rule of life, for the enormous majority Yoga is and can be nothing more than a word; any attempt to practise it is like an attempt to run before learning to walk; and the only possible result is the result which the child has when it is in too much hurry to walk - it falls down and falls down until it learns caution and gains equilibrium.

 

I say this because there are very many practices which may be learned without purity of life, but these will lead to mischief and not to good. It is far easier to take up a book on Yoga and put into practice for a few minutes, or for an hour or two, or for a day, some particular thing that you may read there, than it is to keep a constant watch over the daily life and purify it at every moment of the day. Far easier, but also far less useful; and the disci­pline of the body and the mind is the first stage in practical Yoga. In daily life all sorts of methods of discipline may be found, and when a man has really determined to discipline mind and body, he will, through his daily life as opportunities occur, make for himself some definite rules - it does not matter what the rules are, provided they are harm­less - and he will rigidly keep these rules after he has made them. That is to say, he will systematize his life; he will determine certain points of time, and at those points he will force himself to do the things that he has previously decided shall be the occupation of that particular moment or hour. Let me take a very common illustration. He fixes an hour for rising, but when the hour comes somehow he fails to rise. He is lazy, or sleepy, or what not. Now it does not matter in itself whether he rises a quarter of an hour earlier or later than the hour fixed, but it does matter that he shall do what he has determined to do. For the carrying out of a resolution in the face of disinclination strengthens the will - and no progress in Yoga is possible unless the will is strong and the body and mind obedient; this power may be best accumulated in the practice of daily life. And when the mind and body are controlled, brought to obedience, no matter what may be the temptations of sloth or anything else, he has taken the first step on this path of Yoga; for they have been made obedient to something that is higher than themselves. By strengthening the will, the man is making one of the instruments that he is going to use in his further progress. Then take the question of food, not a vital ques­tion, but one of considerable importance; you will find certain kinds of foods forbidden to those who lead a spiritual life. Food should be correlated to the purpose for which you are living. There is no one rule which you can lay down for all. There are rules which are different according to the pur­poses that you are using your life to accomplish. According to that which it is the desire of your life to accomplish, so should be the food that you take to nourish, to keep, the life of the body.  Therefore it was that when to be a Brahman meant to be a man who had made progress in the spiritual life and who desired to advance rapidly and further along the road, the rules as to what he might and might not do were exceedingly stringent; and then it was that he was told to eat those things that have the Sattvic quality, because he did not want to bring into the body which he was endeavouring to purify any foods having the Rajasic or the Tamasic qualities, which would draw him down­ward instead of lifting him upwards. It is true that the body is the lowest part of us, but it is not for that fact to be neglected. It is important to lighten your weight if you have to climb. Though the weight does not help you upwards, the lessen­ing of the weight will make the upward climbing less difficult than otherwise it would be. And that is all that you have to do in dealing with the body. It does not help you to spiritual life; but it holds you back. And you want to lessen the hold of the body as much as possible. That is really the use of an external observance. If there is nothing but the external, if there is no upward rising, it is almost a matter of indifference whether the weight is heavy or light, for it is always going to remain on the ground, and it is the ground that bears it, and it does not hold anything down. Tie a rock to a post. It does not matter whether the rock be heavy or light, for the post has nothing in it that will rise. But tie a rock to a balloon which is striving to rise upwards, and as you lessen the weight of the rock, the possibility of rising will come to the balloon, until ultimately the power that draws it upward is greater than the dead weight of the rock that holds it down, and it will go upwards carrying the rock with it, because it has overcome its resistance. That is the way in which the body and all outward observances should be regarded. That is why when the Spirit is free all outward forms become matters of indifference. The very rites and ceremonies of religion that are binding on the Soul that is still unliberated, become useless when the Soul has gained liberation, for then the Soul no longer can be held by anything. And as the rites of religion are meant to be the wings which will lift the Soul upwards against weight, when the weight has vanished and the Soul is free, it no longer needs these wings. It is in its own atmosphere, where equilibrium has been gained, and neither upward nor downward has any mean­ing for it; for it is at the centre which is the All. ­

 

I say this because it is a thing that ought to guide your judgment, if you will judge your neighbours. It would be far better if you never judged them at all. What right of judgment has any one of you as concerns one of your brothers? What know you of his past? What know you of his Karma? What know you of the conditions that surround his life? What know you of his inner struggles, his aspirations and his faults? What right have you to judge him? Judge yourself, but do not judge another; for when you condemn any, judging him only from without and by one or another external observance that he may or may not use, you injure yourselves far more than you injure him; you are judging in the lowest sphere, and you are injuring all your own inner sphere and clouding it over by the tendency of unkindness and of lack of compassion.

 

Now it is in connection with this dealing with the body that a large number of external observ­ances have been advocated and practised - many of them exceedingly useful and some of them exceed­ingly dangerous. Take a practice which is a very useful one, and which is not dangerous but helpful when practised in moderation in a country like this, with a very long physical heredity behind it and the practice of thousands of generations; that which is known as Pranayama - the checking of  the breath - a practice known to almost every Brahman at least. This is done with a very definite purpose, with the object of shutting out all external objects and withdrawing the soul from the senses to the mind - the first stage in practical Yoga. The shutting of the various senses physically, the check­ing of the breath physically, these are really the lightening, so to speak, of the weight, and making it easier for the mind to retire from the external world. But where these directions, which have been published to some extent, are suddenly taken up by people not fitted to practise them by physical heredity, and when they are carried out with much persistence and with Western energy, without  someone who knows how to guide the student, the practice may become exceedingly dangerous. If it is carried beyond a certain point it may seri­ously affect the organs of the body and may cause disease and death. Therefore, even for you who are Asiatics it is never wise to pursue this practice very far unless you are under the training of some one who understands it thoroughly, and who is able to check you the moment you touch danger. Whereas for the European it is unwise to practise it at all, because he has not any suitable physical heredity, nor are the physical and psychical sur­roundings amongst which he lives fitted for a practice which may be said to work on the physico­-psychical life; thus the practice may be exceedingly dangerous, and for a European who is going to begin, the physical training will begin in a different fashion. There again is a point where judgment would be exceedingly unjust; because unless you take these circumstances into considera­tion, you may be blaming the man for what? Be­cause he does not do a thing which in him would produce dangerous bleeding of the lungs; and so would entirely take away from him the physical garment in which, if more carefully trained, pos­sibly progress might be obtained.

 

Of course this may be carried very much further in what is called Hatha Yoga. You may see it carried to the furthest extreme in those cases of the ascetics where some particular practice is adopted - whether that of raising the arm and holding it up till it withers; or clenching the hand till the nails grow into the flesh; or gazing at the sun; or doubling the body, and so on - an enormous number of different practices that some of you must have yourselves seen from time to time. Is there or is there not any value in these practices? How is it that we see them adopted? What is their object and what their real worth? Now it would not be true to say that they are without value. First of all they have this value, that in an age  like our own they are constant and standing wit­nesses to the strength of the inner aspiration which overcomes all bodily passion and all physical temptation in order to seek after something which is recognized as greater than the physical life. It is not fair to omit from sight in judging these cases that service which they do to humanity. For in the world, where almost everyone is seeking after things of the world, where ambition is for money, for place, for power, for fame, for the praise of men, it is not without value that a few should even act in this fashion, and throwing everything that men love aside, proclaim by the very fact of their tortured existence the reality of the Soul in man, and the worth of something which is above the anguish of the body. So that I do not think that anyone should speak lightly of the folly of these men, even though he disagree with them, even though he disapprove of them, even if he say that their method is not right. In any case you should recognize the strength of the devotion which can trample on the body in seeking after the Soul. Even if the method be mistaken, as I myself believe it to be mistaken, still it is a nobler life even in its blunders than the commonplace seeking after transient objects; for it is nobler to seek the higher and climb after it and fall, than it is to seek things only of the earth, to waste everything in gaining those transient objects.

 

And there is the side, another side, which will bring to them their reward in a future incarnation. It is true they will by these methods never reach the spiritual plane. It is true that by these methods they will never reach the higher spheres of exist­ence. Yet it is also true that they are by these methods developing the strength of will that in their next birth may carry them far along the road.  Has it ever struck you what their strength of will must be; not in the stages when the posture has become automatic, but in the early stages, when every moment is a moment of torture? That is the time when the Soul is developed, and when if you pay the price of pain you may purchase that which you pay for. They pay it for strength of will, and that strength of will must come back to them in their future life. And it may be that the strength of will shall then be enlightened by the devotion which made them follow such a life, and that the two together may open up the path towards real knowledge. Although for this incarnation they may fail in reaching the spirit, yet in another devotion and will combined may carry them far, far beyond those who think themselves wiser, because they are not fanatical - as I frankly think these men are. You may say to me, “Are we to follow the practice?” No; for I have already said I regard it as a mistake. I only mentioned this view because I hear so much of idle scoff, so much of idle jeer, from men who are not fit to come  within a mile of those who have at least recognized and tried to follow the possibility of spiritual life.

 

And then there is one word to be said of another life, a life which is not of absolute self-torture, but which is that of complete withdrawal from the world to the forest. That has been said to be a selfish life; in very many cases it is connected with selfishness, but not always. Those lives that are spiritual keep up the spiritual atmosphere which prevents the country as a whole from falling as low as it otherwise would. They keep up the recog­nition of the reality of a spiritual life which may be stimulated into activity, and the fact that India has a possibility of revival in herself is largely due to those recluses of the forests and of the jungles, who have kept possible a spiritual atmosphere into which vibrations may be thrown which then may strike on the outer lives of men.

 

For what is the underlying truth of Hatha Yoga? It is this; that when growth is complete, body will be the obedient servant of the Spirit, and will be developed along the particular lines which will give to Spirit the organs in the body whereby it may work on the outside universe of Matter. That is the real truth of all Hatha Yoga practices. They train the body. They throw into activity certain centres - certain chakrams as they are called - they throw them into activity, and these centres are to act as the organs for the interior life. They are the organs whereby the inner life may work on the material universe, and whereby what are called phenomena may be brought about. Phenomena cannot be brought about by the Spirit at its highest working directly on what we call Matter at its lowest, that is by Atma working directly on the material universe; the gulf is too great, it has to be spanned. And if you are to control the physical universe and physical laws, it is necessary to de­velop certain material organs and astral organs in connection with the body which, brought into im­mediate contact below with the physical universe, and in contact above with the mind and Spirit, will enable the Spirit working downward, so to say, to bring about the physical results that it desires. Now Hatha Yoga is the recognition of this truth and the bringing it into practice on the lower plane. It works first on the body and de­velops a great many of those organs into control over these inner forces. It makes the body easy to be thrown into a condition which does respond to subtler vibrations, and it subjugates the body.

 

So one who practises Hatha Yoga can, with com­parative ease, obtain control over certain forces of the material universe. It wakes up the astral body, it throws the astral centres into vibration; so that there again, powers are gained of a most extraordinary character, so far as the outer world is concerned. But the powers are bad in this sense - that by beginning from below and stimula­ting these organs, the physical and astral bodies, without the corresponding action in the mind and the Spirit, the limit of action is soon reached. It is artificial stimulation instead of a natural and evolutionary one. Those organs should be stimu­lated from above and not from below, if they are to persist life after life; and by the Hatha Yoga practices they are stimulated into action from below, just as in hypnotism you begin by para­lyzing the outer senses; thus you gradually lead to atrophy and to permanent paralysis. Hatha Yoga practices, long continued, make Raja Yoga im­possible for that incarnation. That is why objec­tion is raised to them in many of the wisest of our books. That is why it is said that Raja Yoga is the thing to be sought after and why Hatha Yoga is discountenanced. It is not that no physical practices are ever needed. It is not that these psychic powers are not ultimately to be evolved; but it is that they are to be evolved as the natural result of the developing Spirit, and not as the artificially stimulated results of the body first and then of the astral form. To begin at that end means limitation to the psychic plane. To begin on the spiritual means the unifying of all planes into one. That is the essential difference between the two forms of Yoga. Raja Yoga is more diffi­cult and it is the slower, but it is certain. Its powers are carried over from birth to birth, whereas beyond the psychic plane it is not possible to pro­gress by using the purely Hatha Yoga methods.

 

And now I want to put to you one or two general statements as regards these practices, as I will now call them, that may wisely be used in daily life. You may remember in the Aitareyopanishad that after man is formed he is vitalized - if I may use a somewhat commonplace expression - by the Devas, and that then the Supreme Soul asks the question:  “How shall I enter in?” and he enters in at the place where the hairs of the head divide, that is, the Brahmarandra, the centre of the skull. He takes up three places; in the right eye, in the “inner organ”, and in the heart: three places in which he abides. These places are significant. The right eye stands for the senses; the inner organ for the brain and its mind; the heart for the inner self. And he enters into these one by one, first into the eye, that is, to the senses; then into the inner organ, that is, to the mind; then into the heart, that is, to the final dwelling place in which he resides. That is the keynote to all these triple divisions that I gave you at the beginning. Each of these belongs to one or other of these stages and conditions of which I spoke; and when we begin to practise, it is these that we take up as the stages that may be practised in the world before the Guru is found; which any one of you may begin to practise, and so make possible for your­selves the later stages when you have succeeded in mastering these. First then in seeking the Soul you will deal with the senses. You may choose some image in the mind, and concentrate upon that, until no stimulus can reach you from without.  This is the concentration of the mind within itself and withdrawal from the senses. Why should not a man practise that daily? Why should he not get into the habit of being able to withdraw the mind from working in the senses; so that it may be thrown back into itself and work only within the limits of the mind? All great men of thought do it as a matter of natural instinct. All great thinkers do it. Take the thinkers who have given to the world great literary works and read their lives, and you will find that it was a constant fact that when they were occupied with great mental problems they became oblivious of the body; that they would sit thinking, missing their meals, sitting through the whole day, sometimes the whole of the night; oblivious of every want of the body, even the want of sleep, because they had withdrawn the mind from the senses and had concentrated it within itself.

 

This is the condition of all fruitful thought, it is the condition of all fruitful meditation. Medita­tion is more than this indeed. But this is its first beginning, for you want to draw the Soul away from the senses; otherwise it keeps going outward and you want it to come inwards towards its own seat. Therefore stop the senses. Without that no further progress is possible. And then from the worldly standpoint it will be useful even; for this concentration of mind that you find advocated in old books as a preliminary stage of Yoga, is a con­dition of the most effective mental work. The man who can concentrate is the man who can conquer the intellectual world; he who can bring all his faculties to a single point becomes one­-pointed, as Patanjali has it. That is the one who is really capable of making progress intellectually. You cannot push a wide object through obstacles; you must bring it to a point and it will easily pierce through all. So it is with the mind. If the mind is scattered through the senses it is dif­fused. There is no propelling force that can send it through obstacles. Bring it to a point, and then the force behind it will push it through. Thus even in common intellectual matters concentration is the condition of success. But this carried out thoroughly brings you to the second stage, the Svapna stage, then the condition is that of the mind being fixed on the internal objects; that is, you fix the attention on concepts and ideas and not on the objects which gave rise to them. No longer on the outer body but on that which you have drawn from it into the mind; and you study the internal objects, which are the concepts, the ideas, the deductions and abstract thoughts which from the outer world you have collected. The more perfectly you can do it, the nearer you are coming to the completed Svapna stage, and when  you can do it well you have really made one stage onward in the Yogic method, for you have gained the power of bringing the soul into the internal organ, and once there further progress may be gained. The next stage, still within the limit of Svapna, is not only to withdraw the mind into itself, but to hold it there against the intrusion of thoughts which you do not desire. Suppose you have already secured it against the intrusion of outside stimuli, and the senses can no longer bring you out of this state of concentration; but perhaps thought can do it. The mind itself may not be thoroughly guarded against such intrusion. It is withdrawn from all possibility of stimulation from without. It may be so strong that a man coming up and touching you would not bring you out of the state of perfect abstraction; but still within itself it may not be equally steady, and an idea may reach it while a sensation cannot. On its own plane a thought may intrude. That is the next stage of concentration. You must be able to kill thoughts, The moment a thought comes, if it is not wanted it must fall away. First you kill it by deliberate action; that is, you reject it when it comes. But the realizing of its presence is lack of concentration. The very fact that you see it there shows that it is able to make an impression upon you. Therefore you must deliberately kill it. Therefore when the thought comes to you, you must throw it back. This will be a long process; but if you keep doing it month after month, nay, year after year, at last it will become automatic, and you will have made in the mind such a repel­lent power that you may set that power going by drawing yourself into the centre, and the thought coming from the outside and striking against it will get self-thrown back. It is like a wheel re­volving very rapidly. If it is slowly moving, any moving body that may come against it may check its revolution. If it is moving very rapidly, any moving body that comes against it will get itself flung off. And in proportion to the rapidity of the revolution will be the force of repulsion with which that body is thrown back. That becomes automatic, and just as you get beyond the stimulus of the senses, you get beyond the reach of the mind: that is, the mind becomes self-centred and the circum­ference throws off automatically everything which desires to enter. That is the position which you have now secured. There again there is the worldly advantage, for the highly concentrated mind does not wear itself out; it does not allow to enter all the thoughts which it does not require. It does not consider them. It does not allow energy to be wasted on them, and so fritter away its powers. It is kept empty as to thought when work is not required, instead of being a sort of ever busy machine, always going, and so wearing itself out. Instead of this, it is a machine under absolute control, which works or does not work exactly as the Self desires that it shall or shall not.

 

Beyond this stage no conscious progress is possi­ble without the help of a Teacher. Conscious progress, I say, but unconscious there may be, for the Teacher may be there though you know him not. But there is one way still in which progress may be made, although unrealized in a sense, with­out your knowing that any one is helping you, but that is not by knowledge. If you still desire to tread the path of knowledge you must find your Teacher. But there is something in the world which is stronger than knowledge, and that is devotion. For that is the Spirit itself; and while I have been dealing with all that which consciously you can do, there is one other thing that you can also do which will help you. And that is to open wide all the gates of the Soul, so that you no longer shut out the sun, so that the sun of Spirit may stream in and purify and enlighten, without any action of your lower self. Now devotion is the opening of the windows of the Soul. It does nothing. It is an attitude. Devotion means that you realize something which is greater than your­selves, something which is higher than yourselves, something which is sublimer than yourselves, towards which your attitude is no longer an attitude of criticism, no longer an attitude of what you call learning, no longer any attitude save that of pros­tration, throwing yourself down before it in wor­ship, and remaining silent to hear if any word may come. By that, progress is possible into the inner­most recesses of the Spirit, for devotion opens the way for the light to come in; the light is always there, we do not make it. These processes that I have been speaking about are the tearing off of sheath after sheath, so that we may consciously recognize the light. It may seem to get brighter as sheath after sheath is torn off It does not really get brighter; it is there; but we fail in the outer recognition of the light within. Devotion breaks through ail sheaths from within; and then the light streams forth; and it has nothing to do but shine. It is the quality of light to shine. It is we who obstruct it, and make its shining out impossible. And therefore it is that in the igno­rant man you will sometimes find a spiritual know­ledge that transcends the intellectual knowledge that some great genius may have obtained. He sees the heart of things. Why? Because the inner light is streaming forward and the devotion has opened the eye into which light comes, and it sees along the beam right into the recesses of the sanctuary. Not by knowledge only may be opened sheath after sheath; love too is needed, that the man may find himself, and breaking through them all, one by one, may at last open out the way to the Feet of the God. And that is possible every­where, not only in forest and jungle, if man can separate himself from the things of earth. For this no outer renunciation is necessary; it is the deeper renunciation by the Soul of all the objects of sense and of the world. It is that which Shri Krishna means when he speaks of devotion. Medi­tation means this opening out of the Soul to the Divine and letting the Divine shine in without obstruction from the personal self. Therefore it means renunciation. It means throwing away everything that one has, and waiting empty for the light to come in. It means non-attachment to the fruit of action. Everything you do, you do because you are in the world, and your duty is to perform actions. Shri Krishna said, “I am ever acting!” Why? Because if He did not the re­volving wheel would stop. So with the devotee; he should do his outer actions, because they are examples to other men; because his Karma has placed him in the world where these duties claim discharge. But it is not he who does them. Once devotion is attained, the senses move towards their appropriate objects; mind also moves towards its appropriate objects; but the devotee - he is neither the senses nor the mind. He is the Self that is recognized as Lord. And so he is always worship­ping, while the senses and the mind are busy with the external and the internal objects. That is the meaning of non-attachment. He is not attached to any of the works which his senses bring about; let them go and do their work, and do it with the utmost perfection. Let his mind also go into the outer world and do its share in the world’s work. It is not himself; he is ever worshipping at the Feet of his Lord. While he is there, external things may do their work; what power of attach­ment have they to bind him to any of their actions? But to reach that state non-attachment must be deliberately practised; you must learn to be in­different to results, provided you do your duty, leaving the outcome in the hands of the mighty forces that work in the universe, and that only ask of you to give them the outer material in which they may clothe themselves while you remain one with them. To do this you must be pure; to do this you must always have the heart fixed on the one reality. The devotee is ever within, in the heart. He is always within the shrine, and the mind and body are busy in the outer world. That is true Yoga; that is the real secret of Yoga.

 

For all that it is perfectly true that there is a stage in which knowledge once more comes in, and the devotee may learn from his Guru how to become a conscious co-worker with the spiritual forces. He may be a worker before he is conscious of it, only by means of devotion. Conscious co-working implies knowledge. It means that the Guru takes the shishya in hand and teaches him how he may more perfectly purify himself and remain utterly unsoiled by the touch of actions in which he works. While conscious co-working is joy unutterable, co-working at all makes life worth living.

 

I should not deem it worth while to keep you this morning studying a subject such as this, were it not that it seems to me that one of you here or there may possibly catch some thought of devotion which shall make the way into the inner sanctuary easier and clearer for you than it was before. I have been dealing intellectually with these sheaths of the Soul, intellectually with these regions of the universe, intellectually with these states of consciousness, intellectually with the methods by which progress may be made. I should do less than my duty here to you if I left you on the intellectual plane. Therefore I venture these words as to the essence of Yoga, no matter what the outer form may be; I venture to say to you - to some of you it will seem folly and fanaticism, but what matters that to me? – I venture to say to you that devotion is the one thing that gives security; devotion is the one thing that gives strength; devotion is the one way that opens up the road to the innermost where the Divine is manifest. Better worship igno­rantly in devotion than refuse to worship at all. Better bring a flower or leaf to some village God, as the poorest of those that come ignorantly and desire to give out of their poverty, than be some great intellectual genius that the world honours, too proud to bow before that which is higher than itself, too intellectually strong to bend its knee before the spiritual life; for Spirit is higher than intellect, as intellect is higher than the senses. Spiritual life is the highest life, and it is open to everyone, for the Spirit is the innermost core in each, and none may deny its presence in any man. Cultivate then reverence, reverence for everything which is noble; cultivate worship, worship of that  which is divine; and then when the body and the senses fail you, then when the mind breaks down and has nothing more to give you, then that eternal Spirit, which is the life of your life, the Soul of your Soul, then That shall rise stronger, because the body and the mind have perished, and going upward it shall find itself - nay, it need not go; it is there already, always - it shall find itself lying at the Lotus Feet of its God: there where there is no illusion, no separateness, no pain: there where all is bliss. For the very essence of the Divine is love and is joy, and that is the heritage of the Spirit, greater than anything that the passing world may give.

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Symbolism