Patanjali's Yoga Sutras -Book 3 - Rama Prasad

Continuing a basic summary of the four books of  Patanjali's Yoga Sutras, by Rama Prasad, with some suggestive observations of an esoteric nature, from the introduction to his translation: Patanjalis Yoga Sutras with the Commentary of Vyasa and the Gloss of Vachaspati Misra (1912). See   Part 1

 The Third Chapter gives a description of this Antarangayoga. The Dharana, Dhyana and Samadhi are collectively called Samyama.

When the stage of catalepsy is reached, the Yogi fixes his mind on any particular portion of his body. This holding the mind in a particular part is Dharana or concentration. 

The continuation of the mental effort to keep the mind there Dhyana or meditation.

This meditation (Dhyana) turns into Samadhi or contemplation when the Self is lost as if it were, the object of meditation done remains in the mind and shines out alone. 

This Samyama-concentration, meditation and contemplative trance- is the great instrument of acquiring all knowledge of supersensuous verities. It is the strong searchlight of the mind which turned on any object, reveals its inmost core. It is the great light of wisdom-Prajnaloka. 

This Samyama must be applied to plane after plane of nature, physical, astral, mental, &c . One cannot jump to a higher plane, leaving an intermediate plane---the progress is gradual. 

The Yogi who has mastered Samyama as regards a higher plane  should not desecrate this faculty by employing it in lower planes. He who by Samyama has learnt communion with God, should not waste his faculty in thought-reading, clairvoyance, bringing messages from the dead to the living or vice versa. He should not squander his energy in hunting up the past records in the astral light, nor the shadows of  the future in the Brahmic Idea. 

What is the state of mind in Samadhi and Nirodha? Is it a state of perfect quiescence of the mental body? As regards the mental body it is a state of perfect stillness so far as the vehicle is concerned, but it is a state of great molecular motion in the mental body itself. The molecules of the mental body are thrown in a very high state of vibration, though the body in all appearance is in perfect calm. This vibration of the molecules of the mental body, becomes by practice, rhythmic and this rhythmic flow is the mental peace of Samadhi. The swing of the vibration lies between one-pointedness and all-pointedness-- between the contraction to a point and expansion to embrace a whole universe. That which appears to be the stillness of Samadhi is perhaps the highest activity possible. Even what is called one-pointedness is itself a state of utmost activity. When the mind is one-pointed it does not mean that one idea is indelibly impressed on the mind like an engraving on a stone, but that the mind is working so quickly that the image of one is formed in no time as it were, destroyed in no time as it were, and formed again. This quick succession of the same form is one-pointedness. In ordinary states one idea is followed by another idea. In one-pointedness the same idea vanishes and re-appears again and again. Thus what is called fixing the mind to a thought is really making the mind reproduce one thought over and over again, in the utmost quickness of succession, without the intrusion of any foreign thought. 

The Third Chapter then gives a list of psychic powers and how to acquire them by applying Samyama. The power of knowing the past, present add future is by making Samyana on three-fold modifications which all objects are constantly undergoing (III. 13). Methods are laid down as how to acquire the memory of past births, how to read the thoughts of others, how to disappear from sight, how to get  strength, how to see through closed door, how to know the solar system and astronomy, &c. These methods have a meaning only for him who knows the practice of Samyama. Without that no amount of thinking on the solar plexus will give one knowledge of internal anatomy, &c. 

Book 4 

Blavatsky on Humanity's Innate Spiritual Impulse

The concluding two pages of the first chapter of Isis Unveiled, vol. 1, (pp. 37-38) ably summarizes the basic spiritual challenges that society was faced with at the time, especially in regards to religion, science, and spiritualism. Things have changed in many ways since then, but many aspects remain relevant. One interesting reflection she presents, especially in regards to today’s widespread atheism and materialism, is how powerful the inherent need for spirituality is, which explains why it often expresses itself in very strange ways. It is a compelling discussion of the basic questioning of human mortality and the existence of a transcendent dimension free from superstition.

It is possible. Thirty years ago, when the first rappings of Rochester awakened slumbering attention to the reality of an invisible world; when the gentle shower of raps gradually became a torrent which overflowed the whole globe, spiritualists had to contend but against two potencies — theology and science. But the theosophists have, in addition to these, to meet the world at large and the spiritualists first of all.

"There is a personal God, and there is a personal Devil!" thunders the Christian preacher. "Let him be anathema who dares say nay!" "There is no personal God, except the gray matter in our brain," contemptuously replies the materialist. "And there is no Devil. Let him be considered thrice an idiot who says aye." Meanwhile the occultists and true philosophers heed neither of the two combatants, but keep perseveringly at their work. None of them believe in the absurd, passionate, and fickle God of superstition, but all of them believe in good and evil. 

Our human reason, the emanation of our finite mind, is certainly incapable of comprehending a divine intelligence, an endless and infinite entity; and, according to strict logic, that which transcends our understanding and would remain thoroughly incomprehensible to our senses cannot exist for us; hence, it does not exist. So far finite reason agrees with science, and says: "There is no God."  

But, on the other hand, our Ego, that which lives and thinks and feels independently of us in our mortal casket, does more than believe. It knows that there exists a God in nature, for the sole and invincible Artificer of all lives in us as we live in Him. No dogmatic faith or exact science is able to uproot that intuitional feeling inherent in man, when he has once fully realized it in himself.

Human nature is like universal nature in its abhorrence of a vacuum. It feels an intuitional yearning for a Supreme Power. Without a God, the cosmos would seem to it but like a soulless corpse. Being forbidden to search for Him where alone His traces would be found, man filled the aching void with the personal God whom his spiritual teachers built up for him from the crumbling ruins of heathen myths and hoary philosophies of old. How otherwise explain the mushroom growth of new sects, some of them absurd beyond degree? Mankind have one innate, irrepressible craving, that must be satisfied in any religion that would supplant the dogmatic, undemonstrated and undemonstrable theology of our Christian ages. This is the yearning after the proofs of immortality.  

As Sir Thomas Browne has expressed it: . . . . "it is the heaviest stone that melancholy can throw at a man, to tell him that he is at the end of his nature, or that there is no future state to come, unto which this seems progressive, and otherwise made in vain." Let any religion offer itself that can supply these proofs in the shape of scientific facts, and the established system will be driven to the alternative of fortifying its dogmas with such facts, or of passing out of the reverence and affection of Christendom. 

Many a Christian divine has been forced to acknowledge that there is no authentic source whence the assurance of a future state could have been derived by man. How could then such a belief have stood for countless ages, were it not that among all nations, whether civilized or savage, man has been allowed the demonstrative proof? Is not the very existence of such a belief an evidence that thinking philosopher and unreasoning savage have both been compelled to acknowledge the testimony of their senses? That if, in isolated instances, spectral illusion may have resulted from physical causes, on the other hand, in thousands of instances, apparitions of persons have held converse with several individuals at once, who saw and heard them collectively, and could not all have been diseased in mind?

William Law on Humility

Be humble, if thou would'st attain to Wisdom.

Be humbler still, when Wisdom thou hast mastered

(H. P. Blavatsky, The Voice of the Silence, 2, 161-162)

William Law (1686 –  1761) was an Anglican priest who left the priesthood because he was too much of a lover of free, open, honest inquiry. Around 1735, he discovered the works of the great Christian Theosophist Jacob Boehme and spent the rest of his life exploring aspects of this type of mysticism, including an 1855 work entitled An Introduction to Theosophy.  Aldous Huxley,  in  'The Perennial Philosophy' (1946) quotes Law generously when using Christian examples in his themes of comparative religion.

For the fuller of pride any one is himself, the more impatient will he be at the smallest instances of it in other people. And the less humility any one has in his own mind, the more will he demand and be delighted with it in other people.

You must therefore act by a quite contrary measure, and reckon yourself only so far humble, as you impose every instance of humility upon yourself, and never call for it in other people, so far an enemy to pride, as you never spare it in yourself, nor ever censure it in other persons.

Now, in order to do this, you need only consider that pride and humility signify nothing to you, but so far as they are your own; that they do you neither good nor harm, but as they are the tempers of your own heart.

The loving, therefore, of humility, is of no benefit or advantage to you, but so far as you love to see all your own thoughts, words, and actions, governed by it. And the hating of pride does you no good, is no perfection in you, but so far as you hate to harbour any degree of it in your own heart.

Now in order to begin, and set out well, in the practice of humility, you must take it for granted that you are proud, that you have all your life been more or less infected with this unreasonable temper.

You should believe also, that it is your greatest weakness, that your heart is most subject to it, that it is so constantly stealing upon you, that you have reason to watch and suspect its approaches in all your actions.

For this is what most people, especially new beginners in a pious life, may with great truth think of themselves.

For there is no one vice that is more deeply rooted in our nature, or that receives such constant nourishment from almost everything that we think or do: there being hardly anything in the world that we want or use, or any action or duty of life, but pride finds some means or other to take hold of it. So that at what time soever we begin to offer ourselves to God, we can hardly be surer of anything, than that we have a great deal of pride to repent of.

If, therefore, you find it disagreeable to your mind to entertain this opinion of yourself, and that you cannot put yourself amongst those that want to be cured of pride, you may be as sure as if an angel from heaven had told you, that you have not only much, but all your humility to seek.

For you can have no greater sign of a more confirmed pride, than when you think that you are humble enough. He that thinks he loves God enough, shows himself to be an entire stranger to that holy passion; so he that thinks he has humility enough, shows that he is not so much as a beginner in the practice of true humility. 

(Law, William. A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life, 1729, Ch. 16)

Mohini Chatterji on Karma – Sowing and Reaping 2

From May to September 1886, an intriguing short story by Mohini Chatterji ran in the Theosophist, entitled Sowing and Reaping. It is a fascinating story about karma and reincarnation in the east and the west, and contains certain recondite passages involving the teachings of a spiritual guide to a student, sometimes of an esoteric nature, some extracts which will be featured in a short series of posts.

“My son,” replied the mystic “our acts and thoughts are natural forces, which, when once set in motion, must work to the last turn of the wheel of causation. If you shoot an arrow at your friend thinking him to be a robber, can you recall the shaft when the mistake is discovered? The caused you have generated will produce their appropriate effects, however much you may dislike them. The wisest thing therefore is to bear with patience and dispassion the Protean manifestation of your past karma, and carefully guard against ignorantly falling into the vortex of delusive life. Look upon your life as service done to the earth herself, and resign all selfish interest in it. This is true renunciation. Know yourself to be the infinite spirit of Nature, and your conscious life as the work of Nature herself. You are merely the spectator.  

This union with the all is the supremest happiness which rises from the ashes of sins and sorrows burnt by the fire of wisdom and universal love. So long as you are dependent on conditions your liberation is far away. For conditions will change and you will suffer. To master all conditions, so as not to oppose your scheme of personal enjoyment, is an impossibility. The supreme happiness never comes to the man, who seeks to produce a change in the infinity of conditions so as not to cause him pain.The eternal infinity cannot change, but your finite desires and tendencies can. Secure then the crown and glory of life by changing your finite self towards the infinite spirit which is the inmost self of Hugh St. Clair, now before me.”

“ Master ” I said, " your words are wise and may they rest in my heart! ’ But deign to explain the working of the causes which force me back into the world while my heart would feign fly

The venerated Brahman with a smile, whose crystalline radiance seemed to light up my soul with the silver glow of peace, repeated the Sanskrit verses—

Vaneshu doshan prabhavanti raginain.

Griheshu panchen driya migrahas tapas,

A Kutsite Karmaniya pravarté,

Nivritta rásgasya grihan tapovanam” (1)

Even in the forest,” he said resuming the conversation in English, “the passions of the passionate grow powerful. The subjugation of the five senses in the house is asceticism. For the dispassionate, who engage in blameless karma, the house is even as the forest-hermitage (translation of the Sanskrit verses). My son, to those, whose souls have by devotion to the spirit within reached the supreme tranquility, differences in the conditions of life are of no consequence. Who would cast a glance at the shape of the cup, ugly or beautiful, if it holds the ambrosia that gives immortality ? The supreme spirit is everywhere and in you, then why should you desire one thing more than another? If by devotion you can unite your soul to the inner spirit, all conditions of life will be the same to you, for your heart has reached its supreme fruition, you have but dimly seen the inner light in moments of the highest exaltation of your nature. You cannot feel that your soul is your own wherever you may be and whatever you may do. Your heart is faint and your devotion is weak.

Your karma places you in a sphere of life where alone will come to you the lesson you have to learn and the sacrifice you have to make to add wings to devotion. Look then with gratitude upon your karma which gives you exactly what you need. Murmur not that it should be so.”

“I do not complain, father,” I replied, “but I feel as if my self-identity is passing away. With all the yearnings of my soul I had looked forward to the serener life, which comes to those who have left behind the sorrows and joys of the world. This desire for me had been the last thing to die in the unconsciousness of sleep, and the first to awake with returning life of the day.

“ My son ” continued the Brahman after a pause, it is your karma to be a householder and you cannot cheat nature by seeking a shorter route to the goal. The path of the law is even as the edge of the razor. Fulfil the law. Remember the great sage Janaka was a king among men and yet one of the greatest among the wise men of the earth. This life of ours is the offspring of our prior deeds, which must produce their legitimate consequences. Do your duty cheerfully and without regard to your personality, the day of redemption will come. Your fate is no worse than that of the youth whose body lies in yonder cave temple, but whose exiled soul is fulfilling its destiny. Together you were bound in sin and together shall redemption light upon you. Enough. Mine will not be the hand to draw aside the veil from the mysterious face of karma Time will elucidate all. Take my blessings and this parting advice:- Do thy duty unselfishly and yet preserve thy personality disentangled from work. Let thy acts not forge fresh links in karmic chain, but let them pass over thee as water passes over the lotus-leaf, without wetting it. Fresh karma will lead to a continuance of material life with all its grief-embroidered joys.”

(Chapt. 5, The Theosophist, July, 1886, pp. 647-648)

(1) See Mahabharata [Sec. CXCIX, Vana Parva]

Part 3