METHODS OF ATTAINMENT.
The subject of the methods used by the yogis for the attainment of
another order of consciousness has its physical, its mental, and its
moral sides--and doubtless other sides as well.
Beginning with the physical side, it is probable that the discounting
or repression of the physical brain--or of that part of it which is
the seat of the primary consciousness--is the most important: on the
theory that the repression of the primary consciousness opens the
way for the manifestation of any other consciousness that may be
present. Thus hypnotism lulls or fatigues the ordinary brain into a
complete torpor--so allowing the phenomena connected with the secondary
consciousness to come out into the greater prominence. It need not be
supposed that hypnotism _induces_ the secondary consciousness, but only
that it removes that other consciousness which ordinarily conceals or
hinders its expression. Some of the methods adopted by the yogis are
undoubtedly of this hypnotic character, such as the sitting or standing
for long periods absolutely fixed in one position; staring at the
sun or other object; repeating a word or phrase over and over again
for thousands of times, etc.; and the clairvoyant and other results
produced seem in many respects very similar to the results of Western
hypnotism. The yogi however by immense persistence in his practices,
and by using his own will to effect the change of consciousness,
instead of surrendering himself into the power of another person,
seems to be able to transfer his “I” or _ego_ into the new region, and
to remember on his return to ordinary consciousness what he has seen
there; whereas the hypnotic subject seems to be divided into a double
_ego_, and as a rule remembers nothing in the primary state of what
occurred to him in the secondary.
Others of the yogis adopt prolonged fasting, abstinence from sleep,
self-torture and emaciation, with the same object, namely the reduction
of the body, and apparently with somewhat similar results--though in
these cases not only insight is supposed to be gained, but added powers
over nature, arising from the intense forces of control put forth and
educed by these exercises. The fact that the _Siddhi_ or miraculous
powers can be gained in this way is so universally accepted and taken
for granted in India that (even after making all allowances) it is
difficult not to be carried away on the stream of belief. And indeed
when one considers the known powers of the will--cultivated as it is to
but a feeble degree amongst most of us--there seems to be an inherent
probability in the case. The adepts however as a rule, though entirely
agreeing that the attainment of the Siddhi powers is _possible_,
strongly condemn the quest of them by these methods--saying with great
justice that the mere fact of a quest of this kind is a breach of the
law of Indifference and Trust, and that the quest being instigated
by some desire--ambition, spiritual pride, love of gain, or what
not--necessarily ends either by stultifying itself, or by feeding the
desire, and, if some powers are gained, by the devotion of them to evil
ends.
Thus the methods that are mainly physical produce certain
results--clairvoyances and controls--which are largely physical in
their character, and are probably for the most part more or less morbid
and dangerous. They are however very widely spread among the inferior
classes of yogis all over India, and the performances which spring
from them, by exciting the fear and wonder of the populace, often
become--as in the case of mesmeric performances in the West--a source
of considerable gain to the chief actor.
There remain two other classes of methods--the mental and the moral.
Of the mental no doubt the most important is the Suppression of
Thought--and it is not unlikely that this may have, when once
understood, a far-reaching and important influence on our Western
life--over-ridden and dominated as it is by a fever of Thought
which it can by no means control. Nothing indeed strikes one more
as marking the immense contrast between the East and the West than,
after leaving Western lands where the ideal of life is to have an
almost insanely active brain and to be perpetually on the war-path
with fearful and wonderful projects and plans and purposes, to come
to India and to find its leading men--men of culture and learning and
accomplishment--deliberately passing beyond all these and addressing
themselves to the task of effacing their own thoughts, effacing
all their own projects and purposes, in order that the diviner
consciousness may enter in and occupy the room so prepared.
The effacement of projects and purposes--which comes to much the same
thing as the control of desire--belongs more properly to the _moral_
side of the question, and may be considered later on. The subjection of
Thought--which obviously is very closely connected with the subjection
of Desire--may however be considered here.
The _Gñana-yogis_ (so called, to distinguish them from the
_Karma-yogis_ who rely more upon the external and physical methods)
adopt two practices, (1) that of intense concentration of the thoughts
on a fixed object, (2) that of the effacement of thought altogether.
(1) The thoughts may be fixed on a definite object, for instance, on
one’s own breathing--the inflow and outflow of the atmosphere through
the channels of the physical body. The body must be kept perfectly
still and motionless for a long period--so that it may pass entirely
out of consciousness--and the thoughts fixed on the regulated calm
tide of respiration, to the complete exclusion of every other subject.
Or the name of an object--a flower for instance--may be repeated
incessantly--the image of the object being called up at the same
time--till at last the name and the image of the object blend and
become indistinguishable in the mind.
Such practices have their literal and their spiritual sides. If
carried out merely as formulæ, they evidently partake of a mesmeric
(self-mesmeric) character, and ultimately induce mesmeric states of
consciousness.[4] If carried out with a strong sense of their inner
meaning--the presence of the vast cosmic life in the breathing, the
endeavor to realise Brahma himself in the flower or other object
contemplated--they naturally induce a deeper sense of the universal
life and consciousness than that which belongs to the mesmeric state.
Anyhow they teach a certain power and control over the thoughts; and
it is a doctrine much insisted on by the Gurus that in life generally
the habit of the undivided concentration of the mind on that which one
is doing is of the utmost importance. The wandering of the mind, its
division and distraction, its openness to attack by brigand cares and
anxieties, its incapacity to heartily enjoy itself in its work, not
only lame and cripple and torment it in every way, but are a mark of
the want of that faith which believes in the Now as the divine moment,
and takes no thought for the Morrow. To concentrate at all times wholly
and unreservedly in what you are doing at the moment is, they say, a
distinct step in Gñánam.
[4] The Rev. H. Callaway, in a paper on “Divination among
the Natives of Natal” (_Journal of the Anthropological
Institute_, vol. i. p. 176), says that the natives, “in
order to become clairvoyant, attempt to effect intense
concentration and abstraction of the mind--an abstraction
even from their own thoughts.” And this is done by herdsmen
and chiefs alike--though of course with varying success.
(2) The next step, the effacement of Thought, is a much more difficult
one. Only when the power of concentration has been gained can this
be attempted with any prospect of success. The body must be kept,
as before, perfectly motionless, and in a quiet place free from
disturbance; not in an attitude of ease or slumber, but sitting or
standing erect with muscles tense. All will-power is required, and the
greatest vigilance. Every thought must be destroyed on the instant
of its appearance. But the enemy is subtle, and failure--over a long
period--inevitable. Then when success seems to be coming and Thought is
dwindling, Oblivion, the twin-foe, appears and must also be conquered.
For if Thought merely give place to Sleep, what is there gained? After
months, but more probably years, of intermittent practice the power of
control grows; curious but distinct physiological changes take place;
one day the student finds that Thought has gone; he stands for a moment
in Oblivion; then _that_ veil lifts, and there streams through his
being a vast and illumined consciousness, glorious, that fills and
overflows him, “surrounding him so that he is like a pot in water,
which has the liquid within it and without.” In this consciousness
there is divine knowledge but no thought. It is _Samádhi_, the
universal “I Am.”
Whatever people may think of the reality of this “Samádhi,” of the
genuineness or the universality of the consciousness obtained in it,
etc. (and these are questions which of course require examination),
it is incontestable that for centuries and centuries it has been an
object of the most strenuous endeavor to vast numbers even of the very
acutest and most capable intellects of India. Earthly joys paled before
this ecstasy; the sacred literatures are full of its praise. That
there lurks here some definite and important fact of experience is I
think obvious--though it is quite probable that it is not yet really
understood, either by the East that discovered it or the West that has
criticised it.
Leaving however for the present the consideration of this ultimate and
transcendent result of the effacement of Thought, and freely admitting
that the Eastern devotees have in the ardor of their pursuit of it
been often led into mere absurdities and excesses--that they have in
some cases practically mutilated their thinking powers--that they have
refrained from speech for such prolonged years that at last not only
the tongue but the brain itself refused to act--that they have in
instances reduced themselves to the condition of idiots and babbling
children, and rendered themselves incapable of carrying on any kind of
work ordinarily called useful--admitting all this, it still remains
true I think that even in its lower aspects this doctrine is of vast
import to-day in the West.
For we moderns, while we have dominated Nature and external results in
the most extraordinary way through our mechanical and other sciences,
have just neglected this other field of mastery over our own internal
mechanism. We pride ourselves on our athletic feats, but some of
the performances of the Indian fakirs in the way of mastery over
the _internal_ processes of the body--processes which in ordinary
cases have long ago lapsed into the region of the involuntary and
unconscious--such as holding the breath over enormous periods, or
reversing the peristaltic action of the alimentary canal throughout its
entire length--are so astonishing that for the most part the report of
them only excites incredulity among us, and we can hardly believe--what
I take it is a fact--that these physiological powers have been
practised till they are almost reduced to a science.
And if we are unwilling to believe in this internal mastery over the
body, we are perhaps almost equally unaccustomed to the idea of mastery
over our own inner thoughts and feelings. That a man should be a prey
to any thought that chances to take possession of his mind is commonly
among us assumed as unavoidable. It may be a matter of regret that
he should be kept awake all night from anxiety as to the issue of a
lawsuit on the morrow, but that he should have the power of determining
whether he be kept awake or not seems an extravagant demand. The image
of an impending calamity is no doubt odious, but its very odiousness
(we say) makes it haunt the mind all the more pertinaciously--and it is
useless to try to expel it.
Yet this is an absurd position--for man, the heir of all the ages, to
be in: hag-ridden by the flimsy creatures of his own brain. If a pebble
in our boot torments us we expel it. We take off the boot and shake
it out. And once the matter is fairly understood it is just as easy
to expel an intruding and obnoxious thought from the mind. About this
there ought to be no mistake, no two opinions. The thing is obvious,
clear, and unmistakable. It should be as easy to expel an obnoxious
thought from your mind as to shake a stone out of your shoe; and till a
man can do that, it is just nonsense to talk about his ascendancy over
Nature, and all the rest of it. He is a mere slave, and a prey to the
bat-winged phantoms that flit through the corridors of his own brain.
Yet the weary and careworn faces that we meet by thousands, even among
the affluent classes of civilisation, testify only too clearly how
seldom this mastery is obtained. How rare indeed to meet a _man_! How
common rather to discover a creature hounded on by tyrant thoughts
(or cares or desires), cowering wincing under the lash--or perchance
priding himself to run merrily in obedience to a driver that rattles
the reins and persuades him that he is free--whom we cannot converse
with in careless _tête-à-tête_ because that alien presence is always
there, on the watch.
It is one of the most prominent doctrines of the Gñánis that the power
of expelling thoughts, or if need be of killing them dead on the spot,
_must_ be attained. Naturally the art requires practice; but like
other arts, when once acquired there is no more mystery or difficulty
about it. And it is worth practice. It may indeed fairly be said that
life only begins when this art has been acquired. For obviously when
instead of being ruled by individual thoughts, the whole flock of them
in their immense multitude and variety and capacity is ours to direct
and despatch and employ where we list (“for He maketh the winds his
messengers and the flaming fire his minister”), life becomes a thing
so vast and grand compared with what it was before that its former
condition may well appear almost antenatal.
If you can kill a thought dead, for the time being, you can do anything
else with it that you please. And therefore it is that this power is
so valuable. And it not only frees a man from mental torment (which
is nine-tenths at least of the torment of life), but it gives him a
concentred power of handling mental work absolutely unknown to him
before. The two things are correlative to each other. As already said
this is one of the principles of Gñánam. While at work your thought is
to be absolutely concentrated in it, undistracted by anything whatever
irrelevant to the matter in hand--pounding away like a great engine,
with giant power and perfect economy--no wear and tear of friction, or
dislocation of parts owing to the working of different forces at the
same time. Then when the work is finished, if there is no more occasion
for the use of the machine, it must stop equally absolutely--stop
entirely--no _worrying_ (as if a parcel of boys were allowed to play
their devilments with a locomotive as soon as it was in the shed)--and
the man must retire into that region of his consciousness where his
true self dwells.
I say the power of the thought-machine itself is enormously increased
by this faculty of letting it alone on the one hand and of using it
singly and with concentration on the other. It becomes a true tool,
which a master-workman lays down when done with, but which only a
bungler carries about with him all the time to show that he is the
possessor of it.
Then on and beyond the work turned out by the tool itself is the
knowledge that comes to us apart from its use: when the noise of the
workshop is over, and mallet and plane laid aside--the faint sounds
coming through the open window from the valley and the far seashore:
the dim fringe of diviner knowledge, which begins to grow, poor
thing, as soon as the eternal click-clack of thought is over--the
extraordinary intuitions, perceptions, which, though partaking in some
degree of the character of thought, spring from entirely different
conditions, and are the forerunners of a changed consciousness.
At first they appear miraculous, but it is not so. They are not
miraculous, for they are always there. (The stars are always there.) It
is we who are miraculous in our inattention to them. In the systemic
or secondary or cosmic consciousness of man (I daresay all these
ought to be distinguished, but I lump them together for the present)
lurk the most minute and varied and far-reaching intuitions and
perceptions--some of them in their swiftness and subtlety outreaching
even those of the primary consciousness--but to them we do not attend
because Thought like a pied piper is ever capering and fiddling in
front of us. And when Thought is gone, lo! we are asleep. To open your
eyes in that region which is neither Night nor Day is to behold strange
and wonderful things.
* * * * *
As already said the subjection of Thought is closely related to the
subjection of Desire, and has consequently its specially moral as
well as its specially intellectual relation to the question in hand.
Nine-tenths of the scattered or sporadic thought with which the mind
usually occupies itself when not concentrated on any definite work
is what may be called self-thought--thought of a kind which dwells
on and exaggerates the sense of self. This is hardly realised in its
full degree till the effort is made to suppress it; and one of the
most excellent results of such an effort is that with the stilling of
all the phantoms which hover round the lower self, one’s relations to
others, to one’s friends, to the world at large, and one’s perception
of all that is concerned in these relations come out into a purity and
distinctness unknown before. Obviously while the mind is full of the
little desires and fears which concern the local self, and is clouded
over by the thought-images which such desires and fears evoke, it is
impossible that it should see and understand the greater facts beyond
and its own relation to them. But with the subsiding of the former the
great Vision begins to dawn; and a man never feels less alone than when
he has ceased to think whether he is alone or not.
It is in this respect that the subjection of desire is really
important. There is no necessity to suppose that desire, in itself, is
an evil; indeed it is quite conceivable that it may fall into place
as a useful and important element of human nature--though certainly
one whose importance will be found to dwindle and gradually disappear
as time goes on. The trouble for us is, in our present state, that
desire is liable to grow to such dimensions as to overcloud the world
for us, emprison, and shut us out from inestimable Freedom beneath
its sway. Under such circumstances it evidently is a nuisance and has
to be dominated. No doubt certain sections of the Indian and other
ascetic philosophies have taught the absolute extinction of desire, but
we may fairly regard these as cases--so common in the history of all
traditional teaching--of undue prominence given to a special detail,
and of the exaltation of the letter of the doctrine above the spirit.
The moral element (at which we have now arrived) in the attainment of
a higher order of consciousness is of course recognised by all the
great Indian teachers as of the first importance. The sacred books,
the sermons of Buddha, the discourses of the present-day Gurus, all
point in the same direction. Gentleness, forbearance towards all,
abstention from giving pain, especially to the animals, the recognition
of the divine spirit in every creature down to the lowest, the most
absolute sense of equality and the most absolute candor, an undisturbed
serene mind, free from anger, fear, or any excessive and tormenting
desire--these are all insisted on.
Thus, though physical and mental conditions are held--and rightly--to
be important, the moral conditions are held to be at least equally
important. Nevertheless, in order to guard against misconception which
in so complex a subject may easily arise, it is necessary to state
here--what I have hinted before--that different sections and schools
among the devotees place a very different respective value upon the
three sets of conditions--some making more of the physical, others of
the mental, and others again of the moral--and that as may be easily
guessed the results attained by the various schools differ considerably
in consequence.
The higher esoteric teachers naturally lay the greatest stress on the
moral, but any account of their methods would be defective which passed
over or blinked the fact that they go _beyond_ the moral--because this
fact is in some sense of the essence of the Oriental inner teaching.
Morality, it is well understood, involves the conception of one’s self
as distinct from others, as distinct from the world, and presupposes
a certain antagonism between one’s own interests and those of one’s
fellows. One “sacrifices” one’s own interests to those of another, or
“goes out of one’s way” to help him. All such ideas must be entirely
left behind, if one is to reach the central illumination. They spring
from ignorance and are the products of darkness. On no word did the
“Grammarian” insist more strongly than on the word Non-differentiation.
You are not even to differentiate yourself in thought from others; you
are not to begin to regard yourself as separate from them. Even to talk
about helping others is a mistake; it is vitiated by the delusion that
you and they are twain. So closely does the subtle Hindu mind go to the
mark! What would our bald commercial philanthropy, our sleek æsthetic
altruism, our scientific isophily, say to such teaching? All the little
self-satisfactions which arise from the sense of duty performed, all
the cheese-parings of equity between oneself and others, all the tiny
wonderments whether you are better or worse than your neighbor, have
to be abandoned; and you have to learn to live in a world in which the
chief fact is _not_ that you are distinct from others, but that you are
a part of and integral with them. This involves indeed a return to the
communal order of society, and difficult as this teaching is for us
in this day to realise, yet there is no doubt that it must lie at the
heart of the Democracy of the future, as it has lain, germinal, all
these centuries in the hidden womb of the East.
Nor from Nature. You are not to differentiate yourself from Nature. We
have seen that the Guru Tilleináthan spoke of the operations of the
external world as “I,” having dismissed the sense of difference between
himself and them. It is only under these, and such conditions as these,
that the little mortal creature gradually becomes aware of What he is.
This non-differentiation is the final deliverance. When it enters in
the whole burden of absurd cares, anxieties, duties, motives, desires,
fears, plans, purposes, preferences, etc., rolls off and lies like mere
lumber on the ground. The winged spirit is free, and takes its flight.
It passes through the veil of mortality and leaves that behind. Though
I say this non-differentiation is the final deliverance (from the bonds
of illusion) I do not say it is the final experience. Rather I should
be inclined to think it is only the beginning of many experiences.
As, in the history of man and the higher animals, the consciousness
of self--the local self--has been the basis of an enormous mass of
perceptions, intuitions, joys, sufferings, etc., incalculable and
indescribable in multitudinousness and variety, so in the history of
man and the angels will the consciousness of the cosmic and universal
life--the true self underlying--become the basis of another and far
vaster knowledge.
There is one respect in which the specially Eastern teaching commonly
appears to us Westerners--and on the whole I am inclined to think
justly--defective; and that is in its little insistence on the idea
of Love. While, as already said, a certain gentleness and forbearance
and passive charity is a decided feature of Indian teaching and life,
one cannot help noting the absence--or less prominence at any rate--of
that positive spirit of love and human helpfulness which in some
sections of Western society might almost be called a devouring passion.
Though with plentiful exceptions no doubt, yet there is a certain
quiescence and self-inclusion and absorbedness in the Hindu ideal,
which amounts almost to coldness; and this is the more curious because
Hindu society--till within the last few years at any rate--has been
based upon the most absolutely communal foundation. But perhaps this
fact of the communal structure of society in India is just the reason
why the social sentiment does not seek impetuously for expression
there; while in Europe, where existing institutions are a perpetual
denial of it, its expression becomes all the more determined and
necessary. However that may be, I think the fact may be admitted of a
difference between the East and the West in this respect. Of course
I am not speaking of those few who may attain to the consciousness
of non-differentiation--because in their case the word love must
necessarily change its meaning; nor am I speaking of the specially
individual and sexual and amatory love, in which there is no reason
to suppose the Hindus deficient; but I am rather alluding to the fact
that in the West we are in the habit of looking on devotion to other
humans (widening out into the social passion) as the most natural way
of losing one’s self-limitations and passing into a larger sphere of
life and consciousness; while in the East this method is little thought
of or largely neglected, in favor of the concentration of one’s self in
the divine, and mergence in the universal in that way.
I think this contrast--taking it quite roughly--may certainly be
said to exist. The Indian teachers, the sacred books, the existing
instruction, centre consciously or unconsciously round the development
of Will-power. By will to surrender the will; by determination and
concentration to press inward and upward to that portion of one’s
being which belongs to the universal, to conquer the body, to conquer
the thoughts, to conquer the passions and emotions; always will,
and will-power. And here again we have a paradox, because in their
quiescent, gentle, and rather passive external life--so different from
the push and dominating energy of the Western nations--there is little
to make one expect such force. But while modern Europe and America
has spent its Will in the mastery of the external world, India has
reserved hers for the conquest of inner and spiritual kingdoms. In
their hypnotic phenomena too, the yogis exhibit the force of will, and
this differentiates their hypnotism from that of the West--in which
the patient is operated upon by another person. In the latter there
is a danger of loss of will-power, but in the former (auto-hypnotism)
will-power is no doubt gained, while at the same time hypnotic states
are induced. Suggestion, which is such a powerful agent in hypnotism,
acts here too, and helps to knit the body together, pervading it with
a healing influence, and bringing the lower self under the direct
domination of the higher; and in this respect the Guru to some extent
stands in the place of the operator, while the yogi is his subject.
Thus in the East the Will constitutes the great path; but in the West
the path has been more specially through Love--and probably will be.
The great teachers of the West--Plato, Jesus, Paul--have indicated this
method rather than that of the ascetic will; though of course there
have not been wanting exponents of both sides. The one method means
the gradual dwindling of the local and external self through inner
concentration and aspiration, the other means the enlargement of the
said self through affectional growth and nourishment, till at last it
can contain itself no longer. The bursting of the sac takes place; the
life is poured out, and ceasing to be local becomes universal. Of this
method Whitman forms a signal instance. He is egotistic enough in all
conscience; yet at last through his immense human sympathy, and through
the very enlargement of his _ego_ thus taking place, the barriers break
down and he passes out and away.
“O Christ! This is mastering me!
In at the conquered doors they crowd. I am possessed.
* * * * *
I embody all presences outlawed or suffering;
See myself in prison shaped like another man,
And feel the dull unintermitted pain.
* * * * *
Enough! enough! enough!
Somehow I have been stunned. Stand back!
Give me a little time beyond my cuffed head, slumbers, dreams,
gaping;
I discover myself on the verge of a usual mistake.
That I could forget the mockers and insults!
That I could forget the trickling tears, and the blows of bludgeons
and hammers!
That I could look with a separate look on my own crucifixion and
bloody crowning.”
But such expressions as these--in which the passion of humanity wraps
the speaker into another sphere of existence--are _not_ characteristic
of the East, and are not found in the Indian scriptures. When its time
comes the West will probably adopt this method of the liberation of the
human soul--through love--rather than the specially Indian method--of
the Will; though doubtless both have to be, and will be in the future,
to a large extent concurrently used. Different races and peoples
incline according to their idiosyncrasies to different ways; each
individual even--as is quite recognised by the present-day Gurus--has
his special line of approach to the supreme facts. It is possible
that when the Western races once realise what lies beneath this great
instinct of humanity, which seems in some ways to be their special
inspiration, they will outstrip even the Hindus in their entrance to
and occupation of the new fields of consciousness.