The Literature of Yoga
Unfortunately for non-Sanskrit-knowing people, the literature of
Yoga is not largely available in English. The general teachings of
Yoga are to be found in the Upanishads, and the Bhagavad-Gita; those,
in many translations, are within your reach, but they are general, not
special; they give you the main principles, but do not tell you about
the methods in any detailed way. Even in the Bhagavad-Gita, while you
are told to make sacrifices, to become indifferent, and so on, it is
all of the nature of moral precept, absolutely necessary indeed, but
still not telling you how to reach the conditions put before you. The
special literature of Yoga is, first of all, many of the minor
Upanishads, "the hundred-and-eight" as they are called. Then comes the
enormous mass of literature called the Tantras. These books have an
evil significance in the ordinary English ear, but not quite rightly.
The Tantras are very useful books, very valuable and instructive; all
occult science is to be found in them. But they are divisible into
three classes: those that deal with white magic, those that deal with
black magic, and those that deal with what we may call grey magic, a
mixture of the two. Now magic is the word which covers the methods of
deliberately bringing about super-normal physical states by the action
of the will.
A high tension of the nerves, brought on by anxiety or disease,
leads to ordinary hysteria, emotional and foolish. A similarly high
tension, brought about by the will, renders a man sensitive to
super-physical vibrations Going to sleep has no significance, but
going into Samadhi is a priceless power. The process is largely the
same, but one is due to ordinary conditions, the other to the action
of the trained will. The Yogi is the man who has learned the power of
the will, and knows how to use it to bring about foreseen and
foredetermined results. This knowledge has ever been called magic; it
is the name of the Great Science of the past, the one Science, to
which only the word " great " was given in the past. The Tantras
contain the whole of that; the occult side of man and nature, the
means whereby discoveries may be made, the principles whereby the man
may re-create himself, all these are in the Tantras. The difficulty is
that without a teacher they are very dangerous, and again and again a
man trying to practice the Tantric methods without a teacher makes
himself very ill. So the Tantras have got a bad name both in the West
and here in India. A good many of the American " occult " books now
sold are scraps of the Tantras which have been translated. One
difficulty is that these Tantric works often use the name of a bodily
organ to represent an astral or mental centre. There is some reason in
that because all the centres are connected with each other from body
to body; but no reliable teacher would set his pupil to work on the
bodily organs until he had some control over the higher centres, and
had carefully purified the physical body. Knowing the one helps you to
know the other, and the teacher who has been through it all can place
his pupil on the right path; but it you take up these words, which are
all physical, and do not know to what the physical word is applied,
then you will only become very confused, and may injure yourself. For
instance, in one of the Sutras it is said that if you meditate on a
certain part of the tongue you will obtain astral sight. That means
that if you meditate on the pituitary body, just over this part of the
tongue, astral sight will be opened. The particular word used to refer
to a centre has a correspondence in the physical body, and the word is
often applied to the physical organs when the other is meant. This is
what is called a " blind," and it is intended to keep the people away
from dangerous practices in the books that are published; people may
meditate on that part of their tongues all their lives without
anything coming of it; but if they think upon the corresponding centre
in the body, a good dealÄmuch harmÄmay come of it. " Meditate on the
navel," it is also said. This means the solar plexus, for there is a
close connection between the two. But to meditate on that is to incur
the danger of a serious nervous disorder, almost impossible to cure.
All who know how many people in India suffer through these practices,
ill-understood, recognize that it is not wise to plunge into them
without some one to tell you what they mean, and what may be safely
practiced and what not. The other part of the Yoga literature is a
small book called the sutras of Patanjali. That is available, but I am
afraid that few are able to make much of it by themselves. In the
first place, to elucidate the Sutras, which are simply headings, there
is a great deal of commentary in Sanskrit, only partially translated.
And even the commentaries have this peculiarity, that all the most
difficult words are merely repeated, not explained, so that the
student is not much enlightened.
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