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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