"He who is engaged in the performance of Yoga, who has subdued his senses and who has concentrated his mind in me (Krishna), such Yogis all the Siddhis stand ready to serve."
2The "Soundless Voice", or the "Voice of the Silence." Literally perhaps this would read "Voice in the Spiritual Sound," as Nada is the equivalent word in Sanskrit for the Senzar term.
3Dharana is the intense and perfect concentration of the mind upon some one interior object, accompanied by complete abstraction from everything pertaining to the external Universe, or the world of the senses.
the senses, the Thought-Producer, he who awakes illusion.
When he has ceased to hear the many, he may discern the ONE - the inner sound which kills the outer.
Before the Soul can hear, the image (man) has to become as deaf to roarings as to whispers, to cries of bellowing elephants as the silvery buzzing of the golden fire-fly.
If thy Soul smiles while bathing in the Sunlight of thy Life; if thy Soul sings within her chrysalis of flesh and matter; if thy Soul weeps inside her castle of illusion; if thy Soul struggles to break the silver thread that binds her to the MASTER;1 know, O Disciple thy Soul is of the earth.
1The "great Master" is the term used by Lanoos or Chelas to indicate the HIGHER SELF. It is the equivalent of Avalokitesvara, and the same as Adi-Budha with the Buddhist Occultists. ATMA the "Self" (the Higher Self) with the Brahmans, and CHRISTOS with the ancient Gnostics.
Soul1 lends ear; when to the roaring voice of the Great Illusion2 thy Soul responds; when frightened at the sight of the hot tears of pain; when defeated by the cries of distress, thy Soul withdraws like the shy turtle within the carapace of SELFHOOD, learn, O Disciple, of her Silent "God" thy Soul is an unworthy shrine.
1Soul is used here for the Human Ego or Manas, that which is referred to in our Occult septenary division as the "Human Soul" in contradistinction to the Sprititual and Animal Souls.
2Maha-Maya, "Great Illusion," the objective Universe.
4Attavada, the heresy of the belief in Soul or rather in the separateness of Soul or Self from the One Universal, Infinite SELF.
dismal entrance leading to the twilight that precedes the valley of true light - that light which no wind can extinguish, that light which burns without a wick or fuel.
Saith the Great Law: "In order to become the KNOWER of ALL SELF,1 thou hast first of SELF to be the knower". To reach the knowledge of that SELF, thou hast to give up SELF to Non-Self, Being to Non-Being, and then thou canst respose between the wings of the GREAT BIRD. Aye, sweet is rest between the wings of that which is not born, nor dies, but is the AUM2 throughout eternal3 ages.
1The Tattvajnyani is the "knower" or discriminator of the principles in nature and in man; and Atmajnyani is the knower of ATMA, or the Universal ONE SELF.
2Kala Hansa, the "Bird" or Swan. Says the Nadavindu Upanishad (Rig Veda) translated by the Kumbakonam Theosophical Society - "The syllable A is considered to be its (the bird 'Hansa's) right wing, U, its left, M its tail, and the Ardha-matra (half metre) is said to be its head."
3Eternity with the Orientals has quite another signification than it has with us. It stands generally for the 100 years or "age" of Brahma, the duration of a Maha-Kalpa or a period of 311,040,000,000,000 years.
4Says the same Nadavindu, "A Yogi who bestrides the Hansa (thus contemplates on AUM) is not affected by Karmic influences or crores of sins."
Three Halls, O weary Pilgrim lead to the end of toils. Three Halls, O conqueror of Mara, will bring thee through three states2 into the fourth,3 and thence into the seven Worlds,4 the Worlds of Rest Eternal.
1Give up the life of physical personality if you would live in spirit.
3The Turiya, that, beyond the dreamless state, the one above all, a state of high spiritual consciousness.
4Some Oriental Mystics locate seven planes of being, the seven spiritual lokas or worlds within the body of Kala Hansa, the Swan out of Time and Space, convertible into the Swan in Time, when it becomes Brahma instead of Brahman.
5The phenomenal world of senses and of terrestrial consciousness -only.
6The Hall of Probationary Learning.
The WISE ONES heed not the sweet-tongued voices of illlusion.
1The astral region, the psychic world of supersensuous perceptions and of deceptive sights - the world of mediums. It is the great "Astral Serpent" of Eliphas Lévi. No Blossom plucked in those regions has ever yet been brought down on earth without its serpent coiled round the stem. It is the world of the Great Illusion.
2The region of the full Spiritual Consciousness, beyond which there is no longer danger for him who has reached it.
Seek for him who is to give thee birth,1 in the Hall of Wisdom, the Hall which lies beyond, wherein all shadows are unknown, and where the light of truth shines with unfading glory.
That which is uncreate abides in thee, Disciple, as it abides in that Hall. If thou would'st reach it and blend the two, thou must divest thyself of thy dark garments of illusion. Stifle the voice of flesh, allow no image of the senses to get between its light and thine, that thus the twain may blend in one. And having learnt thine own Ajnyani2 flee from the Hall of Learning. This Hall is dangerous in its perfidious beauty, is needed but for thy probation. Beware, Lanoo, lest dazzled by illusive radiance thy Soul should linger and be caught in its deceptive light.
1The Initiate, who leads the disciple, through the Knowledge given to him to his spiritual, or second birth, is called the Father, Guru or Master.
2Ajnyani is ignorance or non-wisdom, the opposite of Knowledge, Jnyana.
Ensnarer, (Mara).1 The senses it bewitches, blinds the mind and leaves the unwary an abandoned wreck.
The moth attracted to the dazzling flame of thy night-lamp is doomed to perish in the viscid oil. The unwary Soul that fails to grapple with the mockiing demon of illusion, will return to earth the slave of Mara.
Behold the Hosts of Souls. Watch how they hover o'er the stormy sea of human life, and how, exhausted, bleeding, broken-winged, they drop one after another on the swelling waves. Tossed by the fierce winds, chased by the gale, they drift into the eddies and disappear within the first great vortex.
1Mara is in exoteric religions a demon, an Asura, but in Esoteric Philosophy it is personified temptation through men's vices, and translated literally means "that which kills" the Soul. It is represented as a King (of the Maras) with a crown in which shines a jewel of such lustre that it blinds those who look at it, this lustre referring, of course, to the fascination exercised by vice upon certain natures.
'Tis only then thou canst become a "Walker of the Sky,"3 who treads the winds above the waves, whose step touches not the waters.
1The inner chamber of the Heart, called in Sanskrit Brahma-pura. The "fiery power is Kundalini.
2The "Power" and the "World-Mother" are names given to Kundalini - one of the mystic "Yogi powers". It is Buddhi considered as an active instead of a passive principle (which it is generallly, when regarded only as the vehicle, or casket of the Supreme Spirit ATMA). It is the electro-spiritual force, a creative power which when aroused into action can as easily kill as it can create.
3Keshara - or "sky-walker" or "goer". As explained in the sixth Adhyaya of that king of mystic works the Dnyaeshvari - the body of the Yogi becomes as one formed of the wind; as "a cloud from which limbs have sprouted out," after which - "he (the Yogi) beholds the things beyond the seas and stars; he hears the language of the Devas and comprehends it, and perceives what is passing in the mind of the ant."
upper rung, the ladder of the mystic sounds, thou hast to hear the voice of thy inner GOD1 in seven manners.
The last vibrates like the dull rumbling of a thounder-cloud.
2Vina is an Indian stringed instrument like a lute.
When the six1 are slain and at the Master's feet are laid, then is the pupil merged into the ONE2, becomes that ONE and lives therein.
Before that path is entered, thou must destroy thy lunar body,3 cleanse thy mind-body,4 and make clean thy heart.
Eternal life's pure waters, clear and crystal, with the monsoon temptest's muddy torrents cannot mingle.
Heaven's dew-drop glittering in the morn's first sunbeam within the bosom of the lotus, when dropped on earth becomes a piece of clay; behold, the pearl is now a speck of mire.
1The six principles; meaning when the lower personality is destroyed and the inner individuality is merged into and lost in the Seventh or Spirit.
2The disciple is one with Brahman or ATMA.
3The astral form produced by the Kamic principle, the Kama-rupa, or body of desire.
4Manasa-rupa. The first refers to the astral or personal Self: the second to the individuality, or the reincarnating Ego, whose consciousness on our plane, or the lower Manas, has to be paralyzed.
Before the 'mystic Power"1 can make of thee a God, Lanoo, thou must have gained the faculty to slay thy lunar form at will.
Ere thy Soul's mind can understand, the bud of personality must be crushed out; the worm of sense destroyed past resurrection.
1Kundalini, the "Serpent Power", or mystic fire. Kundalini is called the "Serpentine" or the annular power on account of its spiral-like working or progress in the body of the ascetic developing the power in himself. It is an electric fiery occult or Fohatic power, the great pristine force, which underlies all organic and inorganic matter.
1This "Path" is mentioned in all the Mystic Works. As Krishna says in the Dnyaneshvari: "When this Path is beheld...whether one sets out to the bloom of the east or to the chambers of the west, without moving. O holder of the bow, is the travelling in this road. In this path, to whatever place one would go, that place one's own self becomes." "Thou are the Path," is said to the Adept Guru, and by the latter to the disciple after initiation. "I am the way and the Path," says the MASTER.
2Adeptship - the "blossom of Bodhisattva."
Kill out desire; but if thou killest it, take heed lest from the dead it should again arise.
Kill out love of life; but if thou slayest Tanha1, let this not be for thrist of life eternal, but to replace the fleeting by the everlasting.
1Tanha - "The will to live," the fear of death and love for life, that force or energy which causes rebirth.
of her secret chambers, lay bare before thy gaze the treasures hidden in the very depth of her pure virgin bosom. Unsullied by the hand of Matter, she shows her treasures only to the eye of the Spirit - the eye which never closes, the eye for which there is no veil in all her kingdoms.
Then will she show thee the means and way, the first gate and the second, the third, up to the very seventh. And then, the goal; beyond which lie, bathed in the sunlight of the Spirit, glories untold, unseen by any save the eye of the Soul.
lave thy feet in Waters of Renunciation. Beware lest thou should'st set a foot still soiled upon the ladder's lowest rung. Woe unto him who dares pollute one rung with miry feet. The foul and viscous mud will dry, become tenacious, then glue his feet unto the spot; and like a bird caught in the wily fowler's lime, he will be stayed from further progress. His vices will take shape and drag him down. His sins will raise their voices like as the jackal's laugh and sob after the sun goes down; his thoughts become an army, and bear him off a captive slave.
Silence thy thoughts and fix thy whole attention on thy Master, whom yet thou dost not see, but whom thou feelest.
Long and weary is the way before thee, O Disciple. One single thought about the past that thou has left behind, will drag thee down and thou wilt have to start the climb anew.
The rose must re-become the bud, born of its parent stem before the parasite has eaten through its heart and drunk its life-sap.
The light from the ONE MASTER, the one unfading golden light of Spirit, shoots its effulgent beams on the Disciple from the very first. Its rays thread through the thick, dark clouds of Matter.
Now here, now there, these rays illumine it, like sun-sparks light the earth through the thick foliage of the jungle growth. But, O Disciple, unless the flesh is passive, head cool, the Soul as firm and pure as flaming diamond, the radiance will not reach the chamber, its sunlight will not warm the heart, nor will the mystic sounds of the akasic heights1 reach the ear, however eager, at the initial stage.
Unless thou hear'st, thou canst not see.
Unless thou see'st, thou canst not hear. To hear and see, this is the second stage.
1The mystic sounds, or the melody, heard by the ascetic at the beginning of his cycle of meditation, called Anahad-shabd by the Yogis.
When the Disciple sees and hears, and when he smells and tastes, eyes closed, ears shut, with mouth and nostrils stopped; when the four senses blend and ready are to pass into the fifth, that of the inner touch - then into the stage the fourth he hath passed on.
Thou are now in DHARAN,2 the sixth stage.
1This means that in the sixth stage of development which, in the Occult system, is Dharana, every sense as an individual faculty has to be "killed" (or paralyzed) on this plane, passing into and merging with the Seventh sense, the most spiritual.
2See page 1. footnote No. 3.
Three,1 for thou shalt have become that Three thyself. Thyself and mind, like twins upon a line, the star which is thy goal burns overhead.2 The Three that dwell in glory and in bliss ineffable, now in the World of Maya have lost their names. They have become one star, the fire that burns but scorches not, that five which is the Upadhi3 of the Flame.
1Every stage of development in Raja Yoga is symbolized by a geometrical figure. This one is the sacred Triangle and precedes Dharna. The Δ is the sign of the high Chelas, while another kind of triangle is that of high Initiates. It is the symbol "I" discoursed upon by Buddha and used by him as a symbol of the embodied form of Tathagata when released from the three methods of the Prajna. Once the preliminary and lower stages passed, the disciple sees no more the Δ but the - abbreviation of the -, the full Septenary. Its true form is not given here, as it is almost sure to be pounced upon by some charlatans and - desecrated in its use for fraudulent purposes.
2The star that burns overhead is "the star of initiation." The caste-mark of Shaiyas or devotees of the sect of Shiva, the great patron of all Yogis, is a black round spot, the symbol of the Sun now, perhaps, but that of the star of initiation, in Occultism, in days of old.
3The basis, upadhi, of the ever unreachable FLAME, so long as the ascetic is still in this life.
4Dhyana is the last stage before the final on this Earth, unless one becomes a full MAHATMA. As said already, in this state the Raj Yogi is yet spiritually conscious of Self, and the working of his higher principles. One step more, and he will be on the plane beyond the Seventh, the fourth, according to some Schools. These, after the practice of Pratyehara - a preliminary training, in order to control one's mind and thoughts -count Dhasena, Dhyana and Samadhi and embrace the three under the generic name of SANNYAMA.
5Samadhi is the state in which the ascetic loses the consciousness of every individuality, including his own. He becomes - the ALL.
Thou art acquainted with the five impediments, O blessed one. Thou art their conqueror, the Master of the sixth, deliverer of the four modes of Truth,1 The light that falls upon them shines from thyself, O thou who wast Disciple, but art Teacher now.
1The "four modes of truth" are, in Northern Buddhism; Ku, "suffering or misery"; Tu, the assemblying of temptations; Mu, "their destructions"; and Tau, "the path." The "five impediments" are the knowledge of misery, truth about human frailty, oppressive restraints, and the absolute necessity of separation from all the ties of passion, and even of desires. The "Path of Salvation" is the last one.
Hast thou not passed through knowledge of all misery - truth the first?
Hast thou not sin at the third gate destroyed, and truth the third attained?
And now, rest 'neath the Bodhi tree, which is perfection of all knowledge, for, know, thou art the Master of SAMADHI - the state of faultless vision.
1At the portal of the "assembling," the King of the Maras, the Maha Mara, stands trying to blind the candidate by the radiance of his "Jewel."
2This is the fourth "Path" out of the five paths of rebirth which lead and toss all human beings into perpetual states of sorrow and joy. These "Paths" are but sub-divisions of the One, the Path followed by Karma.