Eight
Lectures On Yoga - Index
Eight
Lectures On Yoga Pt 1
Eight
Lectures On Yoga Pt 2
Eight
Lectures On Yoga Pt 3
Eight
Lectures On Yoga Pt 4
Eight
Lectures On Yoga Pt 5
Eight
Lectures On Yoga Pt 6
Eight
Lectures On Yoga Pt 7
Eight
Lectures On Yoga Pt 8
Do what thou wilt shall be
the whole of the Law.
Stars and placental amniotes! And ye inhabitants of the
ten thousand worlds! The conclusion of our researches last
week was that the ultimate Yoga which gives emancipation,
which destroys the sense of separateness which is the root
of Desire, is to be made by the concentration of every element
of one's being, and annihilating it by intimate combustion
with the universe itself.
I might here note, in parenthesis, that one of the difficulties
of doing this is that all the elements of the Yogi increase
in every way exactly as he progresses, and by reason of that
progress. However, it is no use crossing our bridges until
we come to them, and we shall find that by laying down serious
scientific principles based on universal experience they
will serve us faithfully through every stage of the journey.
2. When I first undertook the investigation of Yoga, I was
fortunately equipped with a very sound training in the fundamental
principles of modern science. I saw immediately that if we
were to put any common sense into the business (science is
nothing but instructed common sense), the first thing to
do was to make a comparative study of the different systems
of mysticism. It was immediately apparent that the results
all over the world were identical. They were masked by sectarian
theories. The methods all over the world were identical;
this was masked by religious prejudice and local custom.
But in their quiddity-identical! This simple principle proved
quite sufficient to disentangle the subject from the extraordinary
complexities which have confused its expression.
3. When it came to the point of preparing a simple analysis
of the matter, the question arose: what terms shall we use?
The mysticisms of Europe are hopelessly muddled; the theories
have entirely overlaid the methods. The Chinese system is
perhaps the most sublime and the most simple; but, unless
one is born a Chinese, the symbols are of really unclimbable
difficulty. The Buddhist system is in some ways the most
complete, but it is also the most recondite. The words are
excessive in length and difficult to commit to memory; and
generally speaking, one cannot see the wood for the trees.
But from the Indian system, overloaded though it is by accretions
of every kind, it is comparatively easy to extract a method
which is free from unnecessary and undesirable implications,
and to make an interpretation of it intelligible to, and
acceptable by, European minds. It is this system, and this
interpretation of it, which I propose to put before you.
4. The great classic of Sanskrit literature is the Aphorisms
of Patanjali. He is at least mercifully brief, and not more
than ninety or ninety-five percent of what he writes can
be dismissed as the ravings of a disordered mind. What remains
is twenty-four carat gold. I now proceed to bestow it.
5. It is said that Yoga has eight limbs. Why limbs I do
not know. But I have found it convenient to accept this classification,
and we can cover the ground very satisfactorily by classing
our remarks under these eight headings.
6. These headings are: --
- Yama.
- Niyama.
- Asana.
- Pranayama.
- Pratyahara.
- Dharana.
- Dhyana.
- Samadhi.
Any attempt to translate these words will mire us in a hopeless
quag of misunderstanding. What we can do is to deal with
each one in turn, giving at the outset some sort of definition
or description which will enable us to get a fairly complete
idea of what is meant. I shall accordingly begin with an
account of Yama.
Attend! Perpend! Transcend!
7. Yama is the easiest of the eight limbs of Yoga to define,
and corresponds pretty closely to our word 'control.' When
I tell you that some have translated it 'morality,' you will
shrink appalled and aghast at this revelation of the brainless
baseness of humanity.
The word 'control' is here not very different from the word
'inhibition' as used by biologists. A primary cell, such
as the amoeba, is in one sense completely free, in another
completely passive. All parts of it are alike. Any part of
its surface can ingest its food. If you cut it in half, the
only result is that you have two perfect amoebae instead
of one. How far is this condition removed in the evolutionary
scale from trunk murders!
Organisms developed by specialising their component structures
have not achieved this so much by an acquisition of new powers,
as by a restriction of part of the general powers. Thus,
a Harley Street specialist is simply an ordinary doctor who
says: 'I won't go out and attend to a sick person; I won't,
I won't, I won't.'
Now what is true of cells is true of all already potentially
specialised organs. Muscular power is based upon the rigidity
of bones, and upon the refusal of joints to allow any movement
in any but the appointed directions. The more solid the fulcrum,
the more efficient the lever. The same remark applies to
moral issues. These issues are in themselves perfectly simple;
but they have been completely overlaid by the sinister activities
of priests and lawyers.
There is no question of right or wrong in any abstract sense
about any of these problems. It is absurd to say that it
is 'right' for chlorine to combine enthusiastically with
hydrogen, and only in a very surly way with oxygen. It is
not virtuous of a hydra to be hermaphrodite, or contumacious
on the part of an elbow not to move freely in all directions.
Anybody who knows what his job is has only one duty, which
is to get that job done. Anyone who possesses a function
has only one duty to that function, to arrange for its free
fulfilment.
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
8. We shall not be surprised therefore if we find that the
perfectly simple term Yama (or Control) has been bedevilled
out of all sense by the mistaken and malignant ingenuity
of the pious Hindu. He has interpreted the word 'control'
as meaning compliance with certain fixed proscriptions. There
are quite a lot of prohibitions grouped under the heading
of Yama, which are perhaps quite necessary for the kind of
people contemplated by the Teacher, but they have been senselessly
elevated into universal rules. Everyone is familiar with
the prohibition of pork as an article of diet by Jews and
Mohammedans. This has nothing to do with Yama, or abstract
righteousness. It was due to the fact that pork in eastern
countries was infected with the trichina; which killed people
who ate pork improperly cooked. It was no good telling the
savages that fact. Any way, they would only have broken the
hygienic command when greed overcame them. The advice had
to be made a universal rule, and supported with the authority
of a religious sanction. They had not the brains to believe
in trichinosis; but they were afraid of Jehovah and Jehannum.
Just so, under the grouping of Yama we learn that the aspiring
Yogi must become 'fixed in the non-receiving of gifts,' which
means that if anyone offers you a cigarette or a drink of
water, you must reject his insidious advances in the most
Victorian manner. It is such nonsense as this which brings
the science of Yoga into contempt. But it isn't nonsense
if you consider the class of people for whom the injunction
was promulgated; for, as we will be shown later, preliminary
to the concentration of the mind is the control of the mind,
which means the calm of the mind, and the Hindu mind is so
constituted that if you offer a man the most trifling object,
the incident is a landmark in his life. It upsets him completely
for years.
In the East, an absolutely automatic and thoughtless act
of kindness to a native is liable to attach him to you, body
and soul, for the rest of his life. In other words, it is
going to upset him; and as a budding Yogi he has got to refuse
it. But even the refusal is going to upset him quite a lot;
and therefore he has got to become 'fixed' in refusal; that
is to say, he has got to erect by means of habitual refusal
a psychological barrier so strong that he can really dismiss
the temptation without a quiver, or a quaver, or even a demisemiquaver
of thought. I am sure you will see that an absolute rule
is necessary to obtain this result. It is obviously impossible
for him to try to draw the line between what he may receive
and what he may not; he is merely involved in a Socratic
dilemma; whereas if he goes to the other end of the line
and accepts everything, his mind is equally upset by the
burden of the responsibility of dealing with the things he
has accepted. However, all these considerations do not apply
to the average European mind. If someone gives me 200,000
pounds sterling, I automatically fail to notice it. It is
a normal circumstance of life. Test me!
9. There are a great many other injunctions, all of which
have to be examined independently in order to find whether
they apply to Yoga in general, and to the particular advantage
of any given student. We are to exclude especially all those
considerations based on fantastic theories of the universe,
or on the accidents of race or climate.
For instance, in the time of the late Maharajah of Kashmir,
mahsir fishing was forbidden throughout his territory; because,
when a child, he had been leaning over the parapet of a bridge
over the Jhilam at Srinagar, and inadvertently opened his
mouth, so that a mahsir was able to swallow his soul. It
would never have done for a Sahiba Mlecha! -- to catch that
mahsir. This story is really typical of 90% of the precepts
usually enumerated under the heading Yama. The rest are for
the most part based on local and climatic conditions, and
they may or may not be applicable to your own case. And,
on the other hand, there are all sorts of good rules which
have never occurred to a teacher of Yoga; because those teachers
never conceived the condition in which many people live today.
It never occurred to the Buddha or Patanjali or Mansur el-Hallaj
to advise his pupils not to practise in a flat with a wireless
set next door.
The result of all this is that all of you who are worth
your salt will be absolutely delighted when I tell you to
scrap all the rules and discover your own. Sir Richard Burton
said: 'He noblest lives and noblest dies, who makes and keeps
his self-made laws.'
10. This is, of course, what every man of science has to
do in every experiment. This is what constitutes an experiment.
The other kind of man has only bad habits. When you explore
a new country, you don't know what the conditions are going
to be; and you have to master those conditions by the method
of trial and error. We start to penetrate the stratosphere;
and we have to modify our machines in all sorts of ways which
were not altogether foreseen. I wish to thunder forth once
more that no questions of right or wrong enter into our problems.
But in the stratosphere it is 'right' for a man to be shut
up in a pressure-resisting suit electrically heated, with
an oxygen supply, whereas it would be 'wrong' for him to
wear it if he were running the three miles in the summer
sports in the Tanezrouft.
This is the pit into which all the great religious teachers
have hitherto fallen, and I am sure you are all looking hungrily
at me in the hope of seeing me do likewise. But no! There
is one principle which carries us through all conflicts concerning
conduct, because it is perfectly rigid and perfectly elastic:
-- 'Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.'
So: it is not the least use to come and pester me about
it.
Perfect mastery of the violin in six easy lessons by correspondence!
Should I have the heart to deny you? But Yama is different.
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. That is
Yama.
Your object is to perform Yoga. Your True Will is to attain
the consummation of marriage with the universe, and your
ethical code must constantly be adapted precisely to the
conditions of your experiment. Even when you have discovered
what your code is, you will have to modify it as you progress;
'remould it nearer to the heart's desire'-Omar Khayyam. Just
so, in a Himalayan expedition your rule of daily life in
the valleys of Sikkim or the Upper Indus will have to be
changed when you get to the glacier. But it is possible to
indicate (in general terms expressed with the greatest caution)
the 'sort' of thing that is likely to be bad for you. Anything
that weakens the body, that exhausts, disturbs or inflames
the mind is deprecable. You are pretty sure to find as you
progress that there are some conditions that cannot be eliminated
at all in your particular circumstances; and then you have
to find a way of dealing with these so that they make a minimum
of trouble. And you will find that you cannot conquer the
obstacle of Yama, and dismiss it from your mind once and
for all. Conditions favourable for the beginner may become
an intolerable nuisance to the adept, while, on the other
hand, things which matter very little in the beginning become
most serious obstacles later on.
Another point is that quite unsuspected problems arise in
the course of the training. The whole question of the sub-conscious
mind can be dismissed almost as a joke by the average man
as he goes about his daily business; it becomes a very real
trouble when you discover that the tranquillity of the mind
is being disturbed by a type of thought whose existence had
previously been unsuspected, and whose source is unimaginable.
Then again there is no perfection of materials; there will
always be errors and weaknesses, and the man who wins through
is the man who manages to carry on with a defective engine.
The actual strain of the work develops the defects; and it
is a matter of great nicety of judgment to be able to deal
with the changing conditions of life. It will be seen that
the formula-'Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the
Law' has nothing to do with 'Do as you please.'
It is much more difficult to comply with the Law of Thelema
than to follow out slavishly a set of dead regulations. Almost
the only point of emancipation, in the sense of relief from
a burden, is just the difference between Life and Death.
To obey a set of rules is to shift the whole responsibility
of conduct on to some superannuated Bodhisattva, who would
resent you bitterly if he could see you, and tick you off
in no uncertain terms for being such a fool as to think you
could dodge the difficulties of research by the aid of a
set of conventions which have little or nothing to do with
actual conditions.
Formidable indeed are the obstacles we have created by the
simple process of destroying our fetters. The analogy of
the conquest of the air holds excellently well. The things
that worry the pedestrian worry us not at all; but to control
a new element your Yama must be that biological principle
of adaptation to the new conditions, adjustment of the faculties
to those conditions, and consequent success in those conditions,
which were enunciated in respect of planetary evolution by
Herbert Spencer and now generalised to cover all modes of
being by the Law of Thelema.
But now let me begin to unleash my indignation. My job-the
establishment of the Law of Thelema-is a most discouraging
job. It is the rarest thing to find anyone who has any ideas
at all on the subject of liberty. Because the Law of Thelema
is the law of liberty, everybody's particular hair stands
on end like the quills of the fretful porpentine; they scream
like an uprooted mandrake, and flee in terror from the accursed
spot. Because: the exercise of liberty means that you have
to think for yourself, and the natural inertia of mankind
wants religion and ethics ready-made. However ridiculous
or shameful a theory or practice is, they would rather comply
than examine it. Sometimes it is hook-swinging or Sati; sometimes
consubstantiation or supra-lapsarianism; they do not mind
what they are brought up in, as long as they are well brought
up. They do not want to be bothered about it. The Old School
Tie wins through. They never suspect the meaning of the pattern
on the tie: the Broad Arrow.
You remember Dr. Alexandre Manette in 'A Tale of Two Cities.'
He had been imprisoned for many years in the Bastille, and
to save himself from going mad had obtained permission to
make shoes. When he was released, he disliked it. He had
to be approached with the utmost precaution; he fell into
an agony of fear if his door was left unlocked; he cobbled
away in a frenzy of anxiety lest the shoes should not be
finished in time-the shoes that nobody wanted. Charles Dickens
lived at a time and in a country such that this state of
mind appeared abnormal and even deplorable, but today it
is a characteristic of 95 per cent of the people of England.
Subjects that were freely discussed under Queen Victoria
are now absolutely taboo; because everyone knows subconsciously
that to touch them, however gently, is to risk precipitating
the catastrophe of their dry-rot.
There are not going to be many Yogis in England, because
there will not be more than a very few indeed who will have
the courage to tackle even this first of the eight limbs
of Yoga: Yama.
I do not think that anything will save the country: unless
through war and revolution, when those who wish to survive
will have to think and act for themselves according to their
desperate needs, and not by some rotten yard-stick of convention.
Why, even the skill of the workman has almost decayed within
a generation! Forty years ago there were very few jobs that
a man could not do with a jack-knife and a woman with a hair-pin;
today you have to have a separate gadget for every trivial
task.
If you want to become Yogis, you will have to get a move
on.
Lege! Judica! Tace!
Love is the law, love under will.
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