RAJA Yoga is divided into eight steps. The first is Yama — non-killing, truthfulness, non-stealing, continence, and non- receiving of any gifts. Next is Niyama — cleanliness, contentment, mortification, study, and self- surrender to God. Then comes Asana, or posture; Pranayama, or controlling the vital forces of the body; Pratyahara, or making the mind introspective; Dhdrand, or concentration; Dhyana, or meditation; and Samadhi, or super-consciousness. The Yama and Niyama, as we see, are moral trainings; without these as the basis no practice of Yoga will succeed. As these practices become established the Yogi will begin to realise the fruits of his practice; without these it will never bear fruit. A Yogi must not think of injuring anyone, through thought, word or deed, and this applies not only to man, but to all animals. Mercy shall not be for men alone, but shall go beyond, and embrace the whole world.
The next step is Asana, posture; a series of exercises, physical and mental, is to be gone through every day, until certain higher states are reached. Therefore it is quite necessary that we should find a posture in which we can remain long. That posture which is easiest for each one is the posture to use. For one man it may be very easy to think in a certain posture, but this may be very difficult for another. We will find later on that in the study of these psychological matters there will wil a good deal of action going on in the body. Nerve currents will have to be displaced and given a new channel. New sorts of vibrations will begin, the whole constitutions will be remodelled, as it 16 THE FIRST STEPS 17 were. But the main part of the action will lie along the spinal column, so that the one thing necessary for the posture is to hold the spinal column free, sitting erect, holding the three parts — the chest, neck, and head — in a straight line. Let the whole weight of the body be supported by the ribs, and then you have an easy natural posture, with the spine straight. You will naturally see that you cannot think very high thoughts with the chest in. This portion of the Yoga is a little similar to the Hatha Yoga, which deals entirely with the physical body; the aim of the latter is to make the physical body very strong. We have nothing to do with that here, because the practices are very difficult, and cannot be learned in a day, and, after all, do not lead to any spiritual growth. Many of these practices you will find in Delsarte, and other teachers, such as placing the body in different postures, but the object in these is physical, not psychological. There is not one muscle in the body over which a man cannot establish a perfect control; the heart can be made to stop or go on at his bidding, and, in the same way, each part of the organism can be made to work at his bidding.
The result of this part of Yoga is to make men live long; health is the chief idea, the one goal of the Hatha Yogi. He is determined not to fall sick, and he never does. He lives long; a hundred years is nothing to him; he is quite young and fresh when he is 150, without one hair turned grey. But that is all. A Banyan tree lives sometimes 5000 years, but it is a Banyan tree and nothing more. So, if a man lives long, he is only a healthy animal. One or two ordinary lessons of the Hatha Yogis are very useful. For instance, some of you will find it a good thing for headaches to drink cold water through the nose as soon as you get up; the whole day your brain will be nice and cool, and you will never catch cold. It i8 RAJA YOGA is very easy to do; put your nose into the water, and make a pump action in the throat.
After one has learned to have a firm erect seat, he has to perform, according to certain schools, a practice called the purifying of the nerves. This part has been rejected by some as not beloning to Raja Yoga, but as so great an authority as the commentator, Sankardchdrya, advises it, I think it fit that it should be mentioned, and I will quote his own directions from his commentary to the Svetasvatara Upanisad. “The mind whose dross has been cleared away by Pranayama, becomes fixed in Brahman; therefore Pranayama is pointed out. First the nerves are to be purified, then comes the power to practice Pranayama. Stopping the right nostril with the thumb, with the left nostril fill in air, according to one’s capacity; then, without any interval, throw the air out through the right nostril, closing the left one. Again inhaling through the right nostril eject through the left, according to capactiy; practicing this three or five times at four intervals of the day, before dawn, during midday, in the evening, and at midnight, in fifteen days or a month purity of the nerves is attained; then begins Pranayama.
Practice is absolutely necessary. You may sit down and listen to me by the hour every day, but, if you do not practice, you will not get one step further. It all depends on practice. We never understand these things until we experience them. We will have to see and feel them for ourselves. Simply listening to explanations and theories will not do. There are several obstructions to practice. The first obstruction is an unhealthy body; if the body is not in a fit state, the practice will be obstructed. Therefore we have to take care of what we eat and drink, and what we do; lways use a mental effort, what is usually called “Christian Science,” to keep the body strong. That is all; nothing 18 THE FIRST STEPS 19 further of the body. We must not forget that health is only a means to an end. If health were the end we would be like animals; animals rarely become unhealthy.
The second obstruction is doubt; we always feel doubtful about things we do not see. Man cannot live upon words, however he may try. So, doubt comes to us as to whether there is any truth in these things or not; even the best of us will doubt sometimes. With practice, within a few days, a little glimpse will come, enough to give you encouragement and hope. As one commentator on Yoga philosophy says: “When one proof is realised, however little it may be, that will give us faith in the whole teaching of Yoga." For instance, after the first few months of training and teaching, you will begin to find you can read another’s thoughts; they will come to you in picture form. Perhaps you will hear something happening at a long distance, when you concentrate your mind and try to do so. These glimpses will come, just a little bit at first, but enough to give you faith, and strength, and hope. For instance, if you concentrate your thoughts on the tip of your nose, in a few days you will begin to smell most beautiful fragrance, and that will be enough to show you that there are certain mental percepitons that can be made obvious without the contact of physical objects. But we must always remember that these are only the means; the aim, and end, and goal, of all this training is liberation of the soul. Absolute control of nature, and nothing short of it, must be the goal. We must be the masters, and not nature; neither body nor mind must be our master, and neither must we forget that the body is mind, and not I the body’s.
A god and a demon went to learn about the Self from a great sage. They studied with him for a long time, and at last the sage told them. “Thou thyself art the being thou art 20 RAJA YOGA seeking.” Both of them thought that their bodies were the Self. “We have got everything,” they said, and both of them returned to their people, and said, “We have learned everything that is to be learned; eat, drink, and be merry; we are the Self; there is nothing beyond us.” The nature of the demon was ignorant, clouded, so he never inquired any further, but was perfectly satisfied with the idea that he was God, that by the Self was meant the body. But the god had a purer nature. He at first committed the mistake of thinking, “I, this body, am Brahman, so keep it strong and in health, and well-dressed, and give it all sorts of bodily enjoyments.” But, in a few days, he found out that this could not be the meaning of the sage, their master; there must be something higher. So he came back and said, “Sir, did you teach me that this body is the Self? If so, I see all bodies die; the Self cannot die.” The sage said, “Find it out; thou art That.” Then the god thought that the vital forces which work the body were what the sage meant. But, after a time, he found that if he ate, these vital forces remained strong, but, if he starved, they became weak. The god then went back to the sage and said, “Sir, do you mean that the vital forces are the Self?” The sage said, “Find out for yourself; thou art That.” The god returned once more, and thought that it was the mind; perhaps that is the Self. But in a few days he reflected that thoughts are so various; now good, now bad; the mind is too changeable to be the Self. He went back to the sage and said, “Sir, I do not think that the mind is the Self; did you mean that?” “No,” replied the sage, “thou art That; find out for yourself.” The god went back, and, at last, found that he was the Self, beyond all thought; One, without birth or death, whom the sword cannot pierce, or the fire burn, whom the air cannot dry, or the water melt, the beginningless and birthless, the immovable, the intangible, the omniscient, the 20 THE FIRST STEPS 21 omnipotent Being, and that it was neither the body nor the mind, but beyond them all. So he was satisfied, but the poor demon did not get the truth, owing to his fondness for the body.
This word has a good many of these demoniac natures, but there are some gods too. If one propose to teach any science to increase the power of sense of enjoyment, he finds multitudes ready for it. If one undertake to show mankind the supreme goal, they care nothing for it. Very few have the power to grasp the highest, fewer still the patience to attain to it, but a few also know that if the body be kept for a thousand years the result will be the same in the end. When the forces that hold it together go away the body must fall. No man was ever born who could stop his body one moment from changing. Body is the name of a series of changes. “As in a river the masses of water are changing before you every moment, and new masses are coming, yet taking similar form, so is it with this body.” Yet the body must be kept strong and healthy; it is the best instrument we have.
This human body is the greatest body in the universe, and a human being the greatest being. Man is higher than all animals, than all angels; none is greater than man. Even the Devas will have to come down again and atttain to salvation through a human body. Man alone attains to perfection, not even the devas. According to the Jews and Mohammedans God created man after creating man He asked the angels to come and salute him, and all did except Iblis; so God cursed him and he became Satan. Behind this allegory is the great truth, that this human birth is the greatest birth we can have. The lower creation, the animal, is dull, and manufactured mostly out of Tamas. Animals cannot have any high thoughts; nor can the angels, or Devas, attain to direct freedom without human birth. In human society, in the same 22 RAJA YOGA way, too much wealth, or too much poverty, is a great impediment to the higher development of the soul. It is from the middle classes that the great ones of the world come. Here the forces are very equally adjusted and balanced.
Returning to our subject, we come next to Prdnayama, controlling the breathing. What has that to do with concentrating the powers of the mind? Breath is like the fly- wheel of this machine. In a big engine you find the fly- wheel first moving, and that motion is conveyed to finer and finer machinery, until the most delicate and finest mechanism in the machine is in motion in accordance. This breath is that fly-wheel, supplying and regulating the motive power to everything in this body.
There once was a minister to a great king. He fell into disgrace, and the king as a punishment, ordered him to be shut up at the top of a vey high tower. This was done, and the minister was left there to perish. He had a faithful wife, however, and at night she came to the tower and called to her husband at the top to know what she could do to help him. He told her to return to the tower the following night and bring with her a long rope, a stout twine, a pack thread, a silken threat, a beetle, and a little honey. Wondering much, the good wife obeyed her husband, and brought him the desired articles. The husband directed her to attach the silken thread firmly to the beetle, then to smear his horns with a drop of honey, and set him free on the wall of the tower, with his head pointing up. She obeyed all these instructions, and the beetle started on his long journey. Smelling the honey before him he slowly crept onwards and upwards, in the hope of reaching it, until at last he reaches the top of the tower, when the minister grasped the beetle, and got possession of the silken thread. He told his wife to tie the other end to the pack thread,, and after he had drawn 22 THE FIRST STEPS 23 up the pack thread, he repeated the procedure with the stout twine, and lastly with the rope. Then the rest was easy. The minister descended from the tower by means of the rope, and made his escape. In this body of ours the breath motion is the “silken thread,” and laying hold of that, and learning to control it we grasp the pack thread of the nerve currents, and from these the stout twine of our thoughts, and lastly the rope of Prana, controlling which we reach freedom.
We do not know anything about our own bodies; we cannot know. At best we can take a dead body, and cut it in pieces, and there are some who can take a live animal and cut it in pieces in order to see what is inside the body. Still, that has nothing to do with our own bodies. We know very little about them; why do we not? Because our attention is not discriminating enough to catch the very fine movements that are going on within. We can know of these only as the mind, as it were, enters the body, and becomes more subtle. To get that subtle perception we have to begin with the grosser perceptions, so we have to get hold of that which is setting the whole engine in motion, and that is the Prana, the most obvious manifestation of which is the breath. Then, along with the breath, we will slowly enter the body, and that will enable us to find out about the subtle forces, how the nerve currents are moving all over the body, and as soon as we perceive that, and learn to feel them, we shall begin to get control over them, and over the body. The mind is also set in motion by these nerve current, so, at last, we shall reach the state when we have perfect control over the body and mind, making both our servants. Knowledge is power, and we have to get this power, so we must begin at the beginning, the Pranayama, restraining the Prana. This Pranayama is a long subject, and will take several lessons to illustrate it thoroughly. We will take it part by part.
24 RAJA YOGA 24 RAJA YOGA We shall gradually see what are the reasons for each exercise and what forces in the body are set in motion. All these things will come to us, but it requires constant practice, and the proof will come by practice. No amount of reasoning which I can give you will be proof to you, until you have demonstrated it for yourselves. As soon as you begin to feel these currents in motion all over you, doubts will vanish, but it requires hard practice every day. You must practice at least twice every day, and the best times are towards the morning and the evening. When night passes into day, and day into night, it has to pass through a state of relative calmness. The early morning and the early evening are the two points of calmness. Your body will have a like tendency to become calm at those times. We will take advantage of that natural condition, and begin then to practice. Make it a rule not to eat until you have practised; if you do this the sheer force of hunger will break your laziness. In India they teach children never to eat until they have practised, and worshipped, and it becomes natural to them after a while; a boy will not feel hungry until he has bathed and practised.
Those of you who can afford it will do better to have a room for this practice alone; do not sleep in that room, it must be kept holy; you must not enter the room until you have bathed, and are perfectly clean in body and mind. Place flowers in that room always; they are the best surroundings for a Yogi, also pictures that are pleasing. Burn incense morning and evening. Have no quarrelling, or anger, or unholy thought in that room. Only allow those persons to enter who are of the same thought as you. Then by and by there will be an atmosphere of holiness in the room, and when you are miserable, sorrowful, doubtful, or your mind is disturbed, the very fact of entering that room 24 THE FIRST STEPS 25 will make you calmer. This was the idea of the temple and the church, and in some temples and churches you will find it even now, but in the majority of them the very idea has been lost. The idea is that by keeping holy vibrations there the place becomes and remains illumined. Those who cannot afford to have a room set apart can practice anywhere they like. Sit in a straight posture, and the first thing to do is to send a current of holy thought to all creation; mentally repeat: “Let all being be happy; let all beings be peaceful; let all beings be blissful.” So do to the East, South, North and West. The more you do that the better you will feel yourself. You will find at last that the easiest way to make yourselves healthy is to see that others are healthy, and the easiest way to make yourselves happy is to see that others are happy. After doing that, those who believe in God should pray — not for money, not for health, nor for heaven; pray for knowledge and light; every other prayer is selfish. Then the next thing to do is to think of your own body, and see that it is strong and healthy; it is the best instrument you have. Think of it as being as strong as adamant, and that with the help of this body you will cross this ocean of life. Freedom is never to be reached by the weak; throw away all weakness; tell your body that it is strong; tell your mind that it is strong, and have unbounded faith and hope in yourself.
CHAPTER III.
PRANA.
PRANAYAMA is not, as many think, something about the breath; breath, indeed, has very little to do with it, if anything. Breathing is only one of the many exercises through which we get to the real Pranayamai. Pranayama means the control of Prana. According to the philosophers of India, the whole universe is composed of two materials, one of which they call Akasa. It is the omnipresent, all penetrating existence. Everything that has form, everything that is the result of compounds, is evolved out of this Akasa. It is the Akasa that becomes the air, that becomes the liquids, that becomes the solids; it is the Akasa that becomes the plants, every form that we see, everything that can be sensed, everything that exists. It itself it cannot be perceived; it is so subtle that it is beyond all ordinary perception; it can only be seen when it has become gross, has taken form. At the beginning of creation there is only this Akasa; at the end of the cycle, the solids, the liquids, and the gases all melt into the Akasa again, and the next creation similarly proceeds out of this Akasa.
By what power is this Akasa manifested into this universe? By the power of Prana. Just as Akasa is the infinite omnipresent material of this universe, so is this Prana the infinite, omnipresent manifesting power of this universe. At the beginning and at the end of a cycle everything becomes Akasa, and all the forces that are in the universe resolve back into the Prana', in the next cycle, out of this Prana is evolved everything that we call energy, everything that we call force. It is the Prana that is 26 PRANA 27 26 PRANA 27 manifesting as motion; it is the Prana that is manifesting as gravitation, as magnetism. It is the Prana that is manifesting as the actions of the body, as the nerve currents, as thought force. From thought, down to the lowest physical force, everything is but the manifestation of Prana. The sum-total of all force in the universe, mental or physical, when resolved back into its original state, is called Prana. “When there was neither aught nor naught, when darkness was covering darkness, what existed then? That Akasa existed without motion.” The physical motion of the Prana was stopped, but it existed all the same. All the energies that are now displayed in the universe we know, by modern science, are unchangeable. The sum-total of the energies in the universe remains the same throughout, only, at the end of a cycle, these energies quiet down, become potential, and, at the beginning of the next cycle, they start up, strike upon the Akasa, and out of the Akasa evolve into various forms, and, as the Akasa changes, this Prana changes also into all these manifestations of energy. The knownledge and control of this Prana is really what is meant by Pranayama.
This opens to us the door to almost unlimited power. Suppose, for instance, one understood the Prana perfectly, and could control it, what power on earth could there be that would not be his? He would be able to move the sun and stars out of their places, to control everything in the universe, from the atoms to the biggest suns, because he would control the Prana. This is the end and aim of Pranayama. When the Yogi becomes perfect there will be nothing in nature not under his control. If he orders the gods to come, they will come at his bidding; if he asks the departed to come, they will come at his bidding. All the forces of nature will obey him as his slaves, and when the ignorant see these powers of the Yogi they call them 28 RAJA YOGA 28 RAJA YOGA miracles. One peculiarity of the Hindu mind is that it always inquires for the last possible generalisation, leaving the details to be worked out afterwards. The question is raised in the Vedas, “What is that, knowing which we shall know everything?” Thus, all books, and all philosophies that have been written, have been only to prove That by knowing which everything is known. If a man wants to know this universe bit by bit he must know every individual grain of sand, and that means infinite time for him; he cannot know all of them. Then how can knowledge be? How is it possible for a man to be all- knowing through particulars? The Yogis say that behind this particular manifestation there is a generalisation. Behind all particular ideas stands a generalised, an abstract principle; grasp it, and you have grasped everything. Just as this whole universe has been generalised, in the Vedas, into that One Absolute Existence. He who has grasped that Existence has grasped the whole universe. So all forces have been generalised into this Prana, and he who has grasped the Prana has grasped all the forces of the universe, mental or physical. He who has controlled the Prana has controlled his own mind, and all the minds that exist. He who has controlled the Prana has controlled his body, and all the bodies that exist, because the Prana is the generalised manifestation of force.
How to control the Prana is the one idea of Pranayama. All these trainings and exercises are for that one end, and each man must begain where he stands, must learn how to control the things that are nearest to him. This body is the nearest thing to us, nearer than anything in the universe, and this mind is the nearest of all. The Prana which is working this mind and body is the nearest to us of all the Prana in the universe. This little wave of the Prana which represents our own energies, mental and physical, is the nearest wave to us PRANA 29 of all that infinite ocean of Prana, and if we can succeed in controlling that little wave, then alone we can hope to control the whole of Prana. Perfection is to be gained by the Yogi who has done this, and no power is any more his master. He has become almost almighty, almost all- knowing. We see sects in every country who have attempted this control of Prana. In this country there are Mind-healers, Faith-healers, Spiritualists, Christian Scientists, Hypnotists, etc., and if we analyse these different groups we shall find that the background of each is this control of the Prana, whether they know it or now. If you boil all their theories down the residuum will be the same. It is the one and same force they are manipulating, only unknowingly. They have stumbled on the discovery of a force, and do not know its nature, but they are unconsciously using the same powers which the Yogi uses, and which come from Prana.
This Prana is the vital force in every being, and the finest and highest action of Prana is thought. This thought, again, as we see, is not all. There is also a sort of thought which we call instinct, or unconscious thought, the lowest plane of action. If a mosquito stings us, without thinking, our hand will strike it, automatically, instinctively. This is one expression of thought. All reflex actions of the body belong to this plane of thought. There is then a still higher plane of thought, the conscious. I reason, I judge, I think, I see the pros and cons of certain things; yet that is not all. We know that reason is limited. There is only a certain extent to which reason can go; beyond that it cannot reach. The circle within which it runs is very, very limited indeed. Yet, at the same time, we find facts msh into this circle. Like the coming of comets certain things are coming into this circle, and it is certain they come from outside the limit, although our reason cannot go beyond. The causes of the phenomena protruding 30 RAJA YOGA 30 RAJA YOGA themselves in this small limit are outside of this limit. The reason and the intellect cannot reach them, but, says the Yogi, that is not all. The mind can exist on a still higher plane, the super-conscious. When the mind has attained to the state, which is called Samadhi, — perfect concentration, super-conscious-ness — it goes beyond the limits of reason and comes face to face with facts which no instinct or reason can ever know. All these manipula-tions of subtle forces of the body, the different manifestations of Prana, if trained, give a push to the mind, and the mind goes up higher, and becomes super-conscious, and from that plane it acts.
In this universe there is one continuous mass on every plane of existence. Physically this universe is one; there is no difference between the sun and you. The scientist will tell you it is only a fiction to say the contrary. There is no real difference between the table and me; the table is one point in the mass of matter, and I another point. Each form represents, as it were, one whirlpool in the infinite ocean of matter, and these are not constant. Just as in a rushing stream there may be millions of whirlpools, and the water in each of these whirlpools is fresh every moment, turning round and round for a few seconds, and then passing out at the other end, so this whole universe is one constantly changing mass of matter, in which we are little whirlpools. A mass of matter enters them, goes round and round, and turns, for a few years, into the body of a man, becomes changed, and gets whirled out in the form of, maybe, an animal, from that it rushes round to get, after a few years, into another whirlpool, called a lump of mineral. It is a constant change. Not one body is constant. There is no such thing as my body, or your body, except in words. It is one huge mass of matter. One point is called moon, another sun, another a man, another the earth, another a plant, another a PRANA 3i PRANA 3i mineral. Not one is constant, but everything is changing, matter eternally concreting and disintegrating. So it is with the mind. Matter is represented by the ether; when the action of Prana is most subtle, this very ether, in the finer state of vibration, will represent the mind, and there it will be still one unbroken mass. If you can get to simply that subtle vibration you will see and feel that the whole universe is composed of these subtle vibrations. Sometimes certain drugs have the power to take us, as it were, through our senses, and bring us to that condition. Many of you may remember the celebrated experiment of Sir Humphrey Davy, when the laughing gas overpowered him, and, during the lecture, he remained motionless, stupefied, and, after that, he said that the whole universe was made up of ideas; for the time being, as it were, the gross vibrations had ceased, and only the subtle vibrations, which he called the mind, were present to him. He could only see the subtle vibrations round him; everything had become thought; the whole universe was an ocean of thought, he and everyone else had become little thought whirlpools.