BOOK 3  23-33

The Book of the Spiritual Man  1-11   12-22   22-33   34- 44   45-55

23. By perfectly concentrated Meditation on sympathy, compassion
and kindness, is gained the power of interior union with others.

Unity is the reality; separateness the illusion. The nearer we come to
reality, the nearer we come to unity of heart. Sympathy, compassion,
kindness are modes of this unity of heart, whereby we rejoice with
those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep. These things are
learned by desiring to learn them.

24. By perfectly concentrated Meditation on power, even such power
as that of the elephant may be gained.

This is a pretty image. Elephants possess not only force, but poise and
fineness of control. They can lift a straw, a child, a tree with perfectly
judged control and effort. So the simile is a good one. By detachment,
by withdrawing into the soul's reservoir of power, we can gain all
these, force and fineness and poise; the ability to handle with equal
mastery things small and great, concrete and abstract alike.

25. By bending upon them the awakened inner light, there comes a
knowledge of things subtle, or concealed, or obscure.

As was said at the outset, each consciousness is related to all
consciousness; and, through it, has a potential consciousness of all
things; whether subtle or concealed or obscure. An understanding of
this great truth will come with practice. As one of the wise has said,
we have no conception of the power of Meditation.

26. By perf ectly concentrated Meditation on the sun comes a
knowledge of the worlds.

This has several meanings: First, by a knowledge of the constitution
of the sun, astronomers can understand the kindred nature of the stars.
And it is said that there is a finer astronomy, where the spiritual man
is the astronomer. But the sun also means the Soul, and through
knowledge of the Soul comes a knowledge of the realms of life.

27. By perfectly concentrated Meditation on the moon comes a
knowledge of the lunar mansions.

Here again are different meanings. The moon is, first, the companion
planet, which, each day, passes backward through one mansion of the
stars. By watching the moon, the boundaries of the mansion are
learned, with their succession in the great time-dial of the sky. But the
moon also symbolizes the analytic mind, with its divided realms; and
these, too, may be understood through perfectly concentrated
Meditation.

28. By perfectly concentrated Meditation on the fixed pole-star comes
a knowledge of the motions of the stars.

Addressing Duty, stern daughter of the Voice of God, Wordsworth
finely said:

Thou cost preserve the stars from wrong,
And the most ancient heavens through thee are fresh and strong -

thus suggesting a profound relation between the moral powers and the
powers that rule the worlds. So in this Sutra the fixed polestar is the
eternal spirit about which all things move, as well as the star toward
which points the axis of the earth. Deep mysteries attend both, and the
veil of mystery is only to be raised by Meditation, by open-eyed vision
of the awakened spiritual man.

29. Perfectly concentrated Meditation on the centre of force in the
lower trunk brings an understanding of the order of the bodily powers.
We are coming to a vitally important part of the teaching of Yoga:
namely, the spiritual man's attainment of full self-consciousness, the
awakening of the spiritual man as a self-conscious individual, behind
and above the natural man. In this awakening, and in the process of
gestation which precedes it, there is a close relation with the powers
of the natural man, which are, in a certain sense, the projection,
outward and downward, of the powers of the spiritual man. This is
notably true of that creative power of the spiritual man which, when
embodied in the natural man, becomes the power of generation. Not
only is this power the cause of the continuance of the bodily race of
mankind, but further, in the individual, it is the key to the dominance
of the personal life. Rising, as it were, through the life-channels of the
body, it flushes the personality with physical force, and maintains and
colours the illusion that the physical life is the dominant and
all-important expression of life. In due time, when the spiritual man
has begun to take form, the creative force will be drawn off, and
become operative in building the body of the spiritual man, just as it
has been operative in the building of physical bodies, through
generation in the natural world.

Perfectly concentrated Meditation on the nature of this force means,
first, that rising of the consciousness into the spiritual world, already
described, which gives the one sure foothold for Meditation; and then,
from that spiritual point of vantage, not only an insight into the
creative force, in its spiritual and physical aspects, but also a gradually
attained control of this wonderful force, which will mean its direction
to the body of the spiritual man, and its gradual withdrawal from the
body of the natural man, until the over-pressure, so general and such
a fruitful source of misery in our day, is abated, and purity takes the
place of passion. This over pressure, which is the cause of so many
evils and so much of human shame, is an abnormal, not a natural,
condition. It is primarily due to spiritual blindness, to blindness
regarding the spiritual man, and ignorance even of his existence; for
by this blind ignorance are closed the channels through which, were
they open, the creative force could flow into the body of the spiritual
man, there building up an immortal vesture. There is no cure for
blindness, with its consequent over-pressure and attendant misery and
shame, but spiritual vision, spiritual aspiration, sacrifice, the new birth
from above. There is no other way to lighten the burden, to lift the
misery and shame from human life. Therefore, let us follow after
sacrifice and aspiration, let us seek the light. In this way only shall we
gain that insight into the order of the bodily powers, and that mastery
of them, which this Sutra implies.

30. By perfectly concentrated Meditation on the centre of f orce in the
well of the throat, there comes the cessation of hunger and thirst.

We are continuing the study of the bodily powers and centres of force
in their relation to the powers and forces of the spiritual man. We have
already considered the dominant power of physical life, the creative
power which secures the continuance of physical life; and, further, the
manner in which, through aspiration and sacrifice, it is gradually raised
and set to the work of upbuilding the body of the spiritual man. We
come now to the dominant psychic force, the power which manifests
itself in speech, and in virtue of which the voice may carry so much of
the personal magnetism, endowing the orator with a tongue of fire,
magical in its power to arouse and rule the emotions of his hearers.
This emotional power, this distinctively psychical force, is the cause
of "hunger and thirst," the psychical hunger and thirst for sensations,
which is the source of our two-sided life of emotionalism, with its
hopes and fears, its expectations and memories, its desires and hates.
The source of this psychical power, or, perhaps we should say, its
centre of activity in the physical body is said to be in the cavity of the
throat. Thus, in the Taittiriya Upanishad it is written: "There is this
shining ether in the inner being. Therein is the spiritual man, formed
through thought, immortal, golden. Inward, in the palate, the organ
that hangs down like a nipple,-this is the womb of Indra. And there,
where the dividing of the hair turns, extending upward to the crown
of the head."

Indra is the name given to the creative power of which we have
spoken, and which, we are told, resides in "the organ which hangs
down like a nipple, inward, in the palate."

31. By perfectly concentrated Meditation on the centre of force in the
channel called the "tortoise-formed," comes steadfastness.

We are concerned now with the centre of nervous or psychical force
below the cavity of the throat, in the chest, in which is felt the
sensation of fear; the centre, the disturbance of which sets the heart
beating miserably with dread, or which produces that sense of terror
through which the heart is said to stand still.

When the truth concerning fear is thoroughly mastered, through
spiritual insight into the immortal, fearless life, then this force is
perfectly controlled; there is no more fear, just as, through the control
of the psychic power which works through the nerve-centre in the
throat, there comes a cessation of "hunger and thirst." Thereafter,
these forces, or their spiritual prototypes, are turned to the building of
the spiritual man.

Always, it must be remembered, the victory is first a spiritual one;
only later does it bring control of the bodily powers.

32. Through perfectly concentrated Meditation on the light in the head
comes the vision of the Masters who have attained.

The tradition is, that there is a certain centre of force in the head,
perhaps the "pineal gland," which some of our Western philosophers
have supposed to be the dwelling of the soul,-a centre which is, as it
were, the door way between the natural and the spiritual man. It is the
seat of that better and wiser consciousness behind the outward
looking consciousness in the forward part of the head; that better and
wiser consciousness of "the back of the mind," which views spiritual
things, and seeks to impress the spiritual view on the outward looking
consciousness in the forward part of the head. It is the spiritual man
seeking to guide the natural man, seeking to bring the natural man to
concern himself with the things of his immortality. This is suggested
in the words of the Upanishad already quoted: "There, where the
dividing of the hair turns, extending upward to the crown of the
head"; all of which may sound very fantastical, until one comes to
understand it.

It is said that when this power is fully awakened, it brings a vision of
the great Companions of the spiritual man, those who have already
attained, crossing over to the further shore of the sea of death and
rebirth. Perhaps it is to this divine sight that the Master alluded, who
is reported to have said: "I counsel you to buy of me eye-salve, that
you may see." It is of this same vision of the great Companions, the
children of light, that a seer wrote:

"Though inland far we be,
Our souls have sight of that immortal sea
Which brought us hither,
Can in a moment travel thither,
And see the Children sport upon the shore
And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore."

33. Or through the divining power of tuition he knows all things.

This is really the supplement, the spiritual side, of the Sutra just
translated. Step by step, as the better consciousness, the spiritual
view, gains force in the back of the mind, so, in the same measure, the
spiritual man is gaining the power to see: learning to open the spiritual
eyes. When the eyes are fully opened, the spiritual man beholds the
great Companions standing about him; he has begun to "know all
things."

This divining power of intuition is the power which lies above and
behind the so-called rational mind; the rational mind formulates a
question and lays it before the intuition, which gives a real answer,
often immediately distorted by the rational mind, yet always
embodying a kernel of truth. It is by this process, through which the
rational mind brings questions to the intuition for solution, that the
truths of science are reached, the flashes of discovery and genius. But
this higher power need not work in subordination to the so-called
rational mind, it may act directly, as full illumination, "the vision and
the faculty divine."

Next Page

Spiritual Ideas