VIII THE EASTERN TEACHING
ORIENTAL PHYSICS AND METAPHYSICS
Western physical science, pursued with ardor and devotion for the past hundred years, has attained to a control over physical phenomena little short of magical, but in our understanding and mastery of subjective phenomena we are far behind those Eastern peoples who have made these matters the subject of study and experiment for thousands of years. The informed Hindu, rightly or wrongly, regards the Western practice of hypnotism, both in its methods and in its results, with mingled horror and contempt. To him it is not different from Black Magic, pernicious to operator and subject alike, since it involves an unwarrantable tyranny of the will on the part of the operator, and a dangerous submission to the obsession of an invading will on the part of the subject. Eastern hypnotism—at its highest and best—is profoundly different from Western, in that the sanctity of the individual is respected. Its aim is not to enslave the will, but temporarily to emancipate consciousness, under favorable circumstances, from its physical limitation.
Eastern practical psychology and metaphysics can be understood only through a knowledge of Eastern physics. These we would call transcendental, since they recognize not one theatre of consciousness, but three: the gross, the subtle, and the pure. These correspond to the material, the etherial, and the empyreal worlds of Greek philosophy, and to the physical, astral, and mental planes of modern Theosophy. They may be thought of as universal substance in three different octaves of vibration. Upon this, the trained will of man is able to act directly, for the reason that—as claimed by Balzac—it is a living force.
In Eastern hypnotism the gross vibrations of the physical vehicle are inhibited by the will of the operator, putting the body of the subject to sleep, whereat the consciousness, free in its subtle body, awakens to a dimensionally higher world. The operator, by means of questions, reaps such profit as he may by following the "true dreams" of the entranced subject, scrupulously refraining from imposing his own will further than is necessary to obtain the information which he seeks. The higher power of Eastern hypnotism, totally unknown in the West, consists of inhibiting the subtle vibrations of the astral vehicle also, permitting the consciousness to revert to its "pure" condition. In these deep states of trance the subject is able to communicate knowledges shut away from the generality of men—among them the knowledge of past births.
THE SELF-RECOVERED MEMORY OF PAST BIRTHS
The strength of will necessary to accomplish this higher power of hypnotism is achieved by arduous and long-continued exercises in concentration, by the practice of a strict morality, and by submission to a physical regimen which few Occidentals would care to undergo. Severe as is this training, it is less so than that which the true Yogi imposes upon himself, and its fruits are less. The achievement to which he addresses himself is far beyond that of the most accomplished hypnotist. The Yogi scorns all supernormal powers, even while possessing them. The Yogi, as the word implies—it means literally union—seeks to unite himself with his own higher self, the eternal and immortal part of his own nature, and the achievement of this brings with it the freedom of the three worlds at all times, and in full consciousness. As this involves an inward turning of the mind and will, and the withdrawal from the ordinary active life of average humanity, he alone is witness of his own success. "The rest is silence."
The knowledge of past births which may be obtained by the questionable and cumbersome method of hypnotism is one of the wayside flowers which the Yogi may pluck, if he will, on his path towards perfection. There are definite rules for the attainment of this knowledge, and they conform so closely to Colonel de Rochas' method—save for the fact that operator and subject are one and not twain—that it will be interesting to give them here. The ensuing passage is from the Vishuddhi Marga, or Path of Purity, a work written some sixteen hundred years ago by the famous sage, Buddhaghosha, whose name signifies the Voice of Buddha, the revealer of Buddha's teachings. It is quoted in Charles Johnston's The Memory of Past Births.
"The devotee, then, who tries for the first time to call to mind former states of existence, should choose a time after breakfast, when he has returned from collecting alms, and is alone and plunged in meditation, and has been absorbed in the four trances in succession. On rising from the fourth trance, which leads to the higher powers, he should consider the event which last took place, namely, his sitting down; next, the spreading of the mat; the entering of the room; the putting away of bowl and robe; his eating; his leaving the village; his going the rounds of the village for alms; his entering the village for alms; his departure from the monastery; his offering adoration in the courts of the shrine and of the Bodhi tree; his washing the bowl; what he did between taking the bowl and rinsing his mouth; what he did at dawn; what he did in the middle watch of the night; what he did in the first watch of the night. Thus he must consider what he did for a whole day and night, going backwards over it in reverse order.
"In the same reverse order he must consider what he did the day before, the day before that, up to the fifth day, the tenth day, a fortnight ago, a month ago, a year ago; and having in the same manner considered the previous ten and twenty years, and so on up to the time of his conception in this birth, he must then consider the name and form which he had at the moment of death in his last birth. But since the name and form of the last birth came quite to an end, and were replaced by others, this point of time is like thick darkness, and difficult to be made out by the mind of any person still deluded. But even such a one should not despair nor say: 'I shall never be able to penetrate beyond conception, or take as the object of my thought the name and form which I had in my last birth, at the moment of death,' but he should again and again enter the trance which leads to the higher powers, and each time he rises from the trance, he should again intend his mind upon that point of time.
"Just as a strong man in cutting down a mighty tree to be used as the peaked roof of a pagoda, if the edge of his axe be turned in lopping off the branches and twigs, will not despair of cutting down the tree, but will go to an iron-worker's shop, have his axe sharpened, return, and go on with his cutting; and if the edge of his axe be turned a second time, he will a second time have it sharpened, and return, and go on with his cutting; and since nothing that he chopped once needs to be chopped again, he will in no long time, when there is nothing left to chop, fell that mighty tree. In the same way the devotee rising from the trance which leads to the higher powers, without considering what he has considered once, and considering only the moment of conception, in no long time will penetrate beyond the moment of conception, and take as his object the name and form which he had at the moment of death, in his last birth.
"His alert attention having become possessed of this knowledge, he can call to mind many former states of existence, as, one birth, two births, three births, four births, five births, and so on, in the words of the text."
This quotation casts an interesting light upon Eastern monasticism. The Buddhist monasteries are here revealed as schools of practical psychology, the life of the monk a life of arduous and unceasing labor, but labor of a sort which seems but idleness. The successive "initiations" which are the milestones on the "Path of Perfection" upon which the devotee has set his feet represent successive emancipations of consciousness gained through work and knowledge. Their nature may best be understood by means of a fanciful analogy.
RELEASE
If we assume that all life is conscious life, as much aware of its environment as the freedom of movement of its life vehicle in that environment permits, a corpuscle vibrating in a solid would have a certain sense of space and of movement in space gained from its own experience. Now imagine the solid, which is its world, to be subjected to the influence of heat. When the temperature reached a certain point the solid would transform itself into a liquid. To the corpuscle all the old barriers would seem to be broken down; space would be different, time would be different, and its world a different place. Again, at another increase of temperature, when the liquid became a gas, the corpuscle would experience a further emancipation: it would possess a further freedom, with all the facts of its universe to learn anew.
Each of these successive crises would constitute for it an initiation, and since the heat has acted upon it from within, causing an expansion of its life vehicle, it would seem to itself to have attained to these new freedoms through self-development.
The parallel is now plain to the reader: the corpuscle is the Yogi, bent on liberation: the heat which warms him is the Divine Love, centered in his heart, his initiations are the successive emancipations into higher and higher spaces, till he attains Nirvana—inherits the kingdom prepared for him from the foundation of the world. As latent heat resides in the corpuscle, so is Release hidden in the heart—release from time and space. The perception of this prompted the exultant apostrophe of Buddha, "Looking for the maker of this tabernacle, I have run through a course of many births, not finding him; and painful is birth again and again. But now, maker of the tabernacle, thou hast been seen; thou shalt not make up this tabernacle again. All thy rafters are broken, thy ridge-pole is sundered; the mind, approaching the Eternal, has attained the extinction of all desires."
Upon the mystery of Nirvana the Higher Space Hypothesis casts not a little light. To "approach the Eternal" can only be to approach a condition where time is not. Because there is an escape from time in proportion as space dimensions are added to, and assimilated by, consciousness, any development involving this element of space conquest (and evolution is itself such a development) involves time annihilation also. To be in a state of desire is to be conditioned by a limitation, because one can desire only that which one has not or is not. The extinction of a desire is only another name for the transcending of a limitation—of all desires, of all limitations. If these limitations are of space they are of time also; therefore is the "approach to the Eternal" through the "extinction of all desire." Christ said, "Him that overcometh will I make a pillar of the temple of my God, and he shall go no more out"—go out, that is, into incarnation—into "time, besprent with seven-hued circumstance."
Such are the testimonies of the world-saviors regarding the means and end of liberation. Below them on the evolutionary ladder stand the mystics, earth-bound, but soul-free; below them, in turn, yet far above common humanity, stand the men of genius, caught still in the net of passion, but able, in their work, to reflect something of the glory of the supernal world. Let us consider, in the next two chapters, each of these in turn.