Clearly, even four progressive stages of abstraction did not satisfy the requirements of later Buddhism in regard to the intense sublimation of the thinking faculty needed for the complete effacement of all sense of individuality. Higher and higher altitudes had to be reached, insomuch that the fourth stage of abstract meditation is sometimes divided and subdivided into what are called eight Vimokhas and eight Samāpattis—all of them forms and stages of ecstatic meditation[106].
A general name, however, for all the higher trance-like states is Samādhi, and by the practice of Samādhi the six transcendent faculties (Abhiññā) might ultimately be obtained, viz. the inner ear, or power of hearing words and sounds, however distant (clair-audience, as it might be called); the inner eye, or power of seeing all that happens in every part of the world (clair-voyance); knowledge of the thoughts of others; recollection of former existences; the knowledge of the mode of destroying the corrupting influences of passion; and, finally, the supernatural powers called Iddhi, to be subsequently explained.
But to return to the Buddha’s first course of meditation at the time when he first attained Buddhahood. This happened during one particular night, which was followed by the birthday of Buddhism.
And what was the first grand outcome of that first profound mental abstraction? One legend relates that in the first watch of the night all his previous existences flashed across his mind; in the second he understood all present states of being; in the third he traced out the chain of causes and effects, and at the dawn of day he knew all things.
According to another legend, there was an actual outburst of the divine light before hidden within him.
We read in the Lalita-vistara (chap. i) that at the supreme moment of his intellectual illumination brilliant flames of light issued from the crown of his head, through the interstices of his cropped hair. These rays are sometimes represented in his images, emerging from his skull in a form resembling the five fingers of an extended hand (see the frontispiece).
Mark, however, that Gautama’s meditation never led him to the highest result of the true Yoga of Indian philosophy—union with the Supreme Spirit. On the contrary, his self-enlightenment led to entire disbelief in the separate existence of any eternal, infinite Spirit at all—any Spirit, in fact, with which a spirit existing in his own body could blend, or into which it could be absorbed.
If the Buddha was not a materialist, in the sense of believing in the eternal existence of material atoms, neither could he in any sense be called a ‘spiritualist,’ or believer in the eternal existence of abstract spirit.
With him Creation did not proceed from an Omnipotent Spirit or Mind evolving phenomena out of itself by the exercise of will, nor from an eternal self-existing, self-evolving germ of any kind. As to the existence in the Universe of any spiritual substance which was not matter and was imperceptible by the senses, it could not be proved.
Nor did he believe in the eternal existence of an invisible Self or Ego, called Soul, distinct from a material body. The only eternity of true Buddhism was an eternity of ‘becoming,’ not of ‘being’—an eternity of existences, all succeeding each other, and all lapsing into nothingness. If there were any personal gods they were all inferior to the perfect man, and all liable to change and dissolution.