The Literature of Yoga

The Literature of  Yoga

Unfortunately for non-Sanskrit-knowing people, the literature of

Yoga is not largely available in English. The general teachings

of Yoga are to be found in the Upanishads, and the Bhagavad-Gita;

those, in many translations, are within your reach, but they are

general, not special; they give you the main principles, but do

not tell you about the methods in any detailed way. Even in the

Bhagavad-Gita, while you are told to make sacrifices, to become

indifferent, and so on, it is all of the nature of moral precept,

absolutely necessary indeed, but still not telling you how to

reach the conditions put before you. The special literature of

Yoga is, first of all, many of the minor Upanishads, "the

hundred-and-eight" as they are called. Then comes the enormous

mass of literature called the Tantras. These books have an evil

significance in the ordinary English ear, but not quite rightly.

The Tantras are very useful books, very valuable and instructive;

all occult science is to be found in them. But they are divisible

into three classes: those that deal with white magic, those that

deal with black magic, and those that deal with what we may call

grey magic, a mixture of the two. Now magic is the word which

covers the methods of deliberately bringing about super-normal

physical states by the action of the will.

A high tension of the nerves, brought on by anxiety or disease,

leads to ordinary hysteria, emotional and foolish. A similarly

high tension, brought about by the will, renders a man sensitive

to super-physical vibrations Going to sleep has no significance,

but going into Samadhi is a priceless power. The process is

largely the same, but one is due to ordinary conditions, the

other to the action of the trained will. The Yogi is the man who

has learned the power of the will, and knows how to use it to

bring about foreseen and foredetermined results. This knowledge

has ever been called magic; it is the name of the Great Science

of the past, the one Science, to which only the word " great "

was given in the past. The Tantras contain the whole of that; the

occult side of man and nature, the means whereby discoveries may

be made, the principles whereby the man may re-create himself,

all these are in the Tantras. The difficulty is that without a

teacher they are very dangerous, and again and again a man trying

to practice the Tantric methods without a teacher makes himself

very ill. So the Tantras have got a bad name both in the West and

here in India. A good many of the American " occult " books now

sold are scraps of the Tantras which have been translated. One

difficulty is that these Tantric works often use the name of a

bodily organ to represent an astral or mental centre. There is

some reason in that because all the centres are connected with

each other from body to body; but no reliable teacher would set

his pupil to work on the bodily organs until he had some control

over the higher centres, and had carefully purified the physical

body. Knowing the one helps you to know the other, and the

teacher who has been through it all can place his pupil on the

right path; but it you take up these words, which are all

physical, and do not know to what the physical word is applied,

then you will only become very confused, and may injure yourself.

For instance, in one of the Sutras it is said that if you

meditate on a certain part of the tongue you will obtain astral

sight. That means that if you meditate on the pituitary body,

just over this part of the tongue, astral sight will be opened.

The particular word used to refer to a centre has a

correspondence in the physical body, and the word is often

applied to the physical organs when the other is meant. This is

what is called a " blind," and it is intended to keep the people

away from dangerous practices in the books that are published;

people may meditate on that part of their tongues all their lives

without anything coming of it; but if they think upon the

corresponding centre in the body, a good dealÄmuch harmÄmay come

of it. " Meditate on the navel," it is also said. This means the

solar plexus, for there is a close connection between the two.

But to meditate on that is to incur the danger of a serious

nervous disorder, almost impossible to cure. All who know how

many people in India suffer through these practices,

ill-understood, recognize that it is not wise to plunge into them

without some one to tell you what they mean, and what may be

safely practiced and what not. The other part of the Yoga

literature is a small book called the sutras of Patanjali. That

is available, but I am afraid that few are able to make much of

it by themselves. In the first place, to elucidate the Sutras,

which are simply headings, there is a great deal of commentary in

Sanskrit, only partially translated. And even the commentaries

have this peculiarity, that all the most difficult words are

merely repeated, not explained, so that the student is not much

enlightened.