Lorry G Halfkenny Just now · excerpted from the chapter on MYSTICISM.........................In India, training in mystical insight has been known from time immemorial under the name of YOGA. Yoga means the experimental union of the individual with the divine. It is based on persevering exercise; and the diet, posture, breathing, intellectual concentration, and moral discipline vary slightly in the different systems which teach it. The Yogi, or disciple, who has by these means overcome the obscurations of his lower nature sufficiently, enters into the condition termed SAMADHI, and comes face to face with facts which no instinct or reason can ever know. He learns----That the mind itself has a higher state of existence, beyond reason, a superconscious state, and that when the mind gets to that higher state, then this knowledge beyond reasoning comes....All the different steps in Yoga are intended to bring us scientifically to the superconscious state of SAMADHI....Just as unconscious work is beneath consciousness, so there is another work which is above consciousness, and which, also, is not accompanied with the feeling of egoism....There is no feeling of I, and yet the mind works, desireless, free from restlessness, objectless, bodiless. Then the TRUTH shines in its full effulgence, and we know ourselves for SAMADHI lies potential in us all---for what we truly are, free, immortal, omnipotent, loosed from the finite, and its contrasts of good and evil altogether, and identical with the Atman or Universal Soul[quotes are from VIVEKANANDA, Raja Yoga, London, 1896] The Vedantists say that one may stumble into superconsciousness sporadically, with the previous discipline, but it is then impure. Their test of its purity, like our test of religions value, is empirical: its fruits must be good for life. When a man comes out of SAMADHI, they assure us that he remains enlightened, a Sage, a prophet, a saint, his whole character changed, his life changed, illumined. The Buddhists used the word SAMADHI as well as the Hindus; but DHYANA is their special word for higher states of Contemplation. There seem to be four stages recognized in DHYANA. The first stage comes through concentration of the mind upon one point. It excludes desire, but not discernment or judgment: it is still intellectual. In the second stage the intellectual functions drop off, and the satisfied sense of unity remains. In the third stage the satisfaction departs, and indifference begins, along with memory and self-consciousness. In the fourth stage the indifference, memory, and self-consciousness are perfected. Higher stages still of Contemplation are mentioned---a region where there exist nothing, and where the meditator says: There exists absolutely nothing, and stops. Then he reaches another where he says: There are neither ideas nor absence of ideas, and stops again. Then another region where, having reached the end of both idea and perception, he stops finally. This would seem to be, not yet NIRVANA, but as close an approach to it as this life affords.........................The Varieties Of Religious Experience [a Study in Human Nature] by WILLIAM James with an introduction by REINHOLD NIEBUHR [the author of The Serenity Prayer] pgs. 314---316 published 1961 from the 1902 original LikeLike
Posted on: Sat, 22 Nov 2014 02:08:34 +0000
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