The Way of Power - L. Adams Beck (most inspirational books of all time txt) 📗

IT is my own opinion that the West, now searching even passionately for a clue to the mysteries of psychology, will do very well to listen to the voice of India on the subject.

It will not be perfection for it has filtered through the human medium and human language, as is the case with every pronouncement of every faith, but there is much to be learned from it, especially in some of its strange foreseeings of the conclusions of modern science and its equally strange departures from them in cases where it is impossible for all but the deeply initiated and those who have attained the higher consciousness to pronounce which view is ultimately right. Having said this and thus indicated some of the difficulties, I proceed, and I say in truth that I never meet a Western psychologist (and I have met many) without feeling against how blank an opposition they must contend, how poor, how material are the theories they offer in place of practical guidance in the way of comprehension. To repeat the analogy I have used throughout these chapters the Western psychologist is brought up all standing against the hard glittering surface of the Mirror in which our senses reflect the world about us. The Eastern psychologist passes through this, as if it were mist, to the reality which lies behind. I hope I shall be able to make a part of this ancient system of psychology clear and comprehensible, though I realize that I can say only enough to set others on a track which leads far and higher and in which the motive of research matters profoundly.

I must say in beginning that it is bound up with the most ancient form of religious thought in India, and I cannot wholly ignore that, though I shall dwell on it as little as possible. But just as when in the West we speak of visions, dreams and telepathic occurrences, we must cite such notable religious examples as Joan of Arc, St. Theresa, Francis of Assisi, William Blake, Walt Whitman and others who have possessed what is technically called “the higher consciousness,” so in giving this great Indian system one cannot wholly ignore the relation to religion—for I repeat that always there is something in deeply felt religion which plays like a skilled musician on what I may call “the psychic nerve,” exciting it to its highest harmonies and powers.

In the West, it has been truly said, we never troubled ourselves with examining scientifically the question of why these supernormal experiences happened to these people and their like. We did not at all understand them, did not like them, and were inclined to think them a form of mild or intense religious mania, which no one would wish for himself or for his relations, though it might be well enough if it had happened long enough ago to be placed on the respectable footing of Biblical miracles, which could be comfortably taken as occasions of direct Divine intervention and the suspension of all law and order. If anyone had said to us, “The miracles of the Christ, St. Paul, Joan of Arc, the visions of William Blake, of Boehme the cobbler, and so forth, were perfectly natural things, manifestations of a law as natural as that which governs the radio set in every house, and they were born to these powers because of experiences in past lives,” we should have thought this statement either irreverent or entirely incredible unless the person so speaking was prepared to show us the way in which the whole thing works. This, India has been always prepared to do. She comes into the open with her system of psychology, and takes her stand under this statement: “Some men are born with these powers because they have earned realization of them in former lives. Others must earn them by discipline and training. As to credibility: direct perception, inference, and competent evidence are proofs.” If you will concede that these are sufficient she will state the psychologic law as she has tested it and as you may test it for yourself.

But there is not and never can be an easy system of acquiring psychological knowledge. Many, as in the study of modern science, have fallen victims by the way. I had a friend who was a pioneer in the medical use of the X-ray. First, one finger, then a hand, then an arm was attacked by cancer and finally he died, his life generously spent in blazing the trail for others. So with this Indian science of psychology where the body is compelled to a discipline not to be exceeded in rigor by the strictest monasticism ever laid down in the West for unconsciously following the same winged hope. The hope is there but the way is often dangerous.

The great authority—or rather the authority which collected knowledge and opinions on this psychology in the second century B. C. (for it is said to be four thousand years old) is an Indian known by the name of Patanjali, whose “Yoga Aphorisms” survive to this day as the foundation stone of the science of psychology which in India is named “Raja Yoga”—or the Royal Yoga—the word Yoga signifying union or concentration since it is only by union and concentration with or through the forces of nature that results can be achieved. It must not be thought that Patanjali was the originator of this system. He only collected the experience, already very ancient, of many experimenters. I shall draw on his words for what I am about to say, and on those of deeply learned disciples of his philosophy who themselves constantly experienced what is known in India as “samadhi”—i.e., the state of higher consciousness in which perception beyond all reason is possible.

To begin with, India wholly denies that so-called “miracles,” “answers to prayer” and the strange powers of faith, are due to any supernatural intervention. She says: “Yes, they happen. They are imitated, faked, but they happen and abundantly, only they are never supernatural for nothing exists in the Universe which is not obedient to the law of Nature.” India states that belief in the possibility of supernatural interferences with law inculcates fear, superstition, and therefore cruelty. It belongs to the dark places of the earth and must be cast out by the clear daylight of knowledge.

But there are in nature gross manifestations of force and subtle ones. The subtle ones are the causes, the gross the effects. The gross can be perceived by the senses, the subtle by a consciousness in ourselves which requires cultivation and discipline, conscious or unconscious, before it can open its eyes and see. And because the higher branches of this Way are at least as difficult and new to the unskilled as (for instance) climbing the Alps, India holds that a teacher is a necessity, and that only certain lower branches of the discipline can be studied in safety alone. With this reservation she offers what she calls a science of the mind, and says the mind itself is the instrument by which the mind must be observed. The powers of the mind are like rays of light cast abroad, illuminating a vast space; but when concentrated and condensed they form a beam so powerful that flung on any subject they will illuminate it to translucence. Thus, to understand the mind and its powers the search-light of the mind itself must be turned inward and steadily focused; and, if you come to think of it, that is the one thing which in the West we are never trained to do. Our whole system of education turns our minds to external things, the common branches of learning, observation of the world about us and so forth. But to concentrate mental observation on the mind itself, to force it to self-analysis, is a thing rarely or never done in the West, where there is not one man in millions who can focus his mind on its own powers and, understanding, use them.

So the goal of this ancient science is concentration on the mind and its powers, and it demands no faith or belief. It only demands trial and the hard discipline and training which would be needed for passing so high and difficult examination where body mind, and spirit participated in the competition.

It is natural that a great part of the discipline must be physical. Everyone knows roughly that if he wants to be clear-headed it is not wise to eat a heavy meal and wash it down with abundant alcohol. He may deduce a good deal from that broad statement if he thinks it over carefully. The Germans have an excellent punning proverb, “Was man isst, das ist er” (“What a man eats, that he is”), and in this connection, it is very true. Therefore a discipline which insists that the mind is intimately connected with the body and is actually a finer part of it will insist also that as the mind undoubtedly acts on the body, so the body also acts on the mind. It states that we have very little control of our mind, because of the powerful pull of the body, and that not until the body is sufficiently controlled can we compel the mind to focus on what we will. Now remember that according to this teaching the external world as we see it is only the gross form of the real and subtle world. Therefore the man who has