Remember that all which you can put aside as not
yourself is the body of the yogi, and hence, as you go higher, the
lower bodies form but a single body and the consciousness in that
sheath of matter which it still cannot throw away, that becomes the
man.
“Yoga is Samadhi.” It is the power to withdraw from all that you know
as body, and to concentrate yourself within. That is Samadhi. No
ordinary means will then call you back to the world that you have
left.[2] This will also explain to you the phrase in The Secret
Doctrine that the Adept “begins his Samadhi on the atmic plane” When a
Jivan-mukta enters into Samadhi, he begins it on the atmic plane. All
planes below the atmic are one plane for him. He begins his Samadhi on
a plane to which the mere man cannot rise. He begins it on the atmic
plane, and thence rises stage by stage to the higher cosmic planes. The
same word, samadhi, is used to describe the states of the
consciousness, whether it rises above the physical into the astral, as
in self-induced trance of an ordinary man, or as in the case of a
Jivan-mukta when, the consciousness being already centred in the fifth,
or atmic plane, it rises to the higher planes of a larger world.
[2] An Indian yogi in Samadhi, discovered in a forest by some ignorant
and brutal Englishmen, was so violently ill used that he returned to
his tortured body, only to leave it again at once by death.
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. Few of these are translated.[3]
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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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