[3] Dr. Otto Schräder, Director of the Adyar Library, is now engaged
on these, and is busy with the laborious task of constructing a
critical text, to be followed by a complete translation, copiously
annotated. A great boon will have been bestowed on all interested in
Samskrt literature, when this work is completed.
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;
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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