that modern psychologists have yet to learn and understand. While psychologists are still groping in darkness with the workings of the subconscious mind, Yoga science of mind has gone even beyond the higher mind and discovered the source of all knowledge, wherein lie the eternal peace and joy that everyone seeks. Certain high psychic powers are also open to man in this way, but such powers are rarely obtained until man has risen above the attractions of the lower nature. It is only when man ceases to care for power for his personal use that power comes. This is eternal law. As man unfolds himself in spiritual consciousness, he relies more upon his inner voice and is able to distinguish it from impulses from the lower planes of the mind. Everybody wishes to be independent. No one likes to be guided by the wishes of others. Almost everyone desires to be guided by his own wishes, and rule over others. No one wishes to have a rival. Does this not indicate that everybody wants something that he cannot obtain merely though intellectual knowledge and material wealth? With many, the higher or intuitional mind unfolds gradually and slowly, and many feel a steady increase of spiritual knowledge and consciousness. These may not have startling visible changes. But others may get sudden flashes of light of illumination that will lift them out of their prisonlike house of body and mind, where they pass into a higher plane of consciousness and being. When the mind is not ready or prepared, it cannot carry back into consciousness a clear recollection of what it had experienced while in that state of consciousness. An average person who has no idea of anything beyond his ordinary senses would consider these things hallucinations. These experiences vary materially, according to the degree of unfolding of the individual, his previous training, purity of the mind. Certain characteristics are common to all. The most common feeling is that of possessing almost complete knowledge of all things. This experience may last only for a moment or so, and at first leaves one in an agony of regret at having lost what he has seen. He may again strive hard to glimpse once more that happiness and that knowledge. To some the experience comes as a flashing light that takes complete possession for a few moments or longer and which is accompanied by a sensation of being surrounded by a brilliant and all-pervading light or glow. Though these experiences may be of short duration, the man who experiences them will never be the same person afterward. The recollection of this experience will afterward prove to be a new source of comfort and strength. When he awakes from that state of ecstasy he thinks, “I cannot be awake, for nothing looks to me as it did before,” or else “I am awake for the first time and everything before was a mere dream.” As one cannot communicate what sugar is to a person who has never tasted sweet, or to a man born blind what colors are, so also no one can describe this experience of a Yogi. Someone describes the inability to express intelligently these things. “When I try to tell the best, I find my tongue is ineffectual on its pivot; my breath will not be obedient to its organs; I become a dumb man.” Yajna Valkya was a great sage and he explained that highest spiritual consciousness to his wife, Maitraya, thus: “Where there are two, one sees another, one hears another, one welcomes another, one thinks of another, one knows another. But when the whole has become that atman or soul, who is seen by whom, who is to be heard by whom, who is to be welcomed by whom, who is to be known by whom?” That one idea was taken by Schopenhauer and echoed in his philosophy. Through whom do we know this universe? Through what to know him? How to know the knower? By what means can we know the knower? Because in and through that we know everything. By what means can we know him? By no means. In that experience the knower, the knowledge, and the known are fused, and in that experience past and future merge with the present. In the Upanishads this state of experience of the soul is described in negation. “Those who know it, know not and those who know not, know it.” As we progress on the spiritual path, such experience comes to every one of us at the proper time. In concluding, let us not always be blinded by reason, since intellect is below intuition, and often it fails. But let us not think that intuition, the power of the higher mind, is only for a few gifted persons. Every one of us possesses this, though only a few show the marked development of the higher mind. Devotion, love, purity, an urge to help our fellow men, and selflessness are all the signs of incoming rays of our higher mind in our evolution. The science of Yoga brings this message to every one of us, irrespective of our religion, caste, or nationality, that in man there is an immortal soul wherein lie all knowledge, all wealth, all joy, and peace; and also a practical way to achieve, in a short time, “the kingdom of heaven within us.” To summarize, the mind of man functions on three levels:
file:///C|/...20books/save/Complete%20Illustrated%20Book%20of%20Yoga%20The%20-%20Devananda%20Vishnu%20Swami/index.html[5/29/2012 10:45:06 PM]