Mystical Buddhism in its connexion with the Yoga philosophy

Mystical Buddhism in its connexion with the Yoga philosophy.

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The first idea implied by Buddhism is intellectual enlightenment. But Buddhism has its own theory of enlightenment—its own idea of true knowledge, which it calls Bodhi, not Veda. By true knowledge it means knowledge acquired by man through his own intellectual faculties and through his own inner consciousness, instincts, and intuitions, unaided by any external or supernatural revelation of any kind.

But it is important to observe that Buddhism, in the carrying out of its own theory of entire self-dependence in the search after truth, was compelled to be somewhat inconsistent with itself. It enjoined self-conquest, self-restraint, self-concentration, and separation from the world for the attainment of true knowledge and for the accomplishment of its own summum bonum—the bliss of Nirvāṇa—the bliss of deliverance from the fires of passion and the flames of concupiscence. Yet it encouraged association and combination for mutual help. It established a universal brotherhood of celibate monks, open to persons of all castes and ranks, to rich and poor, learned and unlearned alike—a community of men which might, in theory, be 224 co-extensive with the whole world—all bound together by the common aim of self-conquest, all animated by the wish to aid each other in the battle with carnal desires, all penetrated by a desire to follow the example of the Buddha, and be guided by the doctrine or law which he promulgated.

Cœnobitic monasticism in fact, as we have already pointed out, became an essential part of true Buddhism and a necessary instrument for its propagation.

In all this the Buddha showed himself to be eminently practical in his methods and profoundly wise in his generation. Evidently, too, he was wise in abstaining at first from all mystical teaching. Originally Buddhism set its face against all solitary asceticism and all secret efforts to attain sublime heights of knowledge. It had no occult, no esoteric system of doctrine which it withheld from ordinary men.

Nor did true Buddhism at first concern itself with any form of philosophical or metaphysical teaching, which it did not consider helpful for the attainment of the only kind of true knowledge worth striving for—the knowledge of the origin of suffering and its remedy—the knowledge that suffering and pain arise from indulging lusts, and that life is inseparable from suffering, and is an evil to be got rid of by suppressing self and extinguishing desires.

In the Mahā-parinibbāna-sutta (Rhys Davids, II. 32) is recorded one of the Buddha’s remarks shortly before his decease:—

‘What, O Ānanda, does the Order desire of me? I have taught the law (desito dhammo) without making 225 any distinction between esoteric and exoteric doctrine (anantaram abahiram karitvā). In the matter of the law, the Tathāgata (i.e. the Buddha) has never had the closed fist of a teacher (āćariya-muṭṭhi)—of a teacher who withholds some doctrines and communicates others.’ In short, he was opposed to mysticism.

Nevertheless, admitting, as we must, that early Buddhism had no mysteries reserved for a privileged circle, we must not shut our eyes to the fact that the great importance attached to abstract meditation in the Buddhist system could not fail in the end to encourage the growth of mystical ideas.

Furthermore, it is undeniable that such ideas were, in some countries, carried to the most extravagant extremes. Efforts to induce a trance-like or hypnotic condition, by abstracting the thoughts from all bodily influences, by recitation of mystical sentences, and by superstitious devices for the acquisition of supernatural faculties, were placed above good works and all the duties of the moral code.

We might point, too, to the strange doctrine which arose in Nepāl and Tibet—the doctrine of the Dhyāni-Buddhas (or ‘Buddhas of Meditation’)—certain abstract Essences existing in the formless worlds of thought, who were held to be ethereal and eternal representatives of the transitory earthly Buddhas. These have been adverted to in a previous Lecture (see p. 202).

Our present concern is rather with the growth and development of mystical Buddhism in India itself, through its connexion with the system of philosophy called Yoga and Yogāćāra.

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The close relationship of Buddhism to that system is well known; but the various practices included under the name Yoga did not owe their origin to Buddhism. They were prevalent in India before Gautama Buddha’s time; and one of the most generally accepted facts in his biography is that, after abandoning his home and worldly associations, he resorted to certain Brāhman ascetics, who were practising Yoga.

What then was the object which these ascetics had in view?

The word Yoga literally means ‘union’ (as derived from the Sanskṛit root ‘yuj,’ to join; compare the English word ‘yoke’), and the proper aim of every man who practised Yoga was the mystic union (or rather re-union) of his own spirit with the one eternal Soul or Spirit of the Universe. A true Yogī, says the Bhagavad-gītā (VI. 13, 25), should be indifferent to all earthly things. To him a clod, a stone, and gold should be all alike.

Doubtless this was the Buddha’s first aim when he addressed himself to Yoga in the fifth century B.C., and even to this hour, earnest men in India resort to this system with the same object.

In the Indian Magazine for July, 1887 (as well as in my ‘Brāhmanism and Hindūism,’ p. 529), is a short biography of a quite recent religious reformer named Svāmī Dayānanda-Sarasvatī, whose acquaintance I made at Bombay in 1876 and 1877, and who only died in 1883. The story of his life reads almost like a repetition of the life of Buddha, though his teaching aimed at restoring the supposed monotheistic doctrine of the Veda.

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It is recorded that his father, desiring to initiate him into the mysteries of Ṡaivism, took him to a shrine dedicated to the god Ṡiva; but the sight of some mice stealing the consecrated offerings, and of some rats playing on the heads of the idol, led him to disbelieve in Ṡiva-worship as a means of union with the Supreme Being. Longing, however, for such union and for emancipation from the burden of repeated births, he resolved to renounce marriage and abandon the world. Accordingly, at the age of twenty-two, he clandestinely quitted his home, the darkness of evening covering his flight. Taking a secret path, he travelled thirty miles during the night. Next day he was pursued by his father, who tried to force him to return, but in vain. After travelling farther and farther from his native province, he took a vow to devote himself to the investigation of truth. Then he wandered for many years all over India, trying to gain knowledge from sages and philosophers, but without any satisfactory result, till finally he settled at Ahmedābād. There, having mastered the higher Yoga system, he became the leader of a new sect called the Ārya-Samāj.

And here we may observe that the expression ‘higher Yoga’ implies that a lower form of that system had been introduced. In point of fact, the Yoga system grew, and became twofold—that is, it came in the end to have two objects.

The earlier was the higher Yoga. It aimed only at union with the Spirit of the Universe. The more developed system aimed at something more. It sought 228 to acquire miraculous powers by bringing the body under control of the will, and by completely abstracting the soul from body and mind, and isolating it in its own essence. This condition is called Kaivalya.

In the fifth century B.C., when Gautama Buddha began his career, the later and lower form of Yoga seems to have been little known. Practically, in those days, earnest and devout men craved only for union with the Supreme Being, and absorption into his Essence. Many methods of effecting such union and absorption were contrived. And these may be classed under two chief heads—bodily mortification (tapas) and abstract meditation (dhyāna).

By either one of these two chief means, the devotee was supposed to be able to get rid of all bodily fetters—to be able to bring his bodily organs into such subjection to the spiritual that he became unconscious of possessing any body at all. It was in this way that his spirit became fit for blending with the Universal Spirit, of which it was originally a part.

We learn from the Lalita-vistara that various forms of bodily torture, self-maceration, and austerity were common in Gautama’s time.

Some devotees, we read, seated themselves in one spot and kept perpetual silence, with their legs bent under them. Some ate only once a day or once on alternate days, or at intervals of four, six, or fourteen days. Some slept in wet clothes or on ashes, gravel, stones, boards, thorny grass, or spikes, or with the face downwards. Some went naked, making no distinction between fit or unfit places. Some 229 smeared themselves with ashes, cinders, dust, or clay. Some inhaled smoke and fire. Some gazed at the sun, or sat surrounded by five fires, or rested on one foot, or kept one arm perpetually uplifted, or moved about on their knees instead of on their feet, or baked themselves on hot stones, or submerged themselves in water, or suspended themselves in air.

Then, again, a method of fasting called very painful (atikṛiććhra), described by Manu (XI. 213), was often practised. It consisted in eating only a single mouthful every day for nine days, and then abstaining from all food for the three following days.

Another method, called the lunar fast (VI. 20, XI. 216), consisted in beginning with fifteen mouthfuls at full moon, and reducing the quantity by one mouthful till new moon, and then increasing it again in the same way till full moon.

Passages without number might be quoted from ancient literature to prove that similar practices were resorted to throughout India, with the object of bringing the body into subjection to the spirit. And these practices have continued up to the present day.

A Muhammadan traveller, whose narrative is quoted by Mr. Mill (British India, i. 355), once saw a man standing motionless with his face towards the sun.

The same traveller, having occasion to revisit the same spot sixteen years afterwards, found the very same man in the very same attitude. He had gazed on the sun’s disk till all sense of external vision was extinguished.

A Yogī was seen not very long ago (Mill’s India, 230 i. 353) seated between four fires on a quadrangular stage. He stood on one leg gazing at the sun, while these fires were lighted at the four corners. Then placing himself upright on his head, with his feet elevated in the air, he remained for three hours in that position. He then seated himself cross-legged, and continued bearing the raging heat of the sun above his head and the fires which surrounded him, till the end of the day, occasionally adding combustibles with his own hands to increase the flames.

I, myself, in the course of my travels, encountered Yogis who had kept their arms uplifted for years, or had wandered about from one place of pilgrimage to another under a perpetual vow of silence, or had no place to lie upon but a bed of spikes.

As to fasting, the idea that attenuation of the body by abstinence from food facilitates union of the human soul with the divine, or at any rate promotes a keener insight into spiritual things, is doubtless as common in Europe as in Asia; but the most austere observer of Lent in European countries would be hopelessly outdone by devotees whose extraordinary powers of abstinence may be witnessed in every part of India.

If we now turn to the second method of attaining mystic union with the Divine Essence, namely, by profound abstract thought, we may observe that it, too, was everywhere prevalent in Buddha’s time.

Indeed, one of the names given by Indian philosophers to the One Universal Spirit is Ćit, ‘Thought.’ By that name, of course, is meant pure abstract thought, or the faculty of thought separated from every concrete 231 object. Hence, in its highest state the eternal infinite Spirit, by its very nature, thinks of nothing. It is the simple thought-faculty, wholly unconnected with any object about which it thinks. In point of fact, the moment it begins to exercise this faculty, it necessarily abandons for a time its condition of absolute oneness, abstraction, and isolation, to associate itself with something inferior, which is not itself.

It follows, therefore, that intense concentration of the mind on the One Universal Spirit amounts to fixing the thought on a mere abstract Essence, which reciprocates no thought in return, and is not conscious of being thought about by its worshipper.

In harmony with this theory, we find that the definition of Yoga, in the second aphorism of the Yoga-sūtra, is, ‘the suppression (nirodha) of the functions or modifications (vṛitti) of the thinking principle (ćitta).’ So that, in reality, the union of the human mind with the infinite Principle of thought amounts to such complete mental absorption, that thought itself becomes lost in pure thought.

In the Ṡakuntalā (VII. 175) there is a description of an ascetic engaged in this form of Yoga, whose condition of fixed meditation and immovable impassiveness had lasted so long that ants had thrown up a mound as high as his waist, and birds had built their nests in the long clotted tresses of his tangled hair.

Not many years ago, I, myself, saw at Allahābād near the fort a devotee who had maintained a sitting, contemplative posture, with his feet folded under his body, in one place for twenty years. During the Mutiny 232 cannon thundered over his head, and bullets hissed around him, but nothing apparently disturbed his attitude of profound meditation. Even Muhammadans practise the same. The Russian correspondent of the Times states (Sept. 18, 1888) that he saw in a mosque at Samarkand men who voluntarily remained mute and motionless for forty days. On a curtain being pulled aside he beheld a motionless figure seated in profound meditation like a squatting mummy. The guide said that a cannon fired off in front of his face would have left him equally unmoved.

It is clear, then, that, supposing Gautama to have made up his mind to devote himself to a religious life, his adoption of a course of profound meditation was a most usual proceeding.

A large number of the images of Buddha represent him sitting on a raised seat or throne (called the Bodhi-maṇḍa), with his legs folded under his body, and his eyes half-closed, in a condition of abstraction (samādhi)—sometimes called Yoga-nidrā; that is, a trance-like state, resembling profound sleep. (Compare frontispiece.)

He is said to have seated himself in this way under four trees in succession (see p. 39 of these Lectures), namely, under the Bodhi-tree or sacred fig-tree, under the Banyan-tree, under the Mućalinda-tree (protected by the serpent), and under the Rājāyatana-tree.

And those four successive seats probably symbolized the four recognized stages of meditation[105] (dhyāna) 233 rising one above the other, till thought itself was converted into non-thought (see p. 209).

We know, too, that the Buddha went through still higher progressive stages of meditation at the moment of his death or final decease (Pari-nirvāṇa), thus described in the Mahā-parinibbāna-sutta (Davids, VI. 11):

‘Then the Venerable One entered into the first stage of meditation (pathamajjhānam); and rising out of the first stage, he passed into the second; and rising out of the second, he passed into the third; and rising out of the third, he passed into the fourth; and rising out of the fourth stage, he attained the conception of the infinity of space (ākāṡānañćāyatanam, see p. 214); and rising out of the conception of the infinity of space, he attained the conception of the infinity of intelligence (viññāṇañćāyatanam); and rising out of the idea of the infinity of intelligence, he attained the conception of absolute nonentity (ākiñćaññāyatanam); and rising out of the idea of nonentity, he entered the region where there is neither consciousness nor unconsciousness; and rising out of that region, he entered the state in which all sensation and perception of ideas had wholly ceased.’ (See p. 213 of these Lectures.)

Clearly, even four progressive stages of abstraction did not satisfy the requirements of later Buddhism in regard to the intense sublimation of the thinking faculty needed for the complete effacement of all sense of individuality. Higher and higher altitudes had to be reached, insomuch that the fourth stage of abstract meditation is sometimes divided and subdivided into what are called eight Vimokhas and eight Samāpattis—all 234 of them forms and stages of ecstatic meditation[106].

A general name, however, for all the higher trance-like states is Samādhi, and by the practice of Samādhi the six transcendent faculties (Abhiññā) might ultimately be obtained, viz. the inner ear, or power of hearing words and sounds, however distant (clair-audience, as it might be called); the inner eye, or power of seeing all that happens in every part of the world (clair-voyance); knowledge of the thoughts of others; recollection of former existences; the knowledge of the mode of destroying the corrupting influences of passion; and, finally, the supernatural powers called Iddhi, to be subsequently explained.

But to return to the Buddha’s first course of meditation at the time when he first attained Buddhahood. This happened during one particular night, which was followed by the birthday of Buddhism.

And what was the first grand outcome of that first profound mental abstraction? One legend relates that in the first watch of the night all his previous existences flashed across his mind; in the second he understood all present states of being; in the third he traced out the chain of causes and effects, and at the dawn of day he knew all things.

According to another legend, there was an actual outburst of the divine light before hidden within him.

We read in the Lalita-vistara (chap. i) that at the supreme moment of his intellectual illumination brilliant flames of light issued from the crown of his head, 235 through the interstices of his cropped hair. These rays are sometimes represented in his images, emerging from his skull in a form resembling the five fingers of an extended hand (see the frontispiece).

Mark, however, that Gautama’s meditation never led him to the highest result of the true Yoga of Indian philosophy—union with the Supreme Spirit. On the contrary, his self-enlightenment led to entire disbelief in the separate existence of any eternal, infinite Spirit at all—any Spirit, in fact, with which a spirit existing in his own body could blend, or into which it could be absorbed.

If the Buddha was not a materialist, in the sense of believing in the eternal existence of material atoms, neither could he in any sense be called a ‘spiritualist,’ or believer in the eternal existence of abstract spirit.

With him Creation did not proceed from an Omnipotent Spirit or Mind evolving phenomena out of itself by the exercise of will, nor from an eternal self-existing, self-evolving germ of any kind. As to the existence in the Universe of any spiritual substance which was not matter and was imperceptible by the senses, it could not be proved.

Nor did he believe in the eternal existence of an invisible Self or Ego, called Soul, distinct from a material body. The only eternity of true Buddhism was an eternity of ‘becoming,’ not of ‘being’—an eternity of existences, all succeeding each other, and all lapsing into nothingness. If there were any personal gods they were all inferior to the perfect man, and all liable to change and dissolution.

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In brief, the Buddha’s enlightenment consisted, first, in the discovery of the origin and remedy of suffering, and, next, in the knowledge of the existence of an eternal Force—a force generated by what in Sanskṛit is called Karman, ‘Act.’ The accumulated force of the acts of one Universe produced another.

Every man, therefore, was created by the force of his own acts in former bodies, combined with a force generated by intense attachment to existence (upādāna). Who or what started the first act, the Buddha never pretended to be able to explain. He confessed himself in regard to this point a downright Agnostic. The Buddha himself had been created by his own acts, and had been created and re-created through countless bodily forms; but he had no spirit or soul existing separately between the intervals of each creation. By his protracted meditation he attained to no higher knowledge than this, and although he himself rose to loftier heights of knowledge than any other man of his day, he never aspired to other faculties than were within the reach of any human being capable of rising to the same sublime abstraction of mind.

He was even careful to lay down a precept that the acquisition of transcendent human faculties was restricted to the perfected saints called Arhats; and so important did he consider it to guard such faculties from being claimed by mere impostors, that one of the four prohibitions communicated to all monks on first admission to his monastic Order was that they were not to pretend to such powers (see p. 81).

Nor is there any proof that even Arhats in Gautama’s 237 time were allowed to claim superhuman faculties and the power of working physical miracles.

By degrees, no doubt, powers of this kind were ascribed to them as well as to the Buddha. Even in the Yinaya, one of the oldest portions of the Tri-piṭaka, we find it stated (Mahā-vagga I. 20, 24) that Gautama Buddha gained adherents by performing three thousand five hundred supernatural wonders (Pāli, pāṭi-hāriya; see p. 46). These were thought to be evidences of his mission as a great teacher and saviour of mankind; but the part of the narrative recording these, although very ancient, is probably a legendary addition.

It is interesting, however, to trace in portions of the early literature, the development of the doctrine that Buddhahood meant first transcendent knowledge, and then supernatural faculties and the power of working miracles.

In the Ākaṅkheyya-sutta (said to have been composed in the fourth century B.C.) occurs a remarkable passage, translated by Prof. Rhys Davids (S.B.E., p. 214):—

‘If a monk should desire through the destruction of the corrupting influences (āsavas), by himself, and even in this very world, to know and realise and attain to Arhatship, to emancipation of heart, and emancipation of mind, let him devote himself to that quietude of heart which springs from within, let him not drive back the ecstasy of contemplation, let him look through things, let him be much alone.

‘If a monk should desire to hear with clear and heavenly ear, surpassing that of men, sounds both human and celestial, whether far or near; if he should 238 desire to comprehend by his own heart the hearts of other beings and of other men; if he should desire to call to mind his various temporary states in the past, such as one, two, three, four, five, ten, twenty, a hundred, a thousand, a hundred thousand births, or his births in many an age and æon of destruction and renovation, let him devote himself to that quietude which springs from within.’

Then, in the Mahā-parinibbāna-sutta (I. 33, Rhys Davids) occurs the following;—

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‘At that time the blessed One—as instantaneously as a strong man would stretch forth his arm, or draw it back again when he had stretched it forth—vanished from this side of the river, and stood on the further bank with the company of the brethren.’

And, again, the following:—

‘I call to mind, Ānanda, how when I used to enter into an assembly of many hundred nobles, before I had seated myself there, or talked to them, or started a conversation with them, I used to become in colour like unto their colour, and in voice like unto their voice. Then, with religious discourse, I used to instruct, incite, and quicken them, and fill them with gladness. But they knew me not when I spoke, and would say, “Who may this be who thus speaks? a man or a god?” Then, having instructed, incited, quickened, and gladdened them with religious discourse, I would vanish away. But they knew me not even when I vanished away; and would say, “Who may this be who has thus vanished away? a man, or a god?”’—(Mahā-parinibbāna-sutta III. 22, Rhys Davids.)

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Such passages in the early literature afford an interesting exemplification of the growth of supernatural and mystical ideas, which led to the ultimate association of the Buddhistic system with Ṡaivism, demonology, magic, and various so-called spiritual phenomena.

I now proceed to show that the development of these ideas in Buddhism resulted from its connexion with the later Yoga, which developed similar ideas.

In the aphorisms of this later Yoga, composed by Patañjali, eight chief requisites are enumerated (II. 29); namely, 1. abstaining from five evil acts (yama); 2. performing five positive duties (niyama); 3. settling the limbs in certain postures (āsana); 4. regulating and suppressing the breath (prāṇāyāma); 5. withdrawing the senses from their objects (pratyāhāra); 6. fixing the thinking faculty (dhāraṇā); 7. internal self-contemplation (dhyāna); 8. trance-like self-concentration (samādhi).

These eight are indispensable requisites for the gaining of Patañjali’s summum bonum—the complete abstraction or isolation (kaivalya) of the soul or spirit in its own essence—and for the acquirement of supernatural faculties.

Taking now these eight requisites of Yoga in order, we may observe, with regard to the first, that the five evil acts to be avoided correspond to the five commandments in Buddhism, viz. ‘kill not,’ ‘steal not,’ ‘commit no impurity,’ ‘lie not.’ The fifth alone—‘abstain from all worldly enjoyments’—is different, the Buddhist fifth prohibition being ‘drink no strong drink’ (p. 126).

With regard to the second requisite, the five positive duties are—self-purification, both external and internal 240 (both called ṡauća); the practice of contentment (saṃtosha); bodily mortification (tapas); muttering of prayers, or repetition of mystical syllables (svādhyāya, or japa), and contemplation of the Supreme Being.

The various processes of bodily mortification already described (see p. 228) were repudiated by Buddhism.

As to the muttering of prayers, the repetition of mystic syllables such as Om (a symbol for the Triad of gods), or of any favourite deity’s name, is held among Hindūs to be highly efficacious[107]. In a similar manner among Tibetan Buddhists the six-syllabled sentence: ‘Om maṇi padme Hūm’—‘Om! the jewel in the lotus! Hūm!’—is used as a charm against the sixfold course of transmigration (see pp. 121, 371-373).

Mystical syllables are very common. Sir A. Cunningham gives the following as current in Ladāk:—Bhyo, Rakmo-bhyo! Rakmo-bhyo-bhyo! Ru-lu, Ru-lu, Hūm Bhyo Hūm! (Ladāk, 386.)

Other mystical syllables (such as Sam, Yam, Ram, Lam, etc.) are supposed to contain some occult virtue.

The third requisite—posture—would appear to us a somewhat trivial aid to the union of the human spirit with the divine; but with Hindūs it is an important auxiliary, fraught with great benefit to the Yogī.

The alleged reason is that certain sitting postures (āsana) and cramping of the lower limbs are peculiarly efficacious in producing bodily quietude and preventing restlessness. Some of the postures have curious names, for example:—Padmāsana, ‘the lotus posture;’ ‘vīrāsana, 241 ‘the heroic posture;’ siṉhāsana, ‘the lion posture’ (see note, p. 336); kūrmāsana, ‘tortoise posture;’ kukku-ṭāsana, ‘cock posture;’ dhanur-āsana, ‘bow posture;’ mayūrāsana, ‘peacock posture.’ In the first the legs are folded under the body and the right foot is placed on the left thigh, and the left on the right thigh.

In short, the idea is that compression of the lower limbs, in such a way as to prevent the possibility of the slightest movement, is most important as a preparation for complete abstraction of soul.

Then, as another aid, particular mystical twistings (called mudrā) of the upper limbs—of the arms, hands, and fingers—are enjoined.

Even in Muhammadan countries certain movements of the limbs are practised by devotees with the view of uniting the human spirit with the Divine. Those who have seen the whirling and ‘howling’ dervishes at Cairo can testify that fainting fits result from their violent exertions, inspirations, expirations, and utterances of the name of God, and such fits are believed to be ecstatic states of union with the Deity.

The fourth requisite—regulation and suppression of the breath—is perhaps the one of all the eight which is most difficult for Europeans to understand or appreciate; yet with Hindūs it is all-important. It is sometimes called Haṭha-vidyā. Nor are the ideas connected with it wholly unknown in Europe.

According to Swedenborg[108], thought commences and corresponds with respiration:—

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‘When a man thinks quickly his breath vibrates with rapid alternations; when the tempest of anger shakes his mind his breath is tumultuous; when his soul is deep and tranquil, so is his respiration.’ And he adds: ‘It is strange that this correspondence between the states of the brain or mind and the lungs has not been admitted in science.’

The Hindū belief certainly is that deep inspirations of breath assist in concentrating and abstracting the thoughts and preventing external impressions. But, more than this, five sorts of air are supposed to permeate the human body and play an important part in its vitality. They are called Prāṇa, Vyāna, Apāna, Samāna, Udāna. In the Ćhāndogya Upanishad (V. 19, etc.) they are described as if they were divine beings to be adored and to be honoured by offerings of food. The Haṭha-dīpikā says: ‘As long as the air remains in the body, so long life remains. Death is the exit of the breath. Hence the air should be retained in the body.’

In regulating the breath, the air must first be drawn up through one nostril (the other being closed with the finger), retained in the lungs, and then expelled through the other nostril. This exercise must be practised alternately with the right and left nostril. Next, the breath must be drawn forcibly up through both nostrils, and the air imprisoned for as long a time as possible in the lungs. Thence it must be forced by an effort of will towards the internal organs of the body, or made to mount to the centre of the brain.

The Hindūs, however, do not identify the breath 243 with the soul. They believe that a crevice or suture called the Brahma-randhram at the top of the skull serves as an outlet for the escape of the soul at death. A Hindū Yogī’s skull is sometimes split at death by striking it with a sacred shell. The idea is to facilitate the exit of the soul. It is said that in Tibet the hair is torn out of the top of the head, with the same object.

In the case of a wicked man the soul is supposed to escape through one of the lower openings of the body.

The imprisonment of the breath in the body by taking in more air than is necessary for respiration, is the most important of the breath exercises. It is said that Hindū ascetics, by constant practice, are able by this means to sustain life under water, or to be buried alive for long periods of time. Many alleged feats of suspended animation are of course mere and sheer trickery. It seems, however, open to question, whether it may not be possible for human beings of particular constitutions to practise a kind of hibernation like that of animals, or acquire some power of suspending temporarily the organic functions. A certain Colonel Townsend is said to have succeeded in doing so.

A well-known instance of suspended animation occurred in the Panjāb in 1837. A Hindū Yogī was there, by his own request, buried alive in a vault for forty days in the presence of Runjit Singh and Sir Claude Wade; his eyes, ears, and every orifice of his body having been first stopped with plugs of wax. Dr. McGregor, the then residency surgeon, also watched the case. Every precaution was taken to prevent deception. English officials saw the man buried, as 244 well as exhumed, and a perpetual guard over the vault was kept night and day by order of Runjit Singh himself. At the end of forty days the disinterment took place. The body was dried up like a stick, and the tongue, which had been turned back into the throat, had become like a piece of horn. Those who exhumed him followed his previously-given directions for the restoration of animation, and the Yogī told them he had only been conscious of a kind of ecstatic bliss in the society of other Yogīs and saints, and was quite ready to be buried over again.

What amount of fraud there may be in these feats it is difficult to say. They may possibly be accounted for by the fact that Indian Yogīs have studied the habits of hibernating animals; but in some cases the secret introduction of food has been detected.

I may add that it is commonly believed throughout India that a man whose body is sublimated by intense abstract meditation never dies, in the sense of undergoing corruption and dissolution. When his supposed death occurs he is held to be in a state of trance, which may last for centuries, and his body is, therefore, not burnt, but buried—generally in a sitting posture—and his tomb is called a Samādh.

With regard to the fifth requisite—the act of withdrawing the senses from their object, as, for example, the eye from visible forms—this is well compared to the act of a tortoise withdrawing its limbs under its shell.

The sixth requisite—fixing the principle of thought—comprises the act of directing the thinking faculty 245 (ćitta) towards various parts of the body, for example, towards the heart, or towards the crown of the head, or concentrating the will-force on the region between the two eyebrows, or even fixing the eyes intently on the tip of the nose. (Compare Bhagavad-gītā VI. 13.)

The seventh and eighth requisites—viz. internal self-contemplation and intense self-concentration—are held (when conjoined with the sixth) to be most important as leading to the acquisition of certain supernatural powers, of which the following are most commonly enumerated:—(1) Animan, ‘the faculty of reducing the body to the size of an atom;’ (2) Mahiman, or Gariman, ‘increasing the size or weight at will;’ (3) Laghiman, ‘making the body light at will;’ (4)Prāpti, ‘reaching or touching any object or spot, however apparently distant;’ (5) Prākāmya, ‘unlimited exercise of will;’ (6) Īṡitva, ‘gaining absolute power over one’s self and others;’ (7) Vaṡitā, ‘bringing the elements into subjection;’ (8) Kāmāvasāyitā, ‘the power of suppressing all desires.’

A Yogī who has acquired these powers can rise aloft to the skies, fly through space, pass through the key-hole of a door, pierce the mysteries of planets and stars, cause storms and earthquakes, understand the language of animals, ascertain what occurs in any part of the world, or of the universe, recollect the events of his own previous lives, prolong his present life, see into the past and future, discern the thoughts of others, assume any form he likes, disappear, reappear, and even enter into another man’s body and make it his own.

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Such were some of the extravagant ideas which grew with the growth of the Yoga system, and were incorporated into the later developments of Buddhism.

We learn from Mr. Sarat Chandra Dās that in the monastery of Galdan in Tibet there is at this moment a college specially devoted to the teaching of Esoteric and Mystical Buddhism; while magic and sorcery are taught in the monasteries founded by Padma-sambhava (see pp. 272, 274, 441).

Of course it was only natural that, with the association of Buddhism with the later Yoga and Ṡaivism, the Buddha himself should have become a centre for the growth of supernatural and mystical ideas.

Hence the Buddha is fabled by his followers to have ascended to the Trayastriṉṡa heaven of Indra, walked on water, stepped from one mountain to another, and left impressions of his feet on the solid rock. Although in the Dhamma-pada it is twice declared (254, 255), ‘There is no path through the air.’

Perhaps the climax was reached when the later doctrine made every Buddha possess a threefold existence or three bodies, much in the same way as in Hindūism three bodies are assigned to every being.

The first of the Buddha’s bodies is the Dharma-kāya, ‘body of the Law,’ supposed to be a kind of ethereal essence of a highly sublimated nature and co-extensive with space. This essence was believed to be eternal, and after the Buddha’s death, was represented by the Law or Doctrine (Dharma) he taught. The idea seems 247 to have been invented as an analogue to Brahman, or the Universal spiritual Essence of Brāhmanism[109].

The second body is the Sambhoga-kāya, ‘body of conscious bliss,’ which is of a less ethereal and more material nature than the last. Its Brāhmanical analogue appears to be the intermediate body (belonging to departed spirits) called Bhoga-deha, which is of an ethereal character, though composed of sufficiently gross (sthūla) material particles to be capable of experiencing happiness or misery.

For observe that it is an essential part of the Hindū doctrine of transmigration or metempsychosis, that a soul without a body is incapable of feeling either happiness in heaven or pain in hell.

The third body is the Nirmāṇa-kāya, ‘body of visible shapes and transformations,’ that is to say, those various concrete material forms in which every Buddha who exists as an invisible and eternal essence, is manifested on the earth or elsewhere for the propagation of the true doctrine.

The Brāhmanical analogue of this third body appears to be the earthly gross body, called Sthūla-ṡarīra.

It is evident that the extravagances of mystical Buddhism have their counterparts in Brāhmanism.

There is a Brāhmanical legend which relates how the great Brāhman sage Ṡaṅkarāćārya entranced his gross body, and then, having forced out his soul along with his subtle body, entered the dead body of a recently deceased king, which he occupied for several weeks.

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The Yoga of the Brāhmans, in fact, held that adepts, skilled in occult science, might throw their gross bodies into a state of unconsciousness, and by a determined effort of will project or force out the ethereal body through the pores of the skin, and make this phantasmal form visible in distant places[110].

And now it is declared to be a fact that a community of Buddhist ‘Brothers’ called Mahātmas, are living at this moment in the deserts of Tibet, who, having emancipated their interior selves from physical bondage by profound abstract meditation, have acquired ‘astral’ bodies (distinct from their gross bodies), with which they are able to rise in the air, or move through space, by the mere exercise of will.

Sir Edwin Arnold on the other hand, in his ‘India Revisited’ (p. 273), states that he asked Ṡrī Weligama of Ceylon whether there existed anywhere Mahātmas, who elevated in this way above humanity, possessed larger powers and more profound insight than any other living philosophers? Weligama answered, ‘No! such do not exist; you would seek them vainly in this island, or in Tibet, or in Siam, or in China. It is true, O my friend, that if we had better interpretations of the Lord Buddha’s teaching, we might reach to heights and depths of power and goodness now quite impossible, but we have fallen from the old wisdom, and none of us to-day are so advanced.’

I believe that the Psychical Research Society once sent 249 delegates to India who inquired into this subject, and exposed the absurdity of some of the alleged phenomena.

Curiously in agreement with these extravagant notions are the beliefs of various uncivilized races. Dr. Tylor, in his ‘Primitive Culture’ (i. 440), relates how the North American Indians and others believe that their souls quit their bodies during sleep, and go about hunting, dancing, visiting, etc. It is stated by Mr. Finn, late H. M. Consul for North Persia, that he never could induce his Persian servants to awaken him in the morning. They gave as their reason that the soul during sleep wanders away from the body, and that a sleeper will die if awakened before the soul has time to rejoin the body. The Indian tribes in Central Brazil have the same belief, so says Dr. Karl von den Steinen (recently quoted in the Times newspaper).

Furthermore it is clear that the possibility of acquiring supernatural faculties is not an idea confined to one country.

Old legends relate how Simon Magus made statues walk; how he flew in the air; how he lept into the fire, made bread of stones, changed his shape, assumed two faces, made the vessels in a house move of themselves (Colonel Yule’s Marco Polo, i. 306).

We are told that the phenomena of European spiritualism are to be kept distinct from those of Asiatic occultism. Modern spiritualism, it is said, requires the intervention of ‘mediums,’ who neither control nor understand the manifestations of which they are the passive instruments; whereas the phenomena of occultism are the ‘achievements of a conscious living operator,’ 250 produced on himself by an effort of his own will. According to Mr. Sinnett, the important point ‘which occultism brings out is, that the soul of man, while something enormously subtler and more ethereal and more lasting than the body, is itself a material body. The ether that transmits light is held to be material by any one who holds it to exist at all; but there is a gulf of difference between it and the thinnest of gases.’ In another place he advances an opinion that the spirit is distinct from the soul. It is the soul of the soul.

And again: ‘The body is the prison of the soul for ordinary mortals. We can see merely what comes before its windows; we can take cognisance only of what is brought within its bars. But the adept has found the key of his prison, and can emerge from it at pleasure. It is no longer a prison for him—merely a dwelling. He can project his soul out of his body to any place he pleases with the rapidity of thought[111].’

It is perhaps worth noting that many believers in Asiatic occultism hold that a hitherto unsuspected force exists in nature called Odic force (is this to be connected with Psychic force?), and that it is by this that the levitation of entranced persons is effected.

Others, like the Yogīs, maintain that any one may lighten his body by swallowing large draughts of air, and by an effort of will forcing this air to diffuse itself through every part of the frame. It is alleged that this phenomenon has been actually witnessed.

The connexion, however, of similar phenomena with 251 feats of conjuring is undeniable. In the Asiatic Monthly Journal (March, 1829), an account is given of a Brāhman who poised himself apparently in the air, about four feet from the ground, for forty minutes, in the presence of the Governor of Madras. Another juggler sat on three sticks put together to form a tripod. These were removed, one by one, and the man remained sitting in the air[112].

Long ago Friar Ricold related that ‘a man from India was said to fly. The truth was that he did walk close to the surface of the ground without touching it, and would seem to sit down without any substance to support him’ (Colonel Yule’s Marco Polo, i. 307).

On the other hand, it is contended, that ‘since we have attained, in the last half-century, the theory of evolution, the antiquity of man, the far greater antiquity of the world itself, the correlation of physical forces, the conservation of energy, spectrum analysis, photography, the locomotive engine, electric telegraph, spectroscope, electric light, and the telephone (to which we may now add the phonograph), who shall dare to fix a limit to the capacity of man[113]?’ Few will deny altogether the truth of such a contention, however much they may dissent from Colonel Olcott’s theosophical views.

There may be, of course, latent faculties in humanity which are at present quite unsuspected, and yet are capable of development in the future.

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According to Sir James Paget, in his recent address on ‘Scientific Study,’ many things, now held to be inconceivable and past man’s imagination, are profoundly and assuredly true, and it will be in the power of Science to prove them to be so[114].

Most persons will assent to these propositions, and at the same time agree with me when I express my conviction that mystical Buddhism and Asiatic occultism are no more likely than modern European spiritualism, to bear the searching light of true scientific investigation.

Nevertheless the subject of mystical Buddhism ought not to be brushed aside as unworthy of consideration. It furnishes, in my opinion, a highly interesting topic of inquiry, especially in its bearing on the ‘neo-Buddhism,’ and ‘Theosophy’ of the present day. At all events it is clear from what we have advanced in the present Lecture, that the practices connected with spiritualism, mesmerism, animal magnetism, telepathy, clairvoyance, thought-reading[115], etc., have their counterparts in the Yoga system prevalent in India more than 2,000 years ago, and in the practices of mystical Buddhism prevalent in Tibet and the adjacent countries for many centuries.

‘The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.’