The Way of Power by L. Adams Beck (feel good books to read .txt) 📕

It is unnecessary to recite the moralities common to all humanity (it may almost be said) of duties to parents, husband, wife, children, friends, the poor, and as a citizen. But there are instructions in this Indian system of Yoga as a means to an end which differ from the Christian ideal and are certainly worth consideration.

The householder is to work as an ordinary man at his profession and the things which concern him and his family. The profession must not be one which in itself implies wrong-doing. He must do his best to succeed in his profession and the acquisition of wealth by fair means is in no way forbidden. He is to be a center in life and in social matters and the distribution of his wealth along right lines will advantage all. The householder who acquires wealth by good means and for good purposes is walking the Way (though it is another Way) to the same end as surely as the ascetic. In him we see a different aspect of the selfsame virtues of self-surrender and self-oblivion. He must not gamble, however; he must not move in the companionship of the wicked; he must speak the truth always. He must speak gently. He must not be the cause of trouble to others. The householder by aiding great social aims goes toward the same goal as the greatest yogin beyond the bondage of the three spheres. If the householder dies in battle fighting for his country and faith he comes to the same goal as the yogin does by meditation.

But now comes the difficult part. The freedom of the soul is the goal of all Yoga however reached. By action men may attain the same goal which the Christ gained as a Bhakti (the path of utter love and devotion) or the Buddha as a Jnana (that of high intellect and philosophy). But how is he who lives and works in the ordinary concerns of the world “to free his soul”?

He is to work like a master, not a slave; his work is never to bind or attach his soul. It is all to be done through freedom and love, for all selfish work is slave’s work. When a man can love his wife, children, countrymen, mankind, the world and the universe, and when his actions spring from that root, he is a true yogin of work, and his spirit is unattached and winged.

Do you ask a return from your children for what you have done for them? Do so no more. Work for them and let the matter end there. In what you do for persons, cities, or the State, expect nothing in return. If you hold the position where all you give is given without the least thought of return and as a free offering to the world, then your work will never bind you. Attachment follows only when return is expected.

So in the sacrifice made by the householder-birds in the parable quoted above, no fetters held them to life and they were free as the immortal gods. Surely the Yoga of action, of the man who lives in the world, is at least as difficult as that of the ascetic, and it is no wonder that It should lead him straight into the hidden heart of Reality and Power.

And here I will use another Indian parable which illustrates this Yoga of action.

A young sannyasin (ascetic) had given himself to the strictest Raja Yoga discipline. Meditating in the forest one day some leaves fell about him and looking up he saw a crow and crane fighting. Fury possessed him at the insult to his quiet, and a flash of fire shot from his head and destroyed the birds. He rejoiced to recognize power and to feel himself a yogin of full attainment. He went into the town to beg his bread as usual and, at the entrance of a house, called: “Mother [the usual Indian address], give me food.”

“Wait a little, my son,” said a voice from within.

Pride at once assailed him and in his heart he thought:

“Wretched woman—how dare you keep me waiting!”

Instantly the voice answered:

“You are thinking too much of yourself. Here is no case of the crow and the crane.”

Dumb with astonishment at this, he waited until the woman came with her alms and then he fell at her feet.

“Mother, how could you know?”

She answered:

“My son, I know no Yoga practices. I am an ordinary woman, but all my life have struggled to do my best. My husband was ill. I could not leave him and so you had to wait. And such duties, as daughter and wife, are all the Yoga I have ever practiced. But since I know so little, go on and you will find a butcher from whom you may learn much.”

And he was horrified and startled because in India the butchers belong to the class of the “untouchables.” There are none so low. But he could do nothing but go on until he saw before him the butcher at his revolting work. And looking at the young sannyasin the man said:

“The woman sent you to me. Be seated, please, until I am ready.”

He waited, and the butcher finished his day by serving his parents and then turned to the sannyasin.

The young man questioned him on the high subjects of Yoga and in answer the butcher spoke like one inspired, delivering a discourse that contained the highest flights and concentrated essence of the Vedanta philosophy. And when he had finished his great teaching the young ascetic asked:

“Sir, why, with your knowledge, do I find you thus?” And the man answered;

“No duty is ugly; none is impure. To this I was born, to this devoted. But I have done my best, and I serve my parents and fulfil my duty as a householder. I know no Yoga, nor have I ever left the world. But illumination has found me because I have worked with a spirit free and unattached.”

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This parable perfectly illustrates the point that the feeble may confute the wise. These two, the woman and the butcher, had received the great Illumination. So much for the Yoga of Action.

Next follows the Yoga of Intellect, and here I own I always picture the mathematicians leading with their pure and austere knowledge, though of course it is not necessarily so. This is the Yoga that walks fearlessly along the mountain-peaks of the highest intellect, which from its own altitudes sees through and over the lies of the senses and knows that the world is far other than it appears. Here I must use the word “maya”—so often used in the Western world to signify “illusion” in the belief that such is its Sanskrit signification. But its real meaning may more truly be described as “phenomena,” and as representing the world of appearances which the untrustworthy senses report to us. They are not illusions, though an Indian sect at one time argued that point of view, but they are things wrongly perceived through a medium which presents them to us as they are not, so that we take them as it were by the wrong handle and cannot use them as we should and could if we knew them as they are.

There is a passage from one of the ancient Indian books which sums up the meaning of “maya” very finely.

“Because we talk in vain and are satisfied with the things of the senses, and because we are running after desires, therefore we cover the reality as it were with a mist.”

And again in one of the ancient books:

“Know nature to be Maya, and the Mind, the ruler of this Maya, to be the Lord himself.”

Now, in a very deep sense, the highest, most piercing, most searching form of intellect may most truly become the Lord of Maya, in the sense that it may by sheer luminance of insight so light up the misleading forms which the senses offer us as to make them transparent and see through them to the truth behind. Of this form of Yoga the Buddha is the highest known example.

He had practiced the ascetic discipline of the Raja Yoga to which I devote the whole chapter following this, but certainly also he cast it aside, perceiving another path upon which his supernormal intellect could lead him. There is nothing more interesting to those who care for such things than to study the deep reasoning contemplation to which he gave himself under the Tree and to read the stages by which it soared through all the clouds and mists of the senses until it reached the (to others) almost unbearable illumination of pure truth—naked but radiant. Naturally the powers followed such strength like tamed hounds, and from his height he surveyed them and found them comparatively meaningless because he beheld things so far above and beyond them.

There is no intellect, probably, that could tread the path of the Buddha, but such insight into causes clears the way for other minds belonging in their lesser degree to the same order, and this is the road that the great philosophers, mathematicians, scientists, and others like them may tread to the Land behind the Looking Glass. They will search into the question of man’s boasted “individuality,” and will find that it does not exist. The body is a flux of constantly changing particles, the mind an ever-changing whirl-pool passing from the imbecility of the infant to the imbecility of unmemoried old age, and through all this Maya they will pierce and find their way to the One and Unchanging of which we are all a part. They will realize at last, by their sheer power of destroying interposing veils by reasoning, that the “individuality” of man is a distortion of the truth; that only infinite Spirit is individual, that nothing infinite can ever be divided or changed, and that every man is in himself the infinite, the unchanging, though the phenomena of life, while they are believed to be real, make him appear to change, like colored lights playing upon white surfaces.

And when a man has realized this he knows that the universe is his and he, and the secret places of the universe are as open to him as the street in which he lives—and more so—and the occult is the happy alphabet of the new language the psyche in him has learned to speak. Of course he cannot tell all he knows, for, as has been said, it takes two to tell the truth—the one to hear and the other to speak,—and there are not many yet capable of hearing the truths that the yogin who has trodden the road of reasoning can tell. “There are a few whose eyes are not darkened with dust. They will hear. None others.”

It would not be suitable or possible to open here all the high teachings on this head. They need a volume of their own. Their watchword is realization of the great truth, “Thou art That.” By pure intellect and reason a man may gain the truth that the universe is one and he one with it, and having gained this eternal foothold he knows the central truth of the central thought of ancient India.

“He that seeth about him the manifold goes from death to death.”

He who sees the One has beheld the Vision and holds power in the hollow of his hand. So much