or any other world. Then he advances towards the fifth stage--
Self-controlled. In order to reach that he must practice the six
endowments, the Shatsamapatti. These six endowments have to do
with the Will-aspect of consciousness as the other two, Viveka
and Vairagya, have to do with the cognition and activity aspects
of it.

By a study of your own mind, you can find out how far you are
ready to begin the definite practice of Yoga. Examine your mind
in order to recognize these stages in yourself. If you are in
either of the two early stages, you are not ready for Yoga. The
child and the youth are not ready to become yogis, nor is the
preoccupied man. But if you find yourself possessed by a single
thought, you are nearly ready for Yoga; it leads to the next
stage of one-pointedness, where you can choose your idea, and
cling to it of your own will. Short is the step from that to the
complete control, which can inhibit all motions of the mind.
Having reached that stage, it is comparatively easy to pass into
Samadhi.




Inward and Outward-Turned Consciousness



Samadhi is of two kinds: one turned outward, one turned inward.
The outward-turned consciousness is always first. You are in the
stage of Samadhi belonging to the outward-turned waking
consciousness, when you can pass beyond the objects to the
principles which those objects manifest, when through the form
you catch a glimpse of the life. Darwin was in this stage when he
glimpsed the truth of evolution. That is the outward-turned
Samadhi of the physical body.

This is technically the Samprajnata Samadhi, the "Samadhi with
consciousness," but to be better regarded, I think, as with
consciousness outward-turned, i.e. conscious of objects. When the
object disappears, that is, when consciousness draws itself away
from the sheath by which those objects are seen, then comes the
Asamprajnata Samadhi; called the "Samadhi without consciousness".
I prefer to call it the inward-turned consciousness, as it is by
turning away from the outer that this stage is reached.

These two stages of Samadhi follow each other on every plane; the
intense concentration on objects in the first stage, and the
piercing thereby through the outer form to the underlying
principle, are followed by the turning away of the consciousness
from the sheath which has served its purpose, and its withdrawal
into itself, i.e., into a sheath not yet recognised as a sheath.
It is then for a while conscious only of itself and not of the
outer world. Then comes the "cloud," the dawning sense again of
an outer, a dim sensing of "something" other than itself; that
again is followed by the functioning of the nigher sheath and the
Recognition of the objects of the next higher plane,
corresponding to that sheath. Hence the complete cycle is:
Samprajnata Samadhi, Asamprajnata Samadhi, Megha (cloud), and
then the Samprajnata Samadhi of the next plane, and so on.




The Cloud



This term--in full, Dharma-megha, cloud of righteousness, or of
religion--is one which is very scantily explained by the
commentators. In fact, the only explanation they give is that all
the man's past karma of good gathers over him, and pours down
upon him a rain of blessing. Let us see if we cannot find
something more than this meagre interpretation.

The term "cloud" is very often used in mystic literature of the
West; the "Cloud on the Mount," the "Cloud on the Sanctuary," the
"Cloud on the Mercy-Seat," are expressions familiar to the
student. And the experience which they indicate is familiar to
all mystics in its lower phases, and to some in its fullness. In
its lower phases, it is the experience just noted, where the
withdrawal of the consciousness into a sheath not yet recognised
as a sheath is followed by the beginning of the functioning of
that sheath, the first indication of which is the dim sensing of
an outer. You feel as though surrounded by a dense mist,
conscious that you are not alone but unable to see. Be still; be
patient; wait. Let your consciousness be in the attitude of
suspense. Presently the cloud will thin, and first in glimpses,
then in its full beauty, the vision of a higher plane will dawn
on your entranced sight. This entrance into a higher plane will
repeat itself again and again, until your consciousness, centred
on the buddhic plane and its splendouis having disappeared as
your consciousness withdraws even from that exquisite sheath, you
find yourself in the true cloud, the cloud on the sanctuary, the
cloud that veils the Holiest, that hides the vision of the Self.
Then comes what seems to be the draining away of the very life,
the letting go of the last hold on the tangible, the hanging in a
void, the horror of great darkness, loneliness unspeakable.
Endure, endure. Everything must go. "Nothing out of the Eternal
can help you." God only shines out in the stillness; as says the
Hebrew: "Be still, and know that I am God." In that silence a
Voice shall be heard, the voice of the Self, In that stillness a
Life shall be felt, the life of the Self. In that void a Fullness
shall be revealed, the fullness of the Self. In that darkness a
Light shall be seen, the glory of the Self. The cloud shall
vanish, and the shining of the Self shall be made manifest. That
which was a glimpse of a far-off majesty shall become a perpetual
realisation and, knowing the Self and your unity with it, you
shall enter into the Peace that belongs to the Self alone.





Lecture II

SCHOOLS OF THOUGHT



In studying psychology anyone who is acquainted with the Sanskrit
tongue must know how valuable that language is for precise and
scientific dealing with the subject. The Sanskrit, or the
well-made, the constructed, the built-together, tongue, is one
that lends itself better than any other to the elucidation of
psychological difficulties. Over and over again, by the mere form
of a word, a hint is given, an explanation or relation is
suggested. The language is constructed in a fashion which enables
a large number of meanings to be connoted by a single word, so
that you may trace all allied ideas, ,or truths, or facts, by
this verbal connection, when you are speaking or using Sanskrit.
It has a limited number of important roots, and then an immense
number of words constructed on those roots.

Now the root of the word yoga is a word that means " to join,"
yuj, and that root appears in many languages, such as the
English--of course, through the Latin, wherein you get jugare,
jungere, "to join"--and out of that a number of English words are
derived and will at once suggest themselves to you: junction,
conjunction, disjunction, and so on. The English word "yoke"
again, is derived from this same Sanskrit root so that all
through the various words, or thoughts, or facts connected with
this one root, you are able to gather the meaning of the word
yoga and to see how much that word covers in the ordinary
processes of the mind and how suggestive many of the words
connected with it are, acting, so to speak, as sign-posts to
direct you along the road to the meaning. In other tongues, as in
French, we have a word like rapport, used constantly in English;
" being en rapport," a French expression, but so Anglicized that
it is continually heard amongst ourselves. And that term, in some
ways, is the closest to the meaning of the Sanskrit word yoga;
"to be in relation to"; "to be connected with"; "to enter into";
"to merge in"; and so on: all these ideas are classified together
under the one head of "Yoga". When you find Sri Krishna saying
that "Yoga is equilibrium," in the Sanskrit He is saying a
perfectly obvious thing, because Yoga implies balance, yoking and
the Sanskrit of equilibrium is "samvata--togetherness"; so that
it is a perfectly simple, straightforward statement, not
connoting anything very deep, but merely expressing one of the
fundamental meanings of the word He is using. And so with another
word, a word used in the commentary on the Sutra I quoted before,
which conveys to the Hindu a perfectly straightforward meaning:
"Yoga is Samadhi." To an only English-knowing person that does
not convey any very definite idea; each word needs explanation.
To a Sanskrit-knowing man the two words are obviously related to
one another. For the word yoga, we have seen, means "yoked
together," and Samadhi derived from the root dha, "to place,"
with the prepositions sam and a, meaning "completely together".
Samadhi, therefore, literally means " fully placing together,"
and its etymological equivalent in English would be " to compose
" (com=sam; posita= place). Samadhi therefore means "composing
the mind," collecting it together, checking all distractions.
Thus by philological, as well as by practical, investigation the
two words yoga and samadhi are inseparably linked together. And
when Vyasa, the commentator, says: "Yoga is the composed mind,"
he is conveying a clear and significant idea as to what is
implied in Yoga. Although Samadhi has come to mean, by a natural
sequence of ideas, the trance-state which results from perfect
composure, its original meaning should not be lost sight of.

Thus, in explaining Yoga, one is often at a loss for the English
equivalent of the manifold meanings of the Sanskrit tongue, and I
earnestly advise those of you who can do so, at least to acquaint
yourselves sufficiently with this admirable language, to make the
literature of Yoga more intelligible to you than it can be to a
person who is completely ignorant of Sanskrit.




Its Relation to Indian Philosophies



Let me ask you to think for a while on the place of Yoga in its
relation to two of the great Hindu schools of philosophical
thought, for neither the Westerner nor the non-Sanskrit-knowing
Indian can ever really understand the translations of the chief
Indian books, now current here and in the West, and the force of
all the allusions they make, unless they acquaint themselves in
some degree with the outlines of these great schools of
philosophy, they being the very foundation on which these books
are built up. Take the Bhagavad-Gita. Probably there are many who

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