Here we have a Niyama of infinite delicacy, a spiritual intuition far, far removed from any human quality whatever. Here all is fantasy, and in this world are infinite pleasure, infinite perils. The True Niyama of Neptune is the imaginative faculty, the shadowing forth of the nature of the illimitable light. He has another function. The Yogi who understands the influence of Neptune, and is attuned to Neptune, will have a sense of humour, which is the greatest safeguard for the Yogi. Neptune is, so to speak, in the front line; he has got to adapt himself to difficulties and tribulations; and when the recruit asks 'What made that 'ole?' he has got to say, unsmiling, 'Mice.' Pluto is the utmost sentinel of all; of him it is not wise to speak.
Herschel is dynamic; Herschel is explosive; Herschel, astrologically speaking, does not move in an orbit; he has his own path. So the Niyama which corresponds to this planet is, first and last, the discovery of the True Will
In Greek mythology Artemis, the Goddess of the Moon, is virgin; she yielded only to Pan. Here is one particular lesson: as the Yogi advances, magic powers (Siddhi the teachers call them) are offered to the aspirant; if he accepts the least of these-or the greatest-he is lost
For, like all great things, it is simple; but, like all great things, it is masked by confused thinking; and, only too often, brought into contempt by the machinations of knavery.
(1) There is more nonsense talked and written about Yoga than about anything else in the world. Most of this nonsense, which is fostered by charlatans, is based upon the idea that there is something mysterious and Oriental about it. There isn't. Do not look to me for obelisks and odalisques, Rahat Loucoum, bul-buls, or any other tinsel imagery of the Yoga-mongers. I am neat but not gaudy. There is nothing mysterious or Oriental about anything, as everybody knows who has spent a little time intelligently in the continents of Asia and Africa. I propose to invoke the most remote and elusive of all Gods to throw clear light upon the subject-the light of common sense.
(2) All phenomena of which we are aware take place in our own minds, and therefore th
(7) Yoga means Union. We may now consider what Yoga really is. Let us go for a moment into the nature of consciousness with the tail of an eye on such sciences as mathematics, biology, and chemistry. In mathematics the expression 'a' plus 'b' plus 'c' is a triviality. Write 'a' plus 'b' plus 'c' equals 0, and you obtain an equation from which the most glorious truths may be developed. In biology the cell divides endlessly, but never becomes anything different; but if we unite cells of opposite qualities, male and female, we lay the foundations of a structure whose summit is unattainably fixed in the heavens of imagination. Similar facts occur in chemistry. The atom by itself has few constant qualities, none of them particulary significant; but as soon as an element combines with the object of its hunger we get not only the ecstatic production of light, heat, and so forth, but a more complex structure having few or none of the qualities of its elements, but ca
4)Yoga means Union. In what sense are we to consider this? How is the word Yoga to imply a system of religious training or a description of religious experience? You may note incidentally that the word Religion is really identifiable with Yoga. It means a binding together. (5) Yoga means Union. What are the elements which are united or to be united when this word is used in its common sense of a practice widely spread in Hindustan whose object is the emancipation of the individual who studies and practises it from the less pleasing features of his life on this planet?
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. It is my will to explain the subject of Yoga in clear language, without resort to jargon or the enunciation of fantastic hypotheses, in order that this great science may be thoroughly understood as of universal importance. For, like all great things, it is simple; but, like all great things, it is masked by confused thinking; and, only too often, brought
