310THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
We have now seen enough of this cosmic or mystic conscious-
ness, as it comes sporadically. We must next pass to its methodical
cultivation as an element of the religious life. Hindus, Buddhists,
Mohammedans, and Christians all have cultivated it methodically.
In India, training in mystical insight has been known from time
immemorial under the name of yoga. Yoga means the experimental
union of the individual with the divine. It is based on persevering
exercise; and the diet, posture, breathing, intellectual concentration,
and moral discipline vary slightly in the different systems which
teach it. The yogi, or disciple, who has by these means overcome
the obscurations of his lower nature sufficiently, enters into the con-
dition termed samâdhi, “and comes face to face with facts which no
instinct or reason can ever know.” He learns —
“That the mind itself has a higher state of existence, beyond reason,
a superconscious state, and that when the mind gets to that higher state,
then this knowledge beyond reasoning comes. . . . All the different steps
in yoga are intended to bring us scientifically to the superconscious state
or samâdhi. . . . Just as unconscious work is beneath consciousness, so there
is another work which is above consciousness, and which, also, is not
accompanied with the feeling of egoism. . . . There is no feeling of I, and
yet the mind works, desireless, free from restlessness, objectless, bodiless.
Then the Truth shines in its full effulgence, and we know ourselves —
for Samâdhi lies potential in us all — for what we truly are, free, immortal,
omnipotent, loosed from the finite, and its contrasts of good and evil
altogether, and identical with the Atman or Universal Soul.”
1
The Vedantists say that one may stumble into super-consciousness
sporadically, without the previous discipline, but it is then impure.
Their test of its purity, like our test of religion’s value, is empirical:
its fruits must be good for life. When a man comes out of Samâdhi,
they assure us that he remains “enlightened, a sage, a prophet, a
saint, his whole character changed, his life changed, illumined.”
2
1
My quotations are from V
IVEKANANDA
, Raja Yoga, London, 1896. The completest source
of information on Yoga is the work translated by V
IHARI
L
ALA
M
ITRA
: Yoga Vasishta Maha
Ramayana, 4 vols., Calcutta, 1891–99.
2
A European witness, after carefully comparing the results of Yoga with those of the
hypnotic or dreamy states artificially producible by us, says: “It makes
of its true disciples good,
healthy, and happy men. . . . Through the mastery which the yogi attains over his thoughts and
his body, he grows into a ‘character.’ By the subjection of his impulses and propensities to his
will, and the fixing of the latter upon the ideal of goodness, he becomes a ‘personality’ hard
to influence by others, and thus almost the opposite of what we usually imagine a ‘medium’
so-called, or ‘psychic subject’ to be.” K
ARL
K
ELLNER
: Yoga: Eine Skizze, München, 1896, p. 21.
MYSTICISM
311
The Buddhists use the word “samâdhi” as well as the Hindus;
but “dhyâna” is their special word for higher states of contempla-
tion. There seem to be four stages recognized in dhyâna. The first
stage comes through concentration of the mind upon one point.
It excludes desire, but not discernment or judgment: it is still
intellectual. In the second stage the intellectual functions drop
off, and the satisfied sense of unity remains. In the third stage
the satisfaction departs, and indifference begins, along with memory
and self-consciousness. In the fourth stage the indifference, memory,
and self-consciousness are perfected. [Just what “memory” and
“self-consciousness” mean in this connection is doubtful. They
cannot be the faculties familiar to us in the lower life.] Higher
stages still of contemplation are mentioned — a region where
there exists nothing, and where the meditator says: “There exists
absolutely nothing,” and stops. Then he reaches another region
where he says: “There are neither ideas nor absence of ideas,” and
stops again. Then another region where, “having reached the end
of both idea and perception, he stops finally.” This would seem
to be, not yet Nirvâna, but as close an approach to it as this life
affords.
1
In the Mohammedan world the Sufi sect and various dervish
bodies are the possessors of the mystical tradition. The Sufis have
existed in Persia from the earliest times, and as their pantheism is
so at variance with the hot and rigid monotheism of the Arab mind,
it has been suggested that Sufism must have been inoculated into
Islam by Hindu influences. We Christians know little of Sufism, for
its secrets are disclosed only to those initiated. To give its existence
a certain liveliness in your minds, I will quote a Moslem document,
and pass away from the subject.
Al-Ghazzali, a Persian philosopher and theologian, who flourished
in the eleventh century, and ranks as one of the greatest doctors
of the Moslem church, has left us one of the few autobiographies to
be found outside of Christian literature. Strange that a species of
book so abundant among ourselves should be so little represented
elsewhere — the absence of strictly personal confessions is the
chief difficulty to the purely literary student who would like to
become acquainted with the inwardness of religions other than the
Christian.
1
I follow the account in C. F. K
OEPPEN
: Die Religion des Buddha, Berlin, 1857, i. 585 ff.