- Shalom & Welcome! -
The teaching of Yoga as it was originally taught, and as it has been given to students orally over a period of nearly six thousand years, was designed to lead people to the stage of Pratyahara. Only vague indications were given as to the pattern of human growth and evolution beyond that stage. The primary aim of Yoga was the right formation of mind, which would lead men to acquire those experiences best suited to them individually, in their own unique patterns of growth. The right formation of mind in each person would also make of it an instrument, which he could, ultimately, use, in the highest degree of service, to others on the third and fourth etheric levels. The stage of Pratyahara corresponds in most respects to the fourth level of etheric reality or mind, which is the level of those who have achieved, or are achieving, that advanced stage in their evolution where they are able to be responsible spiritually for other people, as well as themselves. This Yoga teaching has essentially to do with the perfection of the personal self, and with its growth from the most primitive forms of self, and the expressions of will based on like/dislike, through every stage of self expression to the ultimate stage of self expression in the service of others.
The entrance into a person of an entirely new element, around which forms, in time, a new centre of gravity, is a stage which lay on the furthermost frontier of this ancient Yoga teaching. The commencement of non-personal1 Caring or Concern in a person, focussed in his Heart Centre, was a very distant prospect for most men on Earth at that time, nearly six thousand years ago. Very few people were at a point in their own individual evolutions where teaching on this subject would have had relevancy; it could have been at most abstract or theoretical - and the purpose of Yoga is to provide useful instruction to help people where they are in their own beings. Most of the early teachers of Yoga had evolved only up to the fourth level, although some were on the fifth etheric level; but none had evolved beyond that stage. Their knowledge of later stages and further goals was therefore incomplete. Some of the knowledge which they, in fact, possessed was given to their students as a vague outline of distant stages; but they exercised selectivity and knowledge was withheld which could have caused harm or distortion through misunderstanding. It was not until several thousand years later that this part of the teaching was given more fully;2 by that time the need was greater, for there were more human beings incarnate on Earth who could absorb knowledge about the later stages in their etheric evolution.
1. Meaning, not self-oriented - rather than impersonal.
2. “The Fulfilment of Yoga in the Higher Teaching” was given nearly four thousand years later.
In some - but not all - respects, the stage of Pratyahara corresponds to the fourth level of etheric reality; similarly, the stages of Dharana, Dhyana, and Samadhi correspond in many respects to the fifth, sixth, and seventh etheric levels.
The Old Sanskrit word As (as in As-ana) stands for the ‘personal’ mind, which is the entire mind of a man at the second and third stages,3 centred around a ‘personal self’. The mind denoted by As includes all structures of mind that grow out of different images of ‘self’ formed by like, dislike, desire; and all desires for and forms of self expression, including the structure of mind which develops out of the desire to be of service to others. The exercises for a man at this stage are concerned with making his mind more flexible (ana). As-ana describes the fullest possible development of a man's As (personal mind), which means ultimately not only flexibility but sensitivity and responsiveness to direction - the direction of his own evolution. All change of mind depends upon these three things.
3. See Chapter Four, Pratyahara.
The personal mind or As is dominant in man up to and including the fourth etheric level; but at that level another element enters in to provide a new growing point from which, in time, a new mind will evolve. Before the new mind can take form, however, a struggle develops in the man between the two aspects of mind, the personal (or old mind, or As) and the non-personal (or sense of Concern or Caring);4 out of this struggle comes the desire to search for G-d. This desire, this single will, focussed solely on the search for G-d, develops in the person a single or one-pointed mind.5 In Old Sanskrit, this one-pointed mind was called Dhar.
4. In fact, there is only one mind, but many stages of it. At this stage, when a new centre of focus for mind is being formed, from which a transformed mind can evolve, there appear to be two separate minds.
5. Both centres of gravity, the Sex Centre and the point of Caring in the Heart Centre, are focussed temporarily, for this stage, on the single aim or purpose expressed in the man's search for G-d.
The next stage, or step, in man's evolution is called Dharana and has to do with the greatest possible development of his single, focussed mind which has become concentrated through his will to find G-d. In teachings that developed subsequently to the original oral teaching, Dharana has been defined as ‘concentration’, which, in a sense, correctly denotes the purpose of the work and exercises performed at this point in man's evolution. But the work of concentration must be understood in relation to Dhar: the mind of man at this stage or level in his evolution; for, otherwise, the exercises would at best be irrelevant to his needs and, at worst, distort the pattern of his growth. When the knowledge about man's evolution, and the pattern of stages through which he evolves, became lost, so the stage called Dharana was seen merely as an ‘aspect’ of Yoga practices and the exercises in ‘concentration’ were dissociated from their original aim or altered.
In fact, the teaching about Dharana is teaching about the work which takes place on the fifth etheric level, where the person's whole being is centred on his search for G-d. It means, in essence, learning to use the single-focussed mind with infinite sensitivity and responsiveness to turn in upon itself and seek through all previous experiences for G-d. This is an enormous task, for it involves not only the concentrated search through the mind itself and all previous experiences which the person has had, but a re-visiting of places and people out of which those experiences arose. This task can take several thousand ‘years’ of time, while the work is being pursued on various etheric planes.
The Old Sanskrit word ana is used in relation to three different stages, As-ana, Dhar-ana, and Dhy-ana. In each of these three stages it refers to the perfection of the particular kind of mind which belongs to the respective stage. In the first case, it has to do with the growth and development of the personal mind. In the second case, ana is concerned with the fullest possible development of the mind denoted as Dhar, which means focussing upon itself and the development of complete awareness of every experience which has gone into its formation. At this stage the word ana means the learning of total concentration and inner awareness in order that the mind may become completely conscious of itself and of all that has gone into its composition and structuring. This is the aim of the stage or level of man's evolution called Dharana.
At the third stage, Dhyana, the word ana is used to denote the development of Objective Mind in man.
The word ana is not a noun, which stands for a state already acquired or developed, but a verb denoting activity and the efforts necessary to become aware, or more sensitive, or to stay awake to purpose and direction. It implies, therefore, the making of special kinds of effort - not the efforts necessitated by a man's physical life on Earth or called forth by his life on etheric planes, but extra effort: effort needed to go against a tendency to drift which exists in every man on both the etheric and physical planes. Growth of being at every stage depends upon this extra effort signified by the word ana; and consistent effort is required to achieve those attributes which belong, in differing degrees and qualities, to the three different kinds of mind,6 namely, flexibility, sensitivity, responsiveness to direction - and, above all, the effort needed to stay ‘awake’.
6. That is, As, Dhar, and Dhy.
The tendency to drift exists in all etheric life; it is a tendency to entropy, for it is impossible to drift ‘upwards’. Growth in all etheric life - whether plant or animal or man - requires effort, the effort of pushing beyond the limits of the state or condition already achieved, whatever that might be. It is will - the Divine Will in its own particular and appropriate form - that activates the seed so that the seed-state may be transcended and plant-life formed. So it is with man. In man, the tendency to entropy belongs to the nature of his mind; the substance of mind naturally recedes, draws together, becomes passive, if it is not acted upon by the person's will. The achievement of every new state or condition of mind, the working through of every experience a man enters into in order to acquire understanding, and the creation of every facet in his mind out of this understanding are the result of continuous effort of will.
Only after a certain stage has been reached, at the end of the fourth etheric level, when a man's mind has been completely formed with regard to its basic structure of personal experience,7 is a point of stability attained which is permanent for him. At this point, his mind becomes ‘fixed’ at the outermost limits of expansion possible for him, and from this point it can no longer draw back or recede. This is the ultimate acehivement of that stage denoted by the word Asana. Beyond that stage, renewed effort is required for man as he works within and towards the fulfilment of the stage denoted as Dharana. And beyond that again, after it has achieved its perfection - after the man's mind has clarified as a many-facetted crystal, there is the next - and final - stage of Dhyana in which his efforts are focussed on the cleansing and polishing of each crystal for the achievement of Objective Mind. At each of these succeeding stages, the tendency to entropy is still an integral part of his mind and he can still drift back to what had become fixed in him at the previous stage, which is the foundation for his renewed efforts. Each new stage or formation of mind may take hundreds, or even thousands, of years to accomplish - especially if the person allows himself to drift and his mind to diminish.
7. After that point, a man does not need - or seek for - new personal experience, but re-works the structure of experience he has already acquired from the point of view of his search for G-d. At the next, or sixth, etheric level, he again works through his structure of experience and mind, in order to create the ultimate etheric state, or Objective Mind, in himself.
When a student reaches the stage of Dharana his life doesn't necessarily alter in any external sense. He doesn't literally move to a new country or take on a new job - whether on a physical or etheric plane; nor is it necessary for him to relinquish his physical or etheric life as it is and retire from the world he inhabits so as to pursue undisturbed exercises in ‘concentration’. All exercises connected with Dharana are designed to facilitate the mind's concentration upon its inward journey and search, but they are performed - or undertaken - within the person's life of outer activity.8 All change takes place where he is - and this is true at every stage - and is invisible to those around him. For a person who has already passed out of a physical body and is engaged in tasks relevant to the fourth etheric level, the stage of Dharana and its exercises do not imply necessarily - or immediately - another task or another ‘country’. All movement and all changes are internal to begin with, that is, changes in the ground of the person's thinking, seeing, acting; they are only gradually reflected in the whole life of the person.
8. At every stage in man's evolution, whether he is on the physical plane, or on an etheric plane, outer activity of some kind is an integral part of his existence.
Dharana means a stage or level in man's spiritual evolution or pattern of growth; it also refers to the activity or work or efforts of a man at this stage to achieve that sensitivity, responsiveness, awareness of mind - and the kind of mind which the word Dhar denotes. At the end of this stage, man's search for G-d becomes transformed into a search for Truth. And the Truth to which he becomes receptive is the Truth about himself: his own mind, his own being. At the conclusion of this stage a man is in full possession of self-knowledge; he has achieved complete awareness of himself and of all the experiences which, over æons of time, have contributed to the growth of his etheric mind.
The next stage begins with the state reached by the previous one, which is the mind filled with the light of self-awareness and radiating Truth about its own nature. Dhyana corresponds in most respects to the sixth level of reality and is concerned with perfecting the mind so that it is able to reflect Objective Truth, that is, Truth about the spheres in which a man has his being and that comprise all etheric life to which he is related and for which he has any responsibility.
The Old Sanskrit word Dhy, or Dhi, means the perfect etheric mind, which is a mind cleansed in each aspect and every ‘crystal-face’ so that it is capable of the perfect reflection of all etheric life. The completed mind, or Dhar, is structured like a crystal of many faces, each of whose facets was formed by a seminal experience in the ages-long history of the particular man. Each crystal-face in his mind is completely structured by the time he has reached the end of the fifth stage and represents, or symbolises, the kind of experience which originally produced it. By the end of this fifth stage, the person has learned the Truth about the nature of every experience he has undergone leading to an understanding of its essence and the formation of a corresponding structure in his own mind. At the sixth stage, the final perfecting of this mind consists in his learning to use each facet to reflect accurately, or truthfully, any similar experience within his own orbit of relationships (which may extend to every point in the etheric world through which he has himself evolved). The perfected etheric mind, or Dhy, in a man is an instrument capable of reflecting Objective Truth.
The self-knowledge achieved at the fifth stage, or Dharana, does not lead the person to an understanding of the essence of each experience which underlies the formation of every facet of his mind; for that essence is revealed only at the sixth level when he begins to use his mind as an instrument of perception for the understanding of others. Then, only, is this essence slowly distilled after the ‘personal’ elements have become recognisable to him. The person then begins to see the causes which produced the particular experience, the etheric level of reality to which it belongs, and the principles involved in its resolution. As his understanding grows, so the facet of mind which a particular experience formed in him is cleansed and becomes gradually capable of reflecting all other similar experiences objectively.9 This is the way in which the mind is cleansed. It is not primarily an interior process, concentrated inwards as at the stage of Dharana, with its focus on the search for G-d; but it is a process based on certain forms of meditation and related practices in awareness which extend outwards to include, in time, the entire ‘universe’ of a man, which is the sum of all his relationships and experiences. These exercises in meditation do not concentrate upon self awareness, that is, awareness of what has already been formed in the person's mind, but are a way of teaching him to use the different facets of his mind to perceive the exact nature and needs of human, animal, and plant life about him. The word ‘exact’ is important, for the exercises teach a man to use his mind as a precision instrument for the perception of Objective Truth. This is the way in which each facet of his mind is cleansed, through learning to use it as a precision tool and distinguishing the elements in it which are subjective or ‘personal’ to himself; for a mental facet can only reflect Truth when the person is aware of all its subjective aspects. Conversely, no mental facet can be cleansed of its personal elements until the individual has reached the stage where he truly seeks to use it as a mirror to reflect someone else's need. For example, if he tries to use a facet of his own mind - which was formed through the experience of a certain kind of suffering - to understand the nature of another person's suffering and learn what help (if any) he can give, so its objective structure and the principles on which his experience was based clarify and are distinguishable from the subjective elements, which cannot reflect Truth at all.
9. The person's understanding of a particular experience - formed into a specific facet of mind - remains with him permanently after all the “personal” elements in the experience have disappeared altogether from his memory.
The desire for Truth is the principal characteristic of someone at the sixth level of reality, and it is this desire for Truth which provides the strongest motive force for the cleansing of every facet of mind.
So long as a man fails to recognise the subjective elements in his own mind, he may be aware of many of the needs of people around him but his mind will not be an accurate instrument for the precise registering of the nature of these needs. Even more important, his mind will be incapable of registering what is spiritually possible for other people. At every stage of human evolution, even in the Summerland, the human mind is capable of registering, and identifying, some vibrations in other people which are akin to itself. A man who has a certain kind of like or desire can often pick up a similar like or desire in other people. In fact, it is through the very characteristics of his own mind, whatever its nature or level of reality, that he is able to register and identify these same characteristics in others. But it is only at the sixth etheric level, that the mind in its ultimate stage of development becomes able to register human potential. To have a vision of another person's potential means being able to perceive where that person is in his own pattern of evolution and in what direction the next possible stage in his development lifes. This vision is more important than being able to perceive the person's difficulties, needs, or the obstacles which stand in the way of his development. Only at this sixth level, can a man learn to know what is right for the other person and so avoid the risk of causing distortion to his being or diverting him from his true direction or damaging his will, all of which possibilities exist so long as the man's mind contains unrecognised subjective elements. No real help can be given until his mind is capable of a true vision of the other person's potential as well as of his need.
The mind of the man at the sixth level of reality is extended to its greatest possible extent and is in touch with every part of the etheric world through which it has personally evolved, including various forms of animal and plant life. Therefore, the exercises which belong to this stage of Dhyana have nothing to do with mind-extension, for that is no longer necessary; they are concerned with learning to discern the underlying nature of the world and the truth which exists in all relationships and forms of expression. They are concerned with teaching the mind to perceive Truth in all things. The exercises may be described as the practice of cetain forms of meditation whose aim is to enable the nature of a certain object or relationship to be reflected truthfully by the mind and comprehended accurately by the person's consciousness.
These exercises in meditation are practised in the midst of the person's ordinary activity, whatever that might be - whether on the physical or the etheric plane - and never in total isolation from the person's life of external relationships. In general the Dhyana exercises concern mental activity of a two-fold nature. Both parts relate to the central activity of this stage, which is learning to understand the true nature of a certain person, object, or relationship. The first exercise has to do with the person identifying all the ‘personal’ elements in the particular facet of his own mind through which he is endeavouring to perceive an object or relationship. The second exercise consists in the person projecting his own consciousness into the particular object so that he receives direct knowledge of its nature from within. These are two quite distinct and separate exercises, involving different kinds of mental activity, both of which, in various forms, are essential to the work of this stage and fundamental to the reception of every kind of Objective Knowledge whether it relates to another person, the operation of an etheric principle or law, the nature of an animal, or the essential vibration of a certain plant.
Othere exercises are also used at this stage as training in the extension of consciousness, so that a pattern may be laid down for its use in actual situations. One of these exercises consists in selecting three different kinds of object for meditation, for example, a particular plant, an animal, and a person. The objects must always be specific and known to the meditator, and not generalised abstractions. He visualises each object in turn with his Creative Imagination and extends his consciousness into it, moving about in each image and occupying it as fully as possible. Each image is ‘inhabited’ in this way for approximately eight minutes; the whole exercise takes about thirty minutes. To become truly effective it should be repeated each day at the same time, the same three images being used on three consecutive days before they are replaced with three new ones.
Another exercise, which forms part of this stage of Dhyana, has to do with a man learning to place his consciousness in the Head Centre and receive increased inspiration, direction, and knowledge through it. This exercise must never be attempted ‘abstractly’ or repeated regularly; it is one which should only be practised in relation to a particular need or situation. The person must first of all need to seek direction of a certain kind or to be given knowledge to increase his understanding of a particular situation. In time, as the Head Centre is put increasingly to its proper use, so the person's own receptivity grows and he becomes more and more able to receive from a level of knowledge which can only be transmitted in this way.
In many respects the two kinds of exercise overlap. Where the person seeks a deeper understanding of some relationship or situation, he may meditate upon it by projecting his consciousness into the image he has visualised of it; or he may, by concentrating upon the Head Centre, receive knowledge of a kind which goes beyond what his consciousness at any one time is able to comprehend; or he may use both exercises.
These two kinds of exercise appear simple and therefore accessible to anyone, at any stage in his pattern of evolution. In fact, they belong only to the stage of Dhyana. They must not be undertaken at any other stage, before all the work and exercises appropriate to the preceding stages have been gone through and the person has evolved to the sixth etheric level. For it is only at this point that the transfer of a man's centre of gravity (or feeling of “I”) from the Sex Centre to his real etheric being and its manifestation through the three upper centres finally takes place. Only after this change in his centre of gravity is complete can it be said that the man has finally evolved beyond the sphere of his personal self. While this transfer is taking place, the work of identifying the subjective or ‘personal’ elements which prevent the facets in his mind from reflecting Objective Knowledge is going on simultaneously in his mind. Until this work is complete and the mind of the man has been cleansed of all that links it subconsciously with the personal self, and until his feeling of “I” is no longer influenced in any degree at all by the Sex Centre and its desire for power, these exercises must not be undertaken. The danger from attempting to perform spiritual exercises out of their proper context lies in the distortion they can cause in the growth-pattern of the individual. If the Dhyana exercises in meditation were attempted at an earlier stage, they would increase the personal or subjective attributes of mind and the man's own identification with these attributes, making the mind's eventual cleansing far more difficult. Futhermore, the knowledge received through the practice of these execises at an earlier stage would not be Objective Knowledge for it would be distorted by the mind of the person performing them. Objective Knowledge can only be obtained if they are practised in the right context. Great danger could also accrue to other people if the person imagined he was able to receive Truth about people, relationships, or situations before he could in fact do so.
A man who reaches this sixth etheric level during his physical life-time on Earth will find that certain characteristics or attributes of mind - which do not seem ‘personal’ to him, insofar as they do not describe his feeling of himself, and yet form part of his mental structure - never seem to fade away completely. In fact, they are capable of being re-activated as long as the person inhabits a physical body. This can cause a certain amount of distress until he realises that these are part of the social-cultural context in which he developed physically, and from which he ‘acquired’ them, and that they belong to the ‘mind’ of the culture rather than to his own mind. They form part of his own mind only through his participation in the cultural mind. When he becomes aware of them, they need no longer form an integral part of his own mind; nevertheless, they do not fade away entirely so long as he is living a physical life.
These exercises which are related to the stage of Dhyana constitute the hub of a new life. They are not exercises to be learned or practised for a time and then dropped. They form the basis not only for a new way of thinking and using the mind, but they actually constitute a new mind which opens out into a new kind of life, whether a man is on the physical or the etheric plane. The mind becomes a mirror which truly reflects the entire world in which that man lives: all levels of etheric reality and all orders and forms of reality which belong to his life-history. It is unlike the experience of empathy which existed at an earlier stage and in which the person retained his own barriers, his careful and clearly-felt definitions of himself. In ‘empathy’ there is both ‘self’ and ‘other’ as two completely separated entities. Now, as he evolves through this stage of Dhyana, there is no fear of losing the self, for this ‘self’ no longer exists but has been entirely replaced by another self. His consciousness is freed from that former self and the fear of losing it and so it can move and experience wherever his will directs it.
When the person has reached this point where his mind is wholly cleansed and able to reflect Truth with every separate facet and the will is able to extend its consciousness and so enter into every person, object, or situation reflected by the mind, then the person has entered the last and final etheric stage of Samadhi.
The word S-ama-dhi is a composite word, built up of three separate elements whose meanings fully describe the nature and work of this final etheric stage. Dhi means the same as dhy: that is, the complete etheric mind, with its fully cleansed facets, capable of reflecting every aspect of etheric life through which the person has previously evolved over long æons of time. The letter S is an Old Sanskrit symbol for the other essential and irreducible body of man,10 called his ‘long body’. The long body of a man is made up of all etheric life for which he is personally responsible, but consists primarily of certain essential relationships to other people which have been formed throughout his own evolution through many different stages. These relationships are not revealed as to their essential nature until the man reaches the sixth etheric level. Until that time, he will often consider many relationships important which are not so and relationships that belong to his long body he may overlook altogether. This ‘long body’, when it becomes fully formed and visible to the man, is seen as a ‘body’ of people related not to one another but solely to himself and for whose spiritual evolution he is ultimately responsible.
10. The first “essential and irreducible body” of man is his complete etheric mind or dhi. All other “bodies” which he possesses, or sees, or thinks he possesses, are reflections, or expressions of his etheric mind. Even his physical body is a temporary expression of, and vehicle for, his etheric mind (and his will) to experience through. The person's will does not, in itself, constitute a body.
The word or symbol ama stands between the S and the dhi and denotes something akin to meditation or awareness; but ama means more than ‘awareness’. Many different practices of meditation or awareness have accompanied the person through every stage in his evolution, from the latter part of the second etheric level onwards, all of which have had to do with the growth and extension of his mind - the mind of each stage in turn. Only latterly and to a lesser degree has meditation been concerned with the development of will. All the practices of meditation have had to do more with the development of the passive than the active part of man, that is, with the development of his mind as an instrument of perception or receptivity. At this ultimate stage in man's etheric evolution, however, ama does not refer to the development of the passive part of man's nature - for his etheric mind has already reached its final state of perfection - but to the evolution of the active part of his being, which is his will.
This development of will is expressed in two ways. First of all, the will develops the potential expressed in the image of the Divine Will through learning to use the Creative Imagination to its full capacity actually to create life; and, secondly, it grows into its complete sense of responsibility towards use of the etheric mind (dhi) and evolution of the people who make up his ‘long body’ (S).
There are two stages in the development of a man's will on this seventh etheric level. At the first stage, the will learns to act wholly from Truth; Truth becomes the wole motive from which the man's actions spring. At the second stage in this evolution of will, it becomes wholly inspired by Caring or Concern.
The symbol ama faces in both directions, standing above the man's two different ‘bodies’ (dhi and S) as the responsible, creative, and Caring will - at the fullest extension of its evolution within the etheric spheres known to man. Beyond these spheres lies the Unknown. At some distant point this Unknown will draw the man's will onward, but for the moment he rests in the achievement of that evolutionary path upon which he set out at the dawn of his consciousness manifold æons before.
- Shalom & Welcome! - 
© The Neith Network Library 2002
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