Power Behind The Mind

Marjorie Waterhouse

Description

This book contains clear guidance for those seeking inner illumination and freedom, based on a rare understanding of the human mind and its higher powers. Marjorie Waterhouse focuses on how to apply the traditional practices that lead to the discovery of the true Self of all, which transcends the limitations of the mind and the world. Her exposition of the higher powers that lie unsuspected behind the mind, and of our latent capacity for intuition and inspiration, is unique. Yet alongside the most inspired insights, there is always a considerate and good-humoured appreciation of the challenges facing people on the way to Self-discovery.

Sujets

• Philosophie et théologie
• Popular psychology

Informations

• Publié par: Distributed by eBookpartnership
• Date de parution: 09 avril 2015
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780854240647
• Langue: English

Extrait

THE POWER
BEHIND
THE MIND


Marjorie Waterhouse

SHANTI SADAN
LONDON
Published by Shanti Sadan, London.
First edition 1898, second edition 2006.
ISBN-10 085424039X
ISBN-13 978-0-85424-039-5

Copyright © 2006 Shanti Sadan

This ePub ebook edition published 2013
ISBN 978-0-85424-064-7

www.shantisadan.org

Shanti Sadan has asserted its right
under the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act 1988 to be identified
as copyright owner of this work.

A CIP catalogue record for
this ebook edition is available
from the British Library.

All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be
reproduced, stored in or
introduced into a retrieval system
or transmitted in any form
or by any means electronic,
photomechanical, photocopying,
recording or otherwise without
the prior written permission
of the publisher. Any person who
does any unauthorised act in
relation to this publication may be
liable to criminal prosecution.
Contents


Foreword

I Conscious Living
II The Power Behind the Mind
III Renunciation - The Way to Freedom
IV The Three Paths
V Discovery Through Action
VI The Man of Enlightened Action
VII Action and Beyond
VIII Expansion
IX Conservation of Energy
X Dependence and Independence
XI Grasping the Essentials
XII The Inner Transformation
XIII The Final Teachings

Glossary of Sanskrit Words
FOREWORD


Those who have read Training the Mind through Yoga , the collection of fourteen lectures by Miss M V Waterhouse first published in 1964, will need no introduction to the present book which contains thirteen of her hitherto unpublished talks on Adhyatma Yoga, the Yoga of Self-Knowledge.
Marjorie Waterhouse was one of the earliest and closest pupils of Hari Prasad Shastri, an acknowledged master of Yoga, having joined him soon after he arrived in England from the East in July 1929. After his death in 1956, she became the second Warden of Shanti Sadan, the Centre of Adhyatma Yoga in London, and she held this post for the following seven years.
She brought to her understanding of the philosophy and practice of the spiritual Yoga a practical attitude which was more concerned with smoothing the difficulties of the ordinary man in his attempts to control and enlighten his mind than with the abstruse metaphysical questions posed by the Vedanta philosophy. One of her striking sayings was: We do not yet love the human heart sufficiently. But she herself was one of the people least open to this charge. Her sympathy and common sense were enlivened by a delightful sense of humour, which finds expression even on the printed page.
Practical Yoga, as she says, is the process of transforming the mind through meditation, purification and self-control, and involves facing up to, and dealing effectively with, many obstacles which the raw and untutored mind puts up in the way of resistance to change. The transition from individuality to universality is not achieved without effort and without giving up many of the wrong ways of thought which bedevil our ordinary thinking. In this process, the greatest need of the would-be yogi is for sound guidance and clear advice, and this he will get in abundance from the pages of this book.
I
CONSCIOUS LIVING


YOGA is not a religion, nor a system of philosophy, but it is the method by which the goal of a religion or a philosophy may be realised and the spiritual purpose of man may be achieved. That purpose is direct cognition of his true nature, which is divine. Yoga is, of necessity, practical, for it is not an end in itself, but the means to an end, and when that end has been reached, then the task of Yoga has been fulfilled and it can be laid aside, as all training and discipline is laid aside once a learner has become an adept.
There are many authentic, that is, traditional Yogas. Adhyatma Yoga is based on the Advaita or non-dual system of thought, which postulates an all-pervading, unbroken Consciousness-the reality and ground of all phenomena, which, according to the Advaita, consist of name and appearance only. This reality, existence, bliss-all vague, abstract words striving to express the inexpressible-is the supreme spirit and it is established in the centre of man s being. His sole spiritual vocation is to discover it and to know his identity with it.
The great philosopher, Shri Shankara, is the supreme exponent of this school of thought, and in his commentary on the Bhagavad Gita, which is the principal scripture of India, he defines the word Adhyatma as that which first shows itself as the ego-the innermost self in the body-but which turns out to be identical with the supreme reality-God.
Adhyatma Yoga is based on a three-pronged foundation-if this does not sound too uneasy a position to be maintained. First, it relies on logical and subtly conceived philosophical argument; secondly, on a process of training by which the sleeping capacity in man to know his true nature-to know reality-is awakened; and thirdly-and very important this-on the testimony and instruction which has been left by a great concourse of seers and sages, both male and female, stretching from the earliest times down to the present day, all of whom have reached this peak of existence.
The deep subtlety and logic which clothe the philosophical approach to this Yoga have very seldom been appreciated or acknowledged in the West. Investigators have followed the argument up to a certain point, but after that they relapse into accusations of pantheism, fatalism, escapism and, very often, atheism. But the Teachers of this Yoga have never avoided criticism. In fact they have always held that individual experiment and experience are essential for real understanding, and that unprejudiced investigation should be carried out from the very first. They have left many invaluable works to guide the pupil in his researches. After all, if the contentions of the Advaita are true, they will eventually find confirmation in other fields, in the scientific and psychological fields for instance, and this has already begun to take place.
But the philosophical aspect of this Yoga is only one of its riches. Its second asset is the training it guards and offers to those who are ready for it. Control and equanimity of the mind is the principal technique taught by this discipline, for this is the necessary condition preceding the awakening of the higher intuition which can recognise the Truth instantaneously and directly. Intuition has a very bad name in this part of the world today. Hitler is supposed to have used it and so too have many other now discredited people. But in fact all they developed was a subtle method of getting their own way, based on reasoning and their acquisitive faculties. The power of intuition and inspiration, on the other hand, acts instantaneously and inevitably and from its own centre, and it manifests unchanged by preferences and prejudices of the mind. In fact, it only awakens and operates after the mind has ceased to act as a guiding, influencing force.
Words such as these are notions that need a good deal of explanation, but the subject here is confined to the preliminary training, the preparation for Yoga, so I must put myself in the place of an enquirer and speak for him. What is the first thing such a one would want to know? He will surely ask why there is any necessity for training at all, or for restriction-for the word control hints at it-if divinity and omniscience are the birthright of man, his natural state.
The answer to this is that, not only are we living most unnatural lives, but only a fraction of our powers are brought into play in the process. Those powers which are in evidence and are the property of the mind , such as the power of perception, reasoning, memory and so on, are usually in a state of instability and continuous activity. It is stated again and again in the Yoga classics and in the traditional instructions passed from Guru to pupil, that the universal and inexhaustible Power lies dormant behind this busy state of the mind and, when called forth, it can destroy fear and make a man a god and completely satisfied. But this Power will not be brought into operation until a sustained atmosphere of quiet and security and also a state of complete harmlessness have been established in the mind; then alone will this imperishable Truth reveal itself.
It is surely worth undergoing the discipline if only to test the truth of such a claim. But most people have already passed through some kind of training in their lives and do not enter another too easily. They know that it will demand patience, courage and enthusiasm, and also impose temporary restrictions upon them. During training every reaction seems to be out of proportion. Even conscious living, which simply means living with a sense of direction, does not appear to be a stable thing at all. It becomes self -conscious living, and the mind which you are trying to bring into focus perhaps for the first time, reveals itself as a whirlpool of instincts and resistances. But this is only natural, for when you decide to become the master of anything-to control it-you must be willing to experience its strengths and weaknesses, vicariously so to say, while you are bringing it into focus, and you will receive many surprises in the process.
Most of those born before World War II have at some time or other miserably gyrated round a room in the arms of a dancing mistress while she counted: One, two, three-reverse . At that time dancing meant to us great misery, embarrassment and ceaseless vigilance and counting. But later it became for some at any rate a living and creative art, an interpretation of musical themes. Dancing is a specialised art practised by few only, but every man who is born into the world comes into it with latent powers awaiting development. Moreover, unless they are awakened and brought into focus, he will die half a man, ignorant o