When we study the “eight means of Yoga” and the “five Rules”, we can see the requirements and stages of the spiritual life on the Way of Integration. Here [adapted from sutra 28] are given instruction as to the method to pursue if full yoga, union, or at-one-ment is to be achieved. The work might be described as twofold:
1. The practice of the right means whereby union is brought about,
2. The discipline of the lower threefold man so that impurity in any of the three bodies is eradicated.
This steadfast application to the twofold work produces two corresponding results, each dependent upon its cause:
1. Discrimination becomes possible. The practice of the means, leads the aspirant to a scientific understanding of the distinction existing between the self and the not-self, between spirit and matter. This knowledge is no longer theoretical and that to which the man aspires, but is a fact in the experience of the disciple and one upon which he bases all his subsequent activities.
2. Discernment takes place. As the purificatory process is carried on, the sheaths or bodies which veil the reality become attenuated and no longer act as thick veils, hiding the soul, and the world wherein the soul normally moves. The aspirant becomes aware of a part of himself, hitherto hidden and unknown. He approaches the heart of the mystery of himself and draws closer to the “Angel of the Presence” which can only be truly seen at initiation. He discerns a new factor and a new world and seeks to make them his own in conscious experience upon the physical plane.
It should be noted here that the two causes of revelation, the practice of the eight means to yoga and the purification of the life in the three worlds, deal with the man from the standpoint of the three worlds and bring about [in the man’s physical brain] the power to discriminate between the real and the unreal and to discern the things of the spirit. They cause also certain changes of conditions within the head, reorganize the vital airs and act directly upon the pineal gland and the pituitary body. When these four:
1. Practise,
2. Purification,
3. Discrimination,
4. Discernment,
Are part of the life of the physical plane man, then the spiritual man, the ego or thinker on his own plane attends to his part of the liberating process and the final two stages are brought about from above downwards. This six-fold process is the correspondence upon the Path of Discipleship, of the individualizing process, wherein animal man, the lower quaternary [physical, etheric, astral and lower mental] received that twofold expression of spirit, atma-buddhi, spiritual will and spiritual love, which completed him and made him truly man. The two stages of development which are brought about by the ego within the purified and earnest aspirant are:
[1] Enlightenment. The light in the head, which is at first but a spark, is fanned to a flame which illumines all things and fed constantly from above. This is progressive, and is dependent upon steadfast practise, meditation and earnest service.
[2] Illumination. The gradually increasing downpour of fiery energy increases steadily the “light in the head”, or the effulgence found in the brain in the neighbourhood of the pineal gland. This is to the little system of the threefold man in physical manifestation what the physical sun is to the solar system. This light becomes eventually a blaze of glory and the man becomes a “son of light” or a “son of righteousness.” Such were the Buddha, the Christ, and all the great Ones who have attained.
THE EIGHT MEANS OF YOGA ARE:
[1] THE FIVE COMMANDMENTS:
1. Harmlessness—Physical acts—He hurts no one and injures nobody.
2. Truth—Physical nature—Use of speech and of the organs of sound in the formation of a man’s belief regarding God, people, things and forms.—Before the voice can speak in the presence of a Master it must have lost the power to wound.
3. Abstention from theft—Physical acts—The Disciple is precise and accurate in all his affairs and appropriates nothing which is not rightly his.
4. Desirelessness—Astral Nature—Any impulse which concerns the forms and the real man and which tends to link him to a form and to the physical plane is regarded as the satisfaction of a form of incontinence or a desire [like sex].
5. Abstention from avarice—Desirelessness on the mental plane—Contentment of the mind has to be attained before the mind can be so quieted that the things of the soul can find entrance.
[2] THE FIVE RULES
1. Internal and external purity—every sheath has its densest and most tangible form and this must be kept clean.
2. Contentment—here the mind is set at rest in a state of mind wherein all conditions are regarded as correct and just, and as those in which the aspirant can best work out his problem and achieve the goal for any specific life.
3. Fiery aspiration—this quality of “going forth” towards the ideal or of straining towards the objective must be so profound in the aspirant to Yoga that no difficulties can turn him back.
4. Spiritual reading—through study to arrive at the thoughts that words convey—this is of an astral and mental nature.
5. Devotion to God—to bring the lower personal self into a life of obedience and service to the Master within the heart.
[3] RIGHT POSTURE
[4] RIGHT CONTROL OF LIFE-FORCE
[5] ABSTRACTION
[6] ATTENTION
[7] MEDITATION
[8] CONTEMPLATION
If you follow the Eight Means in this order they will eventually lead to full enlightenment.
Read more at: http://edgeba.webs.com/eightmeansofyoga.htm
Read more at: http://edgeba.webs.com/eightmeansofyoga.htm
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