WEIRD POWERS

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XVII, 29 September 1927, Page 9

WEIRD POWERS

CREDITED TO EASTERN CULTS WHAT IS THE TRUTH 7 STRANGE OCCURRENCES. What is the truth concerning the occult powers with which the devotees of certain Eastern cults are credited? Do those who profess these cults actually possess strange magical secrets and abilities more than human, or are the feats which we are assured they perform merely the stuff of travellers’ tales, writes a student of Eastern mysticism in the London “Daily Express.” The cult of Yoga, a Brahmanic philosophy, for example, is especially rich in weird ritual and associations. Yoga means “a rule,” “a yoke,” a discipline. Its chief aim is to bring the mind to bear on the gradually advancing stages of thought towards liberation from vicious tendencies, so that at last those will altogether disappear, and the subject will be free from their debasing controlAt the same time, he is supposed to practice strict truthfulness, noninjury to living beings of all kinds, continence and contentment with what is absolutely necessary for the livelihood only. These are collectively called yama. Together with these abstinences he must observe the strictest cleanliness, placidity and silence.

SUCCESS IS GRADUAL. The yogin believes that through the constant practice of Yoga meditation he .may finally attain liberation from the gross conditions of the flesh, and tit himself for the realisation of God Mediatation and concentration are attained by sitting in a steady posture, holding the breath for long intervals, excluding all other thoughts, and fixing the mind on some specific object. Yogins have informed me that at first it is most difficult to fix the mind steadily on anything, and that it is necessary to repeat the ' same thought continuously until success in this is gradually attained. Persons in whose veracity and honour I have the utmost faith have assured me of certain strange oircum-' stances in connection with the lives of gurus or yogins with whom they were acquainted. I remember being told by a small farmer, whose brother was a guru of ;.c-nt sanctity, that when the sage occa-sinnallv visited him—a rare occurrence, for family ties are usually snapped by the practice of yogi—he seemed to “lose sight of him” a few moments after he had left the family homestead, and this notwithstanding that it was situated on a broad and level plain, which scarcely contained a tree, and where a human foim was visible for miles.

. BELIEF QUITE COMMON. Again, stories of the sudden appearance of gurus, as if coining from nowhere, are quite common in the East, and are frequently alluded to m ordinary conversation as matters of common place occurrence. The truth seems to be that you Western peoples have taken the opposite psychological turning from tue peoples of the East. You Have developed the physical and material side at the expense of the spiritual, and have thus discarded and forgotten secrets known to races living in closer concord and agreement with Nature- At the same time, you have scored in casting aside many of the grosser superstitions which frequently accompany knowledge of this kind.

As a son of Islam, I am more closely associated with the mysticism of my own religion. In Arabic, Persian and Turkish, the word “mystic” is represented by “sufi,” although it also implies a Mohammedan mystic only. Sufism has meen defined as

“not a system, composed of rules or sciences, but a moral disposition.” Perhaps the most authoritative workv have on Sunsm is the ancient anonymous "Kitab al-Luma,” which expounds the seven stages of the cult as repentance, abstinence, renunciation, poverty, patience, trust in God, and satisfaction. These embrace purely the disciplinary code, und must not be confused with its ■'status” or physiological chain. The sub can not De raised to any of the higher “states” until he has triumphantly passed through these seven stages.

Then lie may proceed to that plane of consciousness called nia’ritat, or the Gnosis, in which he encounters “the real” or the absolute. This is a state of illumination and ecstasy, “the heart’s beholding by the light of certainty that which is hidden in the unseen world.” This light bestows on the suli a supernatural power of discernment or inspiration. Finally, the gradual illumination of the mystic merges into complete contemplation of the divine attributes, and ultimately he becomes fused in the radiance of the divine being itself. Indeed, the whole of Sufism consists in the belief that when the individual self is lost the universal self is found. Broadly speaking, it has in this respect a certain similarity with Buddhism and its doctrine of Nirvana, which is not a condition ot “nothingness,” as so many Europeans seem to think, but of absorption in the divine essence and consequent ecstacy therein. This is called fana, or “the passing away,” by the sufis, and is finally achieved without the consciousness of the sufi, whose soul becomes part of the divine unity-