In so-called judo, or jiu-jitsu practice (knowledge brought from the hatchet men of China to Japan), the initiated, after two years of intensive training, suddenly shouts the word, “Kaia.” Although the student uses this word from the beginning, it does not become a real “word of power” until after two years’ training, when he can bring its true vibration from his seat of power in the navel area. The initiated can look at a bird on a branch, shout the word of power, and the bird seemingly paralyzed, drops to the ground. The vibration of this word of power drawn from the navel, when used in combat, causes an opponent to blink and in that moment the enemy is taken unawares.
This is the principle of mantric sound invocation. Even if mantras were written in English and evoked by the student, he would have little chance of gaining their power, unless the sacred knowledge had been handed down to him by an initiated teacher who could demonstrate these things.
The manipulation of sound values and the use of symbols is the basic knowledge back of all real magical ceremonies, for every organism and inanimate object in nature exhibits its own vibratory note, and the student, by higher perception and constant practice, seeks by sound invocation to tune in to these different vibrations.
The devas, and all elemental creations of the different spheres of consciousness, have their vibratory note, and a deva, if we are worthy, will give us its symbol and mantric sound by which we can contact its consciousness and attention.
Some of the spiritual beings which exist in nature have never borne human form. A great avatar has said, “Man was born to have command over the angels.” This is true, but the student must know that we do not have command over these beings who have lived on this earth and passed into higher states of consciousness and truth, but, if we are worthy, through compassion they will sometimes minister to our aspirations for God Realization.
A great many of the younger generation today have read books of magic and met experimentalists who have placed before them the idea that “man is greater than the angels.” Therefore, through magical ceremonies, they seek to gain power and dominion over elemental beings and spirits, in order to compel them to act as they desire. This is done through mantras and the use of symbols, for spiritual beings have their own rate of vibration, and this secret is often discovered accidentally. Such experimenters may also evoke the lower elementals and spirits, whose abode is in the submerged world beneath our feet. They bring them into their magical circle and seek dominion over them to make them their servants. Unfortunately these magicians usually desire personal power and evoke intelligences of their own nature into the atmosphere of humanity. This is looked upon as black magic.
It is not easy to contact the beings of light who stand in the presence of Truth, but it is very easy to contact the lower natures beneath us and bring them up into our world, where they become a danger to the experimenter and the community, and I advise none to experiment along these lines.
The student can often follow the character of those people who have striven for power by means of magical performances. As we said before, the cleverest magicians on the “black” side of ceremonial magic are those incarnated animal souls brilliant and seemingly human in appearance, who have been liberated from the submerged spheres beneath our feet through magical performances.
Their physical bodies generally have some deformity and, in consulting with their “higher self” you will discover invariably that they have been magicians in previous lives, working contrary to the law. It is easy for them to evoke the denizens of those spheres from which they themselves were evoked into human form.
The denser the atmosphere, the easier it is for the lower clairvoyants to perceive. In Yoga practice it takes discipline of body and mind, will and imagination, to contact the intelligence which exists in the light, for God’s messengers appear to the Yogi in full sunlight, but the intelligence of the darkened seance is usually of a low order.
Some mantras, when uttered, bring into activity the different nerve centers of the body, and a real mantra is a preparation for entering into a closer relationship with the Lord God of Truth within. There is a higher counterpart for all physical vibratory enunciations from the human body; that is why in judo practice it takes two years of higher aspiration to gain knowledge from the higher self before the word of power can be properly enunciated.
The world today little realizes the number of people who are engaged in magical practices, often seeking contact with the higher powers in nature but constantly, in ignorance, evoking into our world streams and hordes of undesirable characters, which seize upon and influence such human vehicles as they can find.
These are beings that have a hatred for humanity, beings who have been tortured during their former experiences on earth, and they wage war upon us through those that they can influence. Our prisons are full of such pathological cases. They have some malformation of their psychic structure, for they have left openings through which these entities are able intermittently to obsess and possess them. In magical circles you will often find the operator surrounded by these denizens of the underworld and, instead of their being controlled and subjected to the will of the operator, they often break through the circle and possess the magician and his neophytes.
We have an example of this in certain religious cults. Through singing and vibration, they arouse themselves into a state of ecstasy and for periods become obsessed by outside intelligences and speak with foreign tongues. These obsessing forces are often spirits of the red Indians of the plains, or negroes from the Congo forests. Unguarded emotionalism provides an opening for the lower elemental forces of nature and discordant spirits, and these people have awakened themselves into a state of positive ecstasy.
The Yogi, when he seeks to enter into the presence of nature’s consciousness, is alert and vital in mind and body, with all his nerves centered upon the aspiration for Truth. Most people believe that Yoga practice is the shutting down of the lower mind and body, but the Yogi’s first approach is one of alertness, and the quickening of all his powers for union with Truth. This positiveness pushes him through the spheres of illusion to the goal, until he becomes conscious of the Presence. In the finer spheres, within and without, he gains knowledge and intelligence; a knowledge of mantric law, a knowledge of what he should seek and what he should discard, and he realizes the teaching of St. Paul that the kingdom of heaven can only be taken by force (energy).
A friend once said to me, “Yoga is a process of ‘gate crashing’ to heaven. I shall sit down and let heaven come to me.” Looking at him I answered, “Where your mind is placed, there you will be. At the present moment your mind is upon a lady in Congleton.” This may be his particular heaven for the time, but I do not see it lasting, for he was most attractive to the fair sex, but back of it all there was a greater desire for Truth. He was a sailor in a distinguished position of authority. He had that clear atmosphere which the sea gives to man, as distinguished from the muddy atmosphere of the city. These men of the sea have a clarifying atmosphere and are able to look deeper into the truth regarding nature and man and you perceive in such men the long ranges of experience through which they have travelled in their search for knowledge. They build up in their imaginations positions of power and honor, but they often illusion themselves in their self-importance, and they seldom admit that they are wrong.
The right use of mantras in magic leads to freedom, but the wrong use of them causes one to be ensouled and bound by the powers the magician evokes. This is the so-called good and evil magic.
When privileged to meet one’s teacher, great stress is laid upon the care of the body and the use of the imagination, in order that the body may be strong and healthy. After meeting their teacher most students do not have enough patience in the development of the physical body. It is the storehouse of all strength and, although a man may consider himself physically fit, he little realizes how very fit, alert, and reliant the body must be, in order to meet the demands that will be made upon its structure.
Anyone who takes up fencing or judo will understand this. An alert body gives a man the joy of living and, when he begins to feel this, he is ready to take up the serious practice of Yoga and the development of his finer forces and faculties, especially if he has the desire to know Truth. It makes great demands upon him for a time, for he slowly undergoes a complete change of his nature. There comes a time when the light within him is lifted up from its seat in the body and placed between and above the eyes.
We often see pictures of the Buddha in meditation, seemingly looking at the tip of his nose or at his navel, and at first we wonder why these statues of the saint are found in this attitude. The real secrets of Yoga cannot be put into print, but we can suggest certain things which may make the minds of readers of books on Yoga more clear.
The nose is a director, and when a man aspires for Truth and closes his eyes, with his imagination he looks at the tip of his nose, and then following the direction of his nose upward, he discovers that he locates a place between his eyes. His mind stops at a certain point and he does not go further upward. The imagination, the instrument which the soul uses, stops at this certain point where the two channels of the sympathetic nervous system nearly unite. Below the second rib, near the sternum, or breast bone, is the seat of the Lord God of Truth within man, that divine spark of the Reality. As the Yogi, in his aspiration for Truth, follows the direction of his nose upwards towards its root, he lifts up this spark of the infinite and great Reality to this point between the eyes, and he aspires and meditates for Truth, holding the fire at this point, until in time he perceives a radiant spark of light.
Normally you cannot see two objects at the same time, but when you lift the soul up to this point between the two channels of the sympathetic nervous system, a miracle happens—you can see in two places at once; for the first time you can see this spark of light, and at the same time you can see just below the navel.
In the Golden Age, when we obeyed the will of God and had not developed a personal will, our atoms were of the likeness of the Golden Age, and as we pass from the Golden Age into the Silver and Copper, and then into this Age of Iron, we still retain in this section in our body those atoms of our Golden Age. A man may possess a steam engine, the boiler may be filled with water, and fuel placed under it, but it will be silent until flame is kindled in the firebox. So likewise our human body must be purified by fire, and from that spark of light in the forehead, we must bring those golden atoms within us into a molten condition, until they begin to transmute the coarser element of silver into their own likeness, and after that the still baser metals of copper and iron.
When this is accomplished, a voltage like static electricity flows upwards and, if controlled, brings life and activity into the nerve center of the spinal column. As this center is awakened, a greater voltage is produced, until at last it rises up through the nerve centers of the central column, and out through the door of Buddha, or Jesus, at the top of the head, and our highest aspiration is realized.
When this happens, the student has found freedom and the soul is no longer a prisoner; it is free to unify itself with this greater reality. The development of this power should be undertaken only under the instruction of a competent initiate, one who himself has freedom. Under his guidance the development is brought about by the proper use and control of the breath.1
Man little appreciates what is going on during the day with regard to his breath. When he thinks intently, he will discover that he is shutting down on his breath; he is shutting down the body from interfering with his process of thinking. “As above, so below.” By aspiration for Truth, man attracts into his lungs atoms of an entirely different nature than those which he usually attracts from the environment in which he lives. In time he attracts the finer types of atomic life into his blood stream, as a magnet attracts iron filings, and as the soul desires freedom above all things, man will enter into a new world which was formerly hidden from his vision, for he is now aspiring for union, and seeks earnestly for Truth.
When his body and mind are ready for the higher instruction, then a great soul makes his appearance, and by personal contact gives the student that power for his initial effort to know himself. Few people are aware that what a great soul has achieved, he can bring to birth in the less evolved. We see this in the history of the life of Jesus, but very little is known by the uninitiated about those great souls who were prepared to receive him, and carry out his mission in the four quarters of the globe.
