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A Series of Lessons on the Inner Teachings of the Philosophies and Religions of India1216
who have risen to exalted spiritual heights, and who may have passed
beyond the limits of experience and life of the ordinary man. Whether
or not these magnificent powers may be developed and acquired by an
ordinary individual, by the practice of certain “methods” without regard
to the acquirement of high spiritual knowledge and attainment, we leave
to the judgment of our students. Certainly India shows us no examples of
mere Method-Yogins manifesting any such god-like powers. Adepts there
are in India, but they are not Method-Yogins, but great souls, developed
and unfolded spiritually, who smile pityingly upon these so-called Yogins
who spend their time endeavouring, to “break into the Kingdom of Heaven”
by means of Postures, Exercises, and Methods.
Another set of powers claimed by the Yogins of the Patanjali school is
that, of “seeing all things at once,” which power is said to be derived from
the practice of Concentration upon the smallest division, in thought, of
Time and Space, and the combination of, these divisions into, larger groups
of “time and units” and “space units,” etc., by which means Time and Space
are annihilated, and all things appear simultaneously in Time and Space. As
to this, we would say that the highest Hindu Philosophers teach that there is
no limit to the mental subdivision of Time and Space, and that the process
is infinite; therefore there can be no such thing as an absolute “unit” of Time
or Space, for if such unit could be thought of, the next thought would be
able to divide it into two, or into a million parts, and so on to infinity and
eternity. Thought of this nature, as to Time or Space, inevitably leads the
thinker back to that, or the Absolute, wherein Time and Space vanish.
Moreover, the best Hindu Teachings hold firmly to the idea that “seeing the
universe as One in Time and Space” is an attribute of Deity, to whom Time
and Space are as Maya, Illusion; Avidya or Ignorance—therefore the claim
of the Yogins is slightly presumptuous, unless the “seeing” is admitted to
be a mental realization of the Illusion of Time and Space, as the Vedantists
teach, whereupon the “miracle” vanishes.