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A Series of Lessons in Gnani Yoga764
was vested in the hand rather than in itself, and that although apparently
separate and independent, it was really but a part of the hand. And when
its consciousness, through the consciousness of the hand, broadened and
widened, it would perceive its relationship with, and interdependence with,
the whole body, and would also recognize the power of the brain, and its
mighty Will.
Another favorite illustration of the Eastern teachers is the stream of water
flowing over a rocky bed. They point to the stream before it comes to a
rocky place, and show the chela (student) that it is One. Then they will move
a little way down the stream and show him how the rocks and stones divide
the stream into countless little streams, each of which might imagine itself
a separate and distinct stream, until later on it again joins the main united
stream, and finds that it was but a form of expression of the One.
Another illustration that is frequently used by the teachers, is that which
bids the student consider himself as a minute cell, or “little-life” as the Hindus
call it, in a body. It may be a cell in the blood performing the office of a
carrier or messenger, or it may be a working cell in one of the organs of the
body; or it may be a thinking cell in the brain. At any rate, the cell manifests
capacity for thought, action and memory—and a number of secondary
attributes quite wonderful in the way. (See “Hatha Yoga,” Chapter xviii.)
Each cell might well consider itself as a separate individual—in a certain
sense it does. It has a certain degree of something akin to consciousness,
enabling it to perform its work correctly and properly, and is called upon
at times to manifest something like judgment. It may well be excused for
thinking of itself as a “person” having a separate life. The analogy between
its illusions and that of the man when seen by a Master, is very close. But we
know that the life of the cell is merely a centre of expression of the life of
the body—that its consciousness is merely a part of the consciousness of
the mind animating the body. The cell will die and apparently perish, but
the essence of it will remain in the life of the person whose body it occupied,
and nothing really dies or perishes. Would the cell feel any less real if it