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\begin{document}

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\twocolumn[\centerline{\Large {\bf KARMA YOGA}}\bigskip]

\medskip
 \centerline{A SERIES IN ELEVEN LESSONS}
 \centerline{in}
 \centerline{KARMA YOGA}
 \centerline{(THE YOGI PHILOSOPHY OF THOUGHT-USE)}
 \centerline{and}
 \centerline{THE YOGIN DOCTRINE OF WORK}

\medskip

\centerline{By BHIKSHU}

\bigskip

\bigskip



The kingdom of Thought is truly yours; you can select values, reject vanities, 
eliminate dross, live as the uncrowned and crowned Emperors have lived in the 
utmost independance, ordering for yourself Happiness, distributing the flowing 
surpluses thereof to all around you.


\vfill




Chicago, U.S.A.\\
Yogi Publication Society\\
1928\\

India Agents:
The Latent Light Culture, Tinnevelly.(S. India)

\vfill\eject

\medskip

\bigskip
	One other matter:  The book is intended to be completed by the personal 
interest of the reader and his desire to know the teachings better, a desire 
that the Latent Light Culture is prepared to meet freely; we do not take leave 
of the reader in presenting the book to him, we desire better acquaintance as we 
are also seekers of the Light.

Latent Light Culture

Agents of the Yogi Publication Society in India.

\vfill\eject

\centerline{\large{\bf Table of Contents}}

\begin{description}
\item[LESSON I]
What the West thinks of Eastern Yogi methods; History of Karma Yoga Buddhist and 
Jain views thereof; Their Law of Karma The Hindu view and caste system; ``In the 
beginning was the Deed''; Free will and Predestination; The doubter dissected; 
The Power and Nature of Faith; Mantra.

\item[LESSON II]
Creed and Sradha, their etymology; Man defined; Fear and doubt, divisions of 
man, The dangers of inaction; The cant of Kant's categorical imperative; ``Do 
what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law'' the mantra here.

\item[LESSON III]
What is Karma; Self querying necessary; Analysis of Karma; Its five factors in 
the utmost analysis, c. f. Gita; Modern Relativity says, Everyone is a lord of 
himself; The five factors all in oneself; The teaching as confounded by medieval 
Hindus; Difficulties of language; Behaviorism; Destiny; Karmic ledger has no 
proportion; The Ego is not the ``I'' nor an unity but a multiplicity James' 
definition; Just what we say that man is a diversity; How to cure vain regrets; 
Mantra for the Act in this praxis.

\item[LESSON IV]
Karma is Thought, actually, says the Gita; Mind and Manas; Thought a constant 
function in the universe; The greater being of man; Power of Thought; Facing 
Thought; The cloud; Formation of Thoughts; Letting thoughts pass on; The use of 
Aumn in calming.

\item[LESSON V]
Further study of thought; Contacting thought; Enjoying every thought; Especially 
painful thought; Keeping a notebook, for study, after meditation; Meaning of 
suffering; The fire trial; Mantra for this lesson (Maatra-asparsa-astu) contact, 
suffer, everything.

\item[LESSON VI]
Detachment; Accept the universe of thought without being affected by it; Avoid 
cosmogony; You Call change your environment; True vairagya or detachment; Change 
your point of view; The tangle of thought; The use of the ``Neti,'' ``Neti'' mantra.

\item[LESSON VII]
Janaka and Shuka; Living as kings do; Helping humanity and geocentricity; 
Teaching the law, guarding oneself; Every act to be a sacrament.

\item[LESSON VIII]
The danger in Vedic ritual; Thought is beyond time; It is a sacrifice of the 
Mind of God; Thought the builder; The universe, of thought, of the dead that are 
living; Brief description of death and after; The need of interchange of 
intercourse with the plane of the dead.

\item[LESSON IX]
All worship began as the worship of the dead, The offer of thilah, good 
thoughts, and akshatas undying affection to the manes; The tarpana; The fire 
mystery; The use of incense; the modern fire worship suggested; The Lord's 
prayer and Fateha; The obligations to other lives in Nature; The Eucharist; The 
duty to the Universal Mind, Brahma.

\item[LESSON X]
The Karma Yogi that has got beyond selfishness; The modern problem; The 
substitute for Asceticism; Vicarious suffering; The East requires a different 
praxis; Schemes for the Western (Vani) social worker; His ideal to be the Sun; 
Sun worship; A mantra.

\item[LESSON XI]
The dullness in Karma Yogi's life; The power of cumulation; Dryness; The Air 
trial, without programme; Reversion; The task one of changing the center; The 
need for watchfulness.
\end{description}

\centerline{\large {\bf PEACE TO ALL BEINGS}}

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\pagenumbering{arabic}

\centerline{\large {\bf KARMA YOGA}}\bigskip

\s LESSON I

	It was said by Yogi Ramacharaka (p. I17 of the Advanced Course in Yogi 
Philosophy and Oriental Occultism) that ``many western seekers after truth have 
complained that the philosophies of the East were not adapted to the needs and 
requirements of the westerner, as the conditions of life were different in the 
two different parts of the world''. . . The trouble with these objecting western 
students is that they have considered the eastern teachings to be fit only for 
those who could spend their life in dreaming, meditation and in seclusion far 
away from the busy life. But this is a great mistake. Every true Yogi recognizes 
that even in the East a life of activity is right and proper for those who are 
thrown into it, and that to shirk its duties or run away is a violation of the 
great Law Dharma called also ``God's Law.'' And to that end is herein pointed out 
the beauties and advantages of that important branch of Yogi philosophy and 
praxis known as ``Karma Yoga.'' The phrase ``Karma'' Yoga has passed through many 
vicissitudes in its meaning which has changed from time to time, and from creed 
to creed, till now it is treated as equivalent to what is known as the Doctrine 
of Non-attachment. In the East, in India especially, due to the peaceful 
occupation by the governing race, the depressing fact has come to prevail that 
so many Indians will do just what the actual requirements of their vocation 
demand and nothing else, unless the State makes it worth their while. To these, 
as also to the western peoples who on their part have to learn to appreciate 
more than ever the meaning of equanimity, to subdue their feverish haste with a 
little more evenness of the mind, the following lessons on the need of a new 
orientation towards the Doctrine of Work, KARMA YOGA, are issued.
	The word ``Karma'' has been derived from the Sanskrit root ``Kr'' meaning ``to 
effect'' and it is interesting to trace the history of the word Karma. At about 
the time that the Bhagavad Gita was taught in its original form, there 
prevailed, even in that antique period, doubts as to what was Karma and what, 
not�and the Lord Krishna settled the doubts by suggesting that Karma in brief 
was the emanation (Visarga) that gave rise to the Ideas (Bhava) which taking 
shape or form came to be (Bhoota) (Bhagavad Gita, VIII-3). Later teachers and 
religionists commenting hereon made it out that ``Karma'' referred to the acts 
enjoined by the Sacred Scriptures of their times and taught that ``Karma Yoga'' 
was the adoption of the religious life and praxis of Yoga as ordained thereby, 
against the perversion and exaggeration of which teaching still later thinkers 
said that ``Karma Yoga'' meant only submission to the duties and responsibilities 
of the normal life, which duties and responsibilities the Yogi was always to 
recognize; and the Yogi was not to feel enamoured of the life of the cloister or 
of the wanderer. In its most modern sense, the Karma Yogi is the Yogi who 
whether a Gnani Yogi or Bhakti Yogi or Raja Yogi or no Yogi at all, is still a 
Purposeful man or woman, having settled views, a Grihee (householder) practising 
Yoga while actively in with the world's turmoil; and it is in this sense that we 
shall take the phrase ``Karma Yogi'' and a scheme of life for such a ``Karma Yogi'' 
to be Kharma Yoga.
	Prince Siddharta who was Gautama the Buddha (Enlightened) said the very 
same thing as did Krishna; in the first twin verses of the Kharma Pada, he says, 
``All that we are is the result of what we have thought, it is founded on 
Thought, it is made up of our thoughts. If a man acts or speaks with all evil 
thought, pain follows him as the wheel follows the foot of the ox that draws the 
chariot.'' This is the world renowned ``Law of Kharma,'' the law that is the 
fullest application of the Christian teaching that ``as you sow you shall reap,'' 
the scientific axiom ``that action and reaction are equal and opposite,'' pushed 
to its logical conclusions on the planes of thought that govern, regulate and 
underlie action. To the Buddhists this Law of Karma stands pragmatically for the 
God of the theists and for much more; for, whereas in the Christian religion, as 
in Islam, God can override ``Karma'' by His Great Power of Mercy, in Buddhism and 
in Jainism Karma can in no sense be appeased; evil must be suffered by pain; 
good acts are rewarded by subsequent pleasures. There is no way out of the 
situation than to submit to Karma, and to make the best of it, realising thus 
the meaning and use of pain, says the Jaino-Buddhist view.
	This law of Karma governs the horizon of view of the ethics of the Asiatic 
peoples, regulating the ethics with its very stern hand. The Jain owes his 
transcendental altruism, whereby he forbears from injury of every living 
creature and prays periodically for forgiveness from sins unconsciously 
committed, entirely to his basic Law of Karma. To the Jain, man is continually 
by his actions pouring forth a ``Karma'' that colors him and colors his vision, 
that goes into his being and in time spends itself, in the reaction of effect 
equal to the cause, as pain or pleasure. The Jain carries his altruism so far as 
to maintain a rest house for aged domestic animals where they may die 
peacefully; he carries it so far as not to burn lights in his house lest moths 
be attracted thereby and die therein; he avoids taking meals at night so that 
living creation of the minute nocturnal type may not be interfered with; nay he 
even discourages travel during the rainy season when animalculae spring up 
everywhere in the tropical lands. Both the Jain and Buddhist have built up a 
most elaborate code of ethics, of what to do and what not, all based on the Law 
of Karma, and they have also divided themselves communally into the two classes, 
the laity who recognised the Law of Karma, and the priesthood who abided by the 
Law, subjecting their Rules of Life to the Law.
	The Hindus, however, retained their antique modes of life while 
recognising the Law of Karma. To them the law of Action and Reaction was 
paramount and conformance to the law necessitated the observance of a code of 
ethics which, however, they made very complex, and extremely elaborate. Mankind, 
said the Hindu, was to be found in four classes: (I) Brahmins, Priests, workers 
with God, or workers with the Law, (2) Kshatriyas, rulers, warriors, maintaining 
the Law, (3) Vaisyas, artisans and agriculturists abiding by the Law and (4) the 
Panchamas, the slaves or serfs outside the pale of the Law, who knew not the 
good Law, or would not abide by it, and thus continued slaves. Each class had 
its own code of conduct, its own rules of life; and so long as each member 
observed these rules, he was free to continue to be a member of his class, with 
the rewards and punishments, rights and responsibilities thereof, and free to 
enjoy the ``club'' life of his class in each commune. Any member of any class may 
take up any occupation of any class lesser than he in the social rank which was, 
of course, governed by birth, but whether he would be accepted as member of such 
lower class depended on the goodwill of the community whose occupation he was 
taking up; certainly he could not remain a member of his own community thence-
after. Nor could any one easily take up the profession of a higher class at all; 
Hindus, it has been observed, did not endeavour to admit proselytes, because 
their religion depended much less on creed in which they are latitudinarians 
than upon the fixed customs of their ``castes,'' the character of which customs, 
being derived from birth, could not be transferred to strangers.
	It cannot be forgotten that the orderly state of the community suggested 
by the caste system of the Hindus was governed by scriptures that recognised the 
rights and duties of men to each other, of men to animals and plants, as well as 
to all dumb living existence, of men to the mightier Powers manifested or latent 
in Nature, in Fire, Air, Water, Earth as well as in the Thoughts of Men. For 
generations, in various tongues, as the ancient people moved on, from Egypt, and 
Persia (Iran) to India and the Further East, they saw, and sang of how man 
should act towards the world around him, of how he should praise glory and 
appease power, of how he must put down evil and nourish the good, and they 
chanted it and taught it all in the Gathas, in the Vedas, in Puranas and in many 
other forms of poetry and prose. The text books of the Karma Yoga of the 
ancients were legion, but the teachings thereof are still living and we shall 
enquire into their rationale and use the best of what is available to us.
	Look you, in very ancient times they did not call on any God at all! In 
the beginning, said they, was the Deed, (the Act)! There was no God necessary to 
stand intermediary between the Act and its effect (reward or punishment). Every 
Act had its effect or Reaction, equal and opposite; yes, equal and opposite. 
Herein is the evidence of all Scriptures which say in effect, ``thus did they,'' 
``thus sang they,'' ``thus thought they,'' ``thus'' as in these Puranas, relating of 
noble deeds and valiant conduct, ``thus'' as in these phantasies and songs of the 
Gita and Gatha, Vedas and (Zend) chandas; ``thus'' as in the heights of 
speculation of the Upanishads and Brahmanas. ``Go thou, then, neophyte 'Karma 
Yogi' and do likewise. Sing thou chants like unto the ancient chants, sing thou 
out the joy or pain in thyself, but let it be a song; work thou out deeds or the 
deed before you as the best of them, learned in the law, would do, as the 
ancients are said to have done; think thou out the thoughts of the Upanishads, 
of how thoughts themselves lose in the stillness of silence all their sting and 
return strengthened to solace the aching soul.''
	``The forging of earthly chains,'' says a Master, ``is the occupation of the 
indifferent. It is folly to re-duplicate these by persistent regrets for the 
past, by present cowardice or by fear of the future. It is eternity that man 
mistakes for Past, Present and Future.'' You are what you did in the past, you 
here are Lord of the present, your future will be inseparable from yourself. 
Such is the teaching of the Hindu-Yogi Philosophy which combines both Freewill 
and Predestination in its excellent system of ethics and in its world scheme. 
Predestined are you by the weight of force of your own Karma, your past Acts 
(Thoughts, words, deed); Freewill have you such as you are, to Act; and you will 
be as you Act now. ``As you sow you will reap'' is truly an universal axiom which 
the Christian takes to refer to this world of effects only, whereas the Hindu 
takes it to have force on the moral plane governing the physical, as well. Act 
Thou, therefore, when opportunity confronts you; responding to it, meeting it 
bravely, utilising it, actively. ``Do what thou wilt,'' say the Masters, ``Shalt be 
the whole of the Law,'' of Dharma of Karma�only he who doeth is the Karma; he who 
wills to do and doeth is the Karma Yogi; the Deed is the Karma, his future, his 
Destiny the harvest of his Thoughts and Acts. Your Deed is the expression of 
your will, the will in you; say then to yourself ``I will'' and Act. So acting 
shalt thou not sin, says the Lord Krishna.
	On no account hesitate. The Yogi teachers are very distinct on this point. 
Reflect, certainly, before the Act, but let not indecision foul the Reflection. 
If the authors of the French Revolution had been arguing it out, repeating, 
reflecting, doubting, hesitating about the consequences or about the Act, the 
expression of their High Principles, they would have become gray-haired without 
accomplishing anything. ``The doubter perishes,'' says the Hindu Yogi, he rots, 
becomes good for nothing. Alas, doubt is the characteristic of the majority of 
persons, men whose actions cancel each other out. One goes on from day to day 
doing a little of this and a little of that, thinking a few kind and a few 
unkind thoughts but not thinking any thought at all out thoroughly. Nothing gets 
done indeed till nightfall and body and mind are changed, changed beyond recall. 
What meaning hath any of this change, asks a Yogi. The doubter is really an 
ignorant person in many ways, for he doubts the efficacy of the unerring Karmic 
Law, the Law of Righteousness (Dharma) on which all the universe is founded; he 
doubts himself, he doubts whether he who can think, who has to act, can act; he 
doubts the world around, he doubts the great Purpose of Nature, of Nature that 
thrills with Motion, with Activity, that buds out and expands, becomes great and 
greater (Brahma) continually, always. And what after all is Doubt but Asradha, 
want of Faith, weakness of the will, evidence that the man is puny, that his ``I'' 
is the ``I'' of a weakling, of a decrepit, of a coward, not of a God, not of a 
Lord of creation born with the Right to Act, that man is.
	In this then shall be the Ordinance (Sastra) for you Karma Yogi, in the 
dictum of ``Do what thou wilt'' which shalt be for thee the whole of the law, 
teaching you comprehensively what to do, what to avoid, this the only ordinance; 
``do what thou wilt, then do nothing else''; we shall repeat it constantly, 
without end, that you may be unified of will, that in all your act you may bring 
all the universe that is of you, that in your act the whole of you and not the 
puny portion of you miscalled the ``I'' at the threshold, at the outer gate of 
consciousness, may act, and impress itself on the event that anyhow must be.
	And it is an excellent thing no doubt to make up your mind definitely; it 
gives all your arguments a certain sharpness, a certain definiteness till a 
point is reached and in time reached automatically, habitually, at which they 
suddenly issue forth to produce a definite result; and herein look you it is a 
matter of comparative indifference whether your ideations are true or not, 
whether your ideas are exact representations of the thing; what is of the 
highest importance is that whatever you believe in, should be believed to be 
true; the Hindus speak, from very ancient times, specially about this; they 
distinguish between Rita what is accepted as true and hence is superior, more 
useful, more effective than Truth, Satya; God himself in the Hindu concept is 
the Truth that is greater than truth.
	Says the Gita, each man shall have only the value, the Power that is 
equivalent to his Sradha, his Faith, that is to say, only that portion of man's 
mental makeup is to be taken into our calculations as effective as is the sum 
total of his settled convictions, of his will to power, Sradha. Says the 
Taittiriya Upanishad;''Of the Vijnanamaya sheath of man that interpenetrates the 
mental sheath (Manomaya Kosha) Sradha, the Believing in order to know is the 
head; Rita, the judgment as to whether anything is proper or righteous, is the 
tolerant (dakshina) view; Truth is its saving (uttara) aspect; application 
(Yoga) is its embodiment (atma or self); its remainder is greatness (Mahah).''
	Of course the ancient Sanskrit is difficult to translate into modern 
Sanskrit and harder still to translate into modern English, but what may be 
stated is that man is considered as a composite of an essence with five coats, 
of which the outermost is experience (Anna), the next life (Prana), the third 
mentality (Manomaya), interpenetrating all of which is the Higher Man, the 
transcendent portion of man, of the thinker out-of-the-herd, called Vijnana. 
Such a man believes a thing not because it is true but because it has to be 
believed to be true for the purpose of the Act-necessary; this is his Sradha; 
the faith that moves mountains. Such a faith should not go against truth; it may 
transcend the literal truth, but truth is its saving grace (uttara paksha); such 
a faith is founded on the charity of righteousness; it is countenanced just 
because, for the sake of righteousness, for the sake of the Act, it has to be 
believed in; a concrete instance would be the faith of the soldier that killing 
the enemy in war is not slaughter. And such a faith does find application in 
everyday life; it finds ecstasy (yoga) in fulfillment, says the Upanishad. And 
how Great the power of the faith is can be seen, it is so great that it leaves 
greatness as its tail, as its remainder. Yes, this is the first lesson of the 
real useful Karma Yoga.

\centerline{``As each one Believes shall he know and Be''}



\s LESSON II

	In very ancient times when the Indians and Iranians (Persians) aboded 
together, they had the same word for Fire or rather the same concept, which they 
translated later, the Iranians into fire and the Indians to righteousness the 
root of the word Rita. In Parsi literature rita became athar (fire) and the fire 
priest was atharvan; the atharvan corresponding to the rithvik or Brahmin; and 
to the angiras; angiras being ``son of fire'' (agni). Both in Persia and in India 
the sense that there is something beyond this herd life to be attained, the 
desire to reach out to that life, was in all beings; it was the fire in them, 
athar in Persia, rita in India, Dharma in later and Buddhist-Hindu parlance; 
Sradha in its complete translation in Vedic times. Any one who desired ardently 
(the term ``ardent'' is phonetically from the same origin as rita, arta, and athar 
) attained it, for that was the Dharma, the Law, the Talmud (Dharma's code). We 
find the word sradha to be of very ancient origin as a concept; it is the 
``creed'' of the English, the faith to which he subscribes as to the flag he 
serves under, it is the ``credo'' of the Latin, the ``cretin'' of the Slavic, the 
faith to which according to the Hindu scriptures he shall devote himself every 
morn on rising up whether the Sun himself has risen or not. As says the Hindu 
text, having devoted yourself to the work before you for the day, having taken 
care to exclude vanities of no use whatsoever for the day, draw up your 
programme to which you shall devote yourself, devote yourself wholly as if it 
was your creed, as if it was your joy and your necessity, have not only any 
doubts hereabout at all.
	There is further danger in this ``Doubt'' in that it is a division of the 
will. We would remind our students of the First Principles of the Hindu Yogi 
Philosophy, as regards Man, namely that he is not a unity at all: (1) Every 
individual is a permanent organisation consisting of an indefinite number of 
living entities, each of which has Thought, Will and Feeling, graded in a 
``hierarchy'' ranging from the most vital and essential to the least vital and 
least indispensable; (2) the most ``vital'' entities in the hierarchy are those 
which have the most powerful determining action on the vital processes. They are 
also those which are most essential to the organisation. (3) These vital 
entities may during life be called soul particles and together they make up the 
soul or Personality. (4) This soul of the human individual besides being 
polypsychic is composed of an indefinite number of streams (or threads) of 
consciousness co-existing in each of us, which can be variously and in varying 
degrees associated and disassociated, each soul particle being regarded as a 
thread or stream of consciousness.
	Yes, multiple personality is the rule and not the exception�all mankind 
are like unto as this. Says Frater P.: ``They wish a dozen careers and the force 
which might have been sufficient to attain eminence in one is wasted on many. 
They are null, they drift, they are the flotsam in the ocean of life, all 
because of Indecision. It is this Indecision that becomes Fear, the Dweller on 
the Threshold so graphically described by Lord Lytton in his Zanoni; fear of the 
world, fear of the future, fear of oneself, fear the greatest enemy on the path 
of the Yogi. Says H. P. Blavatsky in the Voice of the Silence: ``Beware of fear 
that spreadeth like the black and soundless wings of the midnight bat, between 
the moonlight of thy soul, and thy great goal that loometh in the distance far 
away.'' Fear, says a Brother, is the first of the pylons (gates) through which 
one passes, in the Egyptian system of Yogi discipline; and of course is the 
first and worst enemy in all schools of Thought culture. No one can become 
Immortal, without eradicating Fear, says the Hindu. Indeed to the Hindu no one 
can become a recluse or ascetic, none can be ``saved'' unless he has transcended 
Fear.
	For this there is a very good reason. Fear like most other depressing 
notes, such as anger, sorrow, passion, envy, breaks down the unifying 
Personality�the soul-particles become divided into two camps hostile to each 
other. For there has been a suppression of the will, there has not been that 
judgment which residing in the single governing cell (soul-particle) can weld 
the whole to effect an Act. For look you, the deciding Power, both will and 
judgment prove on careful analysis and study, not to be distributed through a 
large number of entities in the soul-body but to reside in a single cell. The 
will and judgment are the result of autocratic and not democratic decisions. The 
theory underlying these facts has been carefully expounded for westerners by 
Freud in his Psychology of the Group-mind �and man is after all a group-mind 
himself. Without the king, without the will, there is anarchy, crime, and there 
is again the sin of omission. For ``doing nothing'' is not entirely a harmless 
thing in every case; to refuse to save life is murder, in all decent systems of 
ethics or of unwritten codes. In continuing to be subject to lndecision, man 
becomes a rat, dog, pig, brute, idiot or devil. He truly does ``die,'' does 
undergo metempsychosis at once, in effect; he does not continue to be a Man and 
can scarcely hope to become God.
	This is what the Lord Krishna repeatedly urges in the Bhagavad Gita. 
Fight, Arjuna, says he; find thy joy and pain, thy loss and gain, victory or 
defeat in the battle, and know that it is not joy or pain, loss or gain, victory 
or defeat that you experience but the Battle, the Battle of Life that is around, 
within and irrespective of you. The Battle of Life waits for nobody, men live, 
die, or are born, enjoy or delight irrespective of the fact that the scoffer, 
the decrepit, the coward, the degenerate has not joined in the fray. These may 
wait, as the drunkard waits for the lamp posts he cannot avoid hitting his head 
at, and hope that the lamp posts may pass on, but�is it Life, is it not rather 
the backwater, the lapwater of froth and foam, of dirt and foulness that is left 
behind for the coward to bathe under and be soiled by? Not alone that in the 
Indecision an opportunity has passed, but that an Act of God has not come to be. 
An Act (of God), a Radiance should have manifested, should have illumined the 
battle; for the act, of every individual, that should have been has not been, 
and the Indecisive person has thus sinned or erred doubly, he has not paid his 
dues to the world or to himself. And he has gained nothing truly, for the God in 
him will not act so fully again, the God in him has gone to sleep, leaving him a 
riven cloud, befogged and dry.
	Not that doubts should not assail anyone; it is no crime at all to be 
weak. Even Arjuna had his Indecision, his doubts, and hence the Gita. Westerners 
may read McSwiney's ``Principles of Freedom'' very carefully many times. ``Because 
of our human weakness, our erring minds and sudden passions, the most confident 
of us may at times find himself in the mud. What then will uplift him if he has 
been a weaver in principle as well as in fact? He is helpless, disgraced, 
undone. Let him know in time that we do not set up fine principles in a fine 
conceit that we can easily live up to them but in the full consciousness that we 
cannot possibly live away from them. That is the bed-rock truth When the man of 
finer faith by any slip comes to the earth he has to uplift him a staff that 
never fails, and to guide him a principle that strengthens him for another 
faith, to go forth, in a sense that Alexander never dreamt of, to conquer new 
worlds. It is the faith that is in him and the flag he serves that makes a mall 
worthy, and the meanest way may be with the highest if he be true and give good 
service. Let us put by the broken reed and craft of little minds and give us for 
our saving hope the banner of angels and the loyalty of gods and men.''
	The teachings of Karma Yoga can indeed have no value if they do not 
strengthen the weakling; they are not merely solatial; they are not at all 
obiter dicta of doctrine; they do not teach of any mediator or intercessor ready 
to help man when up against evil, nor of a Providence that fights man's fight 
within himself, without man's, joining the affray or against the coward. 
Whatever the Act (of course the right Act under the circumstances has been 
decided on) it should be done without further indecision, is the blazen cry of 
the Karma Yogi. You may take it that God has, as Jesus Christ, atoned for the 
sins of mankind but of what use is that great teaching to you who are He of the 
Great Act. Mahomed Rasul Alla (the Peace of God be on him) spake of the great 
glory of God but at the same time said that no one shall bear the burden of 
another; none other can act your Act. Zoroaster, the Emperor of the Dravidian 
Parsis, (probably you question our description) said that life should be a 
continuous Act of putting down evil, a continuous Battle with evil. His God was 
ever fighting the Devil, Angra Mainyus. Good word, good deed, good thought was 
his slogan, and every Act was and is of course good.
	It is delusion, says the Hindu-Yogi Philosophy, to suppose that doing 
nothing has no effect. As we have said already, to refuse to save life is 
murder; as the Hindus say, to refuse to spread good thoughts in the world is 
doing harm by permitting wrong thoughts to foul the mental plane. Says Evelyn 
Underhill: ``A good deal of the pseudo mysticism that is industriously preached 
at the present time is crudely quietistic. It speaks of the necessity of ``going 
into the silence'' and even gives lessons in subconscious meditation�a state of 
vacant placidity is attained in which he rests remaining in a distracted 
idleness and misspending the time in expectation of extraordinary visits, 
believes he is united with his Principle.'' The quietists, says Underhill, by a 
perversion and violation of Christian teachings produce deliberately a half 
hypnotic state of passivity. They remain from every interior and exterior act. 
Such a repose is treason to God; quietism blinds a man plunging him into that 
ignorance which is not superior but inferior to all knowledge; such a man 
remains in himself, useless and inert; a repose that is simply laziness�- a 
forgetfulness of God, of one's neighbour, of one's self. About the same words 
may apply to the ascetic. The ascetic thinks that by reducing himself to the 
condition of a vegetable he is advanced on the path of evolution. Advance is in 
the direction of more continuous and untiring energy.
	The object of those who counsel non-action, which is very much to the fore 
in the modern pseudo sanyasins and bairagis of India, is to prevent any inward 
cause arising so that when the old causes have died out there is nothing left. 
In order to escape the effects of action, of the Law of Karma, namely continued 
existence (birth, death and rebirth), they propose simply not to act or to come 
as near to that Ideal as possible. The ascetic life is advocated not only 
because it approximates a state of inaction and so tends directly to obliterate 
Karma (Law) but also because withdrawal from the world is a kind of insurance 
against being entangled in worldly desires which lead man astray from his true 
goal, Emancipation, to quote the words of an American. But this is quite 
unphilosophical, for every effect as soon as it occurs�whether man act or not�
becomes a new cause and is always equal to its cause. Truly we may talk of 
renouncing the world but the world has to renounce us for inaction to be 
complete. If you do not act, you drift.
	``Do what thou wilt,'' then, is the categorical imperative of the Hindu-Yogi 
Philosophy. How much better is this than the categorical imperative of Kant, 
which shouts ``Do your duty'' without being able to tell us what that duty is. 
Moralists had tried for ages to formulate a moral law which should be foolproof 
but had only succeeded in compiling systems of putrid morality. So it struck 
Kant, says a western writer, as a bright idea, to coin his categorical 
imperative ``Do thine duty,'' a law which need not work at all; for there was no 
criterion of duty defined at all. The philosophy of Kant herein is nothing but 
the philosophy, if any, of that cant that has been the bane of religious creeds 
since the beginning of the world. All along have men in their jealousy and 
vindictiveness made out codes, legislated for other men, have framed elaborate 
manuals of what to do and what not to do, assigned duties to individuals and 
congregations by birth, calling them natural duties, created castes, confusions, 
rituals and what not so that the other man shall remain a slave. They continue 
to suggest the advisability of doing one's duty, of being true to oneself, of 
not avoiding the work which nature has ordained for them, from birth (!), but as 
to how to decide between the comparative claims of two conflicting duties is not 
taught at all in the philosophy of religious cant.
	Nor think that there are many duties assigned to you either by birth or by 
convention. The idea of ``duty'' does not exist in the Hindu religion at all in 
spite of vehement attempts made to assert that stitching is the natural duty of 
a man born of tailor parents, or shaving the natural duty of a barber's son. 
There are those, of course they are not barbers nor tailors but high caste, 
exclusive Brahmins, who assert that the tailor and barber will attain salvation 
only by stitching and shaving. Yes, these slaves shall serve, say they the 
lords, of creation, of caste; and to that end they say that a cobbler shall 
worship God only by his cobbling without any worship at all, and a barber shall 
shave and not worship God which worship of God is the privilege of Brahmins who 
alone have to be employed for a remuneration by the tailor and the cobbler and 
the butcher and the barber, to worship God. No duty at all exists anywhere on 
anyone's part, no obligation, no slavery in this world the kingdom of God. Each 
one is free to live as he wilt, to do as he wilt, joyously and luxuriously, and 
there is nothing in the way of Freedom at all. You may be a tailor by birth; no 
need is there for you to stitch at all; certainly you have the heredity that you 
can stitch very much better, you can make of stitching an art, find your joy in 
stitching easier than most others; but compulsion there is none on you to be a 
tailor. You may become a priest and may do very well, as a priest, better than 
most priests born.
	This imaginary restriction in the concept of ``duty'' or ``duties,'' has been 
called ``Karma Bandha,'' the obsession that man is bound or constrained to act in 
a particular manner either by the Ten Commandments or the Buddhist Pancha Shila, 
or by the voluminous Hindu Scriptures, or by the Koran. They call this ``Gharam'' 
in Islam, considering it a thing from which one is unable to free himself. The 
first and greatest of all privileges is to have recognised the ordinance ``Do 
what thou wilt'' as not at all in any way opposite to the Karmic Law ``Action and 
Reaction are equal and opposite''; thus does one become free and independent, 
thus does one destroy all fear whether of convention, of custom, of creeds, of 
other men or of death itself. Says the Upanishad: ``it is not for the wife's sake 
but for one's own sake that the wife is dear; it is not for the children's sake 
but for one's sake that children are dear to one, nor money is dear to one for 
money's sake but for his own sake is money dear.'' Duty really has no meaning at 
all to the average citizen or man of the world who is prepared to transcend it, 
to transcend his concepts of duty where himself is concerned; duty in such cases 
becomes a burden and where not borne, a bondage.
	``Do what thou wilt shalt be the whole of the Law'' is the mantra of this 
lesson of Karma Yoga. There is no law beyond ``Do what thou wilt'' Ishta Poorti�
the ordinance is called in the Vedas. The individual will such as it feels to 
be, has always the last word, the casting vote. Read verse XVIII, 63 of the 
Bhagavad Gita which, as says F. T. Brookes in his ``Gospel of the Gita,'' should 
be in very large print. Pray do not pass it by. Yes, the Adept does what he 
wills, and allows nothing to interfere with it. This was the ordinance long ago 
in Ecclesiates II, 7 to 10: ``Go thy way, eat thy bread with joy, and drink thy 
wine with a merry heart. Let thy garments be always bright and let thine head 
lack no ointment. Live joyously all thy days of vanity.'' Thus too does the Qoran 
say; it repeatedly asserts that its omnipotent Lord-God does not compel men to 
adopt one way or another; it leaves it to the choice of the individual. And 
Freewill has been the building stone of Buddhism (Wisdom's Religion), freedom to 
act, restrained only by oneself that self being the embodies, enshaped past-
Acts. Act thou, therefore, for he only can act who has a perfect Self.

\centerline{``DO WHAT THOU WILT SHALT BE THE WHOLE OF THE LAW''}


\s LESSON III

	The Hindu-Yogi Philosophy is nothing if it does not answer all the canons 
of fair criticism. This has been assured by the method of instruction called the 
Samwada or the dialogue, wherein the student can raise all kinds of objection 
before he submit to the utter obedience necessary in the earlier stages of Yoga. 
The ``dialogue'' it may be mentioned by the way, is the most ancient form of 
religious instruction to be found as in the Gilgamesh Epic of the Babylonians, 
in the Teutonic myths, in the chronicles of Zoroaster, as well as in the Vedas. 
And the dialogue is the result of the querying habit of man, a query that is 
naught but the crown of all gifts that has come down to man. This more or less 
developed power of gathering one's activities together, and unifying them in a 
conscious self that can look at itself in a mirror and see itself objectively, 
is given to everyone. This is the vivid, controlling attention-shifting 
selfconsciousness, the psychical side of cerebral integration, the tribunal 
before which the promptings of the primary conscious and repressed unconscious 
must come up for judgment.
	It is quite right therefore for everyone to ask himself ``What is this 
Karma or Act?'' Where does it begin? Where does it end? Action and Reaction, you 
say, are equal and opposite; where then can action be avoided or rather can any 
act be done which does not provoke reaction? What are the factors of the act? Is 
there no difference between the consciously performed and the unconsciously 
performed Act or omission? If so, what? Is there not such a thing as the agent 
or instrument, the vehicle or the cause of the Act, itself the cause of the 
Actor? And who pray is the Actor? Is man the actor? If, as they say, the 
reaction is equal and opposite to the action, who is the enjoyer of the action? 
Does man live long enough to enjoy the reaction of all his acts? Yes, these and 
other questions, a very long chain of them are and have from time immemorial 
been asked by querying minds as to the ``Act,'' and the Scriptures of all nations 
are full of answers, complete or incomplete, thereto.
	A complete answer is to be found in the dialogue, Bhagavad Gita. For the 
purposes of these lessons only the acts of the conscious person are taken for 
analysis and the Gita says that every act is prompted by knowledge, Jnana, made 
up of the thing known, Jneyam, and the Knower, Parijnata. And the Act may be 
said to include the instrument Karana, the Act, Karma and the actor Karta. And 
going further, the Gita says that in the utmost analysis, for the fulfillment of 
any act, five factors are required so say the most ancient thinkers too. These 
five are: ( I ) The sphere governed by or governing the Act, the limit of 
pervasion of the act and ipso facto, of its consequences, the Adhishtanta (2) 
The enjoyer of the act, Akarta, he who is affected by the utmost consequences of 
the Act, Bhokta, quite irrespectively of the Act or Actor (3) Various kinds of 
modes of the Act, the ways in which the Act takes effect, is performed, or 
exhibits itself, cheshta (4) Various kinds of the instruments or agents of the 
Act, the intermediaries or restrictions between the Actor and the Act, Karana 
they are called, and (5) Daiva, God, if you please, the unseen factor, the 
marginal error, the uncounted host, the catalyst or decatalyst, time, etc.�in so 
many forms does it appear.
	For every Act, continues the Gita, whether it is performed by the body, by 
the tongue (as speech or utterance) by the mind (as thought), these remain five 
factors, the five Actors. The sages commenting on this text tell us that the 
limit of pervasion of the Act, its sphere, is the body itself, the body alone, 
and by the body is meant the entire ``kingdom'' subject to each individual, his 
passions, desires hopes, longings, possessions, etc., all that he identifies 
himself with. This is his sphere of action, rather the sphere of the Reaction 
that follows the Act inevitably. This is quite in accord with the discoveries of 
modern Relativity which tell us that force is a mathematical fiction, that 
nothing one can do can affect really any other but himself, that no two 
particles of matter ever come into contact, that when they get too close to each 
other they both move off. The Actor is not at all an Integrity but a 
multiplicity; this is the fundamental doctrine of the Yogi Philosophy. From time 
out of mind they have been inculcating this precept that the Ego is not the ``I,'' 
that the ``I'' is but a puny figment of the waking memory, quite powerless to 
effect the tremendous result called the body and known as the universe. They 
have uttered it in the Vedas, heard it from the Puranas and learnt it from the 
Gita. How foolish then those men of incomplete insight who not caring to think 
deeply or at all, state that oneself alone is the actor.
	Let me quote the definition of the consciousness of the self given by 
James in his Psychology text book: ``The consciousness of self involves a stream 
of thought each part of which as ``I'' can remember those that went before and 
know the things that they knew, and (2) could emphasize and care permanently for 
certain ones among these as ``me'' and appropriate to these the rest. The nucleus 
of the ``me'' is always the bodily existence felt to be present at the time. 
Whatever remembered past feelings resemble this present feeling are deemed to 
belong to the same ``me'' with it. Whatever other things are perceived to be 
associated with this feeling are deemed to be part of the ``me's'' experience and 
of them certain ones which fluctuate more or less are reckoned to be themselves 
constituent of the ``me'' in a larger sense�such are the clothes, material 
possessions, the friends, honors, esteem which the person receives or may 
receive. This ``me'' is of course an empirical aggregate of things objectively 
known. The ``I'' which knows them cannot itself be an aggregate neither for 
psychological purposes need it be considered to be an unchanging metaphysical 
entity like the spirit or a principle like the Ego viewed as out of time. It is 
a thought at every moment different from that of the last moment but 
appropriative of the latter together with all that the latter called its own.''
	All the experiential facts find room in the above description of the ``I'' 
unencumbered with any hypothesis other than passing states of mind. It shows 
that the ``I'' is not an unity nor an integrity but a multiplicity, and a 
multiplicity it is, incalculable, both of the human form, a body built up of 
billions of living entities, an impermanent aggregation of living cells, and of 
the human soul itself, composite of quintillions of souls each and all non-
finite compounds of fragments of anterior lives, a congeries diseased, teeming 
with many purposes and places and yet in whom there is no power to persist.
	How are actions, Karma, caused, then? Says the Hindu Yogi: ``Action (Karma) 
is a constant function in the universe�the lives in nature, man's or world's 
nature always effect Karma, as in ideomotor action called by us avashah karma, 
irrespective of an attention or attentive being, in the Act caused.'' In the 
language of Einstein and the Relativists, events are continually happening; 
matter is a succession of events; the succession of events, rather, was called 
matter in so far as matter was a logical construction that could be made from a 
series of events, grouped together in virtue of their semblance and continuity. 
Not only that, according to Bertrand Russel (A. B. C. of Relativity, p. 122): 
``Every bit of matter, little or small, is at the top of its own hill in the 
spacetime continuum; the hill is what we know about; the bit of matter is 
assumed for convenience.'' Again says he on p. 222 thereof: ``It is true that 
there are still electrons and protons that persist but these are to be conceived 
as strings of connected events like the notes of a song.''
	The world before us is then a world not of things in motion but a world of 
events, wherefrom we judge whether what comes before our vision is a Behaviour 
(Guna) or whether it is only a representation to ourselves of our own Thought 
(Karma). And first of all we have to remember that every Act, every Thought is 
symbolic and not real. ``When we say, 'we see a table,' we use a highly 
abbreviated form of expression,'' says Russell, p. 214 of the book above quoted, 
``concealing complicated and difficult inferences the validity of which will be 
open to question,'' (in a world of relativity because no two points of view are 
the same). As says Max Nordau: ``In every act of consciousness man perceives a 
symbol of the object and never object itself.'' First of all in the subject, i. 
e. in the field of perception of the subject, the Adhistana, the whole universe 
is mirrored and digested, by the subject, who is hence called Akarta, a Gita 
term for enjoyer. In this perception which is a vibration, motion or force, and 
which after all is not distinguishable from matter, there is an effect, Cheshta, 
on the perceiver; and the effect is both simple, and compound, direct, and 
indirect, i. e. via an instrument or agent, a Karana. In fact all the forces in 
the universe known and unknown (destiny or Daiva) are, in every act of 
perception, acting on the subject.
	So too in every Act (Karma). All the forces in the subject together with 
all the forces in the universe are acting on every Instant (event)! Every event 
is generated not out of some proceeding event (Actor or Cause), but out of a 
whole situation or complex of events, no one of which could be regarded as the 
cause of any event, says ``Relativity''; this being a translation into modern 
English of the teaching in the Bhagavad Gita (XVIII, 16). It would be idle to 
argue herefrom a sole Actor, an Unity; and it would be more correct to argue 
that it was a Multiplicity that was the Actor in every Act. As a great Brother 
says, ``the cry of I am I is most especially of that which, above all, is not the 
'I'.''
	This is specifically seen in the old adage, ``Nature will out,'' no hetero-
suggestion is ever successful says the physician Coue, ``if it is opposed to the 
conscious tastes and desires of the subject''; nature is oftentimes found to 
constrain a man to act; ideas that occupy obsessingly the threshold of 
consciousness are bound to issue in action, the self playing consciously no part 
in such Acts; this is a truism made in group psychology. The will of the many, 
in man has no consideration for any but its own purpose; this has to be 
understood by the Karma Yogi. For while man is working day and night at some 
trival detail of his affairs, a giant force, the ``Purpose of the many in him,'' 
Destiny you may call it, the nature of space-time in his neighbourhood as the 
Relativists term it, may be advancing pede claudo to overtake him.
	You may say that this the Reaction of the Action inaugurated by man 
himself at some time previous; nay, it is not that alone; what reacts so far as 
there is reaction is only that conscious act of man's surface consciousness that 
may have acted, and we can see that there is no proportion therein. The reaction 
though equal and opposite to the Action is still too trifling a part of the 
future; as Destiny, Daiva it is only one of the factors of the Act in the 
future. The freewill of man, such as it is, remains always unimpaired.
	The moral that the Jains drew from all this teaching was that it was well 
to avoid sinful act, for after ``a man has done manifold actions that injured 
many lives, his pleasure-seeking relations took up all his wealth while the doer 
suffered in Hell for his sins.'' The people of the Vedic times drew the moral 
that the past was not to be regretted but to be recognised by the neophyte Karma 
Yogi as the work of Kama, heedless thought, and of Manyu, anger, by the mantra 
``Kamo Akarshid Manyur Akarshid'' ( Kama caused it; Manyu caused it). Anyway the 
past was not to be regretted at all.
	It can therefore be seen that the Law of the equality of Action and 
reaction on the mental plane, has not such value to the Karma Yogi, he 
recognises that every Act is the act or function of the Many; that a Unity can 
never be the sole actor; that every action is not caused but truly effect. The 
Karma Yogi has to recognise that things cannot have happened otherwise than as 
they have; this is the teaching of the word ``Tatha'' the submission to kismet 
that characterised Prince Sidharta the Buddha and many others after Him. Further 
he is to recognise that this Karmic ledger of each one is a peculiar record the 
balance of which is struck only after death; he does not know at any date what 
is owed him nor to whom all he owes debts; it is all a mess�but so it is. It 
leaves him only one conclusion, that nothing can excuse his inaction in any 
event, that nothing can exonerate him, that his Free-will that is the Free-will 
of the many in him has always power to prevail and overpower, and that this 
power is exercisable by himself, i. e. by the King in him. The will and judgment 
are always the result of autocratic and never of democratic decisions, is a fact 
recognised in group psychology, and this constitutes the base of man's Free-
will. It is a unification of many wills rather than a single will full cell in 
man.
	Such ideas as that the Law of Karma is a blind Law, a stern justice that 
takes no note of men's motives, or of God's mercy, have to be given up as 
worthless teaching unfit for and inapplicable to the Karma Yogi of all men. 
Behind all the apparent suffering and pain and malice of the world the Karma 
Yogi especially if he be the sufferer sees transcendent beauty, thrilling 
energy, enduring love, and the utter radiance that enchants. And, most 
especially the Karma Yogi cannot be a Fatalist.
	For purposes of this lesson it is enough to recognise that though thou 
doest as thou wilt, what is done is not done by thee but by many milliards of 
cells that are of thy make-up. Remember that every act is to be of many milliard 
cells not of that fiction called the I or Ego.
	The Mantra shall be herein, as follows:-

``I shall act, yet not I, but the many that live in, that are of Me, for them 
shall I act so that they may find their longing and fulfillment. I shall DO IT 
that they may live their life which elsewise they could not.''



\s LESSON IV

	What finally in the utmost analysis is the Act or Karma? The Gita has a 
peculiar answer. Karma, says the Gita, is the emanation (Visarga) that is the 
generator (udbhava kava) of Images (Bhava) which become Beings (Bhootas). It 
would be insufficient to translate Karma by the word ``Action''; we can see that 
the word is in the ultimate meaningless, for being the product of many-actors, 
``action'' can only be a ``result'' or an ``event.'' Traced to the ``individual'' behind 
the Act we recognise the ``motive'' of the Act, the thought behind the Act, the 
thoughts which make up the Act, the thought, which, the Gita in its excellent 
analysis, calls an ``emanation that is the generator of images.'' That is what 
Flammarion also tells us, in his great work on ``Death and After'' in three 
volumes. We would refer our readers to that book for the scientific proof of the 
theory that Thought is the generator of Images.
	In the Yogi Philosophy, Thought is an emanation of the Mind (Brahma), mind 
being used in the sense of an universal principle which creates and sustains the 
world of sensations and through which alone the world Can be interpreted. Mind 
as the power of sentience is no wise synonymous with brain, disposition, 
instinct, intellect, intelligence, reason, sense, soul, spirit, thought or 
understanding. Mind is conscious cognition; it itself is neither one of the 
vehicles nor a set faculty of mental consciousness but is a movable factor 
between the ``Ego'' and Ego here is taken as the threshold of the Act (of 
consciousness) each or any one of the Ego's vehicles. Mind is only coincident 
with the mental nature in an ideal situation. Mind is Being when and where Being 
is attentive and may be focused so low as in an infant's moron prejudices. That 
is how westerners have defined the Mind; but in the Hindu Yogi Philosophy, Mind 
is only one of the aspects or factors of Manas, the other being Budhi, Reason or 
the power of Judgment, both Insight and Intuition; Chitta,  the thought-
emanating center,  Antahkarana the thought-absorbing faculty.
	We are here concerned with the Manas, in its aspects of reception, 
selection and emanation of Thoughts. We have many facts to learn yet about the 
Mind beyond the western analysis of the Mind which divides the Mind into the 
Subjective Mind (subconscious) and the Objective Mind. We have to be very 
careful not to confound these two minds with the Manas of Hindu phraseology. 
They would rather correspond, the subjective with Prana and the objective with 
Manah (one of the four factors of Manas). In the province of Karma Yoga, our 
chief factor is the Power of Thought, of conscious Thought; we have naught to do 
with unconscious cerebration nor with ideomotor action Avasah Kamna, for it is 
obvious that unconscious cerebration cannot form the subject of Yoga or be used 
at all. All the same we have to know that Thought is a constant function 
irrespective of the Ego. The Bhagavad Gita says that not for an instant can 
anyone remain without emanating Thought, consciously or unconsciously. Like 
respiration, or oxidation, thought is a constant process but unlike the former, 
irrespective of the subject. For ideas are essentially motor and if one occupies 
the field of consciousness to the exclusion of incompatibles it is bound to 
issue in action�the self does not play consciously any part in such acts�is the 
dictum of modern western psychology, too.
	Indeed man is continually peopling space, the thought-world, with emanated 
thoughts, consciously and unconsciously. And by man we do not mean a puny Being 
whose only consciousness is a little flicker of waking consciousness itself 
comprising at any moment but an insignificant fraction of his total memory, but 
a Being with a consciousness extending and working over the whole range of his 
personality whether instinctively or deliberately. That Being does not like the 
former go out of existence every time man goes to sleep but simply turns his 
attention to vital processes founded at a time of life when he could not speak 
and before words or other symbols could be used to bring these processes under 
the purview of the ordinary waking memory. This is the real man, a Being endowed 
with a stupendous memory and activity and an almost unlimited command over vital 
processes, and even over physical processes, a man such as only rare illumined 
geniuses are ever aware of Being but which we all are, though we know it not.
	Of this Great (Brahma) Being, Thought is a constant function as has 
already been said; thoughts are being constantly emanated irrespective of the 
``Self'' or Ego. Each moment, groups of thoughts are being formed made up of 
``likes,'' Sadrisa, from out of thoughts already in space and those just being 
emanated. And these thoughts cannot be killed nor restrained at all even by the 
cleverest man; following the laws of group psychology, provisional beings 
(Bhootas) are being constantly formed out of the heterogeneous elements 
(thoughts) which for a moment become combined exactly as the cells which 
constitute a living body form by their re-union a new Being which displays 
characteristics very different from those possessed by each of the cells singly. 
That is why there arises difficulty in many practices of concentration. Half-
knowledge, such as of many teachers suggests hetero-suggestive bases, which do 
not at all lead to success, they being opposed not only to the conscious tastes 
and desires of the subject but also because the Thought-Being created by 
ideomotor action has no consideration for any but its own purpose. The Bhagavad 
Gita explains this out fully in verses XVIII, 59 and 60, and also in verse III, 
33.
	Yes, all thoughts whether created from or passing into the depths of being 
go to the make-up of one's own character, one's self. And in the finale, it is 
the character that governs the function of Thought. A fundamental teaching of 
the Eastern Hindu-Yogi Philosophy as it is of the philosophy of the West, is 
that every conscious thought passes down to the lower stratum and then and there 
becomes an element of our Being partaking of our conscious energy and playing 
its part in determining our mental and bodily states. If it is a helpful 
thought, all the better. Such is how Coue and his school define the Power of 
Thought. According to Flammarion, ``Every thought considered as an emanation of 
the thinker, a thread spun out by the soul (silkworm) is a Guna (Behaviour) and 
acts with more or less intensity virtually as an agent called material acts, as 
a projectile or stone and may project itself afar. If a man thinks of murder he 
emits into the atmosphere (of thought) a murder-element, that remains and 
returns to him.'' Imagine thought as it exists in man raised out of him and as an 
active and energetic Being endowed with an inner life of its own and you have 
but a feeble illustration of that which fills a whole region, a whole universe 
beyond Time.
	How near we are to this grand Truth, that we are actually denizens of a 
universe of Thoughtforms, that we are all each complex thought-forms compounded 
entirely of Thought, we have scarcely recognised, even amongst those of us that 
have been devoting attention to practices of meditation and Yoga. It has been 
the experience of many when meditating that they have been interfered with by 
particular kinds of Thought, apparently coming from nowhere. And against this 
interference there has, alas, been wasted a good deal of pious gassing by most 
Acharyas. They have found it easier to say ``Be good and you will be happy''; they 
have continued to make many generalisations, to tell you that the mind is the 
bugbear of all philosophers, that every time it wanders it should be brought 
back by force (?) and reapplied to the object,�generally the object is Miss 
Kundalini with the tail in her mouth, to modern Hindu practitioners. They 
continue to analyze Nirvana, Moksha, Dhyana, and to explore Hindu metaphysics 
utterly. The poor practitioner continues to have pious platitudes trumpeted 
forth to him, continues to be fobbed off with inane remarks on virtue and Raja 
Yoga, Gnana Yoga, and such other Rogas (diseases) in his hour of need.
	Be it well understood of you that it is not necessary nor right to shut 
off natural activity of any kind, (Sahaja). Thoughts (Karma) do as one sits to 
meditation come easily on before the threshold of consciousness, often times 
they are mean, clouded, inchoate, harmful; for in life there is much meanness 
(dosha); man is often called on to acknowledge some degrading standard or fight 
for the very recognition of manhood. And what is the remedy? How shall we get 
rid of these thoughts? The answer of the Bhagavad Gita is that you should not 
effort to take the trouble even of attempting to reject, much less to accept any 
of these thoughts; presently the thought atmosphere will clear, the smoke will 
disappear for the flame to burn brighter. Yes, if a man gets into a serious 
worry, it is doubtless well to face it and see what it means and to get expert 
advice such as the Latent Light Culture literature can give gladly, if the 
trouble does not smooth out. But in ordinary life it is probably better to leave 
the roots of the unconscious to look after themselves; it is better to try to 
grow some flowers or fruit including health of body and mind. When difficulties 
apparently insurmountable confront thee, all that thou has to do is not to fight 
it out without knowing what you fight against, but to wait and see, to calmly 
observe what it is. Perchance it may pass off; certainly it will clear, it will 
begin to work itself out and become less Powerful.
	A Russian confrere in translating the term Parjanya (the Rain God of the 
Occidental-Oriental) says that all that is seething in war, in the ``struggle for 
existence,'' of passion, pain and the joy of victory is not only perceptible in 
its effects as revealed to the physical senses; it may be seen as an atmospheric 
process in the spirit world, a sort of thunderstorm. For each thought has a 
form, is a sort of cloud or mist and makes up in its electrical and magnetic 
potency a perfect analogue to a rain cloud. The simile is further expanded by 
Fournier D'Albe in his ``New Lights on Immortality'': ``On the earth nearly a 
hundred thousand persons die every day, the great majority of them being 
unconscious purposeless monads. The atmosphere is full of them. They remain for 
some time in the atmosphere and form a cosmic environment of diffused 
consciousness which mingles with the subconscious at time and manifests in 
mediumistic and spiritistic phenomena.'' These ``monads'' are of course the 
multiplicities of thoughts that were not expended with the body that had been 
shed, and they are only aggregations not certainly with any power of persisting 
as such but mere aggregations of thought-forms. Our point is here that the 
universe is peopled by these thought-forms and that it is quite possible for 
some of these thought-forms to appear before our consciousness as we sit to 
meditation or sit to think �all that you have to do is to wait, wait till they 
pass on.
	As you can see for yourself, ideas are in the air around us; it is ideas 
that we see spread before us; spread before our consciousness, ideas that govern 
and move all things; guns, bayonets, men of war, aeroplanes are but outward 
symbols. These ideas are neither to be bayoneted or battoned down; they are not 
to be shot down either. You cannot of course disperse or kill ideas in this way� 
they thrive and sprout, aye, even, under the spilling of blood, especially under 
the spilling of blood. We have to deal with these Ideas or Thoughts in quite 
other ways. We have to recognise ourselves as not yet fully competent to deal 
single-handed, I mean with a superficial attention, with these ideas pouring on 
us. And different modes of treatment are prescribed for different forms of 
thoughts; it is impossible to frame a general law for dealing with all wrong 
thoughts, and attempts such as that of the categorical imperative of Kant or the 
``congenital duty'' of the eastern pseudo Yogi can only end in failure to grasp 
the principles of Karma Yoga.
	As says Coue, ``A form of particular suggestion (Nirdesa, the Bhagavad 
Gita, calls it) is the quiet repetition of a single word. If your mind is 
worried and confused whether by the thoughts that had been oppressing you till 
you sat to meditation, or that had been pouring on you preventing your practice 
of mental-gymnastics for that day, sit down, close your eyes, relax yourselves, 
and murmur slowly and reflectively the single word (AUMN or) calm; say it 
reverently, drawing it out to its full length and pausing a bit after each 
repetition.'' And curiously Coue adds this method has been found most applicable 
to the attainment of moral qualities! It shows how powerful are some simple 
means and how independent of the ends actually attained. Each man may use his 
word, AUMN, Amen, Allah, as he likes�all that is necessary is to follow the 
direction given and to use the Mantra, we suggest the

A U M 


	You may wonder how such a simple word can produce a development of the 
moral qualities! The reason is given by Freud, the psychologist who has 
specially analyzed for us the workings of the Group Mind. ``A group,'' he says, 
``is subject to the truly magical power of ``names'' or words; words can provoke 
the most formidable tempests in the group-mind and are also capable of stilling 
them!'' And again, he says ``Reason and argument are incapable of combating 
certain words or formulae. These words are uttered in solemnity in the presence 
of groups and as soon as they have been pronounced all heads are bowed with 
respect.'' Note this faculty of the group-mind carefully; realize herewithal that 
man's mind is after all a group-mind, that it is a collection of thoughts (many 
milliards of them),that it is a collocation of these thoughts, and you will find 
reason enough to apply by analogy all the  postulates of Group Psychology to the 
individual Human mentation.
	Thus you see the AUMN in the auto-suggestion of Karma-Yoga to still all 
worries. But in the use of the AUMN do not seek for results, continues the Gita; 
do not expect any particular effect to follow on the utterance. To do so would 
first of all be to distract the attention and lessen the efficacy of the AUMN 
and secondly it would be a diversion away from the AUMN. Do the work of 
pronunciation or utterance of the AUMN and do nothing else. Avoid extensions of 
the thought suggested, if any, by AUMN by the very pronunciation itself; 
centralize entirely on the AUMN. Thus use every mantra, use it as an auto-
suggestion, affirming it to yourself by repetition and not by forcing it on your 
subconscious. Let the AUMN in time form part of your Being replacing the 
thoughts of worry that had occurred, that may occur, unless superseded by the 
utterance of the AUMN. This was the word (sound) that was, that has to be, has 
to prevail and be uttered; in the beginning, it was the word that was with God, 
i. e. with what is beyond behind phenomena (such is the sense of ``God'' taken 
here), the word that is God (as far as our pragmatic experience goes), stilling 
all worries, solacing all griefs, as ``God'' the ``God'' of the cults can and does 
(still) solace.


\s LESSON V

	Students must doubtless have studied and understood the significance and 
power of Thought, and that they may do it thoroughly is our object in this 
lesson. In dealing with conscious thought that is with thought arising from, or 
coincidentally with Perception or contact (sparsa), we have to remember the 
sevenfold nature of any Perception, e. g. the vision of a table. There is 
primarily the vision of the table with the sense of sight; secondly seeing it 
still with the eyes closed by retinal impression; thirdly the image of it 
conserved in the brain; fourthly it can be recalled by the memory; fifthly it 
can be seen in a dream; sixthly, or as an aggregate of its atoms or components, 
and seventhly as disintegrate. There are thus seven ways in which a sensation or 
bundle of sensations can contact the mind and deal with the constant emanation 
of thoughts that is taking place; and by contact (sparsa) is meant not merely 
the surface contact which alone we know out here in our world of superficiality. 
Sparsa or contact is the power of self-identification, the attempt at self-
identification of conscious pervasion whereby the self contacts its bodies or 
whatever it feels itself inclined to be pro tem. A conscious thought is not only 
the resultant of many thought forms as we have said in a previous lesson, but it 
is also the addition of one more combatant to the world-war, of Kurukshetra. The 
moment a perception in its sevenfoldness is launched into being, a thought or 
series of thought-forms begins to attack, associate, affect, commingle, resolve, 
integrate, disintegrate, overpower and make up a result, an event.
	Do not fear at all contact with people or with ideas, is the slogan of 
this lesson. Very true we have asked you not to worry yourself with thoughts 
that apparently come on to worry you, to cause you fear or make you abandon what 
you have taken up to do. But the danger here is that students do often avoid the 
circumstances that give rise to such thoughts, and at the same time do not 
replace these by other circumstances or surroundings. What we have to understand 
is to make use (Yoga) of everything of every idea as it comes on to us, at 
whatever time such idea may come on, provided the idea is not actually repugnant 
or repulsive. The latter require the treatment mentioned in the last lesson; 
just now we take up ideas born of contact (sparsa-ja thoughts).
	Let there (atra) not (ma) be (astu) non-contact (asparsa) with the 
thoughts arising from perceptions or percepts. Enjoy everything. These ideas 
last only their little moment and then pass off; but argue not so to yourself. 
Do not tell yourself ``these ideas, these contacts, their suffering or pain is 
only momentary, I shall suffer them therefore bravely.'' That is not the attitude 
of the Hero or of the Karma Yogi. On the other hand let the attitude be: ``These 
contacts, the suffering and gladness that they are bringing to me, endure mayhap 
only for the moment; but I shall enjoy them; it is quite possible that another 
such experience may not at all come in my way in such a fullness, in such a 
mode, giving such joy, aye such a joy in the suffering. Therefore shall I 
endure, enjoy, cultivate, intensely conscious, actively and acutely, this 
experience.'' Remember herein the self-flagellation of the mystics of the Roman 
Catholic Church, how intensely they enjoyed pain. You must read Havelock Ellis' 
book ``Psychology of Sex'' in six volumes, and if possible the Bibliography 
referred to therein, especially on Sadermasoch. Self-flagellation and pain has 
its reflex in the disturbance it creates in the sexual sphere; pleasure is but a 
waste of many useful thoughtforms; pain on the other hand provokes many thought-
forms into activity that could not otherwise have had any opportunity to 
manifest itself.
	``One's attitude to the necessaries which the traditions of earthly life 
involve, must of course be to rule them neither by mortification nor by 
indulgence.'' Such is the wise rule of Karma Yoga; it is not necessary to discard 
pain just because it is painful, nor is it necessary to revel in pleasant 
associations. These pleasant associations can only be for their time and it 
would be only creating a fresh chain of cause-act, (Karmika), of event-behaviour 
were one to attempt to continue the enjoyment. As said already, there happens a 
separation from the enjoyment, in practice, the separation provokes thought, 
anger, diversion, and one befogs himself in the attempt. So that when painful 
thoughts arise in the contacting with objects, all that one has to do is to 
eliminate mental spines and burrs, to reject or avoid all that one considers 
inimical to oneself�any attempt to lay down general rules hereunder as to how to 
do it only leads to confusion, for to each it will be quite different as to what 
all Ideas are harmful to him. All that one can do at the start to watch, 
observe, note down (if necessary) consider, study and then reject or eliminate 
or accept the thought. Probably it sounds all empty literature without definite 
meaning or precision of message. Wait a bit, however, and listen to us when we 
tell you to keep a note-book.
	It is of course a very small, but it is a very useful hint to keep a note-
book beside you as you sit in meditation; after meditation note down any idea or 
thought that strikes you as strange or curious or out of the ordinary; any idea 
that you cannot understand; flashes of intuition for which your ordinary thought 
has not been responsible. Jot down in it all the experiences (thought-forms) 
that you have had as you sat down to meditation Write them out in their 
fullness, especially when they are unique, and keep the book by while you 
continue your meditations. Not that there is any need to refer to the past pages 
of the book; rather do not refer back, but just note down your experience and 
leave it there. The use of the book belongs to another lesson in Karma Yoga; 
what is here taught is that all experiences should be noted especially if they 
are novel, and dispassionately noted. You can, however, in your leisure hours 
read over these notes, compare the experience with others in the books in your 
library if you are an ardent student and can spare time thereto; you can in time 
understand how much more you learned by suffering them otherwise.
	Our point is here that it is by suffering pain, aye, even by courting it, 
that you can obtain some exquisite sensations of Karma Yoga. The Greek 
philosopher Zeno refers in one of his works to the wise man who having conquered 
all passions feels happiness in the midst of torture. That is his definition, 
his ideal of the wise man; the Sanskrit equivalent for which is Dhira which also 
means the Hero. Etymologically it is this way: ``Nature, as we know it, is 
stupid, brutal, cruel, beautiful, extravagant and above all the vehicle of 
illimitable energy.'' How do we know it ? Only by experience; we realise that the 
apparent injustice of all differences of well-being can be explained by the fact 
that we have known prior existences. It is the suffering in this life that has 
remained and trace back the chain of causes till we got not at a solace but at 
the only possible conclusion. All suffering then has a meaning and whether the 
meaning be searched for or not, the suffering should be keenly and intensely 
enjoyed. The Yogi Philosophy advises the Karma Yogi to ``work and not to 
complain�for gradually the state is attained by the Karma Yogin where he himself 
determines the manner in which the impressions of the external world shall 
affect him.''
	In most books on Yoga, there is far too much emotionalism, not only as 
part of the language but also as a result of pedantry; the craze for 
classification has obviously dulled them and they are not able to catalogue 
experiences, not having had any worth the name. They do give you a long list of 
the virtues and vices, of the principles and Tatvas of the qualifications and 
Siddhis (powers), but as to a correct catalogue of mental experiences on the 
Path of any Yoga you have very few records in plain non-symbolical language. 
This much remains, that there is apparently no practical attempt to aid 
suffering, as in the attempt to aid suffering the consciousness of that 
suffering is lost. They tell you that Ahimsa, non-injury, is the greatest of all 
virtues, but that greater virtue the cure of those who have undergone Himsa is 
beyond the exoteric schools of Eastern metaphysics. ``In order to divide state of 
thought into 84 classes which is�to their fatuity!�an object in itself because 
84 is 7 times 12, they do not hesitate to invent new names for quite imaginary 
states of the mind and to put down the same state of mind several times.'' This 
is what leads to extreme difficulty in the study of their works on Psychology 
and the like, by the Westerners.
	``What we have to remember is that most of the pleasures in life and that 
of the most education in life are given by superable obstacles. Sport including 
love, depends on the oncoming of artificial or imaginary resistances. Golf has 
been defined as trying to knock a little ball into a hole with a set of 
instruments very ill-adapted for the purpose. In chess, one is bound by purely 
arbitrary rules.'' Suffering, I refer to the suffering inflicted by the passing 
thought as much as to the suffering provoked by contact, is a superable obstacle 
as is the teaching of the Yogi Philosophy, and the first treatment of suffering 
is to let it pass. The student is here advised to practice indifference, 
indifference to any but his own progress. This teaching does not mean the 
indifference of the Man to the things around him, as it has been often so 
unworthily and wickedly interpreted. The indifference is a kind of inner 
indifference; everything is to be enjoyed to the full, everything is to be 
suffered to the utmost, but always with a reservation that neither shall the 
absence of the thing enjoyed cause regret nor shall the continuity of the 
suffering disturb the serenity and patience of the sufferer. May be that this is 
too hard for the beginner but it is necessary and in many instances it has been 
found necessary for the beginner to abandon pleasures in order to prove to 
himself that he is indifferent to them; (An American Brother thinks that it may 
occasionally be advisable even for the Adept to do this now and again). In the 
Secret Rules of Kadambini Diksha, a very superior kind of Yogic Initiation, it 
has been ordained on the Yogi that ``to succeed he must be fearless, he has to 
brave danger, death and dishonour, to be forgiving and silent on that which 
cannot be given; for it is not lawful for an Occultist to thirst or even to seek 
for revenge.'' Nay he shall not even say, ``Vengeance is Mine, hath said the 
Lord,'' to himself.
	Such is the ethic of suffering. ``The Hindu Yogi has to swear the most 
solemn oaths never to either desire or seek retaliation or revenge ; he has to 
be always ready to help a brother in danger, even to the risk of his own life; 
to bury every dead body left unburied; to honor his parents above all; to 
respect old age and protect those weaker than himself; and finally to ever bear 
in mind the hour of death and the Purpose that made this body for him.'' All 
philosophy is built round suffering; the contemplation of the universe is at 
first one of pure anguish! The Hindu sees the evil of the environment; the Parsi 
the dnij the permanent enemy of God; in Islam there are jinn and devils whom 
Allah pulls down; in Christianity is the doctrine of original sin to which all 
are slaves from birth. All these have a moral and the moral is that the 
suffering and the sin should be borne, understood, fought against. Rest for the 
Karma Yogi would be unthinkable for it would reduce existence to nothingness. 
Yes, it is in the travail with the problems of evil that all the great religions 
of the world have been born.
	When the Karma Yogi has started on the programme of life he has sketched 
for himself, and has a sense of unrest with regard to the environments around 
him that has deeply entered into his soul there will be no faltering. There will 
be on the other hand carelessness as to what it may cost the worker himself; he 
may be crucified or, as it happens in modern days, at the worst, ignored. That 
is the attitude of the Karma Yogi towards suffering. As says M. Therion: ``For to 
him that is in any wise advanced upon the way of meditation it appears that all 
objects save one object are distasteful (blamable) even as appeared formerly in 
respect of his chance wishes to the will.'' The suffering comes on to him in many 
ways; distaste, pain, disgust, non-attachment�infliction, etc. In such cases the 
most obvious way and a thorough treatment would be to practise a love of the 
suffering, so that ``the object is grasped by the mind and heated in the 
sevenfold furnace of love until with explosion of ecstasy they unite and 
disappear, for they being imperfect are destroyed utterly in the creation of the 
perfection of union.'' Therion's language is rather hard to follow but what he 
says is that the Karma Yogi should suggest to himself that the suffering he 
undergoes is really to be enjoyed, actually to be longed for, nay to be 
regretted, if not continued. The acme of the suffering is to be found only in 
the fantastic pain of Bhakti Yoga, Rapture, and in Samadhi where the soul is 
torn temporarily off from the body with a sensation as tingling as that when 
one's skin is peeled off by oneself.
	The test of self-confidence, courage, fortitude, augmented by bearing 
sorrow, and disappointments from the failure of prior undertakings, with 
greatness of mind and especially with quiet and unbroken strength is called the 
Agneyi Dharana, or Dhyana Agni, Fire Trial in the Hindu Yogi Philosophy. ``All 
thoughts as they arise whether on perception or otherwise are subjected to 
analysis to an ordeal of their usefulness'' to the practitioner irrespective of 
whatever they are ``good or bad.'' Usefulness is the only test, not whether the 
Thought is ``good'' or ``bad.'' We are not concerned with moral judgment at all; 
rather we would, with Nietsche demand of all philosophers that they have the 
delusion of the moral Judgment beneath them�as there are no such things as moral 
facts. The danger in moral judgment is that in common with exoteric religion it 
believes in realities which are not real. Read McSwiney again: ``War must be 
faced, and blood must be shed out gleefully but as a terrible necessity; because 
there are horrors, moral horrors worse than any physical horror, because freedom 
must be had at any cost of suffering. The soul is greater than the body. This is 
the justification for war.'' Herein do we find the justification for suffering 
and its use, in this vast untilled field of moral conduct.
	Western readers may read H. P. Blavatsky's ``Voice of the Silence,'' the 
pseudo-Tibetan book, Part II, the Two Paths, verse 23;� ``If thou art taught that 
sin is born of action and bliss of absolute inaction then tell them that they 
err. Now permanence of human action, deliverance of mind from thralldom by the 
cessation of sin and fault are not for Deva-Egos . . . (What does H P.B. mean by 
Deva-Egos?) . . . Thus saith the doctrine of the Heart . . .'' What she says is 
that one should not be afraid to act; action should be fought by reaction, 
tyranny will never be overthrown by slavish submission to it; cowardice is 
conquered by a course of exposing oneself unnecessarily to danger. Suffering has 
to be enjoyed till it has no effect. ``The way to conquer any thought, to 
overcome any suffering is to understand it and the work of the Karma Yogi herein 
consists in the ability to decide whether or not he will perform any given 
action. The Karma Yogi should ever be ready to abide by the toss of a coin and 
remain perfectly indifferent as to whether it falls head or tail. That is the 
test of the Karma Yogi, that is the nature of his indifference. Be indifferent 
then to any but thine own work. Thus shall you not be bound.''
	``Suffer, enjoy every experience as it come on.''

\centerline{SUFFER, ENJOY, EVERYTHING}


\s LESSON VI

	We shall now turn our attention to ``Detachment'' which is said to be the 
meaning of Karma Yoga, and this ``detachment'' is termed ``non-attachment'' although 
the latter phrase conveys no meaning, for the one reason that a negative cannot 
convey any positive, definite meaning. The difference between the ideas conveyed 
by ``detachment'' and ``non-attachment'' is that detachment is a positive attitude 
of keeping oneself aloof or detached, while non-attachment is vague and of an 
indefinite meaninglessness which on that account has been made the subject of 
voluminous commentaries by cheap philosophers to whom we can attribute the 
desire to legislate for others via their public lectures. As says Sankara in his 
commentary on verse III, 34 of the Bhagavad Gita: ``Now I shall tell you where 
lies the scope for personal exertion and for the Teaching (Sastra). He who would 
follow the Teaching should at the very commencement rise above the sway of 
affection and aversion. For what we speak of as the nature of a person draws him 
to its course only through love and aversion. He then neglects his own duties 
and sets about doing the duties of others. When on the other hand a person 
restrains these feelings by means of their enemy, then he will become mindful of 
the Teaching only when no longer subject to his own nature. Wherefore, let none 
come under the sway of these two; for they are his adversaries, obstacles to his 
progress on the right path, like thieves on the road.''
	The Sanskrit of Sankara is Sanskrit of the 8th century A.C. and the 
translator has not expressed the sense in modern English using philosophical 
parlance. What is conveyed is that the practitioner could with regard to the 
objects of objective world, avoid having either affection or aversion. He could 
at all times view the oncoming thought or contacted object dispassionately; 
having learned to let it pass, as stated in Lesson IV, having learned to bear 
with it as stated in Lesson V, he might go a step further and remain quite aloof 
from it, all the while eagerly watching the thought fructify or the object 
working out the fulfillment.
	As already stated, the first position of the Karma Yogin towards the 
oncoming thought or towards the universe is to accept it, the next position is 
to accept it without being affected by it. The Karma Yogi must especially guard 
himself against getting into researches of cosmogony, against bothering himself 
as to how the thought arose, or how it happened. ``The question of being is the 
darkest in all philosophy; all of us are beggars here; for all of us alike fact 
forms a datum, a gift which cannot be burrowed under, explained away or left 
behind,'' says a westerner. It is as well to leave aside the logical riddle 
untouched of how the coming of whatever it is, whether it came piecemeal or came 
it all together can be or at all logically understood. In the East this is 
termed Kismet, the Doctrine of Fatalism in the form expounded in Islam, of men 
who have combined a great sense of personal moral obligation with religious 
resignation as to the final outcome of human life. These have been characterized 
by their meek acceptance of the Present, of the Event as an Act of God, 
something that one should not question or trace out; most of the great religions 
are clear that life in the world is a tangle of disharmonies; in one way or 
another they say that this world is damned or is the abode of suffering, but the 
Doctrine of Kismet says that these disharmonies are here, this damnation is here 
inexplicably. Why indeed explain, ask they? In the Buddhist metaphysic, the 
present is the consequence and the inevitable consequence of the Past of that 
Freewill once exercised which still is available for exercise. The attitude 
towards the oncoming Thought must, therefore, be to put yourself in a proper 
mental (and physical) condition therefore, to meet it.
	Be sane, always. Asceticism is not for you Karma Yogis at all; asceticism 
excites the mind, the object of the Karma Yogi is not only to calm it but to 
continue to keep it calm. Of course, during the periods of actual concentration 
there is no time for any but the work itself, but to make even the mildest 
asceticism a rule of life is the greatest of errors, except perhaps that of 
regarding asceticism itself as a virtue. I do not begin here an instruction 
again asceticism, though asceticism has always been the stumbling block most 
dreaded by the wise. Christ said that John the Baptist came neither eating nor 
drinking, and the people called him mad; He himself came eating and drinking and 
they called him a gluttonous man and a wine bibber and the friend of publicans 
and shlllers. It must always be remembered that the Karma Yogi always does what 
he likes or rather what he wills and allows nothing to interfere with it, but 
because he is ascetic in the sense that he has no appetite for the stupidities 
which fools call pleasure, it has become the fashion with snobs, what we call 
the Sastris of India, to expect him to refuse things both natural and necessary. 
It has been put to the Karma Yogi that he must accept his environment, and also�
wrongly we say�that he should not only accept his environment but also stick on 
till death to that environment. The notorious caste system had been vainly 
trying for ages to assert that a cobbler should be a cobbler, an oil-monger an 
oil-monger, but that only a Brahmin could become a God. Alas, Kabir, Nanak, 
Chaitanya, and a host of others have been deified and were not Brahmins at all. 
No doubt the Karma Yogi has no right, no business to break up his domestic 
circumstances; for the Karma Yogi's doctrine is pat with the Rosicrucian 
doctrine ``that the Adept should be a man of the world, for such is nobler than 
the hermit.''
	But under any condition, in every environment, confronted without any 
proposition or any difficulty, aye, even with destiny in its darkest adversity, 
it is always open to the Adept to exercise his Freewill. Those who have master 
souls, says M, refuse to be bound by anything but their own wills. ``They may 
refrain from certain actions because their main purpose would be interfered 
with, just as a man refrains from smoking if he is training for a boat-race. But 
there are sane people so hypercritical that they claim their dislikes as virtue 
and it very often happens that the literature before the would-be Karma Yogi is 
full of the self-bombast of the poor, weedy, unhealthy degenerate who cannot 
smoke because his heart is out of order, and cannot drink because his brain is 
too weak to stand it or perhaps because the doctor has forbidden him to do it 
for the next two years, the man afraid of life, afraid to do anything lest some 
dire result should follow.'' Very often those acclaimed as the best and greatest 
of mankind are these slaves to custom and habit those unable to realise that the 
Karma Yogi must never be less, but always more than a man. The desire for the 
flesh has ever grown stronger for ascetics as they endeavored to combat it by 
abstinence and when with old age their functions are atrophied they claim 
vaingloriously ``I have conquered,'' ``I have Vairagya.''
	It is quite possible to attain Vairagya, that sort of indifference that 
marks a high stage in moral strength; an indifference that approaches disgust 
for everything�what would remind the Englishman a great deal of the ``Oxford 
manner.'' It is typically the phlegmatic type which declines to be moved by 
anything good (bad or indifferent) that does not belong to one. When one is 
affected by a wrong thought, a thought that does not, however, provoke pain for 
which latter the treatment has already been given, it is possible for the Karma 
Yogi to remain indifferent thereto; nay the indifference may be so far 
strengthened so as to be made a sort of disgust�not expressively so, not even 
intensively so. The nature of the attitude of disgust herein called Vairagya is 
to remain quite phlegmatic about it, towards undesirable thoughts as towards 
needless Acts and happenings in the world around the Karma Yogi. Where it is as 
well to let well alone, it is the rule of Karma Yoga to remain indifferent, 
apparently indifferent all the time. However, the Karma Yogi watches the event, 
ready to intercede should harm be likely to ensue. The Karma Yogi can remember 
the famous adage: ``Too many cooks spoil the broth �too many physicians kill the 
patient-too much of care is not necessary about every passing thought.''
	The attitude of Vairagya herein suggested is, of course, a passion-free 
attitude; there is a particular method open to the Karma Yogi of keeping himself 
up in the state of equilibrium with which things can be done which bear no fruit 
and have no reaction. The Eastern Scriptures state that the Karma Yogin's status 
is like that of fishes in water, of kites in the air; they affect not the 
element in which they move. The Karma Yogi lives and moves in the world but he 
lives and moves practically incognito, practically as if he were making himself 
invisible, while continuing to work. It is best to explain this attitude by a 
praxis which has been advised and I quote the advice at length:
The student must set aside a small part of his daily life in which to concern 
himself with something quite different from the objects of his daily occupation. 
(Five minutes a day will suffice.)

	He is not to occupy himself with the affairs of his own ego or with the 
thoughts that occur to him, in such moments. He should rather let the thoughts 
he experiences as messages from the outer world re-echo within his own 
completely silent self. (And note, you, yourself have to be utterly silent, the 
silence being assured by your taking up the attitude of disgust�Vairagya.)
	N. B.�And he will prepare himself to receive quite new impressions of the 
outer world through different eyes. (He need not be waiting particular results 
at all; he ought not to do so.)

	For it is quite possible to view the universe through various kinds of 
spectacles, from various points of view; and similarly it is possible to 
consider each oncoming thought from a different point of view. The hint is to 
change your Point of View rather than attempt to change the Thought by going 
into the whence and why of it. He may of course remain perfectly indifferent to 
the experience furnished by the Thought, and the reason for the indifference 
requires to be better understood.
	Just as the seven forms of perception and contact by perception generate a 
sevenfoldness of thought, so every thought deals with seven planes of experience 
in eastern psychology as stated by the Vedas. They are: (I) Memory, Smriti, (2) 
Vision, Pratyaksha, (3) Association, Aitihya, (4) Induction, Anumana. These four 
planes of thought work in collaboration and interrelation with thoughts from (5) 
the Sanchita, the storehouse that is the individual make-up; (6) Association or 
contact with which creates another thought, Prarabda; (7) accidental 
sympathetics, Agamya, crowning the whole. When the attention runs as a shuttle 
does through this warp it creates a weft of Action and Reaction called Samsara. 
One way to avoid this creation of Samsara is to deal with the original thought 
and inhibit it, by remaining in an attitude of disgust theretowards, and the 
attitude of disgust or Vairagya has to be taken up to every thought other than 
the subject of meditation. And before the attitude of disgust should the 
attitude of watchfulness hereinbefore advised be taken up.
	All that is required in this stage is an inhibition of thought. The Karma 
Yogi has to recognise that the thought that occurs to him is very necessary in 
itself and ought to be borne with, suffered, allowed to pass on without regard 
to any end outside itself. This thought as has been mentioned is but a 
resultant, a reaction and hence cannot be avoided. But at the same time it is 
very necessary to avoid treating the thought as all actuality or reality. To do 
so is a further action, a furtherance of ``bondage,'' as has already been said. It 
may even be necessary to put oneself in all attitude of disgust. A little later 
the practice of elimination of thoughts could be tried, but so far the neophyte 
Karma Yogi has to train himself to change his point of view, whenever he has to 
deal with an experience that is alien to his own will. He, as it were, goes up 
the ``Hill of Meditation,'' take up a point of view of Udaseenata, a sort of view 
of the plains as from the top of a hill, a comprehensive view, the view of a 
superior person. How can the Karma Yogi think as a God, if he has not the 
outlook of a God, the Isvara Bhava! And to have the outlook of a God one has to 
change his own point of view, the point of view that is as but putty in the 
hands of Intelligence. Towards the on-coming thought what the Karma Yogi here 
has to do is to judge for himself whether to God such a thought would be 
possible, before he entertains the thought. This Isvara Bhava has also been 
spoken of as the attitude of the Kshatriya, Kshatra denoting both the Kingdom of 
God and the Human Body (soul and body combined). Just as nothing can exonerate 
the Karma Yogi from doing his utmost to determine and perform the right Act and 
just as nothing can excuse his failure to do so, in the plane of thought 
``culture'' (miscalled), nothing can exonerate the Karma Yogi's failure to obtain 
the right thought by the process hereinbefore mentioned.
	But if these themselves were not enough, a settled practice has been 
encouraged by the HinduYogi Philosophy with regard to wrong thoughts� namely to 
eliminate them. The charge to the Karma Yogi has always been to eliminate 
rubbish from the Mind�he should eliminate anything which does not serve his 
purpose. He can, as by the ``Neti,'' ``Neti'' mantra eliminate (and thus select for 
use) thoughts pouring in as he sits to meditation. As each thought comes on 
before you, you, having been trained already by the practices before mentioned 
and not being the slave of the thoughts, being careless about the results, begin 
by examining the thought and reject it, if you think it useless to yourself, by 
the Mantra ``Neti,'' Not so; ``Neti,'' Not thus; Oh, no, certainly not. This ``Neti,'' 
``Neti'' process requires a very deep psychological investigation as a 
preliminary. It is not sufficient to get rid temporarily of these thoughts; one 
must as it were seek their roots and destroy their roots so that they can never 
rise again. A helpful suggestion is to bring about the habit by auto-suggestion 
of declining thoughts that are not useful to one's purpose, as a settled 
practice of Karma Yoga by the use of the Mantra

``NETI, NETI''

	All along you have to remember that your experiences, (again these 
thoughts that you are advised to deal with) are not the ultimate truth. They are 
only sensations that change with your status and as you advance in the direction 
of more and more untiring energy. ``Thine to do'' is with thought only, says the 
Bhagavad Gita; ``not with the resultsi'' which results are the resultants of the 
whole universe acting on the Act initiated perhaps by you, the reaction of your 
action. It is quite open to you, Karma Yogi, to take out use for anything into 
yourself�because yours is the kingdom of thought�but it is as well that you do 
not revel in the silence of not dealing with the occurring event, as it or as 
you require. This carelessness as to what it may cost the Karma Yogin is to be 
found more in the West nowadays apparently combined with the desire and impulse 
to work; and if it is not to be found in the East, it is because the conditions 
of life possible in the Sannyasi mode of living have made it unnecessary for 
anyone to be a Karma Yogin at all. And the commingling of the West and East have 
made it equally impossible for a Grihee (householder) to be a Yogi, much less a 
Karma Yogin unless he be truly ardent.

\centerline{NA ITI NA ITI}

\centerline{NOT THUS, NOT THIS}


\s LESSON VII

	We propose now to take up a section of Karma Yoga that has been rejected 
or rather misunderstood, namely the use of sacraments to the Karma Yogi. It had 
been an invariable statement by religious reformers that in spite of the 
inferiority of Vedic ritual still it had its uses. What the uses are to the 
Karma Yogi has not been explained but it has been taken that Karma Yoga (of the 
lower or inferior ( ? ) variety) consisted in the observance of the Vedic ritual 
and performances of the practices mentioned in the Vedas. For there is much in 
the Vedas that is of use in magic, in religion, in praxis, though great be the 
difficulty in cogent arrangement, and greater the worry on the part of the 
Teacher not to speak overmuch; lest in unlocking Pandora's box disease and 
devilment get out to work their havoc with simple minds anxious to use every 
good advice as a weapon against one's neighbour. Great indeed are our 
difficulties and nothing but the desire to help humanity on the part of the 
Latent Light Culture has compelled me to write down what little I am permitted 
to do. Alas, I am not complete; I would rather request that if difficulties crop 
up, and difficulties will crop up only to the evil-minded, aye, even if a single 
thought of evil be encouraged, the reader addresses the Latent Light Culture for 
remedy.
	First then as to the rationale of the Karma Kanda, religious ritual. It is 
very necessary that the rationale be understood first before the subject is 
approached. To begin at the beginning we would draw attention to our original 
statement that the universe is a universe of Thought. Herein we venture to state 
that it is naught else. All objects are but thoughts, whether we see them as 
Behaviors or feel them as sensations or do not see them at all as thoughts. 
Thought is a constant function irrespective of the Ego, of you or I; the 
universe is a play of strands of thought working out among other strands of 
thought and what marks out each strand (guna) of Thought (Karma) is an Event of 
Time, the fourth dimension. Just as the geometrical point in space is a line or 
thread of event in space�Time the 4th dimension, each event is but the 
occurrence of a Thought, a tick mark placed on thought which is matter of the 
5th dimension for Thought transcends and is irrespective of Time. From the 
viewpoint of Time, Thought is Immortal, or rather beyond Time. Thought does not 
age, has neither Past, Present nor Future and always can be recalled-though not 
in the same form or vehicle in which it first appeared. This is the first Truth 
about Thought.
	Secondly, from the viewpoint of the Thinker, the Mind or what emanates 
Thoughts, what is behind Thought, what of which Thought is but an Image or 
debased image, Thought is a sacrifice, Yajna. This is a most Sacred Truth. It is 
another way of stating that each Thought having been emanated returns (by the 
Law of Action and Reaction) back to the Thinker, Mind (Brahma). But the 
emanation and the return are not meaningless at all; a thought is not a waste; a 
Thought is a Purposeful emanation and returns with its Purpose fulfilled; this 
is not all assertion but a matter of experience (Anna). It is for the experience 
that Thought comes to be (Bhoota); it is from out of experience (Anna) that the 
Thought that has come to be, has been made, and gathering unto Itself the 
experience it gains, the Thought (Son) returns to his Father (Mind) which art in 
Heaven When therefore God created mankind, says Genesis I.28, ``And God said unto 
them (and God blessed them)�Be fruitful and multiply .... replenish the earth 
and subdue it'': Exactly what the Bhagavad Gita says (Ill, 10): ``God the Lord of 
Progeny having created Progeny (Praja) along with sacrifices (Yajna) said of 
old, before creation, Hereby do you multiply. These shall be the fulfillers of 
your desires,'' or words to that effect. Of course the progeny were thoughts and 
each thought was an Act of Sacrifice or an Act of Worship of God (or of God's 
command or Act). Mind you, they, the thoughts, were to be fulfillers of 
themselves, of their desires, their own milkmaids for themselves the milch cows. 
As says the proverb, why have of the Kingdom of the Mind half the kingdom; have 
the whole of course.
	Each thought is of the Form of Light�a Devata�but yet each thought is 
still helpless, the phrase Deva conveys the idea of helplessness also. Each 
Devata (Thought) as created, when it goes to the make-up of your Being, has 
virtually all the qualities of the cell-life (in the human body). Just as you 
have to understand the capacity of the subconscious cell life in you, that 
builds and rebuilds your body, so must you understand the power of these 
Thoughts emanated by you or by mankind. Filling the atmosphere round about you 
are Thoughts, Intuitive messengers, Mr. Stillwell in his book ``Grow and Live 
Young'' calls them. ``Expect them, command your intuitions to come to your aid 
when problems confront you; consider that intuition is a silent partner, that it 
desires to aid and will aid if called on for help.'' And the Bhagavad Gita says 
equally well: ``Consider then each cell of your body, each psychomere (particle 
of your soul) has ears and be careful what is whispered by your Thoughts and 
Acts, into these ears, what you tell your subconscious, for whatever the order 
is, the cell will build you up accordingly. Have ye not noted that sudden psalms 
of fear or anger kill like lightning? We would go further and say: ``Be careful 
what thought you add on to the world of thoughts� for they both mar and make�
unerringly.''
	Very curious this our suggestion-it is Vedic� that thought is a sacrifice, 
and as a sacrifice a rite whereby not only man gains divine help but the Gods 
themselves derive strength, a means by which man assists Gods against evil. This 
was the teaching in the ancient Parsi country. The existence of angels and 
devils has been part of the religious literature of almost all countries; in one 
form or another; and what are these angels or devils but the visions of Thoughts 
embodied ? All along has prevailed the idea that the function of men was to 
strengthen the Gods (Thoughts) by Prayer (persistent Thought) and Sacrifice 
(more Thought). Among the Parsis the teaching was that if Gods were not pleased 
or sacrificed to they hurt humanity; so too among the Hindus where the Pitris 
the manes of dead ancestors have similarly to be appeased; and in China and 
Japan where ancestor worship was the only worship� the ancestor being ourselves! 
In Sanskrit Mata (Mother) was a synonym for Atma which meant father and son 
equally well�being too reflexive a pronoun. indeed there is much in the ancestor 
worship of ancient nations to be understood and appreciated in the light of our 
philosophy today and only a portion of the entire truth need be considered now.
	As said already, on the earth nearly a hundred thousand persons die every 
day, the great majority of which are unconscious, purposeless monads�the 
atmosphere is full of them. They remain for some time in the atmosphere, 
disperse and form a cosmic environment of diffused consciousness which mingles 
with the ``subconscious'' at times and manifests in mediumistic and spiritistic 
phenomena. This leads us to a brief study of Death and what happens at ``death
''
and in the state beyond Death. We of course do not take up the materialistic 
theory that Death is a mere disruption of the congregation of the cells called 
the body which congregation breaks up leaving the cells free to form other 
congregations somehow. Such a theory is not for thinkers, not for Karma Yogis to 
whom every Act in Nature has a meaning, to whom Death is a conscious, voluntary 
act and not an incident. Death is a ``laying aside'' of the outer-shell which has 
become independent of the directing Thought�called ``Soul'' or Spirit�death is the 
death of the shell, an act of anarchy on the part of the cells composing the 
shell, these cells having chalked out a course against or independently of the 
soul.
	What happens at death then? Fournier D'Albe puts it in his excellent 
language: ``A nucleus weighs about 1/1000th of the average cell body; its really 
vital and perhaps invisible portion may be 1/10000th part of the weight of the 
nucleus. In other words taking all the cells together, our real living matter, 
the vital portions of the body may have an aggregate weight of about 1/5th of an 
ounce. Could we eliminate all the rest of the cell material we should have a 
body consisting of all that is alive in every single cell. But (especially note 
this) that body would be quite invisible and would if it filled the outline of 
the body as before ascend some fifteen miles in the air before it found a 
position of equilibrium. It could indeed live in a new world, retaining all its 
social and organic memories and fulfilling all its essential conditions except 
that of acting on ponderable matter.'' It will be enough to say that at death, 
the soul, itself a ``body'' composed of all that is vital in every cell is 
``released'' and soars to the upper atmosphere.
	To us the soul is not a mere ``cloud'' of physical (albeit fine) inert 
matter. It is a Life, a Purpose, the unfulfilled portions of the Purposes that 
animated the late dead body; a Purpose all the more strong because it had been 
rid of the clog that was recently hampering it. And to confirm this comes in the 
statements of the earnest band of thinkers and workers who from messages, 
codified messages for which the vehicle-body was not responsible, which say that 
the invariable assertion from the realms beyond Death is that the conditions on 
the other side of Death are much like those here more than the communicators 
(the recent dead or disembodied) themselves had expected; that the character and 
personality are unchanged; but that they are freer from obstruction and 
difficulty and that the conditions are more conducive to progress than here; and 
at the same time they assure us that they know little more than we know, that 
they have not suddenly jumped into supernal or infernal regions at all. Indeed 
it would appear that the dead here around us, through us, in us (?), and that 
they are connected in their plane by links of affection and interest rather than 
space relation or bodily proximity. None the less the dead are barely cognisant 
of earth happenings, curiously.
	Another and outstanding fact in early messages is the keen desire 
apparently felt to relieve the minds of survivors of some anxiety or 
misunderstanding which is casting a shadow over their lives; for the Dead are as 
we said, but unfulfilled Purposes and as such deserving of the sympathy and 
worship of those on this side of the veil. For the very best thinkers, like 
Mahomed Rasul Allah (Peace Be on Him), have opined that ``the development of a 
man's faculties is really the starting point towards an immeasurable wider vista 
of the realms to be traversed opening out after death when the soul is liberated 
and assumes another body in Paradise in accordance with past deeds; similarly 
those who have wasted their opportunity in this life shall under the law which 
makes every man taste of what he has done be subjected to a course of treatment 
till the effect of their poisonings be nullified after which they are fit again 
to start on to the great goal, God's Mercy.'' This in the language of the 
spiritualists is expressed in the following quotation: ``The same constructive 
ability as must in the long course of evolution have succeeded in producing the 
visible organism by arranging particles of matter seems able to continue its 
task under the new conditions and can construct another new body or mode of 
manifestation out of such substance as is there available; the ether it may 
hypothetically he supposed to be, a body not unlike the body it had here.''
	Writing on the exteriorisation of personality, Fournier D'Albe says that 
``the observed stability of our body, its constancy of outline, is due to the 
play of imponderable forces vast in comparison with the size of the particles on 
which they act. on this view this body is a kind of mist from which there is a 
possibility of extracting a finer kind of mist and doing so in a short time and 
repeatedly with a nearly permanent possibility of restoring it to its former 
place; and this is herein significant that the force of cohesion which keeps the 
body together is almost certainly of electrostatic origin.''
	We can understand this better when we recognise that man is but an 
aggregation of many thoughts each thought a mist; the dead are only the mist 
separated from the body, but the term mist must not be understood an unity but 
rather a multiplicity of very unstable composition, and, look you, a 
multiplicity that still grows, decays, reforms, continues to be of the same 
material, namely, of thoughts. Not all these thoughts are forms; many are 
inchoate, they are incomplete in form; others are mere velocities, powers, 
yearnings, what the Bhagavad Gita calls in its language, Fires, Flames, 
Radiances, smokes, nights, luminosities, months, days, blacknesses, to denote 
the denizens of the realms beyond death of the physical.
	Free intercourse with the realms of the dead was possible and is still 
possible; experiments continually being made by spiritualists are proving the 
possibility. Whether such free intercourse and intermingling of the living with 
the dead is advisable is more than the Hindu scriptures can say. Writing on the 
reappearances of the forms of the dead, a gifted author says: ``The subjective 
form created through the desires and thoughts in connection with things of 
matter survives the death of the body; the pale copy of the man that was, his 
eidola, vegetates for a period of time but will, if left to itself, gradually 
fade out and disintegrate. Occasionally, however, these reclothe themselves out 
of the materials at hand which are found in the air and in the emanations of 
those present at seances and then become objective; but ordinarily they do not 
perceive us nor we them. But it is sinful to recall them, sinful to retard their 
progress by worrying them to repeat their past here.''
	According to the Rg Veda the dead go to that joy that Yama the pioneer 
discovered for them; a passage in the Shatapatha Brahamana XI.4.iv.2 says that 
the dead live in intercourse with Brahma (God). How then arose the idea of the 
rites to the manes, the rites other than mere invocations or worship? On which 
states the Buddhist: ``The unsatisfied desire of beings that belong to a state of 
personal existence in the material world has a force, has creative impulse in 
itself so strong that it attracts as center a new Purpose drawing God back again 
to mundane life.'' We here tread on the theory of reincarnation, a theory that 
has not been accepted in the earlier writings and even where accepted has been 
considered to be optional and never compulsory as in latter writings.
	The suggestion herein is that Thought can become dominant, can survive 
death, can rebuild again a body, can after death affect the world that it got 
out of; the suggestion is that such thoughts have to be treated with by the 
Karma Yogi, for the teaching is that such dominant Thoughts of the dead do seek 
help and punish us in the world if neglected. Hence the rites to the dead, the 
Pitr Kriyas, to the Fravshi of the Parsis. Incidentally, reflection would lead 
to a greater understanding of the universe of thought as existing beyond Time 
and circumstance (body).
	All worship, all sacrifice, all religion began as has been seen in the 
History of Religions with the worship of the dead, either as our ancestors or as 
heroes or as sages; in China worship has been and is offered only to the 
ancestors; in the Turanian countries to the dead who have been interred in 
Samadhi (tombs or temples) and who are still living; in Egypt to the ``dead'' 
Pharaohs whose mummies reposed in pyramids, in undisturbed peace; in among the 
Aryas to the Pitrs, the father and mother, chiefly; for, as has been stated, it 
is not only now but for ever so long a time that the dead have become immortal 
memories for the dying who remained.
	In the Indian doctrine, the dead have to be pleased by what has now become 
a small offering of sesame seeds (thila) and rice (akshatah) along with water in 
an act called tarpana (for pleasing). Almost all adult-males are to be found 
after their fathers' death offering this every New Moon day, after mid-day, to 
the ancestors and this rite called Pitr Kriya, of all the ordained rites, still 
survives other rites and hence is taken up for explanation.
	Thilah stand for all the best that is in man, the best of his good 
thoughts, the best of his yogaic practices; as has been said the dead are not 
merely the personalities that were, but only fragments thereof; they are the 
still-to-be-fructified purposes and thoughts, good, bad, and indifferent that 
were of a deceased personality but now are disintegrating, or are remaking, or 
getting along, in another world that is still linked to us by ties of affection, 
each one fragment a make-up of thoughts that do form our thought environment. It 
is still, in this age too, seen from messages from beyond the veil that there 
are desires, there too, to communicate with us here and to make us respond; and 
the only way to establish such communication is via the thought world; good 
thoughts (thila), undying memories (akshatas) are to be sent up along with the 
desire to please (Tarpana). The ``form'' for the act is the offer of the sesame 
seeds and rice grains along with water, of which a handful; if the dead are 
those who have become recluses, the offering was of pure milk alone; for such 
did not want solace but mere kind remembrance, if at all. Yet, the Karma Yogi 
ought, of course, to remember the dead who have fed, who have inspired, who have 
educated us and are still doing so. What form this ancestor worship, as you may 
call it, should take depends on the metaphysic of the worshipper; on his 
spirituality rather, for in the act he is outpouring his self on in sacrifice, 
in the sacrifice of what is called ``Pitr Yajna.'' In India this outpouring 
consists in feeding all and sundry relations and poor of the same caste on the 
anniversary day of the death of the deceased object; and this is actually 
soliciting the good thoughts of the many fed towards what remains of the old 
personality of the dead. And the ritual combines also the offer to the ancestors 
of the oblations of cooked rice and ghee into the Fire, specially invoked and 
consecrated by magick, as per tradition-honored ritual. Thoughts here are 
offered in generous sacrifice, (ahuti) in their collective (pinda) to the 
ancestors; to the ancestors; fire and water the destroyers and solvents of all 
things (actually they are the transmuters of thoughts from the inchoate to the 
actual)�are asked to help in a generous conveyance of the good thoughts from man 
to what was man.
	We think that the West does require some sort of rites to the dead other 
than ``in memorium'' masses for the soul and the keeping up the anniversary day of 
great men. We think that especially in spiritualist circles there should be 
greater consideration shown to the dead. All invocations should be made of the 
dead with reverence; the spirits called up should be assured that they are 
called up for their own sake primarily; is there any purpose remaining 
unfulfilled for them, is there anything we, the living, can do to meet the 
unfulfilled wishes of the dead we invoke? As they sit in silent circles in the 
dark, this may be the attitude of the enquirers, and such an attitude will 
remove much of the stigma that is gradually sullying the good work done by the 
spiritualists.
	Whether the Western Karma Yogin should adopt the entire Hindu rituals of 
the dead Srardhas (anniversary rituals) is another matter; what we can state is 
that the additional charity of the offer of free food to the poor on anniversary 
days will not be a wrong act anywhere in the world; nor will the Hindu 
injunction to regard anniversary days as holy like unto the Sabbath be without 
value for adoption. But the puzzle is that Occidentals (to whom the personality 
of the dead remains unchanged) have no rites for the dead of an anniversary 
ritual nature whereas the Orientals, who believe in the change of the 
personality after death, continue to behave as if the personality had been 
continuing on unchanged even after death.



\s LESSON VIII

	The Hindu-Yogi Philosophy has recognised full well the universe of Thought 
in so far as to state that Thoughts people many realms of existence beyond the 
physical plane, the treatment of one of which we have already spoken of in the 
last chapter. Thoughts exist otherwise too, as the denizens, for instance, of 
the infra world, the matter of biology, for which the term in Hindu philosophy 
is Bhoota (what has come to be); as ideas, soul particles, psychomeres, gods, 
divinities, angels, good thoughts, Devas, denizen of a supra world, (not 
superior world at all); as Manushyas; men themselves who are but aggregations of 
Thought; and as the Transcendentals, the Higher Purposes of Man called in the 
collective God. The Karma Yogi has to know, has to appreciate these lives, these 
Thoughts as forming part of the universe he is dealing with, and has to settle 
his attitude towards these various forms of thought not as they come before him, 
but collectively, comprehensively.
	As he can approach the Devas, the gods of the supra world, and help the 
Bhootas, the beings of the infra world, alike via the agency of Fire, says Veda. 
And by fire is meant not merely the flame but the catalyst that accelerates 
oxidation, which oxidation is a constant ceaseless factor in the universe, the 
same thing again as thought. We shall therefore deal with the Fire mystery, for 
Fire is a mystery, as great a mystery as catalysis, as great a mystery as 
electrical induction, as radiography; Fire has been a universal symbol; it was 
the Universal medium for all offerings among almost all the ancient nations. And 
has the use and purpose of fire been entirely meaningless? The Karma Yogi must 
understand why the ancient Parsis and Hindus were charged with being worshippers 
of the visible fire, and falsely charged, too. For the Parsis and Hindus face 
the Fire as they also face the sun and sea, because in them they picture to 
themselves the hidden light of lights, source of all life, to which they give 
the name of Ahuramazda. How well Robert Fludd, the English mystic, expresses 
this divinity of Fire is seen from the following excerpt from ``Hargrave Jennings 
on the Rosicrucians,'' p. 69.
	``Regard fire then with other eyes than with those soulless incurious ones 
with which thou hast lookt on it as the most ordinary thing. Thou has forgotten 
what it is, or rather thou hast never known. Chemists are silent about it. 
Philosophers talk about it as anatomists talk about the constitution or parts of 
the human body. It is made for man and the world and it is greatly like him they 
would add that is mean.... But is this all? Is this the sum of the casketed lamp 
of the human body? thine own body, thou unthinking world's machine, thou man? Or 
in the fabric of this clay lamp (what a beautiful simile) burneth there not a 
light? Describe that ye doctors of physics! Note the goings of fire .... Think 
that this thing is bound up in matter chains. Think that he is outside of all 
things; and that thou and that world are only the thing between and that outside 
and inside are both identical, couldst thou understand the supernatural truth! 
Reverence fire for its meaning and tremble at it. Avert the face from it as the 
Magi turned, dreading and as the symbol bowed askance.... Wonder no longer then 
if, rejected so long as an idolatry, the ancient Persians and their masters the 
Magi concluding that they saw all in this supernaturally magnificent element, 
fell down and worshipped it; making of it the physical representation of the 
very truest yet in man's speculation and in his philosophies�nay in his 
commonest reason impossible God.''
	And look you, this is the language not of a Parsi or Hindu but of an 
English scholar, one of a nation of phlegmatics, and hence is his effusiveness 
remarkable; of one who followed the shining path marked out by the Chaldean Magi 
and obtained like them the true meaning of their mysteries.
	Fire (Agni) was not merely a symbol with the ancient Hindus; it was a 
vehicle for the good thoughts of the individual and good thoughts were offered 
up along with material physical offerings via Agni the great Vehicle, vahana. 
Could not good thoughts, kind wishes and the like be offered without any media? 
They could, of course, but they would in most cases be inchoate; of incomplete 
cogency, and hence ineffective of action. But offering through Fire conveys to 
the offerer the suggestion that the Vedas state about the Vedic sacrifices; 
namely that offerings into the fire being reduced all into one element rise up 
to the Father the Sun who himself is a great drier of water which rises in steam 
up to him; from on high where these smokes and clouds form and in time condense 
cometh rain which sheds on the world forcing up plant life and creating fruits 
which are offered again in sacrifice. As says the ancient lawgiver Manu: ``The 
offering put into the fire goeth to the Sun; from the Sun cometh rain; from rain 
food; from food all creatures.'' III. 76.
	And again, as says Ramanuja, a great revivalist of Hindu Bhakti Yoga in 
his comment on the Bhagavad Gita III. 15: ``This is the wheel of ceaseless 
antecedents and sequences, thus; food from rain, rain from yajna, sacrifice and 
worship; yajna from works performed by a doer; works from a living body; living 
bodies again from food.''
	The world is seen by the ancient Vedic yogis to be a world of fire, of 
things which are ceaselessly burnt up; what the chemists mean when they say that 
oxidation is a constant process of nature; what the ancient works state when 
they say that Thought is a constant process irrespective of any thinker; what 
the Xian mystics mean when they say that the world is a world of sin that has 
been already saved by the sacrifice of Jesus Christ who is dying on the Cross in 
every moment of time. All things are being burnt up, eaten up, continuously and 
it is for the Karma Yogi to make of this unconscious waste process a useful 
process, to regulate it, to make all thoughts, offerings, to render the thought 
again to its appropriate end. And herein is Fire to be used as apparatus 
(vahana), water as an accessory (tarpana), and speech as the time marker, rhythm 
fixer (japa); for the Karma Yogi is going to use all the material available and 
use it for the ends of all, ends that are to be attained in the universe as far 
as he can help. And let not this programme daunt any one, for the one instrument 
that he Karma Yogi shall use is good thought, and if he uses it, he does not 
care about what happens in the use, especially to himself, and of course he does 
not care about the results at all.
	The rationale of the burnt offering is this: That the offering is reduced 
to aerial particles according to science and as all particles are ions of ether 
(or fine matter), if you please, the burnt offering is reduced to a diffused 
condition just as the thought world is, and as we have postulated the thought 
world is a world of matter still, albeit finer matter than any we have out here; 
for thought can be used, rejected, eliminated, placed, transmitted, avoided, 
rendered up just as any other material can be. And along with the burnt offering 
goeth the prayer or persistent thought of the offerer, goeth up to the object 
intended much quicker than the offering itself, for who can state that the 
offering as reduced in fire has not reached the object; who can say that the 
object of affection did not exist in the Fire and did not take the offering as 
it was offered to the Fire? And indeed fire itself is but a form of thought, a 
form of oxidation, a form of Life.
	In the Turanian worship, the worship via fire and the burnt offering were 
replaced by the offer of incense; good thoughts, kind remembrances and the like 
expressions of gratitude were offered up in incense, frankincense and spices, 
the smoke of which added to the world's greater fragrance. The Turanian concept 
did not need the sacrifice of the fire; it ruled that man should sacrifice 
himself by a willing life and by a willing death; but in effect they offered 
good thoughts to the universe of thoughts by the burning of incense, itself 
provocative of fragrant thoughts. The Western World has virtually adopted the 
Turanian ritual; it maintains the offer of incense still and has given up the 
burnt offering and any attempt to introduce the burnt offering in the West would 
be difficult; what we would therefore advise is that every Karma Yogi, every 
disciple who has come to us for guidance, do, in a separate room set apart for 
worship, meditation or Yoga as it ought to be, burn incense or joss sticks, as 
the Chinese or Japanese do; incense of any non-stupefying kind, before his 
invocation of the Presences around and in man, before beginning each practice of 
meditation. It would be very well if along with this offer of incense, good 
wishes for the welfare of the world around, be also sent up by the use of any 
short prayer, such as the ``Phala-sruti-vakyas'' of Sanskrit books for the 
Orientals, or the simpler ``Sarvey janah sukhinah bhavantu,'' ``let every one be 
happy; let every one have his peace,'' ``the Blessings of Alla on all'' any of 
these may be adopted for use as mantra or affirmation.
	For Orientals and for those Karma Yogins of the West who have a liking for 
oriental methods, it is advisable to have an altar; in the West where tables and 
chairs are used the altar has to be raised and all that one has to do is to have 
such a separate altar for himself, instead of the common altar at church or 
lodge. Of course the altar should be used exclusively for the purpose of the 
Ritual and be kept clean and pure. Every morn after one has risen and finished 
his morning ablutions and cleansing, his bath and dressing (of course the loose 
morning gown is enough) one may offer to the fire that he has kindled, (it is 
only a little flame of burning scented wood sticks, the scent being all 
important), a handful of cooked wheat or rice or oats seasoned with butter or 
aromatic oil, or a few scented sticks of wood along with the repetition of that 
grand hymn, Our Lord's Prayer.
	Such of our Mahomeddan Karma Yogis as desire to take up the hint contained 
in the above may, instead of the above Prayer, repeat the Fateha, a very ancient 
Tamil Prayer rendered into the Arabic, and drop the fire offering, keeping on 
the burning of the incense.
	Those who would have no objection to the Hindu ritual are required to 
offer two offerings, first to our Father the Sun, Sooryaya Svaha; and next to 
Fire the great granter of one's yearnings, good yearnings (of course), Agnaye Su 
Ishta kritaya svaha. It is taken that the place of fire-kindling, the altar, has 
been well cleansed and that fire is approached with reverence; the Parsis say 
that the mouth must be covered by a veil lest any spittal, or even the breath, 
pollute the Fire addressed. These are the essentials and may be used with any 
adaptation required by modernity with the proviso that neither flesh, fish, 
blood nor foul-smelling substances be used in the ritual; and it will be a 
pleasing diversion to many westerners to adopt this mode of prayer and offering.
	The ancient Hindu identified Fire with himself, with his household life 
(garhapatya), with his service to humanity and the world (ahavaniya), with the 
invocation of the Higher presence (in himself and in the universe), darsana. 
There were kept, first one fire that was ever burning, and next three fires, two 
of them periodical, or occasional. The Hindu recognised the Fire in man, Hunger, 
Agni Vaisvanara, God in himself, the living God in man that we all recognise in 
our acceptance of charity as a virtue. God has incarnated as man with a Purpose, 
wherefore is the body, we have to live to fulfill the Purpose (Anta), and we 
have to eat to live, not because it is the food that causes the vital energy, 
but because vital energy, oxidation or thought, a constant process, has been 
eating up the matter-cells that we have to replace to make our embodiment hold 
together. God himself as Agni (fire) Vaisvanara (in all men) digests and 
converts gross material into experience, both mental, spiritual and physical.
	As says the Westerner, ``the satisfaction afforded by a starving creature 
by his taking food is a manifestation of the spirit, of the spirit of God in 
man,'' that is where the rationale of Charity comes in as a Manushya Yajna, 
sacrifice to and worship of humanity. In Mahommeddanism, Charity was the one 
injunction of duty from man to man and was regarded as a duty to be controlled 
and regulated by the state; in the Hindu country the offer of food to the guest 
was a duty to be well recognised; for here the guest was God himself and the 
unhonored guest took away the merit of the host. It was to be regarded, say the 
Hindu scriptures, that the unbidden guest was a messenger of God, one whom God 
could not feed and hence whom God had sent to us to be fed, fed as God should 
have fed him, for it was God's duty to feed every creature. Not one shall die of 
starvation say the scriptures; the sun shall not set before every one is fed; 
the great creator, Brahma himself, shall feed the starving.
	The Karma Yogi (like every householder) should satisfy, recognising their 
needs, all beings on all the five planes where worship or sacrifice is to be 
rendered. Firstly then as to the human plane, charity the offer of free food to 
the chance guest, to the really needy as much as any one could afford, has been 
advised in Hinduism and Jainism. Hindu scriptures have gone elaborately on this 
duty to the needy, of giving food, to the extent that it has been made part of 
the ordinances that none was to take food unless he had fed strangers seeking 
food at his doorstep; but before feeding strangers the householder had to feed 
children, vestals, sick females, aged females, aye, before feeding even the 
guest! So much was the guest esteemed in the East that the guest was regarded as 
the master of the house, even before the master himself. The ancient adage also 
states that the householder attains heaven not so much by sacrifices, or 
charities or by attendance on the Fire, as by devotion to the unbidden guest.
	Not only was man to be fed by the householder but also the lives of the 
``infra'' world, the teeming life of the insect world as far as possible in what 
is known as the Bhoota Yajna by offerings called Bali. Like Devas, the beings of 
the infra world can hardly be seen and hence the offer of food to them must be 
through the medium of the elements (in this case the elements of air and earth); 
food is spread or scattered before the birds, ant or insect life, snakes even, 
in groves, nocturnal wanderers in midnight offerings, of food and drink where 
four roads meet, or in cemeteries. Along with the offer of the food go out the 
good thoughts of the offerer of the food, thoughts that go out to strengthen the 
Bhootas, the beings of the lesser world that is of us, that is contributing its 
quota to us. It was useful in ancient time to offer blood periodically to one 
class of these beings and in many places blood continues to be shed and offered 
in the invocation of the beings of the infra world. Bali was current in very 
ancient time among the Turanians and consisted in the offer of the blood and 
flesh of the sacrificed animal victims to insect and bird life, the while the 
sacrifice was considered as an offering to God, i.e. to the Being to be pleased 
or appeased.
	Dating to very ancient times when the victim was God or one deified as God 
for the purpose of the immolation, as in the Purusha Sukta, Aja Medha, etc., of 
the Rg Veda, it came out later on that instead of a human victim an animal 
victim representative of God was sacrificed to God in a hundred fashions in many 
thousand primitive cults. ``Sacrifice to gods,'' says James (Varieties of 
Religious experience), ``are omnipresent in primeval worship, but as cults have 
grown refined, burnt offerings and the blood of he-goats have been superseded by 
sacrifices more spiritual in nature; Judaism, Islam and Buddhism get along 
without ritual sacrifice, so does Christianity, save in so far as the notion is 
preserved in transfigured form in the mystery of Christ's atonement.'' 
	Says Madame H. P. Blavatsky in her Isis Unveiled, II. 4I: ``As all 
expiation for the past, present and future sins of ignorant but nevertheless 
polluted mankind the Hierophant (Karma Yogi) had the option of suffering his 
sinless life as the sacrifice for his race to the Gods whom he hoped to rejoin 
or an animal victim (Passion). The former depended entirely on his free will.'' 
Like Jesus the Karma Yogi's life is one of voluntary sacrifice, for it is not as 
a halter that he regards (his duties) these rituals nor as helping him on, but 
because they are God's work. To the idea of charity as the virtue to be 
practised towards man, the Karma Yogi adds that all shedding of blood, all use 
of flesh and fish as food should be accompanied by the recognition of the need 
of the poor, too poor to buy the food, a fact that Islam recognises and insists 
on to be appreciated in the course of the Haj pilgrimage. It has, it may be 
mentioned en passant, been part of Hindu ethics to spread food for crows, birds, 
insects, etc., the Bhootas, before beginning the daily meal; whether this can be 
followed out in the West is a matter of Individual choice, but is it after all 
anything worse than feeding the pidgeons or magpies, than feeding dogs and 
horses?
	So far as to Bhoota Yajna; but what about the milliards of beings in 
himself, what about his higher purposes? We have seen how in the history of 
religious thought, religions such as Islam, Christianity, Bhuddhism, Jainism, 
replace offerings of the heart, renunciations of the inner self for the 
oblations of the ancient; but they ought not to be replaced but to be added on 
to the offerings; all life wherever it is taken strenuously calls for sacrifice, 
and the ascetic practises of most religions are Brahma Yajna, religious 
exercises that are sacrifices. The Karma Yogi has to continue to strip away 
whatever accretions to himself he has been tempted to make in daily life by set 
practices of mortification, the term being used in the western sense of 
stripping away vain employments, curiosity, fantasies and the like. Towards 
Brahma Yajna comes in as help the Scripture or representation of the great Law; 
it does not matter what the Scripture is, provided it is read in the spirit 
known to the Karma Yogi.



\s LESSON IX

	We have provided only for the Karma Yogi who is a man of the world and 
householder (Grihasta), but have not taken note of the Karma Yogi to whom the 
whole world is a home, who has no other country but the world to which he has 
devoted himself, to which he has decided to be a servant; what in ancient Hindu 
parlance is called (the life of a) Vanaprastha or recluse. This greater Karma 
Yogi recognises that the thousands of points of the confused, egotistical, 
proprietary, partisan, nationalist, life-wasting chaos of human life has to be 
changed into a coherent development of a kingdom that shall be a kingdom of God. 
The Karma Yogi has already learned that there can be no such thing as separate 
existence in the universe; he has understood that all existence is actually one 
and that one is not the fraction that he once called the ``I''; the Karma Yogi has 
found a way of escape for that fraction of consciousness; he has known that 
fraction and other such fractions are illusions or delusions, but yet he 
understands that his own task is unaccomplished while there remains any fragment 
of consciousness thus unemancipated from illusion.
	The modern world has progressed far; the optimism and refinement of the 
modern imagination has changed the attitude of thinkers towards ascetic 
practices and mortification so that people have begun again to ask as in the 
days of the Bhagavad Gita-religion, what need there is of torment of the 
violation of the outer nature if the inner dispositions are all right. The Karma 
Yogi who has mastered the lessons of the Bhagavad Gita and of Karma Yoga will 
look on pleasures and pains, abundance and privation as alike irrelevant and 
indifferent. He can engage in actions and experience joy without compunction of 
fear or enslavement or degradation. Our ultra optimistic attitude of today is 
that we may treat evil by the method of ignoring; man has only to close his eyes 
to the existence of pain and suffering in the universe outside of himself and he 
will be quit of it altogether and can sail through life happily on a healthy 
minded, bias-less basis. But this is a shallow dodge, a man evasion; pain and 
wrong and death must be fairly met and overcome in higher excitement or else 
their sting remains essentially unbroken. If one has ever taken the fact of the 
prevalence of death into his comprehension drowning, torture, entombment alive, 
wild beasts, worse men and hideous diseases�he can with difficulty, it seems to 
us, continue his own career of worldly prosperity without suspecting that he 
may, all the while, not be really inside the game. This is what the Karma Yogi 
thinks and he voluntarily takes the great step-of the Vani, wanderer.
	In heroism life's supreme mystery is hidden; we tolerate in the modern 
world no one who has no capacity for it whatever in any direction. On the other 
hand, whatever a man's frailties may otherwise be, if he be willing to risk 
death and still more if he risk it heroically in the service he has chosen, that 
fact consecrates him for ever; if he is able to fling away like a flower his 
life, caring nothing for it, we account him in the deepest way our born 
superior; the metaphysical mystery thus recognised by common sense that: he who 
attacks death that is the eater up of men meets best the secret of the universe, 
is the secret mystery of asceticism; the folly of the cross so inexplicable by 
the intellect has yet its indestructible vital meaning.
	The world in which this law of vicarious suffering prevails is a far 
richer and nobler world than one wherein everyone would get his dessert of good 
or ill; such a world would not be a world in which there could be no sacrifice 
for another, no little children, no mother love, a world of independent adult 
individuals each standing up for himself or herself, a moral world without shade 
or dew where all life was legal because life could not bear another's burdens or 
hazard all things for another's sake. There can be no difficulty whatever in 
bringing home to intelligent men that vicarious suffering, the Purusha Medha of 
the Vedas, is a law of the nth dimension, a law beyond all laws, beyond time. We 
are all bearing the suffering of many past centuries and laying down our life 
for centuries yet to be, for are we not a composite of milliards of lives, lives 
that some of them have been from of old, others that yet are to be born, for 
whose sake we really live and die and are born? If we did not incarnate, and if 
we did not care to be born again and again, what of all these lesser beings, 
Bhootas, that are of us, that would not have been, but for us, that would not 
have been brought into being or much less have obtained experience?
	The practical course of action for us as religious men, as Karma Yogis, 
would therefore not be to turn our backs on the ascetic impulse, but rather to 
discover some outlet for it of which the fruits in the way of privation and 
hardship might be objectively useful. The Karma Yogi has to cease from following 
his own path to perfection, and yet to find saner channels for the heroism that 
has been his inspiration. In the West, as regards the laity, athletics, 
militarism and individual and national enterprise and adventure have been 
pointed out as the via media. War and adventure assuredly keep all who engage in 
them from treating themselves too tenderly. Discomfort and annoyance, hunger and 
wet, pain and cold, squalor and filth cease to have any deterrent action 
whatever; death turns into a commonplace matter and its usual power to check our 
action vanishes. But in the East, these things have never been and neither 
hunger nor wet, discomfort nor annoyance daunt the ordinary householder; both 
for the East and West what is now wanted, say many, is the discovery in the 
social realm of the moral equivalent of war something heroic that will speak to 
one universally as war does and yet will be as compatible with their spiritual 
selves as war has proved itself incompatible.
	What then must be the life work of the Karma Yogi? It must be first of all 
the Preaching of the Good Law, it must be the dissemination of the Yogi 
Philosophy and its teachings that have made him a Karma Yogi. His second duty 
and joy must be to find out in all the great religions the great and good Law, 
to follow it out in details and to disseminate that knowledge to solace eager 
souls waiting for it. His third joy must be to preach the kingdom of God as he 
found it and as he found it not for himself but for all; his fourth joy should 
be in the reformation of the wandering beggar that is, alas, a disgrace to 
asceticism; to educate him, to regulate him, to use him wherever found in the 
world and bring him into the fold firstly of a great religion, if nothing better 
can be done and then teach him the good Law of ``Do what thou wilt.'' A fifth joy 
for the Karma Yogi would be to render aid in the regulation of food supply to 
the masses, the work that the homes for the poor, the Salvation Army shelters, 
etc., are doing. A sixth, but this can be undertaken only by qualified men, 
would be medical relief to the poor; though what the Karma Yogi can do is to 
make medicos help the poor; and ways and means by the many, for salvaging 
civilisation, can be found in world experience that require no catalogue here.
	Of course herein it is taken that the Karma Yogi in this stage has got 
beyond a home; he has not become yet God; to do that he must have become one who 
has not the wherewithal to find a place where he may lay down his weary head 
(Aniketah is the term for this stage of Karma Yogi in the Bhagavad Gita). The 
Karma Yogi finds the greater world his home, and all life his brethren; he is a 
forester of that great forest the world, Loka aranya. All the suggestions made 
for the forester's life, the Vanaprastha's asrama now cruelly forgotten or 
neglected, may be considered by the Karma Yogi; he may for instance be a 
householder in the forest but yet have nothing to do with legal positions, or he 
may have given up the service of fire and have gone forth naked, nagna, i.e. 
without the need of protection against chills or heat, out into the cold; 
recognising not at all the civil law, refusing all the rights that confused 
modern civilisation still allows to man, the Karma Yogi can, of course, devote 
himself to social service and remain a hermit in the world, but here he differs 
from the modern social service worker in the fact that he has deliberately 
turned his back on a house and home and that he combines social service with 
true religion, its study and teaching. The point is that the Karma Yogi 
continues to work ever more energetically just because he has attained, and 
makes his work thorough and exhaustive.
	The model that the Karma Yogi, who has become a social worker, keeps 
before him is that of our father, the Sun. Before sunrise the Karma Yogi must 
have bathed and finished his ablutions and be ready to adore the Visible God, 
the Sun. And for the Adoration, any Rhythm, any simple prayer would suffice; in 
Hinduism the Sun in the early morn Sandhya (twilight) prayers is called Mitra, 
Friend. God is the Friend; all that the Karma Yogi meets are Friends, Companions 
in the great enterprise called life, illuminated, nay, even led, by the Sun that 
shineth on all alike. All may draw their warmth from him; to none is he partial; 
for he is the Friend. The Karma Yogi, too, may get the best out of humanity by 
seeking its friendliness, by the cheery word, by the kind thought, by solicitous 
care, by ignoring unkindness shown in return for kindness. The Karma Yogin can 
work out for himself how best he may utilise the Mitra aspect, the friendliness 
as a concrete practice, with or without its adjuncts of compassion, benevolence, 
charity and the like. The various ways in which God the friend was portrayed and 
adored are to be found in the Mithra cults of ancient Persia, to the literature 
on which we would refer our readers; so much of space would be taken up did we 
deal with any of the beauties of the teaching.
	The sun is both food and raiment to the Karma Yogi in this stage; he may 
not take any cooked food at all; a fruit and nut diet must be his, for this 
course of life has to make him independent of all the artificialities of 
civilisation; he may exist on alms whatever is given him unasked, but he shall 
not keep by anything for the morrow, for that would make him dependent and 
fearful. Above all must the Karma Yogi be independent and fearless, regretless, 
in a sense unrepentant, for he does not need to waste any more thought on the 
past that he need not recall by vain repentance, and all artificiality, whether 
of fashion, convention or compunction, has to cease in the natural life of the 
Karma Yogi who renounces all other clubs than that of the Bohemians or 
Wanderers.
	Just before the mid-day must the Karma Yogi again bathe and adore our 
father the Sun again, in some simple prayer as hereunder, a translation of a Rg 
verse rendered into modern language:

Isvara, Lord of Light! Make us all channels through which thou Pourest! Teach Us 
to know thine voice and effulgence in other hearts as in ours and inform us with 
thine radiance time without end, in eternal cycles!


	And again must the Karma Yogin just before sunset bathe and adore the Sun, 
who is Varuna this time, Varuna the quaintness of the Rg Veda, Varuna the 
translated Ahura Mazda, Varuna the great coil (pasa), Varuna the harbinger of 
Night, the Night of rest, the night of dawn, the night when beauty shall retire 
to reappear in another divine garment of day, Varuna the ocean of joy, the 
refuge that is of the Mother, the sleep divine that cheers but does not kill.
	The Karma Yogin has to bathe, to wash himself thoroughly, because he has 
been living the strenuous life all along every day, throughout the day; he must 
shed all that, always turning afresh to the beauty of nature dancing before him; 
the experiences in the violet, orange and ultra violet of the early morn are not 
the experiences of the ``green'' of mid-day; they are quite different from the red 
and red-violet of the evening, and each of the experiences has to be met by a 
fresh appreciation, a fresh dress of the mind, a cleanliness of the embodiment 
that has to be free from prejudice. And adoring the Sun shall the Karma Yogi 
offer his service in to the radiance of Truth, Satyai Jyotishi to which the sun 
has transferred on sunset his radiance. The radiance that had been was that of 
the Oversoul in man our Father the Sun. When he was hid where then had gone the 
radiance? Why, it was there still, but we can now see it as Truth what was the 
Sun's glory.
	So utterly is the Sun's model to be followed that during the rainy season 
the Karma Yogi, if a Vanaprasta (monastic), was not to travel about at all; he 
was to stay for the four months minding the insect life that springs luxuriantly 
in the tropic during the rains, in one place, giving no worry whatever to 
householders whose bounden duty was long considered to be attention to guests, 
in India. Of course, all activity periods must be followed by rest periods, as 
Lent follows ordinary life periods; as the Ramzan period breaks the animal life 
of men. In modern life, therefore, the Karma Yogi may well devote some months of 
his year to recoupment, study and preparation for fresh activity. But always is 
the Sun to be his model; every recoupment, every night of the soul must make its 
conscious activity letter and clearer and turn on newer ideals and newer uses to 
be taken out of life for the sake of the people. ``All for the people,'' shall 
ever be his motto, as has been repeatedly said.



\s LESSON X

	The type of the Karma Yogi is the sage Janaka who is the topic of many 
anecdotes. Janaka was a great Emperor and a sage as well, he was the greatest of 
the Karma Yogis. His empire was called Mithila; he was said to be the father of 
Queen Seeta, the wife of Sri Rama, one of the incarnations of God in Hindu 
legend. His empire was also called Videha. You can find him referred to in the 
Buddhist writings and also in Jain works, but in these later as King Nimi. It is 
said of the king that seeing one day his capital city in flames, he said that 
nothing of him had been destroyed, he still remained of unbounded wealth. ``Happy 
are we, happy live we who call nothing our own; when Mithila is burnt nothing is 
burnt which belongs to me,'' says the Pravargya of King Nimi, I-9-23, 
Uttaradhyayana Sutra (Jain)�Sacred Book of the East�Max Muller's edition. 
Similarly says the Dharmpada: ``We live happily indeed though we call nothing our 
own. We shall be as the bright gods feeding on happiness.'' Janaka was like the 
stone that is not flung off the ever whirling wheel of life, Arishta. Nemi is 
his other name in the Vedic literature. He was the chakravarti, he let things 
work out their course, he let the wheel (chakra) roll on, as had been advised in 
the Gita, III-16.
	One of the earliest Upanishads explains the rule of life of Janaka in an 
anecdote: Once upon a time there was a great sage, Shuka, a celibate, one born a 
sage, the son of Vyasa, the sage who rearranged the Hindu scriptures. Though a 
born sage, much of the world phenomenalising seemed understandable to Shuka and 
on asking his father was referred to Janaka, King of Mithila. Shuka went to 
Janaka's palace gate and sent up his name that Vyasa's son Shuka was waiting. 
Let him wait was the reply, but at the gate Shuka was, however, received with 
the utmost respect and all hospitality was shown him; for seven days no reply 
came and Shuka passed into the inner courtyard. There too, though very cordially 
received, he got no word from Janaka; he then passed into the inner apartments, 
but could not see the king for another seven days; but girls galore, rich viands 
and all good things were placed before Shuka for his enjoyment. Shuka was not at 
all charmed out by any of these; seeing which at the end of seven days Janaka 
himself came and waited on Shuka. And thereon ensues a conversation in which 
Janaka explains to Shuka how it is possible to be a Karma Yogi, to accept the 
universe, to Act and yet not be affected by his actions. Yes, so can you too, 
Brother aspirant, you too can Act and yet not be affected by your Acts; just as 
the soldier in obeying his general, the general thinking of the good of the 
country he serves, while ordering slaughter.
	Yes, you can, you ought to, live as the kings and princes crowned and 
uncrowned of this world have always lived, as masters always live�but let it not 
be in self indulgence�on the other hand make your self indulgence your religion. 
The hero, says the Bhagavad Gita, plunges into the work of the world, and 
undertakes his daily duties and pleasures exactly as another but non-hero, 
uneducated man would; the difference in his case being that he is not moved by 
his environments or his acts as the other man is. It has always to be recognised 
that the majority of men in all ages best serve their kind by a life of quiet 
duty in the family in their daily work, in the support of certain definite 
philanthropic causes, or in following up great examples�and the Karma Yogi can, 
of course, choose to belong to and maintain the outward conventions of the great 
majority he is surrounded by. The Hindu Yogi philosophy from very ancient days 
admits of no facile flight to the wilderness, no sterile virtue; indeed it does 
count the recluse who fasts among scorpions in a cave as no better than a 
deserter in hiding. Eastern readers can read the Maitrayi Upanishad (one of the 
so-called minor Upanishads) where it says: ``He who after taking the vows 
abandons his own country is like a thief; selfishness is the son, riches are the 
brethren, glamour the house, desire the wife that one has to give up�thus, 
giving up these, only, is one freed.'' It is quite possible, quite permissible, 
really it is advised that the Karma Yogi do remain in the world that he is yet 
out of. Mind you, you are the master of destiny which is the Harvest of your 
thoughts�not the result of your environments.
	There has been here an item of horseplay introduced into the practice of 
Karma Yoga by many teachers. The Karma Yogin had been told that he must remain 
behind to help humanity. The Karma Yogin has himself conquered, has become 
perfectly indifferent, perfectly energetic, perfectly creative; at this stage he 
gives himself completely up to the service of the universe, not merely of 
Humanity alone, having become acutely conscious that his own fortunate condition 
is not shared by that which he now is. It is then, not because of geocentricity, 
that the Karma Yogi turns his face downwards for he can save himself only by 
saving others, by preaching the good Law of ``Do what thou wilt-- Matha Ischasi 
Tatha Kuru.'' ``Geocentricity,'' writes M, is a very pathetic and amusing 
childish characteristic of the older schools. There is no reason whatever for 
imagining that to help humanity is the only kind of work worth doing by the 
Karma Yogi. Helping humanity is a very nice thing for those who like it and no 
doubt those who do so deserve well of their fellows. But the feeling of the 
desire to help humanity is itself a limitation and a drag just as bad as any 
other�for in the ultimate it is just swinging a censer by ourselves to our 
supposed moral superiority.
	Very true the masses have to pass through a dual transformation; (a) they 
have to become divorced from every element of exoteric superstition and 
priestcraft, (b) they have to become educated men enslaved whether by an idea or 
by other men. But how far the Karma Yogi should interfere so as to bring up 
humanity to his standard is entirely a matter for himself. There are many 
dangers in the way; the Karma Yogi must proceed very warily. ``The student of 
occultism must belong to no special creed or sect, yet he is bound to show 
outward respect to every creed and faith if he would become a Karma Yogi Adept. 
He must not be bound by the prejudged and sectarian opinions of any one and he 
has to form his own opinions and come to his own conclusions in accordance with 
the rules of evidence furnished to him by the science to which he is devoted,'' 
says a Teacher. And again, as says Ragon (Des Initiations, p. 22): ``We have seen 
in our days 'all through the people, nothing for the people' a false and 
dangerous system. The real axiom ought to be 'all for the people and with the 
people; all for the people, nothing through the people'.'' For the Karma Yogi all 
that has been advised with regard to helping humanity is that he should adapt 
every one of his actions, govern each one of his thoughts, frame each one of his 
words so that it doesn't at all interfere with any one's free will. For every 
one is a star, a blazing Sun whose destiny none may interfere with.
	Of course it is considered an especially sacred duty to instruct all in 
the doctrines of Yogi Philosophy, especially to teach the Law of ``Do what thou 
wilt,'' to teach all people independence of character and freedom of thought, and 
to warn all that servility and cowardice are the most deadly diseases of the 
soul. ``Thou who have not accepted the Law are therefore as it were troglodytes, 
survivals of a past civilisation to be treated accordingly; kindness should be 
shown them as to any other animal and every effort made to bring them into 
freedom,'' say the Rules. But equally well do some Mystics say: ``Be prudent, we 
say, prudent and wise, and above all take care: what those who learn from you 
believe in: lest by deceiving themselves they deceive others.... for such is the 
fate of every truth with which men are as yet unfamiliar ....Let rather the 
supercosmic and sub-cosmic mysteries remain a dreamland for those who can 
neither see nor yet believe that others can....''
	``Point out the 'way' however dimly, and lost among the host, as does the 
evening star to those who tread their path in darkness,'' says the Voice of the 
Silence (Madame H. P. Blavatsky), and again: ``Be, O disciple (Lanoo) like them 
(Mercury, Mars and Sun). Give light and comfort to the toiling pilgrims and seek 
out him who knows still less than thou, who in his wretched desolation sits 
starving for the bread of wisdom and the bread which feeds the shadow, without a 
Teacher, Hope or consolation and let him hear the Law.''
	Most specially is the teaching to be understood as applying to the East 
where the tyranny of the Guru Sishya Bhava has been of telling effect. Knowledge 
may not be obtained unless from a Teacher, and the Teacher he is as ignorant as 
he whom he is asked to teach. The world in India is full of the world-gurus, so 
they style themselves, denying to the poor and down-trodden any rights at all. 
Everyone has a right to know, and every Karma Yogi has a right to teach, the 
duty to teach. Every one's first duty is to himself and to his progress in the 
Path; but his second duty which presses the other hard, is to give assistance to 
those not so advanced as he.
	Indeed, in one place in the Scriptures they say that though the Karma Yogi 
has found a way for escape (Salvation) for that fraction of consciousness that 
he called the ``I'' and though he knows that not only that consciousness but all 
other consciousness are part of an illusion, yet he feels that his own task is 
not accomplished while there remains any fragment of consciousness thus 
unemancipated from illusion. The Karma Yogin having found a Divine Kingdom in 
himself turns to find out the Divine Purpose in the complex harmony of the 
External life; for each one is free to live as he will and the luxury of this 
enjoyment is such that he becomes careful to avoid the disturbance of the equal 
rights of others. Yes, all objects in their activity, substance and form 
indicate their relationship and thereby their usefulness to all other things and 
the phenomena of psychical research indicate that there is absolute connection 
between Minds here and now existing in ways over and beyond those accounted for 
by the senses; though our ordinary normal consciousness are severed from each 
other and apparently distinct so that though we communicate with each other 
through speech and writing, we are nevertheless in connection with each other in 
subliminal levels. It can thus be seen that the Karma Yogi may not encourage, 
notice or make any difference between any one thing and any other thing. He may 
not confound the space, marks saying they are one, they are many.
	Yes, to each the knowledge of his Infinite Will, his Destiny to perform 
the Great Work, the realisation of his true Self; aye, be he barber or cobbler, 
or Brahmin or Pariah, to each again will come the knowledge of his finite will 
whereby one is Prophet, one poet, one worker in jade, another worker in steel. 
Every one is unfettered to think, to revel in the Great Act, each one is a God, 
did he but know it; each one is saved, did he but realise it! And as each one 
binds himself and takes his pleasure does he remain blacksmith, cobbler, barber�
never when his soul revolts. In everything so ever inhereth its own perfection 
proper to it and to neglect its full operation bringeth distortion to the whole. 
Act therefore in all ways, Karma Yogi, but transforming the effect of all these 
ways to the one way of God. I am translating verses XVIII, 45 and 46 of the 
Bhagavad Gita.
	In the commentary on these verses, the founders of the creeds of Modern 
Hinduism are alike in one view about Sva Karma, one's own Karma. Of the Karma 
Yogi, Ramanuja has it that man attains perfection, i.e. attains God by God's 
grace granted when he worships God as the inner soul abiding in every object of 
worship, God by whom all things are pervaded. According to Sankara, all activity 
(Pravritti) proceeds from Isvara, the Antaryamin, the Ruler Within. Worshipping 
the Lord, says Sankara, by one's Acts (Thoughts), man attains the perfection of 
the Jnana Nishta, the willing ``Death.'' Madhavacharya says that by one's Acts of 
Worship of the Lord one obtains Jnana (Intuitive Appreciation) and next 
Salvation. Sva Karma is with all these the worship of the Lord God, the true 
function of the real Ego (Sva) in man. That is what the Karma Yogi has to bear 
in mind, namely that all Act is a Sacrament, must be as a sacrament, and as 
naught else than a sacrament; not merely to hold the view but to turn one's 
commonest acts into sacraments is the work of the Karma Yogin, to make his very 
self-indulgence his religion. He may drink but he shall drink to the glory of 
God; not to make himself besotted. He shall pick up all the flowers by the 
roadside in humble Pooja (worship) at the Throne of God the Invisible King 
behind the darkness of the Threshold of Life. Indeed, those who, whether they 
eat or drink or whatever they do, do all to the glory of God, may be said to 
turn their commonest acts into sacraments. Read carefully verse IX-27 of the 
Bhagavad Gita, any translation, and make it the Mantra for this Lesson.

``Whatever Thine Act, what thou consumest;
What thou sacrificeth; what thou granteth,
What thou yearneth after, do it to the glory of God.''

\centerline{Let every act of thine be a magical exercise.}



\s LESSON XI

	Some lessons back we told you of the factors governing each act, of how 
the factors were the sphere of the act, the enjoyer of the act (3), the various 
agents or instruments used in the act (4), the various forms in which the act 
came to be (Cheshta) together with destiny or daiva, God the marginal error, the 
cumulative power of spacetime, of the whole universe as a fifth. We told you 
specially that consequently it would be foolish to assume that any one by 
himself could be the Actor; we again said that none the less the Individual was 
possessed of the fullest freewill and that he ought to do only as he wilt. How 
the position we took up was in no sense self-contradictory we have mentioned in 
prior chapters but here we shall further state the great need, the very great 
need, there is for the exhibition of one's Freewill every moment of one's life. 
Albeit destiny be all potent as being the will of Many, it is none the less to 
be understood by the Karma Yogi that he too is a many in one that his will too 
is the will of many of him; when both wills become identical the result is 
sudden and favorable.
	But if on the contrary the will of the individual had been unconsciously 
against the will of the universe, what happens? Is Thought a waste? Are not 
motives of any account in this divine harmony that we call the universe? Can it 
be that man thinking good thoughts all along, but defeated at every moment by 
circumstances, is to find his life a waste? No, says the Hindu-Yogi Philosophy. 
The subconscious incubation of the motives deposited by the experience of life 
when ripe do burst into flower, says the Bhagavad Gita, the text book par 
excellence of Karma Yogi. Thoughts are never waste; you can pile on your good 
intentions and good thoughts till the cumulative effect, as in all mantras, 
affirmations, magick, becomes of powerful effect breaking down all obstacles 
before the fruition of the good thought. The last straw breaks the camel's back, 
says the proverb; if in alchemy you add one more atom-ion to make up of the 
valency of the element, it breaks up and disintegrates as seen in radio 
metallurgy. Read what Madame H. P. Blavatsky says in the Voice of the Silence, 
part 3, the seven portals.
	``70. Remember tho that fightest for man's liberation each failure is 
success and each sincere attempt wins its reward in time. The holy germs that 
sprout and grow unseen in the disciple's soul their stalks wax strong at each 
new trial, they bend like reeds but never break nor can they ever be lost .... 
But when the hour has struck they blossom forth.''
	Yes, it is very difficult to continue practising Karma Yogi of all the 
Yogas because very often very little advancement is seen apparently for a very 
long time. To quote a familiar instance,� there is water on the fire and nothing 
whatever happens or appears to be happening; but one continues to keep it on the 
fire, and lo! without warning it suddenly boils. You may get the temperature to 
99 degrees and keep it at 99 degrees for a thousand years and the water will not 
boil. It is the last step that does the trick. Similarly in the practices given 
herein it may be said that one must be prepared to accept that the mantra or 
practice one has been doing, however bad, is the best one can go on with, and no 
attempt to change mantra after mantra can be encouraged by us. Such students are 
given up by us as perfectly hopeless.
	There is an aspect of the doctrine of Detachment that has been 
rediscovered in the West and may be found, as ``art for art's sake.'' Actually it 
is an indifference especially necessary when wrong thoughts come and afflict one 
and attempt to persuade one that if one goes on the Path of Karma Yoga he will 
go mad or some such thing. Says Frater O. M.: ``In times of dryness the 'Devil' 
comes to you and persuades you that it is most necessary for your spiritual 
progress to repose (i.e. refrain from the task of the Karma Yogi). He will 
explain that by the great law of action and reaction you should alternate the 
task you have set forth to do with something else, that you should in fact 
somehow or other change your plans. Any attempt to argue with him will assuredly 
result in defeat. You must be able to reply: ``But I am not in the least 
interested in my further progress; I am doing this because I have set it down in 
my programme to do it. It may hurt my spiritual progress more than anything in 
the world. That does not matter. I will be gladly damned eternally but I will 
not break my obligation in the smallest detail. By doing thus you come out at 
the other end and discover that the whole controversy was illusion.''
	This is the experience of the ordinary Yogi; the Karma Yogi's position is 
harder. As Steiner Slys in his ``Initiation'' the Karma Yogi ``finds no definite 
goal to be reached; all is left in his own hands; he finds himself in a 
situation where nothing occasions him to act. He must find his way all alone and 
from out of himself. And he must be able to attain always the point of being 
able when confronted suddenly with some task or problem demanding immediate 
attention to come to a swift conclusion, to act without delay or personal 
consideration or any the least hesitation. Nothing or nobody need give him the 
strength he needs but himself alone.''
	As says H. G. Wells: ``It is the amazing and distressful discovery of every 
believer that one can find himself caught unawares by a base impulse; he then 
discovers that discontinuousness of our apparently homogeneous selves, the 
unincorporated and warring elements that seemed altogether absent; we are 
tripped up by forgetfulness, by distraction, by old habits, by tricks of 
appearance; there come dull patches of existence; those mysterious obliterations 
of one's finer sense that are due at times to the little minor poisons that one 
eats or drinks, to phases of fatigue, ill health or bodily disorder or one is 
betrayed by some unanticipated storm of emotion brewed deep in the animal being 
and released by any trifling discontent such as personal jealousy or one is 
relaxed by contentment into vanity.''
	We may call the group of ideas to which man devotes himself and from which 
he works the ``habitual center of his personal energy. It makes a great 
difference to a man whether one set of ideas or another be the center of his 
energy; and it makes a great difference as regards any set of ideas which he may 
possess whether they become central or remain peripheral in him,'' says James, 
the pragmatic; but even this definition would not apply to the Karma Yogi who 
has always to have a changing center, who has to change the center of his point 
of view and cultivate his appreciation sufficiently widely so as to cover the 
innumerable experiences of the world; for in every sense the Karma Yogi is truly 
homeless and these regulations and observations that apply in an ego-centric 
metaphysic do not apply to him at all. And this change of center of point of 
view is his Karma Yoga.
	Mistakes do not afflict the Karma Yogi in the least; no, not even the fact 
that he has in the immediate to go against the Law of Karma; he does not care, 
he breaks the law and suffers the reaction, but he has done what he had 
obligated himself to do. The Karma Yogi of all yogis is not ever in training; 
rules and prohibitions for other stages of Yoga for the mantra yogi, raja yogi, 
sparsa yogi, abhava yogi, etc., have no meaning in his case. In these cases the 
would-be yogins are in training; and in their case prohibitions are made general 
rules; but the rules do not apply to people not under training, never to people 
beyond the need for further yogaic training. To break training is not a sin for 
any one who is not in training; the Karma Yogi is a ceaseless worker who is not 
only not less than a man but more than one.
	The Karma Yogi in such a complexity has always to be watchful (atmavan). 
The watchfulness is to be very active, a watchfulness at the door of one's 
thought, never off guard, but all the while there is being cultivated an inner 
indifference, a faith that mountains cannot shake. Apparently the Karma Yogi is 
silent, for he is able to inhibit thought; actually thought from the universe 
surges through him, strengthens him and perhaps leaves its traces behind in 
rendering him every moment more useful in sensing.
\vspace{.5in}

\centerline{\large PEACE UNTO ALL BEINGS}

\vfill\eject

%\begin{verbatim}
I've donated some time and effort, 
but you have the results.
Karma.ps.Z is level 1 postscript. 
The font is not included,
because I figured everyone would have Times.
Karma.txt.Z is straight ASCII. 
It should be in mac format,
so dos users may have to convert.
karma.sit.hqx is the source Word 5.1 file.

I got this book from a friend of mine. I have no idea
if the Latent Light Culture still exists. We had heard
a rumour (unsubstantiated) that this book is a teaser
by Aleister Crowley. I don't know. I don't think it
matters. The book has some good things to say that
really doesn't depend on who wrote it or what you
choose to believe.

This is my first paper to etext conversion, 
so please give me slack! 

You can reach me at gt2806a@prism.gatech.edu.


Daniel J Galloway\\
Mac Systems Support \\                  
College of Computing  \\              
current phone: (404)894-9301\\
email: dgall@cc.gatech.edu\\

%\end{verbatim}
\end{document}
