the Equinox - The Hermetic Library

48
THE AGNOSTIC POSITION
DIRECT experience is the key to Yoga; direct experience of
that Soul (Âtman) or Essence (Purasha) which acting upon
Energy (Prâna) and Substance (Âkâsa) differentiates a plant
from a stone, an animal from a plant, a man from an animal,
a man from a man, and man from God, yet which ultimately
is the underlying Equilibrium of all things; for as the Bhagavad-Gîta
says: “Equilibrium is called Yoga.”
Chemically the various groups in the organic and inorganic
worlds are similar in structure and composition. One piece of
limestone is very much like another, and so also are the
actual bodies of any two man, but not so their minds. Therefore,
should we wish to discover and understand that Power
which differentiates, and yet ultimately balances all
appearances, which are derived by the apparently unconscious
object and received by the apparently conscious subject, we
must look for it in the workings of man's brain.*
* Verworn in his “General Physiology” says: “It was found that the sole
reality that we are able to discover in the world is mind. The idea of the
physical world is only a product of the mind. . . . But this idea is not the whole
of mind, for we have many mental constituents, such as the simple sensations of
pain and of pleasure, that are not ideas of bodies . . . every process of knowledge,
including scientific knowledge, is merely a psychical event. . . . This fact
cannot be banished by the well-known method of the ostrich” (pp. 39, 40).
“The real mystery of mysteries is the mind of man. Why, with a pen or
brush, one man sits down and makes a masterpiece, and yet another, with the
self-same instruments and opportunities, turns out a daub or botch,is twenty