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IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF GODS.
939
breathing exercises or prândyama and other similar purely physical practices can ever take the place of the systematic scientific path ; for our karmic chains are held together by the force of desire, which breathing and pranayama cannot by any possibility unloosen. The same is the case with such practices as fixing the mind on the top of the nose and the like ; they, too, are valueless except when rightly employed and at the right moment of time. · So much for the method of emancipation through the destruction of sheaths. The other system which we propose to examine here is also advocated by a certain class of mystics, who follow the doctrines laid down in the Yoga Vashishta and other similar works of mystic origin. They believe in hallucination and 'suggestion', and propose to steal a marehon nature by substituting a product of illusion for the genuine 'thing.' The idea underlying their teaching is that suggestion' is the all-important, all-powerful force in nature, and that the products of imagination are as desirable as the genuine things themselves, only we should not believe them to be unreal. Thus, whatever be the nature of the condition to be produced, all one need do is to dream of it, and then to believe the dream to be a reality. In course of time the mind will accept the mental hallucination as a fact, and the belief will be gratifying to the soul. So far as moksha is concerned, it is regarded as a state altogether beyond conception, and as devoid of knowledge and bliss both.
Such is the main doctrine of the hallucinationistic mystics as they might be called ; they create . mental
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