is said to come to the Lord." Thus: "He who works for me, he who is intent on me, he who is free from attachments, without emnity toward any creature, he comes to me (xi. 55); and again: "They who in me renounce all effort, who are bent on me, meditate on me, draw near to me, of them am I the savior from the round of births and deaths. Therefore set thy heart on me, enter into me with thy soul, and thou shalt dwell with me in my home above. But if thou canst not concentrate thy mind upon me, then seek to reach me by union through assiduous practice" (ib. xii. 6–9). Here devotion comes first and Yoga discipline last, which, as we shall see, inverts the order of schematic mysticism. The disciple here seeks union with God, becomes the Eternal, and with infinite rapture feels that he is united with the Eternal," for he sees his soul as one with all and all with him; he cannot lose God for he dwells in God (ib. vi. 27 f).

Turning now to early Buddhistic mysticism, we are met at once with the question, What scope for mysticism in a religion which admits no soul and denies God? We may perhaps get the answer most easily if we pause to glance at the mysticism which arose in China as the result of Taoism, a digression perhaps pardonable here inasmuch as no provision has been made in this course for Chinese mysticism.

Tao is not a personal God; it is the way of the gods or the right order of the universe, than which Lao Tzu admitted nothing more divine. Yet his follower, Chuang Tzu, privileged interpreter of Lao Tzu, held Tao to be the universal principle of good and a manifestation of the divine first principle or Absolute. Chuang Tzů regards it as a sort of worldspirit with which he feels himself blessed in being one, though it is the unknowable ultimate, manifest in nature; and inspired by this thought the later Po Chü says that they are happy who delight in Tao's laws:

Within my breast no sorrow can abide,

I feel the great world's spirit through me thrill,

And as a cloud I drift before the wind.
Since life and death in circles come and go,
Of little moment are the days to spare.
Thus strong in faith I wait and long to be
One with the pulsings of eternity.3

"Pass into the infinite," said Chuang Tzu, "your final rest is there." And again: "By becoming oblivious of self people become the people of God. But only those are capable of this who have entered into the eternal harmony of God."

With this example of Chinese mysticism in mind we may better appreciate what the early Buddhist sought. He too sought to bring himself into harmony with the pulsings of eternity; above all he sought by so doing to escape from the "bog of birth and death," that endless revolution of the wheel on which every one was bound and like Ixion was in hell. His means was the conventional accepted means. He retired into a lonely place and began a regular course of illuminative meditations with concentrated auto-hypnotic effort, gaining a tranced condition out of which he came with clarified mind at harmony with the world-order and already advanced into that state in which he was transported beyond all fear of rebirth. The rapture is expressed in terms of salvation or Nibbâna. The so-called Psalms of the early Buddhists are collections of confessions attributed to this or that primitive Brother or Sister of the Order. One of these Sisters gives as her aññâ or confession of faith: "Buddha's daughter I, born of his word, his blessed word, who stand transported with Nibbana's bliss alway" (Theri, xxxi). It is often a serenity rather than a rapture: Cool and serene I see Nibbâna's bliss" (Sister Sakula, xlix). But in these cases of sudden insight, the Heavenly Eye often appears. So Sona says, " Even as I grappled with the cause of things, clear shone for me the Eye Celestial" (xlv),

3 Musings of a Chinese Mystic, by Lionel Giles, - in Wisdom of the East series, London, 1906.

which immediately leads her to "win the ecstasy of emancipation."

"Delight in truth is supreme delight " and " to know.. is Nibbâna, supreme happiness" (Dhammap. 203, 354). The mystic attains by way of apprehension to the knowledge, as he attains to the pure being and immortality desired, just as by the same means he attains to moral excellence (universal friendliness). This conjunction of immortality, truth, and love reminds one forcibly of the striking expression of Augustine, who in his Confessions explains, "Truth, love, eternity, thou art my God." Again, like Wordsworth, the Buddhist might say, I not believed but saw all nature one. He sees immortality. Synonymous with the dibba or heavenly eye is the epithet "purified" applied to the eye and the explanation that it is "super-human." It may give a vision of past births or of future bliss but above all it sees truth and, as in the case of the Upanishadist, knowledge is emancipation. In such a state the mystic may be illuminated with a call to teach, preach, or compose verses, and then these verses become his aññâ, gnosis, acknowledgment, confession. The chief point here is that, though it is long before we have the scheme of scientific illumination, yet the operations in the case of the saints contemporary with Buddha or up to the third century B. C., to which date they may be provisionally assigned, show the same discipline.

The stages of joy in the mystic contemplation are described in the Yogâvacara's manual as introduced by a phrase, "I beg (or pray) for the bliss" of this or that sort. The mystic then seeks to verify or realize, sacchi karoti, the real sources of experience, and these with the impermanence of all things, and then, through this realization, to master the process of change and free himself from it, by means of devices, kasinas which are like Boehme's gazing at pewter, whereby he "beheld the real properties of all things." The Buddhist induces abnormal consciousness by the methodical process

called Samâdhi, first by focussing his thought, cittass' ekaggatâ, and thus attaining 1) a little thrill khuddata pîti; 2) a momentary joy, khanika pîti (“momentary flash"); 3) a flood of emotion, okkantika pîti, in which he is submerged as with a wave; 4) an elated rapture, ubbega pîti, in which he is transported, not only mentally but physically, so that he can rise and float off; and 5) an "all pervading ecstasy, pharaṇa pîti.*

According to later views," the unintelligent has no trance and the unintranced has no intelligence" (Dhammap. 372). But the intuitive flash of knowledge, or suffusion of insight in the early period may be the result of a personal experience rather than of a system of concentrated meditation. Thus in the Theri (xlvii), one of the Sisters has a vision of the Buddha and of Truth through visual observation of what happens to water when it flows out and what happens to a lamp when it is extinguished, and this is her gnosis (knowledge and confession):

"Unto my cell I go and take my lamp,

And seated on my couch I watch the flame;

Then grasp the pin and push the wick right down
Into the oil-Nibbana of my lamp!

So to my mind comes freedom."

The Manual of a Mystic seems to refer to this exercise: "Meditating on the wax-taper I aspire to attain bliss" (p. 63). But it is interesting to notice how often the early Buddhists are helped to their gnosis by this vision of the Buddha. Harita, shocked into moral consciousness by the sudden death of his beloved wife, has a vision of the Buddha, who appears and, admonishing him, leads him to "develop his insight" (Thera xxix). Tissa is asleep and sees a vision

* See the account in Mrs. Rhys Davids' Buddhist Psychology, London, 1914, 187 f., and the (Yogâvacara) Manual of a Mystic, 1916, pp. xi, xiii, and notes, p. 7 f.; examples, e. g. p. 23.

of the Buddha shedding glory upon him and admonishing him and therewith he became emancipated (xxxix). Emancipation is here freedom from existence bound to Karma, extinction of spatial life as well as extinction of desires, one being dependent on the other. Thus Uttara (cxli) says: nibbayissam anâsavo, as explained by the commentator, "by the expiry of the last moment of consciousness I shall utterly pass away like a fire without fuel." So Buddha himself said, as did others after him (ib cliii), "stayed is the further rise of consciousness; blown even here to nothingness."

Buddha himself attained to enlightenment through the recognized series of trances. With him who was himself the Supreme Lord, there could be no vision save of the Truth, which led him finally to that jhâna-ecstasy which reappears in the gnosis of his disciples, e. g. Theri (cxii).

The completed system of the Hîna school is given by Buddhaghosha in the fifth century A.D. as the Way of Purity, Visuddhi Magga. Here forty subjects of meditation are enlisted, ten pleasing, ten gruesome, ten being reflections on Buddha, morality, etc., and ten being exalted states, joy, compassion, love, etc. The novice is given certain subjects to meditate upon, which brings him to, one trance after another. Hundreds of times he must repeat formulas connected with each subject, sitting retired, his eyes fixed on a red disk, till he sees it as well with his eyes closed as open. Then he retires to his hut and "develops the reflex," abandoning investigation and consideration, till he attains to the ecstasy of the third and to the supernatural calm of the fourth trance. Then he receives the clarified "divine eye" of purified intuition.5

5 An account of these trances will be found in Warren's Buddhism in Translations, and in Mr. E. W. Burlingame's Legends, from the Dhammapada Commentary, in HOS. vol. xxviii. See also Mrs. Rhys David's Buddhist Psychology, the Quest Series, London, 1914. As a result of his mystic vision the Buddhist may attain to the miraculous powers acquired by all Yogins.