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Date Posted: 09:43:46 07/14/03 Mon
Author: Hendrik - 13 May 2003
Subject: Re: Kechari mudra
In reply to: c - 12 May 2003 's message, "Re: Kechari mudra" on 09:43:01 07/14/03 Mon

That was Gustav Meyrink (1868-1932), but there is not much on him on the web in English. I recently re-read a biography on and a longer essay by him and was astonished to find so many yogic references; I remembered him to be an occultist and writer.

For a long time he looked for a Guru but considered almost every teacher he met as either fraudulent or ignorant - including Annie Besant and Gurdjieff. He was said to be in telepathic contact with Ramana Maharshi, but one cannot vouch for it. He never went to India.

His comprehension of yogic tenets and practices is quite impressive for a European that lived around 1900 - he discovered and performed inner breathing, So-Ham, Tratak, Hatha and Tantric practices and others, and noticed that changes of consciousness go along with 'alchemical' changes in the body.

One of the interesting things about him is that he was an adept in occult practices but at the same time described all spiritual experience as mental projections.

Once he tried out black magic but with the only result that afterwards he suffered from a paralyzed leg for many years.

He made a lot of experiments in the inner realms and commented on some of them; for instance he wrote an interesting essay on how stigmata come about -- he also stayed himself with a stigmatized Christian medium for some years but achieved little result and finally got told that he was under the influence of "Asian devils" and hence not susceptible to Christian mysteries! ;-)

For some time early in his sadhana he was a lot into the Kundalini stuff, but more and more he got convinced that everything he encountered in life - in fact everything that is - was just a mental projection of himself - his 'higher Self'. After practicing Yoga for eight hours a day for decades he eventually discovered what he called "the central-Self".

Legend has it that late in his life, in 1927, he 'converted to Buddhism' - which is however not wholly accurate. In 1930 he had a sort of profound realization which changed his views on spirituality within one single day. Of course he did not become a 'born-again' Christian or something idiotic -- he loathed religion. He also referred to some egyptian Isis mystery, the "All-Mother" etc. I think he had simply been pushed on the path of complete surrender; he got rewarded by unending bliss and celebrated the day of his passing (which he foresaw) like a festivity. Some of his late experiences are not easy to grasp -- his beloved son died as a result of an accident and this sent him into all kinds of ecstasies.

Regarding his late perception of what the meaning of life is all about he said: "He must increase; I must decrease." John 3:30 -- He gave an interesting allegory: He said that Christian mystics like Therese of Konnersreuth should have inwardly taken Christ from the cross instead of: glorifying his suffering, suffer themselves and hence move in a circle. I.e. he felt it was better to pursue yoga for the sake of the Divine than for individual salvation. On the other hand he admitted that without practicing yoga (which by then in his inimitable style he essentially equated with Black Magic leading to the abyss) for many years he would probably not have realized that.


Here is an issue that is possibly related: I have been told by an SRF insider that after meeting Ramana Maharshi Yogananda seems to have remarked that his chela Yogi Ramiah was more advanced than Ramana himself. I am not an expert on Ramana and don't know Ramiah, but this is an interesting subject. I would like to find out the source - Yogananda naturally would never have permitted a statement like this being published in print.

According to Ramana's own understanding this would be impossible - either one is 'realized' or one is not. That is a Jnana idea.

Hendrik


P.S. Fours years ago I took the trouble to translate some pages of the Ramana bio into English and posted it on Kashi's now defunct board. It is about Meyrink's first spiritual experience. Frustrated with life and almost having committed suicide he had somewhat recovered and one day set out for a nightly walk through his then-hometown Prague. The funny thing is that one reader on Kashi's board was from Prague and knew the exact place the described experience took place more than a century before.

I see I still have that text. Except two of the last three paragraphs this is Meyrink himself speaking.

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The following is an extract from the book by Frans Smit on Gustav Meyrink, German edition, pp.46-49. (There may be some blunders in my translation, excuse me for my defective English):



"One night I sat, because it was winter and a ride out onto my hill didn’t seem possible for the deep snow, on a bench at the river Vltava. Behind me an old bridge tower with a big clock. I had sat there already for some hours, deeply wrapped in my fur coat but still shivering with cold, and stared into the black-gray sky, laboring in any possible way to gain what Mrs. Besant in a letter described as inner sight. All in vain. Up to that time, from childhood on, I amazingly lacked capability (other than many people) of imagining a picture or a familiar face with closed eyes. So for instance it was completely impossible to me to say if this or that of my acquaintances had blue or brown or gray eyes, dark or fair hair, a straight or a bent nose, unless I had watched it beforehand expressly in this regard. In other words, I was used to thinking in words and not in images.

On the aforementioned bench I had sat down with the firm decision to get up not before the inner sight became accessible to me, thinking of the sublime model of Buddha Gautama who once sat down under the Bodhi tree with a similar decision. Naturally I stood it for about five hours only and not like him for days and nights. Suddenly I couldn’t help thinking about what was the time? Just at this moment of being dragged away from my absorption I saw, with a sharpness and clearness like I do not remember to have ever before in my life been perceiving a real object, a huge glaring clock standing in the sky. The hands showed: twelve minutes to two. The impression was so powerful that I sensed clearly that my heartbeat – not faltering, no, but getting extraordinarily slow. So as if a hand would hold on to it. I turned around, looked at the tower clock which up till then was standing behind me. That I had turned around earlier yet and thus as it were had gained a clue to the time is entirely out of the question for I had sat on the bench for five hours without any movement as is strict order with such concentration practice! The tower clock showed likewise, same as the visionary one seen in the sky: twelve minutes to two. – I was really overjoyed; just a little fear crept over me: will the "inner eye" stay open?

I resumed my practice; for some time the sky remained black-gray and overcast, like before. Suddenly I got the idea to try if I would succeed getting my heart beating so calmly and controlled as it did by itself during the vision or perhaps, really probably: as it did BEFORE the vision had occurred. – It was not that much of an ordinary idea but rather a semi-felt conclusion or instruction from the sense of a line by Buddha which forced itself on me as if coming from the invisible mouth of the 'masked one'. The line read: 'The things come from the heart, are heart-born and heart-arranged.' Owing to my Yoga-practice I could wield a certain influence on the heartbeat; I was successful with it the first time in my life. Immediately a state occurred which before had been completely alien to me: the intensive feeling of abnormal alertness. At the same time of that alertness a circular piece of the night sky drew back from my sight: like a Laterna magica starting her play. As if freeing itself from the atmosphere, pushing its way always farther in immeasurable depths of space; all at once there was nowhere a background anymore. [...] In this circular hole in the air there was a geometrical sign. I didn’t see it like one sees things in life: from the front or from besides: - I could see it from all sides AT THE SAME TIME (however strange this may sound!), so as if my inner eye wasn’t a lens but as if it were a circle drawn around the visionary image. Hence the new kind of impression that there was no background!! The geometrical sign was the so-called 'in hoc signo vinces' = a cross standing in a big Latin 'H'. I saw it with a cool and somehow unexcitable heart; not a trace of superiority or the likes of it seized me."

Later, he proceeds, he didn’t need practice anymore to open the "inner eye". It was sufficient to hold the experiences and the visions at the Vltava before the consciousness. Thus he could reproduce the same images. The visions became clearer and more radiant and in fact so luminous that they helped him to come through difficult periods in his life. Never during these visions he fell into a reverie, in trance or the like. Together with his narrative talent this breakthrough laid the foundation for his later being a writer. Apart from the fact that this visionary gift gave him strength during dark hours und delivered material for his stories, it was of use for his private life, too.

"Just by the way, visions that gave me either symbolic or obvious warnings, advice and instruction appeared before me quite often."

What strikes one in the account of his "breakthrough" is the craving, rather: possession with which he wanted to achieve his goal, the inner vision, while in contrast to it the vision only occurred when his alertness eased. It appeared as answer to a trivial question. A further conclusion comes to mind – this problem is dealt with by Meyrink in other writings -, namely that autosuggestion played an important role in this. In some essays Meyrink gave his view on various aspects of the yoga path, interesting aspects that haven’t lost with time.
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