4 MYSTICAL BUDDHISM. 



and for emancipation from the burden of repeated births, 

 he resolved to renounce marriage and abandon the world. 

 Accordingly, at the age of twenty-two, he clandestinely 

 quitted his home, the darkness of evening covering his flight. 

 Taking a secret path, he travelled thirty miles during the night. 

 Next day he was pursued by his father, who tried to force 

 him to return, but in vain. After travelling farther and 

 farther from his native province, he took a vow to devote 

 himself to the investigation of truth. Then he wandered for 

 many years all over India, trying to gain knowledge from sages 

 and philosophers, but without any satisfactory result, till 

 finally he settled at Ahmedabad. There, having mastered 

 the higher Yoga system, he became the leader of a new sect 

 called the Arya-Samaj. 



And here we may observe that the expression " higher 

 Yoga " implies that another form of that system was intro- 

 duced. In point of fact, the Yoga system grew, and became 

 twofold that is, it came in the end to have two objects. 



The earlier was the higher Yoga. It aimed only at union 

 with the Spirit of the Universe. The more developed system 

 aimed at something more. It sought to acquire miraculous 

 powers by bringing the body under control of the will, and 

 by completely abstracting the soul from body and mind, and 

 isolating it in its own essence. This condition is called Kaivalya. 



In the fifth century B.C., when Gautama Buddha began his 

 career, the later and lower form of Yoga seems to have been 

 little known. Practically, in those days earnest and devout 

 men craved only for union with the Supreme Being, and 

 absorption into his essence. Many methods of effecting such 

 union and absorption were contrived. And these may be 

 classed under two chief heads bodily mortification (tapas) 

 and abstract meditation (dhyana). 



By either one of these two chief means, the devotee was 

 supposed to be able to get rid of all bodily fetters to be able 

 to bring his bodily organs into such subjection to the spiritual 

 that he became unconscious of possessing any body at all. It 

 was in this way that his spirit became fit for blending with the 

 Supreme Spirit. 



We learn from the Lalita-vistara that various forms of 

 bodily torture, self-maceration, and austerity were common in 

 Gautama's time. 



Some devotees, we read, seated themselves in one spot and 

 kept perpetual silence, with their legs bent under them . Some 

 ate only once a day or once on alternate days, or at intervals 

 of four, six, or fourteen days. Some slept in wet clothes or 

 on ashes, gravel, stones, boards, thorny grass, or spikes, or 



