MYSTICAL BUDDHISM. 15 
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 inits 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 ail 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 ouce 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 
