A later and mysterious but most important method of Yoga is known to the Tantras[679] as Shatcakrabheda or piercing of the six cakras.  These are dynamic or nervous centres distributed through the human body from the base of the spinal cord to the eyebrows.  In the lowest of them resides the Devi Kundalini, a force identical with Sakti, who is the motive power of the universe.  In ordinary conditions this Kundalini is pictured as lying asleep and coiled like a serpent.  But appropriate exercises cause her to awake and ascend until she reaches the highest cakra when she unites with Siva and ineffable bliss and emancipation are attained.  The process, which is said to be painful and even dangerous to health, is admittedly unintelligible without oral instruction from a Guru and, as I have not had this advantage, I will say no more on the topic except this, that strange and fanciful as the descriptions of Shatcakrabheda may seem, they can hardly be pure inventions but must have a real counterpart in nervous phenomena which apparently have not been studied by European physiologists or psychologists[680].

2

When we turn to the treatment of meditation and ecstasy in the earlier Buddhist writings we are struck by its general resemblance to the programme laid down in the Yoga Sutras, and by many coincidences of detail.  The exercises, rules of conduct, and the powers to be incidentally obtained are all similar.  The final goal of both systems also seems similar to the outsider, although a Buddhist and a Yogi might have much to say about the differences, for the Yoga wishes to isolate a soul which is complete and happy in its own nature if it can be disentangled from its trammels, whereas Buddhism teaches that there is no such soul awaiting release and that religious discipline should create and foster good mental states.  Just as the atmosphere of the Pitakas is not that of the Brahmanas or Sutras, so are their ideas about Jhana and Samadhi somewhat different.  Though hypnotic and even cataleptic phases are not wanting, the journey of the religious life, as described in the Pitakas, is a progress of increasing peace, but also of increasing intellectual power and activity.  Gotama did not hold Jhana or regulated meditation to be essential to nirvana or arhatship, for that state was attainable by laymen and apparently through sudden illumination.  But such cases were the exception.  His own mental evolution which culminated in enlightenment comprised the four Jhanas[681].  Also in the eightfold path which is essential to arhatship and nirvana the last and highest stage is sammasamadhi, right rapture or ecstasy.

Jhana is difficult for laymen, but it was the rule of the order to devote at least the afternoon to it.  We might compare this with the solitary prayer of Christians, and there is real similarity in the process and the result.  It brought peace and strength to the mind and we hear of the bright clear faces and the radiantly happy expression of those who returned to their duties after such contemplation.  But Christian prayer involves the idea of self-surrender and throwing open the doors and windows of the soul to an influence which streams into it.  Buddhist meditation is rather the upsoaring of the mind which rises from ecstasy to ecstasy until it attains not some sphere where it can live in bliss but a state which is in itself satisfying and all-comprising.