“Yoga is Samadhi.”  It is the power to withdraw from all that you know as body, and to concentrate yourself within.  That is Samadhi.  No ordinary means will then call you back to the world that you have left.[FN#4:  An Indian yogi in Samadhi, discovered in a forest by some ignorant and brutal Englishmen, was so violently ill used that he returned to his tortured body, only to leave it again at once by death.] This will also explain to you the phrase in The Secret Doctrine that the Adept " begins his Samadhi on the atmic plane " When a Jivan-mukta enters into Samadhi, he begins it on the atmic plane.  All planes below the atmic are one plane for him.  He begins his Samadhi on a plane to which the mere man cannot rise.  He begins it on the atmic plane, and thence rises stage by stage to the higher cosmic planes.  The same word, samadhi, is used to describe the states of the consciousness, whether it rises above the physical into the astral, as in self-induced trance of an ordinary man, or as in the case of a Jivan-mukta when, the consciousness being already centred in the fifth, or atmic plane, it rises to the higher planes of a larger world.

The Literature of Yoga

Unfortunately for non-Sanskrit-knowing people, the literature of Yoga is not largely available in English.  The general teachings of Yoga are to be found in the Upanishads, and the Bhagavad-Gita; those, in many translations, are within your reach, but they are general, not special; they give you the main principles, but do not tell you about the methods in any detailed way.  Even in the Bhagavad-Gita, while you are told to make sacrifices, to become indifferent, and so on, it is all of the nature of moral precept, absolutely necessary indeed, but still not telling you how to reach the conditions put before you.  The special literature of Yoga is, first of all, many of the minor Upanishads, “the hundred-and-eight” as they are called.  Then comes the enormous mass of literature called the Tantras.  These books have an evil significance in the ordinary English ear, but not quite rightly.  The Tantras are very useful books, very valuable and instructive; all occult science is to be found in them.  But they are divisible into three classes:  those that deal with white magic, those that deal with black magic, and those that deal with what we may call grey magic, a mixture of the two.  Now magic is the word which covers the methods of deliberately bringing about super-normal physical states by the action of the will.

A high tension of the nerves, brought on by anxiety or disease, leads to ordinary hysteria, emotional and foolish.  A similarly high tension, brought about by the will, renders a man sensitive to super-physical vibrations Going to sleep has no significance, but going into Samadhi is a priceless power.  The process is largely the same, but one is due to ordinary conditions, the other to the action of the trained will.