71. Yoga and hermeticism
You seem to be very keen on yoga exercises and meditation, and I wonder if your path might not be there. R. has remained in prayer, but has never been able to take on experimental and physical hermetism, and has not even been able to read the hermetists. You are mistaken over the intentions of the true sons of Hermes about breathing and other yoga exercises, because they have no need of that, having much better things available, and those great yogis are no more than apprentices compared to the holy possessors of the philosophers’ stone. As regards breathing, the whole secret consists in slowing the rhythm of sleep and then suspending it so as to suspend at the same time the mental stimuli and thus arrive at the state of holy idiocy of which I have spoken to you, but one can reach that in other ways, and in any case, it is merely a stage in the quest for the Perfect One.
If yoga gives you satisfaction, you must persevere, but it is a means, and no more. The so-called perfect position is sufficient for everything, that is, for meditation, for prayer, for praise and for silence.
Yoga has no value for hermetism, and many yogis die of quite ordinary illnesses and remain quite ignorant of the beginning and end of all things.
Yoga utilises the prima materia in the non-specific gaseous state, while the adepts possess it in the bodily condensed state, which brings a power 100,000 times greater. Do not become obsessed about the breathing, because life is simple in itself, and forcing your breathing all the time is worse work than Stakhanovism.
