Buddhist Philosophy in India and Ceylon c11.s2.1

c11.s2.1

The Canon is singularly rich in diverse devices intended to secure the production of a state of mind in which there shall be no presence of empirical reality. The Yoga practices of which India has ever been so fond were doubtless the object of eager study, and forms of self-hypnosis were the objects of research. We have in all likelihood echoes of these experiments in the records of the power to see heavenly visions and hear heavenly sounds, in the imagination of wrestlings in controversy with the evil Māra,¹ in whom the power of desire and the temptations of the life of the world are personified. The life of the monks and nuns, with their scanty nutriment and eager desire to secure experiences of rapture, must have tended to the abnormal development of psychic powers and the induction of hallucinations and self-hypnosis. All the methods seem to have aimed at one end; despite occasional combination in the texts they may fairly be held to have been originally independent modes of gaining a common end.