. Other miraculous attainments are such that they
should be visible to others, but are probably explicable as subjective
fancies. Such are the powers of becoming heavy or light, infinitely
large or infinitely small and of emitting flames. This last phenomenon
is perhaps akin to the luminous visions, called photisms by
psychologists, which not infrequently accompany conversion and other
religious experiences and take the form of flashes or rays proceeding
from material objects[673]. The Yogi can even become many persons
instead of one by calling into existence other bodies by an effort of
his will and animating them all by his own mind[674].

Europeans are unfavourably impressed by the fact that the Yoga devotes
much time to the cultivation of hypnotic states of doubtful value both
for morality and sanity. But the meditation which it teaches is also
akin to aesthetic contemplation, when the mind forgets itself and is
conscious only of the beauty of what is contemplated. Schopenhauer[675]
has well expressed the Indian idea in European language. "When some
sudden cause or inward disposition lifts us out of the endless stream of
willing, the attention is no longer directed to the motives of willing
but comprehends things free from their relation to the will and thus
observes them without subjectivity purely objectively, gives itself
entirely up to them so far as they are ideas, but not in so far as they
are motives. Then all at once the peace which we were always seeking,
but which always fled from us on the former path of the desires, comes
to us of its own accord and it is well with us." And though the Yoga
Sutras represent superhuman faculties as depending chiefly on the
hypnotic condition of samyama, they also say that they are obtainable--at
any rate such of them as consist in superhuman knowledge--by pratibha or
illumination. By this term is meant a state of enlightenment which
suddenly floods the mind prepared by the Yoga discipline. It precedes
emancipation as the morning star precedes the dawn. When this light has
once come, the Yogi possesses all knowledge without the process of
samyama. It may be compared to the Dibba-cakkhu or divine eye and the
knowledge of the truths which according to the Pitakas[676] precede
arhatship. Similar instances of sudden intellectual enlightenment are
recorded in the experiences of mystics in other countries. We may
compare the haplosis or ekstasis of Plotinus and the visions of St