Sect of the Black Lotus

It is said that Yoga has eight limbs. They are:
1. Yama: self-restraint, self-control and discipline. The yamas can be thought of as the ethical restraints that are necessary for achieving harmony with other beings.
2. Niyama: rule, restriction - a duty or obligation adopted by a spiritual aspirant.The niyamas are the actions necessary for achieving balance within oneself.
3. Asana: the art of sitting still, yoga postures. These are the ashtanga yoga poses or postures so commonly made the focal point of many types of yoga today.
4. Pranayama: Some complexities, but generally means 'breath-exercises' or 'breath-control' in the simplest terms.
5. Pratyahara: Withdrawal of the senses - This is the stage of withdrawal of the attention into oneself. It is the state of re-sorption into the self of all the senses.
6. Dharana: Concentration of the mind. This is where yoga begins. Without it there is no yoga.
7. Dhyana: Meditation,an unbroken stream of consciousness whereby very little sense of the ‘self’ remains.
8. Samadhi: Mystical absorption, where knowledge of the ‘essential self’ is attained. It is the state otherwise referred to as nirvana, jivana mukti, satori.
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Dharana - Control of thought. This is the initial step of deep concentrative meditation, where the object being focused upon is held in the mind without consciousness wavering from it.
Let us start with Dharana.
1. Constrain the mind to concentrate itself upon a single simple object imagined. The five tattwas are useful for this purpose; they are: a black oval; a blue disk; a silver crescent; a yellow square; a red triangle.
2. Proceed to combinations of single objects; e.g., a black oval within a yellow square, and so on.
3. Proceed to simple moving objects, such as a pendulum swinging; a wheel revolving, etc. Avoid living objects.
4. Proceed to combinations of moving objects, e.g., a piston rising and falling while a pendulum is swinging. The relation between the two movements should be varied in different experiments. Or even a system of flywheels, eccentrics and governor.
5. During these practices the mind must be absolutely confined to the object determined on; no other thought must be allowed to intrude upon the consciousness. The moving systems must be regular and harmonious.
6. Note carefully the duration of the experiment, the number and nature of the intruding thoughts; the tendency of the object itself to depart from the course laid out for it, and any other phenomena which may present themselves. Avoid overstrain; this is very important.
7. Proceed to imagine living objects; as a man, preferably some man known to, and respected by, you.
8. In the intervals of these experiments you might try to imagine the objects of the other senses, and to concentrate upon them. For example, try to imagine the taste of chocolate, the smell or roses, the feeling of velvet, the sound of a waterfall, or the ticking of a watch.
9. Endeavor finally to shut out all objects of any of the senses, and prevent all thoughts arising in your mind.
Now one of the most interesting and irritating features of your early experiments is: interfering thoughts. There is, first of all, the misbehavior of the object which you are contemplating; it changes its color and size; moves its position; gets out of shape.
And one of the essential difficulties in practice is that it takes a great deal of skill and experience to become really alert to what is happening. You can go on daydreaming for quite long periods before realizing that your thoughts have wandered at all.
But when you have had a little practice in detecting and counting the breaks in your concentration, you will find that they themselves are useful, because their character is symptomatic of your state of progress. Breaks are classed as follows:
1. Firstly, physical sensations; these should have been overcome by asana.
2. Secondly, breaks that seem to be indicated by events immediately preceding the meditation: their activity becomes tremendous. Only by this practice does one understand how much is really observed by the senses without the mind becoming conscious of it.
3. Thirdly, there is a class of break partaking of the nature of reverie or daydreaming. These are very insidious - one may go on for a long time without realizing that one has wandered at all.
4. Fourthly, we get a very high class of break, which is a sort of aberration of the control itself. You think, 'How well I am doing it!' or perhaps that it would be rather a good idea if you were on a desert island, or if you were in a soundproof house, or if you were sitting by a waterfall. But these are only trifling variations from the vigilance itself.
5. A fifth class of break seems to have no discoverable source in the mind. such might even take the form of actual hallucination, usually auditory. Of course, such hallucinations are infrequent, and are recognized for what they are. The usual kind consists of odd sentences, or fragments of sentences, which are quite distinctly heard in a recognizable human voice, not the student's own voice, or that of anyone he knows. A similar phenomenon is observed by wireless operators, who call such messages 'atmospherics'.
There is a further kind of break, which is the desired result itself.
*Part and portions of this is from Aleister Crowley's Eight Lectures on Yoga.