The Equinox (Volume I, Number IV)

THE YOGAS Direct experience is the end of Yoga. How can this direct experience be gained? And the answer is: by Concentration or Will. Swami Vivekananda on this point writes: Those who really want to be Yogis must give up, once for all, this nibbling at things. Take up one idea. Make that one idea your life; dream of it; think of it; live on that idea. Let the brain, the body, muscles, nerves, every part of your body, be full of that idea, and just leave every other idea alone. This is the way to success, and this is the way great spiritual giants are produced. Others are mere talking machines. . . . To succeed, you must have tremendous perseverance, tremendous will. “I will drink the ocean,” says the persevering soul. “At my will mountains will crumble up.” Have that sort of energy, that sort of will, work hard, and you will reach the goal.* “O Keshara,” cries Arjuna, “enjoin in me this terrible action!” This will TO WILL. To turn the mind inwards, as it were, and stop it wander- ing outwardly, and then to concentrate all its powers upon itself, are the methods adopted by the Yogi in opening the closed Eye which sleeps in the heart of every one of us, and to create this will TO WILL. By doing so he ultimately comes face to face with something which is indestructible, on account of it being uncreateable, and which knows no dis- satisfaction. * Vivekananda, “Raja Yoga,” Udbodhan edition, pp. 51, 52. “Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be brought low; and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways shall be made smooth. . . . Prepare ye the way of Adonai.”—Luke, iii, 5, 4. 68