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Page 1 of 11939 · PDF PAGE 33
…efore very long, you forget all about the pleasantness of things, and it would not be at all polite to give you any idea of what you are going to think of the Teacher. 14. Perhaps the first thing you notice is that, although you have started in what is apparently the most comfortable position, there is a tendency to change that position without informing you. For example, if you are sitting in the 'god' position with your knees together, you will find in a few minutes that they have moved gently apart, without your noticing it. Freud would doub…
1939 · PDF PAGE 31
…Routine is rhythm. If you want to go to sleep, you get rid of irregular, unexpected noises. What is wanted is a lullaby. You watch sheep going through a gate, or voters at a polling station. When you have got used to it, the regularity of the engines of a train or steamship is soothing. What we have to do with the existing functions of the body is to make them so regular, with gradually increasing slowness, that we become unconscious of their operation. 6. Let us deal first with the question of Asana. It might be thought that nothing would be m…
1939 · PDF PAGE 24
… and breathing out, lasts exactly a minute. That is pretty good work for most people, but it may be or may not be good enough to get you going. No one can tell you until you have tried long enough (and no one can tell you how long 'long enough' may be) whether that is going to ring the bell. It may be that if you increase your sixty seconds to sixty-four the phenomena would begin immediately. That sounds all right but as you have nearly burst your lungs doing the sixty, you want this added energy to make the grade. That is only one example of t…
1939 · PDF PAGE 19
… remember Dr. Alexandre Manette in A Tale of Two Cities. He had been imprisoned for many years in the Bastille, and to save himself from going mad had obtained permission to make shoes. When he was released, he disliked it. He had to be approached with the utmost precaution; he fell into an agony of fear if his door was left unlocked; he cobbled away in a frenzy of anxiety lest the shoes should not be finished in timethe shoes that nobody wanted. Charles Dickens lived at a time and in a country such that this state of mind appeared abnormal an…
1939 · PDF PAGE 27
…But against this it may be urged that one has to reckon with unseen forces. The most impossible things begin to happen when once you get going. It is not really satisfactory to start serious Yoga unless you are in a country where the climate is reliable, and where the air is not polluted by the stench of civilisation. It is extremely important, above all things important, unless one is an exceedingly rich man, to find a country where the inhabitants understand the Yogin mode of life, where they are sympathetic with its practices, treat the aspi…
1939 · PDF PAGE 16
…d thoughtless act of kindness to a native is liable to attach him to you, body and soul, for the rest of his life. In other words, it is going to upset him; and as a budding Yogi he has got to refuse it. But even the refusal is going to upset him quite a lot; and therefore he has got to become 'fixed' in refusal; that is to say, he has got to erect by means of habitual refusal a psychological barrier so strong that he can really dismiss the temptation without a quiver, or a quaver, or even a demisemiquaver of thought. I am sure you will see tha…
1939 · PDF PAGE 39
YOGA FOR YELLOWBELLIES. FIRST LECTURE. Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. Let us begin this evening by going briefly over the ground covered by my first four lectures. I told you that Yoga meant union, and that this union was the cause of all phenomena. Consciousness results from the conjunction of a mysterious stimulus with a mysterious sensorium. The kind of Yoga which is the subject of these remarks is merely an expansion of this, the union of self-consciousness with the universe. We spoke of the eight limbs of Yoga, and dealt …
1939 · PDF PAGE 71
… frequent troubles is that people who are doing excellent work throw it up because they find that Nature is not what they thought it was going to be. But this is the best test of the reality of any experience. All those which conform with your idea, which flatter you, are likely to be illusions. So you become a Neophyte; and attack the Task of a Zelator. There are further grades in this system, but the general principles are always the samethe principles of scientific study and research. 26. We end where we began. 'The wheel has come full circ…
1939 · PDF PAGE 30
…to study the nomenclature of the various systems can have but one result: to fuddle your brain for the rest of your incarnation. 4. I am going to try to simplify. The main headings are: (a) Asana, usually translated 'posture,' and (b) Pranayama, usually translated 'control of breath.' These translations, as usual, are perfectly wrong and inadequate. The real object of Asana is control of the muscular system, conscious and unconscious, so that no messages from the body can reach the mind. Asana is concerned with the static aspect of the body. Pr…
1939 · PDF PAGE 37
…oper, until he is able to acquire suitable surroundings. But do not let him imagine that in making this very exceptional indulgence I am going to advocate any slipshod ways. If he decides to do, let us say, a quarter of an hour's Asana twice daily, rising to an hour four times daily, and Pranayama in proportion, he has got to stick to thisno cocktail parties, football matches, or funerals of near relations, must be allowed to interfere with the routine. The drill is the thing, the acquisition of the habit of control, much more important than a…
1939 · PDF PAGE 41
…erable period so far as it is humanly possible to do so. If you have failed in this original strategical disposition, you are simply not going to carry through the campaign. Unforeseen contingencies are certain to arise, and therefore one of our precautions is to have some sort of reserve of resource to fling against unexpected attacks.
1939 · PDF PAGE 11
… of us; so familiar indeed that there is actually nothing else at all of which we have any knowledge. It is knowledge. What is it we are going to study, and why should we study it? (13) The answer is very simple. All this Yoga that we know and practice, this Yoga that produced these ecstatic results that we call phenomena, includes among its spiritual emanations a good deal of unpleasantness. The more we study this universe produced by our Yoga, the more we collect and synthesize our experience, the nearer we get to a perception of what the Bud…
1939 · PDF PAGE 26
…chel. It is the most important of the tasks of the Yogi, because, until he has achieved it, he can have no idea who he is or where he is going. 18. Still more remote and tenuous is the influence of Neptune. Here we have a Niyama of infinite delicacy, a spiritual intuition far, far removed from any human quality whatever. Here all is fantasy, and in this world are infinite pleasure, infinite perils. The True Niyama of Neptune is the imaginative faculty, the shadowing forth of the nature of the illimitable light. He has another function. The Yogi…
1939 · PDF PAGE 36
…ages: 1. Perspiration. This is not the ordinary perspiration which comes from violent exercise; it has peculiar properties, and I am not going to tell you what these are, because it is much better for you to perform the practices, obtain the experience, and come to me yourself with the information. In this way you will know that you have got the right thing, whereas if I were to tell you now, you would very likely imagine it. 2. Automatic rigidity: the body becomes still, as the result of a spasm. This is perfectly normal and predictable. It is…
1939 · PDF PAGE 60
…ason. The only use, therefore, of describing our experiences is to enable students to get some sort of idea of the sort of thing that is going to happen to them when they attain success in the practices of Yoga. We have David saying in the Psalms: 'I hate thoughts, but Thy law do I love.' We have St. Paul saying: 'The carnal mind is enmity against God.' One might almost say that the essence of St. Paul's Epistles is a struggle against mind: 'We war not against flesh and blood'you know the restI can't be bothered to quote it allEph. vi. 12. 9…
1939 · PDF PAGE 22
…for over thirty-five minutes. They don't. You do not hear the ticking of the clock; perhaps you do not even know whether a typewriter is going in the room; for all I know, you could sleep peacefully through an air-raid. That has nothing to do with it. As soon as you start the practices you will find, if you are doing them properly, that you are hearing sounds which you never heard before in your life. You become hypersensitive. And as you have five external batteries bombarding you, you get little repose. You feel the air on your skin with abou…
1939 · PDF PAGE 17
…titutes an experiment. The other kind of man has only bad habits. When you explore a new country, you don't know what the conditions are going to be; and you have to master those conditions by the method of trial and error. We start to penetrate the stratosphere; and we have to modify our machines in all sorts of ways which were not altogether foreseen. I wish to thunder forth once more that no questions of right or wrong enter into our problems. But in the stratosphere it is 'right' for a man to be shut up in a pressure-resisting suit electric…