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CONTENTS YOGA FOR YAHOOS First Lecture. First Principles Second Lecture. Yama Third Lecture. Niyama Fourth Lecture. Asana and Pranayama YOGA FOR YELLOWBELLIES First Lecture Second Lecture Third Lecture Fourth Lecture
YOGA FOR YAHOOS THIRD LECTURE. NIYAMA. Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. 1. The subject of my third lecture is Niyama. Niyama? H'm! The inadequacy of even the noblest attempts to translate these wretched Sanskrit words is now about to be delightfully demonstrated. The nearest I can get to the meaning of Niyama is 'virtue'! God help us all! This means virtue in the original etymological sense of the wordthe quality of manhood; that is, to all intents and purposes, the quality of godhead. But since we are translating Yama 'control…
…; either it comes up sweet to the hand, or it does not. You cannot explain it, and you cannot argue it away. 21. I have treated Yama and Niyama at great length because their importance has been greatly underrated, and their nature completely misunderstood. They are definitely magical practices, with hardly a tinge of mystical flavour. The advantage to us here is that we can very usefully exercise and develop ourselves in this way in this country where the technique of Yoga is for all practical purposes impossible. Incidentally, one's real count…
them) are offered to the aspirant; if he accepts the least of theseor the greatesthe is lost. 15. At the other end of the scale of the Niyama of the Moon are the fantastic developments of sensibility which harass the Yogi. These are all help and encouragement; these are all intolerable hindrances; these are the greatest of the obstacles which confront the human being, trained as he is by centuries of evolution to receive his whole consciousness through the senses alone. And they hit us hardest because they interfere directly with the techniqu…
…f Pluto? The answer is profound. It is because nothing at all is known about him. Anyhow it hardly matters; we have surely had enough of Niyama for one evening! 19. It is now proper to sum up briefly what we have learnt about Yama and Niyama. They are in a sense the moral, logical preliminaries of the technique of Yoga proper. They are the strategical as opposed to the tactical dispositions which must be made by the aspirant before he attempts anything more serious than the five finger exercises, as we may call themthe recruit's drill of postu…
…at confront the Yogi are impracticable to intellectual manipulation. They yield to graciousness. 13. Our next planet is Mercury, and the Niyama which correspond to him are as innumerable and various as his own qualities. Mercury is the Word, the Logos in the highest; he is the direct medium of connection between opposites; he is electricity, the very link of life, the Yogic process itself, its means, its end. Yet he is in himself indifferent to all things, as the electric current is indifferent to the meaning of the messages which may be transm…
…ing mad. This was especially the case when those phenomena began to occur, which, recorded in cold blood, did seem like madness. And the Niyama of Mars is the ruthless rage which jests at scars while dying of one's wounds. " . . . the grim Lord of Colonsay Hath turned him on the ground, And laughed in death-pang that his blade The mortal thrust so well repaid" 11. The next of the heavenly bodies is the centre of all, the Sun. The Sun is the heart of the system; he harmonises all, energises all, orders all. His is the courage and energy which is…
…To what moral qualities does this correspond? The first point of virtue in a bone is its rigidity, its resistance to pressure. And so in Niyama we find that we need the qualities of absolute simplicity in our regimen; we need insensibility; we need endurance; we need patience. It is simply impossible for anyone who has not practised Yoga to understand what boredom means. I have known Yogis, men even holier than I, (no! no!) who, to escape from the intolerable tedium, would fly for refuge to a bottle party! It is a physiological tedium which bec…
…ou have to tackle each fresh problem as it arises in the best way you can. 6. We are now in a better position to consider the meaning of Niyama, or virtue. To most men the qualities which constitute Niyama are not apprehended at all by their self-consciousness. These are positive powers, but they are latent; their development is not merely measurable in terms of quantity and efficiency. As we rise from the coarse to the fine, from the gross to the subtle, we enter a new (and what appears on first sight to be an immeasurable) region. It is quite…
… and we can cover the ground very satisfactorily by classing our remarks under these eight headings. 6. These headings are: 1. Yama. 2. Niyama. 3. Asana. 4. Pranayama. 5. Pratyahara. 6. Dharana. 7. Dhyana. 8. Samadhi. Any attempt to translate these words will mire us in a hopeless quag of misunderstanding. What we can do is to deal with each one in turn, giving at the outset some sort of definition or description which will enable us to get a fairly complete idea of what is meant. I shall accordingly begin with an account of Yama. Attend! Perp…