Capacities of Yoga
Can everybody practise Yoga? No. But every well-educated person can
prepare for its future practice. For rapid progress you must have
special capacities, as for anything else. In any of the sciences a man
may study without being the possessor of very special capacity,
although he cannot attain eminence therein; and so it is with Yoga.
Anybody with a fair intelligence may learn something from Yoga which
he may advantageously practice, but he cannot hope unless he starts
with certain capacities, to be a success in Yoga in this life. It is
only right to say that; for if any special science needs particular
capacities in order to attain eminence therein, the science of
sciences certainly cannot fall behind the ordinary sciences in the
demands that it makes on its students.
Suppose I am asked: "Can I become a great mathematician?" What must
be my answer? "You must have a natural aptitude and capacity for
mathematics to be a great mathematician. If you have not that
capacity, you cannot be a great mathematician in this life." But this
does not mean that you cannot learn any mathematics. To be a great
mathematician you must be born with a special capacity for
mathematics. To be born with such a special capacity means that you
have practiced it in very many lives and now you are born with it
ready-made. It is the same with Yoga. Every man can learn a little of
it. But to be a great Yogi means lives of practice. If these are
behind you, you will have been born with the necessary faculties in
the present birth.
There are three faculties which one must have to obtain success in
Yoga. The first is a strong desire. "Desire ardently." Such a desire
is needed to break the strong links of desire which knit you to the
outer world. Moreover, without that strong desire you will never go
through all the difficulties that bat your way. You must have the
conviction that you will ultimately succeed, and the resolution to go
on until you do succeed. It must be a desire so ardent and so firmly
rooted, that obstacles only make it more keen. To such a man an
obstacle is like fuel that you throw on a fire. It burns but the more
strongly as it catches hold of it and finds it fuel for the burning.
So difficulties and obstacles are but fuel to feed the fire of the
yogi's resolute desire. He only becomes the more firmly fixed, because
he finds the difficulties.
If you have not this strong desire, its absence shows that you are
new to the work, but you can begin to prepare for it in this life. You
can create desire by thought; you cannot create desire by desire. Out
of the desire nature, the training of the desire nature cannot come.
What is it in us that calls out desire? Look into your own mind,
and you will find that memory and imagination are the two things that
evoke desire most strongly. Hence thought is the means whereby all the
changes in desire can be brought about. Thought, imagination, is the
only creative power in you, and by imagination your powers are to be
unfolded. The more you think of a desirable object, the stronger
becomes the desire for it. Then think of Yoga as desirable, if you
want to desire Yoga. Think about the results of Yoga and what it means
for the world when you have become a yogi, and you will find your
desire becoming stronger and stronger. For it is only by thought that
you can manage desire. You can do nothing with it by itself. You want
the thing, or you do not want it, and within the limits of the desire
nature you are helpless in its grasp. As just said, you cannot change
desire by desire. You must go into another region of your being, the
region of thought, and by thought you can make yourself desire or not
desire, exactly as you like, if only you will use the right means, and
those means, after all, are fairly simple. Why is it you desire to
possess a thing? Because you think it will make you happier. But
suppose you know by past experience that in the long run it does not
make you happier, but brings you sorrow, trouble, distress. You have
at once, ready to your hands, the way to get rid of that desire. Think
of the ultimate results. Let your mind dwell carefully on all the
painful things. Jump over the momentary pleasure, and fix your thought
steadily on the pain which follows the gratification of that desire.
And when you have done that for a month or so, the very sight of those
objects of desire will repel you. You will have associated it in your
mind with suffering, and will recoil from it instinctively. You will
not want it. You have changed the want, and have changed it by your
power of imagination. There is no more effective way of destroying a
vice than by deliberately picturing the ultimate results of its
indulgence. Persuade a young man who is inclined to be profligate to
keep in his mind the image of an old profligate; show him the
profligate worn out, desiring without the power to gratify; and if you
can get him to think in that way, unconsciously he will begin to
shrink from that which before attracted him; the very hideousness of
the results frightens away the man from clinging to the object of
desire. And the would-be yogi has to use his thought to mark out the
desires he will permit, and the desires that he is determined to slay.
The next thing after a strong desire is a strong will. Will is
desire. transmuted, its directing is changed from without to within.
If your will is weak, you must strengthen it. Deal with it as you do
with other weak things: strengthen it by practice. If a boy knows that
he has weak arms, he says: "My arms are weak, but I shall practice
gymnastics, work on the parallel bars: thus my arms. will grow
strong." It is the same with the will. Practice will make strong the
little, weak will that you have at present.
Resolve, for example, saying: "I will do such and such thing every
morning," and do it. One thing at a time is enough for a feeble will.
Make yourself a promise to do such and such a thing at such a time,
and you will soon find that you will be ashamed to break your promise.
When you have kept such a promise toyourself for a day, make it for a
week, then for a fortnight. Having succeeded, you can choose a harder
thing to do, and so on. By this forcing of action, you strengthen the
will. Day after day it grows greater in power, and you find your inner
strength increases. First have a strong desire. Then transmute it into
a strong will.
The third requisite for Yoga is a keen and broad intelligence. You
cannot control your mind, unless you have a mind to control. Therefore
you must develop your mind. You must study. By study, I do not mean
the reading of books. I mean thinking. You may read a dozen books and
your mind may be as feeble as in the beginning. But if you have read
one serious book properly, then, by slow reading and much thinking,
your intelligence will be nurtured and your; mind grow strong.
These are the things you want--a strong desire, an indomitable
will, a keen. intelligence. Those are the capacities that you must
unfold in order that the practice of Yoga may be possible to you. If
your mind is very unsteady, if it is a butterfly mind like a child's,
you must make it steady. That comes by close study and thinking. You
must unfold the mind by which you are to work
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