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 to yourself 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.