and quality, as would be necessary under the conditions of one’s own personality in
that particular stage of evolution, with the purpose of helping oneself in the onward
growth to a healthier condition of spiritual aspiration.
Again, it may be pointed out that every stage in self-restraint or practice of yoga is a
positive step, so that there should not be pain felt in the practice. When we feel
undue pain, suffocation or agony—well, that would be an indication that we have
made a slight mistake in the judgement of values. We should not feel restless or
troubled in our practice. That would be the consequence of a little excess to which we
might have gone, not knowing what actually has been done. So when we feel that one
side of the matter is causing us some trouble, we should pay a little special attention
to it and see that it is ameliorated to the extent necessary. We have to bear in mind
that the goal of yoga is the consummation of a series of practices that we undertake,
every step therein being a positive step without any negativity in it. Really speaking,
every step in yoga should be a step of happiness, joy and delight.
Chapter 53A VERY IMPORTANT SADHANAFor the purpose of those students of yoga who would not be in a position to practise
these meditations daily as has been indicated up to this time, the great sage Patanjali
says that the same goal can be reached, though with a greater effort and in a longer
period of time, by milder techniques of sadhana if intense meditation is difficult. The
very attempt at the control of the senses—austerity, about which we were discussing
previously—generates a new strength in the mind and sets the mind in tune with
more impersonal powers. Thus, meditation becomes less difficult than it would have
been otherwise.
It is the pressure of the senses towards objects that prevents the mind from taking to
exclusive spiritual meditations. The objects of sense are so real to the senses that they
cannot easily be ignored or forgotten. Even the very thought of an object will draw
the mind towards it, and every particularised thought in the direction of an object is a
further affirmation of the falsity that Reality is only in some place, in some object, in
some thing, in some person, etc., and it is not universal in its nature. The universality
of Truth is denied by the senses, at every moment of time, in their activities towards
sense gratification.
The very purpose of the senses is to bring about this refusal of the ultimate
universality of Godhead, to affirm the diversity of objects and to push the mind—
forcefully—towards these external things. If this undesirable activity on the part of
the senses can be ended to the extent possible, this force with which the mind moves
towards objects can be harnessed for a better purpose, for a more positive aim than
the indulgence of the senses in objects. The very restraint of the senses from their
movement towards objects is a meditation by itself, at least in some sense, because
energy cannot be bottled up, unused; it always finds expression in some way or the
other. If we do not utilise it in more beneficial ways for spiritual purposes, the only
alternative would be for this mental energy to leak out through the senses towards