about words." The true poet had his feet on the ground. Never mind
the idea, write it down.
You can see how the five modifications combine against us. When
we daydream, we are mixing fantasy and the dullness of sleep. If we
are daydreaming about the past, we add memory to the mixture. This
may be pleasant and soothing, but it leads nowhere. In fact, when we
return to present reality, we may find it, by comparison, quite un
palatable. This is a painful state emerging from a painless one.
Those who fail to emerge from solely imaginative thoughts never
command respect; they remain lightweights. We reserve our greatest re
spect for those who transform a panoramic and penetrating vision into
reality. As a young man, Mahatma Gandhi imagined an India inde
pendent and free of British rule, yet it took him a lifetime of unremit
ting labor, of tapas, to realize his dream. Tapas is the key here. The
word implies intense, purifying heat, a fire that, like the alchemist's,
transforms base metal into gold. Imagination is the flickering flame,
the coolest part of the fire. Dancing flames give light to reveal shape,
which in yoga terminology is the subtle counterpart of fire. What is an
idea, a concept, but a shape in the mind? The work before us is to blow
on the fire with the bellows of tapas, so that it becomes intensely hot
and transforms the shapes of mind into reality. Asana practice brings
mind and body into harmony for this task. Your mind is always ahead
of your body. The mind moves into the future, the body the past, but
the self is in the present. The coordination between them that we learn
in asana will enable us to turn the shape of our visions into the sub
stance of our lives.
Sleep is sleep. I asked earlier, "What can it teach us?" After all, we
never witness it. We are inert and unconscious and have no direct
memory of it. Yet we always know how we have slept. Deep dream
less, nourishing sleep is worth hoping for. Yogis do not dream. Either
they are in sleep or awake. Sleep is of three types. If one feds lll'avy .md
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