in their manner and did not think their pupils were deserving enough.
One could not talk to them openly and frankly as we do today. Even
Ramana Maharishi kept his philosophy for an inner circle of highly
qualified scholars. You could say that India at that time was engaged
in a struggle for political democracy, but I can assure you that spiritual
democracy did not exist. Because I am seen as a stern authoritarian
teacher, people do not realize how strongly I have in fact reacted
against the harsh and secretive regime in which I was brought up. I am
open with everything I have learned, and my strictness has really been
a passion for precision so that my students should not suffer from the
mistakes and hardship that I had to endure.
Eventually my guru relented to the point where he allowed me to
do deep inhalation, retention, and deep exhalation. But he gave no
technical instruction. Consequently I was prone to the instability of
body and irregular, labored breathing of which Patanjali warns. As I
have said, I mercifully escaped the despair or hopelessness that can re
sult, but I was restless and unsettled. Everybody needs a teacher for
pranayama. I had no one and fell into the gap between "knowing" and
"doing." I knew I had to take a deep, slow breath, but it did not
happen. I could not do it.
It was my asana practice that kept me on track. I continued to
adapt and transform my body to be capable of pranayama and so over
many long years came to master it. From the point of view of my
ability to teach, this process of trial and error has proved a tremendous
asset, but it is not a method I would recommend to anyone. My early
failures were because of a lack of guidance as well as my own weak
ness. You, on the other hand, are in a position to build up a good prac
tice in only two or three years, provided you stick with it for as little
as ten minutes a day and have a good teacher. As I did, you will learn
through action and observation to understand the rising and de
scending energies of the intelligence and gain the art of surrendering
the intelligence and willpower from the scat of the head toward the
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