imply thereby that the qualities which are not dominant are totally absent. Every
stage of yoga is every other stage, and so we have to be prepared, basically, for the
advent of a very comprehensive experience which will take possession of us one day
or the other. Therefore, the preparation that is taken up is also to be of a similar
character. The means should have, at least in some measure, the characteristics of
the goal towards which it is moving.
These eight limbs of yoga are really the eight conceptual segments of a single act of
meditation or concentration of mind on the goal of life, which was very pithily stated
in the earlier sections of the sutras of Patanjali, especially in the Samadhi Pada.
Patanjali does not go into such details because he regards these details as intended
for mediocre aspirants and not for advanced ones. The advanced aspirants do not
pass through stages in this manner. Though it is true that everyone has to pass
through every stage, they are all compressed together in a single concentrated focus.
Here, in the Sadhana Pada, they are a little bit dispersed, and they are taken up one
by one for the purpose of easy understanding and practice.
Hence, as I stated, the very first step, which is the discipline known as the yamas, is
really symbolic of one’s total outlook of life. If we can know what our outlook of life
as a whole is, we will also know the extent to which we can succeed in the practice of
these yamas. If the outlook is one thing, naturally the practice cannot be another,
contrary to it. What do we feel, from the recesses of our heart, in respect of things
around? Do we like them, or do we not like them? What is it that we feel? Do we want
something from them, or do we not want something from them? Are we fed up with
them? Are we happy about them? Do we think we are outside them, or they are
outside us? What is it that we think about all these things?
This is what will determine the extent of success in the practice of these yamas which
are most difficult things, really speaking, because these yamas of which yoga speaks
are the counterattack upon the natural prejudices of the mind in respect of things.
Naturally, we are inclined to like or dislike, to appropriate, to harm, to hurt, to assert,
and so on. Now a counterblow is dealt by these practices. The natural tendency to
assert oneself, the natural tendency to be pleased with the pains and sorrows of
others, the natural tendency to indulge in physical and psychological pleasure, the
natural tendency to appropriate things which need not necessarily belong to oneself,
and such other inclinations are indicative of one’s immersion in a set-up of things—
an evaluation of the world which is opposed to the structure of Reality.
Why is there so much insistence on the practice of the yamas? What is the point
about it? The point is simple. These attitudes of the human being, which are the
opposite of the yamas, are the expressions of a vehement insistence of the mind on
those features which are opposed to the nature of Reality. We are living in a world
which cannot be coordinated with the features of Ultimate Truth if we are to live a
life of insistence on those features which are the opposites of the yamas.
Thus, to introduce into the very blood of the student the basic features, the
foundational features of the goal which he is aspiring for, the practice of the yamas is
regarded as necessary because the opposites of these yamas are nothing but the
externalised urges of the human being. These are what the psychoanalysts call the
libido—the desire principle, the motive force in the individual which always presses it
forward, onward, externally towards those things which one regards as existing