conditions should be chosen, the social atmosphere should be properly selected, and
a proper mood of the mind also should be there.
We need not repeat that one should be in the immediate presence of a Guru or a
spiritual master. One cannot read a book and become a yogi; that is not possible. The
tradition of the Guru is an eternal tradition. Nobody can gainsay it, and it cannot be
amended. It is an absolute necessity. The immediate presence of a spiritual guide is
also a great protection against the problems and difficulties of a personal character.
Whatever the problems be, they can be rectified if they are properly exposed and
relayed before the competent mind of the master.
Side by side with this, one has to guard oneself consciously against getting into
unwanted ways by placing oneself deliberately in unfavourable atmospheres. As far
as possible, the atmosphere that we select should be favourable, and we should not
be under the impression that we have advanced so much that we can live anywhere in
the world. It is difficult to believe that anyone is so far advanced. It is very easy to
think like that, but very unfortunate to do so. Anyone can fall; nobody can be free
from this possibility.
The fall is merely due to carelessness and the careless attitude that we bestowed
upon ourselves at the very beginning, thinking that we know very well all things of
yoga and that the secrets of life are laid bare before us. This is a kind of foolishness
that can take possession of a student. While for some time, maybe even for fifty
years, everything looks all right, after that period we will find that we are in the midst
of a storm. A whirlwind will blow from all sides, and this can happen even at the end
of our life, when we are about to become a jivanmukta, as we may imagine. A wind
will blow in such a tempestuous manner that we will be cut off from the very roots,
all because we have been under the wrong impression that we have been well-off and
well grounded in the practice of yoga.
The needs of the body, the cravings of the senses and the susceptibilities of the mind
are terrible. They are not ordinary things. Even hunger is very serious indeed and it
can upset one’s peace of mind when it comes like a torture. Those who do not know
what hunger is cannot appreciate this situation. One should know what it is. We
should be starving for days together, and we will know what we do at that time. Any
sin can be committed by a man who is hungry; no sin can be away from him.
Likewise is the impetuous character of any desire when it is completely curbed and
bottled up without satisfaction and not allowed to come out at all.
Bottling up a desire is not the practice of yama. Something else is intended here,
because even though it is possible for a person to suddenly be away from homestead
and chattel, as they call it, and go to a monastic atmosphere and live a life of
complete isolation from normal satisfactions of life, the desire for satisfaction cannot
cease, though the satisfactions are not there. It is rasavarjam, as the Bhagavadgita
puts it—the taste for things will not cease. Whatever be the distance we maintain
between ourselves and an object of sense, the desire for that object of sense cannot
cease. It will be there like a drop of honey at the bottom, which we would like to lick
at any moment. Though it is hidden in the midst of bushes of thorn, that little drop of
honey will be there tempting us all the way, because either we have not tasted it, or
we have deliberately and wrongly imagined that it is not worthwhile.