The First Step in The Practice of Yoga

Divine Life Society Publication: In The Light Of Wisdom by Sri Swami Krishnananda

The practical side of yoga is founded on moral and personal discipline. As a matter of fact, this process of purification and training is as important as anything that follows. On analysis it was discovered that the process of preparation—the setting in tune of the equipment—is the essential prerequisite of the practice. The practice of yoga is impossible for unpurified instruments. It is not that anyone can practise yoga, because the practice is not undertaken by a person or a personality in general, but by a condition of mind. It is our mind that practises yoga more than anything else, and that mind should be prepared for the necessary transformations that yoga requires. It was thought that in the process of alchemy that iron could be converted into gold, but wood could not be converted into gold. In the same way, it is not so that all minds in whatever condition are to be regarded as capable of this practice.

It is said that there are three kinds of disciples: the gunpowder type, the wood type and the plantain stem type. We know what gunpowder is. To set fire to it takes very little time. In a second after the match is lit the gunpowder catches fire. Wood takes a little more time to catch fire. We may have to blow hard on the wood to catch the flame gradually. Sometimes we have to pour kerosene on it, and so on. A little effort is needed to make the wood catch fire, while gunpowder requires no such effort. But the plantain stem will never catch fire—however much we may roast it, it will remain cool.

These three comparisons are supposed to be exemplary of the three types of yoga students—the first class, the second class and the third class. The first class is the one who immediately catches the point of teaching. At once, like fire that ignites gunpowder, the mind that is purified receives the instruction. Not only does it understand what is said, but it also catches the spirit behind the teaching. The students who are of the wood type require hard blowing, being told again and again many a time—sometimes for years. But then there is the plantain stem type which will not understand anything. They may be taught throughout their lives, but nothing will enter the brain. These three kinds of students mentioned in the analogy as gunpowder, wood and plantain stem are the sattvic, rajasic and tamasic types of disciples. Even among many students of the same class we find a distinction.

It is more difficult to catch the import of the teaching of yoga than its outer implications. It is more difficult to catch the spirit of yoga than the meanings of the arts and sciences that are studied in colleges and universities. We know the difficulty about yoga—it does not merely give us information, as is the case in history, geography, physics, chemistry or biology. Yoga does not give us information about things, and this is the difficulty with it. Yoga is not a study about something; it is a study of something. A study of something is the study of a thing directly and not merely gather facts connected with it.

All our studies, generally speaking, are facts related to a thing, so it is indirect knowledge that we gather in colleges. This is information, facts and related circumstances rather than the very substance of the object concerned. In this system we become no wiser after our education, and life remains as complicated as before. Conversely, the spirit of yoga infuses itself into the mind of the student from the very beginning. We have to be, at least in one sense, a yogin from the very outset. We do not become a yogin merely at the end. Even at the first step we are a yogin in one degree of its understanding and practice, because whatever be the step that we have taken in the practice of yoga, whatever be the stage—even if it be the most initial of stages—we will realise that the whole of us has gone into it.

This is the speciality about the learning of yoga, as distinguished from other types of learning or branches of knowledge. The whole of us is in it. It is not just understanding or feeling that merely react in the study of yoga—it is us as a complete personality. This is something very difficult to understand. We have not been initiated into these ways of thinking, and we do not know what it actually means. What do we mean by the whole of personality? We have never been taught this. We have always been taught to understand, to act, to do, or to feel and react. But for the whole of our personality to keep in unison with everything in the world is something untaught and un-understood by us.

Excerpts from

The First Step In The Practice of Yoga - In The Light Of Wisdom by Sri Swami Krishnananda