Weakness of Will

Divine Life Society Publication: The Yoga of Meditation by Sri Swami Krishnananda

Weakness of will is partly the reason for failure in spiritual pursuits. Also, it so happens, unfortunately, that the time most people devote for meditation is too little in comparison with the extensive part of the day and night when the consciousness is vigorously in pursuit of pleasure. Whatever little benefit has accrued during the short period of meditation is likely to be swept away by the strong winds of desires during the larger pan of the day. For, desires are not to be taken lightly. They have powers before which the most destructive bombs cannot stand. The celestials who send nymphs to stultify the meditations of Yogins are the subtler essences of the senses which are cosmically distributed in ethereal realms and which fly like jets towards their respective objects while the feeble ratiocinating power of man keeps looking on with bewilderment and a sense of depression, a mood of melancholy and a feeling of the hopelessness of all human efforts in the end.

It is not that effort is useless, but ordinary efforts are inadequate. The celestial beauties descend into the moral world to tempt the unwary aspirants by a constant presentation of f variety in beauty and value. When the aspirant has mastered one form of resistance, he finds himself in the grip of another which is quite new to him. When he is busy with methods of overcoming this second front, he finds that he has fallen into the pool of a third group whose existence he could never notice before. One's life seems to be spent away in this manner in a perpetual struggle for conquering the sense of erroneous values, but life is too short even to be able to count the number of such values and sources of temptation and opposition. This has been the predicament of thousands of seekers both in the East and the West, and it is no wonder that Bhagavan Sri Krishna warns us in the Bhagavadgita: 'Among thousands of people, some single being attempts to achieve perfection; and even among those who strive, some rare soul it is that really attains it'.

Excerpts from

Weakness of Will - The Yoga of Meditation by Sri Swami Krishnananda