YOGA SAGES

Articles In This Section:

· STRESS IN THE WORLD

· NOT ORDINARY MORTALS

· YOUR DAY IS TO SHORT

· BENIFITS YOGA HAS TO OFFER

· YOGA SAGES

· SPIRITUAL PRACTICE OF YOGA

We can also put it another way:

Through the centuries our ancestors spent years of their time and energy, and sometimes large fortunes, looking for the elixir of youth—only their search for the secret of how to make gold out of baser metals was ever pursued with as much passion. Men were willing to sell their souls to the devil for it, women to bargain away their chastity; expeditions traveled to the four corners of the earth searching for it, hoping for magic wells and magic spells and poultices. The prize, if found, was to be a promise of physical perfection without end: beauty that did not fade, an ever-supple, lovely body, a face without lines. For the man it meant undiminished vitality and sexual powers; for the woman the allure of a Helen of Troy. Or, translated into everyman's ultimate desire, it added up to never-ending zest for life, a boundless joy.

Well, the men who searched for magic formulae were doomed to failure. It was the Yoga sages who, without any magic whatsoever, offered the world something of this secret. For in reality it isn't eternal life that man longs for, but rather a long, good, useful life lived to the full and without fear— fear of pain, of dependence, of invalidism and weakness and all the other miseries which can make old age a burden and an indignity. It is a life so organized and so satisfying that in its twilight a person will be content to let go without regrets and without a sense of leaving too much undone. This, in many ways, is or can be our ultimate achievement.

Such goals, based on the principle of a perfect marriage between a mind at peace and a body that remains sound and active long after middle-age and old age would normally have begun to make their inroads, are not unrealistic for the student of Yoga. Once you learn to live without tensions, you discover your own optimum potential and are on the way, though without urgency, to live up to it; in short, once you begin to achieve that inner harmony which will allow you to stop living at odds with yourself, you will find your entire viewpoint changing. Your relationships with others will grow more harmonious and satisfying too, for nothing is so attractive to people as a harmonious personality. Naturally the world around you will then become a more attractive place for you to live in.

People often ask, understandably enough, whether there aren't some limitations as to the time of life when the study of Yoga may begin. Fortunately, the answer to this question is an emphatic no. You can begin at any age. Old people may take it up as well as the young, and even children have benefited by it.