NOT ORDINARY MORTALS

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

Fortunately there does exist an answer to this problem. It is possible for anyone who will only take the trouble to learn to live serenely in our Age of Anxiety. Within easy reach is a key to living out one's allotted span of three-score-and-ten or more, enjoying all the while a vigorous mind in a vigorous body, both of them functioning to the very limit of their potential. The key to such well-being is Yoga.

Yoga, you say? But that's some kind of Eastern magic, or maybe a religion! Yoga is a Hindu with an exotic headdress, climbing a rope firmly anchored in mid-air. It's a man walking barefoot over hot coals or lying on a bed of nails.

Nothing of the sort! The misconceptions about Yoga are many, and naturally what sticks in the minds of most people is the flamboyant, or what we might call the circus approach. But this we can happily leave to the tricksters. The truth has nothing whatever in common with any spectacular nonsense. True Yoga philosophy and Yoga health practices are sane, serious, utilitarian and easily applicable to our own daily lives.

As far back as the days of Marco Polo travelers in the East returned home with tales of men they had met totally unlike ordinary mortals. These were sages and philosophers, described as being singularly serene, detached, apparently unaffected by the ordinary stresses and strains of living, indifferent to pain and frequently possessed of certain extraordinary sensory powers. Their concentration, their physical control, their insight were amazing. Their hands could heal, their spirit travel to distant places. And while they lived to be unbelievably old, they seldom looked their age. Invariably they were held in the highest esteem.

The sages whom the travelers described were Hindu Yogis —a Yogi being a follower of Yoga, the ancient school of philosophy whose founder, Pantanjali, lived in the third century b.c. Often these men were also Gurus, or teachers, each of whom had dedicated a lifetime to the kind of study and practice which made him an outstanding figure in his chosen way of life. The claims made for them, fantastic as these may sound, need not necessarily have been exaggerated. In fact the modern traveler in India will still come upon their counterparts, for such men do exist, as even the most skeptical of scientists will not deny. Nor are they magicians, even though to the uninitiated they may seem to have attained truly supernatural powers.

In a later chapter we shall briefly come back to them— discuss, analyze and attempt to explain some of their more striking achievements—but only in order to give the student a general idea of what the profound study of Yoga does make possible by way of ultimate goals. Right now let us make it very clear, however, that no one advocates setting up such goals for the Occidental student. This is not the purpose of our book. Indeed nobody could hope to achieve or even approximate them without devoting a lifetime to their single-minded pursuit. Certainly it could never be done without a Guru for a guide.