A Series of Lessons in Raja YogaAtkinson, William Walker
Religion
A Series of Lessons in Raja Yoga
Atkinson, William Walker
Yoga; Yoga, Raja
If this seems incredible, let us remember how old whist players note and
remember every card in the pack, and can tell whether they have been
played or not, and all the circumstances attending upon them. The same is
true of chess players, who observe every move and can relate the whole
game in detail long after it has been played. And remember, also, how
one woman may pass another woman on the street, and without seeming to
give her more than a careless glance, may be able to relate in detail
every feature of the other woman's apparel, including its color, texture,
style of fashioning, probable price of the material, etc., etc. And a
mere man would have noticed scarcely anything about it--because he would
not have given it any attention. But how soon would that man learn to
equal his sister in attention and observation of women's wearing apparel,
if his business success depended upon it, or if his speculative instinct
was called into play by a wager with some friend as to who could remember
the most about a woman's clothing, seen in a passing glance? You see it
is all a matter of Interest and Attention.
But we forget that the Attention may be developed and cultivated, and we
complain that we "cannot remember things," or that we do not seem to be
able to "take notice." A little practice will do wonders in this
direction.
Now, while the above exercises will develop your memory and powers of
observation, still that is not the main reason that we have given them to
you. We have an ulterior object, that will appear in time. We aim to
develop your Will-power, and we know that Attention stands at the gate of
Will-power. In order to be able to use your Will, you must be able to
focus the Attention forcibly and distinctly. And these childish exercises
will help you to develop the mental muscles of the Attention. If you
could but realize the childish games the young Yogi students are required
to play, in order to develop the mental faculties, you would change your
minds about the Yogi Adepts whom you have been thinking about as mere
dreamers, far removed from the practical. These men, and their students,
are intensely practical. They have gained the mastery of the Mind, and
its faculties, and are able to use them as sharp edged tools, while the
untrained man finds that he has but a dull, unsharpened blade that will
do nothing but hack and hew roughly, instead of being able to produce the
finished product.
The Yogi believes in giving the "I" good tools with which to work, and he
spends much time in tempering and sharpening these tools. Oh, no, the
Yogi are not idle dreamers. Their grasp of "practical things" would
surprise many a practical, matter-of-fact Western business man, if he
could but observe it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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