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There is only one way to still the body in the long run, and that is to keep it still. It's dogg�d as
does it.
The irritations develop into extreme agony. Any attempt to alleviate this simply destroys the value
of the practice. I must particularly warn the aspirant against rationalizing (I have known people
who were so hopelessly bat-witted that they rationalized.) They thought: 'Ah, well, this position is
not suitable for me, as I thought it was. I have made a mess of the Ibis position; now I'll have a go
at the Dragon position'. But the Ibis has kept his job, and attained his divinity, by standing on one
leg throughout the centuries. If you go to the Dragon he will devour you.
It is through the perversity of human nature that the most acute agony seems to occur when you are
within a finger's breadth of full success. Remember Gallipoli! I am inclined to think that it may be
a sort of symptom that one is near the critical point when the anguish becomes intolerable.
You will probably ask what 'intolerable' means. I rudely answer: 'Find out!' But it may give you
some idea of what is, after all, not too bad, when I say that in the last months of my own work it
often used to take me ten minutes (at the conclusion of the practice) to straighten my left leg. I took
the ankle in both hands, and eased it out a fraction of a millimetre at a time.
At this point the band begins to play. Quite suddenly the pain stops. An ineffable sense of relief
sweeps over the Yogi -- notice that I no longer call him 'student' or 'aspirant' -- and he becomes
aware of a very strange fact. Not only was that position giving him pain, but all other bodily
sensations that he has ever experienced are in the nature of pain, and were only borne by him by
the expedient of constant flitting from one to another.
He is at ease; because, for the first time in his life, he has become really unconscious of the body.
Life has been one endless suffering; and now, so far as this particular a�sana is concerned, the
plague is abated.
I feel that I have failed to convey the full meaning of this. The fact is that words are entirely
unsuitable. The complete and joyous awakening from the lifelong and unbroken nightmare of
physical discomfort is impossible to describe.
The results and mastery of a�sana are of use not only in the course of attainment of Yoga, but in the
most ordinary affairs of life. At any time when fatigued, you have only to assume your a�sana, and
you are completely rested. It is as if the attainment of the mastery has worn down all those
possibilities of physical pain which are inherent in that particular position. The teachings of
physiology are not contradictory to this hypothesis.
The conquest of a�sana makes for endurance. If you keep in constant practice, you ought to find that
about ten minutes in the posture will rest you as much as a good night's sleep.
Page 24 of 57
Crowley, Aleister. Eight Lectures on Yoga.
London: Ordo Templi Orientis, 1939
So much for the obstacle of the body considered as static. Let us now turn our attention to the
conquest of its dynamics.
It is always pleasing to turn to a subject like pra�n�a�ya�ma. Pra�n�a�ya�ma means control of force. It is
a generalized term. In the Hindu system there are quite a lot of subtle substrata of the various
energies of the body which have all got names and properties. I do not propose to deal with the
bulk of them. There are only two which have much practical importance in life. One of these is
not to be communicated to the public in a rotten country like this; the other is the well-known
'control of breath'.
This simply means that you get a stop watch, and choose a cycle of breathing out and breathing in.
Both operations should be made as complete as possible. The muscular system must be taxed to
its utmost to assist the expansion and contraction of the lungs.
When you have got this process slow and regular, for instance, 30 seconds breathing out and 15 in,
you may add a few seconds in which the breath is held, either inside or outside the lungs.
(It is said, by the way, that the operation of breathing out should last about twice as long as that of
breathing in, the theory being that breathing out quickly may bring a loss of energy. I think there
may be something in this.)
There are other practices. For instance, one can make the breathing as quick and shallow as
possible. Any good practice is likely to produce its own phenomena, but in accordance with the
general thesis of these lectures I think it will be obvious that the proper practice will aim at
holding the breath for as long a period as possible -- because that condition will represent as close
an approximation to complete stillness of the physiological apparatus as may be. Of course we are
not stilling it; we are doing nothing of the sort. But at least we are deluding ourselves into thinking
that we are doing it, and the point is that, according to tradition, if you can hold the mind still for as
much as twelve seconds you will get one of the highest results of Yoga. It is certainly a fact that
when you are doing a cycle of 20 seconds out, 10 in, and 30 holding, there is quite a long period
during the holding period when the mind does tend to stop its malignant operations. By the time
this cycle has become customary, you are able to recognize instinctively the arrival of the moment
when you can throw yourself suddenly into the mental act of concentration. In other words, by
a�sana and pra�n�a�ya�ma you have worked yourself into a position where you are free, if only for a
few seconds, to attempt actual Yoga processes, which you have previously been prevented from
attempting by the distracting activities of the respiratory and muscular systems.
And so? Yes. pra�n�a�ya�ma may be described as nice clean fun. Before you have been doing it
very long, things are pretty certain to begin to happen, though this, I regret to remark, is fun to you,
but death to Yoga.
The classical physical results of pra�n�a�ya�ma are usually divided into four stages:
1. Perspiration. This is not the ordinary perspiration which comes from violent exercise; it has [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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