The Yoga of Patanjali

Lesson - 5 95out­come of the brain of a mad man? What happen to us ifPatanjali might have scribbled something crazy out of his brain?Can’t it be true that Christ, Himself, was insane or hysteric, inallowing Himself to crucified?” So this is another real obstacle.These obstacles prove vacuum breaks because they can makeyou stop.The fourth obstacle is “mistake”. We do horrible thingsin the name of Yoga and sometimes we commit self-torture inthe name of purging. We conduct holy fastings and threatenGod by not taking even a drop of water during the fast. Someone stands on his head for two hours to find out that Kundalinislides down the backbone due to anti-gravitational pull. A thirdone practises placing his right ankle on his shoulders and standingon the left leg for three hours. You will find many such strangeones when you visit pligrim centres of India. Of course, nowadayswe find them in the west also since man has every incentive topurify himself. We commit many such mistakes and damagethe machine beyond repair. Afterwards if someone shows usthe real path it is too late, the machine cannot serve us to reachperfection. This is the greatest of all the obstacles because ittakes the vehicle away. We are left with ourselves before wecan find the Lord in us. So we are left alone in old age.The next obstacle enumerated by Patanjali is what weknow as “lethargy”. In childhood we see people doing Yoga.At sixteen we feel like doing it. Yes! let us do it after finishingour studies and settling somewhere. Then we are busy withour job. This job-hunting business does not permit us to doYoga. So we wait. So we march on like this postponing Yogawhile we advance straight to the grave. Even after we start wemay think “Can’t we do it from tomorrow?” This is the obstaclewhich Patanjali calls -“Alasya”.The next one is to believe that we are too busy. “See,my time is not permitting me to do Yoga. I am trying to do it but