Hatha Yoga

Try to understand, this is a very simple thing. After realization all of them are right. Before realization all of them are wrong. Before your car starts, if you start turning the wheel, or using the brake, you are spoiling the car. When the car has started and you know how to drive and you have become a master of driving, then everything is right. Otherwise the same car which has to drive you from your house to this Ashram will land to somewhere. In the same way, the same thing before realization has no meaning. After realization only you start understanding.

So let us take the case of Hatha Yoga. It is based on centres, no doubt. It is based on “lshwar Pranidhana”, no doubt, all the Ashtangas, all the eight sides of Hatha Yoga. See from human point of view, I’m saying. For them why Hatha Yoga came into being.

It’s first that they should fix their attention on Ishwara Pranidhana means they should fix the attention into the existence of God. Not blind faith. But to understand that there is God, so that you humble down yourself. Then you should go to the realized soul as a Guru. Guru means a realized soul minimum. Any Tom, Dick and Harry becomes a, Guru, is a nonsense absolutely. He has to be a realized soul and if he is a realized soul he will say like that. He doesnt talk of separation, he talks of authority, because he is there he has that authority. Those who talk of separation and crying and weeping and woes and all that are blind like all others. They have no business to be there There is no humility about it, I mean if I have a red shawl, I should say, ‘I have a red shawl.’ What is there to feel humble about ? I mean whatever you are, there is no harm in saying what you are. When you are not that, when you don’t have that and you say that you have, it is arrogance. But when you are there, you have to say. That Christ said, ‘I am the light, I am the path’. I mean he was not trying to be arrogant about it. What is there to feel bad about it ? So Hatha Yoga itself is done under a person who is a realized soul. Not only realized but who knows. Who has mastered the art of Shakti-pat is the raising of the Kundalini minimum. Of course Sahaja Yogis just raise it like that. It is different. But no other Yogis can do that. It is only you, because you are authorized, that you can raise the Kundalini just like that. So what these Hatha-Yogis have done they have boiled it down to only the physical sense. So you have to have Ishwarapranidhana, Yama and Niyama and that too before 25 years of age, you have to discipline yourself in a way that you should understand, what is right and what is wrong. Now those who have done all the wrongs of the world before they are 15 years of age, now at the age of 25 are trying to learn what is Yama and Niyama. How can you do it? Just tell me now. Supposing you have spoilt the car completely. At the most you can ask for insurance, if you have paid for it. But how can you expect the car to come out absolutely new, as if it has come out from the factory? A house which is being completely mutilated cannot be renovated. Isn’t it? That would be madness. So one has to understand that these Yama and Niyamas and all these things are not meant for us. At least for the Western people, in any way. Let us accept it whatever it is in experimentation or whatever it is we have committed lots of mistakes or may be we have been experimenting, again I’ll say the same word. Whatever we have done we have done a lot of harm to ourselves, to our body and to our mind. Because we had nobody to guide us. Alright. We didn’t want to harm ourselves but by mistake it happened. Now what to do?

It is a very sad affair. People are sick. They cannot do Hatha-Yoga. The atmosphere is sick. The whole place is sick. They want love, they do not want exercise. They do not want scouts. They want somebody to love them, to heal them, to cure them to establish them. There is no word of love in Hatha Yoga these days because you pay for it. One thing you cannot pay for is your love. How can you pay for love? And that’s why this modern Hatha Yoga is just a misnomer. But after realization you can do Hatha Yoga because you are purified, you are cleansed, you are healed, your wounds are alright. People are wounded, they are so much hurt. They are extremely unhappy. You touch them and feel it. Why talk about big things when they do not even have energy to sustain themselves ? It is a strain on them. And none of them are realized souls neither are they masters of Shakti-pat. So that’s why it was said, 'you go to a Guru who is a realized soul. Go into the jungles before 25 years of age you should be there and practice under his guidance in complete celibacy in the atmosphere of complete celibacy.'

H.H.Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi, extract from Talk on the Meaning of Yoga, London, 1979 (1979-1111)

Sahaj A-Z Português: Hatha Yoga