Reluctance to Practice Yoga

Today, July 3, 2023, Yogeshwarananda said that he was disappointed by the high percentage of yogis, who become reluctant to practice. After they are introduced to methods, and shown these in detail, it seems that they continue for a bit, and are then overcome by a retardative braking force which causes them to cease, and to continue making excuses for not making the effort.

He said that eventually such stalled yogis, abandon the practice altogether. Usually, they secretly go away from advanced association. They resume normal life with no yoga practice. Their resistance to materialistic association makes a sharp dip from which they rarely recover.

He asked me if I noticed this. What could I say? Of course, I noticed it. For some years now doing yoga in this body since at least the year 1973 when I first taught some of the practice, I noticed that most of the students, even those who begin with an aggressive strong interest, gradually are swamp over by other influences. These powers vary from student to student but the resulting influence, kills deep interest in the practice.

Some students are ardent readers of yoga books. Some others do not like to read even, but prefer to associate and participate in discussion. In either case, there is a power struggle between the interest of yoga and other energies which counteract the need for the practice.

This conversation with Yogeshwarananda brought to mind, the situation of why I had the idea that a physical body would be useful, for the purpose of discovering methods of yoga, which were proven in this time and place, to be productive of mystic perception.

Before taking this body, I had the view that being physical, practicing methods to see their effectiveness, and teaching the same, showing by example, that many students would benefit and would sustain a practice. However, this idea is put to question because the majority of people whom I somehow or the other introduced to the practice, did not continue to do it.

My physical presence is just as good as if I did not assume physicality. Why become a body to do something, and then discover that the risk of being physical was not worth it. If one is present in the physical history of this world, and even then, one has little or no impact on humanity, then what is the value of going through the birth process from start to finish, from being make sexual fluid, then male-female sexual combination, then embryonic, then newborn stage, then infant stage, then juvenile stage and so on.

At some point one is faced with realization that this world will go its own way, with no regard for anybody, not for a great yogi even. And where does God fit in? But even if there is an argument to show that God does fit in sensibly, still then the limited self who tries to make an impact in real terms, finds itself to be irrelevant to Nature’s plans for human development. This reality is daunting!