Changes

 Physical education means chiefly the combination of all exercises for the sake of the growth and upkeep of the body. <ref>httphttps://incarnateword.in/cwm/12/general-messages-and-letters#p60p64</ref>

Physical education has three principal aspects: (1) control and discipline of the functioning of the body, (2) an integral, methodical and harmonious development of all the parts and movements of the body and (3) correction of any defects and deformities.It may be said that from the very first days, even the first hours of his life, the child should undergo the first part of this programme as far as food, sleep, evacuation, etc.are concerned.If the qualities that one can acquire through physical educationchild, from the very beginning of his existence, learns good habits, it will save him a good deal of trouble and inconvenience for the rest of his life; and besides, those who have the responsibility of caring for him during his first years will find their task very much easier.The first condition for acquiring power Naturally, this education, if it is to be obedientrational, enlightened and effective, must be based upon a minimum knowledge of the human body, of its structure and its functioning. As the child develops, he must gradually be taught to observe the functioning of his internal organs so that he may control them more and more, and see that this functioning remains normal and harmonious. As for positions, postures and movements, bad habits are formed very early and very rapidly, and these may have disastrous consequences for his whole life. Those who take the question of physical education seriously and wish to give their children the best conditions for normal development will easily find the necessary indications and instructions.<ref>httphttps://incarnateword.in/cwm/12/messagesphysical-for-competitionseducation#p54p3,p4,p5</ref>

Man has a power to educate: his body can be developed, educated. He can increase certain faculties. You cannot imagine any animal, even among those we most admire, which is capable, for instance, of physical education, purely physical... a systematic development of the muscles. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/09/13-november-1957#p7</ref> ===Prerequisites of Physical Education=== There can be no physical education without discipline. The body itself could not function without a strict discipline. Actually, the failure to recognise this fact is the principal cause of illness. Digestion, growth, blood-circulation, everything, everything is a discipline. Thought, movement, gestures, everything is a discipline, and if there is no discipline people immediately fall ill. <ref>httphttps://incarnateword.in/cwm/12/correspondence#p359p371,p372</ref>

Physical The first condition for acquiring power is to be obedient. The body must learn to obey before it can manifest power; and physical education has three principal aspects: (1) control and is the most thorough discipline of the functioning of for the body, (2) an integral, methodical . So be eager and harmonious development of all the parts sincere in your efforts for physical education and movements of the you will acquire a powerful body and (3) correction of any defects and deformities. <ref>httphttps://incarnateword.in/cwm/12/physicalmessages-for-educationcompetitions#p3p39,p40,p41</ref>

...It's for a good many bodily defects can be rectified and many malformations avoided by an enlightened physical education that teaches given at the cells to proper time. But if for any reason this physical education has not been given during childhood or even in youth, it can begin at any age and be consciouspursued throughout life. But to develop the brainlater one begins, it's studythe more one must be prepared to meet bad habits that have to be corrected, observationrigidities to be made supple, intelligent education—especially observation malformations to be rectified. And this preparatory work will require much patience and reasoningperseverance before one can start on a constructive programme for the harmonisation of the form and its movements. And naturallyBut if you keep alive within you the ideal of beauty that is to be realised, for sooner or later you are sure to reach the whole goal you have set yourself. <ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwm/12/physical-education #p13</ref> ===Importance of Physical Education=== Physical Education is meant to bring into the body, consciousness from the standpoint of characterand control, discipline and mastery, it's yogaall things necessary for a higher and better life. <ref>httphttps://incarnateword.in/agendacwm/0912/septembermessages-28for-1968competitions#p40p11</ref>

Physical Education is meant We have been given a body not to reject it but to bring make it into the something better... The human bodymust be improved, perfected, consciousness and control, discipline it must become a superhuman body capable of expressing a being higher than man. And this certainly cannot happen if we neglect it. It is by an enlightened physical culture and by using physical activities―the activities of the body―not for little personal needs and masterysatisfactions, all things necessary for but to make the body more capable of expressing a higher beauty and better lifeconsciousness. And for that, physical education has an important place, which should be given to it.<ref>httphttps://incarnateword.in/cwm/1213/messages-foraspiration-competitionstalks#p15p273</ref>

We have in us an intelligent will more or less enlightened which is the first instrument of our psychic being.It is this intelligent will that we must use in order to learn to live not like an animal man, but as a human being, candidate for Divinity.And the first step towards this realisation is to become master of this body instead of remaining an impotent slave.It One most effective help towards this goal is by an enlightened physical culture and by using physical activities―the activities .For about a century there has been a renewal of the body―not for little personal needs a knowledge greatly favoured in ancient times, partially forgotten since then. Now it is reawakening, and satisfactions, but to make with the body more capable progress of expressing modern science, it is acquiring quite a higher beauty new amplitude and consciousnessimportance. And for This knowledge deals with the physical body and the extraordinary mastery that, can be obtained over it with the help of enlightened and systematised physical education .This renewal has an important place, which should be given been the result of the action of a new power and light that have spread upon the earth in order to prepare itfor the great transformations that must take place in the near future.<ref>httphttps://incarnateword.in/cwm/1312/aspirationto-women-about-their-talksbody#p281p21,p22,p23,p24,p25</ref>

It may be good to remind you that we are here for a special work, a work not done anywhere else: we want to come into contact with the supreme consciousness, the universal consciousness, we want to receive it and manifest it...It is For that, we need a power of attracting certain very material vibrationssolid base, which has and our base is our physical being, our body. We therefore need to prepare a capacity solid, healthy, enduring body, skillful, agile and strong, so it may be ready for utilisation that increases its strength—which anything. There is like no better way to prepare the action of body than physical exerciseexercises: sports, athletics, you see—it increases its strength through utilisationgymnastics and all other games are the best means to develop and strengthen the body. <ref>httphttps://incarnateword.in/cwmagenda/0607/28march-july26-19541966#p4p1</ref>

... I must tell you once more that don’t see why there should be one special ideal for us spiritual life does not mean contempt the physical education of girls and another for Matter but the education of boys. Physical education aims at developing all the possibilities of the human body―possibilities of harmony, strength, suppleness, skill, endurance―and increasing the mastery of the functions of its divinization. We do not want to reject members and organs, making the body but to transform ita perfect instrument at the disposal of the conscious will. For this, physical education This programme is excellent for all human beings equally; there is no reason for wanting to have another one of the means most directly effective for girls. <ref>
httphttps://incarnateword.in/agendacwm/08/april25-3july-19671956#p3
p41,p42,p43</ref>

...but for expressing We have limbs and muscles and nerves, indeed everything that constitutes the Spirit no other animal body; if we don’t give them a special development, a special education, all these things do what they can be compared with him...physical educationto express the Power in the body, but it is a systematic development of the muscles..very clumsy and very incomplete expression.Man It is certainly, in an organised way, beyond question that a physical body which has been trained according to the first progressive animal who can augment his capacities, his possibilities, increase his faculties most complete and acquire rational methods of physical culture is capable of things that he did not have spontaneouslyit could never do otherwise. There is not I think no one animal which can do deny that.<ref>httphttps://incarnateword.in/cwm/09/1317-novemberseptember-19571958#p7p15</ref>

So ... I must tell you once more that for us spiritual life does not mean contempt for Matter but its divinization. We do not want to reject the body but to transform it gives . For this, physical education a deep ''raison d'être''is one of the means most directly effective. <ref>http: people capable of stopping fires, saving drowning people and so on//incarnateword. There needn't in/agenda/08/april-3-1967#p3
</ref><center>~</center>If a wide calm can be many: if there were five hundred of themestablished in the physical consciousness, it would be enough for occupying and filling the entire townvery body and all its cells, that can become the basis for its transformation; in little groups going about like thatfact, without this wideness and calmness the transformation is hardly possible. <ref>
httphttps://incarnateword.in/agendacwsa/1029/augustpeace-the-basis-of-30the-1969sadhana#p19
p18</ref>

Sports help ...the body to prepare -consciousness is a patient servant and can be in its large reserve of possibilities a potent instrument of the individual life, and it asks for little on its own account: what it craves for is duration, health, strength, physical perfection, bodily happiness, liberation from suffering, ease. These demands are not in themselves unacceptable, mean or illegitimate, for they render into the terms of Matter the perfection of form and substance, the Transformationpower and delight which should be the natural outflowing, the expressive manifestation of the Spirit.<ref>httphttps://incarnateword.in/cwmcwsa/1222/generalthe-messages-andgnostic-lettersbeing#p60p24</ref>

As the child developsSomething there is in us or something has to be developed, perhaps a central and still occult part of our being containing forces whose powers in our actual and present make-up are only a fraction of what could be, he must gradually but if they became complete and dominant would be taught truly able to observe bring about with the functioning help of his internal organs so that he may the light and force of the soul and the supramental truth-consciousness the necessary physical transformation and its consequences.… But even these changes would still leave a residue of material processes keeping the old way and not amenable to the higher control them more and more, and see that if this functioning remains normal could not be changed, the rest of the transformation might itself be checked and harmoniousincomplete. As for positionsA total transformation of the body would demand a sufficient change of the most material part of the organism, postures and movementsits constitution, bad habits are formed very early its processes and very rapidly, and these may have disastrous consequences for his whole lifeits set-up of nature. 
<ref>httphttps://incarnateword.in/cwmcwsa/1213/physicalthe-divine-educationbody#p5p19,p20</ref>

Sports are It [''the descent of the higher consciousness into the most physical''] brings light, consciousness, force, Ananda into the cells and all the gamesphysical movements. The body becomes conscious and vigilant and performs the right movements, competitionsobeying the higher will or else automatically by force of the consciousness that has come into it. It becomes more possible to control the functionings of the body and set right anything that is wrong, tournamentsto deal with illness and pain etc. A greater control comes over the actions of the body and even over happenings to it from outside, etce.g. minimising of accidents and small mishaps. The body becomes a more effective instrument for work. It becomes possible to minimise fatigue.Peace, happiness, strength, all lightness in the whole physical system. These are the things based on contests more obvious and ending normal results which grow as the consciousness grows, but there are many others that are possible. There is also the unity with the earth-consciousness, the constant sense of the Divine in the physical, etc. <ref>https://incarnateword.in placings /cwsa/30/descent-and prizes-the-lower-nature#p26</ref> '''For Suppleness''' When you do gymnastics, is it not to make your body less rigid? And you go on progressing: what you cannot do the first year, you are able to do after a few years.There are people who obtain an almost total suppleness, those, for example, who do Asanas. Yes, one can obtain almost complete suppleness. ...With the mind, it is the same thing. It is through gymnastic exercises that you make yourself supple. It is a question of discipline, of development.<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/1205/general16-messagesseptember-and1953#p19</ref> ===How to Make the Body Conscious?=== …it is very important to remember that the instinct of the body, so long as it remains intact, is more reliable than any theory. <ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwm/12/physical-letterseducation#p60p6</ref>

The way to really awaken the physical consciousness is physical education...If one keeps It’s physical education that teaches the habit of leading one's normal life always, very soon one does not even notice the presence of the mensescells to be conscious. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwmagenda/1209/to-women-aboutseptember-their28-body1968#p31p40</ref>

The best thing for your headache ...“How does one awaken the consciousness of the physical being?”, that is to take plenty precisely the aim of physical exercise (such as gardening education. It is physical education that teaches the cells to be conscious. But for example)the development of the brain, it is study, observation, intelligent education, above all observation and reasoning. And naturally, for the whole education of the consciousness from the point of view of character, it is yoga. <ref>httphttps://incarnateword.in/cwm/1612/25mothers-action-in-februarya-class-of-children-aged-sixteen-to-1935eighteen#p2p53</ref>

Physical But as a general and absolute rule, the teachers and especially the physical education aims at developing all instructors must be a constant living example of the possibilities of qualities demanded from the human body―possibilities of harmonystudents; discipline, regularity, good manners, strengthcourage, supplenessendurance, skillpatience in effort, endurance―and increasing the mastery are taught much more by example than by words. And as an absolute rule: never to do in front of the functions of its members and organs, making the body a perfect instrument at the disposal of the conscious will. This programme is excellent for all human beings equally; there is no reason for wanting child what you forbid him to have another one for girlsdo.<ref>httphttps://incarnateword.in/cwm/0812/25-july-1956correspondence#p43p112</ref>

There are people who obtain an almost total suppleness… by means of a rational and discerning physical education, we must make our body strong and supple enough to become a fit instrument in the material world for the truth-force which wants to manifest through us. In fact, the body must not rule, it must obey. By its very nature it is a docile and faithful servant. Unfortunately, thoseit rarely has the capacity of discernment it ought to have with regard to its masters, for examplethe mind and the vital. It obeys them blindly, who do Asanasat the cost of its own well-being. YesThe mind with its dogmas, one its rigid and arbitrary principles, the vital with its passions, its excesses and dissipations soon destroy the natural balance of the body and create in it fatigue, exhaustion and disease. It must be freed from this tyranny and this can obtain almost complete suppleness be done only through a constant union with the psychic centre of the being.The body has a wonderful capacity of adaptation and endurance.It is able to do so many more things than one usually imagines.With If, instead of the mindignorant and despotic masters that now govern it, it is ruled by the central truth of the same thingbeing, you will be amazed at what it is capable of doing. It Calm and quiet, strong and poised, at every minute it will be able to put forth the effort that is demanded of it, for it will have learnt to find rest in action and to recuperate, through gymnastic exercises contact with the universal forces, the energies it expends consciously and usefully. In this sound and balanced life a new harmony will manifest in the body, reflecting the harmony of the higher regions, which will give it perfect proportions and ideal beauty of form. And this harmony will be progressive, for the truth of the being is never static; it is a perpetual unfolding of a growing perfection that you make yourself suppleis more and more total and comprehensive. It is As soon as the body has learnt to follow this movement of progressive harmony, it will be possible for it to escape, through a question continuous process of disciplinetransformation, from the necessity of disintegration and destruction. Thus the irrevocable law of developmentdeath will no longer have any reason to exist. <ref>httphttps://incarnateword.in/cwm/0512/16the-science-septemberof-1953living#p19p13,p14</ref>

…the body obeys the mind automatically in those things in which it is formed or trained to obey it, but the relation of the body to the mind is not in all things that of an automatic perfect instrument...The body also has a fundamental passive condition consciousness of the its own and, though it is a submental instrument or servant consciousness gathered into itself is , it can disobey or fail to obey as well. In many things, in matters of health and illness for instance, in all automatic functionings, the proper poise for concentration body acts on its own and is not a seated gathered immobility in servant of the body mind. If it is fatigued, it can offer a passive resistance to the best for mind's will. It can cloud the mind with tamas, inertia, dullness, fumes of the subconscient so that the mind cannot act. The arm lifts, no doubt, when it gets the suggestion, but at first the legs do not obey when they are asked to walk; they have to learn how to leave the crawling attitude and movement and take up the erect and ambulatory habit.When you first ask the hand to draw a straight line or to play music, it can't do it and won't do it.It has to be schooled, trained, taught, and afterwards it does automatically what is required of it.All this proves that there is a body-consciousness which can do things at the reason why Yogis always sit in an asanamind's order, but has to be awakened, trained, made a good and conscious instrument. One It can accustom oneself to meditate walkingeven be so trained that a mental will or suggestion can cure the illness of the body. But all these things, standingthese relations of mind and body, lying, but sitting stand on the same footing in essence as the relation of mind to vital and it is the first natural positionnot so easy or primary a matter as Augustine would have it. <ref>
httphttps://incarnateword.in/cwsa/2928/concentration-andthe-meditationmind#p66
p30</ref>

… In the outer change admission of an activity such as sports and physical exercises into the life of the Ashram it is necessary but as a part evident that the methods and the first objects to be attained must belong to what we have called the lower end of the inner changebeing. If there is impurity Originally they have been introduced for the physical education and bodily development of the children of the Ashram School and insincerity these are too young for a strictly spiritual aim or practice to enter into their activities…. Yet what can be attained within, the outer change will not human boundaries can be effective; but if there something very considerable and sometimes immense: what we call genius is a sincere inner workingpart of the development of the human range of being and its achievements, especially in things of the outer change mind and will help it , can carry us halfway to the divine. Even what the mind and accelerate will can do with the body in the field proper to the process. <ref>
http://incarnateword.body and its life, in/cwsa/30/the-danger-way of-physical achievement, bodily endurance, feats of prowess of all kinds, a lasting activity refusing fatigue or collapse and continuing beyond what seems at first to be possible, courage and refusal to succumb under an endless and murderous physical suffering, these and other victories of many kinds sometimes approaching or reaching the-ego-miraculous are seen in the human field and-the-need-must be reckoned as a part of our concept of-purification#p45</ref>a total perfection….

==What And so, in this case, what Sri Aurobindo has recommended as the most direct and most total way is Hathayoga?==surrender to the Divine—a surrender made more and more integral, progressively, comprising the physical consciousness and physical activities. And if one succeeds in this, then the physical, instead of being an obstacle, becomes a help. <ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwm/08/19-september-1956#p17,p18</ref>

Hathayoga is a powerful, but difficult and onerous system whose whole principle of action is founded on an intimate connection between the body and the soul. ...The body is not to the Hathayogin a mere mass of living matter, but a mystic bridge between the spiritual and the physical being;...scientific processes to give to the soul in the physical body the power, the light, the purity, the freedom, the ascending scales of spiritual experience which would naturally be open to it, if it dwelt here in the subtle and the developed causal vehicle....Hathayoga is, in its own way, a system of knowledge; but while the proper Yoga of knowledge is a philosophy of being put into spiritual practice, a psychological system, this is a science of being, a psycho-physical system... It must not be forgotten, however, that both do arrive at the same end. Hathayoga, also, is a path, though by a long, difficult and meticulous movement, ''duḥkham āptum'', to the Supreme.All Yoga proceeds in its method by three principles of practice; first, purification,...secondly, concentration,...thirdly, liberation...The enjoyment of our liberated being which brings us into unity or union with the Supreme, is the consummation; it is that for which Yoga is done. Three indispensable steps and the high, open and infinite levels to which they mount; and in all its practice Hathayoga keeps these in view.The two main members of its physical discipline, to which the others are mere accessories, are ''āsana'', the habituating of the body to certain attitudes of immobility, and ''prāṇāyāma'', the regulated direction and arrestation by exercises of breathing of the vital currents of energy in the body. ... it does mainly by these two methods, complex and cumbrous in action, but simple in principle and effective.The Hathayogic system of Asana has at its basis two profound ideas which bring with them many effective implications. The first is that of control by physical immobility, as the power of mental immobility in yoga of knowledge the second is that of power by immobility. It is the sign of a constant inability of the body to hold even the limited life energy that enters into or is generated in it...the first necessity of a greater status or action is to get rid of this disordered restlessness, to still the activity and to regulate it. The Hathayogin has to bring about an abnormal poise of status and action of the body and the life energy, abnormal not in the direction of greater disorder, but of superiority and self-mastery.The first object of the immobility of the Asana is to get rid of the restlessness imposed on the body and to force it to hold the ''Pranic'' energy instead of dissipating and squandering it... —just as the restless active mind seems to seize on and use irregularly and imperfectly whatever spiritual force comes into it, but the tranquilised mind is held, possessed and used by the spiritual force.The body, thus liberated from itself, purified from many of its disorders and irregularities, becomes, partly by Asana, completely by combined Asana and ''Pranayama'', a perfected instrument. ...The lightening of the heavy hold of the latter, of which the overcoming of fatigue is the first sign and the phenomenon of "utthāpana" or partial levitation the last, is one result. ...the Hathayogic siddhis or extraordinary powers of ''garimā, mahimā, aṇimā'' and ''laghimā''. Moreover, the life ceases to be entirely dependent on the action of the physical organs and functionings, such as the heart-beats and the breathing. All this, however, the result in its perfection of Asana and Pranayama, is only a basic physical power and freedom. The higher use of Hathayoga depends more intimately on Pranayama. ...but the principal gain is that by this purification the vital energy can be directed anywhere, to any part of the body and in any way or with any rhythm of its movement. The Prana has according to Yogic science a fivefold movement pervading all the nervous system and the whole material body and determining all its functionings. The Hathayogin seizes on the outward movement of respiration as a sort of key which opens to him the control of all these five powers of the ''Prana''. …a complete mastery of the body and the life and a free and effective use of them established upon a purification of their workings is founded as a basis for the higher aims of Hathayoga....this depends on the connection between the body and the mind and spirit and between the gross and the subtle body on which the system of Hathayoga takes its stand. Here it comes into line with Rajayoga, and a point is reached at which a transition from the one to the other can be made.<ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/23/hathayoga</ref> ===Cultivating HathayogaRole of Conscious Will in Physical Culture===

''A.'' These are occult processes for acting on the body—the Tantric ones, at any rate—while the modern methods of development follow the ordinary physical process to give the body all the perfection it is capable of in its present state. ...the basis of all these methods is the power exercised by the conscious will over matter. ...movements, on the other hand, if they are made consciously, deliberately, with a definite aim, suddenly start helping you to form your muscles and build up your body. ...these very movements with the will to develop this muscle or that, to create a general harmony in his body—he succeeds. ...Therefore, what I mean is that the method one uses has only a relative importance in itself; it is the will to obtain a certain result that is important.The yogi or aspiring yogi who does asanas to obtain a spiritual result or even simply a control over his body, obtains these results because it is with this aim that he does them, whereas I know some people who do exactly the same things but for all sorts of reasons unrelated to spiritual development, and who haven't even managed to acquire good health by it! ...This amounts to saying that it is the conscious will which acts on matter, not the material fact. ...This means that you can use all the movements of your life for a harmonious development of your body. ...So, you choose the method you like best, but you can use the whole of your daily life in this way. ...To think constantly of the harmony of the body, of the beauty of the movements, of not doing anything that is ungraceful and awkward. You can obtain a rhythm of movement and gesture which is very exceptional."Something there is in us or something has to be developed, perhaps a central and still occult part of our being containing forces whose powers in our actual and present make-up are only a fraction of what could be, but if they became complete and dominant would be truly able to bring about with the help of the light and force of the soul and the supramental truth-consciousness the necessary physical transformation and its consequences. ...But even these changes would still leave a residue of material processes keeping the old way and not amenable to the higher control and, if this could not be changed, the rest of the transformation might itself be checked and incomplete. A total transformation of the body would demand a sufficient change of the most material part of the organism, its constitution, its processes and its set-up of nature." <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/09/17-july-1957#p2</ref><center>~</center>Mechanical, these are the Asanas, Hathayoga. It is done with this intention. ...The psychological method is Yoga. To seek within oneself through introspection what is permanent, what is constant. That's all. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/05/16-december-1953#p4</ref><center>~</center>But don't get into a meditation posture! And don't tense up; just let yourself go, as if you simply wanted to rest—but not in an empty hole. To rest in a mass of infinite force... a supple solidity. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/agenda/03/may-29-1962#p64</ref><center>~</center>No use doing asanas and pranayam. It is not necessary to burn with passion. What is needed is a patient increasing of the power of concentration and steady aspiration so that the silence you speak of may fix in the heart and spread to the other members. Then the physical mind and subconscient can be cleared and quieted.<center>~</center>The asanas are one means for control of the body, as is Pranayam for the life-forces, but neither is indispensable.<center>~</center>Mother thinks that the shirshasana is not safe for your eyes. While some of these asanas are simple and safe, others are not so; they require a training of the body or practice under the eye of an expert. It might not be prudent for you to take them up in an amateur fashion.<center>~</center>Pranayam is safe only if one knows how to do it and is on guard against its possible dangers: (1) danger to health by mistakes in the method, (2) rising of the vital forces, especially lust, egoism and wrongly directed strength and force, (3) the awakening of concealed sanskaras of the physical nature or latent karma from past lives.<center>~</center>... it is not safe to do Pranayam without guidance by one who is expert in Rajayoga or Hathayoga. Pranayam is not a part of the sadhana here.<center>~</center>...it is not safe to do Pranayam except under the directions of a guru who is siddha in either Rajayoga or Hathayoga. Gasping is obviously a sign of something wrong—for the breathing in Pranayam must be perfectly unimpeded and regular.<center>~</center>Your experience is correct. The true breathing is not merely the inspiration and expiration from the lungs which is merely the mechanism of it, but a drawing in of the universal energy of Prana into every cell of the body.<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/29/sankhya-and-yoga#p18

</ref>…

===Benefits The basis of Hathayoga===all these methods is the power exercised by the conscious will over matter. Usually it is a method which someone has used fairly successfully and set up as a principle of action, which he has taught to others who in turn have continued and perfected it until it has taken a somewhat fixed form of one kind of discipline or another. But the whole basis is the action of the conscious will on the body. The exact form of the method is not of primary importance…. But essentially all these disciplines depend above all on the person who practises them and the way he uses them. One can, even in the most material, ordinary processes, make use of this altogether external basis to infuse into them powers of a higher order. And all methods, whatever they may be, depend almost exclusively on the person who uses them, on what he puts into them.

...By You see, if the matter is considered in its numerous "āsanas" or fixed postures most modern, most external form, how is it first cures that the body of that restlessness movements we make almost constantly in our everyday life, or which we have to make in our work if it is a sign of its inability physical work, do not help or help very little, almost negligibly, to develop the muscles and to contain without working them off create harmony in action and movement the vital forces poured into it from body? These same movements, on the universal Life-Oceanother hand, if they are made consciously, deliberately, with a definite aim, gives suddenly start helping you to form your muscles and build up your body. There are jobs, for instance, where people have to carry extremely heavy loads, like bags of cement or sacks of corn or coal, and they make a considerable effort; to a certain extent they do it with an extraordinary healthacquired facility, force and suppleness and seeks to liberate but that doesn’t give them harmony of the body, because they don’t do it from with the habits ''idea'' of developing their muscles, they do it just “like that”.And someone who follows a method, either one he has learnt or one he has worked out for himself, and who makes these very movements with the will to develop this muscle or that, to create a general harmony in his body—he succeeds.Therefore, in the conscious will, there is something which adds considerably to the movement itself.robust healthThose who really want to practise physical culture as it is conceived now, prolonged youtheverything they do, often an extraordinary longevity are attainedthey do consciously. On the other handThey walk downstairs consciously, Pranayama awakens they make the coiled-up serpent movements of ordinary life consciously, not mechanically. An attentive eye will perhaps notice a little difference but the Pranic dynamism greatest difference lies in the vital sheath and opens to will they put into it, the Yogin fields of consciousness, ranges of experience, abnormal faculties denied they put into it. Walking to the ordinary human life while it puissantly intensifies such normal powers go somewhere and faculties walking as he already possesses…<ref>http://incarnatewordan exercise is not the same thing.in/cwsa/23/the-systems-of-yoga#p9

</ref><center>~</center>Asana It is used by the Rajayoga only conscious will in its easiest and most natural positionall these things which is important, ...Coupled with the use of the mantra it is that which brings about the divine energy into progress and obtains the body and prepares for and facilitates result. Therefore, what I mean is that concentration the method one uses has only a relative importance in Samadhi. <ref>
http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/23/rajayoga#p7
</ref><center>~</center>...the way made clear for the ascent through itself; it is the greater psychic being will to the union with the superconscient Purusha. This can be done by Pranayamaobtain a certain result that is important.<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/23/rajayoga#p6</ref>

===Limitations The yogi or aspiring yogi who does ''asanas'' to obtain a spiritual result or even simply a control over his body, obtains these results because it is with this aim that he does them, whereas I know some people who do exactly the same things but for all sorts of Hathayoga===reasons unrelated to spiritual development, and who haven't even managed to acquire good health by it!

The results of Hathayoga are thus striking to the eye and impose easily on the vulgar or physical mind. And yet at the end we may ask what we have gained at the end of all this stupendous labour. The object of physical Nature.For instance, all the preservation of the mere physical lifemovements you make when dressing, its highest perfectiontaking your bath, ...On the other hand the physical results, increased vitality, prolonged youth, health, longevity are of small avail if they must be held by us as misers of ourselvestidying your room… no matter what; make them consciously, apart from with the common lifewill that this muscle should work, for their own sakethat muscle should work. You will see, not utilised, not thrown into the common sum of the world's activities. Hathayoga attains large you will obtain really amazing results, but at an exorbitant price and to very little purpose. <ref>
http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/23/the-systems-of-yoga#p10
</ref>

==What You bend down to pick something up, you stretch up to find something right at the top of a cupboard, you open a door, you close it, you have to go round an obstacle, there are a hundred and one things you do constantly and which you can make use of for your physical culture and which will demonstrate to you that it is Rajayoga?==the consciousness you put into it which produces the effect, a hundred times more than just the material fact of doing it. So, you choose the method you like best, but you can use the whole of your daily life in this way…. To think constantly of the harmony of the body, of the beauty of the movements, of not doing anything that is ungraceful and awkward. You can obtain a rhythm of movement and gesture which is very exceptional.<ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwm/09/17-july-1957#p2,p3,p4,p5,p6,p8,p9</ref>

Rajayoga aims at the liberation and perfection not of the bodily, ...it fixes its eyes on the "citta", that stuff of mental consciousness in which all these activities arise, and it seeks, even as =Hathayoga with its physical material, first to purify and to tranquillise.The preliminary movement of Rajayoga is a careful self-discipline by which good habits of mind are substituted for the lawless movements that indulge the lower nervous being. By the practice of truth, by renunciation of all forms of egoistic seeking, by abstention from injury to others, by purity, by constant meditation and inclination to the divine Purusha who is the true lord of the mental kingdom, a pure, glad, clear state of mind and heart is established.<ref>
http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/23/the-systems-of-yoga#p11</ref>=

…Rajayoga does not forget that the disabilities of the ordinary mind proceed largely from its subjection to the reactions of the nervous system and the body. ...it gets rid of the Hathayogic complexity and cumbrousness while it utilises... the system proceeds to the perfect quieting of the restless mind and its elevation to a higher plane through concentration of mental force by the successive stages which lead to the utmost inner concentration or ingathered state of the consciousness which ==What is called Samadhi.<ref>
http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/23/the-systems-of-yoga#p12

</ref>Hathayoga?==

Rajayoga also uses the Pranayama and for the same principal psychic purposes as the ...Hathayogais, but being in its whole principle own way, a psychical system, ...of knowledge; but insists first on while the proper Yoga of knowledge is a moral purification philosophy of the mentality…divided in the established being put into spiritual practice, a psychological system under two heads, five "yamas" and five "niyamas"this is a science of being, a psycho-physical system. ...The object Hathayoga, also, is to create a moral calmpath, though by a void of the passionslong, difficult and so prepare for the death of egoism in the rajasic human being. ...a discipline of the mind by regular practices of which the highest is meditation on the divine meticulous movement, "Beingduḥkham āptum"[difficult to attain], and their object is to create a sattwic calm, purity and preparation for concentration upon which the secure pursuance of the rest of the Yoga can be founded.<ref>
http://incarnatewordSupreme.in/cwsa/23/rajayoga#p5
</ref>

===What All Yoga proceeds in its method by three principles of practice; first, purification, that is Samadhi?===to say, the removal of all aberrations, disorders, obstructions brought about by the mixed and irregular action of the energy of being in our physical, moral and mental system; secondly, concentration, that is to say, the bringing to its full intensity and the mastered and self-directed employment of that energy of being in us for a definite end; thirdly, liberation, that is to say, the release of our being from the narrow and painful knots of the individualised energy in a false and limited play, which at present are the law of our nature. The enjoyment of our liberated being which brings us into unity or union with the Supreme, is the consummation; it is that for which Yoga is done. Three indispensable steps and the high, open and infinite levels to which they mount; and in all its practice Hathayoga keeps these in view.

There are almost as many ways of arriving at Samadhi as there are different paths The two main members of Yoga. ...All Yoga is in its nature an attempt and an arriving at unity with physical discipline, to which the Supremeothers are mere accessories, are ''āsana'',—unity with the being habituating of the Supreme. ...body to these two systemscertain attitudes of immobility, to Rajayoga and Hathayoga''prāṇāyāma'', …in spite of the wide difference regulated direction and arrestation by exercises of their methods from that breathing of the path vital currents of knowledge, they have this same principle as their final justificationenergy in the body. .. ….for it does mainly by these two methods, complex and cumbrous in a synthetic and integral Yoga they take a secondary importance; their aims have indeed to be includedaction, but their methods can either altogether be dispensed with or used only for a preliminary or else a casual assistance.<ref> book synthesis of yogasimple in principle and effective.</ref>

This is the first step only. …the The Hathayogic system proceeds to the perfect quieting of the restless mind and Asana has at its elevation to a higher plane through concentration basis two profound ideas which bring with them many effective implications. The first is that of mental force control by physical immobility, as the successive stages which lead to the utmost inner concentration or ingathered state power of mental immobility in yoga of knowledge the consciousness which second is called Samadhi.<ref>http://incarnateword.that of power by immobility in/cwsa/23/the-systems-Yoga of-yoga#p12</ref>knowledge, and for parallel reasons....

Intimately connected with It is the aim sign of a constant inability of the body to hold even the Yoga limited life energy that enters into or is generated in it… [T]he first necessity of Knowledge. ...a greater status or action is not so all-important in the Yoga to get rid of devotionthis disordered restlessness, but to still the activity and to regulate it still . The Hathayogin has its place there as the swoon to bring about an abnormal poise of being into which the ecstasy status and action of divine love casts the soul. ...It is evident that where our objective includes body and the possession of the Divine in lifeenergy, a state abnormal not in the direction of cessation of life cannot be the last consummating step or the highest desirable condition: Yogic trance cannot be an aim, as in so many Yogic systemsgreater disorder, but only a means, and a means not of escape from the waking existence, but to enlarge superiority and raise the whole seeing, living and active consciousness. <ref>
http://incarnatewordself-mastery.in/cwsa/23/samadhi#p1</ref>

==Bhakti Yoga==Bhakti in itself All this, however, is as wide as still a mere basis, the heart-yearning outward and inward physical conditions of the soul for the Divinetwo instruments used by Hathayoga. ...yoga of Bhakti resolves itself simply into these four movements, There still remains the desire more important matter of the Soul when it turns towards God psychical and spiritual effects to which they can be turned. This depends on the straining of its emotion towards him, connection between the pain of love body and the divine return of love, the delight of love possessed mind and spirit and between the play of that delight, gross and the eternal enjoyment of the divine Lover subtle body on which is the heart system of celestial blissHathayoga takes its stand. These are things that are at once too simple and too profound for methodising or for analysis. ….how the way of devotion enters Here it comes into a synthetic and integral Yogaline with Rajayoga, what place it takes there and how its principle affects a point is reached at which a transition from the one to the other principles of divine livingcan be made.<ref>
httphttps://incarnateword.in/cwsa/2423/the-way-of-devotionhathayoga#p1
p2,p4,p5,p6,p7,p12</ref>

=Different Systems Hathayoga similarly depends on this perception and experience that the vital forces and functions to which our life is normally subjected and whose ordinary operations seem set and indispensable, can be mastered and the operations changed or suspended with results that would otherwise be impossible and that seem miraculous to those who have not seized the rationale of Yoga=their process. <ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/23/life-and-yoga#p3</ref>

... the central principle ===Process of the chief schools of Yoga still prevalent in India...The triple Path of Works, of Love and of Knowledge uses some part of the mental being, will, heart or intellect as a starting-point and seeks by its conversion to arrive at the liberating Truth, Beatitude and Infinity which are the nature of the spiritual life. Its method is a direct commerce between the human Purusha in the individual body and the divine Purusha who dwells in every body and yet transcends all form and name.<ref>
http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/23/the-systems-of-yoga#p7

</ref>Hathayoga===

==Synthesis The chief processes of Hathayoga are ''āsana'' and ''prāṇāyāma''. By its numerous āsanas or fixed postures it first cures the Yoga Systems==body of that restlessness which is a sign of its inability to contain without working them off in action and movement the vital forces poured into it from the universal Life-Ocean, gives to it an extraordinary health, force and suppleness and seeks to liberate it from the habits by which it is subjected to ordinary physical Nature and kept within the narrow bounds of her normal operations. In the ancient tradition of Hathayoga it has always been supposed that this conquest could be pushed so far even as to conquer to a great extent the force of gravitation. By various subsidiary but elaborate processes the Hathayogin next contrives to keep the body free from all impurities and the nervous system unclogged for those exercises of respiration which are his most important instruments. These are called ''prāṇāyāma'', the control of the breath or vital power; for breathing is the chief physical functioning of the vital forces. Pranayama, for the Hathayogin, serves a double purpose. First, it completes the perfection of the body. The vitality is liberated from many of the ordinary necessities of physical Nature; robust health, prolonged youth, often an extraordinary longevity are attained. On the other hand, Pranayama awakens the coiled-up serpent of the Pranic dynamism in the vital sheath and opens to the Yogin fields of consciousness, ranges of experience, abnormal faculties denied to the ordinary human life while it puissantly intensifies such normal powers and faculties as he already possesses. <ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/23/the-systems-of-yoga#p9</ref><center>~</center>The physical being is the instrument; but the physical being is made up of two elements, the physical and the vital, the body which is the apparent instrument and the basis, and the life energy, ''prāṇa'', which is the power and the real instrument. Both of these instruments are now our masters. We are subject to the body, we are subject to the life energy; it is only in a very limited degree that we can, though souls, though mental beings, at all pose as their masters. We are bound by a poor and limited physical nature, we are bound consequently by a poor and limited life-power which is all that the body can bear or to which it can give scope. Moreover, the action of each and both in us is subject not only to the narrowest limitations, but to a constant impurity, which renews itself every time it is rectified, and to all sorts of disorders, some of which are normal, a violent order, part of our ordinary physical life, others abnormal, its maladies and disturbances. <ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/23/hathayoga#p5</ref> … Prana, the nervous or vital element in man which is centralised below the Manas and Chitta in the subtle body and connected with the navel in the Sthula Deha. Here I must distinguish between the Sukshma Prana and the Sthula Prana, the former moving in the nervous system of the subtle body as described in the Yogic books, the latter in the nervous system of the gross body. The two are closely connected and almost always act upon each other. The prana forms the link between the physical and the mental man. I must here warn you against stumbling into the error of those who try to harmonise Yogic Science with the physical science of the Europeans and search for the Yogic Nadis and Chakras in the physical body. You will not find them there. There are certain centres in the physical nervous system with which the Chakras correspond, otherwise Hathayoga would be impossible. But the Chakras are not these centres. The Europeans are masters in their own province of knowledge and there you need not hesitate to learn from them, but for God’s sake do not subject your higher knowledge to their lower; you will only create a most horrible confusion. Develop your higher knowledge first, then study their sciences and the latter will at once fall into their place.<ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/11/yogic-sadhan#p52</ref><center>~</center>The mere function of breathing into and out of the lungs is only the most sensible, outward and seizable movement of the Prana, the Breath of Life in our physical system. The Prana has according to Yogic science a fivefold movement pervading all the nervous system and the whole material body and determining all its functionings. The Hathayogin seizes on the outward movement of respiration as a sort of key which opens to him the control of all these five powers of the Prana. He becomes sensibly aware of their inner operations, mentally conscious of his whole physical life and action. He is able to direct the Prana through all the ''nāḍīs'' or nerve-channels of his system. He becomes aware of its action in the six ''cakras'' or ganglionic centres of the nervous system, and is able to open it up in each beyond its present limited, habitual and mechanical workings. He gets, in short, a perfect control of the life in the body in its most subtle nervous as well as in its grossest physical aspects, even over that in it which is at present involuntary and out of the reach of our observing consciousness and will. Thus a complete mastery of the body and the life and a free and effective use of them established upon a purification of their workings is founded as a basis for the higher aims of Hathayoga. <ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/23/hathayoga#p11</ref> <center>~</center>In Hathayoga the instrument is the body and life. All the power of the body is stilled, collected, purified, heightened, concentrated to its utmost limits or beyond any limits by Asana and other physical processes; the power of the life too is similarly purified, heightened, concentrated by Asana and Pranayama. This concentration of powers is then directed towards that physical centre in which the divine consciousness sits concealed in the human body. The power of Life, Nature-power, coiled up with all its secret forces asleep in the lowest nervous plexus of the earth-being,—for only so much escapes into waking action in our normal operations as is sufficient for the limited uses of human life,—rises awakened through centre after centre and awakens, too, in its ascent and passage the forces of each successive nodus of our being, the nervous life, the heart of emotion and ordinary mentality, the speech, sight, will, the higher knowledge, till through and above the brain it meets with and it becomes one with the divine consciousness. <ref>
https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/24/the-principle-of-the-integral-yoga#p3
</ref><center>~</center>It is the sign of a constant inability of the body to hold even the limited life energy that enters into or is generated in it, and consequently of a general dissipation of this Pranic force with a quite subordinate element of ordered and well-economised activity. Moreover in the consequent interchange and balancing between the movement and interaction of the vital energies normally at work in the body and their interchange with those which act upon it from outside, whether the energies of others or of the general Pranic force variously active in the environment, there is a constant precarious balancing and adjustment which may at any moment go wrong. Every obstruction, every defect, every excess, every lesion creates impurities and disorders. ... Yet this interference is inevitable, since man lives not for the purposes of the vital Nature in him alone, but for higher purposes which she had not contemplated in her first balance and to which she has with difficulty to adjust her operations. Therefore the first necessity of a greater status or action is to get rid of this disordered restlessness, to still the activity and to regulate it. The Hathayogin has to bring about an abnormal poise of status and action of the body and the life energy, abnormal not in the direction of greater disorder, but of superiority and self-mastery.<ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/23/hathayoga#p6</ref><center>~</center>The first object of the immobility of the Asana is to get rid of the restlessness imposed on the body and to force it to hold the Pranic energy instead of dissipating and squandering it. The experience in the practice of Asana is not that of a cessation and diminution of energy by inertia, but of a great increase, inpouring, circulation of force. The body, accustomed to work off superfluous energy by movement, is at first it will be able to bear this increase and this retained inner action and betrays it by violent tremblings; afterwards it habituates itself and, when the Asana is conquered, then it finds as much ease in the posture, however originally difficult or unusual to it, as in its easiest attitudes sedentary or recumbent. It becomes increasingly capable of holding whatever amount of increased vital energy is brought to bear upon it without needing to spill it out in movement, and this increase is so enormous as to seem illimitable, so that the body of the perfected Hathayogin is capable of feats of endurance, force, unfatigued expenditure of energy of which the normal physical powers of man at their highest would be incapable. For it is not only able to hold and retain this energy, but to bear its possession of the physical system and its more complete movement through it.<ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/23/hathayoga#p8</ref><center>~</center>The higher use of Hathayoga depends more intimately on Pranayama. Asana deals more directly with the more material part of the physical totality, though here too it needs the aid of the other; Pranayama, starting from the physical immobility and self-holding which is secured by Asana, deals more directly with the subtler vital parts, the nervous system. This is done by various regulations of the breathing, starting from equality of respiration and inspiration and extending to the most diverse rhythmic regulations of both with an interval of inholding of the breath. In the end the keeping in of the breath, which has first to be done with some effort, and even its cessation become as easy and seem as natural as the constant taking in and throwing out which is its normal action. But the first objects of the Pranayama are to purify the nervous system, to circulate the life-energy through all the nerves without obstruction, disorder or irregularity, and to acquire a complete control of its functionings, so that the mind and will of the soul inhabiting the body may be no longer subject to the body or life or their combined limitations. <ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/23/hathayoga#p10</ref>

An undiscriminating combination in block would not be a synthesis, but a confusion. ….To know, be and possess the Divine is the one thing needful and it includes or leads up to all the rest; ===Attitude towards this sole good we have to drive and this attained, all the rest that the divine Will chooses for us, all necessary form and manifestation, will be added.<ref>
http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/23/the-synthesis-of-the-systems#p2
</ref>Hathayoga===

Perfection includes perfection ''Q.Sweet Mother, you have said: “… Many methods have been framed to attain this perception [of mind and body, so that the highest results of Rajayoga psychic being in us] and Hathayoga should be contained in the widest formula of the synthesis finally to be effected by mankind. ...we would include in achieve this identification [with the scope of our liberated psychic being and perfected modes of activity the material life]. Some methods are psychological, our basesome religious, and the mental life, our intermediate instrument. <ref>
http://incarnatewordsome even mechanical.in/cwsa/23/the-synthesis-” Will you give some examples of-the-systems#p18</ref>this?''

==Objects ''A:'' Mechanical, these are the Asanas, Hathayoga. It is done with this intention [perception of Integral the psychic being, finally leading to identification with it].... The psychological method is Yoga==. To seek within oneself through introspection what is permanent, what is constant. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/05/16-december-1953#p4</ref><center>~</center>The true breathing is not merely the inspiration and expiration from the lungs which is merely the mechanism of it, but a drawing in of the universal energy of Prana into every cell of the body. <ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/29/sankhya-and-yoga#p21</ref>

We perceive that as ===Benefits of Hathayoga, dealing with the life and body, aims at the supernormal perfection of the physical life and its capacities and goes beyond it into the domain of the mental life, so Rajayoga, operating with the mind, aims at a supernormal perfection and enlargement of the capacities of the mental life and goes beyond it into the domain of the spiritual existence. ...Especially is the spiritual life, in this system, too much associated with the state of Samadhi. Our object is to make the spiritual life and its experiences fully active and fully utilisable in the waking state and even in the normal use of the functions. <ref>
http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/23/the-systems-of-yoga#p14
</ref>===

===The Principle asanas are one means for control of the Integral body, as is Pranayam for the life-forces, but neither is indispensable. <ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/29/sankhya-and-yoga#p16</ref><center>~</center>The body, thus liberated from itself, purified from many of its disorders and irregularities, becomes, partly by Asana, completely by combined Asana and Pranayama, a perfected instrument. It is freed from its ready liability to fatigue; it acquires an immense power of health; its tendencies of decay, age and death are arrested. The Hathayogin even at an age advanced beyond the ordinary span maintains the unimpaired vigour, health and youth of the life in the body; even the appearance of physical youth is sustained for a longer time. He has a much greater power of longevity, and from his point of view, the body being the instrument, it is a matter of no small importance to preserve it long and to keep it for all that time free from impairing deficiencies. It is to be observed, also, that there are an enormous variety of Asanas in Hathayoga, running in their fullness beyond the number of eighty, some of them of the most complicated and difficult character. This variety serves partly to increase the results already noted, as well as to give a greater freedom and flexibility to the use of the body, but it serves also to alter the relation of the physical energy in the body to the earth energy with which it is related. The lightening of the heavy hold of the latter, of which the overcoming of fatigue is the first sign and the phenomenon of ''utthāpana'' or partial levitation the last, is one result. The gross body begins to acquire something of the nature of the subtle body and to possess something of its relations with the life-energy; that becomes a greater force more powerfully felt and yet capable of a lighter and freer and more resolvable physical action, powers which culminate in the Hathayogic siddhis or extraordinary powers of ''garimā'', ''mahimā'', ''aṇimā''and ''laghimā''. Moreover, the life ceases to be entirely dependent on the action of the physical organs and functionings, such as the heart-beats and the breathing. These can in the end be suspended without cessation of or lesion to the life.<ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/23/hathayoga#p9</ref><center>~</center>The power of these exercises of breathing to bring about a purified and unobstructed state of the nervous system is a known and well-established fact of our physiology. It helps also to clear the physical system, but is not entirely effective at first on all its canals and openings; therefore the Hathayogin uses supplementary physical methods for clearing them out regularly of all their accumulations. The combination of these with Asana,—particular Asanas have even an effect in destroying particular diseases,—and with Pranayama maintains perfectly the health of the body. But the principal gain is that by this purification the vital energy can be directed anywhere, to any part of the body and in any way or with any rhythm of its movement. <ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/23/hathayoga#p10</ref><center>~</center>By Pranayama the Hathayogin is able to control, suspend and transcend the ordinary fixed operation of the Pranic energy which is all that Nature needs for the normal functioning of the body and of the physical life and mind, and he becomes aware of the channels in which that energy distributes itself in all its workings and is therefore able to do things with his body which seem miraculous to the ignorant, just as the physical scientist by his knowledge of the workings of material forces is able to do things with them which would seem to us magic if their law and process were not divulged. …But the Pranic energy supports not only the operations of our physical life, but also those of the mind in the living body. Therefore by the control of the Pranic energy it is not only possible to control our physical and vital functionings and to transcend their ordinary operation, but to control also the workings of the mind and to transcend its ordinary operations. The human mind in fact depends always on the pranic force which links it with the body through which it manifests itself, and it is able to deploy its own force only in proportion as it can make that energy available for its own uses and subservient to its own purposes. In proportion, therefore, as the Yogin gets back to the control of the Prana, and by the direction of its batteries opens up those nervous centres (''cakras'') in which it is now sluggish or only partially operative, he is able to manifest powers of mind, sense and consciousness which transcend our ordinary experience. The so-called occult powers of Yoga===are such faculties which thus open up of themselves as the Yogin advances in the control of the Pranic force and, purifying the channels of its movement, establishes an increasing communication between the consciousness of his subtle subliminal being and the consciousness of his gross physical and superficial existence. <ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/18/the-superlife-life-of-our-life#p4,p5</ref>

Hathayoga aims at the conquest of the life and the body whose combination in the food sheath and the vital vehicle constitutes, as we have seen, the gross body and whose equilibrium is the foundation of all Nature’s workings in the human being...The equilibrium established by Nature is sufficient for the integral Yoga, they are not indispensablenormal egoistic life; it is insufficient for here the reliance purpose of the Hathayogin. For it is calculated on the power amount of vital or dynamic force necessary to drive the physical engine during the normal span of human life and to perform more or less adequately the various workings demanded of it by the individual life inhabiting this frame and the world-environment by which it is conditioned. Hathayoga therefore seeks to rectify Nature and establish another equilibrium by which the higher being physical frame will be able to change sustain the lower existenceinrush of an increasing vital or dynamic force of Prana indefinite, almost infinite in its quantity or intensity. In Nature the equilibrium is based upon the individualisation of a working limited quantity and force of the Prana; more than that the individual is chosen mainly from above downward by personal and not the opposite wayhereditary habit unable to bear, use or control. In Hathayoga, and therefore the development of equilibrium opens a door to the superior power universalisation of the gnosis will be awaited as individual vitality by admitting into the instrumentative change in this part body, containing, using and controlling a much less fixed and limited action of the Yogauniversal energy.<ref>
http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/2423/the-elementssystems-of-perfectionyoga#p5
p8
</ref>

…For the methods ===Limitations of the integral Yoga must be mainly spiritual, and dependence on physical methods or fixed psychic or psycho-physical processes on a large scale would be the substitution of a lower for a higher action. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/23/rajayoga#p11</ref>Hathayoga===

The results of Hathayoga are thus striking to the eye and impose easily on the vulgar or physical mind.And yet at the end we may ask what we have gained at the end of all this stupendous labour.The object of physical Nature, the preservation of the mere physical life, its highest perfection, even in a certain sense the capacity of a greater enjoyment of physical living have been carried out on an abnormal scale.then followed an era of But the development weakness of philosophies Hathayoga is that its laborious and Yoga difficult processes which more make so great a demand on the time and more used the emotional energy and aesthetic being as impose so complete a severance from the means ordinary life of spiritual realisation ….We may say therefore men that the universal Consciousness after utilisation of its descent into Matter has conducted results for the life of the world becomes either impracticable or is extraordinarily restricted. ...On the other hand the evolution there along two linesphysical results, one increased vitality, prolonged youth, health, longevity are of ascent to the discovery small avail if they must be held by us as misers of ourselves, apart from the self and spiritcommon life, for their own sake, not utilised, not thrown into the other common sum of descent through the already evolved levels of mindworld's activities. Hathayoga attains large results, life but at an exorbitant price and body so as to bring down very little purpose.<ref>
http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/23/the spiritual consciousness into these also -systems-of-yoga#p10
</ref><center>~</center>Pranayam is safe only if one knows how to do it and is on guard against its possible dangers: (1) danger to fulfil thereby some secret intention health by mistakes in the creation method, (2) rising of the material universe. Our Yoga is in its principle a taking up vital forces, especially lust, egoism and summarising wrongly directed strength and completing force, (3) the awakening of concealed sanskaras of this process, an endeavour to rise to the highest possible supramental level and bring down its consciousness and powers into mind, life and bodyphysical nature or latent karma from past lives.<ref>
httphttps://incarnateword.in/cwsa/2829/spiritual-evolutionsankhya-and-the-supramentalyoga#p5
p18 </ref>

This energy will not be in its essence an outward, physical or muscular strength, but will be =Comparison of the nature, first, Hathayoga with Other Schools of an unbounded life-power or pranic force, secondly, sustaining and using this pranic energy, a superior or supreme will-power acting in the body. ...when we go higher, the relation is gradually reversed; it is then able to act in its own power or handle the rest only as a subordinate instrumentation.Yoga=<ref>
http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/24/the-power-of-the-instruments#p6</ref>==Rajayoga==

...In our Yoga it is Rajayoga aims at the liberation and perfection not a specialised processof the bodily, but a spontaneous uprush of the mental being, the control of the emotional and sensational life, the mastery of the whole lower apparatus of thought and consciousness. It fixes its eyes on the "citta", that stuff of mental consciousness sometimes in currents or waveswhich all these activities arise, and it seeks, even as Hathayoga with its physical material, sometimes in first to purify and to tranquillise. ...The preliminary movement of Rajayoga is a less concrete motioncareful self-discipline by which good habits of mind are substituted for the lawless movements that indulge the lower nervous being. By the practice of truth, by renunciation of all forms of egoistic seeking, by abstention from injury to others, by purity, by constant meditation and on inclination to the divine Purusha who is the true lord of the other side mental kingdom, a descent pure, glad, clear state of mind and heart is established. <ref>
http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/23/the Divine Consciousness -systems-of-yoga#p11</ref><center>~</center>Rajayoga also uses the Pranayama and its Force into for the body. This descent is felt same principal psychic purposes as the Hathayoga, but being in its whole principle a pouring psychical system, it employs it only as one stage in the series of calm its practices and peaceto a very limited extent, of force for three or four large utilities. It does not start with Asana and powerPranayama, but insists first on a moral purification of the mentality. This preliminary is of supreme importance; without it the course of the rest of lightthe Rajayoga is likely to be troubled, marred and full of joy unexpected mental, moral and physical perils. This moral purification is divided in the established system under two heads, five ''yamas'' and ecstasyfive ''niyamas''. ... ''Yama'' is, of pure wideness more largely, any self-discipline by which the rajasic egoism and its passions and freedom desires in the human being are conquered and knowledgequieted into perfect cessation. The object is to create a moral calm, a void of the passions, and so prepare for the death of egoism in the rajasic human being. The ''niyamas'' are equally a Divine discipline of the mind by regular practices of which the highest is meditation on the divine Being or , and their object is to create a Presence—sometimes one sattwic calm, purity and preparation for concentration upon which the secure pursuance of these, sometimes several the rest of them or all togetherthe Yoga can be founded. <ref>
http://incarnateword...Once this descent becomes habitual, in/cwsa/23/rajayoga#p5
</ref><center>~</center>But Rajayoga does not forget that the disabilities of the Divine Force, ordinary mind proceed largely from its subjection to the Power reactions of the Mother begins to work, no longer nervous system and the body. It adopts therefore from above only or from behind the veilHathayogic system its devices of ''āsana'' and ''prāṇāyāma'', but consciously reduces their multiple and elaborate forms in each case to one simplest and most directly effective process sufficient for its own immediate object. Thus it gets rid of the Adhara itself, Hathayogic complexity and cumbrousness while it utilises the swift and deals with powerful efficacy of its difficulties methods for the control of the body and possibilities the vital functions and for the awakening of that internal dynamism, full of a latent supernormal faculty, typified in Yogic terminology by the ''kuṇḍalinī'', the coiled and sleeping serpent of Energy within. This done, the system proceeds to the perfect quieting of the restless mind and carries on its elevation to a higher plane through concentration of mental force by the successive stages which lead to the utmost inner concentration or ingathered state of the Yogaconsciousness which is called Samadhi. <ref>
http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/3023/the-inwardsystems-movementof-yoga#p17p12

</ref>

===Individual to UniversalisationWhat is Samadhi?===

...Intimately connected with the aim of the Yoga of Knowledge which must always be the growth, the equilibrium established by Nature is sufficient for ascent or the withdrawal into a higher or a divine consciousness not now normal egoistic life; it to us, is insufficient for the purpose importance attached to the phenomenon of the HathayoginYogic trance, to Samadhi. ...Hathayoga therefore seeks It is supposed that there are states of being which can only be gained in trance; that especially is to rectify Nature be desired in which all action of awareness is abolished and there is no consciousness at all except the pure supramental immersion in immobile, timeless and establish another equilibrium by which infinite being. By passing away in this trance the soul departs into the physical frame will be able to sustain silence of the inrush highest Nirvana without possibility of an increasing vital return into any illusory or dynamic force inferior state of existence. Samadhi is not so all-important in the Yoga of Prana indefinitedevotion, almost infinite in but it still has its quantity or intensity. .place there as the swoon of being into which the ecstasy of divine love casts the soul.To enter into it is the supreme step of the ladder of Yogic practice in Rajayoga and Hathayoga.What then is the nature of Samadhi or the utility of its trance in an integral Yoga? It is evident that where our objective includes the possession of the Divine in Hathayogalife, the equilibrium opens a door to the universalisation state of cessation of life cannot be the individual vitality by admitting into last consummating step or the bodyhighest desirable condition: Yogic trance cannot be an aim, containingas in so many Yogic systems, but only a means, using and controlling a much less fixed means not of escape from the waking existence, but to enlarge and limited action of raise the universal energywhole seeing, living and active consciousness.<ref>
http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/23/the-systems-of-yogasamadhi#p8
p1</ref>

...in ==Bhakti Yoga the process is spiritual and psychic; even its vital and physical processes are given a spiritual or psychic turn and raised to a higher motion than belongs properly to the ordinary life and Matter, as for instance in the Hathayogic and Rajayogic use of the breathing or the use of Asana. ...this we shall have to do if our aim is to transform the human into the divine life. …the lower perfection will not disappear; it will remain but will be enlarged and transformed by the higher perfection which only the power of the spirit can give. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/09/24-april-1957#p2</ref>==

Bhakti in itself is as wide as the heart-yearning of the soul for the Divine and as simple and straightforward as love and desire going straight towards their object. It cannot therefore be fixed down to any systematic method, cannot found itself on a psychological science like the Rajayoga, or a psycho-physical like the Hathayoga, or start from a definite intellectual process like the ordinary method of the Jnanayoga. ...the more intimate yoga of Bhakti resolves itself simply into these four movements, the desire of the Soul when it turns towards God and the straining of its emotion towards him, the pain of love and the divine return of love, the delight of love possessed and the play of that delight, and the eternal enjoyment of the divine Lover which is the heart of celestial bliss. These are things that are at once too simple and too profound for methodising or for analysis. One can at best only say, here are these four successive elements, steps, if we may so call them, of the siddhi, and here are, largely, some of the means which it uses, and here again are some of the aspects and experiences of the sadhana of devotion.<ref>
http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/24/the-way-of-devotion#p1
</ref>==Integral Yoga=More on Physical Culture =All Yoga is in its nature an attempt and an arriving at unity with the Supreme,—unity with the being of the Supreme, unity with the consciousness of the Supreme, unity with the bliss of the Supreme...To these two systems, to Rajayoga and Hathayoga, we may as well now turn; for in spite of the wide difference of their methods from that of the path of knowledge, they have this same principle as their final justification. At the same time, it will not be necessary for us to do more than regard the spirit of their gradations in passing; for in a synthetic and integral Yoga they take a secondary importance; their aims have indeed to be included, but their methods can either altogether be dispensed with or used only for a preliminary or else a casual assistance.<ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/23/hathayoga#p1</ref><center>~</center>Perfection [in Integral Yoga] includes perfection of mind and body, so that the highest results of Rajayoga and Hathayoga=should be contained in the widest formula of the synthesis finally to be effected by mankind. At any rate a full development of the general mental and physical faculties and experiences attainable by humanity through Yoga must be included in the scope of the integral method. Nor would these have any ''raison d’être''unless employed for an integral mental and physical life. Such a mental and physical life would be in its nature a translation of the spiritual existence into its right mental and physical values. Thus we would arrive at a synthesis of the three degrees of Nature and of the three modes of human existence which she has evolved or is evolving. We would include in the scope of our liberated being and perfected modes of activity the material life, our base, and the mental life, our intermediate instrument.

Pranayama Nor would the integrality to which we aspire be real or even possible, if it were confined to the individual. Since our divine perfection embraces the realisation of ourselves in being, in life and in love through others as well as through ourselves, the extension of our liberty and of its results in others would be the inevitable outcome as well as the broadest utility of our liberation and perfection. And the constant and inherent attempt of such an extension would be towards its increasing and ultimately complete generalisation in mankind. <ref>
https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/23/the-synthesis-of-the-systems#p18,p19</ref><center>~</center>Most of the physical siddhis acquired by certain Yogins are brought about by some opening up of the law of the subtle or a calling down of something of the law of the spiritual body. The ordinary method is the opening up of the ''cakras'' by the physical processes of Hathayoga (of which something is also included in the Rajayoga) or by the methods of the Tantric discipline. But while these may be optionally used at certain stages by the integral Yoga, they are not indispensable; for here the reliance is on the power of the higher being to change the lower existence, a working is chosen mainly from above downward and not the opposite way, and therefore the development of the superior power of the gnosis will be awaited as the instrumentative change in this part of the Yoga. <ref>
http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/24/the-elements-of-perfection#p5
</ref><center>~</center>On the whole, for an integral Yoga the special methods of Rajayoga and Hathayoga may be useful at times in certain stages of the progress, but are not indispensable. It is true that their principal aims must be included in the integrality of the Yoga; but they can be brought about by other means. For the methods of the integral Yoga must be mainly spiritual, and dependence on physical methods or fixed psychic or psycho-physical practices like asana do not necessarily root out sexual desire— processes on a large scale would be the substitution of a lower for a higher action.<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/23/rajayoga#p11</ref><center>~</center>In Hathayoga and in the various attempts at divinisation of the body there is also a line of endeavour which attempted to arrive at the same achievement with regard to living matter; but this still awaits the discovery of the true characteristic method and power of spirit in the body.The We may say therefore that the universal Consciousness after its descent into Matter has conducted the evolution there along two lines, one thing of ascent to do the discovery of the self and spirit, the other of descent through the already evolved levels of mind, life and body so as to bring down the spiritual consciousness into these also and to fulfil thereby some secret intention in the creation of the material universe. Our Yoga is in its principle a taking up and summarising and completing of this process, an endeavour to rise to separate oneself the highest possible supramental level and bring down its consciousness and powers into mind, life and body.<ref>
http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/28/spiritual-evolution-and-the-supramental#p5
</ref><center>~</center>It is the universal Prana, as the ancients knew, which in various forms sustains or drives material energy in all physical things from these movementsthe electron and atom and gas up through the metal, plant, animal, physical man. To get this pranic shakti to act more freely and forcibly in the body is knowingly or unknowingly the attempt of all who strive for a greater perfection of or in the body. The ordinary man tries to command it mechanically by physical exercises and other corporeal means, the Hathayogin more greatly and flexibly, but still mechanically by Asana and Pranayama; but for our purpose it can be commanded by more subtle, essential and pliable means; first, by a will in the mind widely opening itself to and potently calling in the universal pranic shakti on which we draw and fixing its stronger presence and more powerful working in the body; secondly, by the will in the mind opening itself rather to the spirit and its power and calling in a higher pranic energy from above, a supramental pranic force; thirdly, the last step, by the highest supramental will of the spirit entering and taking up directly the task of the perfection of the body. In fact, it is always really a will within which drives and makes effective the pranic instrument even when it uses what seem to find onebe purely physical means; but at first it is dependent on the inferior action.<ref>
http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/24/the-power-of-the-instruments#p6</ref><center>~</center>This inward movement takes place in many different ways and there is sometimes a complex experience combining all the signs of the complete plunge. There is a sense of going in or deep down, a feeling of the movement towards inner depths; there is often a stillness, a pleasant numbness, a stiffness of the limbs. This is the sign of the consciousness retiring from the body inwards under the pressure of a force from above,—that pressure stabilising the body into an immobile support of the inner life, in a kind of strong and still spontaneous ''āsana''s . There is a feeling of waves surging up, mounting to the head, which brings an outer unconsciousness and an inner self waking. It is the ascending of the lower consciousness in the Adhara to meet the greater consciousness above. It is a movement analogous to that on which so much stress is laid in the Tantrik process, the awakening of the Kundalini, the Energy coiled up and live latent in the body and its mounting through the spinal cord and the centres (''cakras'') and the Brahmarandhra to meet the Divine above. In our Yoga it; is not a specialised process, but a spontaneous uprush of the whole lower consciousness sometimes in currents or waves, sometimes in a less concrete motion, and on the other side a descent of the Divine Consciousness and its Force into the body. This descent is felt as a pouring in of calm and peace, of force and power, of light, of joy and ecstasy, of wideness and freedom and knowledge, of a Divine Being or a Presence—sometimes one of these movements will not then any , sometimes several of them or all together. The movement of ascension has different results: it may liberate the consciousness so that one feels no longer appear as belonging in the body, but above it or else spread in wideness with the body either almost non-existent or only a point in one’s free expanse. It may enable the being or some part of the being to oneself but as surface impositions go out from the body and move elsewhere, and this action is usually accompanied by some kind of partial ''samādhi'' or else a complete trance. Or it may result in empowering the consciousness, no longer limited by the body and the habits of the outer Prakriti upon external nature, to go within, to enter the inner mental depths, the inner vital, the inner (subtle) physical, the psychic, to become aware of its inmost psychic self or Purushaits inner mental, vital and subtle physical being and, it may be, to move and live in the domains, the planes, the worlds that correspond to these parts of the nature. They can then be more easily discarded It is the repeated and constant ascent of the lower consciousness that enables the mind, the vital, the physical to come into touch with the higher planes up to the supramental and get impregnated with their light and power and influence. And it is the repeated and constant descent of the Divine Consciousness and its Force that is the means for the transformation of the whole being and the whole nature. Once this descent becomes habitual, the Divine Force, the Power of the Mother begins to work, no longer from above only or brought to nothingfrom behind the veil, but consciously in the Adhara itself, and deals with its difficulties and possibilities and carries on the Yoga.<ref>
http
https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/3130/sexthe-inward-movement#p95
p14</ref>

Psychology: that's abstract. Even yoga boils down to: he sat down =More on Physical Education and stayed there for so many hours, he had this vision, he tried out that method, he did asanas and breathing exercises... That, for them, is concrete. That and that alone. Psychology is thoroughly abstract—thoroughly. It's unreal to them.<ref>http://incarnateword.in/agenda/03/july-31-1962#p13</ref>Hathayoga =

...FortunatelyPranayama and other physical practices like asana do not necessarily root out sexual desire—sometimes by increasing enormously the vital force in the body they can even exaggerate in a rather startling way the force too of the sexual tendency, which, I lived with Sri Aurobindobeing at the base of the physical life, who never used is always difficult to sit cross-leggedconquer. He told me right away that The one thing to do is to separate oneself from these movements, to find one’s inner self and live in it was all a question ; these movements will not then any longer appear as belonging to oneself but as surface impositions of habits—subconscious habitsthe outer Prakriti upon the inner self or Purusha. It has no importance whatsoeverThey can then be more easily discarded or brought to nothing. And how well he explained<ref>
http: //incarnateword.in/cwsa/31/sex#p95
</ref><center>~</center>...if a posture is necessary for you, it will come by itself. And it's it’s perfectly true, for instance, that when necessary, the body will suddenly sit up straight—it comes spontaneously. As he said, the important thing is not the external frame but the inner experience, and if there is a physical necessity and your inner experience is entirely sincere, that physical necessity will come "ALL BY ITSELF." This is something I am absolutely sure of... Consequently, all those stories of posture and so on are the petty mechanical bounds of the human mind.

==Limitations <center>What better offering can we make to the Divine, than to offer the skill of Science==our growing bodies? Let us offer our efforts towards perfection, and physical education will take for us a new meaning and a greater value. The world is preparing for a new creation, let us help through physical education, by making our bodies stronger, more receptive and more plastic, on the way to physical transformation. <ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwm/12/messages-for-competitions#p49,p50,p51</ref></center>