Hathayoga Compilation

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Physical Education

What is Physical Education?

Physical education means chiefly the combination of all exercises for the sake of the growth and upkeep of the body.

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...the qualities that one can acquire through physical education. The first condition for acquiring power is to be obedient.

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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.

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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.

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...It's physical education that teaches the cells to be conscious. But to develop the brain, it's study, observation, intelligent education—especially observation and reasoning. And naturally, for the whole education of the consciousness from the standpoint of character, it's yoga.

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Physical Education is meant to bring into the body, consciousness and control, discipline and mastery, all things necessary for a higher and better life.

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...It is by an enlightened physical culture and by using physical activities―the activities of the body―not for little personal needs and satisfactions, but to make the body more capable of expressing a higher beauty and consciousness. And for that, physical education has an important place, which should be given to it.

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...It is a power of attracting certain very material vibrations, which has a capacity for utilisation that increases its strength—which is like the action of physical exercise, you see—it increases its strength through utilisation.

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... 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. For this, physical education is one of the means most directly effective .

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...but for expressing the Spirit no other animal can be compared with him...physical education, a systematic development of the muscles...Man is certainly, in an organised way, the first progressive animal who can augment his capacities, his possibilities, increase his faculties and acquire things that he did not have spontaneously. There is not one animal which can do that.

Advantages of Physical Education

So it gives physical education a deep raison d'être: people capable of stopping fires, saving drowning people and so on. There needn't be many: if there were five hundred of them, it would be enough for the entire town, in little groups going about like that.

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Sports help the body to prepare for the Transformation.

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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. 


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Sports are all the games, competitions, tournaments, etc., all the things based on contests and ending in placings and prizes.

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...If one keeps the habit of leading one's normal life always, very soon one does not even notice the presence of the menses.

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The best thing for your headache is to take plenty of physical exercise (such as gardening for example).

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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 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 to have another one for girls.

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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.

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...a fundamental passive condition of the consciousness gathered into itself is the proper poise for concentration and a seated gathered immobility in the body is the best for that ...this is the reason why Yogis always sit in an asana. One can accustom oneself to meditate walking, standing, lying, but sitting is the first natural position.

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… the outer change is necessary but as a part of the inner change. If there is impurity and insincerity within, the outer change will not be effective; but if there is a sincere inner working, the outer change will help it and accelerate the process.

Hathayoga

What is Hathayoga?

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.

Cultivating Hathayoga

Q: Mother, in the physical education we practise here our aim is a greater and greater control over the body, isn't it? So, as Sri Aurobindo has said in what we read last time, that the Hathayoga and Tantric methods give a very great control over the body, why don't we introduce these methods into our system?

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."

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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.

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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.

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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.

The asanas are one means for control of the body, as is Pranayam for the life-forces, but neither is indispensable.

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.

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.

... 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.

...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.

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.

Benefits of Hathayoga

...By its numerous "āsanas" or fixed postures it first cures the 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 ...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…

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Asana is used by the Rajayoga only in its easiest and most natural position, ...Coupled with the use of the mantra it brings the divine energy into the body and prepares for and facilitates that concentration in Samadhi.

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...the way made clear for the ascent through the greater psychic being to the union with the superconscient Purusha. This can be done by Pranayama.

Limitations of 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, ...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 ourselves, apart from the common life, for their own sake, not utilised, not thrown into the common sum of the world's activities. Hathayoga attains large results, but at an exorbitant price and to very little purpose.

Different Schools Of Yoga

What is Rajayoga?

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.

…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 is called Samadhi.

Prerequisites for Rajayoga

Rajayoga also uses the Pranayama and for the same principal psychic purposes as the Hathayoga, but being in its whole principle a psychical system, ...but insists first on a moral purification of the mentality…divided in the established system under two heads, five "yamas" and five "niyamas". ...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. ...a discipline of the mind by regular practices of which the highest is meditation on the divine "Being", 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.

What is Samadhi?

There are almost as many ways of arriving at Samadhi as there are different paths of Yoga. ...All Yoga is in its nature an attempt and an arriving at unity with the Supreme,—unity with the being of the Supreme. ...to these two systems, to Rajayoga and Hathayoga, …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. ….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.

This is the first step only. …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 is called Samadhi.

Intimately connected with the aim of the Yoga of Knowledge. ...is not so all-important in the Yoga of devotion, but it still has its place there as the swoon of being into which the ecstasy of divine love casts the soul. ...It is evident that where our objective includes the possession of the Divine in life, a state 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 systems, but only a means, and a means not of escape from the waking existence, but to enlarge and raise the whole seeing, living and active consciousness.

Bhakti Yoga

Bhakti in itself is as wide as the heart-yearning of the soul for the Divine. ...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. ….how the way of devotion enters into a synthetic and integral Yoga, what place it takes there and how its principle affects the other principles of divine living.

Different Systems of Yoga

... the central principle 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.

Synthesis of the Yoga Systems

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; 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.

Perfection 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. ...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.

Objects of Integral Yoga

We perceive that as 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.

The Principle of the Integral Yoga

In Hathayoga ...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.

...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.

…For the methods 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.

...then followed an era of the development of philosophies and Yoga processes which more and more used the emotional and aesthetic being as the means of spiritual realisation ….We may say therefore that the universal Consciousness after its descent into Matter has conducted the evolution there along two lines, one of ascent to 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 the highest possible supramental level and bring down its consciousness and powers into mind, life and body.

This energy will not be in its essence an outward, physical or muscular strength, but will be of the nature, first, 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.

...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 pure wideness and freedom and knowledge, of a Divine Being or a Presence—sometimes one of these, sometimes several of them or all together.

...Once this descent becomes habitual, the Divine Force, the Power of the Mother begins to work, no longer from above only or from behind the veil, but consciously in the Adhara itself, and deals with its difficulties and possibilities and carries on the Yoga. 

Individual to Universalisation

...the equilibrium established by Nature is sufficient for the normal egoistic life; it is insufficient for the purpose of the Hathayogin. ...Hathayoga therefore seeks to rectify Nature and establish another equilibrium by which the physical frame will be able to sustain the inrush of an increasing vital or dynamic force of Prana indefinite, almost infinite in its quantity or intensity. ...in Hathayoga, the equilibrium opens a door to the universalisation of the individual vitality by admitting into the body, containing, using and controlling a much less fixed and limited action of the universal energy.

...in 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.

More on Physical Culture and Hathayoga

Pranayama and other physical practices like asana do not necessarily root out sexual desire— ...The one thing to do is to separate oneself from these movements, to find one's inner self and live in it; these movements will not then any longer appear as belonging to oneself but as surface impositions of the outer Prakriti upon the inner self or Purusha. They can then be more easily discarded or brought to nothing.

Psychology: that's abstract. Even yoga boils down to: he sat down 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.

...Fortunately, I lived with Sri Aurobindo, who never used to sit cross-legged. He told me right away that it was all a question of habits—subconscious habits. It has no importance whatsoever. And how well he explained: if a posture is necessary for you, it will come by itself. And 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 of Science

...Modern Science and psychology have even held, for a time, this dependence to be in fact an identity; they have tried to establish that there is no such separate entity as mind or soul and that all mental operations are in reality physical functionings. Even otherwise, apart from this untenable hypothesis, the dependence is so exaggerated that it has been supposed to be an altogether binding condition, and any such thing as the control of the vital and bodily functionings by the mind or its power to detach itself from them has long been treated as an error, a morbid state of the mind or a hallucination. Therefore the dependence has remained absolute, and Science neither finds nor seeks for the real key of the dependence and therefore can discover for us no secret of release and mastery.

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