Page 12 - All India Magazine May-2022

Besides these two great practices the Hathayogins have numerous
others such as the extraordinary means by which they clean out daily
all the physical impurities of the body. By these numerous and dif-

ficult physical practices they attain an extraordinary power, vitality,
virility, longevity, and are also able to attain knowledge transcend-
ing the ordinary human bounds, leave the body in Samadhi and, in
one word, exercise every mere power that comes by Yoga. But the
practice of unmixed Hathayoga generates a colossal egoism and the
Yogin seldom exceeds it. The modern Hathayoga is mixed with the
Rajayoga and, therefore, neither so virile and potent nor so danger-
ous as the ancient. CWSA 1: 506

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 ob-
ject 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. But the weakness of Hathayoga is that its laborious and dif-

ficult processes make so great a demand on the time and energy and
impose so complete a severance from the ordinary life of men that
the utilisation of its results for the life of the world becomes either
impracticable or is extraordinarily restricted. If in return for this loss
we gain another life in another world within, the mental, the dynam-
ic, these results could have been acquired through other systems,
through Rajayoga, through Tantra, by much less laborious methods
and held on much less exacting terms. On the other hand the physi-
cal 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.
CWSA 23: 35 Sri Aurobindo

All India Magazine, May 2022