Page 5 - All India Magazine Apr-2026

THE SUNLIT WAY OF YOGA

A cheerful and sunlit heart
Peace was the very first thing that the Yogins and seekers
of old asked for and it was a quiet and silent mind — and that
always brings peace — that they declared to be the best condi-
tion for realising the Divine. A cheerful and sunlit heart is the fit
vessel for the Ananda and who shall say that Ananda or what
prepares it is an obstacle to the Divine union? As for despon-
dency, it is surely a terrible burden to carry on the way. One
has to pass through it sometimes, like Christian of The Pilgrim's
Progress through the Slough of Despond, but its constant reit-
eration cannot be anything but an obstacle. The Gita specially
says, "Practise the Yoga with an undespondent heart", anirvi-
77acetas1.
I know perfectly well that pain and suffering and struggle
and excesses of despair are natural — though not inevitable —
on the way, — not because they are helps, but because they
are imposed on us by the darkness of this human nature out
of which we have to struggle into the Light. I do not suppose
Ramakrishna or Vivekananda would have recommended the
incidents you allude to as an example for others to follow —
they would surely have said that faith, fortitude, perseverance
were the better way. That after all was what they stuck to in
the end in spite of these bad moments and they would never
have dreamed of giving up the Yoga or the aspiration for the
Divine on the ground that they were unfit and not meant for the
realisation.
At any rate Ramakrishna told the story of Narada and the as-
cetic Yogi and the Vaishnava Bhakta with approval of its moral.
I put it in my own language but keep the substance. Narada on
his way to Vaikuntha met a Yogi practising hard tapasya on the

All India Magazine, April 2026 5