It is traditionally believed that yoga is playing with danger. The other day you enigmatically said yoga is dangerous but safe. Can you shed more light on this topic?
What I was trying to say is that all the yoga has a tremendous esoteric access to the subtle parts, the subtle complicated systems. Compared to the access it gives, the safety measures that it has are really incredible and if you follow the principles of yoga, you are certainly with all your guards. But it happens many times that people do not practice the principles of yoga or maybe a part of it is practised. Therein lies the danger. That's why even if we put a lot of stress on asana, pranayama, we must see that other principles of yoga are inculcated in our practice. When you practice you will not become indiscreet, you will not become injudicious, you will not be crazy, delirious.
But suppose, for example, somebody approaches asana like a gymnast approaches his or her exercises. There is a craze to get something and if one practices asana, pranayama with that craze, the principles of yoga are definitely kept aside and you become exercise fanatic. And all you want, like a gymnast, is just go after getting the results for whatever degree of exercise you want to reach. You are after it. You are crazy. You are delirious and by hook or crook you try to attain results. Because ultimately, you want to win the gold medal! So you go all out, without any discretion, without any judiciousness. Your only aim is to reach that degree and get the gold medal. And in the process, you loose so many things, for which you don't bother. And if you are so crazy and mad, it could be a mania, an exercise-mania, an exercise-craze, then you are not following the yogic principles and therefore you are disinsulated for any troubles. They will definitely attack you and will finish you.
But if you are practising yogic principles, you will be moderate, you will be temperate, you will be judicious and discrete and in that case, the yogic practices are absolutely safe. In spite of the fact that I said they have a very great deep access to your mind and mental mechanism, to your mental functioning and mental constitution, all that will be complete safe. Yogic principles are like guards. If you follow yogic principles, the Yama, Niyama etc., and the other moral, ethical principles in your practice, if your practices are conditioned, navigated and shaped by those principles, then there is definitely no danger. Now, to give an example which is very palatable: if someone is looking at Guruji and says "He does a hundred and eight Viparita Chakrasana and I should also do it because he does it." And "he is really an ideal of mine and therefore I should do it." Well, he creates room for danger because he should know where he stands and for how much he is qualified. You can do a hundred and eight but you will not be as Guruji is after his hundred an eight. That's the big difference nobody notices. There are some of his students who did practice with him. If Guruji did a hundred and eight, they also did a hundred and eight but they did not bother to find out the state of Guruji after a hundred and eight as compared to their state after a hundred and eight. They never bothered, they only had the satisfaction of having done along with him, "He did a hundred and eight, I did a hundred and eight!"
This is the aspect which brings danger in practices - if you are crazy, if you are delirious, if you are mad after something. But when you are practicing other principles of yoga, you will certainly know for what you are qualified and how much you should do. I have said sometimes in the class, these are the propositions, "How much am I doing? How much can I do?" and "How much should I do?"
Once you have these principles guiding your practices, there should be no danger. But if you are just thinking of "how much I can" and "how much can I do," you are keeping the gates open for all the troubles to enter. But once you know "how much should I do," then the gates are absolutely closed for any troubles to enter in. So that is the aspect of discretion, judiciousness in the practice. If you are following Guruji in a hundred and eight Viparita Chakrasana you should follow him in everything. About that, people don't bother - what he eats, what he sees the rest of the day, how much pranayama he does, what other things he does. Nobody bothers to find out. So the problem is that the principles of practice are very important to learn. That will give you sufficient impellent, no more, no less. That is very important. If you have a tremendous impellent, don't think it is an advantage. It should be an optimum impellent. You know what "impellent" means? Do you understand? The force making you practice, the force behind you: impel. To "impel" is to "push." The push that you have in your practice must be governed by other factors, otherwise you will be mad or crazy.
Like a gymnast who may work without any care to his body and his calibre to reach that point to get the gold medal. You can imagine what happens to them after that. Their life as a gymnast is only fifteen or twenty years. A gymnast's life is very, very short. A sportsman's life also, a little longer but again it is short. And then after this career is over, their whole life is filled with a vacuum, and they invite various mental problems, because thereafter there is going to be no achievement, no laurels, no claps. People will not be applauding them. No press publicity, nothing is coming in the press. So they suffer with all those things.
People want that; once they are used to it, that recognition, people applauding, appreciating, people always staying around pleasing you and once that is gone, they feel a vacuum. So the thing is, safety measures are there if you understand the principles of yoga. Once you are following them, then there is no danger at all, because it is a tremendously safe system although it goes beyond your faculties, your perceptions, your powers, your sensitivity and mental powers. It really takes you beyond those powers. You see, when you go into the mystical aspect of yoga, you are groping in dark, but you are not without a guide. And when you have a guide, even if you are in a foreign place, you don't have any difficulties. If you have a reliable person as your guide, you don't have any worries. So if you follow the principles, you have a guiding force within you although you are moving in dark, although you are moving in something un-manifest, something inconceivable.
A yogi is supposed, from a certain stage, to face the unknown.
Yes. Yes. Therefore you have a guide, when you have these principles properly inculcated. Then you are totally confident and also you have no apprehension, no fears, no fumbles; otherwise there will be fumbles. If you don't attend to integral yoga, then such dangers can come, in pranayama particularly. That's why they say that pranayama is very dangerous.
It can kill you! "As lions, elephants and tigers are tamed very slowly and cautiously, so should prana be brought under control very slowly in gradation measured according to one's capacity and physical limitations. Otherwise it will kill the practitioner." [ 4 ]
It can kill you if you don't practice the principles of practice. Once you are following the principles of practice then you will not antagonize the science. If you antagonize the science, the science is dangerous and therefore, several times, in the talks also I said that the theory of our practice is very important. We must understand the theory of our practice. The "scientification" of our practice is very important. A practice is scientific only if it has a theory behind. No science is without theory. There is theory even in a practical subject, it must be there, and it must be understood so that there are no confusions, no doubts, no fears, and no apprehension. Otherwise there are always doubts, "Am I right? Is it right?"
Those things will happen if you do not know the theory of practice and once you know the theory of practice, you have a ready reckoner with you. Immediately you can find an answer for any doubt that you have.
Don't you think the mind can become also very clever with us, or more than us?
Clever in what sense?
It can mystify us.
Mystify or cheat you? That happens only when you don't practice the principles of yoga. If you are practising ahimsa, satya, asteya, brahmacarya, aparigraha, sauca, santosha, svadyaya, Isvara pranidhana, that won't happen. If you know what those are, if you practise them, there is no danger. If you practise lop-sided yoga, then difficulties come. Several times I said that there are psychodynamics of practice, how the mind should be and what you should do with the mind in a particular pose, in a particular cycle of postures. You should know as you know physical techniques about the shin, about the sternum, about the spine, about the joints, about the muscles etc. You must also know something of the mind, as to how the mind should be in the pose and what the mind should do in the pose. So they are all technical aspects of yoga, our technical aspects are not only restricted to the joints and muscles, and bones and cartilages. Because those are also all technical parts: how your senses should be, how your mind should be, how your eyes should be, how your ears should be. All those are technical aspects and therefore if you know the theory of it, you will attend to every aspect of it, and everything will be taken care of, and you will not have such difficulty that you might get "artified" intelligence, or tricky intelligence. Those things will not happen. Otherwise your mind will be tricky, because you are not doing anything to tame the mind, you are not doing anything for the mind and that's why such danger can occur.
Can you give an example about how the mind should be in one pose, so the people can understand?
For example when you are doing Trikonasana, why are you doing Trikonasana? That's how the mind should be questioning, "Am I doing this only to tone my leg muscles and only to tone my spine and back muscles?" So then, naturally, the answer will be, "It is not only for that." Those things should be happening and apart from those things, something else should be happening. So psychodynamics starts with the question: "Why am I doing it?"
And then if you get the answer that you are doing it for the whole. Ultimately asana are done for citta, are done for the consciousness, because the effect of asana is not mentioned on body. It is also mentioned on the body, the mind, the whole gross body and also the subtle body. Patanjali says the effect of asana is: "tatah dvandvah anabhighatah" [ 5 ] - "that you are free from dualities."
Do you mean to say that dualities are only physical, like heat and cold? The dualities are also mental. So the effect of asana is primarily mental and as they have mental effects, the body in the process is also experiencing an effect, which is desirable and conducive. So standing poses are not only for toning the leg muscles, toning the back muscles. They will be toned, but other things are happening. If you have a hundred rupees, it implies that you have got ten rupees, right? If you have a hundred rupees in your pocket, you can't say, "I don't have ten rupees," because ten is part of hundred. So if the effect of asana is in the consciousness, that is like a hundred rupees and if you tone your back muscles and leg muscles, it is like ten rupees. So having a hundred rupees you are going to have the ten rupees as well. So why am I doing the asana? What should I be getting in the asana on my mind?
Guruji has said in several places and several times, "Asana are for citta pari karma." He says, "Asana are for purification of the mind." You use the word "cosmetics," and you think that there are cosmetics for the body, or cosmetics for the face. But there are also cosmetics for the mind in yoga. So the asana are cosmetics of the mind. They should give that quiet, serene, sublime, sedate, passive, restful effect on the mind. And for that sake asana are to be done. You must know that if, by Trikonasana, I have got to attain such a state I should be doing something in that direction. Apart from the ankles to the hip sockets and from the hip sockets to the shoulders and to the fingers, you must do something else to get the mental effect of yoga after Trikonasana. Therefore you have certain other things to do in Trikonasana. And you know that asana are psychosomatic. Guruji has said several times, "You have to get elated when you are dull sometimes." Now how do you get that elation? You have got to flush the brain and when you do that, by working on the glandular aspect through asana, you get the elation.
Or you want the circulation for the brain. That's why you may do jumpings and full arm balance or some dynamic fast things and you get the circulation. Then again it is not just physical. Suppose you are dull, you get fresh when you do Halasana, Paschimottanasana fifty times. Or you do full arm balance ten times and you get fresh. How can you call it "physical?" You wanted to overcome something that was a mental state; the gloom was a mental state, the dullness was a mental state, which you wanted to overcome and you did some asana. So definitely, asana are psychosomatic and when they are psychosomatic, you can't just be working on soma and through soma, for soma; you must also work through the psyche, for the psyche, and through soma on the psyche.
Therefore the psychological aspects are very much explicit in our system. When you are emotionally down, a particular cycle of postures is given. Why? If the postures are physical, well, they should not do anything on your emotions. But if you are emotionally upset, Viparita Karani, Viparita Dandasana, Setu Bandha Sarvangasana are given. If they were only physical poses, they should not do anything on your emotions. But why do they do? All the asana have those bearings, psychological bearing, mental bearing. It is nothing new to Iyengar students.
In the West we see a lot of different people who come as beginners to our class; but sometimes they have been practising meditation for years and are already getting problems or strange experiences.
Yes. A simple thing: when they are doing meditation, they have not done what you do and they say that they have done meditation. They have transgressed from the principles of Asthanga Yoga. It's an infiltration into higher aspects of yoga, unqualified entry into meditation. It is an infiltration into meditation. It's a taboo - they are not supposed to be meditating. And they have done it and pay for it. That's why I said that if it is lop-sided practice, then it is going to have ill effects. Because you have definitely committed a blunder, it is a mistake. It's not ignorance. Suppose there is a laboratory and you enter the laboratory and do something and harm yourself. It is totally your fault, because being ignorant you are not supposed to enter the laboratory and play with the things there. If you take some liquid acid from the bottle, pour it in your hands and as a result burn your hands, it's not the fault of the acid, it is your ignorance and it is your fault. You are not supposed to enter the laboratory and play with the things there. That means you are going against the science and you want the science to be safe. When you go with the science there is no question of non-safety. You can invite the problems when you don't go with the science. If you are lucky enough, you will escape. That's why the safety measures are there, and particularly with reference to the amount of access to subtle aspects in you that they give. Safety measures are incredible in the system.
[ 4 ] Hatha Yoga Pradipika II, 15.
[ 5 ] Yoga Sutra II, 48: "From then on, the saddhaka is undisturbed by dualities." B.K.S. Iyengar, Light on the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali.
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