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TAKE YOUR TIME : A NOTE ON YOGA 163 In the Yoga Vashistha are enumerated the qualifications of those who desire deliverance. Vashistha, in one passage, speaks thus to his followers :
"Many are the times we have all been together in the past, as also separately, and so again shall it be in the future. Even as a heap of grain removed from granary to granary ever assumes new order grain arrangement, new combinations, so do the Jivas (nomads) in the Universe. The man who has attained to inward peace, passes unfretting through the rearrangement. ... Spare not effort. Think not anything of Fate. All is within the reach of everyone in all this Universe, if only due endeavour shall be made, and the seeker not turn back, losing heart half-way. ... Two are the kinds of effort: the effort of the past and the effort of to-day. Of these two the latter will prevail over the former, and well-directed effort will achieve its object. Even as light brings out the difference of colours. Man always gets only as he endeavours, and his convergent previous Karma is only his Daiva-fate. There is no other fate than this, and like two rams they fight, these two, the present Karma and the past, and now the one prevails and now the other, and the stronger wins at last. Therefore, let the man call up his energies, and, setting his teeth together, let him conquer the past with his present effort. The past may be long-gathered, but the present can be carried longer still into the future.