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YOGA AND ITS PRACTICE
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theft, all wealth comes to him. This aphorism can be explained in two ways. In the first place, when a man becomes free from all feelings of covetousness he no longer experiences the lack of anything; he is therefore in the same situation as the richest man on earth. Secondly, it is true that a lack of desire for material benefits actually seems, in many cases, to attract those benefits. As Vivekananda puts it: "The more you fly from nature the more she follows you, and if you do not care for her at all she becomes your slave.”
asfoorui allta: 113511 38. When a man becomes steadfast in his abstention from
incontinence, he acquires spiritual energy. Sexual activity, and the thoughts and fantasies of sex, use up a great portion of our vital force. When that force is conserved through abstinence, it becomes sublimated as spiritual energy. Such energy is indispensable to a spiritual teacher; it is the power by which he transmits understanding to his pupils. For true religion is not taught,” like history or mathematics; it is transmitted, like light or heat.
अपरिग्रहस्थैर्ये जन्मकथन्तासंबोधः ॥३६॥ 39. When a man becomes steadfast in his abstention from
greed, he gains knowledge of his past, present and
future existences. Attachment, and the anxiety which accompanies attachment, are obstacles to knowledge. As long as you are clinging desperately to the face of a precipice (and thereby to your life) you are in no condition to survey the place you climbed up from or the place toward which you are climbing. So Patanjali tells us that freedom from attachment will result in knowledge of the whole course of our human journey, through past and
