Yoga Aphorisms of Patanjali

Author(s): Prabhavnanda Swami, Christopher Isherwood
Publisher: Ramkrishna Math Madras

Page 35

YOGA AND ITS AIMS
and reason. Such "faith" should certainly be attacked. It is compounded of laziness, obstinacy, ignorance and fear. Because it is rigid and unyielding it can quite easily be shaken and altogether destroyed.
But this is not the true faith—the faith which is recommended by Patanjali. True faith is provisional, flexible, undogmatic, open to doubt and reason. True faith is not like a picture frame, a permanently limited area of acceptance. It is like a plant which keeps on throwing forth shoots and growing. All we require, at the beginning, is a seed. And the seed need be nothing more than a feeling of interest in the possibilities of the spiritual life. Perhaps we read a passage in a book which moves us. Perhaps we meet someone who seems to have reached some degree of wisdom and tranquillity through the practice of meditation and spiritual disciplines. We become interested and intrigued. Maybe this is a solution for our own problems, maybe it isn't. We can't be sure—we ought not, at this stage, be sure—but we decide to give it a try.
Suppose you are subject to indigestion. One day you read a book about diet or meet a doctor who tells you that he can restore your health if you follow his instructions. You do not have to accept the book or the doctor with blind faith, but you do have to have provisional, hypothetical faith. You have to assume that the diet will help your condition. You have to try it before you can say with authority whether it is helpful or useless. So, too, with the spiritual diet which the great teachers recommend. You have to have provisional faith in the truth of the scriptures and in the word of your teacher.
Also, you have to have energy. Without energy you cannot follow any kind of instructions, day after day, and really test their value. The Buddha pointed out that, if there is any sin, it is laziness. As we have seen in discussing the gunas, tamas is the lowest condition of nature and the human mind.
But, luckily for us, energy is like a muscle; it grows stronger