THE STILLNESS IN YOGA (UNION):


Here we have a book on Yoga telling us how to really live. It is also necessary to have this energy to really and properly go to one’s death or to make it possible to astrally or dimensionally travel to the Bardol states and places that we go when we actually die.


“It is difficult to pay attention to something if you are not interested in that thing. But it is also difficult to be interested if you are not paying attention. For example, you may be watching the best film in the world. But if you are thinking of something else and are not paying attention, you will miss the subtle nuances that make the film so good, and you won’t appreciate or enjoy it as much as you might. Interest, attention and enjoyment are obviously interrelated. Of course, if you are not interested in doing yoga at the moment, you should really be doing something else. Or you may be interested but unable to maintain a focused attention for an extended period of time. Ujjayi breathing can create that focus.


Each breath you take can remind you to be here now, to treat this moment as important, and repeatedly to affirm the fact that right now you are exactly where you want to be, doing exactly what you want to be doing. You will probably be amazed at how much energy is suddenly at your disposal the moment you realize this. When you are no longer wishing you were somewhere else, doing something different, you will discover that energy is the given and that energy is abundant. What would you expect but the fullest enthusiasm and response when your body, mind, heart, attention, and interest are all in one place? When your attention is no longer splintered and dissipated through conflict, indecisiveness, or half-heartedness, you will experience and increase in energy and feel more alive.


This is especially interesting because, unless you are an absolute beginner, you’ll find your mind tiring long before your body. When your mind begins to tire, only then does your body start getting tired. {My older brother used to run long distances and it took until his second mile or more before he reached past tiredness to a meditative state. I remember once when he came back from a five mile run with Marty Liquori and I ran alongside him for the last quarter mile. That was about all I could really run. His breathing was in sync with something I never really got to understand. He had the same sense of this in boxing and other sports as well as the ability to superannuate his hormones and become far more powerful. He could sense the center of gravity of ‘both’ people in a fight and thus know or sense the next move before it happened. He never studied spirituality as we think of it. He did not need to, in some ways. But each person should find these second and third ‘winds’ or altered states in whatever way works best for them. I think sex was one area where we both knew this. I certainly never lost interest in sex with someone I loved unless I was drunk or for some other less than appropriate reason.} As your interest begins to flicker and wane, you become less attentive. You start thinking of other things, wishing you were elsewhere. Your energy goes elsewhere. {N. B.} You treat your body and your Yoga with less care, less respect; and automatically but not surprisingly, your body�following the dictates of your mind�loses its energy and also gets tired. But as you stay clear within yourself that this is what you want to be doing right now, you will be able to sustain interest and attention for far longer periods of time. As your capacity for attention increases, so does your energy, your actual physical energy. {Nowadays it is ‘creating’ which brings this intent to a high focus for me – and my energy still remains high despite being older and in far worse physical condition.}


Your mental attitude, therefore, is the real source of energy and enthusiasm, and you will learn this very quickly in yoga… It’s worth the small effort required to discipline yourself mentally to be attentive and present with whatever is happening each new moment.� (13)


I have spent time reading Alan Watts as part of doing these books lately. People always used to say I sounded like him. Now I understand the reason�we both lived in the ‘Zen of the moment’.