gurujidarshan.com · Published site text
Yoga practice and physical appearance
4 sections
- Reassurance and attributed claims about practice and appearance; not an objective test of spiritual attainment or health.
- Truthfulness is stated as a condition of practice; honesty is developed as an ethical connection.
- Advice concerning combining practices; the eating/excretion comparison is analogy, not diet guidance.
- A question about Gandhi is answered with a correction that he was already popular, then an attributed initiation/history account.
§1
Reassurance and attributed claims about practice and appearance; not an objective test of spiritual attainment or health.
Book 1 · Difficulties, safety and results of practice Also: Body, health, food and celibacy
Q: why some practitioners are looking very ugly and some of them are looking very good? Sometimes I fear to practice because I don’t want to look like some of them…
Guruji: no. you’re not going to be like some other person. So far I have seen in my last 35 years – person begins to look better and better as the time passes by.
If he or she is looking ugly – that means they’re not practicing, just saying that they are doing it.
He simply can not look ugly.
some of them are saying that they are practicing but they are looking awful
Guruji: I doubt it. Whether they are practicing or not practicing – only they can tell it honestly. But if we are doing something which is supposed to be the best thing – we will begin to look our best also. You can relax.
It is believed by yogis that yoga practice is the best thing, which a person can do in this creation. I observe that if you’re doing something which is supposed to be the best and as a result of that practice you will also look at your best. It will make you look more and more better and more beautiful.
If someone is still looking ugly – I mean not so good – that might be some problem with that what he or she is practicing.
§2
Truthfulness is stated as a condition of practice; honesty is developed as an ethical connection.
Book 1 · Discipline, tapas and the practitioner's conduct Also: Living well: emotions, love, family, work and money
may be they talking more than doing?
Guruji: first step in yoga is being truthful. If you’re not truthful then you’re not doing yoga at all.
§3
Advice concerning combining practices; the eating/excretion comparison is analogy, not diet guidance.
Book 1 · Discipline, tapas and the practitioner's conduct
and when the person are trying to combine two different practices?
Guruji: it will not give results. You can’t do everything at the same time.
I don’t know any person who is eating and at the same time shitting also.
You have to separate them. Simple observation. If they are combining yoga practice with many-many other different practices – that means they are not very much interested in yoga practice, they just want to learn it – so they can tell others that they practice yoga also.
§4
A question about Gandhi is answered with a correction that he was already popular, then an attributed initiation/history account.
Book 2 · The Kriya lineage: Babaji, Lahiri Mahasaya, Yogananda and Guruji's own line Also: Religions, history, society and science
you said that even Mahatma Gandi start to be most popular, when he start to practice Kriya Yoga?
Guruji: he was already very popular, but when Yogananda gave him initiation in Kriya Yoga, which Mahatma Gandi himself requested, when Yogananda was visiting his ashram – this incident was given in “Autobiography of the Yogi” – after that his rise is phenomenon. Till then he was doing so many things, but after this – extraordinary rise.