Obstacles to Yoga

Before considering the capacities required for this definite practice, let us run over the obstacles to Yoga as laid down by Patanjali.
The obstacles to Yoga are really inclusive. First, illness : if you are ill you can't practice Yoga ; it demands sound health, for the physical strain comprised by it is great.

Then languor of mind : you have to be alert, energetic, in your thought. Then doubt : you've got to have call of will, must be able to make up your mind.

Then carelessness : this is an example of the best problems with amateurs ; they read a thing carelessly, they are incorrect. Sloth : a lazy man can't be a Yogi ; one who is inert, who does not have the power and the will to exert himself ; how shall he make the desperate efforts wanted along this line? The following, worldly-mindedness, is patently an obstacle. Mistaken concepts is another great obstacle, thinking incorrectly about things. One of the great qualifications for Yoga is "right notion" "Right notion" means the idea shall correspond with the outside truth ; a man shall he basically true, so that his thought corresponds to fact ; unless there's truth in a person, Yoga is for him most unlikely. Not understanding, illogical, dumb, making the critical, trivial and vice versa. Ultimately , instability : which makes Yoga most unlikely, and even a touch of which makes Yoga futile ; the unstable man can't be a yogi. Capacities of Yoga Can everyone practise Yoga? No. But every well-educated person can get ready for its future practice.

For fast progress you must have special capacities, as for anything more. In any of the sciences a person may study without being the possessor of extremely special capacity, though he will not reach eminence therein ; and so it is with Yoga. Anybody with a fair intelligence may learn something from Yoga which he may favourably practice, but he won't hope unless he starts with certain capacities, to be successful in Yoga in this life. It's only right to assert that ; for if any special science desires particular capacities to accomplish eminence therein, the science of sciences definitely cannot fall behind the normal sciences in the demands that it makes on its scholars.

Suspect I am asked : "Can I become a great mathematician?" What must be my answer? "You must have a natural ability and capacity for arithmetic to be a great mathematician. If you haven't that capacity, you can't be a great mathematician in this life. "But this does not mean that you can't learn any arithmetic. To be a great mathematician you may be born with a special capacity for arithmetic. To be born with such a special capacity suggests that you have practiced it in many lives and now you are born with it pre-made.

It's the same with Yoga. Each man can learn a little of it. But to be a great Yogi means lives of practice. If these are behind you, you'll have been born with the required faculties in the present birth. There are 3 faculties which one must have to get success in Yoga. The first is an intense desire. "Desire ardently." Such a want is wanted to break the robust links of need which knit you to the outer world. Likewise , without that irresistible desire you will never go thru all the problems that bat your way. You've got to have the conviction that you are going to at last succeed, and the resolution to go on till you do succeed. It's got to be a want so enthusiastic and so resolutely rooted, that obstacles only make it more keen. To such a person an obstacle is like fuel that you throw on a fire. It burns but the more strongly as it catches hold of it and finds it fuel for the burning. So problems and obstacles are but fuel to feed the fire of the yogi's resolute wish. He only becomes the more resolutely fixed, as he finds the problems.