Eight Lectures on Yoga

elementary purposes by taking as the basis of our illustration the solar system as conceived by the astrologers. I do not know whether the average student is aware that in practice the significations of the planets are based generally upon the philosophical conceptions of the Greek and Roman gods. Let us hope for the best, and go on! 8. The planet Saturn, which represents anatomy, is the skeleton: it is a rigid structure upon which the rest of the body is built. To what moral qualities does this correspond? The first point of virtue in a bone is its rigidity, its resistance to pressure. And so in Niyama we find that we need the qualities of absolute simplicity in our regimen; we need insensibility; we need endurance; we need patience. It is simply impossible for anyone who has not practised Yoga to understand what boredom means. I have known Yogis, men even holier than I, (no! no!) who, to escape from the intolerable tedium, would fly for refuge to a bottle party! It is a physiological tedium which becomes the acutest agony. The tension becomes cramp; nothing else matters but to escape from the self- imposed constraint. But every evil brings its own remedy. Another quality of Saturn is melancholy; Saturn represents the sorrow of the universe; it is the Trance of sorrow that has determined one to undertake the task of emancipation. This is the energising force of Law; it is the rigidity of the fact that everything is sorrow which moves one to the task, and keeps one on the Path. 9. The next planet is Jupiter. This planet is in many ways the opposite of Saturn; it represents expansion as Saturn represents contraction; it is the universal love, the selfless love whose object can be no less than the universe itself. This comes to reinforce the powers of Saturn when they agonise; success is not for self but for all; one might acquiesce in one's own failure, but one cannot be unworthy of the universe. Jupiter, too, represents the vital, creative, genial element of the cosmos. He has Ganymede and Hebe to his cupbearers. There is an immense and inaccessible joy in the Great Work; and it is the attainment of the trance, of even the intellectual foreshadowing of that trance, of joy, which reassures the Yogi that his work is worth while. Jupiter digests experiences; Jupiter is the Lord of the Forces of Life; Jupiter takes common matter and transmutes it into celestial nourishment. 10. The next planet is Mars. Mars represents the muscular system; it is the lowest form of energy, and in Niyama it is to be taken quite literally as the virtue which enables one to contend with, and to conquer, the physical difficulties of the Work. The practical point is this: 'The little more and how much it is, the little less and what worlds away!' No matter how long you keep water at 99 degrees Centigrade under normal barometric pressure, it will not boil. I shall probably be accused of advertising some kind of motor spirit in talking about the little extra something that the others haven't got, but I assure you that I am not being paid for it.