For Heroic Hearts Intended
“How can you be sure that the journey of yoga leads to the truth? What is it that tells you that yoga is ‘the way’, to the goal of self realisation. We need to ask this, because as a rule we don’t usually believe something for the fun of it. For us really to believe something it has to seem plausible. From our posi- tion as students of yoga there is no proof to know if the path is valid. We take it on hearsay and rumour because we hear it works. From any position, right up to the final last step we know nothing about the next stage of our journey.
And yet, we possess a lot of knowledge. We know that we know, we also know that there are things that we don’t know – known unknowns. But we are unaware that we have huge blind spot for what we don’t know ‘Unknown, unknowns’ . This is ignorance.
“For me what I am doing is not important, it is what I am not doing that is important”
This was a remark made by Guruji, as he was leaving the hall after a morning’s practice, his dhoti bundled under his arm. His statement was not about the mornings discoveries, it was the opposite. He was pointing to something not yet done in his practice. It wasn’t a confession a bad practice, he was pointing to what was important for him in sadhana.
“Yoga is an Art, a Science and a Philosophy”, a most quoted quote, found in the preface of almost all his books. He dedica- ted his life’s practice to research into the nature of the self and in particular the unknown self. Following his method we enjoy great benefit from all his research. But as seekers on that same path we need to ask why it is that what he had not done, was important to him.
The whole thrust of yogic philosophic and scientific inquiry has been to examine the nature of being.
–BKS Iyengar, from Light on Life.