Sometimes a kind of thinking can get initiated that later on permeates our entire life. H. G. Wells wrote the story of a country of blind people. They had accepted their handicap as reality and carried on transactions on that basis. They were doing well until a ‘one eyed’ man landed into the country. He could see with his one eye and started correcting obvious mistakes. The blind people didn’t know about the rising of the sun or its setting, etc. His advice went against the beliefs and conventions of the blind people who didn’t know about the sun’s rising and setting or the moon’s waxing and waning.

The confusion because of the one eyed man’s help increased to a point when the blind people decided to do away with the one eyed man. The one eyed man ran for his life and left the country of the blind.

We have our own kind of blindness on capitalism, communism or socialism or so many other ‘isms’. The effort in Yoga is to transcend the fixed ideologies and understand the ideology as a writer suggested. To recognise that we are trapped in some fixed thinking not always logical was what he meant. The effort should be to grasp the larger truth and base our calculation on that. Our usual thinking is a limited way of understanding reality.

Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra by Smt. Hansaji J Yogendra
Chapter III – 22
We can see certain sign and we are able to know what has happened or what can happen. A good Yogi can see the action or the behaviour and predict about the future of the individual. Actions create certain reactions in us. Just as much they affect the outside world. For example when a person is full of excitement and does something, we know that he is violently disturbed and so his actions will not come out well. As against this an individual who is quiet and steady, is surely going to the more concentrated and successful. Action also that are very brutal affect the individual .He would be punished for such actions.

This kind of understanding as if helps us to foretell events. We know what we have done even in the smallest details and we also know the consequences that will follow. We can thus foretell unexpected things and long before their happenings.

Actions as Karmas are of two kinds. These that very systematically and very quickly act and those that have very slow and long run. The point is that the individual having certain tendencies is driven by this and becomes a victim very quickly, of these strong tendencies. Like a young person given to taking away things cleverly can later on turn into a thief. The early signs are available. Naturally the individual suffers for this kind of handicap. The end is sure. For a Yogi who has studied the Karma knows the beginning of Karma till right upto the end.

However there are some Karmas that are uncertain and it is hard to know, how they will proceed. They may take a very long time to mature and bring results.

Excerpts of some of the articles in current issue:

Headaches by Hella Naura
The Yoga Institute is offering special Health Camps for persons suffering from respiratory, cardiac or orthopaedic problems and for diabetes patients. But there are no Camps specially designed to relieve people from headaches. This struck me because coming from Germany I find headaches to be a most common problem. But maybe this is not so in India. Whether this will remain so, may be open to doubt. Because the living-style of urban Indians, especially the young, seems to be changing fast. When the Institute started offering also Stress Camps some years ago, it must have been in response to a new and growing need, because in the 80‘s I never even heard of a thing like stress. So maybe headaches will also soon be a more common trouble for Indian city dwellers…..

Will power by Promil Jain
Through the practice of yoga, one can strengthen one's will power.

One does not have to do heroic things to develop one's will power. Doing some simple yoga practices, regularly and with devotion can enhance one's will power. Keeping the mind one pointed, while doing the yoga practices, followed by focusing the mind on a candle light, or on one's breath or doing any concentration-centering practice also helps…..