THE SECRET OF YOGA SADHANA - Swami Sivananda Saraswati

THE SECRET OF YOGA SADHANA

I solemnly affirm that the disease of birth and death can be removed
only through the divine panacea of mind-mastery; not through any other means. The path of annihilation of the mind will be most beneficial to you and will never generate the least of pains. If the mind is destroyed by dint of discrimination, then maya (illusion) will not afflict you. There is no other vessel on this earth to sail the ocean of rebirth, than mastery of this turbulent mind.

Tame the mind. Collect your thoughts. Keep the mind serene. Think not of evil. You will enter the realm of deathlessness, dominion of eternal bliss. Withdraw the senses from their objects. Collect the rays of the mind. Direct the mind towards the ajna cakra (or the space between the eyebrows) and fix it there steadily.

Understand the mind; know how to manage it. Mind abhors a vacuum. Aversion and desire, both are binding - two monkeys sitting on the tree of the heart. While they continue to shake and agitate it there can be no peace.

Man falls into the cycle of births and deaths through his own thoughts, his own ignorance. Liberation means nothing but the destruction of the impurities of the mind. If your mind is free and pure, you will not again enter into birth.

Control of the mind is not done in a day but by constant practice and sustained dispassion. Victory will be yours. Become a true hero. Have mastery over the mind. Enter the illimitable realms of bliss. Blessed is he who has controlled his mind and achieved self conquest.

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Dispassion, discrimination, renunciation and meditation are enemies of the mind. You can destroy the mind easily, if you possess these virtues. The mind manifests itself as the external world in the shape of pain and pleasure. The mind subjectively is consciousness, while objectively it is this universe. The mind has the potency of creating or undoing the world in the twinkling of an eye.

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