SHUT UP GET OUT

“We have seen that the Yogic process is implicit in every phenomenon of existence. All that we have to do is to extend it consciously to the process of thought. We have seen that thought cannot exist without continual change; all that we have to do is to prevent change occurring. All change is conditioned by time and space and other categories; any existing object must be susceptible of description by means of a system of coordinate axes.

On the ‘terrasse’ of the Café des Deux Magots it was once necessary to proclaim the entire doctrine of Yoga in the fewest possible words ‘with a shout, and with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God.’ St. Paul’s First Epistle to the Thessalonians, the Fourth Chapter and the Sixteenth Verse. I did so.

‘Sit still. Stop thinking. Shut up. Get out!’

The first two of these instructions comprise the whole of the technique of Yoga. The last two are of a sublimity which it would be improper to expound in this present elementary stage.

The injunction ‘Sit still’ is intended to include the inhibition of all bodily stimuli capable of creating movement in consciousness. The injunction ‘Stop thinking’ is the extension of this to all mental stimuli. It is unnecessary to discuss here whether the latter can exist apart from the former. It is at least evident that many mental processes arise from physical processes; and so we shall at least be getting a certain distance along the road if we have checked the body.”

— Asana and Pranayama from Eight Lectures On Yoga

• Search for “Shut up. Get out!” at the library

Previous | MINISTRY OF INFORMATION | Next