After a lull of inertia and sleep for a few years, there can arise an irresistible desire for sense-enjoyment, the very thing which looked undesirable years ago when a fit of renunciation drove the seeker to the hermitage or the monastery. The usual form of desire is actively sensory and herein it is that one may become prone to yield to the pressure of the subhuman side of passions that insist on having their fill. These are the impetuous instincts of the animal world, the savage nature, which have no regard for the good of the individual concerned, because their objective is only physical satisfaction. This is the immoral nature, so much condemned in the science of ethics, since it has no concern with the welfare of others. The seeker may become neurotic and eccentric when the outlets for his feelings and urges are blocked by the regulated atmosphere outside. The greatest enemies of the spiritual aspirant are wealth, sex, fame and anger. A craving for silly satisfaction through even the pettiest objects of sense, of play and diversion, may rise to the surface and press for fulfilment. There is always an interplay of inertia (tamas) and craving (rajas) in the mind of the seeker who is still on the path of struggle and is groping in darkness. The achievement, if at all there has been any, up to this stage, is a suppression of desire simultaneously consequent upon the burning of the fire of renunciation and love for God, which showed its head in an earlier stage. It is something like an ocean sweeping over dustbins and locations of drainage and sewage, flooding them with its overwhelming rush and force and submerging them for a while, but not actually transmuting them into purer substances. The initial spiritual urge of the jubilant enthusiast, our youthful hero on the path, is of this nature. The dust and dirt and rubbish are all there when the oceanic waves recede and when the daylight of sense activity falls upon them, reverting them to their original form of rot and stink. Spiritual seekers, beware! It is not all rose-bed or milk and honey that is the path you are treading. A razor’s edge, verily, it is!

Any healthy advice not conducive to the fulfilment of desire may be looked upon with resentment. And any overexerted pressure of the cloister may force the seeker back to the condition of sleep, an unsocial behaviour (rarely it can even be anti-social), a sense of hopelessness, a melancholy mood and an air of dispiritedness. Then there can come rising up the hissing snake of ire against all spiritual effort, even against the very faith in the existence of God, and a longing to listen to the call of a return to worldly life, the very condition from where the soul once struggled to soar above in a flaming aspiration. How mysterious is the way spiritual! Many students of yoga who once demanded nothing short of the realisation of God in this very life were forced later on to go back to the old routines of the work-a-day world of sense and ego. There is a very strange reaction produced by the desires suppressed for long, and that is the vehemence and ferocity with which they can strike back on centres of indulgence with redoubled force, making the moral condition of a person much worse than what it would have been even under an accepted normal state of worldly life. Prolonged celibacy of a repressed character may urge one to an impulse towards leading the life of a householder or even of seeking physical satisfactions at lower levels by a psychological regression into earlier instinctive stages of what modern psychoanalysts call the ‘libido’. Disturbing dreams and erratic thoughts of self-fulfilment in a variety of ways may become a common feature. There can even be a return to such gross levels as business and shop keeping as the result of a kick received from those desires which were not allowed a free hand by the action of an overwhelming influence exerted by that spiritual enthusiasm which once had risen up to the surface long ago. An itching for frequent outings, trips and journeys can become one of the innocuous avenues for the escape of energy which was kept bottled up but not harnessed by sublimation. A thoroughgoing repulsion to circumstances requiring one to live alone and a panicky love for company of others at any cost, even if it be in a street or market place, can become an easy solution the horrors pictured before the senses and the ego by the relentless hands of the call spiritual. Grammar and literature, art and music may assume the role of not only harmless accessories to living the ideal of one’s life but even forms of spiritual practice by themselves. And so our hero does go his way, undaunted by what the world may say from outside or what the conscience may speak from within.

The almost incurable trait of finding fault with others, whether by way of philosophical doctrine, technique of practice or personal attainment, may become a source of negative satisfaction when one does not possess anything that is positive. To cavil at great men and noble souls is perhaps the easiest way of becoming great oneself. Sisupala suddenly became important due to his cheek in casting aspersions on the Lord Sri Krishna. To many this is the chief source of acquiring social status and gaining certificates and encomiums from the unwary public, to exploit whose ignorance through these deceptive means of vainglorious complacency is a covetable ideal to get on comfortably in life. But Nature’s wrath and the nemesis of divine law is something which cannot be foreseen by the eyes of this astounding stupidity discoverable in human behaviour. The finding of fault with others runs, of course, hand-in-hand with the habit of self justification and self-assertion which loudly proclaims that its viewpoints and the ways of its working are infallible.

There are Gurus or Masters whom it would not always be easy for a spiritual aspirant to befriend or serve. We have a classic instance of the story of the spiritual quest of Tibet’s Yogi Milarepa who underwent an intolerably severe training under his Preceptor Marpa. The hardship of living with a Guru is a thing our modern curiosity-ridden students cannot understand, far less appreciate or be able to endure. But spiritual attainment exacts such a price from anyone who is really sincere in this glorious pursuit; nay, all the priceless goods of this earth cannot be regarded as equal to the value of the fruits which such a strict personal discipline and such knowledge would yield in the end. Doubts and fears unmistakably hover round even the sincere seeker like vampires ready to suck one’s blood. One may doubt the worth of one’s own Guns. Can this be the last stroke that Satan attempts to deal at the root of all spiritual aspiration? Perhaps not. Because, there can be something worse, and that is a disbelief in the very existence of God and a conviction about the nonsensical character of spiritual salvation which the seeker on the path is supposed to be striving for. But a type like that of Milarepa or the noble example of Nachiketas recounted to us by the Katha Upanishad is made of a different stuff. Persistence in one’s pursuit and tenacity in one’s practice are the hallmarks of such heroes who are not only the salt of the earth but a dazzling credit to the immortal glory of mankind’s essential function which tops the list of all its duties.

Physical disease, extreme talkativeness, loss of memory, gluttony, dullness of aspiration, doubts of different kinds, remission in the continuity of practice, laziness, a subtle desire to have sense-enjoyment, mistaking illusive perceptions for reality, inability to find the point of concentration, and instability in the practice of meditation are some of the major obstacles on the path of the seeker. A desire to mix too much with society, to raise large institutions and expand the circle of one’s disciples can act as a fatal weapon to deal a death-blow at the hunger of the soul for God. History is here our best teacher. The life of Rishyasringa as we have it recorded in the Mahabharata, the life of Visvamitra given to us by Valmiki in the Ramayana, the life of Buddha told in the poem by Edwin Arnold, the ‘Paradise Regained’ of Milton, the life of Yogi Milarepa recorded by Evans-Wentz, the lives of the Alvars and Nayanars of Southern India, the life of St. Augustine, the writings of Thomas a Kempis, and such great examples as Rishabhadeva, Jadabharata, or Dattatreya of ancient times, the life of Sri Krishna Chaitanya-Deva, and the like would provide a stimulating and most helpful study to every student on the path of yoga.