WHO CAN BE A YOGI?: Page 88

Now, my reader, if you are undergoing training, think well over what I have said. It is but little at the best. Yet, it will help teach you to realize your own state. In the first and second stages, Yoga is impossible. In these, you are in the womb of pain. But take heart, thou brave one! Pain is to be accepted. It will chasten, toughen and strengthen you. Hence flinch not. If in the third, you are nearly ready for the treading of the higher path. Short indeed is the transition from the third to the fourth, from thence to the fifth, and thence to Samadhi. The last you need hardly aim at; so difficult indeed is its achievement that the mere contemplation of it will dash your spirits. Effort, intensity of the will-to-achieve, earnestness, purity, devotion, tenacity of purpose, will bridge the distance of time for you. The light shining upon us is but a fitful glimmer. We shall strengthen it so that it shall burn steadily, calmly, evenly, right on through life. Do you hear this call? It is not a call to arms: to bloodshed: to manslaughter: to worldism: to sham supernaturalism: to present-day spiritualism. It is a call to ascetism;- stern, self-imposed, and severe: to self-sacrifice; to chastity; to manhood; to continence; to mercy; to brotherhood; to life;-keener, harder, fuller, more sensitive; to Love, pure and simple. Here you touch the apex of bliss. Here you drink God's sweet, soothing elixir at the pure fount of life. Here you realise all that you have been hungering for. Here learn to say with the dear blessed Swami: