http://www.aypsite.org/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=6853
I was looking at a popular yoga site/forum and I noticed that someone asked a question about Crowley's yoga. The people there were generally negative about Crowley's views on yoga. The OP says "Reading his instructions on Yoga for instance his tone is typically maniacal and oppressive, taking the hardline on everything -the practice of Asana as he describes it involves choosing one posture and staying in it for hours at a time until it is completely "conquered
and , though the same tone prevails throughout with Mantrayoga and Pranayama)
Their query is about Crowley's apparent overly severe and harsh approach to yogic teaching;
How is it for instance that in AYP and many other approaches, the practice of Asana means going through many different postures holding each for a short time while 'keeping comfort well in hand', but then there's this other method of holding just one posture until the nervous system passes through 'hell' with it and comes out the other side in comfort?
The responses advise that such severity is not "the middle way" and is unwise. Buddha would never do this and so on.
Someone says that they find Crowley's approach "somewhat oppressive sounding." They even question Crowley's interpretation of Patanjali as being wrong i.e. he got it wrong about Asana as something like
"the yogic technique of holding one posture for long periods of time every day" and it differs greatly to what goes on in most ordinary Yoga classes.
,
Someone cites the Buddhist tradition called "surrender sitting" which seems to back up Crowley's methods but then we get the usual cr.ap about Crowley was a black magician and liked to oppress people and this was reflected in his yoga lectures.
Then we get "The will IS quite powerful, and magical things can be done, been there, but I think it doesn't lead to enlightenment directly. It can teach you a lot about the illusiveness of reality, but the will is bound so tightly with the ego that it leads you astray. This path is important for a lot of us to teach us that when yoga says God, it has nothing to do with what many western religions say.
and someone says about Crowley' "He's definitely *not* the guy to learn anything related to yoga from, though (unless you feel a super-strong inner draw to do so ... but it doesn't sound like you do).
He simply didn't have enough immersion in yogic systems to be an authority; it was tough for a European to, in those days, unless he or she lived in India, which I don't think Crowley did.
And, much of the time, it's hard to tell if he's joking, high on drugs, or both ... or being serious ........... and he did all of the above intentionally. Kind of a Zen Crazy approach ... one with very limited appeal to, or benefit for, most people.
So Crowley's yoga lectures, where they part of a sadistic prank? Is such pain and discomfort necessary?
This is my answer: (from Crowley's Eight Lectures)
18. The irritations develop into extreme agony. Any attempt to alleviate this simply destroys the value of the practice. I must particularly warn the aspirant against rationalising (I have known people who were so hopelessly bat-witted that they rationalised). They thought: 'Ah, well, this position is not suitable for me, as I thought it was. I have made a mess of the Ibis position; now I'll have a go at the Dragon position.' But the Ibis has kept his job, and attained his divinity, by standing on one leg throughout the centuries. If you go to the Dragon he will devour you.
19. It is through the perversity of human nature that the most acute agony seems to occur when you are within a finger's breadth of full success. Remember Gallipoli! I am inclined to think that it may be a sort of symptom that one is near the critical point when the anguish becomes intolerable.
You will probably ask what 'intolerable' means. I rudely answer: 'Find out!' But it may give you some idea of what is, after all, not too bad, when I say that in the last months of my own work it often used to take me ten minutes (at the conclusion of the practice) to straighten my left leg. I took the ankle in both hands, and eased it out a fraction of a millimetre at a time.
20. At this point the band begins to play. Quite suddenly the pain stops. An ineffable sense of relief sweeps over the Yogi-notice that I no longer call him 'student' or 'aspirant'-and he becomes aware of a very strange fact. Not only was that position giving him pain, but all other bodily sensations that he has ever experienced are in the nature of pain, and were only borne by him by the expedient of constant flitting from one to another.
He is at ease; because, for the first time in his life, he has become really unconscious of the body. Life has been one endless suffering; and now, so far as this particular Asana is concerned, the plague is abated.
I feel that I have failed to convey the full meaning of this.
The fact is that words are entirely unsuitable. The complete and joyous awakening from the lifelong and unbroken nightmare of physical discomfort is impossible to describe.
21. The results and mastery of Asana are of use not only in the course of attainment of Yoga, but in the most ordinary affairs of life. At any time when fatigued, you have only to assume your Asana, and you are completely rested. It is as if the attainment of the mastery has worn down all those possibilities of physical pain which are inherent in that particular position. The teachings of physiology are not contradictory to this hypothesis.
The conquest of Asana makes for endurance. If you keep in constant practice, you ought to find that about ten minutes in the posture will rest you as much as a good night's sleep