Its principle is very simple. We can feel happy or unhappy without an external reason, only by the power of our own will. The possibility of this is indirectly confirmed, for example by a well known fact that, when someone has some sorrow, they forget about it, if their attention is caught by something else. Based on this very piece of knowledge, a system can be created. By the power of our will, we can turn our attention away from the situations which brought us to suffering, and simply change the whole situation by fastening our attention upon things that evoke good feelings in us. According to the yogic teaching, emotional experience is the most powerful factor in the life of creatures. It is sustained by a momentum which doesn’t only steer the being, it also categorises it. This usual emotional experience can only be counteracted by repeated actions aiming to change its quality. This means to learn to rejoice and feel happy, even without any reason, over and over again, repeating this effort for so long, till joy and happiness become the only inner states which will keep on seizing us, as soon as we stop trying to create such moods. When we reach that far, we have in fact already changed our inner condition or, in other words, we have moved from the sphere of unhappy people into the one of people constantly being made happy via the effect of spiritual factors. This is already considered as the beginning of the path of a higher type towards the goals of the practical yoga. For, only a happy person, an optimist, obtains from concentration an increasing clarity of the consciousness, an ability of a fine and deep discernment, a possibility of better perception and therefore also better understanding of everything; in short, all that which we may expect from yoga. Then, it is really sufficient only to concentrate. Only a happy person is able to concentrate in the way yoga instructs, i.e. to think of objects and to observe them without sinking into a mental lethargy and without the clarity of their consciousness been decreased. 5 Conclusion Would you like to try it, too? If the answer is yes, then stick to the following principles, which are in fact the whole of yoga in a nutshell: 1. You have to raise yourself from the state of passivity toward reflexive, i.e. automatic, unconscious reactions to the external world by a constant producing of an allsurpassing joyfulness in you. 2. You have to develop and intensify self-control, and you have to do that by a persistent awareness of everything that you do, i.e. that you stand, walk, eat, act in this or that way. 3. You have to attempt concentration in such a way that you think of (concentrate on) a chosen object (your feet and legs), but only in so far as you do not dim your awareness – only in so far as you would return again and again to the normal registering of things of the surrounding world, because only in this way you will ensure the control over vigilance. This type of concentra88 (12) Květoslav Minařík
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