Let me welcome you back to a great new year. As part of the series on Mind, I will now start discussing about Yoga – a way of entering into domains beyond our limited Minds.
In fact, the main motivation for me to write the 3-part series “Marvels of the Mind” has been my interest in Yoga. Even this series of discussions we have been having for the past 2 months has been motivated towards knowing Yoga better, though I started it as a series on Mind.
But then I should admit that my notion of Yoga may be quite different from what you understand by the word Yoga.
For most people Yoga means body postures and breathing exercises – ‘twisting and turning as well as gasping’ as somebody put it jovially 😉
Unfortunately, that is the picture painted by many Yoga teachers in recent times and the word Yoga has become some sort of exercise to keep you fit and healthy.
I have tried to correct this notion in all my books and blog posts as well as talks, but I realize that it is such a deep-rooted belief among the masses that it is hard to rectify.
I have attempted to show in some of my books, what Yoga meant originally and how the meaning changed in recent times. The current definition of Yoga has hardly few centuries of history. Considering the thousands of years of history that Yoga has, few centuries is hardly anything.
While staunch proponents of modern Yoga try to stick to their views by claiming millions of years of history their version of Yoga has, they rarely give any corroborative evidence. They bank on unverifiable tradition, religious beliefs, and such other hand waving 😉
On the other hand, there are some who labor hard to show that Yoga did not originate in India but it is something that was borrowed from the west. They try to characterize Yoga as Hindu Yoga, Christian Yoga, Muslim Yoga and so on. Some people even go into the Egyptian tombs digging for support for their form of Yoga 😉
The fact is that Yoga as a meditative practice has been part of various ancient civilizations irrespective of their geographical locations. It may not have been called as Yoga, but the practices were similar.
Ancient Greeks whether it is Plato or even Pythagoras had their versions of Yoga. Biblical Saints before Jesus did it, Jesus practiced it throughout his life. Even Prophet Mohamad dictated Quran based on his meditative experiences. I am sure many other civilizations had saints who followed various meditative practices. It is just that we are not aware of them, sometimes due to language barriers.
In India, whether it is the Upanishads, Bhagavad Geetha, Buddhist Tripitakas, Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra, all talked about very similar meditative practices. The aim of all these practices was to quieten the Mind and experience the truth that is beyond mental preoccupation.
The reason why most saints irrespective of geography resorted to meditation was probably because they had one thing in common – they were all humans; humans who had an urge to have a peek beyond what is evident to their senses and intellect; humans who firmly believed in happiness beyond that that can be achieved through physical means.
Probably, it is not wrong to say that it is in India that we see a systematic study of these meditative practices that are to some extent well recorded and discussed and debated. Even other civilizations might have had such records or traditions, but we are unaware of them, other than through jingoistic claims of some individuals.
Having said all this, it is also a fact that Yoga in India is no longer what it was few centuries ago. Today Yoga means a totally different discipline which is everything but meditation 😉
Probably, this change of phase was started by the wandering mystics like Matsendranath, culminating in the composition of Hatayoga Pradeepika by one of the Nath mystics in his lineage, namely Swatmarama of the 15th century. And renowned Indian Gurus in modern times like B.K.S. Iyengar carried forward this new tradition of Yoga.
Unlike the original Yoga which was predominantly Mind oriented, this new Yoga is Body oriented. Even the goals changed. The original goal of experiencing states beyond the Mind were replaced by health, longevity, better worldly performance and so on.
It may be too hard to turn the clock backwards. But if we totally miss out what originally Yoga meant, we definitely would miss out lot of things. In my view, we will be missing a powerful tool that can potentially result in a more peaceful world. That is what I will be talking about in the next episode.
A series revolving around Mind – Science of Mind, Philosophy of Mind, Notions of reality, Mind modulation, Domains beyond Mind, and so on. © Dr. King 2019
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