What can Yoga do?

 

Photo Credit: Divyatattva.in

What can Yoga do?

The common understanding of yoga is that it is good for getting into physical shape. Yoga has become more westernized today and there are far more corrupted forms of yoga with lots of people coming with their own variations of yoga. For instance – Hatha Yoga, Vinyasa Yoga, Ashtang Yoga, Power Yoga, Hot Yoga, Bikram Yoga, Forrest Yoga, Bikram Yoga, Kundalini Yoga, Yin Yoga, Restorative Yoga, Kripalu Yoga, Jivamukti Yoga, Anusara Yoga, Sivananda Yoga, Viniyoga, Ananda Yoga, Dharma Yoga, Acro Yoga, Aerial Yoga – these are twenty forms and there are many more variations with music, dance and other creative forms of art mixed to create different asanas. Does this really help? The true form of Yoga – the pristine original form is Ashtang Yoga – the eight-fold path which helps one to clear all external and internal blockages to ultimately reach completeness and a state of void.

If one has got the calling – then the subconscious throws out three questions – Who am I? Where did I come from? Where am I headed? These three questions keep repeating within your being – it’s like a recording which is playing within your consciousness.

Once we start getting these questions, we start looking for ways and means to get answers, which leads us to yoga and meditation. Swamiji tells us to go to the samadhi of an enshrined Guru and plead to be guided to their living Master or Satguru – one who can transfer the seed of awakening into you in a subtle way. Once we find our realised Master, he starts guiding us within, we start practicing yoga and meditation. During Swamiji’s 8-days meditation camp, the fourth day is the day of awakening. When Swamiji introduces you to meditation by giving you the spiritual experience of Shirdi Sai Baba, I felt cool vibration on the palms of my hand – it was like an ice-cold eddy whirling on the palms of my hands. This was the indication that soul-realisation has happened, my duty was to meditate regularly alone and in collectivity to convert that seed into a strong tree. It is now 12 years plus since that day – February 5, 2009!

Does yoga really accelerate our perception or help us perceive this reality as it is? I am talking about yoga in its true sense, its ultimate form, not just asanas. Many of us practice asanas daily – mainly to get a nice shapely physical body, we don’t focus on the ultimate reality of yoga – going within to become one with the universe. What then is the true understanding of yoga? If you understand the dialogue between Lord Rama and Yoga Vasishtha – it is basically a conversation in which Lord Rama keeps enquiring and Yoga Vasishtha keeps answering his questions. Just like the Bhagavad Gita – all the 18 chapters have yoga in their titles – so yoga is a mode by which you try to find the truth!

Without a healthy body you cannot have a healthy mind. Without a healthy mind, you cannot even inquire. So, first steps are laid and then begins the inquiry. And through your meditation practice, you open up your understanding and intelligence, so that subtle thoughts are grasped. Unless subtle thoughts are grasped, you cannot go beyond. So, it means opening up of your conditioned mind – for this discipline is required. This means discipline over the food we eat; we start avoiding food which has a gross influence on our body and mind. We avoid food and drink which intoxicates us as this hinders our thinking ability. This does not mean we throw away thought, but we try to make thoughts subtler and subtler till one day it becomes quiet.

This state is ‘yogas chitta vritti nirodha’ – all the vrittis or fluctuations are removed and in that the chitta becomes quiet and calm – now this is no longer the mind – it is the state of ‘no mind’. This is the state of supreme consciousness. Now your state is ONE and that is pure consciousness – the mind does not exist as a separate entity any longer. That is the aim of Yoga!