Look In Before Coming To Any Conclusion 2

Whether we believe it or not, accept it or not, we are Divine. To realize our divine nature, ancient mystics have created this wonderful formula of the yoga system. Yoga in modern days is practiced just for health reasons. Good health is just a by-product of practicing yoga, not the end. The actual reason that our wonderful rishis created this formula was to create the divine experience within anyone who used the formula. Yoga is a straight technique to achieve the divine experience. This formula cannot be modified or altered or practiced in parts and pieces. This formula has to be practiced as prescribed for one to realize the divine nature of one's self. Yoga is a formula in which there are techniques that can be practiced to reach the Divine. Once we become intensely tuned to the eight-fold formula it will become such an integral part of our being that it will become difficult to forget it even for a minute during our day.

A person who practices yoga to meet with the Divine will not treat yoga as an activity to be performed on a schedule only during a particular time of the day. He will live and breathe yoga. These eight limbs of yoga will influence any activity that we perform. For example, if we are speaking to someone we will constantly be aware of speaking the truth. If we are performing an activity, our awareness will be completely on that activity.

Yoga cannot be treated as a set of principles and exercises to be practiced only for a certain number of hours in a day. It will infiltrate our life and become our way of life. Even modern man can become a yogi by applying these principles to every single activity he performs. When this happens, all material activities will automatically cease.

I was taught Ashtanga Yoga by a great yogic Master. He started training me when I was barely three and he was then already nearing one hundred years of age. I truly believe that he was a descendent of Patanjali; he was so in tune with the Yoga Sutra of Patanjali. I hated a lot of what he made me do then. He made me climb pillars in the Arunachala temple in Thiruvannamalai with one hand behind my back! But it was this training that allowed my body to withstand the rigours of my parivrajaka, wandering through the country and the Himalayan Mountains in search of enlightenment.

Now, I teach Ashtanga Yoga, as it was taught to me, with the additional insight of Patanjali's vision that I have gained since then. I call it Nithya Yoga. The path and purpose of Nithya Yoga is bliss. It is bliss arising out of the merging of body, mind and spirit, when the glimpse of what we truly are is experienced by us.

The word yoga in Sanskrit means to unite or to become one with. Actually, yoga refers to the process of uniting. What is important in the practice of yoga is the journey, the path, and the process. We should understand one important thing about yoga. For whatever purpose, with whatever intention we move our body or bend our body, that idea, that intention is completely inserted or recorded into our body and mind. This may appear startling to us but it is the truth. It is the truth from my experience.

Whatever thought and intention, the samskara, you hold when you move your body, that samskara will get inserted into you and that samskara will start expressing itself in your body. For example, if you move your body with the intention and the strong belief that you will have health, however you move your body, then health will simply happen. With any physical movement, including just sitting, if you strongly believe that you will have health, health will simply happen in you.

This leads us to another important conclusion: the method in which we do posture in yoga is not important. It is the thought, the idea with which we move our body in the posture that matters. Understand that the body itself is made out of memories. Whether we believe it or not, we are an expression of our own self-hypnosis. Our memories are recorded in our muscles as well.

Here is a simple technique to experience this truth: for just ten minutes in the morning, visualize your whole body as a bliss bag filled with bliss. Then move the body in whatever way you want. The body will start working, experiencing and expressing the bliss.

When we reach the state of yoga we are in a meditative state of bliss. In this state, all desires for sense gratification and activities cease. Our existence becomes an outpouring of bliss. There will be so much bliss bubbling from inside that there will be no need to look for an outer object, person or location to influence this bliss. The desire for sense gratification and running after goals will automatically drop when we experience this state of bliss. This bliss is independent of the external world. It is beyond the body and the mind. This state of bliss can radiate and flow out to touch outer objects but the outer objects cannot influence this inner bliss!

Q: Master, what Krishna says about yoga and what we see being practiced today as yoga is very different. If it is supposed to be derived from the same source, why is this the case?

As I mentioned, yoga as it is practiced today has very little to do with what Krishna said or what Patanjali instructed. Yoga that Krishna talked about was the uniting of mind, body and spirit. He was referring to the uniting of the self with the Self. He was talking about finding our true nature.

Yoga, according to the dictionary means 'union', but according to me it is really 'uniting'. It is the process, not an end result. Being engaged in the process itself is the reward, not getting anything else in return. That is why time and again, Krishna talked about not being attached to the end result. He said, 'Renounce the fruit of action!' That is why the meaning of this process is uniting. It has no purpose. Union is not its purpose. It is a practice where the end and the means to the end are the same, so the goal and the path are the same. They cannot be different.

When people followed Krishna's advice and practiced yoga as He taught, many understood their true nature, as Arjuna did. They realized their true Self. They became enlightened. During this process, which is one of the individual energy merging with the Cosmic Energy, there were many changes in their body and in their breathing as their mind was becoming still. These changes in the body were the asana, the postures, and changes in breathing were the pranayama, breath control.

Patanjali and other sages observed and codified these transformations that the body-mind system went through during the process of enlightenment or samadhi, and this eventually became the basis of Ashtanga Yoga as laid down by Patanjali. Postures and breathing were a part of the total process and not the only parts as they have been made out to be today. Please understand that the body and mind have to work together to synchronize with the spirit. The mind has to have the intention and the body needs to make the movements to achieve yoga. The mind is more important. That is why Patanjali's treatise starts with the statement that 'Yoga is stilling the mind.' It is very profound and very true.

I have trained and ordained teachers now to teach Nithya Yoga. It is designed from the body language of Patanjali. Nithya Yoga is about adding life to our movements, not adding movements to our life. We are already wasting our time and energy pointlessly, doing something or the other. Even those who sit in an office and work have enough movement to keep them active. There is no point in adding some more movements in the name of yoga. What we lack is awareness. What we lack is the right intention. What we lack is the direction to seek the truth about ourselves. So I say, please add life to your movements. Do whatever you are doing, but do it in awareness. Nithya Yoga teaches us to be aware and shows us how even simple movements can be done in a meditative way that brings in awareness and bliss. That is what Krishna intended and Patanjali conveyed.

It is not that the sources of these truths said different things. We have lost the codes, the keys to understanding what these truths are. We understand them only from a very limited perspective and apply our own inadequate logic to suit what we think is correct. If the end products work, if we have created a profitable business, we pat ourselves on the back and smile all the way to the bank. If there is a problem, there is always Patanjali to blame.