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CHAPTER TWO YOG VIDYA AND YOG SADHNA THE PATH OF YOGA IN THEORY AND PRACTICE ORIGIN AND TECHNIQUE OF THE YOGA
SYSTEM FORM THE yajnavalkya smriti, we learn that Hiranyagarba (Brahma) was the original teacher of yoga. But the yoga system, was first expouned by Patanjalii the great thinker and philosopher, in his yoga sutras, sometime before the Christian era. The yogic system is one of the six schools of Indian Philosophy (khit shastras) that were systematized and developed to set in order Indian thought concerning the cosmos, the individual soul, and their interrelation. These philosophies resulted from an attempt at reformation and restoration of the ancient and time-honored concepts on psychological and metaphysical matters. The word yoga in common parlance means “method”. In it's technical sense, it connotes “yokes” or “union” signifies to unite or join together and to place oneself under yoke (discipline). In this context, the yoga system denotes a methodical discipline, which aims on the one hand at viyog (unyoking), or separation of the individualized soul from mind and matter, and on the other hand , yog, or yoking it with Brahman . It therefore, means and implies the search for the transcendental and the divine in man, or to find the “noumenal”in the “phenomenal” by reducing the physical metaphysical states to their most essential common factor, the basis and the substratum of all that exists, whether visible or invisible. As such, yogic methods imply a system of attain perfection through the control of the physical body, the ever – active mind, the self- assertive ego or will, the searching and questioning intellect, the pranic vibration, the restless faculties and powerful senses. Allegorically, the present state of the individualized soul is described as riding in the chariot of the body, with dazed intellect as the charioteer, the infatuated mind as the reins, and the sense as the powerful steeds rushing headlong into the field of sense of yoga discipline activity as may help to depersonalize the soul and free it supramental, and then to contact it with the power of God and achieve union with God. The word yoga is however not to be confused with yogmaya and “yogic powers” which denote respectively, the supreme powers of God per Saints (creating, controlling and sustaining the entire creation), and pshchic power (Ridhis and siddhis that one may acquire on the path of yoga. Again, yog vidya or the science of yoga has a two-fold aspect; the physical as well as the spiritual. In the former sense, it has come to mean a yogic system of physical culture aiming at a all-round development of the various component parts of the human body. But we are concerned here with the spiritual aspect of yoga in this context is, therefore, to be strictly nored. The term yoga in this context is, therefore, to be strictly confined to one of the systems of philosophic thoughts as derived from the Vedas, and is concerned with the sole object of regaining the soul (through spiritual discipline), now lost in the activity of mind and matter, with which it has come to identify itself by long and constant association for aeons upon aeons. Yoga, in brief, stands for a technique of reorientation and reintegration of the spirit in man, the lost continent of his true self. |