Yoga was conceived 5000 years ago, in the Indian
subcontinent. The Upanishads, composed in the 8th or 9th
century BCE as a collection of beautiful verses, crystallised deep
philosophical ideas that had a timeless quality and a vision of life in which
yoga was a fundamental factor. The Katha Upanishad of 3000 years ago says: “He……….whose
senses are uncontrolled , who is not tranquil, whose mind is not at rest, he
can never attain the true self, even through knowledge”. It also says: “The
supreme, being formless, cannot be discerned by the senses, hence all knowledge
of the eternal must be acquired by the more subtle faculties. These are
developed only through the purifying practice of meditation”.
Yoga is a deep study of the universal nature of humankind,
not just a science of the mere physical world. It is the study of consciousness
itself, understanding one’s body, one’s emotions, one’s mind and, beyond that,
one’s true self. Yoga has a vision of oneness in all that there is around us.
It is a vision of great harmony and works towards integrating us with the
eternal reality. What comes in the way of this unity is people’s egos and their
limitless desires which they spend their lives chasing. There is never
satisfaction in their lives, only pain and a constant restlessness.
Yoga quite literally means to unite oneself with the higher
self, which is in us and is all-pervasive. It means to join the subject with
the object. To do this, we have to strip away the many layers of momentary sensory
perceptions that assail our senses and keep us bound to the material world.
The Upanishad says: “when all desires dwelling in the heart
cease, then the mortal becomes immortal and attains the true self”. The purpose
of yoga is to free its practitioners from the shackles of desires, awaken the
true knowledge within them and help them be in harmony with all that there is.
Yoga helps people to be in the moment in which they live. Gradually, they
become aware, first of their bodies and of their breath. Yoga brings them to
look at it, to control it. Once that has been achieved, the transformation has
begun.
From there the next step is awareness of the mind. Yoga and
ancient Indian thought do not consider the mind to be conscious by itself. The
mind is in many way ,like the body . People have to see it, be aware of it. The
ancient texts point out that the mind is like a monkey which jumps about. It
flits from thought to thought, and people usually have no control over it. In
yoga, they become aware of it and step aside, to become observers of the mind.
They are no longer carried away by the fluctuations of the mind. Scientific
research done on yoga in the past 40 years has confirmed that yoga contributes
to the health and happiness of people in all walks of life. At the end of the
path of self-transformation is the reward of true knowledge: when we are deeply
aware of our oneness with all that there is: the state of yoga.
