Yoga Is Universal – In Gita Verse 6.28 Thus the self-controlled yogī, constantly engaged in yoga practice, becomes free from all material contamination and achieves the highest stage of perfect happiness in transcendental loving service to the Lord.
Krishna is saying the person who is pracing the yoga is free from all material contaminations. Why again and again Krishna selected Yoga from all the other practices for self-realization. As Yoga Is Universal, it doesn’t belong to any particular religion or sect.
In my Bhagavad Gita Verse 6.17, blog I wrote as Yoga is practice which doesn’t need any belief.
Yoga Is Just a Technology: Technology comes from the mind, and religious technology also comes from the mind – yoga, mantra, yantra. Yoga means body postures, which can help you to go deep inside yourself; they are created by the mind. That is religious technology. That’s why Yoga is not part of any particular religion. There can be Christian yoga, there can be Hindu yoga, there is certainly Buddhist yoga, Jaina yoga – there can be as many yogas as there are religions. Yoga is just a technology. No machine is Hindu; no machine is Mohammedan. You don’t go into the marketplace to purchase a Mohammedan car or a Hindu car. Machines are simply machines. Yoga is technology. Mantra is technology; it is created by the mind. In fact, mantra comes from the same root as mind – both come from the Sanskrit word man. One branch becomes the mind, another branch becomes mantra – both are part of the mind.
As Yoga is technology Yoga Tries Step by Step to Penetrate the Inner Mystery: The whole yoga is a methodology – how to uncover it which is so hidden, how to open the doors within yourself, how to enter the temple that you are, how to discover yourself. You are there, you have been there from the very beginning, but you have not discovered it. The treasure is carried by you every moment. Every breath you take in or out, the treasure is there. You may not be aware, but you have never missed it.
You may be completely oblivious, but you have never lost it. You may have forgotten it completely, but there is no way to lose it – because you are it. So the only question is: how to discover it. It is covered; many layers of ignorance cover it. Yoga tries step by step, slowly, to penetrate the inner mystery. In eight steps yoga completes the discovery. The beginning steps are called bahirang yoga, the yoga of the outside. Yam, niyam, asan, pranayam, pratyahara these five steps are known as the yoga of the outside. The following three, the last three – dharana, dhyan, samadhi – are known as antarang, the yoga of the inside.
Also Yoga Can Teach You again how to Be Here and Now: Wherever you are, in that moment, enjoy not asking for the future. No futuring in the mind, just the present moment, the nowness of the moment, and you are satisfied. Then there is no need to go anywhere. Wherever you are, from that very point you will drop into the ocean, you will become one with the cosmos. But the mind is not interested in the here and now. The mind is interested somewhere in the future, in some results. So the question is, in a way, relevant for such a mind – it will be better to call it the modern mind rather than Western – the modern mind which is constantly obsessed with the future, with the result, not with the here and now.
How can this mind be taught Yoga? This mind can be taught Yoga because this future orientation is leading nowhere. And this future orientation is creating constant misery for the modern mind. We have created hell – and we have created too much of it. Now either man will have to disappear from this planet Earth, or he will have to transform himself. Either humanity will have to die completely because this hell cannot be continued anymore, or we will have to go through a mutation. Hence, Yoga can become very meaningful and significant for the modern mind because Yoga can save. It can teach you again how to be here and now, how to forget past and how to forget future and how to remain in the present moment with such intensity that this moment becomes timeless. The very moment becomes eternity.
A disciple means a seeker who is not a crowd, who is trying to be centered and crystallized – at least trying, making efforts, sincere efforts to become individual, to feel his being, to become his own master.
Krishna says that the whole discipline of Yoga is an effort to make you a master of yourself. As you are, you are just a slave of many, many desires. Many, many masters are there and you are just a slave – and pulled in many directions. Now the discipline of Yoga. Yoga is a discipline. It is an effort on your part to change yourself. Many other things have to be understood.
Yoga is not a form of therapy. In the West many psychological therapies are now prevalent, and many Western psychologists think that Yoga is also a therapy. It is not! It is a discipline. And what is the difference? This is the difference: a therapy is needed if you are ill, a therapy is needed if you are diseased, a therapy is needed if you are pathological. A discipline is needed even when you are healthy. Really, only when you are healthy can a discipline then help. It is not for pathological cases.
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