|
Yoga is an integral part of Sanatan Dharma and philosophy of India. Originally, it was present cryptically in the stanzas of Vedas. Its basic philosophy is that, Almighty God is full of richness and creatures have nothing, but desires. Craving and striving for the absent objects is a natural instinct of every living being.
An unwealthy person craves and strives for the money. An ignorant person craves and strives for knowledge. Thus, everybody craves for those things, which he is lacking or does not possess. He makes every efforts to acquire the things of his desires. But Almighty God is the treasure of all these things. He has endless luxuries, endless power, endless knowledge etc. Hence, a desire naturally arises in the heart of human beings to reach God, to see Him and to mingle with Him in order to achieve supreme joy. The same desire is known with different names like worship, devotion or Yoga. Stay of every creature is very brief on earth. Eternity of life is assured in the unification with God. Yoga is such a unification.
Human beings have the ability to unify their microcosm soul with that eternal supreme soul. A man, who has attained unification with God, acquires divine powers. Now he is free from all the illusions. God is not bound to expressions; hence an ordinary person cannot feel His existence. Yoga is a powerful tool for introspection and feeling the existence of God. This stream of Yoga has four parts.
- Mantra Yoga.
- Hatha Yoga.
- Laya Yoga.
- Raja Yoga.
Of them, Mantra Yoga is the most primitive and crude whereas Raja Yoga is the most refined. Other two lie in between.
- MANTRA YOGA : Verbal mantra and an idol are required to train this stream of Yoga. During the training, adherence to celibacy is insisted specially.
- HATHA YOGA : It involves physical postures to control the whimsical flights of mind. These postures involve control of airflow, related to our body.
- LAYA YOGA : Rhythm of Prakriti with Purush constitutes Laya Yoga. It is basically mental actions.
- RAJA YOGA : It is entirely trained through the powers of our conscience. It is the supreme kind of Yoga.
Yoga is a valuable heritage of ancient India. Since antiquity, tradition of Yoga has flourished through the system of Gurukulas. Continuous efforts of our great and learned sages have refined the ways to practice Yoga. Exponent of Yoga, sage Patanjali embodied a cryptic philosophy of essential knowledge within the stanzas of Yoga Darshan. Yoga is thus, an efficient way of having introspection and a unification with God. And there is no other way to come over the sorrow.
Literally, Yoga has two roots- Yuja and Samadhau which mean joining with reconciliation. Words Yujir and Yoge also make Yoga that means to join. Unification of microcosm soul with the supreme soul is also inferred from the word Yoga. In fact, microcosm and supreme souls are not different from each other. In fact, they are two different faces of the same coin. It is by ignorance that human being has come to differentiate between the two. But, with perfection of Yoga, such a difference ceases to exist. It is only then that the unification of microcosm and supreme soul takes place.
According to the sage Patanjali, the successful control of unstable mind is Yoga. Mind has five stages-Chhipta, Moorh, Vikshipta, Ekaagra and Niruddha. Last two stages of these five distinguish Yoga.
According to the philosophy of Yoga, mind is itself capable of attracting all the things. It is omnipresent also but because it is veiled by darkish virtues that it fails to manifest its powers. In contemplative state, darkish and royal virtues fade out and the mind is able to manifest the things of its desires. Reconciliation is the major part of Yoga. In reconciliation, all the earthly illusions are destroyed and microcosm unifies with the supreme soul. The joy one feels in the state of reconciliation is beyond the words.
|