Yoga
defined in scriptures is symbolic and often words are misunderstood
and meaning distorted in the absence of right words in other
languages. Yoga is defined in many ways as yoga leads man to
experience transcendental consciousness and transcendental
consciousness is beyond mind which mind cannot really explain and can
only point out to that reality and truth. In addition, mind can point
out in many ways the process, meaning and method but a still remains
far away, from what is truth, reality and bliss which yoga seeks.
However, simple definitions can be given for clear understanding in
daily life.
1. Yoga is harmony of mind, emotion and body
When
a person is in stress, his mind, body and emotion all acts
differently without any coordination to one another. Mind seeks what
body does not like, emotion goes for what mind or body resists and
body likes what is disliked by mind and emotion. This disharmony or
ask of coordination is one of the main reasons of stress and
conflicts and problems in daily life. Mind cannot bring about this
harmony in life as it tries harmony as an idea not as a reality by
dropping something and adding something into life, personality and
action. This mind is of the nature of division and divides everything
then looks what has gone wrong. The emotion when guided by animal
instincts can never approach harmony. The body when conditioned by
mechanical habits, routines and cannot reflect upon what mind seeks
from it and result is disintegration.
When
you practice yoga, harmony comes by discovering, experiencing a new
consciousness within that is beyond mind. This consciousness is of
the nature of delight, peace, harmony and bliss. When this
consciousness descends down into mind, body; it purifies this body
and mind; it eliminates all discords between body and mind. This
results into peace, harmony. Yoga not only brings inner harmony but
also outer harmony with nature, with people with society and with the
external world.
How
harmony of body, mind and emotion comes because of yoga practices.
When you practice yoga, you awaken the inner consciousness or
spiritual consciousness within. This spiritual consciousness within
transmits all what it has in terms of peace, light, delight,
knowledge, bliss to body, mind and body and transforms all lower
nature and its discords like dualities, conflicts, stress, anxiety,
emotional disturbances. This spiritual consciousness has the capacity
to act upon body, mien and emotion and also pours down all its
attributes. In addition, the result is harmony.
2. Health, Happiness and harmony are three results of yoga
I
always ask a person whosoever comes to me practicing yoga. And the
question is,” why you want to practice yoga?”
“I
want health.” Replied a person.
“ Do
you know what is health.”
“
Physical fitness.”
I
asked,” but you are already healthy at physical level. Are you not
healthy or suffering from any disease? And if not then why you want
health.”
“
No! Guru, I am not suffering from any disease, I want to
practice to see what happens.”
In
addition, the I found no particular reason or correct reason to
practice yoga.
When
yoga talks of health, it is not confined to physical health. It is
not restricted to some physical exercises that stretches the body,
increase blood circulation, stamina etc. yoga considers health at
five levels of body of at five bodies.
There
are five bodies with all of us according to us. They are Annamaya
Kosha or Gross Boy of matter, Pranamaya Kosha or gross body of
energy, Manomaya Kosha or mental body, Jnanamaya Kosha or knowledge
body and Anandmaya Kosha or bliss body. The first Annamaya Kosha is
the outermost and Anandmaya Kosha is the innermost body. Every person
has five bodies. Harmony, perfect interaction and functioning of all
theses five bodies’ means health in yoga.
When
you are in stress, it starts from mind or Manomaya Kosha and enters
into gross body or Annamaya Kosha with the help of Pranamaya Kosha.
So third body when in stress also brings stress in the gross for
first body and second body of energy. That is why you experience
fatigue, tiredness, and loss of energy at the level of body when you
have stress in mind. You experience conflicts in your mind is due to
third or Manomaya Kosha. However, when this stress continues,
Annamaya Kosha and Anandmaya Kosha – the other two innermost bodies
do not transfer their powers that results into feeling of boredom,
sorrow and tension.
Health comes when all five bodies work in integration
and harmony with one another and gross or first body alone cannot
bring health. Health is defined in yoga and ancient scriptures of
India as a state of well being at physical, mental, emotional,
spiritual and social levels.
In
addition, when you practice yoga, you must experience
- Peace
- Relaxation of mind and body
- Experience of happiness and freshness
- Energetic
- Lightness in the body and mind
- Increased awareness and attention with less fluctuations and distractions in the mind
- Decrease in anger, hatred, anxiety, and ill will against others.
However,
these experiences are only the beginning as you continue to practice
yoga, you discover a new consciousness full of peace, bliss,
knowledge, truth and many more. At last you experience
self-realization. The state of self-realization in terms of health,
happiness and harmony means a state of contentment, higher level of
awareness, bliss, and peace.
Always
remember yoga Guru changes your vision not the world in which you
live. This means he makes you aware of inner consciousness or real
self. He takes you to the journey of inner self where lies the truth,
peace, happiness and health and harmony. He guides and never imposes;
suggests but never dictates; inspires you but never frustrates you in
the path of yoga.
3. Transformation
of brain, mind and body is yoga.
What
is change and what is transformation? Change means it may or may not
be permanent but transformation also means change but permanent
change. When you put milk to convert into yogurt, it can never be
changed again into milk. This is transformation. In addition, when
you freeze water it converts into water. This is also change but
temporary change as you can again convert ice into water.
Yoga
transforms the brain. Brain has deposits of all your past
impressions, conflicts, dualities, problems and worries, brain
further is full of deposits of instincts that becomes active in daily
life and you experience hatred, anger, jealousy and many other
negative traits. When you practice yoga, brain transforms into peace,
harmony and love. It is always full of love, beauty, creativity,
energy, delight and many other positive traits. This is the first
transformation you can experience after practicing yoga.
There
is right hemisphere and left hemisphere of brain. The right brain is
analytical, logical, liner and always acts in sequence, while
left-brain is intuitive, synthetic, integrative and full of creative
attributes and qualities. You always or at 90% acts through right
brain, thinks, contemplates, rationalize everything and the result is
stress, depression, and fatigue and tiredness etc. but when you act
through left brain, it brings creativity, energy, harmony, happiness,
integration etc.
When
you practice yoga, it brings changes in your nervous system and brain
so that you start working harmoniously with left and right brain.
Modern scene says that after practice of yoga, man experience
calmness, peace, and harmony due to dominant working of
parasympathetic system. In addition, when you continue practicing
yoga, your nature changes to more calmness, quiet, peace and
happiness.
Yoga
transforms mind as well. This transformation of mind means, you start
working through intuition, inspiration and revelations at all time of
your life. Less the work of rational mind, less the stress you have
in life as reasoning always divides life into many parts. Reasoning
is always good for material world. Say for example, you want to go to
some place far away, you plan how, you go, which transportation to
use-to-use, time it will take to reach there and many more questions
like this. But when you want to know what is love, honesty, integrity
and beauty and many more things from this reasoning mind, you gets
cheated and frustrated as reasoning mind can not answer theses
questions. When you practice yoga, a stage comes, your mind is
transformed means your mind pours down higher consciousness that is
full of intuition, inspi8ration and revelations and all these tells
you to follow the path what is right, peaceful and harmonious.
And
what about transformation of body. The transformation of body means
change of rezones this body offers in many life situations. Body
becomes stiff, sick, and resist when you are in stress; enter into
climate and environment where chances of getting infection are very
high. There body after transformation can face these situations and
conditions with easy as it increases power of immunity, resistance
power, vitality, vigor etc.
Yoga
is transformation of brain, mind and body. Hatha Yoga practices of
Pranayama and Asana and meditations along with other practices brings
this transformation. This transformation also means that you always
live, move and act in higher consciousness than this mind and
rational consciousness. This state of mind is free from distractions,
anxiety, stress, problems and miseries.
So,
whenever you practice yoga always aware of these changes and if such
changes do not take place, ask your Guru or teacher.
If
a teacher does not offer any explanation, it is always better to
change the teacher and go to another so that you can learn yoga
rightly.
4. Yoga
is accelerating the process of evolution of human race.
Swami
Vivekananda says, “ yoga is a process of evolving one’s life,
mind into ones lifetime, into few days or few hours of earthly
existence.”
What
is evolution? Modern science says human race has evolved from monkey
and monkey from still lower animals. Who is evolving all of us? It is
known in yoga as Prakriti or nature or universal consciousness. This
Prakriti is the force of consciousness and consciousness is the
ultimate reality. This Prakriti is evolving all time to reach to pure
consciousness. The destination after evolution is the pure
consciousness. This consciousness is all pervading.
Human
frame has evolved fully ass this human frame of body cannot have any
sixth organ. The nervous system is fully evolved in this boy. This
body already has new brain, which made us. Then what is the purpose
of this evolution? This process of evolution is still going on and
evolving the mind. Mind is not fully evolved even today. If you look
may be 100 years ago, the mind was not evolved as t today. You look
around and you will find that even small kids are more intelligent
than what we were at the same age. This is what evolution does. This
mind is evolving all time. When you practice yoga, your mind evolves
faster and consciously. Evolving mind consciously means you know it
is evolving and faster means much faster than what nature does. What
happens when this mind evolves, you will enter into peace, harmony,
and perfection. However, yoga does not end here as it goes further
and evolves after the mind. What is after and beyond mind? It is pure
consciousness full of truth, peace, harmony, bliss and total
awareness.
Yoga
hastens the process of evolution and takes you to the end of journey
for which you are and have come on earth. You become spiritual fully
awakened and attain perfection.
When
you achieve this state of evolution- you move, live and act in joy,
peace, free from stress also known ass self realization and
salvation. This state can be achieved even if you are with this body
or after death of the body as well.
This
self-realization doe not brings spiritual consciousness but also
success in every filed that you undertake.
5. Yoga
is union of the two polarities within the body for perfection
Perfection
means you live move and act with perfection and never have any
problem miseries and sorrows. This perfection comes when you have
right observation, right perception and right action in life at every
moment in life.
Yoga
says this inside this boy there is another energy body known as
Pranayama Kosha exactly like this outer gross body or physical body
has two divisions. These two divisions are two poles of energy-
positive and negative or sun (hot flow or energy) and moon _ cold
flow of energy).
Have
you ever thought of why you have two nostrils in the body when even
one nostril can do the work? You require two ears to find the depth
of sound and distance of sound coming to your ears.
You
need two eyes to know the distance of any object you see.
Nevertheless, why two nostrils. Because you have two different types
of energies. One flows from right nostril and other flows from left
nostril. You might have noticed that at particular time, only one
nostril is active i.e. pen nostril flows or you are able to breathe
freely through only one nostril at one time. This is because of the
effect of one type of energy at that time. You may notice even now
while reading this books that only one nostril flows at a time. The
right flow of nostril is hot, left flow is cold, and union of harmony
of two becomes yoga. Why when the two nostrils start flowing equally
at the same time this flow is known as middle flow of susumna flow in
which your inner consciousness is awakened and you are possible in a
state of meditation.
Why
this union is required? There are many reasons given for this
question. One is union brings harmony. Union awakens the inner
consciousness or spiritual consciousness. Union transforms your mind.
Union brings peace, love and brings you face to face with truth.
There
are many ways to unite these two flows but one important way is known
as Hatha Yoga. Most people understand Hatha yoga means all physical
practices of yoga and meditation are different form this yoga.
However, Hatha in Hatha Yoga is made of two words- HA means sun or
hot flow of energy and THA means cold flow of energy and union of the
two is Hatha Yoga. This process of union of the two flows takes place
by changing the biochemistry of the body. In addition, these
biochemical changes take place when you practice sat karma or
cleansing practices, physical yoga or Asana. But practice physical
yoga like any physical exercise will not bring any result as I have
seen people practicing this physical yoga even for 15 years but
without any result or rather they suffer form many diseases, they
have not been able bring about any change in their attitude. This is
because they are practicing physical yoga like any physical exercise
concentration upon stretching, muscular development and increasing
blood circulation. These results can come when you practice any
physical practice even jogging, running, or walking. Nevertheless,
practice physical yoga is to be done with awareness of inner
consciousness o that mind and emotions can lasso is affected. There
requires a proper attitude, right manner and few other tips for
practicing physical yoga so that your mind can also be evolved, your
energies ca also be harmonized and your attitude can also be changed.
Physical
yoga has many positions that do not have any type of stretching in
the body still very important and very effective much more than any
physical practice or exercise.
This
is because, these few postures change the inner chemistry of boy,
brings about a transformation in mind and life. There is one asana
known as Padma Asana that requires a little or no effort in
developing it. If you practice this asana regularly for fifteen
minutes and go on increasing the duration every week from 15 minutes
to one hour, two hours and three hours. When you can practice this
asana for more than an hour, you will many changes in your mind,
attitude, behavior and body. This can take place even when there is
no stretching in the body at all. The reason being that this asana
can bring harmony and union of two energies together and bring about
a transformation. Even self-realization comes by longer practice of
this asana. This Padma asana is known as one of the most important
and best asana in Hatha Yoga. There is another reason is this asana
makes your body like a pyramid and what ever ism kept in pyramid for
years together never decays. In addition, when you practice this
posture or asana, it delays decaying process, harmonizes the energy
within, awaken the spiritual consciousness and can take you into
deeper meditation even without making any effort for meditation.
6. Material
and spiritual world are one and only one in yoga.
There
is spiritual world of pure consciousness. Consciousness is the
ultimate reality and this consciousness created everything of the
universe and universe itself. The best thing of this consciousness is
that it creates and enters into what it creates. After entering into
every creation, it starts working of evolving by his force known as
consciousness force or Prakriti as it is explained earlier.
Spiritual
consciousness is unmanifest material world and material world is
manifest spiritual consciousness. You see the seed and explain seed
is potential tree and tree is manifest seed. Similarly, spiritual
consciousness is like a seed in every being and in everything of this
universe. That is why yoga lays stress that body is the temple of
divine, you should know how to enter into this temple and open the
door to divinity. Many people open the door from the desires, sex and
cravings and meet with all kinds of problems and worries. In
addition, others open the door from above and succeed in entering
into divine kingdom. Yoga is a science that helps you to recognize
the door that opens to divinity and transform the lower nature.
You
know you need an isolated place for both meditation and sex. Sex as
such is done in an isolated place and so the meditation practice
requires an isolated place. The isolated place, motive, and desire
make the difference. The desire to practice meditation takes you
divinity. It is the choice or free will of a person that goes for
spiritual development is all yoga matters and needs.
Like
a lamp or light is used for both stealing and reading. Similarly this
body with material world can also be used either for spiritual
progress or for cravings, fulfillment of ones desires and self
centered aspirations. The self-realization is very much in the same
world in which we all live and move. Yoga calls for contemplation of
what we do everyday in our lives and encourage us to follow the path
and action that may lead to the discovery of self within leading to
self-realization. Why this self-realization has been so important in
yoga? It is because self-realization alone can bring true happiness,
peace, delight and knowledge in life. Only the self-realization can
bring an end to all miseries, problems, and afflictions.
Many
people think that while leaving everything in this world, they can
become a true yoga master or by torturing their body in the name of
penance, they could reach or attain many powers. Neither a person who
leaves everything in this universe nor a person who tries all means
to torture this body can become a true yoga master. What yoga demands
a conscious approach to drop all attachments with all material things
in life so that mind could be directed to spiritual consciousness
within. As long as mind is attached with anything of this material
world, it can not experience and realize the spiritual consciousness
as mind will continue to create divisions and conflicts within and ca
keep the barrier or a distance between the real self and mind.
Dropping
attachment through contemplation, understanding and awareness leads
to progress and dropping attachment with force, for attaining some
powers and for reputation does not lea the yoga practitioner any
where near to goal in yoga.
Material world is also the spiritual world but in
unmanifest form and spiritual world is also the material world in
manifest form. They both are one and can be realized one only when
the spiritual consciousness is awakened in deeper meditation.
7. Yoga
is commerce between conscious and super conscious.
Modern psychology has understood deeply what is the
relation between conscious and subconscious mind. The concept of
Freud and Adler and Jung throws deeper light in to the workings of
conscious and unconscious and subconscious mind, Infact they have
revolutionized the understanding of mind and ego with reference to
unconscious drives.
Yoga
first accepts what is said and understood in modern psychology but
goes further and says that there is higher consciousness above this
conscious mind and unconscious or subconscious mind. This higher
consciousness is also referred to as super consciousness. Modern
psychology has not been able to understand clearly what is this super
conscious and how it works in relation conscious, subconscious and
unconscious mind. Few also refer, as unconscious mind is the super
consciousness.
Yoga
simply puts forward that as there is commerce between conscious and
subconscious mind there is commerce between conscious and super
conscious mind and layers of consciousness. Understanding consciously
this relationship, allowing the superconsciosuness to manifest itself
consciously, experiencing it and helping it to establish its domain
over the conscious and unconscious mind is what is yoga in real
sense.
Subconscious mind creates much of problems and miseries
in the world. In addition, when this suprerconsciousness is
understood and brought down consciously, it transforms all problems
created by this unconscious mind. This transformation comes, as
superconsciosuness is the supreme authority of this body, mind and
life and is capable of guiding the life to happiness, bliss, peace,
bliss and knowledge.
As
all three layers are within human frame, so yoga is self-discovery of
your essential nature. You discover layer by layer your own nature,
problems, worries and at last reach to real self. There is nothing
beyond this super conscious. All tools of yoga whether it is physical
exercise or mental practices or meditation are all used to know, live
and experience this super consciousness which is also known as real
self.
8.Yoga
is an integral and perfect education
Education
is search of knowledge for perfection. Learning begins the moment one
comes out of the womb of mother and continues until death. There are
many references in ancient texts that learning even begins in the
womb of mother after three months of pregnancy. There are many
examples of historical person sin India who learnt and received
knowledge in the womb of mother and used the same when they became
mature.
Learning is inherent ability of human race that moulds
his behavior, awakens ones potentials, perfect his attitudes and
perception, sets standards of social, emotional, mental and
intellectual life, brings changes in the outer and internal world.
Education
means using instrument of human frame for reaching harmony,
perfection, integration, and better and better response to the
challenges in the world.
“Yoga
is self conscious finding,” says one of the greatest yoga masters
who revolutionized by integrating the modern psychology with ancient
knowledge of yoga. Sri Aurobindo further says.” By Yoga, we mean
……… a methodized effort towards self perfection by the
expression of potentialities latent in the being and a union of human
individual with universal and transcendent existence we see partially
expressed in man and in cosmos.”
Yoga
is discovery of self-consciously. Any discovery leads to knowledge
and yoga leads to knowledge of self. It means, yoga brings the
knowledge of all layers of human frame and existence so that they can
be harmonized, integrated for happy, healthy, creative life. Yoga
further brings on surface consciously the true being that responds
integrally to the outer challenges of life with reference to truth
and only truth of the being.
Yoga
is a learning of self in relation to outer world and in relation to
transcendental world of highest consciousness so that even the field
of unknown becomes united with the known so that every action taken
leads to joy, happiness, perfection and integration.
Yoga
is Infact education of the self and modern education is the education
of external world. Yoga is education of self in relation to outer
world and modern education is the education of the external world in
relation to self.
Yoga
is life long learning to all layers of your existence- emotions,
mind, thoughts, desires, cravings, peace, light, bliss, self etc.
yoga helps in eliminating what is not required in your life,
transforming what rings conflicts, stress, anxiety and problems and
miseries, purifying what has become impure during the process of
living, awakening what is still not awakened or sleeping and evolving
what is yet to be evolved for a better life, richer life and dynamic
life.
Acharya Girish Jha took yoga and spirituality to its highest level by teaching it as the science of conscious evolution, a fact that attracted global attention. He taught over 60000 people world wide. As a Board Certified Professional Counselor, Acharya combines the wisdoms of Yoga, Science and Spirituality based on authentic texts, himalayan tradition, and consciousness approach aims at Health, Harmony & Happiness. http://www.shreyasyoga.com
Yoga Plus Herbs, Marlboro Plaza, Intersection of Rte 9 and Rte 520 in Marlboro, NJ 07726, 732-617-2020, http://www.yogaplusherbs.com, info at yogaplusherbs dot com
