We have to study, understand and practice yoga in such a way that it can change the nature, the quality and the responses of our external consciousness as well as our internal consciousness. If you become aware of your inner life, but you are not in a position to deal with the violent and alarming things of life outside, there is a split in your personality. Within you there is an experience of bliss, but when you come out, you face a total disaster, and the mind and the body become unwell. That is where yoga has failed in recent centuries. Not because it is an incomplete science, but because we understand yoga as an incomplete concept. I dont mean to criticize any of the branches of yoga, and Id be the last person to do it. But to interpret yoga, to present it for the good of humanity, in a lopsided way, does more harm than good. A system, whose practices have precise and known effects, must be presented in a balanced manner, so that it works effectively on the different aspects of our being. I teach hatha yoga, raja yoga, bhakti yoga, karma yoga, gyana yoga, kriya yoga, laya yoga, kundalini yoga and tantra, and these should be integrated. If you just practice a few techniques of hatha yoga or meditation, and you think you will achieve everything in life, you are unnecessarily over emphasizing one aspect. Raja yoga and gyana yoga develop your head; bhakti yoga develops your heart, and karma yoga develops your hand. Simultaneous development of head, heart and hand is something which is needed. In the last three or four decades, yoga has come to be known to people throughout the world. Swami Vivekananda brought it to the western world towards the end of the last century. Later, Paramahansa Yogananda came, then Swami Sivananda Saraswati and his disciples have brought the message of yoga all over. Now intelligent people have begun to investigate it, and they have found that yoga definitely heals the sick bodies and the sick minds. However, there is something more that yoga can accomplish, which will be in the interest of the larger community of human beings – it can change the level of human consciousness. If you get better from yoga, that is a personal benefit you derive, but it is also necessary for the entire humanity to change its level of consciousness, to be able to think in a different way, a better way. This change in the collective consciousness takes place by accepting the synthesis of yoga. Therefore, yoga is a path towards greater human evolution. I am not talking about the external path; Im talking about the inner path... When you discover that inner path, then you automatically feel happiness and peace outside. But when you do not discover that path or dont know about it, you experience unhappiness. External unhappiness created by worldly matters is merely an expression of that inner dissatisfaction and inner ignorance. Sri Sw. Satyananda
Posted on: Wed, 16 Apr 2014 23:59:35 +0000
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