· Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras

· Bhagavad Gita

· Hatha Yoga Pradipika

If we cannot at least agree that these texts provide fundamental knowledge needed to understand the original yoga process, then we might have nothing further to share on the subject. If you can concede, or might agree, maybe then we can also agree that most so called yoga teachers and students are not studying these books.

Yoga classes are mostly about postures, not lectures, not philosophy, not psychology, not liberation.

I grew up with an English teaching mother, a known grammar-Nazi. Accurate English was highly valued and strictly enforced. What I learned from the experience is that attention to detail in language can make or break our true understanding of anything.

Beware of anyone who tells you that Sanskrit words cannot be translated properly into English. Poor English speaking Swamis are notorious for this nonsense claim. It’s such a cop out way of dismissing the student’s ability to understand the essence of the Sanskrit in their own native language. It can be done, the words are there, but the translator must be intimately familiar with both languages.

As a yogini, I am a believer in spiritual liberation. I accept that there are ways a soul can be relocated to a spiritual environment. Yoga scriptures make it clear though that there is much to do in preparation between here and there.

Therefore, when navigating the complexities of one’s personal psyche, as well as navigating the innumerable psychic dimensions it can enter into, we depend on accurate instruction through language in our holy books to get some objectivity about the whole thing. We study these special training texts because our spiritual lives depend on them. They tell the way out of the wilderness of rebirth. Imagine being given a map out of a jungle you are completely lost in. Would you want the language on the map to be super-precise? What if it wasn’t? Or what if it was vague? What might happen to your efforts to successfully complete your escape?

As we all know, the Sanskrit word yoga, or yuj, closely resembles the English word ‘yoke’.

From there, the translation somehow jumps quickly to the word union. But this is where everything is left out. How do we fit Patanjali’s Yoga System in with this union idea because nowhere in his text does he refer to yoga as a union. Indeed he says just the opposite! He tells us that the bare self (swarupe) is a separate entity from the psychic and physical equipment it uses in this dimension of rebirth. Patanajali yoga requires that we pull apart what seems to already be an overly unified self.

Humans, with all our supposed intelligence, can barely tell the difference, or discern, what is physical from what is mental, much less the mental from the spiritual. During the complete restraint (samayama) meditation process, stages 6, 7, and 8, the self is forced into isolation for its own good. It is the only way for it to stop identifying with the material/psychic creation and have a chance at experiencing togetherness with a higher concentration source.

New age culture, beginning approximately with Madame Blavatsky’s Theosophical Society, seemed to absorb the yoga process into its melting pot of sameness soup. There were many Indian gurus in the US at the time. Many were teaching mainly yoga postures interwoven with some oneness philosophy and proclaimed it as ‘Yoga’. Their flowery repetition of yoga meaning ‘union’ gave great credence to the western adaptation of the word union as Yoga.

Yet they defeat the purpose of what a guru is really there for – interpretation and advanced insight.

Unfortunately, most yoga training courses focus primarily on asana. Few take students through the holy books with a fine tooth comb, which is what needs to be done to keep it honest. Instead things are kept on the surface with the use of universal terminologies that mesh with mainstream acceptability.

Finally, I will get to the real point of this article.

Why doesn’t Yoga even mean union? Because…..

…Yoga actually means yoke. And what is a yoke? It is a restraint devise. What is the purpose of putting a restraint devise on something or someone? It is to restrict, control or even to force their will (nature) into some kind of submission, correct? Hostile or not, it’s the reality of Patanjali’s yoga.

Therefore, the word yoga means restraint. When you apply yoga, you apply restraint in some way.

In the example of a harness (restraint) placed on the donkey (nature of one’s body/mind), the farmer (core self) wants the animal to submit to his will. The farmer needs the donkey’s behavior narrowed to few specific and repetitive acts. This is excruciatingly difficult and painful for the donkey at first, he resists, he complains, he cries, feels very sorry for himself and fights against the restraint. Yet, eventually, if the farmer comes back every day with the same restraint devise, places it on the animal and repeats the desired activities, the donkey is likely to surrender to its fate and resistance will end.

This is yoga.

How?

Patanjali’s 8 steps show us that yoga means “restraint” - but restraint of what? First, of lifestyle (steps 1 & 2), then of material energies (steps 3, 4 & 5) and also of consciousness (steps 6, 7 & 8).

He tells us how in the Sutras.

First we restrain our social and moral behaviors. We do this and don’t do that as we apply the yamas and niyamas to our social dealings. Next we are told to restrain the body, the breathing and mental attention energies. Then we restrain the core-self attention and eventually, with practice, achieve the goal of all this restraint, which is complete insight. Samadhi. Samadhi is a state of reality piercing clarity. The atma, the individual singularity self, has come out from under the influential mental and emotional energies which cloud his/her understanding of its existence.

It has split. Split from the material influences.

Samadhi still doesn’t mean union. You are still an individual, according to both Patanjali in the Sutras (see chapter 1 verse 3) and Lord Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita (see chapter 2 verse 12). You will remain you, the atma, even once you have made it to the spiritual environment which matches your texture or vibration.

The obscured yoga process is much like the core-self (atma) itself. It has been identified with things that it is not, lost in the messy chaos of the material creation and its mish mash of non-objective diversification. If we could remove the shroud of the new age, pulling the yoga out of it like a jewel from the ground, we might see its beautiful and concentrated specialness and come face to face with unimaginable possibilities for your spiritual future.

Once again, how does this apply to our yoga practice? Remember, you are the farmer, the spiritual self, the eternal person. The donkey is your body and mind - with a mind of its own and inner impulses to fulfill certain yearnings (kundalini). Sometimes it seeks pleasure and sometimes pain. It carries with it desires both passionate and inert. When applying yoga restraint techniques, we are not creating a union, we are slowly bringing our own nature under control. It is a loss for the natural person. The kundalini loses its grip over the self. The atma has taken the kundalini through a submission process that will eventually result in yogically desired insight, the highest insight, which can be applied to comprehend the incomprehensible. Relieving the anxiety of the unknown. This is samadhi.

Yoga restraint brings the 3 parts of our reality; physical, mental and spiritual, under the gun of a tightly controlled lifestyle through close self-monitoring of who we socialize and emotionalize with, the quality of our food, exposure to media, who we have intimate relations with and who we make deals with. If we practice yoga, we restrain from lying, stealing, coveting and harming. We assert will power over our own physical and mental bodies and restrain them in postures and exercises designed for chemical and psychological purification. The more we restrain (yoga) from what influences us physically and emotionally, causing us to make non-objective, impulsive decisions, increasing our karmic debt, the more we are able to pay off the bill and move on to the next highest possible dimension.

I didn’t get into yoga because I am a former dancer or gymnast or because I’m a hippy. I have no interest in being anyone’s fitness instructor or life coach. I have had a fondness throughout this life (some might say obsession) to find out what yoga is and how it works, down to the most-minute detail. I’ve done little with the last 20 years but search for the meaning of Yoga. This has required a lot of time alone because workshops and retreats are not my thing. Reading, writing, meditating, contemplating, dreaming and reading some more are. I needed to know for myself. Not for anyone else. My interest is selfish. I have considered my relationship with God as the primary motivator for continuing the study.

In conclusion, what I have found to be true through the wisdom in these holy books is that yoga is complete and perfectly set in stone. It is an un-dissolvable pebble, whole and perfect, within the new age soup our cultures so stubbornly adhere to. It’s our choice, each of us as supposed ‘yoga’ enthusiasts, to decide if it is worth reaching down in there and pulling it out. It will set you apart. The culture will not make it easy, but this is our fate and these are our times.

To accept the true yoga one must reject the water-down revision of it and deal directly with the reality of what it requires – this is challenging enough without the added hostility and resentment you may receive for not being part of the charade, but maybe you can do it.