Prabhuji's Blog

Yoga in recent years

Over the last several decades, countless books and articles about yoga and meditation have been published. Nevertheless, all that has been discussed, explained and written up until now is only a minute part of what can still be expressed, written and published in the future, concerning this ancient wisdom. The word yoga often brings to mind a method of exercise to preserve youth and maintain the health and figure. Some understand yoga to be a method of relaxation, imagining a person with closed eyes, sitting in the lotus posture.

There are those who consider yoga to be an Eastern system of philosophy, while there are still others who believe that it is concerned with methods of breathing, mystical powers, or even supernatural abilities and magic. In reality, the public is not entirely mistaken, as yoga actually encompasses all of the above.

The error lies in the notion that this holistic wisdom is limited only to the above-mentioned. On the contrary, the wisdom of yoga branches out and expands to affect each of various aspects of the human being. Those who relate yoga to magic or miracles are not completely misguided. Is there a greater miracle than the transformation, development, and evolution of a human being on the physical, mental, and emotional levels? Can there be a greater act of magic than that which creates harmony and cohesion between all the different facets of man that is to say between his thoughts, feelings and actions?

The meaning of the Sanskrit term yoga

The meaning of the Sanskrit term yoga is “union”, coming from the verbal root yuj, which means to “join”, “fuse”, “reunite”, “integrate” or “harmonize”. Yoga refers to a communion with the Whole, and suggests harmony and cohesion, in a holistic and organic vision of the human being, the world, the universe, and life. Although the word yoga seems simple at first glance, it holds a wide range of meanings that contain deep messages. For example, yoga aspires to reach union, and there can also be seen implicit within the word itself, a kind of division.
However, more than assembling disconnected fragments or reuniting separated pieces, yoga is to open our eyes and pay attention, so as to see that we are, always have been, and always will be, an integral part of the Whole… that there is no need to strive to unite with that which we have never separated from. We only need to regain the awareness that any kind of separation is absurd.

Yoga is to unite the inseparable

Yoga is to unite the inseparable, to reconnect that which was never disconnected. Yoga is the re-encounter of what we believe ourselves to be, with what we really are; it is the re-encounter of what we imagine ourselves to be, with our reality, a reunion with oneself.
Though we may attempt with all our might, we will never be able to separate ourselves from Life; we will never be able to stop pulsating along with it. No matter how hard we try, we will never be able to separate ourselves from Existence; we can merely remain conscious or unconscious of it.

Yoga is communion with existence

Yoga is communion with existence: communion with the flowers, the Sun, the Moon, the rain, the trees and the clouds. Yoga is to harmonize with and attune oneself to the Whole, something that paradoxically happens by the renunciation of all effort to be united with the Whole, since making such an effort only reinforces the illusion that we are an entity ripped away from the Whole.
We are one with the Whole. In communion with God, we will recognize eternity in each moment, the infinite in every place, and behind all the names and forms, the same Existence, Consciousness and Bliss that pulses in the innermost depths of our being. Loving and serving everyone, we will see ourselves transported by infinite bliss.