Explain yoga to me

[Ampresus]

Hello everyone. After coming back from the library, I wonderd what yoga is (I saw some books about the topic)

All I know is that people stretch and that they do it to seem younger. I know that people do it in groups (stage Green) and for personal experience (stage Turquoise). I am not sure if the last one is stage Turquoise.

So please, anyone who has experience with it, explain me why people do it. Why it has any kind of relation with the inner self. Isn't it just stretching a little bit? It does seem for me.

I only started meditating in september, just got introduced to books and have done only 1 session of shamanic breathing. I am very curious about what yoga has to offer. 

[SgtPepper]

Yoga is complex as fuck. Your conception of yoga is less than basic and is pretty much developed from western propaganda about it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yoga

Just read that whole wiki page and you've only scratched the surface.

One aspect of yoga is about stretching, but your next issue would be what you think stretching is for and the potential it has for us. 

[Hellspeed]

The art of becoming One. 

But not western yoga. Yoga learned naturally as a result of awakening.

[Prabhaker]

6 hours ago, Ampresus said:

Isn't it just stretching a little bit? It does seem for me.

Yoga means union, the science of union. Meditation is the most supreme phenomenon as far as union with reality is concerned. Meditation is the god of yoga. But yoga has fallen into wrong hands, and not only recently – for centuries it has been in the wrong hands.

The original fault must be with the founder, Patanjali himself. Patanjali has divided yoga into eight parts. His division is clear-cut, very scientific, but he was not really aware of human stupidity. He started with the body – and that's the right way to start. The first part of yoga must be physiological because man lives on the circumference, in the body, so the work has to start there, only then can it reach the mind. And when one has gone beyond the body and beyond the mind, then the third, meditation, happens.

So according to Patanjali the first part belongs to the body. But he was not clearly aware that millions of people would remain entangled with the first part. Hence yoga has become synonymous with yoga postures: people standing on their heads and doing all sorts of contortions. That has become synonymous with yoga.

It is not a true yoga, it is just the preface, the introductory part; and the person who thinks the introduction is the whole book is idiotic. But Patanjali did not warn people. If he had warned people it would have been better. People like Patanjali believe in others' intelligence – which is not there! They trust. Their trust is immense, their trust is as immense as people's stupidity is! They respect people's intelligence. So he did not warn people, but the warning was absolutely necessary: 'Don't get entangled in the physiological part.'

A few people, only very few – if a hundred people become interested in yoga then only one person will get out of the physiological entanglement. And that one person will become entangled in the psychological. If a hundred persons are entangled in the psychological then only one person gets out of it...and only when you get out of the mind does the real yoga begin.

The physiological part of yoga will give you great physiological powers; it can make you live a really long, healthy life. But what are you going to do with a long life? If you are idiotic, instead of being idiotic for seventy years you will be idiotic for two hundred years. It is not going to help anybody; it will be a calamity.

Yoga can make a person live long, but what will you do? That physiological part should not be paid so much attention. Yes, a little bit is good to keep physically fit, but just a little bit; otherwise it is a vast jungle. One can be lost in its subtleties, in its complexities.

The second part is even vaster than the physiological. If you get into it you can have many psychic powers, you can read people's thoughts. But what is the point? Your own rubbish is so much, what is the point of reading somebody else's rubbish? He is tortured by his rubbish and you are reading his thoughts – and you think you are doing something great!

The physiological part is ordinary, the psychological part is ordinary. Both can give power, but power is not the goal of meditation. Power is politics, all kinds of power is politics. And power corrupts – all kinds of power – it corrupts unconditionally and absolutely. It always corrupts.

The only essential thing, the real core of all yoga, of all methods of search, is meditation. One should put aside everything non-essential. You can use things as stepping stones, but not more than that – just like jumping boards. You need not bother too much about them. Your whole concern should be one-pointed; you should move like an arrow towards meditation.

[Echoes]

@Ampresus