On Basic Principles of Yoga

(lecture)

V.Antonov

Translated by T. Danilevich

Yoga is the name of the Teaching about the means for achieving spiritual Perfection. Translated from Sanskrit this word means "union", "merging", "becoming one". It implies removal of one's separateness, harmonious merging of individuality with macro-ecosystem.

Yoga is a religious teaching. But particular branches of yoga may be considered as "neutral" with respect to religion and can be used by atheists too. Such are, for example, hatha yoga (a teaching of bringing one's body into harmonious state) and raja yoga (in the past, it was known in the west and in our country rather in modifications, titled "autogenous training" or "psychic self-regulation").

Yoga includes a number of methodically independent parts: such as above mentioned hatha yoga and raja yoga, jnani yoga ("yoga of wisdom", theoretical substantiation of the path of yoga), karma yoga (ethical teaching, which includes notions about man's destiny and influences on it), bhakti yoga (a higher, as compared to karma yoga, stage of mastering ethics, emphasizing development of love), buddhi yoga (teaching about the development of consciousness). Sometimes some authors also call the systems of their views "yogas", as for example, agni yoga of the Roerichs couple (in fact representing a manifest, a call to spiritual awakening) and so on.

The term "yoga" is inherent in Hinduism; it also was included into the vocabulary of Buddhism. Sometimes, when a wide interpretation of this term is used, different ethical teachings, including the Teaching of Jesus Christ, are referred as "yogas".

The basic literary source of yoga is the Indian Bhagavad Gita created few thousand years ago. But as the term "yoga"  appeared long before the creation of the Bhagavad Gita, so did people walk this path long before the creation of this scripture.

As it was mentioned above, the goal of the yoga teaching is religious. It consists in achieving by an individual human consciousness, which have gone through preliminary long evolution, the Divine Perfection and merging with the Consciousness of Ishvara (God-the-Father, in Christian terminology) which is called in the Bhagavad Gita, in particular, "the Supreme Abode".

"Submerge your consciousness (buddhi) into Me (God) — truly you will then live in Me", — so Krishna formulates in the Bhagavad Gita the final goal of a seeker. But if you are unable of doing it now, says He, practice preliminary meditations. And if the technique of meditations is too difficult for you, learn to perform everything that you do in your life not for your personal benefit, but devote these actions to God. (In other words: firstly, do only that which is useful for the evolution and, secondly, do not think about your personal benefit) (Bhagavad Gita, 12:9-10). These simple words, briefly speaking, express the essence of the yoga path.

Now let us consider who are capable of walking it and how far?

Are there people among us capable of working for the sake of others selflessly?

And those, who are capable, can also meditate? Meditation, as one of the leading masters of the modern yoga Rajneesh formulated, is the "state of non-mind". That is before one becomes capable of practicing higher forms of meditation, he has to develop his intellect and then learn to control it. This is so, because only he who, possessing developed mind, can govern it, obtains the possibility to develop his consciousness purposefully, passing through the consecutive stages of buddhi yoga: Samadhi, the first achievement of Nirvana, "crystallization", then — the summit of Nirvana consisting in merging with the God-the-Father. At that, these stages cannot be mastered without preliminarily bringing one's body to the necessary level of perfection. And, apart from other things, advancement in the highest yoga is connected with the necessity of deep comprehension of the laws of spiritual growth.

Are there some of us who can, at least, formulate clearly what "mind" ("manas" in Bhagavad Gita) and "consciousness" (buddhi) are?

Incompetent people often equate these absolutely different meanings. Consciousness composes the basic essence of man. And it is purposeful work intended for developing one's consciousness through yoga methods that allows some people to realize the highest human possibilities in themselves.

Why — only some people and who are they? They are those, firstly, who are able, owing to a number of objective and subjective reasons, of making sense of all this; secondly, who had in themselves aspiration to self-perfection strong enough to renounce primitive "earthly" pleasures and brawls with other people and who for many years made endless efforts and super-efforts in yoga practice, and, thirdly, who endured a lot of ethical trials on this path.

So, we see that the highest yoga is not meant for everyone. Objective laws of man's development allow only those people to direct their efforts towards intensive and conscious self-perfection who have overcome in themselves attachments to exquisite food, money, fame and so on. Only for the one who is ready to renounce selfish attitude towards life, who is ready to easily and naturally sacrifice his interests for others' sake — for such a one is the highest yoga.

One should not think that people who do not practice yoga lose their time in vain. No, beside the benefit that many of them give to society by their work, in this process they develop in themselves the skills and habits that will be needful for them in the future, when they will "grow" in their psychogenesis to irrepressible desire of devoting themselves to studying yoga. And then yoga will provide them with an opportunity to perform a "breakthrough" in their personal evolution.

The foundation of yoga is ethics. the basic principle of ethics is Love in the highest sense of this word. The word "love" denotes attraction, aspiration to union. And that which divides by any feature — national, religious etc. — is opposite to love and yoga. (Let us note that meanings of the words "love" and "yoga" are quite close).

The schools of various systems of training that base their world outlook on other ethical principles have no right to call themselves schools of yoga — at least because their essence does not correspond to the meaning of the term "yoga. They can be called occult, sport schools, but not yogic ones.

Love is the basis and pivot of spiritual development. But mastering it is not an easy matter. Mastering the true Love requires from most of us long hard work on ourselves. Consider such an example: the majority of people of our country, who were subjected to perverted ideological "treatment" over decades, now are capable of understanding the concept of love only as sexual passion and sex itself. "Love" as selfish sexual passion with "legitimatized" (in social opinion) right of jealousy and crimes related to it have been taught even to schoolchildren on the examples from literary "classical works". While the concept of the higher spiritual Love was suppressed upon along with other attributes of religion.

In Hindu yoga the tenet of Love is termed "bhakti". For the first time it was formulated in the Bhagavad Gita where Krishna expounds the fundamentals of yoga to His disciple Arjuna. In particular, Krishna promises more successful advancement to those beginners in yoga who develop in themselves love to a concrete Divine Teacher — in contrast to those who worship the "non-manifested" (Ch.12).

It is "only Love (in a seeker)" (11:54) that is capable of achieving the final Goal.

Let us consider in detail the meaning of these poetic words. Let us think why Krishna pays so much attention in His religious Teaching to the necessity of learning to love, for example, "pure fragrance of the earth" instead of directing one's whole attention to the Creator?

The answer is the following. There is little value in love, so to say, "from the mind" (that is, for example, I know this is manifestation of love, and love is a virtue so I will do it). Such — intellectual — love is good only as a precondition for developing the true love — the emotional one. And how is it possible to develop the emotional love? And so Krishna suggests that one achieves this through admiration, attunement, emotional merging with the best that exists around us in nature and in people.

Another one of the greatest Teachers in the history of mankind — the founder of Christianity Jesus — spoke of the same, proclaiming the love to people as a necessary prerequisite for formation of the love for God. His whole Teaching, set forth in the New Testament, is full of precepts of how to do this.

So the basis of yoga is Love. One has to develop it in oneself by all possible means — through contacts with people and nature, through the arts, through studying ethical principles, fighting with own vices and so on. A good additional method, which accelerates the development of love, is the use of special techniques of work with reflexgeneous zones of emotional sphere. It must be noted, however, that such techniques do not guarantee stable progress in development of the highest spiritual features if the practitioner lacks strong desire to gain them and also if he does not supplement practicing these exercises with the transformation of his whole life.

High rate of advancement along the path of spiritual development in yoga is possible only in the case of the complex use of methods. This implies intellectual work (broadening the knowledge, ethical self-analysis, aspiration to understanding one's own path and  the paths of other people with the aim of helping them, and so on), transformation and development of one's emotional sphere, preparatory and auxiliary exercises with body, work with the consciousness. It is also desirable to use purposefully everyday activity (including professional one) in combination with specific methods of yoga training. The rate of disciple's advancement directly depends on the quantity of the techniques combined. The pivot of the whole discipleship is ethics based on the principle of Love; this pivot gets enveloped with fruits of other practical methods. Among the latter ones, first the development of the body and bioenergetic structures of the organism (chakras, meridians) are emphasized, and on the higher and the highest stages — work with the consciousness. Efficient development of consciousness is possible only with the help of buddhi yoga techniques.

Over the whole period of teaching, a teacher must be quite watchful to the ability of each student to fully grasp that which he does in the process of his practice. This is no less essential than control over possible appearance of such incompatible with spiritual development features as arrogance, self-admiration, intolerance. It is very significant to take into account the student's intellectual ability, when he is about to move to the next stage, because an excessive portion of knowledge may turn out to be a burden exceeding the student's power. Students' own teaching activity, when they share with others the knowledge of the stages they have passed, allows them to consolidate that which they have mastered and helps them to achieve maturity.

Each successive stage of study is conquered by a considerably lesser number of students than the previous one. The highest stages of yoga are accessible only to a few out of thousands who started the practice. It is not possible to quickly satisfy even the strongest aspiration to the Perfection: advancement consists as if of "ups" and "downs". The latter are necessary for consolidation in new states, for accumulation of power for mastering new "ups", for intellectual understanding of the parts of one's Path, for resolution of arising ethical problems. Periods between "ups" may last from days to years and much more for different students. Attempts to artificially accelerate the process of student's development by teaching him new techniques of training always yield negative results.

One should always keep in mind another very important principle of teaching yoga: a student must be absolutely free to leave the teacher; the latter has no right to compel the student to continue the study, attracting him to oneself even in thoughts.

And the last rule: specific methods of the highest stages of yoga must not be spread and revealed to unprepared students to avoid, among other things, their incorrect use. One should take into account usual tendency of people to do prestigious things, as well as to read books from the end.