Consider a final statement as to why yoga
practice and theory are inseparable. The Spiritual Counterfeits Project
in Berkeley, California, publishes a relatively brief treatment on yoga,
which we reproduce here with permission. The author was a former
practitioner of yoga for several years with the Ananda Marga Yoga
Society: 1
Yoga exercises are taught as part of YMCA
physical education programs, as health spa esoterica, on educational TV,
and are incorporated into institutional church youth activities—all on
the assumption that these techniques are nothing more than a superior
brand of physical conditioning.
Yet this assumption is really the worst
presumption.... [E]ven physical yoga is inextricably bound up in the
whole of Eastern religious metaphysics. In fact, it is quite accurate to
say that physical yoga and Indian metaphysics are mutually
interdependent; you really can’t have one without the other. This
point may be illustrated by referring to the two major traditional
occurrences of physical yoga in the East.
First of all, yoga postures (asanas)
evolved as an integral part of Raja (royal) Yoga, also known as ashtanga
(eight-limbed) yoga. Raja Yoga is one of the more highly
sophisticated systems of psychospiritual conditioning, and all the more
so because it recognizes the profound influence of the body upon
consciousness. (Indeed, its philosophical premise is that the body is
but a crude layer of mind.) Asana (physical postures) is
indispensable as one of the eight stages of Raja Yoga because the yoga
postures are themselves specifically designed to manipulate
consciousness, to a greater or lesser degree, into Raja Yoga’s
consummate experience of samadhi: undifferentiated union with the
primal essence of consciousness, the monist’s equivalent of
"God." In his definitive work on Raja Yoga, Swami Vivekananda
writes of asana: "A series of exercises, physical and mental, is to
be gone through every day until certain higher states are reached. Nerve
currents will have to be displaced and given a new channel. New sorts of
vibrations will begin: the whole constitution will be remodeled, as it
were."
In the context of Raja Yoga, then, the
effects of the practice of asana are recognized as certainly
going far beyond the merely physical and psychological results of
Western systems of exercise. But does it necessarily follow that the
Westerner practicing physical yoga will automatically have his or her
consciousness manipulated into that experience of reality characteristic
of Eastern metaphysics? Such a question has a great many ramifications.
Some preliminary light may be shed on it, however, by examining the
second major occurrence of physical yoga in the East—Hatha Yoga.
Because of widespread abuse in India,
Hatha Yoga has there fallen into much disrepute, being considered a
gross physical practice without spiritual value. Vivekananda, in
comparing asana to hatha, summarily dismisses the latter as having no
real worth at all: "This portion of yoga (asana) is a little
similar to Hatha Yoga, which deals entirely with the physical body, its
aim being to make the physical body very strong. We have nothing to do
with it here, because its practices are very difficult... and, after
all, do not lead to much spiritual growth."
It is this reputation, as well as the
ready availability of certain teachers of hatha who would perpetuate it,
which makes it easy for a Westerner to presume to use the techniques of
yoga as but another form of physical self-culture. But, in reality,
neither Vivekananda’s partisan snobbery nor a lotus-cart full of Hatha
gymnasts can mask the fact that Hatha is classically understood in much
the same way as Raja Yoga.
In fact, the classic esoteric handbook of
Hatha, the Hatha Yoga Pradipika by Swami Svatmarama states
emphatically in the second and third slokas: "Having thus solemnly
saluted his master, Yogi Svatmarama now presents Hatha Vidya (vidya =
wisdom) solely and exclusively for the attainment of Raja Yoga. For
those who wander in the darkness of conflicting creeds, unable to reach
to the heights of Raja Yoga, the merciful Yogi Svatmarama has lit the
torch of Hatha wisdom."
The meaning here could not be more plain.
The techniques of Hatha are given so as to prepare a person’s
consciousness for the subtler metaphysics of Raja Yoga. Irrespective of
belief, Hatha is regarded as a torch to experientially guide one out
from that belief into the "wisdom" of Raja Yoga.
Alain Danielou, a recognized French
scholar on the subject of yoga, states that "the sole purpose of
the physical practices of Hatha Yoga is to suppress physical obstacles
on the Spiritual or Royal path of Raja Yoga and Hatha yoga is therefore
called ‘the ladder to Raja Yoga.’" However for those who
practice Hatha for purely physical ends, outside of a total context of
spiritual discipline, most of the classic commentaries issue dire
warnings. The Ananda Marga Yoga Society’s manual for teachers sums
them up well: "Indeed from the practice of Hatha Yoga, without a
proper effort to the mind, mental and spiritual degeneration may
ultimately occur."
The typical middle-class Westerner,
taking yoga classes at the YMCA, has little or no idea of the how’s
and why’s of yoga’s seeming efficacy. In the traditional
understanding, physical yoga has a great deal more to do with the
practitioner’s invisible, "subtle" body, than it does with
the flesh and bones and muscles which encase it. While yoga does purport
to first of all work on the muscular, glandular, and physical nervous
systems, its real import, as Danielou says, is as "a process of
control of the gross body which aims at freeing the subtle body."
This subtle body is extremely complex, but can be superficially
described as consisting of 72,000 invisible psychic channels called nadis,
which constitute an other dimensional body which directly
corresponds to the physical, or gross, body. The subtle body is
connected to the gross body at several points, with the seven
predominant ones located at distinct points ranging from the base of the
spine to the top of the head. These are called chakras, and they
are believed to control the various aspects of the consciousness of the
individual. Physical yoga finds its most refined expression when it
teaches postures which bring various channels within the subtle body
into a specific alignment with one another and thus alter the
consciousness of the practitioner in a specified way.
Whether or not this sort of thing is
actually going on... it is important to understand that physical yoga,
according to its classical definitions, is inherently and functionally
incapable of being separated from Eastern religious metaphysics. The
Western practitioner who attempts to do so is operating in ignorance and
danger, from the yogi’s viewpoint, as well as from the Christian’s.
2
Notes:
1. Dave Fletcho, "David Fletcho’s Story: Last
Meditation/Lotus Reference," Special Collections Journal,
vol. 6, no. 1, Berkeley, CA: Spiritual Counterfeits Project, Winter
1984, pp. 31-36.
2. Dave Fletcho, "Yoga," Berkeley, CA:
Spiritual Counterfeits Project, 1978, pp. 2-6.
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