Yoga – the greatest spiritual myth of our time?

What we generally think of and talk about as yoga is simply physical exercise. Many of them are not even worthy of being called the first step of yoga. Yoga has to do with the mind, because our problems and sufferings are in the mind. No one commits suicide because their knee hurts. No one says their life is ruined because their back hurts. Our real problems lie elsewhere. If we were to truly explain what is seriously reducing the quality of our lives, it would be our mental state.

There is a fundamental misconception that yoga has anything to do with the body. In fact, this misconception is the biggest obstacle to real yoga. Look at the whole iconography that surrounds yoga, how it has been portrayed in popular culture. What immediately comes to mind is a healthy person doing certain asanas and mudras. That is nice to see, but that is not yoga.

Real yoga has to do with the position of the mind, which unfortunately is not given much emphasis, in fact it is given negligible emphasis.

In the second, fourth, sixth and tenth chapters of the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna explains very clearly what yoga is. When the mind is firmly aligned with what is right, that is the state of yoga. You need to know who you are and act accordingly. You need to be one and in harmony with what is truly important. That union is called yoga.

Yoga is not the so-called merging of body, mind and spirit. It is not the merging of soul and a few other things. And there are a lot of meaningless poems like this that sound flowery but mean nothing. Yoga is simply the mind being fixed on the right thing all the time and remaining bound to it. This merging, not allowing the mind to wander, is yoga.

Many of our problems are related to our mind and body, so a healthy mind leads to a healthy body. If you understand the values ​​you want to achieve in life, you will understand that your body is important because it helps you on your journey. You will want to take care of your body and keep it healthy and in good condition, as it is a wonderful vehicle that will take you to your destination. Then your body will become a resource for your mind, and as a result, your body will be kept healthy.

Physical health is a by-product of yoga. It is secondary, not central. Right living is central.

Yoga is not something that you can somehow fit into your normal life patterns. Yoga has to be at the center of your life. It is not something that you can take from the outside and somehow fit into your existing routine. I repeat, yoga is a commitment to live right. It is not something you do to keep your body healthy so that you can continue living an absurd life.

I may be living a very wrong, very delusional life, and yet I may want to have a healthy body, because a healthy body brings me all kinds of pleasure and keeps away many kinds of pain. And given that most of us are very particular about our bodies, there is an added incentive to be physically healthy. This is a gross misuse of yoga.

I may be in a job or business that is soul-draining. But I want to be okay, I want to be successful in my profession, so I use yoga to fulfill my goals. Or rather, I misuse and abuse it. I read a long time ago that there is a group of extremists who use the breath control techniques of yoga to achieve their goals more effectively and efficiently. Is that really what we want to use yoga for?

Yoga has to be the centre of your life. Yoga has to set its own goals. It does not serve the goals you set for yourself.

Otherwise, it’s a strange situation. The ego sets a goal and then uses yoga to achieve that goal. It’s like using the greatest weapon for the most ignoble purpose. It’s like using the greatest resource, the greatest knowledge, for the most ignoble purpose. Yoga could have saved us, but it has been grossly misused.

Arjuna was probably one of the healthiest people on the battlefield of the Mahabharata. He was the strongest warrior and archer of his time, so he may have even been physically superior to Krishna. So why did Krishna have to teach Arjuna the 18 types of yoga? Obviously, it was not for Arjuna’s physical health; he was already physically healthy.

In fact, many of the physical problems we have today are due to mental breakdown. For example, the problems we face due to pollution, lifestyle-related diseases, etc. are not actually physical problems but are manifestations of mental disorders. In that sense, we are all like Arjuna. There are no purely physical problems, there are many problems that arise from the mind. Just as Arjuna needed the 18 chapters, 18 types of yoga that Krishna taught him, so too do we need yoga.

The ego has a vested interest in confining yoga within the concept of the body, because if yoga is not confined within the physical walls of the body, it will attack the ego itself. And the ego does not want that. So the ego plays a clever, sneaky trick: it says, “Yoga is great, yoga is great, and yoga is physical.”

The moment you free yoga from these artificial and unwise physical constraints, it becomes a powerful force for changing lives. Then you need to read, understand and realise what Patanjali and Krishna actually meant. Now, that’s something we don’t want to get into, but we are so happy because our slim figure helps us to do whatever we want to do. And that is the evil of doing whatever we want to do. Yoga is not about doing whatever you want to do, and it is the ego that says so. Why do you want to do “anything”? Why not do the right thing?

Yoga is a life of sincerity and honesty. Yoga is a life of fiery rebellion. Yoga is a life whose actions are not dictated by knowledge acquired from the world. Yoga is a life that is not guided by anything and everything other than the mind itself.

Yoga is not a part of life, Yoga is life itself. There is no room for compromise, no room for doubt, no room for dependency.