Yoga (Yoga, Hinduism, Buddhism)

seems to have commenced in India in antiquity, prior to the Brahminism of the Aryan invaders under whom it was sometimes tolerated, sometimes persecuted. It flourished in the period of the [vedanta]

which followed that of the [veda]

and is expounded in the [upanishads]

and in the [Bhagavad Gita]

. It incorporates the nonviolence and doctrines of karma and reincarnation of Jain teaching; and was spread beyond India through the various forms of Buddhism.

Literally meaning "union" and "control", from the same root as the word "yoke", yoga is a system of methods of physical, mental, moral and spiritual development. Its premise is that through self-estrangement, alienation from existence, man has lost contact with the infinite ground of existence. Restless search for truth and happiness outside himself occurs because he has forgotten that these are only to be found at the inmost centre of his own being. The purpose of all forms of yoga is to unite finite man in full consciousness with the infinite, by whatever name this ultimate reality is known. The term is used to designate any ascetic technique and any method of meditation (Indian thought), although classical (systemic), popular (nonsystemic), and non-Brahmanic (Buddhist, Jainist) yogas are distinguished. Even the way of the Christian mystic, in that it it is a path towards knowledge of and union with God, can be referred to as yoga.

The fundamental goal of union with the spiritual world presupposes a preliminary detachment from the material world. Yoga therefore places emphasis on the self-discipline by virtue of which the individual can obtain the necessary concentration of spirit prior to any experience of true union. The exercises directed toward this end are extremely practical and guard against side-tracking into fanciful contemplation and dilettante exploration of profound ideas.

In addition to being a system of methods, yoga is also a system of philosophy (although not in the Western sense) lived out through these methods. It is a system of coherent affirmations, coextensive with human experience (which it attempts to interpret in its entirety), with the aim of liberating man from ignorance and allowing him to experience the [supra-conscious]

component of his personality. As such it is one of the six orthodox Indian systems of philosophy.

Yoga methods (as practised in India) are not supposed to be learnt by the individual working in isolation. The guidance of a master (guru) is considered necessary. The individual begins by giving up the profane world with which he has been associated and, guided by his guru, applies himself to passing successively beyond the behaviour patterns and values proper to the human condition. Through this process the individual may achieve (if successful) a form of death and rebirth into a transcendent mode of liberated being which enables him to maintain the experience of spiritual union whilst retaining a relationship to his ongoing, limited, earthly experience.

Within the general system of yoga, four more specialized systems are distinguished, although few gurus would make use of one yoga to the point of excluding use of the other three in his practices (to the point that each guru effectively creates his own yoga combining elements from each of the others). These four correspond to the developmental priorities and endowments of four basic personality types: reflective, emotional, action-oriented, and empirical or experimental. All forms of yoga require the individual to cultivate practices such as: truthfulness, self-control, cleanliness, harmlessness. All of them usually require some practice of the first form of yoga, namely Hatha Yoga, which gives the body the necessary health and strength (particularly through breathing control) to endure the hardships of the more advanced stages of training. This is the system of yoga normally practised in the West and is often, erroneously, simply referred to as yoga itself. The other three forms are: Laya Yoga, leading to control over the mind and emotions (defined to include mastery over will, love, energy, sound and form); Raja Yoga, leading to control over consciousness (defined to include discrimination, intellect, action, psychic-nerve energy, and ecstasy); and Dhyana Yoga which is concerned with meditation, and as such is common to all the yogas, since it is an essential practice in each of them.

Each of the first three yogas therefore leads to the perfection of one aspect of man's nature, respectively the physical man, the emotional/mental man, and the spiritual man. They are reflected in the three ways or [marga]

- [karma marga]

(the way of action), [bhakti marga]

(the way of loving faith) and [jnana marga]

(the way of knowledge or enlightenment). It should be noted that none of the forms of yoga nor the different ways is exclusive and all are to some degree considered necessary. There are thus many variants on the forms of yoga, adapted to fit individual schools and teachings, and many of these are described separately. Taken together, yoga is therefore conceived to be a method of bringing about man's complete development by means of mental powers and spiritual forces, experienced in and through the human organism.