What is Yoga?

Gauracandra · October 22, 2002

This week’s Srila Siddhaswarupananda television program is concerned with understanding ‘What is yoga?’ The program opens with Jagat Guru asking various audience members their understanding of yoga is.

Srila Siddhasvarupananda: When I say yoga what do you think of?

Audience Member1: I think of exercises like stretching or standing on your head.

Audience Member2: Moving the energy from the bottom of the body to the top of ones brain.

Audience Member3: Breathing exercises.

Srila Siddhaswarupananda continues: All kinds of people have different notions of what yoga is. Most people think of body exercises. Sitting with your legs crossed, or standing on your head, or twisting your back. This is yoga. People do this for health, and to look better, to be sexier. You find many fat ladies doing yoga hoping to lose weight. Other people think of yoga as pranayama or breathing exercises. This is all Hatha yoga. Basically it is a preliminary physical system to help a person regulate the body.

We must understand what is the real purpose of yoga. Yoga is a Sanskrit word which means to link up the living entity with the Supreme Soul. Yoga is not material, it is not a physical endeavor. In fact it is a spiritual endeavor. Yoga although very scientific is also religious. It is religion. Union with God is religion. All religious processes are meant for union with God.

Unfortunately most people mistake exercise as the purpose of yoga. This is because this is what the yoga teachers present. Myself, I am a yoga teacher. Often I will meet people and they will ask me what I do. I tell them ‘I am a yoga teacher’. Then they ask “Can you show me some moves?” [laughter] It should be understood that a bonafide yoga teacher teaches you how to link up with God. Hatha yoga seeks to make the body less disturbed by physical agitations with the specific purpose that in such an undisturbed state one can meditate upon God. This is the true purpose of these exercises. It cleans up the subtle nervous system to help realize the spirit within.

Hatha Yoga is a preliminary system which moves onto a more advanced form known as Kundalini yoga. This process opens up energy points through out the body in order not to cause physical harm to the body. Simply put Hatha yoga is a physical endeavor which leads then to Kundalini yoga. It allows a person to sit and increase energy levels in the body without causing damage to the body. Kundalini yoga then works to raise the life force from the base of the spine to the top of the head. I won’t go into the details of this process right now.

Another form of yoga is called Jnana yoga or linking to the Supreme through knowledge. If a person understands Aham Brahmasmi – “I am spirit soul”, this person is in knowledge. A Jnana yogi takes a philosophical approach to understand “Who is God?” “Who am I?”

The ultimate goal of yoga is Bhakti or uniting with the Supreme Lord in loving devotion. Basically Bhakti, as Lord Jesus Christ has stated in his first and foremost commandment, is to love God with all your heart, mind, and body with no desire for reward. Simply out of love. My happiness is that You allow me to serve You. Such a person is in the perfectional stage of yoga. This is the goal of all yoga processes. Such individuals know they are eternally God’s servant and have perfected their life.

So what is yoga? Yoga is union with God. What kind of union? There is the union between two lovers, the union between friends, the union between son and father. There are many relationships one can have with the Supreme Lord. This loving relationship is what links us to God.

Some people like to think union means becoming zero. That you cease being an individual. You are like a drop of water falling into the ocean. “It is all one.” But Caitanya Mahaprabhu says that yoga is oneness but simultaneous distinction. There is oneness in love and will. The impersonalists will say you become zero and that God is nothing more than an impersonal ocean of light. They cannot conceive of infinite variety.

In the 12th Century a great Vaisnava saint named Ramanujacharya described how there can be oneness and variety at the same time. He gave the example of a green bird flying into a green forest. From a distance it may appear that the green bird has become zero. But in fact the individual green bird retains its identity. When you look at a green mountain from a distance it all seems like one big mass. But the closer you get the more you start to see varieties of color. You see wild life, flowers, fruits, rivers. These are things you can’t see from a distance. The Absolute Truth is full of individuality, personality, love and variety. When the spirit soul enters the Spiritual Sky he leaves the world of matter (birth, disease, old age, and death) and enters the eternal Kingdom of God. In God’s Kingdom He is the central enjoyer. He is the Supreme Personality of Godhead. That is why its His kingdom. A perfect yogi understands this and lovingly serves the Supreme Lord even if in this material world.