[yoh-guh]
“The word ‘Yoga’ means ‘union.’ Union means you begin to experience the universality of who you are. For example, today, modern science proves to you beyond any doubt that the whole existence is just one energy manifesting itself in various forms. If this scientific fact becomes a living reality for you – that you begin to experience everything as one – then you are in Yoga. When you are in Yoga, you experience everything as a part of yourself. That is liberation, that is mukti, that is ultimate freedom.” -Sadhguru
Initially, Yoga was imparted by the Adiyogi (the first yogi), Shiva, over 15,000 years ago. It was Adiyogi who introduced to humanity the idea that one can evolve beyond one’s present level of existence. He poured his knowing into the legendary Sapta Rishis, or seven sages, who took the tremendous possibility offered by the yogic science to various parts of the world, including Asia, ancient Persia, northern Africa, and South America. It is this fundamental yet sophisticated science of elevating human consciousness that is the source of the world’s spiritual traditions, predating religion by many thousands of years. Yoga is about attaining absolute Balance, piercing Clarity, and an inexhaustible Exuberance. With this, you are immensely fit for life.
Yoga is the science of activating your inner energies to such a vibrant and exuberant state that your body, mind, and emotions function at their highest peaks
– Sadhguru
Introduction
Sadhguru: In the western part of the world, if you utter the word yoga, people think of impossible physical postures. This is a very distorted idea of what yoga is. The word “yoga” literally means “union.” What does union mean? Today it is a scientific fact that the whole existence is just one energy manifesting itself in a million different ways. For ages the religions of the world have been saying, “God is everywhere.” Whether you say “God is everywhere” or “Everything is one energy,” it is not different. Einstein called it energy, you call it God. It is the same thing being expressed in two different ways. But a scientist has only mathematically deduced it. He has not experienced it. A person who just believes it has also not experienced it. Somebody just told him so.
Yoga is not about bending and twisting your body or holding your breath. It is a mechanism and a technology to get you to that state of experience where you see reality just the way it is.
Everything Becomes One
Is such a thing possible? The individual experience of who you are has its basis on the boundaries of your sensation. Whatever is within these boundaries is you, and whatever is outside is not you – this is your experience of life. For example, once you drink a glass of water, you experience the water as you. Everything that makes up your body right now was somewhere outside as food or water. Once you put this into the boundaries of your sensation, you experience it as “myself.” At any moment in your life, if you have known an extreme sense of joy or ecstasy, if you had placed your hands about eight or nine inches over your body, you would have felt the sensation of touching the body. Similarly, it is a medical fact that even when a physical leg is amputated, the sensory leg is still intact.
The sensory body has its own presence beyond the physical body. There is a way to enlarge your sensory body.If you make your life energies very exuberant and ecstatic, your sensory body becomes as large as you want it. Yoga is to expand the boundary of your sensation in such a way that you experience the whole universe as a part of yourself. Everything becomes one. That is union.
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