Yoga Sagar

SR No.: 014011
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Paramhamsa Satyananda
Publisher: Bihar School of Yoga Munger
Publication Year: 1994
Total Pages: 436
Language: English
Classification: Seminar & Articles
File Size: 24 MB

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another, social theorists and creative authors still another. And religion will provide a whole array of different answers. However, I believe that one very important answer lies in yoga: an answer not to accidental origin but an answer to the origin of origins, and that goes by the names of purusha and prakriti. Yoga to my mind is an active memory of viyoga. It is the cosmic memory of a great chain of being which has to be recalled here and now in our terrestrial boundaries.
Let me come to the second kind of memory which yoga summons us to revive; the memory of purpose, of what the Greeks call the telos. In the Hindu version of it there are four aims in life. These are dharma, artha, kama and moksha. In pursuit of these aims, dilemmas can arise. As the great figure of the Mahabharata, Duryodhana, often used to say, Jaanaami dharmam nacchame pravritti. Jaanaami adharmam nacchaame nivritti. "I know the dharma but I cannot act upon it or act by it. I know the adharma but I cannot desist from it".
The existence or dilemma is a different order of reality to the prescription of the four aims of life. Purposes are notorious because they conflict. Purposes conflict even in the guru. Everywhere purposes conflict and to my mind yoga is the active memory of the conflict of dharmic and adharmic purposes. It is also the means of resolving this order of conflicts. In other words, I would like to say, with the courage of my confusion, that yoga is the memory of this great purushartha, this great praxis.
With your indulgence let me now come to the third kind of memory. This is the memory of the body, the body as the temple of the spirit, the body as a path, as a medium not as an obstacle or a terminus to emancipation. For a true yogi the body must be a mirror of the soul. The memory of the body stands celebrated in hatha yoga and to some extent in raja yoga. Care of the body, responsibility towards the body is, I think, the basis of yoga.
When I go to Deoghar I am going to ask Satyam what kind of yoga he is currently practising by the daman, the repression of his body. But I must say, Swamiji made me conscious of my body. He introduced me to my toe. I knew I had a toe but I never realized that it was part of my body until one fine morning, he said, "Upen, I want to instruct you in chidakasha dharana." I said, "I don't want to be instructed in chidakasha dharana or any other kind of dharana for that matter." But he
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