Yoga

yoga (yō`gə) [Skt.,=union], general term for spiritual disciplines in Hinduism, Buddhism, and throughout S Asia that are directed toward attaining higher consciousness and liberation from ignorance, suffering, and rebirth. More specifically it is also the name of one of the six orthodox systems of Hindu philosophy. Both Vedic and Buddhist literature discuss the doctrines of wandering ascetics in ancient India who practiced various kinds of austerities and meditation. The basic text of the Yoga philosophical school, the Yoga Sutras of Patañjali (2d cent. B.C.), is a systematization of one of these older traditions. Contemporary systems of yoga, such as those of Sri Aurobindo Ghose and Sri Chinmoy Ghose, stress that spiritual realization can be attained without the withdrawal from the world characteristic of the older traditions. Yoga is usually practiced under the guidance of a guru, or spiritual guide.

Patañjali divides the practice of yoga into eight stages. Yama, or restraint from vice, and niyama, or observance of purity and virtue, lay the moral foundation for practice and remove the disturbance of uncontrolled desires. Asana, or posture, and pranayama, or breath control, calm the physical body, while pratyahara, or withdrawal of the senses, detaches the mind from the external world. Internal control of consciousness is accomplished in the final three stages: dharana, or concentration, dhyana, or meditation, and samadhi. Through such practices yogis acquire miraculous powers, which must ultimately be renounced to attain the highest state. In samadhi the subject-object distinction and one's sense of an individual self disappear in a state usually described as one of supreme peace, bliss, and illumination. A common feature of different traditions of yoga is one-pointed concentration on a chosen object, whether a part of the body, the breath, a mantra, a diagram, a deity, or an idea.

Hindu tradition in general recognizes three main kinds of yoga: jnana yoga, the path of realization and wisdom, bhakti yoga, the path of love and devotion to a personal God, and karma yoga, the path of selfless action. Other classifications exist. Patañjali's yoga is known as raja, or "royal," yoga. Hatha yoga, which stresses physical control and postures, is widely practiced in the West. Kundalini yoga, especially associated with Tantra, is based on the physiology of the "subtle body," according to which seven major centers of psychic energy, called chakras, are located along the spinal column, with the kundalini, or "coiled" energy in latent form, located at the base of the spine. When the kundalini is activated by yogic methods, it ascends the spine through the main subtle artery of the sushumna, "opening" each chakra in turn. When the kundalini reaches the topmost chakra in the brain, samadhi is attained.

Bibliography

See S. Dasgupta, Yoga as Philosophy and Religion (1924, repr. 1973); I. K. Taimni, The Science of Yoga (1967); E. Wood, Yoga (1967); M. Eliade, Yoga (1969); P. Sinha, Yoga (1970); J. Varenne, Yoga and the Hindu Tradition (1976).

---

Yoga

One of the six orthodox systems (darshans) of Indian philosophy, which has had widespread influence on many schools of Indian thought. It is better known through its practical aspect than its intellectual content, which is largely based on the philosophy of Samkhya. Holding that the evolution of the world occurred in stages, Yoga attempts to reverse this order so that a person reenters his or her state of purity and consciousness. Generally, the Yoga process involves eight stages, which may require several lifetimes to pass through. The first two stages are ethical preparations emphasizing morality, cleanliness, and devotion to God. The next two stages are physical preparations that condition the body to make it supple, flexible, and healthy; the physical aspects of Yoga have been most successfully popularized in the West. The fifth stage involves control of the mind and senses to withdraw from outward objects. The remaining three stages entail the cultivation of increasingly concentrated states of awareness, which will ultimately lead to release from the cycle of rebirth. See also chakra, kundalini.

---

yoga

1. a Hindu system of philosophy aiming at the mystical union of the self with the Supreme Being in a state of complete awareness and tranquillity through certain physical and mental exercises

2. any method by which such awareness and tranquillity are attained, esp a course of related exercises and postures designed to promote physical and spiritual wellbeing
www.yoga.com

---

Yoga 

(Sanskrit, literally “joining,” “union,” “concentration,” or “effort”; the term is found in texts going back to oral traditions of the ninth and eighth centuries B.C.).

(1) In the broadest sense, a doctrine and method of controlling the human mind and psychophysiology with the aim of achieving higher psychic states. In this sense, yoga is an indispensable part of all the philosophical and religious systems of ancient and medieval India, and it is regarded by these systems as an extremely important means of realizing ethical and religious ideals, of which the highest is the complete liberation of man from the bonds of material existence. The basic ideas of yoga are the parallelism between the microcosm of man’s psychophysiology and the cosmic body of the universe, signifying that all man’s conscious strivings for self-reconstruction find their correspondence in the play of cosmic forces; the gradualness with which man masters the practice of self-change; the possibility of controlling biological bodies and inanimate objects by the mind; and the potential existence and possible development in any living being of a special yogic force, capable of fundamentally altering the natural order of things.

The basic concepts and actions of yoga are the subordination of body functions, or yama (control of respiration, temperature, digestion, the heart, circulation, and so on); settling the body into particular fixed postures, or asana; meditation upon a fixed (real or mental) object, bhavana; a state of trance characterized by a sharp change in mental and emotional condition, dhyana; and a state of psychic equilibrium and concentration, in which the mind acquires the characteristics of a homeostatic system (nonreversibility of psychic processes), known as samadhi. The ideas and concepts of yoga served as the basis for the development of a particular system of anatomical and physiological concepts about the circulation of life energy in the organism (kundalini-shakti ) and its concentration in the functionally important centers of the body (chakra). Yoga became especially highly developed by the Tantrist sects and schools of Hinduism and by Mahayana Buddhism.

(2)One of the six orthodox systems of Indian idealist philosophy, as summarily expounded in the Yoga-sutra of Patanjali (some time between the second century B.C. and the second century A.D.). Its basic idea is that the individual (purusha) can achieve spiritual liberation by stopping the flow of mental activity and bringing into equilibrium the basic tendencies of individual existence: sattva (serenity), rajas (activity), and tamas (inertia). In the yoga of Patanjali, eight stages of psychic concentration are distinguished, beginning with yama and ending with samadhi. Yogic exertions result in attaining the state of mahasa-madhi, that is, a merging of the contemplator, the object contemplated, and the process of contemplation. Mahasamadhi is considered to be a state of absolute freedom.

(3) Yoga understood as a form of consistent meditation (in the Vedanta), rather than as psychophysiological exercises (hatha-yoga). This form of yoga, raja-yoga, gives an intellectual interpretation to all yogic practices, explaining them as special reflex procedures for establishing the practicing individual’s identity with absolute reality.

In modern times, there have developed within yoga certain tendencies of classical Hinduist yoga, of which the most prominent representatives are Vivekananda, with his idea of integral yoga (the end of the 19th century), and Yogananda (the 1940’s and 1950’s). A specifically Buddhist yoga became especially developed in Tibet and Japan. The practice of yogic psychophysiological techniques to sustain the viability of the human organism under conditions of extreme scarcity of food and of anomalous rates of the functioning of the nervous, endocrine, and respiratory systems is being studied by contemporary clinical medicine, experimental psychology, and physiology.

REFERENCES

Ramacharaka. Hatha Yoga. St. Petersburg, 1912.
Vivekananda, S. Filosofiia Ioga. Sosnitsa, 1911.
Radhakrishnan, S. Indiiskaia filosofiia, vol. 2, pp. 296–330. Moscow, 1957. (Translated from English.)
Aurobindo. The Synthesis of Yoga.New Jersey, 1950.
Coster, G. Yoga and Western Psychology.Oxford, 1949.
Dasgupta, S. Yoga As Philosophy and Religion. London, 1924.
Eliade, M. Patanjali et le Yoga. Paris, 1962.

D. B. ZIL’BERMAN and A. M. PIATIGORSKII