•  YOGA AND ITS UNIVERSAL TEACHINGS

By: Dr. Somvir

Yoga has been considered a universal concept of harmonious living since time immemorial. Patanjali, the greatest yogi, wrote the text book on yoga entitled ‘Yogasutra’, which contained 195 philosophical sentences using the ancient Sanskrit language. Let us first understand what yoga is. In the second sentence of ‘Yogasutra’, Patanjali, gives a definition of yoga as the restraint of the process of mind. Some people also interpret the word yoga as unity between human souls with supreme energy.

Yoga introduces physical exercises, which are very scientific in themselves, to cure different diseases found in the human body. These exercises are universal and have been taken not from any particular religion but from birds, animals and plants. It means the physical exercises of yoga that are prevalent nowadays do not belong to any particular religion or culture. The exercises done in yoga are, for example, peacock pose, snake form, lotus form, tree pose, fish pose and arrow pose etc. and these exercises are performed by many yoga practitioners. These animals or birds certainly do not belong to anyone; they are everywhere and are good companions of human being.

Coming now to the breathing exercises of yoga: there are no hospitals and no doctors in modern concepts of medical scientific techniques of the human body’s breathing system as perfect as those found in yoga. Yoga has a fully developed science on the techniques of breathing exercises which cure the human body internally and calm the mind. That’s why breathing exercises are very important to remove stress from the mind. Breath is in every human being and the techniques found in yoga are also very scientific and universal.

Now we come to the last concept of yoga: meditation. Meditation is when a person fully controls the senses, mind and complete contemplation on God is actually meditation. In a simple meaning, meditation means remembering God. The recent development that yoga belongs to Hinduism comes from this last technique of yoga; meditation. It is true when some people meditate they do it silently without mentioning the name of God verbally. Some people use the name of God according to their faith and some of them also chant and recite AUM.

However, let us look at an original yoga text book such as ‘Yogasutra’. We do not find any mention of the word AUM there. We just find the word ‘Pranav’ which later on is translated into the word AUM. I think our Muslim brothers have an objection to receiving any other name than prescribed in their holy books. Similarly, there might be objections from other religions too. Therefore we have no need to recite Aum during meditation; other religions can recite and remember the name of God per belief or we may just substitute humming while meditating and remembering the God as per our own faith. 

It is sad that some of our yoga gurus do not have deep knowledge or they have even not studied the original text books of yoga and they start including certain mantras or sectarian concepts to yoga. Yoga is not only physical exercise but it has developed into medical science to cure and prevent different diseases. Techniques such as eye cleaning, anal cleaning, stomach cleaning, throat cleaning and nose cleaning are important aspects of yoga.

Human civilization has progressed through the contribution of many great thinkers, philosophers and intellectuals so we are all interdependent; neither independent nor dependent. For example, the inventions of the mobile phone, radio or Television are mostly achievements made by our Christian brothers and now every country can assemble or make the mobile phone, TV or radio. It does not create any problem but these are universal itself and benefit goes directly to each individual. We cannot reject them by arguing that they are invented by other community members.

Another simple example is the Birthday song, which is popular everywhere (happy birthday to you). This comes from the west but our children happily use it to celebrate birthdays even though we have our own birthday songs. Yoga contributes a lot in bringing the communities of Muslims and Hindus in India together; one of the concepts of Sufism is also very much influenced by yoga. Kabirdas, a great saint, lived and died for the unity of the different communities for this purpose. In Europe yoga has never been subject to bans because they adopted physical exercise, techniques of breathing and silent meditation and in fact now, in America, more than 10 million people practice yoga according to ‘Time Magazine’.

On the other hand, yoga opened the mind of western thinkers to look at Asia; a place of great philosophy. Development of science in the west and development of philosophy in Asia are a perfect combination and encourage us to share the experiences which finally will benefit all of us. Indonesia has a great historical relation with India, Hinduism, Buddhism and Islam also reached to Indonesia from India. India and Indonesia are an example of where all religions can live peacefully.

The greatest contribution of Islam to India is music and art. The Tajmahal is one of the wonders of the world and is a symbol of unity between civilizations of Hinduism and Islam which both can be proud of. Indonesia has Borobudur, Prambanan, wayang and in fact the phrase ‘Bhineka Tunngal Ika’ - unity in diversity - was taken from the last Hindu kingdom ‘Majapahit’ of Indonesia. This reflects Indonesian intellectuals were very tolerant in accepting such values as ‘Bhineka Tunngal Ika’. Similarly, we want the same thinking and universal approach of the intellectuals of today and the society that they really trust in ‘bhineka tunngal ika’ and ‘Pancasila’ while dealing with yoga, which has been in Indonesia for more than 2000 years.

As yoga united India with the west, similarly yoga unites India and south East Asia. Because it is only the concept which has been practiced by Indians, it is far from the rituals and thus this concept is very easily applicable for everyone. That is why yoga is gaining great popularity not only in Asia but even in The Russian federation and Africa. Yoga is an alternative life style and if we develop it with further scientific research, we will not need to spend millions of dollars on any more chemical medicines.

If we follow the technique of yoga we can bring down our annual budget for health. India has many yoga and Ayurvedic Universities and institutes, which are far from religion but truly developed in scientific methods and India is proud to have less dependence on modern chemical medicines than any other country. We do not have any medicine for our mind, we do not have medicine for AIDS and cancer but yoga has.

Yoga can cure diseases such as cancer and AIDS if the patient starts doing yoga at the preliminary stage. There is no medicine for stress compared with yoga that can cure our stress within three months. Yoga is not something mystic but it is a very simple internal science for our body, mind and soul to keep them in balance so that we can come out as complete human beings having the qualities of being human such as compassion, love and tolerance among all our brothers and sisters. Let us benefit from the science of yoga and not to consider yoga as a religion or sect but practice it regularly in order to achieve a healthy mind, body and soul which we have polluted in the name of modernisation.

           
The science of yoga is perhaps more developed than the modern science of today. The yogis found that human beings take a total of 21,600 breaths per day and night. The human body has 72,000 veins that need to be cleaned everyday to achieve good health. The human body has 6-8 energy channels, which are called chakras. The human body has five major elements: fire, earth, water, air and the sky. The yogis lived perfectly for more than 100 years without any medicines but cured themselves by simply doing the techniques of yoga. Yoga has techniques to clean the entire body from head to toe, which are very simple to practice yet contain deep philosophy. Our body has five seats based on food, breath, mind, intellect and our soul. To clean these seats yoga has introduced different techniques to reach the last stage which is our soul.

 
Where yoga developed as a complete science there also developed sectarian thoughts about yoga and some sects, with the help of yoga, do survive even today but they are not purely following the original text book of Patanjali, which need to have further research to find their closeness to yoga. Many branches of yoga developed, these branches come out from breathing exercise only or from the meditation or physical exercise. It will be mistaken, if yoga teachers teach about any mantra or any sectarian concept to convince the yoga students. If you study ‘yoga sutra’, you will not misunderstand; you will come out from the illusion and practice yoga in a right way that will be accepted easily by others.

Let us hope our intellectuals as well as practitioners of yoga will not make any decision in haste to not practice yoga. Yoga is very soft, natural and makes the human being to have such qualities as being soft and natural. Yoga itself has a great strength, it has power of great yogis which cannot be simply ignored but whoever will practice will get great benefit from it and will be an example of peace lover and belief in the universal brotherhood.

Certainly yoga will also spread that peace to even those who do not practice yoga and if we develop the peace within and spread outside, it means we have done our great duty as good human beings who care for all, show compassion to all and protect the weak, this can be achieved only if we live in unity and that is the real meaning of yoga.