What Yoga is…
(Part of report presented by Master Amadio Bianchi at Congress “Psychology and Psychiatry for the 3rd Millennium” – Casinò of Sanremo – September 1998)
Human mind, in its evolutionary
process, has been cleared by light of consciousness, creating
systems which purpose is the improvement of human condition.
Circumstances, sometimes, determine geographic location where
these systems appear more clearly to the world. So, Yoga finds
in India the historical location of its birth, being then
imprisoned in religious culture of this Country. This becomes
determining to purposes of researcher, who, today, must
necessarily pass through Indian culture to understand the
purpose and to use techniques that create the system of
“liberation” called Yoga. When I say “liberation” I mean
liberation from the yoke of human suffering, but for a Hindu it
also represents the way to free himself of cycle of samsara or
of re-births tightly tied to distorted view of senses that
impedes the dissolution of union with suffering and the access
to knowledge of absolute oneself.
So, the word Yoga belongs to spiritual and sometimes utopian
Indian world, even if ancient Yoga, someone says, didn’t present
any cultural or religious connotation. The ancient origin of
Yoga certainly is pre-air, as archaeological findings of
Harrappa and Mohenjo-daro prove, cities belonged to the culture
of Indo Valley, that come before development of Veda’s India.
Classical Yoga, instead, sees the light in the first centuries
of our period, and it is considered one of the six Darsana, or
points of view, of the philosophical-religious Hindu thought
which coding, as everyone knows, is ascribed to Patanjali,
writer of Yoga-sutra or Aphorisms of dating Yoga, as always
happens when we are in contact with Indian history, that is very
uncertain.
As has been said several times, Yoga is a Sanskrit word that
comes from the root of verb Yuj and indicates the act of
subjugating. Example: to subjugate oxen to an oxcart. Its
meaning accords to this system the role of discipline where we
think to subjugate the instinctive personality present in human
nature, to orientate and direct it to higher purposes
represented by other meanings, that we’ll see afterwards,
attributable to Yuj verb. Promoters of this discipline at the
beginning prepare (on a psycho-somatic level) to subjugate mind
and body to obtain a perfect unity, operating, in deep levels,
to a single idea.
So, they test a first sensation of harmonic aggregation that
corresponds to a pleasant stage where mind results partially
re-organized. To go back to Sanskrit verb Yuj, we find other
meanings, not only the intrinsic “subjugate” that I think can
represent precise stages and related experiences of conscience,
as the one that I described above, linked to verb “to unite” or
to union, if referred to the word yoga.
A third interpretative proposal is in the word “fusion” that for
yoga represents the conscience’s level of experience more
advanced, that usually follows the complete realization of the
psychophysical union. In this stage, the subject, after taking
note of dynamic interrelation between himself and what is around
him, strongly realizes it, also as a sensation. That let the
last oppositions and provocations fall towards aspects of
manifestation, also towards men, feeling in fusion and linked to
them because of something in common. His view of world changes,
at this point. Words as “friend” or “enemy” or “indifferent” are
substituted by opportune, unfavourable or neutral and,
consequently, a more evident emotional stability is shown in
him.
Memories, especially through the practice of meditation, are
re-organized and spoiled from the emotional aspect. The heavy
burden, that in several occasions forms a depressing past, is
melted and often we notice the disappearance of senses of guilt.
So, the man can walk to a fourth stage of realization that will
bring it to search endless joy and what is above ordinary, that
is the transcendental. Along the way he could test the supreme
calm, know and rest with the true essence of its being.
Through an uninterrupted meditation on the true oneself that is
pure eternal conscience and is beyond the psychosomatic complex
and beyond the world’s oppressions he could achieve freedom. In
the full success of this stage, the subject should integrate in
community, we think without oppositions, and with a very clear
view of reality.
In conclusion of this first part, I have to say that science of
Yoga wants to teach a method that permits to achieve a complete
union of oneself, that is the spiritual reality present in
everyone of us, with the universal one, which constitution would
be, in according to an hypothesis of ancient literature,
reality, conscience, bliss (Satchidananda). This union would be
the only Yoga. The point from where we start for this
experience. A state of conscience in which mysticism intend to
meet and know God. A way, maybe going backwards, through which
the procreated, we can say, would come back to generator’s womb,
melting himself in the same nature of it, surely loosing his
individual identity.
by Amadio Bianchi