Yoga as a State of Being

By Dr Benjamin Major

We now find ourselves in an age in which more people are practicing yoga than ever before, the term yoga here having become more or less synonymous with postural āsana practice. There are a bewildering array of yoga styles out there, each one trying to make their mark. Yoga appears in glossy magazines and on YouTube and TV programmes and yoga studios are cropping up all over the place in most cities. At least 12,000 ‘yogis’ turn up at Times Square in New York twice a year to practice āsana en-masse. These days it sometimes feels like almost everyone is doing yoga (an exaggeration , I know). Yet, the question has to be asked, is what they are ‘doing’ really yoga?

To answer this question, it may be useful to try and more clearly define what we mean by ‘yoga’. This in itself is a tricky business! First off, is there something tangible, a set of practices and worldviews that we can point to and say conclusively ‘ah-ha, that’s yoga’? Or does the term yoga, as I suspect, refer to something more encompassing, more primordial even, to that yearning to find one’s place in the universe that has arisen amongst all humans in all times and cultures? These days we often hear people say something like “I’m off to do my yoga”. In the very early history of yoga this phrase would not have made much sense. Mostly, yoga was not something you did, but more often referred to a state of being, something you were at the core of your being, and the word was often used interchangeably with samādhi. I think it is important to fully understand this point, that yoga is ultimately the goal, that which we aim to attain, through whatever means and whatever practices seem right for us. The truth is, in its long history yoga can and has been defined in many different ways, as even a cursory look through this history will attest.

We might begin this journey sifting through the rather questionable ‘evidence’ presented by pre-Vedic archaeological finds from the Indus Valley Civilisation and early Vedic texts, where we meet the long-haired sages and vrātyas who some claim to be proto-yogis. Much scholarly research is now suggesting that the origins of the practices and concepts of yoga may have originated amongst the ascetic groups known as the śramaṇas, such as the Buddhists, Jains and Ājīvikas, although they didn’t actually use the term yoga. Our next hard evidence of yoga appears in the genre of texts known as the Upaniṣads where the first clear reference to yoga (in the Kaṭha Upaniṣad) defines it as firm restraint of the senses, a state in which one becomes completely undistracted by the outside world. Within the Bhagavad Gītā, we see yoga defined in a multitude of ways, including in this sense-withdrawal guise, but also as separation from suffering and also as ‘skill in action’ in the context of karma yoga. In Sāṃkhya and subsequently in the Yoga Sūtras the aim of yoga becomes ‘the stilling of the turnings of mind’ and the separation or isolation (kaivalya) of our true self or puruṣa from the everyday material world of prakṛti, and explicitly not becoming ‘one with everything’ which is in fact a more Vedāntic, Tantric and New Age notion.

Later on, yoga becomes inflected with a new set of meanings from the Nondual Śaiva Tantric traditions. The aim of yoga here becomes any practice aimed towards the achievement of that heightened state of awareness where one can perceive the Divine in all things, all situations, and all beings, including oneself. Later still, we come to the tradition of Haṭha yoga. Ironically, the name of this style of yoga which is now usually promoted as a ‘gentle’ yoga in most yoga studios, actually literally means something like ‘forceful yoga’. The overarching aim here remains one of ultimate liberation, but to reach this all kinds of bodily practices are employed, and in some strands of the tradition at least these are geared towards raising the kuṇḍalinī energy up the suṣumṇā nāḍi, awakening the c̣akras as it goes. Here, the division of four yogas, with rāja yoga placed highest, first appears. Though bodily health and longevity are promised as benefits of Haṭha yoga these are hardly seen as the ultimate goal. Indeed, it can be said with some confidence that health related aims (admirable as these may be) do not take on any considerable significance until we get to the present age, within the last half century or so. Nowadays, yoga is very much embedded within the Health and Wellbeing industry and we have seen the rise of ‘fitness yoga’, for want of a better term.

So, what is yoga, and can it even be said to have a definable essence? For me, yoga describes a state of being that is innate, natural and primordial. Yoga is not even something to strive for or towards because each one of us has yoga at the very core of our being. In prehistoric times I believe we were all naturally engaged in yoga, and by saying this I certainly don’t want to portray a rose-tinted view of the past in which life was perfect and peaceful, that’s absurd, but I do think we would have been more deeply connected with the source, with the ground of Being, that puruṣa, brahman, Śiva, God, Pure Awareness, call it what you will. In the modern technological age, we have more and more distractions that prevent us from realising and abiding in this true state. This does not necessarily mean that the modern age is all bad, again that’s just absurd, it just means we have to work much harder to regain this state of yoga. And again, this is not really the right wording, because we are not actually re-gaining anything, as yoga is always with us, it is simply veiled or covered to varying degrees.

Having as I do a preference for the Nondual Śaiva Tantra view of things, I also happen to believe that rediscovering the state of yoga does not mean renouncing or closing oneself off from the world, to the contrary, it means opening up fully to the universe and all the wondrous potentiality it contains. If one could see the Divine working creatively through everything (including oneself) in every single moment, whether enjoying a beautiful beach, cleaning a toilet, or doing a headstand or whatever one does in life… then one would know one was truly living in yoga. We might rediscover that lost state through dancing or whilst washing the dishes, we might rediscover it through sitting in deep meditation, and yes, we might rediscover it through standing on our heads! Who cares how we find it? Yoga is a destination with many paths, and now is hardly the time to bicker about which path is superior.

As a species, we stand at a crossroads. Our egotistical desire to control and manipulate everything has left us at the edge of destruction. I know it all sounds a bit grand but maybe, just maybe, rediscovering this state of yoga, this state of equilibrium and joyous exuberance in all-pervading Divinity, will be the thing that can save us...