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