|
by Georg Feuerstein
The Essence of Yoga is about more than just
building fit bodies. Yoga scholar Georg Feuerstein traces the spiritual
roots of yoga in the West and looks at how we might benefit from
its future evolution.
The "lost" teachings that spread during Yoga’s ascendancy in the
West are not really lost. But, we may be losing sight of the profound
wisdom of traditional yogic teachings to the point where they are
now virtually lost. If we want to benefit from the true power of
yoga in our daily lives, then we need to go back to traditional
teachings.
The spiritual heritage of India reached our Western shores intact.
The masters who broke the long-standing brahmanical taboo of crossing
the ocean showed the utmost integrity in transmitting the yogic teachings
faithfully to Westerners.
In the spirit of authentic yoga, they emphasized the moral disciplines
(yama) of nonharming, truthfulness, nonstealing, chastity, and greedlessness.
They also taught meditation and inner stillness as the royal road
to enlightenment. And, naturally, they praised the ideal of enlightenment,
or liberation, itself.
Why do we hear so little about morality, meditation, and enlightenment
in yogic circles today? What happened between then and now? Why
have the teachings of these and other late 19th and early 20th-century
masters been eclipsed by the recent secular yoga boom? More on that
later.
First Contact
Shivapuri Baba (1826-1963) appears to have been the first modern
yoga master to transplant the wisdom of India to the West. He had
no fewer than 18 audiences with Queen Victoria, who considered this
great sage a friend. He was blessed with a very long life, which,
after his awakening at the age of 50, he dedicated entirely to the
spiritual welfare of others.
Shivapuri Baba (alias Swami Govindananda Bharati) taught that as
humans we have three principle duties: first, physical duty, consists
mainly in maintaining body and mind through proper livelihood, including
the obligation to help one’s dependents to accomplish the same.
Second, moral duty, consisting in remaining sensitive to the obligation
to seek the truth 24 hours a day. Third, spiritual duty, by which
he meant the worship of the Divine. He felt certain that if we attend
carefully to the first two duties for a decade, we will naturally
become able to fulfill the third duty. Physical discipline, he noted,
brings pleasure. Moral discipline gives us serenity. Spiritual discipline
yields deep peace and ultimate happiness.
Shivapuri Baba was dismissive of conventional yogic paths, because
he saw in them potential distractions that might keep a person from
performing the three duties. On closer inspection, his own sensible
prescriptions are in fact a form of yoga. Only rare individuals
can devote themselves directly to the pursuit of enlightenment.
Most people, who live householder lives, need to take care of the
first two duties, which are in preparation of the third sacred obligation.
His emphasis on the moral disciplines strikes a positive chord, because
all authentic yoga regards morality as the foundation of the spiritual
path. We can also readily agree with Shivapuri Baba’s insistence on
becoming a fully functional member of society. All too often the spiritual
quest is engaged as a neurotic escape from conventional life, which
cannot possibly lead to inner freedom.
Because of Queen Victoria’s interest in him, Shivapuri Baba was
well received in certain circles in Europe, but the time for a greater
impact had not yet come. This was to be the destiny of Swami Vivekananda,
the great disciple of the venerated 19th-century saint Sri Ramakrishna
(1836-1886).
Yogic Message Finds Fertile Ground
In his famous speech at the 1893 Parliament of Religions, which
was convened as part of the World Fair in Chicago, Swami Vivekananda
(1863-1902) enthused his audience of 7,000 by addressing everyone
as "Brothers and Sisters of America." After the spontaneous ovation
had died down, he continued with an inspiring speech that opened
the doors of many homes and hearts. "I will quote to you, brethren,"
Swami Vivekananda said, "a few lines from a hymn which I remember
to have repeated from my earliest boyhood, which is every day repeated
by millions of human beings: ‘As the different streams having their
sources in different places all mingle their water in the sea, sources
in different tendencies, various though they appear, crooked or
straight, all lead to Thee.’"
He gave his responsive American audience a message of tolerance
by pointing to the One beyond all forms and manifestations, as the
ancient sages of the Vedas had done many millennia earlier. In so
doing, Swami Vivekananda delivered the quintessence of Hinduism
and Hindu Yoga.
In one of his many talks given in the years following the Parliament,
Swami Vivekananda observed: "Stand upon the Self, then only can
we truly love the world. Take a very, very high stand; knowing our
universal nature, we must look with perfect calmness upon all the
panorama of the world. It is but baby’s play, and we know that,
so cannot be disturbed by it . . . The more our bliss is within,
the more spiritual we are." This is the very heart of yoga.
In a letter to Manmatha Nath Bhattacharya written in 1894, Swami
Vivekananda mentioned a gathering of several hundred men and women
at Greenacre, where he stayed for two months. "Every day," he wrote,
"I would sit in our Hindu fashion under a tree, and my followers
and disciples would sit on the grass all around me. Every morning
I would instruct them, and how earnest they were!" This statement
reveals the quality of people’s interest in yoga in those days.
Learning to See Infinity
Swami Rama Tirtha (1873-1906), who visited the United States in
1903 and stayed for about 18 months, today is barely even remembered.
In a talk delivered on March 5, 1903, in San Francisco, he said:
"So long as you regard yourself as a part only, a small, finite
something like three cubits and a half long and 150 pounds heavy,
so long as you consider yourself to be flesh and blood, so long
as you are limited: you are impaired, you are cut, you are divided,
you are not whole, you are simply a finite fraction and are not
whole, not healthy, not strong. . . . If you separate a small particle
of water from the sea, it will become putrid, it will become stagnant
and filthy.
Similarly the man, the sage or saint, or anybody who feels himself
as a finite being, who feels himself a finite being limited by time
or space, confined within a short area, is not healthy, is not whole
and is not happy; he can lay no claim to happiness. The very moment
your vision is not limited, the very moment you dispel your finite
consciousness and feel that you are the all, that you are the whole
world, that you are an Infinity; when you realize that, then you
become whole and the bodily disease, trouble, anxiety is dispersed,
dispelled, evaporated."
Again, these words beautifully capture the spirit of yoga, the path
taking us from illusion, delusion, and bondage to reality, truth,
and perfect inner freedom. In his lively talks, Swami Rama Tirtha,
who is remembered in India as a fully enlightened master, sought
to instill in his audiences a sense of the unconditional, infinite
One that is the true Identity of all beings. Like Swami Vivekananda
before him, he recommended the cultivation of clarity, work, morality,
love, compassion, and not least self-discipline.
Ananda Acharya (1881-1945) arrived in England in 1911 and three
years later relocated to Norway where he taught until the end of
his life. He had only a few students and lived quietly in a hermitage
they had constructed for him. He taught them Vedanta (Jnana-Yoga)
and told them that he saw "a new humanity, God-vestured, dazzling
the sight like a fiery cloud of gold."
In 1919, Yogendra Mastanami (then only 22 years of age) introduced
traditional Hatha-Yoga to New Yorkers, staying for three years before
returning to Mumbai (formerly Madras). He established an American
branch of his Yoga Institute in Santa Cruz, India, which is still
thriving today. As the result of a meeting between Shri Yogendra
Mastanami and Benedict Lust, the founder of naturopathy, Hatha-Yoga
was for a decade or more presented to the American people as one
of the alternative healing modalities pioneered by naturopaths.
Shri Yogendra was a disciple of Paramahamsa Madhavadasa, a 119-year-old
yogi, who also trained Swami Kuvalayananda, the founder of Kaivalyadhama,
another early yoga research organization.
While Shivapuri Baba, Swami Rama Tirtha, Yogendra Mastanami, and
Ananda Acharya did not leave any significant following, Swami Vivekananda
founded the successful Ramakrishna Mission in 1897, which continues
to be a vibrant source of social programs based on spiritual values.
But the yoga master who claimed the largest following during the
early days of yoga’s sojourn in the West was Paramahansa Yogananda.
Paramahansa Yogananda
Paramahansa Yogananda (1893-1952) arrived in the United States in
1920 and in the same year founded his Self-Realization Fellowship.
In his widely read Autobiography of a Yogi, he stated: "Hundreds
of thousands, not dozens merely, of Kriya Yogis are needed to bring
into manifestation the world of peace and plenty that awaits men
when they have made the proper effort to reestablish their status
as sons of the Divine Father."
Paramahansa Yogananda, who is said to have personally initiated
100,000 disciples into Kriya-Yoga, wrote the following prayer, which
expresses his all-embracing orientation very well: "Let me be Christian,
Jew, Hindu, Buddhist, or Moslem; I care not what my religion or
race or nationality be, so long as I win my way to Thee!" Despite
this commendable ecumenical attitude, his Kriya-Yoga is strongly
based on the traditional teachings of Hindu Yoga.
To his British disciples, Yogananda admitted: "I have given many
yoga lessons in India and America; but I must confess that, as a
Hindu, I am unusually happy to be conducting a class for English
students." He admired the quality of tenacity in the British character.
But he also spent many happy years with his American disciples.
Toward the end of his life, Paramahansa Yogananda was asked by one
of his students whether it all has been worth it. He replied: ".
. . yes, a thousand times yes! It has been worthwhile, more than
ever I dreamed, to see East and West brought closer in the only
lasting bond, the spiritual."
Swami Vivekananda and Paramahansa Yogananda and some other early
masters have a strong following even today, yet, most of the twenty
or so million Americans who are said to be practicing yoga know
nothing of them or their teachings. For most modern practioners,
yoga is fitness training. They know nothing about the moral disciplines.
They show little or no interest in meditation. The idea of a guru
is alien to them. The ideal of liberation is outlandish, even if
they are familiar with the concept.
Yoga Gets Physical
The popularization and secularization of yoga in the West appears
to have started with an enigmatic writer by the name of Ramacharaka.
His books were widely read for many decades starting with The Science
of Breath and Fourteen Lessons in Yogi Philosophy and Oriental Occultism
(both in 1903). It now appears that Ramacharaka was the pseudonym
of Chicago lawyer William Warren Atkinson (1862-1932), who might
have studied in India with a certain Baba Bharata.
Atkinson’s publications set the stage for the fascination with "physical
culture" in the 1930s. Starting in 1917, the Soviets instituted
programs to promote physical health and fitness, which in the late
1930s assumed an extreme militaristic flavour. John D. Fair, in
his book Muscletown USA, showed that the United States likewise
became obsessed with physical culture, especially bodybuilding,
in the 1930s. In Nazi Germany, too, body culture and gymnastics
were pursued nationwide with the goal of producing a new type of
"Aryan" German. Britain and other European countries, as well as
China and Japan, witnessed similar developments. Historically, then,
the preoccupation with physical perfection in the modern West was
closely tied to fascist politics. We see distasteful echoes of this
in today’s Olympics where the number of gold medals won by a country
matters more than the achievement and well-being of individual competitors.
A significant yogic figure in those early days was Selvarajan Yesudian
(1916-1998), son of an Indian physician, who arrived in Hungary
in 1936. He became acquainted with Elisabeth Haich (1897-1994),
who coauthored with him Sport and Yoga, which in the first edition
sold 100,000 copies. Since then this popular book apparently has
sold two million copies. While Yesudian, who emigrated to the United
States in 1948, took the spiritual dimension of yoga into account,
already the title of his book suggested the physical orientation
that marks its contents. In his youth, Yesudian suffered from all
kinds of illnesses, and through dedicated Hatha-Yoga practice he
was able to overcome his frail constitution and develop a healthy
body and impressive physique.
In 1947, Indra Devi (1899-2002), who had been the first female student
(in 1937) of the famous Tirumalai Krishnamacharya, came to the United
States and quickly became a successful yoga teacher in Hollywood.
By the time she left for Argentina in 1982, she was considered the
"First Lady of Yoga." Although she was personally in tune with the
spiritual values of yoga, her books emphasized Yoga’s physical side.
In the mid-1950s, Walt Baptiste (1917-2001) and his wife Magana
promoted yoga—especially its physical aspects—in California. This
husband-and-wife team were students of Paramahansa Yogananda and
so had imbibed the spiritual teachings of yoga, but both were heavily
involved with physical disciplines like bodybuilding and (in Magana’s
case) dance.
In 1958, Swami Vishnudevananda, the jet-setting disciple of the
famous Swami Sivananda of Rishikesh, arrived in San Francisco. Today
his International Sivananda Yoga Vedanta Centers comprise seven
ashramas and 20 centres. His book on Hatha-Yoga includes 11 pages
on the philosophy of yoga, 81 pages on subtle anatomy (cakras, nadis,
kundalini, etc.), and a whopping 319 pages on cleansing techniques,
postures, and breath control. One wonders whether readers of this
book ever even got to the back pages dealing with the theoretical
aspects.
Among the most influential Western popularizers of Hatha-Yoga were
Richard Hittleman, Lilias Folan, and Sir Paul Duke (a former chief
of intelligence in Great Britain), all of whom had their own immensely
successful television programs in the 60s and 70s. The 80s consolidated
what had been gained in the preceding decades, though jogging and
aerobics became a bigger trend. Some far-sighted yoga teachers started
to rally around the ideal of "unity in yoga," though the yoga movement
continues to be highly fractured and non-cooperative.
Hollywood Connections
Then, in the 90s, Hatha-Yoga postures received a boost through video
presentations, such as those featuring Jane Fonda, Ali MacGraw,
and Rodney Yee. A growing number of Hollywood personalities, including
Sting, Madonna, Raquel Welch, Meg Ryan, and David Duchovny, as well
as popular sports heroes like basketball star Kareem Abdul Jabar,
quarterback Dan Marino, and tennis legend John McEnroe, turned to
yoga partly to keep fit and partly to find deeper meaning. This
led to increased media attention, which, in turn, stimulated the
public interest in yoga postures.
Ever since the 1930s, the current of physical yoga has been running
parallel to the spiritual current initiated by Shivapuri Baba, Swami
Vivekananda, and other early teachers. Good teachers of the spiritual
dimension of yoga have continued to travel from India to the West
— such as Gopi Krishna (1903-1984), Swami Muktananda (1908-1982),
Swami Satyananda Saraswati (1923-), Swami Rama (1925-1996), and
Swami Shiv Mangal Tirth (1945-) to mention just a few.
The boundary between the physical and spiritual currents of transmission
in the West has always been rather fluid. More recently, however,
Westernized Hatha-Yoga has gone mainstream and in the process its
promulgators have downplayed, if not altogether dropped, the spiritual
aspects of yoga. This secularized yoga has produced millions of
practitioners who, at least thus far, have shown little interest
in the spiritual side of yoga. Nevertheless, as these followers
of physical yoga (or posture practice) continue to mature in body
and mind, they will likely start to ask themselves the age-old existential
questions "Who am I?" and "Why am I here?" Since our own culture
is so bereft of deeper answers to these vital questions, practitioners
of physical yoga may, over time, become sensitive to the spiritual
teachings of yoga as well. This is, in fact, a concern of Christian
fundamentalists. Carl G. Jung saw this situation very clearly. Half
a century ago, he stated that "while we are overpowering the Orient
from without, it may be fastening its hold upon us from within."
Of course, as a practitioner of yoga, I am bound to regard this
as a favourable development. Christian fundamentalism, or indeed
any other kind of religious fundamentalism, has no long-term future.
It fails to quench people’s thirst for first-hand spiritual experience.
As we mature beyond intellectual and emotional dependence, we inevitably
desire more than mere belief, dogma, ideology, or cultism.
I have no doubt that in the long run, as humanity matures, spiritual
teachings like yoga will achieve prominence. In the meantime, however,
we are left with an uneasy divide between the physical culturists
and the spiritually motivated practi-tioners of yoga.
Finding Inner Freedom
Since the late 1960s, I have through my writings sought to vigorously
promote traditional yoga. Over the years, I have become more and
more focused on this objective, because I consider the popularization
of yoga as potentially destructive of the yogic heritage. While
I applaud the fact that yoga has become available to so many millions
of people outside India, I cannot fail to notice the distortions
that have occurred as a result of Yoga’s success on such a large
scale.
If we want to ensure a healthy future for yoga, which has become
a social movement (though its members do not yet see this with sufficient
clarity), we must not only look ahead but also look back into the
past. We must remember Yoga’s traditional roots. Without proper
alignment to India’s profound spiritual heritage, our contemporary
yoga practice is bound to become watered down more and more, until
it reaches a state of ineffectiveness as a tool for personal transformation.
Let us recall that all traditional yoga has the purpose of setting
us inwardly free. Whatever the form, branch, or school of yoga,
it always revolves around this pivotal if elusive thing called "freedom."
Regardless of our position in life or external circumstances, in
any given moment we can enjoy inner freedom. Some survivors of concentration
or prisoner-of-war camps have told their story of finding that inner
freedom in the midst of the most atrocious circumstances where mere
breathing was dangerous to their health. Traditional yoga seeks
to put us in touch with the dimension of Spirit, which is inherently
free.
By contrast, as I have stated, much of contemporary yoga is not
about inner freedom but fitness and health. There is of course nothing
wrong with fitness and health, they are simply not final objectives
of traditional yoga, not even the now-so-popular Hatha-Yoga. Few
followers of so-called contemporary Hatha-Yoga, in fact, know that
the system that they purport to practice originally aimed at a complete
transmutation of the physical body into a "diamond body" (vajra-deha).
This diamond body is a thoroughly transubstantiated body that is
endowed with all kinds of paranormal capacities—the kind of body
that Christians know as the "Body of Glory" and the Tibetan yogis
as the "Rainbow Body."
When traditional yoga reached our Western shores in the late 19th
century, it was gradually stripped of its spiritual orientation
and remodeled into fitness training. The worst part is that the
popularization of yoga has more people suffering injuries from yogic
exercises. I am referring to the postures that have been converted
into gymnastics and athletics. They were never intended to be practiced
competitively, as if they were fitness exercises or an Olympic tour
de force.
All this is unfortunate. At the same time, some good may come from
it, because the very popularity of yoga now gives more people the
opportunity to discover what yoga really is. If we practice yoga
merely for health reasons, it is indeed likely that our expectations
will be met. We will be able to improve or maintain our health,
fitness, and flexibility. The yoga postures and breathing indeed
work wonders.
But if we practice yoga as mind training, or spiritual discipline,
we can definitely grow toward the freedom that the traditional yoga
authorities hold up as the highest goal of human existence. Often
I remind my students that even a perfectly fit body can be broken
into pieces in a car accident. In that case, the only resort we
have is our own inner strength and mental peace. Figuratively speaking,
that accident will happen to all of us at the moment of our exit
from this life. At the hour of death, when the body is disintegrating,
we only have our inner resources to fall back on. All of yoga, in
a way, is preparation for our final hour on earth. It matters how
we exit from life, because death is only a doorway to another state
of existence. The quality of that state depends on the quality of
the life we live today—that is, the quality of our present state
of mind.
This should answer the question, which people sometimes pose to
me, about whether it even makes sense for contemporary people, especially
Westerners, to approach yoga as a spiritual discipline I believe
we need yoga more than the ancients did, because our civilization
has lost its bearings, and we are spiritually adrift.
We are part of a huge evolutionary experiment that, I hope and pray,
one day will produce really great Western masters, who will breathe
new life into our ailing civilization. It is good to keep this larger
picture in mind when we practice yoga to the best of our ability,
day after day.
The transformation of our society must begin with each one of us.
To use Swami Sivananda’s beautiful metaphor, we all are like gardeners,
who are called to weed our individual mental gardens, so that they
can flourish. The process of weeding consists in gradually replacing
our unconscious patterns of thought and behaviour with new, more
benign patterns that are expressive of the higher powers and virtues
of enlightenment.
The "lost" teachings of yoga - that is, the authentic teachings
as found in the traditional literature and as imbued with life by
living masters, can provide guidance and sustenance in this immensely
challenging process of voluntary self-change. Without them, we can
never cut through all the veils of misconception, bias, and self-delusion
that mark our present state of consciousness. The "lost" teachings
of yoga can awaken in us our own native wisdom (buddhi), so that
external inspiration becomes a continuous inner impulse toward ever
deeper realization.
Naturally, it takes time to accomplish this far-reaching work of
self-transformation, and therefore practitioners of yoga must first
and foremost practice patience. Enlightenment, or liberation, is
not realized in a matter of days, weeks, or months. We must be willing
to commit to an entire lifetime of yogic practice. There must be
a basic impulse to grow, regardless of whether or not we will achieve
liberation in this lifetime.
It is one of Yoga’s fundamental tenets that no effort is ever wasted;
even the slightest attempt at transforming ourselves makes a difference.
It is our patient cumulative effort that flowers into enlightenment
sooner or later. In the meantime, we have the opportunity to live
benignly in the world, spreading understanding, peace, harmony,
and joy.
Georg Feuerstein, Ph.D., the founder-president of Yoga Research
and Education Center (YREC), has authored numerous books, including
The Yoga Tradition, The Shambhala Encyclopedia of Yoga, and Tantra:
The Path of Ecstasy. Many of his articles can be found on YREC’s
website at www.yrec.org.
 Top
|
|
