*YOGA - To yoke (UNION),
*YOGI - GURU
Yoga means "to yoke," to attach yourself to a task at hand with ox-like discipline, to find union - between mind and body, between individual and God, between our thoughts and the source of our thoughts, between teacher and student, and between ourselves and others. But Yoga can also mean trying to find God through meditation, through scholarly study, through the practice of silence, through devotional service or through mantra. (p121) The Yogic path is about disentagling the built-in glitches of the human condition, as the heartbreaking inability to sustain contentment - which Taoists call it imbalance, Buddhism calls it ignorance, Islam blames our isery on rebellion against God, and Judeo-Christinity attributes all our suffering to original sin. Freudians say that unhappiness is the inevitable result of the clash between our natural drives (and desires) and civilization's needs. (p122) (Eat, Pray, Love)
The Indian word 'yoga' means union ‑ union with God. For man, if he but knew himself, is now and always has been a spiritual being, bright and radiant
from God.' (Yoga, p63)
Yoga (Sanskit, literally "yoking", "union", "disciplined activity") implies the necessity of a path (or way) for union with God. "My yoke is easy" means Jesus' path is the best or simplest, most direct way. Out of all paths of the avatars, I have synthesized for you the one true way that will lead to your union with God. (Lost Years, p442)
One of the 6 classic systems of Hindu philosophy distinquished by the marvels of bodily control and the magical powers ascribed to its advanced devotees. Humanity must work out its own salvation. One may achieve liberation from the limitations of flesh, the delusions of sense, and the pitfalls of thought and thus attain union with the object of knowledge. Yoga practice forms a ladder leading to perfect knowledge - the eight stages:
1. self-control involves truthfulness, abstinence, avoidance of theft, refusal of gifts, and not doing injury to living things
2. religious observance embraces austerity, poverty, contentment, purification rites, recital of the Vedichymns, and devoted reliance on the Supreme Being
3. postures are regarded as basic to all the stages that follow
4. regulation of the breathe
5. restraint of the senses
6. steadying the mind narrows attention
7. meditation fixes the mind on the object of knowledge
8. profound contemplation is the perfect absorption of thought in the object of knowledge, its union and identification with that object. This liberates the self from the illusions of sense and the contradictions of reason. (Encyc)