YIC - What is NOT Yoga & What is Yoga?

                                    What is NOT Yoga & What is Yoga?

What is Not Yoga?

• ·        Yoga is not mere acrobatics.
• ·        Yoga is not concerned with the manipulation of the body into various queer positions, standing on the head, for instance, or twisting about the spine, or assuming any of the numerous odd poses.
• ·   Yoga is not the performance of magical feats. Some psudo and fake Yogins presents Yoga like that to achieve their selfish motive.
• ·        Neither is Yoga 'Fakirism'.  Yoga is not some form of self-torture—lying on a bed of nails, burying oneself underground, chewing or swallowing pieces of glass, drinking acid, swallowing nails or piercing oneself with pins and needles. This has nothing to do with Yoga, and real Yogins have nothing to do with all this.
• ·        Neither is Yoga any weird ceremonial or peculiar rite. It is not hedonism. It is not paganism. It is not palmistry. It is not prophesying. It is not astrology. It is not thought-reading, nor is it the dispensing of charms to ward off evil spirits or 'possessions'. None of these is Yoga.
• ·        Yoga is not auto-hypnotism or self-hypnosis. It is not doing of incantations or by the monotonous performance of gestures. Yoga is not experiences like those obtained by taking lysergic acid or mescalin or peyote (of Mexican origin) or divine mushrooms. These experiences are not Yoga, nor are they products of Yoga.
• ·        Neither is Yoga a religious cult. Yoga is not demonstration of Bhugata Samadhi, Siddhis, Magics, Mantra, Tantras etc.

What is Yoga?

• ·        Yujyate anena iti Yogah (युज्यते अनेन इति  योगः) Primary definition of Yoga in Sanskrit is “union with the Divine” or “the experience of oneness with the great Reality”.
• ·        As Swami Vivekananda puts it "YogA is the means of compressing one's evolution into single life or a few months or even a few hours of ones bodily existence". In general, there is a growth process due to interactions with nature in all creation. But it may take thousands and millions of years for this natural growth; that is the long instinctive way in animals.
• ·        As per Sri Aurovindo: Yoga is a systematic process for accelerating the growth of a man in his entity. With this growth, man learns to live at higher states of consciousness. Key to this all-round personality development and growth is the culturing of mind.
• ·        Yoga is also a set of scientifically evolved and intelligently formulated practical techniques enabling man to shed himself of all the impurities imposed upon him by the nature of his body, mind and senses, and aiding him to concentrate his thoughts entirely upon the Supreme.
• ·        Yoga means anything that man may do to purify his lower nature, to restrain his senses, to direct his mind towards God, to come into a deep interior level of worship of the Divine and finally to realise his eternal oneness with the Divine Consciousness.
• ·        Yoga is comprised of highly evolved and practical techniques which may be applied by persons of any race, nation, caste, creed, church or sect. As philosophical definitions were being formed and as religious concepts of the Hindus were being formulated, the science of Yoga was evolved. Certain metaphysical concepts are peculiarly Hindu and Eastern, but Yoga which is separable from its philosophical and metaphysical background, is a science of universal and practical value.
• ·        Yoga is essentially a spiritual matter concerning spiritual methods. It is an intensely practical approach towards the realisation of the supreme Reality, the very Centre of all life—God. And it is the heritage of all humanity.