 What is Yoga...really?
Is yoga merely a series of bodily postures and exercises meant to make the body more supple and healthy, and perhaps make the mind a bit more tranquil (yet still mundane)? Decidedly, it is much more than that.
In his new eBook on meditation, Om Yoga–Its Theory and Practice (available here as a free PDF download–see below), Swami Nirmalananda Giri explains what yoga is truly about:
Yoga is all about freedom. Only a fraction of the world’s population is formally imprisoned, but the entire human race is imprisoned in the earth itself. None are free from the inevitability of sickness, age, and death, however free of them they may be at the moment. The human condition is subject to innumerable limitations. Who really controls his life fully, attains all his goals, and knows no setbacks of any kind? No one.
“Om Yoga is the way to freedom from suffering and limitation.”
Our real self, the spirit, is ever perfect and free. But it has forgotten that. So it identifies with its present experience of bondage and consequently suffers in countless ways. Our situation is like someone who is asleep and dreaming that he is being tortured and beaten. In reality he is not being touched at all; yet he is experiencing pain and fear. He need not placate, overpower, or escape his torturers. He needs only to wake up. Yoga is the procedure of self-awakening.
Om Yoga is the way to freedom from suffering and limitation. “What world does he who meditates on Om until the end of his life, win by That? If he meditates on the Supreme Being with the Syllable Om, he becomes one with the Light, he is led to the world of Brahman [the Absolute Being] Who is higher than the highest life, That Which is tranquil, unaging, immortal, fearless, and supreme.” (Prashna Upanishad)
How this freedom is accomplished is related in detail in Om Yoga–Its Theory and Practice. The chapters include the following:
• Why Yoga?
• The Word That Is God–what Om is and why it is used in meditation.
• Om Yoga Medition–the technique of meditation.
• Breath and Sound in Meditation
• Pointers For Successful Meditation
• Om Yoga–Ashtanga Yoga–the eight limbs of yoga as outlined by Patanjali.
• The Foundations of Yoga–about Yama and Niyama, the essential moral precepts of spiritual life.
Discover the rationale and practical aspects of this classical method of yoga and mediation in this comprehensive, free eBook. (101 pages, 1.1 mb.)
Download your free PDF eBook,
Om Yoga–Its Theory and Practice, by Swami Nirmalananda Giri
Or you can view the chapters of the book online.
More of Om Yoga–Its Theory and Practice:
• Preface: Yoga and Freedom
• Chapter One: Why Yoga?
• Chapter Two: The Word That Is God
• Chapter Three: Om Yoga Meditation
• Chapter Four: Breath and Sound in Meditation
• Chapter Five: Points For Successful Meditation
• Chapter Six: Om Yoga–Ashtanga Yoga
• Chapter Seven: The Foundations of Yoga
• Chapter Eight:Om in the Upanishads, Bhagavad Gita, and Yoga Sutras
• Afterword: It Is All Up To You
• Appendix One: The Yoga of Sound
• Appendix Two: The Glories and Powers of Om
• Glossary
|
