THERE is much misconception and confusion regarding yoga. Normally, it is conceived as Union as opposed to separation, yoga as opposed to viyoga. This is a basic misconception arising due to superficial and wayward thinking, and also due to the failure to grasp the deep-rooted afflictions of the heart.

If we go one step deep in our heart, we will at once have a glimpse of the mechanics of union and separation. There we understand that what we had thought to be union with an object, producing pleasure, was, in fact, not real union but a particular status of thought; and similarly the apparent painful conception of separation was not at all separation, but an attachment of thought: another of its status tending to become dynamic.

Having felt the above mechanism of thought and having dwelt at that level of heart, we may proceed to deeper levels to realise, and thereby to master the deeper roots of thought. There we find that it was our thought and thought alone which had created the conceptions of union and separation with the pleasant thing supposed to produce pleasure, and thought itself was all the time actually united with the things. At this stage, lovers cry and crave for the remembrance of their beloved. The beloved is pleasant to them in both ways, in union as well as in separation.

For ordinary people, it is extremely difficult to go deeper than the above-mentioned stage. Because that condition produces intense ecstasies, and man by himself, will never like to part with it. It is at once so exciting, so thrilling, and so blissful that he who has got it assumes the garb of, or even becomes a lunatic, in order to be free from the external world, which appears to him to be an obstruction for his constant intoxication. This is the state of utter intoxication of love. People may and do consider such a one as having attained perfection in Yoga. But this is not Ultimate Reality although it is more advanced stage than that of ordinary extroverts.

If a Master of highest attainment intervenes at this stage, it will be possible to go deeper with His help and Grace. Then the exclusive attachment of thought with the idea of beloved causing intense pleasure comes to the realisation of its Originality, and the idea of beloved and the sensation of pleasure are left behind. The thought is quite naked at this stage. Yet its activity is still there. If one dwells here, or to be precise, if one is made to dwell here for sufficient time, he will realise the source which causes the activity of thought. The oneness of the source and its activity is realised more and more clearly. The source is seen simultaneously in both of its phases, the static and the dynamic. The riddle of being and becoming is solved. Now there is neither yoga nor viyoga, neither union nor separation. From this point alone real yoga starts.

At this stage, a yogi may be considered as really having attained some high status in yoga, is in perfect conformity with Nature. His will or any thought of his becomes the same as his Master’s. He is really fit to start on the voyage of the Infinite Ocean of Central Region as described in the book, Efficacy of Raj Yoga in the Light of Sahaj Marg.

The above description is sufficient to convince one that almost all the riff-raff preached in the name of yoga from public platforms is really nothing but the display of confusion, or at the most a parrot like prattle of nincompoops, having little practical views in the realisation of Ultimate Reality. They may at the most lead to some form of mechanical forging of thought into the ruts of rites and rituals and other trivialities, or into narrow grooves of formalities, orthodoxy, bigotry, and fanaticism.

In real yoga the flow of Infinite Divinity is at Its full and there is no stagnation whatsoever. It is ever fresh, evergreen and ever present. There is the death of all other deaths, and it is a state of deathlessness, utter purity, and without sinews. No bondage whatsoever exists here. All the knots are rent asunder. No touch of maya or ahankar remains here, for, the yogi has surpassed, or transcended, or even transformed maya and has realised Reality of aham or the inseparable. This is the culmination of yoga.

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Source: Call of the Fellow Traveller