SAMADHI : Bliss
The ultimate aim of yoga is not to be able to touch your toes with straight legs, hold your breath for minutes, concentrate your mind on wonderful thoughts, or even to be a nice person. Yoga seeks to liberate us from all those minor and lead us to the sense of Self Realisation, or union with the God within us.
The idea of what/who god is, or where, could be debated until the end of time. As long as we are searching for God using words, debating techniques and intellectual ability the search can never be successful. The whole aim of yoga is to lead us to that point where we can put all those things to one side and finally open our `heart` to what is inside. Even there we place restrictions on what we are trying to do. For most of us the heart is an organ pumping away in the chest which stops when we die. We associate the heart with being alive. Looking for that spark of the Divine which is within us cannot be found by looking only in a physical organ.
Other yogis with great wisdom say `Ah no, we are speaking here of the `Heart Centre` - Anahata Chakra. That is where we must look to find our Self and the realisation of God within us.` Certainly it helps most of us to locate such a sensation somewhere in the body. We are used to the idea of circles and wheels having centres, and we tend to think that everything comes from the centre. What a convenient concept for centralist politicians and dictators!
There is an old story about the deities talking about people and God, and how they were so used to having God at hand that they valued God less and less. In the end they said that humans should be made to search more diligently to find God , and then they would value God more highly. Various suggestions were made: deep in the jungle, on the highest mountain, at the bottom of the sea, even on the moon. Each suggestion was discarded. `Humans are so clever they will easily find him there.` they said. In the end they agreed that deep in the heart of man would be the hardest place for God to be found. Certainly we spend much more time focusing on the world around us than in us.
However in yoga we must come to the realisation that we will not find God just in one place, and the deities were not seeking to place God just in our hearts. In the doctrine of Advaita Vedanta we are taught that all is God, and God is all. There is no differentiation. This places an enormous responsibility on each individual`s shoulders, and yet makes our Self Realisation all the more wonderful.
The ultimate aim of yoga is not to be able to touch your toes with straight legs, hold your breath for minutes, concentrate your mind on wonderful thoughts, or even to be a nice person. Yoga seeks to liberate us from all those minor and lead us to the sense of Self Realisation, or union with the God within us.
The idea of what/who god is, or where, could be debated until the end of time. As long as we are searching for God using words, debating techniques and intellectual ability the search can never be successful. The whole aim of yoga is to lead us to that point where we can put all those things to one side and finally open our `heart` to what is inside. Even there we place restrictions on what we are trying to do. For most of us the heart is an organ pumping away in the chest which stops when we die. We associate the heart with being alive. Looking for that spark of the Divine which is within us cannot be found by looking only in a physical organ.
Other yogis with great wisdom say `Ah no, we are speaking here of the `Heart Centre` - Anahata Chakra. That is where we must look to find our Self and the realisation of God within us.` Certainly it helps most of us to locate such a sensation somewhere in the body. We are used to the idea of circles and wheels having centres, and we tend to think that everything comes from the centre. What a convenient concept for centralist politicians and dictators!
There is an old story about the deities talking about people and God, and how they were so used to having God at hand that they valued God less and less. In the end they said that humans should be made to search more diligently to find God , and then they would value God more highly. Various suggestions were made: deep in the jungle, on the highest mountain, at the bottom of the sea, even on the moon. Each suggestion was discarded. `Humans are so clever they will easily find him there.` they said. In the end they agreed that deep in the heart of man would be the hardest place for God to be found. Certainly we spend much more time focusing on the world around us than in us.
However in yoga we must come to the realisation that we will not find God just in one place, and the deities were not seeking to place God just in our hearts. In the doctrine of Advaita Vedanta we are taught that all is God, and God is all. There is no differentiation. This places an enormous responsibility on each individual`s shoulders, and yet makes our Self Realisation all the more wonderful.
