The study of Indian religions is a whole school of the Art of Being Human. The mythopoetic stages of humanity coexist and overlap in a way that is as fertile as it is chaotic. It would take at least a three-year course to initiate us into all the subtleties and doctrinal and devotional variants of those religions, a commitment that the vast majority of you would not be able to attend to due to the practical issues of life. I have been giving you some keys learned and matured in the last 40 years of my life, many of them synthesized in the “Path of Beauty”, a book that I intended to make simpler but that I see now, after several months of your reactions in the Blog, how it requires a whole arsenal of prior knowledge for its complete understanding. I would like the most direct and simple proposal of the book to be clear: let yourself be found by Beauty and surrender to It. I would also like it to be clear what the path of non-dual knowledge (Advaita Vedanta) consists of in relation to the common practice that we call “Yoga”, because in one way or another you are going to practice it until the end of your days.
The Orientalist movement initiated by Vivekananda in the Western world at the end of the 19th century was not the first contact with non-dual knowledge (Advaita Vedanta) that Europe had, since the Spanish Sufism of the 12th-13th centuries, especially in the figure of Ibn Arabi and other more or less unknown Sufis from Andalusia and Castile expressed it in all its splendor, often at the cost of life and imprisonment. The Sufis, as well as Meister Eckart in Germany, dared to say that if there is only one Being in the Universe, then the Human is also that Being, and not something different. In philosophy, always burdened and at the same time helped by the weight of logic, Advaita does not find its way until Arthur Schopenhauer and then later his lucid and savage epigone Friedrich Nietzsche.
The arrival of Vivekananda, the appearance of the Theosophical movement, the subsequent arrival of Universalist Sufism of the Chisti Order of India, and other related psychological trends occurs at the beginning of the wave of mass culture in which we find ourselves today. We live in Pop and we are only able to understand Pop, fashion, trends, what sells, what activates the economy. It is no surprise that the deeper Advaita and Gnostic esotericism plunged into the depths of an orientalist folkloric movement to which the different forms of Buddhism joined soon enough. On the surface of this cultural lake, Yoga has been left floating, as a synthesis of a set of activities to improve the quality of life. Doctors in Europe and America recommend Yoga, often without knowing what exactly they are recommending, a complacent attitude of Western medicine that thinks that Yoga, like water, can do no harm. But not all waters are equally good for all kidneys.
Yoga is understood as a type of intense gymnastics accompanied by a positive and healthy attitude towards life with fashionable vegetarianism and various forms of diet. In the best cases, this Hatha Yoga leaves the childish circus phase of elasticity and impossible body postures to delve somewhat into breathing (pranayama) and concentration (dharana). The austerities and sufferings of the yogi have been curiously assimilated in the West as calisthenic, gymnastic austerities and sufferings: yoga is practiced to achieve the difficult asana that encourages and strengthens our body and our ego, our masks, for subsequent actions in daily life . It is interesting to note that in India, austerities are traditionally associated with demons, who by practicing them strengthen their psychic structure and achieve powers over other beings. Today, a good number of yogic instructors and gurus are enrolled in that group, both in India and in the rest of the World.
In some cases, perhaps one in ten people, Hatha Yoga is the prelude to “more Yoga.” Most human souls feel the Nostalgia of returning Home, the Ishq of which the Sufis speak, and Hatha Yoga enlivens it because it activates a memory of “Samadhi” of a state of contemplation that leads to a dissolution of the masks and Presence of the “I Am”. We begin doing Hatha Yoga in a selfish and therapeutic way that suddenly reveals itself as a deep longing for Reality. Universal Love calls us, led us to Itself. The Dawn of that Loving Nostalgia is also the dawn of an irrepressible desire to know what we love: this is the Dawn of Knowledge that we call Ñana Yoga (Gnana, Jnana).
Patanjali's well-known Yoga Sutra begins with a clear aphorism: Yoga is Samadhi. Ñana Yoga would then be the deep knowledge of Samadhi. Knowing in the sense of “being in a form of wisdom” is a permanent state of Consciousness, although Consciousness is something non-permanent that arises and disappears with the Universe.
Ñana Yoga is then “Being the Consciousness of Samadhi”, which is a Consciousness of Bliss (Chidananda Rupa) put in terms of Advaita Vedanta. Ñana Yoga is non-dual knowledge, it is Advaita Vedanta, but it is also something more because it is not limited by non-duality, nor by knowledge, nor by personalistic nor impersonal perspectives. No religious, philosophical or mythopoetic form offers a representation of this Yoga, and is in this sense a Paramatman Yoga.
We will continue talking about Ñana Yoga. “Path of Beauty” is nothing more than a sign on the path of life that points towards Ñana Yoga. Curiously, it is a type of sign that points in all directions, like a compass rose of infinite dimensions. To the right, to the left, forward, backward, up, down, in, out...
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