The Truth of Yoga is in the experience, and you don’t necessarily need to know the story of its origins in the Himalayan Mountains, or to understand the powerful science behind Yoga, to experience its benefits. But this fascinating knowledge will empower both the beginner and advanced practitioner of Yoga alike.
In a series of conversations, Cosmin shares the origins of this amazing knowledge with us, and how it has served humanity for thousands of years. It’s a story not just of Yoga’s past, but of its past, its present, and its future in our modern world.
In Part One: The Story of Yoga, Cosmin takes us on a journey that explores this ancient science from its auspicious beginnings to its role in promoting a beautiful balance in our modern lives — allowing us to become the best that we can be as a good human beings!
An ancient science.
The way I see it, Yoga is a science . It’s a system that, if you follow it, will help you greatly. Not only on a physical level — meaning keeping you healthy; not only on a mental level — meaning keeping you sane and happy; but also in the service of your spiritual growth.
Yoga is the great tool that humanity has today. Yoga, in fact, is probably the best tool that we have today in terms of helping us to live our modern lives.
In terms of our physical body — yes, we need to stay healthy. In terms of our mind — yes, we need to stay sane. This is a daily thing, no matter where or when we live. But spiritual growth is another angle we can look at. And this is what makes Yoga not only something that we do for our physical body and our mind, but also something we use to wake-up to our true nature.
For me that is the beauty of Yoga, that’s the magic of it, and that’s the difference between, say, a sport like going running, or going to the gym, or going swimming. (All of which are very, very good, so please do them!)
But what does Yoga bring that goes far beyond that?
From auspicious beginnings.
Around 15 thousand years ago (let’s go by the oral tradition) Lord Shiva in the Himalayas was the first being to be seen going into ecstasy: laughing, and crying, and dancing, and meditating. And going into these states that had the other humans around him wondering what was going on.
So they gathered around him and asked him for knowledge. And from all of those maybe thousands of people only seven were chosen. And Lord Shiva gives these seven some prep work in order to make them vessels — to make them strong enough for him to be able to download this teaching, this whole new system of knowledge.
You can’t just download these sorts of teachings unless your nervous system is very strong to begin with. First of all, just to cope with that kind of energy. Because unless you are prepared to be very open-minded — and not, as per Yogi Bhajan, confusing yourself by comparing and competing.
You first have to make yourself available — by being, as in the Buddhist tradition, an open pot — empty and open — and then the teacher or the master can give you, by their grace, whatever teachings are available.
And these teachings took them many, many years of preparation. (About 84 years in fact!) And only after that did the Adi Yogi, Lord Shiva, become the first Yoga teacher when he says to them, Okay. Now is the time. And then — on what’s known today as Guru Purnima — he begins to teach, and gives them this beautiful science of Yoga, as we know it today.
A simple proof.
Let’s be honest. We’re talking about what happened thousands and thousands of years ago. Today, we’re thinking about going to other planets, but we don’t even know what’s here on planet Earth! We don’t even know what’s happening in our oceans. And how much do we really know about ourselves?
This is the beauty of Yoga. What happened? How did it happen? Hopefully, one day we’ll know in detail. But what’s most important is how does it help me today?
It been proven over these thousands and thousands of years to help. It helps me today, and lets me get an experience here and now, and lets me go home better than when I came in, better than when I walked into the class, better than when I started my practice.
Time marches on.
And we’re still going to move forward from here. You’re going to see things in the next 10 to 20 years — things that right now just seem like science fiction — if we continue at this rate. And that’s great. It’s excellent.
We should do that, provided we can put together these two beautiful sisters of science and spirituality.
So let science continue to grow and let science give us the knowledge of what happens in a lab: When we mix this, or we do that, here’s what we get. Let science explain everything. Let science give us the technology to feed all human beings. Let science give us shelter for everybody, and clean water, and care for the environment. But these things are on the outside only.
If we can put them together — science and spirituality — then we’ll have this beautiful blend, this beautiful balance that’s going to keep humanity growing in a very healthy and a very auspicious direction.
The beautiful balance.
Look today at the Eastern and Western parts of the world. The Eastern part of the world is the part where people took their work inwardly — as much as they could — generation after generation. Look at India and other countries that have a very old and beautiful tradition on spirituality.
Now, while they did that, there wasn’t too much work being done on things like infrastructure, building-out of the economy, exporting, or banking systems. This came much later than it did in the Western part of the world.
If you look at the Western parts of the world — Western Europe, the United States, or other Western countries — what we did in the last couple of hundred years is we worked tremendously on building-out the infrastructure for systems for material life.
We have fast cars… (And hopefully the brakes for them!) We have buildings which can house us, and we have technology. We can do so many things in a single second: we can get the answer to anything there is to know in the world!
But there’s a lack of work being done inwardly. And now, in the West, we are beginning to feel that.
If we can bring East and West together — if we can bring together the beautiful spirituality and the sciences — where we have a house, and we have a job. Where we have food on the table — and we’re not talking about billions of dollars or anything like that — just enough to be comfortable.
If you’re starving, you won’t be able to do Yoga. If you’re hungry, you’re not going to be able to meditate. But if I have the kind of life where, I know that tomorrow I won’t have to worry about paying my bills, then immediately I’m going to start having the time and the interest to begin working on myself.
Become the best that you can be.
Now the teachings from the East are moving to the West, and the technology from the West is moving to the East. You see many beautiful teachings and teachers — and even masters — slowly over the last 50 years or so coming to the States or the Western parts of the world to share their science — their inner science.
We have outward science and we have inward science. The best lesson we can apply to humanity is to marry these two together! Let technology work for us. Let this beautiful science work for us — let it provide while we do the work on ourselves where the focus is not just about making more money. The interest is: How can I go deeper? How can I be happy? How can I stay sane? How can I make the best out of this life as a human being?
You know what we say in Yoga? We say: Become the best human being and God will look for you. Become the best that you can be as a good human being… Loving… Compassionate… Helping — for yourself and for everybody — and God will find you.
He’ll Google you! He will find you, no problem!
What’s up next?
Today we say: Oh, I’m very spiritual. Well of course we’re spiritual! Because we’re all spirits! We’re all souls. And we’re given a physical body as a vehicle. We’re given a mind as a computer that tells us: Hey, go play! Make the best out of it. You want to enjoy life? Go to planet Earth.
Our Spirit is just our true nature! Yoga takes us beyond the mind, going to the unknown where everything comes from: The spirit. Join Cosmin in his next post as he digs deeper into Yoga — this amazing tool we have to unlock our greatest potential: The knowledge of our True Nature — our Spirit.
