What is Yoga truly then?
Yoga in its truest, highest embodiment, is the end of all human suffering. No kidding.
Yoga means union in its most simple understanding. It is the union of our ordinary psyche-mind with a higher state. A post-human state, one that is hyper-cognitive and hyper-sensory. I know it sounds like claptrap, but just hold on. A state beyond the psyche, the mind, and the senses, above it all. One of pure bliss, uncaused and unbroken. That is Yoga, and mistake not, because it is a comprehensive, rigorous, meticulous, scientific process.
It is a well-defined combination of theory and experimentation. It is a precise, elegant science.
It is the Physics of existence.
Now, this technology is discovered rather than an invented one. It is a process of nature, and just like the laws of nature are discovered and outlined in physics, so can one discover and outline the Yogic process. This process is running its course in your system whether or not you are aware of it. Just like gravity or electromagnetism exist whether or not you are aware. Scientists do not invent the physical laws, they create finer and finer models to mimic and explain them, right?
Yoga is precisely the same. It is a model for the laws of human existence. Building a contemporary model to explain these Yogic laws is what we can do then, at best. It is the need of the hour because they might be the most important laws of all: The laws of life.
Why is Yoga Neo-empirical?
Yoga is a neo-empirical science, at least for modern day empiricism. It is a strange irony that modern science thumps itself on its back all the time for being progressive when in fact its experimentation techniques are very narrow in scope. Don’t you see its experimentation techniques hitting one road-block after another? I call Yoga Neo- empirical not because there is anything novel about it per se; it has existed for millennia, but because it departs from today’s traditional framework of experimentation. And, no, it does not mean taking arbitrary creative liberty with experiments. It is the need of the hour, to expand the entire scope of evidence, proof, and experimentation itself, as modern theories of physics indicate. We discussed this about String theory in a previous blog if you remember. Expanding the definition of valid scientific theory is urgent for the further progress of science itself! The framework of empiricism must be expanded for further scientific evolution. Yogic science already understands this truth, and hence its epistemology accommodates the understanding.
It is ultra-cognitive, i.e. its mode of observing exceeds purely mental and sensory functions.
It is ultra sensory because its mode of experiment and observation exceeds the functions of the five senses of seeing, touching, tasting, smelling and hearing.
A highly sensitive scientific apparatus might appear to be ultra-sensory too, but actually it is just an extension of existing senses. By ultra- sensory, extra-sensory is implied, meaning the mode of a new, a different kind of sense organ.
The LHC, the LIGO, the neutrino observatories are considered as necessary investments, crucial expenses for further scientific progress, aren’t they? If such sizable resource in terms of time and money can be spent on experiments with such tremendous uncertainties, to not only be valid, but cutting edge science, Yogic technology very easily crosses the ‘science’ bar. Its only experimental apparatus is the psyche-mind- body unit, the end goal is better ‘known’, even though not readily experienced. It explores the nature of human existence, the essence of our lives. Could there be a worthier subject for experimentation? How to end human suffering and acquire permanent bliss, could the question be less important than the detection of gravitational waves, or neutrinos or the Higgs Boson? Scientists dedicate decades to building apparatus for experiments and devote many more years of uncertainty before arriving at successful detection. How is spending that much time to explore the fundamental questions of our existence less crucial? I say it is much more so, in fact it is a human imperative. If we were to dedicate years to the Yogic process, in the same earnestness, we would have a world free from suffering! Guaranteed.
Ok, but who has the time, you may ask. No, each one of us must undertake this endeavour, even with our busy business of running our lives. There are ways.
There is the Yogic technology.
Why is Yoga Neo-psychological?
The Yogic process is intricately linked with psychology. The problem of suffering, and the goal of happiness is deeply psychological, but not completely so. It appears and feels like that because it plays out in our visible, manifest, psyche-mind. There is an invisible, unmanifest part of our complete psyche-mind too, which is unknown to modern science. Today we talk of every kind of suffering in the vocabulary of modern psychology, we frame our problems in it, but unfortunately, the answers will not come from it. Like every other field of medicine, psychology and psychiatry are excellent at codifying and collating the symptoms of a ‘condition’ very well. However, they try to treat the symptoms alone, rather than killing diseases at their root. Psychiatry has been able to identify many mental conditions based on symptomatic assessments only. Funnily, many of these conditions always overlap. For example, the borderline personality disorder, the bipolar disorder, manic depression etc are classified as three different mental disorders, which is frankly ridiculous. Psychiatry has erroneously resulted in ontological excess, the creation of many false entities in place of one. Ontology means fundamental ‘things’ in existence. Modern psychology does not work with the complete construct of our psyche-minds. There is more, you will see. Based on its partial grasp, it comes up with ineffective solutions to ‘mental disorders’. They treat these disparate appearing conditions in a piecemeal fashion, with drugs or therapy. Ironically, real change never happens in a piecemeal fashion, it is always holistic. Also, lasting change and evolution is rarely gradual. It takes quantum leaps.
Yogic technology is neo-psychological because it understands that the traditional understanding of the psyche and mind is incomplete. The traditional paradigm of psychology misses out deeper fundamentals of our psyche-minds; it looks at just the emergent mechanics. At its paler reflection. Just like space-time, which is an emergent property of deeper fundamentals. It appears real, but is not the complete story. It is just an approximation of more fundamental mechanics at play. Similarly, modern psychology can view only the trunk, or the branches and leaves of a tree, but it does not and cannot locate its roots. In fact, the resolution of the whole human condition will come only from this ‘extra-psyche-mind’, that which no one is currently aware of. Yes, Yoga can treat the entire panoply of the human misery and suffering, believe that! In the Yogic model, all psychological ideas are framed differently, with a much simpler ontology. Yoga is a different model of the psyche-mind altogether, with a deeper substratum. Hence it is EXTRA or ULTRA-psychological. You could call it Neo-psychological, because it is a new kind of psychology. More than it.
Why Post-Philosophical?
The Yogic technology is post-philosophical because its underlying philosophy comes to light and can be grasped only after experimentation. Its philosophy is born after experience. It is hyper-logical as well, because reasoning is just not enough for it. Yoga’s logic arrives posteriori; after experimentation.
Truth be told, using regular logic to debate about existence is an exercise in ignorance. It is a fool’s errand to sit across debating tables and analyse life with clever arguments. It is useless. This is Yoga’s clarion call, an earnest entreaty to all the existentialists, post-modernists, post structuralist, the theists and the atheists.
For life’s fundamental questions, answers will never come from armchair theorizing! You have to dive straight into the experimentation. The theory will emerge from it!
Of course, Yoga’s philosophy can be laid out at the outset, but it will make very little sense. It will make no connection with you ordinarily, so you will dismiss it as nonsense. Wrapping one’s head around the Yogic philosophy alone, and initially at that, is futile. It will feel totally abstruse, so difficult to understand that you will have two reactions. Either it will make a disbeliever and sceptic out of you or you will try to rote learn it in blind faith. Both are unwanted, foolish conditions. So you will have to experience to know. You will have to see for yourself. Nobody could tell you. One can be the compass, the load star, but the journey is your own. One which you absolutely must undertake. It is your responsibility.
Everyone’s. It is a human imperative. In fact, it becomes an uncontrollable impulse for ones who are prepared. Like thirst and hunger.
The one’s who understood this great responsibility, this human specie imperative, tried to tell us so, repeatedly, across millennia, in many languages. Sadly, it lay forever shrouded in mystery, partly because it is difficult to understand with ordinary logic, and partly because it never acquired the language of the masses. Any concept catches the fancy of popular imagination, becomes a part of a mass lexicon and of the collective consciousness when it has the language to do so. In today’s world old ideas cannot be presented in old ways, even if they are absolute truths unchanged by time. Remember, yoga has become ‘VOGA’, and so even this ageless idea must be presented in the language of our modern world. I am attempting to do precisely that.