So when we talk about a lot of these things particularly as an introduction to yoga and spirituality people often start kind of like spazzing out because they have different ideas and concepts. Many of them are quite limited in their understanding, like, for instance, this word ‘spiritual’ is used so often and thrown around and there’s this basic idea that materialism is bad or not desirable and spirituality is good. But when you ask people to actually define it, there is this idea that spirituality is kind of like ‘feel good’ kind of stuff – cotton candy and rainbows, is that… and pink poodles. (Audience laughter) Is that spirituality? Dolphins, sorry, sorry, sorry, dolphins and rainbows and crystals, you know.
So one of the biggest problems that we have is that we are actually beginning to talk about something that is so foreign to people’s everyday life and experience; and it takes a little time to begin to appreciate and understand some of the concepts and to develop some sort of platform of terminology or understanding of words, so that we’re speaking about the same things.
So if we ask, I mean we consider materialism as the opposite, isn’t it, of spirituality? So what is materialism and what is spirituality? People will just have a very hard time with this; and, invariably, much of what is described as spiritual is actually not. It’s kind of like ‘feel good’ things that are fundamentally material in nature.
The foundation of materialism is the idea that I am material - that this body is me, that I am a man, I am a woman, I am Australian, or Chinese, or African, or American, or Russian. The idea that these labels that I put on my body to describe my physical existence - that this is me. This is the foundation of all materialism.
The foundation of spirituality is the understanding that I am a spiritual being. I’m a spiritual person. I am residing within this particular body for a very limited amount of time and eventually, I will leave this body, I will move on. And this body that I treasure so much will simply rot, become the stool of worms, or be burnt into flames, burnt in fire, turn to ashes. This is the foundation of all spiritual teaching, or of all materialism.
Some of you, a lot of you are yoga teachers and somebody was mentioning earlier that when she tells her students that yoga asana is meant as a preparation for meditation, it just kind of like mind blowing and sort of like have a hard time relating to that. And the primary reason is a person exists and lives completely lost in this idea that this particular body that I have is me, and it is through this tool that I will experience love, that I will find happiness, that I will find fulfilment, that I will find perfection. And that is completely erroneous. This idea is completely erroneous.
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The Hatha Yoga system just forms one small part of a much bigger system of yoga, primarily known as the Astanga Yoga system or Raja Yoga. Nowadays, people term a specific type of Hatha Yoga as Astanga Yoga. Sorry, that is incorrect. That is not correct. As we’ve mentioned, asta means eight; anga, means limbs. It is the eight limbs of yoga. Do any of you know what these eight limbs are?
PERSONS IN AUDIENCE (various replies): Yama, niyama. Asana. Pranayama, dharyana. Dhyana.
Yama, niyama, asana, pranayama, dhyana… Not doing too good here, are we? (Audience laughter) Pratyahara, and finally, samadhi. So the practice of yoga, of course, was a spiritual pursuit. It was to find profound meaning - my life, what is it actually for - and to come to the platform of perfect self-realization.
Before we go into talking about the system, we must define what is realization or self-realization; what constitutes it. We have already mentioned about the quest to understand our spiritual identity, as a spiritual personality temporarily residing within the body. But this question of our identity needs to be answered in three separate divisions. There’s the question of what is my essence. You know this word ‘essence’? What does it mean, ‘essence’?
PERSONS IN AUDIENCE (Various replies): Your nature. Origin? Nugget or kernel of truth.
Yeah, it’s like you’re saying the kernel, nugget. It is actually what I am made of, what am I, what constitutes me. If I can say ‘made of’, it’s not the proper terminology, but it gives you some understanding of the essential nature or composition of the living being – my essence, my spiritual essence.
The second part has to do with understanding my natural position. Where do I fit in the big scope of things? Where do I fit in relation to this material world, in relation to other living beings? If there’s a higher being, what is my connection or relationship there? So, my position.
And thirdly, my natural function – what, if I was to exist in my natural, spiritual state, what would be my natural activity? What would it be that I would be doing? This is my function.
In this world if we want to come to know about any particular item, you know, anything, we must examine these three things in order to come to understand what a particular appliances, or a car, or, you know, a building or whatever… when we look at it in relation to its essence, its position and its function we can develop a full understanding. And so the yoga system is a process which will take a person gradually through this realization so that one can come to fully appreciate or understand their actual spiritual identity, experience their spiritual identity. We’ll talk a little bit about this later because it very much ties into the different types of spiritual realization that people can and do have.
