What Is Yoga? An indispensable way to nourish your ‘soul’

What is Yoga?

The word ‘Yoga‘ comes from the Sanskrit root ‘yug,’ which means to yoke, to join, or to unite. It may be useful at this point to reflect momentarily on the meanings of the word. Whenever you talk about fastening or joining or uniting, there necessarily needs to be two or more things to be connected or fused together.

Interestingly the origin of the word ‘religion’ lies in the Latin word ‘ligare,’ which means to bind or to tie. Also, if you talk about binding or tying something together, there necessarily needs to be two or more things to be connected.

The question remains: What are you trying to unite or tie together?

Here is what Bhagwat Gita has to say about the ‘soul’ in Chapter 2:

The Soul never takes birth and never dies at any time nor does it come into being again when the body is created. The Soul is birthless, eternal, imperishable and timeless and is never destroyed when the body is destroyed. Just as a man giving up old worn out garments accepts other new apparel, in the same way the embodied Soul giving up old and worn out bodies verily accepts new bodies. The Soul is eternal, all-pervading, unmodifiable, immovable and primordial.

Master Choa Kok Sui also emphasized the concept of the immortality of the ‘soul.’ The ‘soul’ is indestructible and enjoys a certain continuity beyond the confines of time. The Soul is a spark from the universal flame (referred to sometimes as the Divine Spark or the ‘Divine Father’). The Divine Spark itself comes from the Supreme God (referred to in the Hindu tradition as Parabrahman and Ain Soph in the Hebrew tradition). The ‘Soul’ is a small portion of the Divine Spark, which then incarnates, or takes a body, in the lower plane (the Earth) by extending a small portion of itself downwards.

The Soul extends only a small portion of itself downwards when it incarnates to learn and evolve. Why only a small portion you may ask? To understand why this happens, consider the following example. Suppose that you would like to experience what fire feels like. An easy way to have the experience is to touch an open flame using a fingertip (as opposed to jumping into a bonfire). The moment you were to touch an open flame, you would learn about the nature of fire (which is to burn things). Likewise, the Soul can learn and gain experiences by extending just a small portion of itself downwards through physical incarnation.

The Incarnated Soul and the Higher Soul

As an extension of the Supreme God, our Soul is in a state of permanent health, a state of prolonged awareness, peace, love, and bliss. The Soul may not be perfect, but it is pure. We may not be consciously aware of it, but we inherently know it resides within us. However, during the period of one physical incarnation, a temporary separation is created. There is the Incarnated Soul (often described as the personality or lower self) and the Higher Soul (sometimes called the Higher Self or Divine Self). In fact, from the viewpoint of esoteric teachings, the human is defined as a Soul with various vehicles, including physical, emotional, and mental bodies. A human resembles an inverted tree with its roots upward, rooted to the Higher Soul and ultimately to the Supreme God. It is evident in some of the teachings and practices of Kaballah and Hinduism and the art-crafts of Indonesia and Persia.

According to MCKS, “The purpose of yoga is to realize that you, the incarnated soul, are one with your Higher Soul. The purpose of yoga is union with your Higher Soul and union with all souls.” This phenomenon is known as “Soul-Realization,” “Enlightenment,” or “Self-Realization.”

However, ‘soul-realization’ or ‘self-realization’ is not a single step. According to MCKS, there are multiple stages of ‘self-realization.’

Stages of Soul-Realization

In the introduction of his book Achieving Oneness With The Higher Soul, MCKS has described the following stages of Self-Realization or Soul-Realization:

The first stage is when one realizes that he is the Soul occupying various bodies, a spiritual being of divine light, love, and power. This realization is however still at the intellectual level. The first stage happens when one realizes that he is not his physical body, emotions, or  thoughts; the emotions and the thoughts are only products of the Soul.

The second stage, in this case, happens when one experiences himself as the Soul, during meditation or any other spiritual practice, not being able to feel his physical body. The spiritual practitioner may have an out-of-body experience where the Soul uses different subtle bodies and can travel faster than the speed of light. He might experience the nature of the Soul as a being of light, traveling in all directions.

In the third stage, the yogi, as the ‘incarnated soul,’ may experience of being united with the ‘higher soul.’ He may further experience oneness with other Souls, including other human souls, animals, nature, and others.

The last stage is the experience of oneness with God, where the spiritual practitioner experiences oneness with God and oneness with all. Such Soul can be literally called a God-realized person.

Many types of Yoga introduce different means to make the oneness possible, including Hatha Yoga, Bhakti Yoga, Mantra Yoga, Raja Yoga, Jnana Yoga, Karma Yoga, and Kundalini Yoga.

Arhatic Yoga is another method of achieving oneness developed by Master Choa Kok Sui, which is, in fact, a synthesis of different Yoga suitable for people with various backgrounds who want to pursue spirituality and simultaneously live an everyday life. No wonder Arhatic Yoga is called ‘the Yoga of the 21st Century.’