Yoga Beyond Belief: Insights to Awaken and Deepen Your Practice

an ongoing journey of experimentation, practice, and learning from experience.
    After several years of traditional yoga study and practice, I had the opportunity to travel in India and Europe with a bright, unconventional yogi. He encouraged and enjoyed
vichara
—the process of deep inquiry, questioning, and discussion. At that time I was still very steeped in traditional thinking, and I believed meditation must be structured and practiced daily as part of one’s routine. The yogi, who led meditationclasses, kept taking the opposite viewpoint, emphasizing the spontaneity and freedom of real meditation. After a couple of days of debate, I finally began to see his perspective on meditation as something that has to occur naturally without contrived effort. I began to feel free, and excited, letting go of effort. I got up, and as I was leaving the room, I said, “Thank you very much. I feel very freed up and now see meditation as something that occurs naturally, a
happening.”
As I was closing the door, he smiled and said, “One more thing, Ganga. Be sure to let it happen regularly!” Now that he had swung me the other way, he was sure to get in the last blow. Both sides of the argument have their validity. There is a need and benefit of learning control and there is also that which is beyond control.
    Meditation balances an interplay of control and surrender, faith and questioning, reverence and self-empowerment. It is selflessness balanced by individuality, or
self-fullness
. It requires holding firmly and letting go. It brings grace and harmony. It perceives the miraculous and the sacred. Meditation is all of life, the wholeness of life, the ending of time, and the essence of yoga.



O ur deeply rooted concepts of spirituality developed over millennia in religious traditions from around the world that had their beginnings ages ago in times when human consciousness and the state of our knowledge were very different from what they are today. Tradition was a necessary means of passing knowledge from generation to generation. Strong controls on society were needed, since survival depended on generations living as their ancestors had taught. Centuries, even millennia, may have passed with little or no profound change in traditions. Memory, custom, and repetition were requisite for the survival and maintenance of societies and cultures without books, tape systems, computers, and other mechanisms of mass information storage and distribution. The advent of science and technology introduced huge challenges that upset the ancient equilibrium of religious thought and culture. Science allowed many inexplicable and seemingly miraculous things to be proved, explained, demonstrated, and acted upon while creating many new miracles beyond even those reported by religion. There are legends, for example, of yogis levitating or hovering above the ground, but now we can “levitate” hundreds of people at once across the seas at thirty-five thousand feet.

Our Relation to the One
    We now live in a very different world. There are many beautiful principles and gems of wisdom in ancient religion, but human knowledge has grown exponentially. Given the many insights and advances in our culture, many of the ancient beliefs, practices, and philosophies no longer seem appropriate or consonant with broader, modern perspectives. Much Eastern philosophy grew from the explanations and teachings of mystics who claimed experiences of divinity, or of the Oneness of the universe. The core belief in this perspective is that the underlying truth and reality in life is the One, and that the everyday world of diversity and individuality in which we live is actually an illusion, called
maya
. Worldly existence is often regarded merely as a means for getting us back to union with the One, with God, or to enlightenment. Thought, ego, self-centeredness, desire, and attachment are usually defined in these traditions as obstacles to be eliminated in order to go beyond separateness into Oneness and reintegration. While this common yogic perspective has given us many useful insights and transformational practices, it can also be a limiting,
one
-sided perspective.
    Seeing Oneness as the only essential true reality can lead to a devaluing of the earth, of life, and personal relationships. In this perspective, our relationship to the transcendent, to the mystical, or to the Teacher, the Guru, is often put above our closest personal relationships, even that