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Yogic insights into human psychology

Yoga and conceptions of God

Dr. Alok Pandey

Abstract
Conceptions of God are not just religious matters but a matter of everyday living. We may not
call it God but simply the idea of what is the source of all things. This search for a lost reality is
interwoven in man’s fabric of life. Yoga explores it in its own unique way. Yet in the process it can
and does enrich all other areas of human activity such as science, art, psychology, religion and
philosophy.

A question is sometimes asked if the satisfaction of desires, success in one’s
practice of yoga necessitates a belief in endeavours and prevention from various
God? The question is a tricky one since kinds of afflictions and sufferings that chase
much depends also on how we define mankind as a shadow.
God. Most commonly, when we speak
of God, we immediately visualise the Such a conception of an extraterrestrial God
God of religions who is much like a human who sits above in some blue heavens, whom
being in his ways of dealing with life and we must appease or fear, is the typical God of
creation but with abundant, supernatural the religious instinct in man. This conception
powers at his disposal. He is, according to is not without its advantages. It has served
these conceptions, an aggrandised human as a scaffolding in man’s spiritual evolution.
being, endowed with much more power, a Perhaps there never has been a time since
practical Omnipotence and Omniscience at man awakened to his inner subjective space
the disposal of a consciousness that is very that he did not have some conception of a
much human. His principal task seems to divinity. The difference however between
be to maintain the cosmic law and order, to the religious and yogic conceptions is that the
dispense justice by rewarding the good and God of formal religions is ‘out there’ whereas
punishing the evil-doers, to heal the sick the God of Yoga is ‘in here’.
and help human beings when in distress.
He is also supposed to grant favours and Yes, the yogic conception of God or better
prayers of various kinds, including the still divinity, — since the word God has been

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