Page 34 - NAMAH-Apr-2020

Namah Vol. 28, Issue 1, 24th April 2020

This is the general background of all yoga. The Law of Truth
The fact that yoga has been studied and its
findings confirmed repeatedly by many Each religion claims that it has found the
yogins down the ages of mankind, cutting law of Truth! But the law of Truth is not
across barriers of time and space; the fact that something engraved upon a hard rock for
its results, findings and discoveries can be all times to come. Nor is it a human law that
reproduced by others, provided they follow works according to human ideas of justice or
the guidelines and fulfil the conditions (as moral conceptions of right and wrong. If we
indeed in all experiments) makes it a science look closely at nature we shall discover that
in its own right. Equally the fact that there she works in an amoral way. Justice there is
is no single book, no universal code or rule- but it is not about reward and punishment as
book, no single Name of the ultimate Mystery, it is about a constant growth and unfolding.
no single person who holds all the keys is What applies for one creature need not
enough to say that Yoga is as far from religion apply to another. What works at one stage
and ideologies as man is from the ape. of evolution may even become counter-
productive at another. However no doubt
In fact religion is very often some kind there is a fundamental Truth that is ever the
of an incomplete and imperfect yoga wherein same, unchanging and immutable behind all
the founder either lost his way or stopped at the changes going on in creation.
some half-way home of the Spirit. Or else a
religion is born when the Master has gone But this Truth unfolds itself differently in
and man steps in with his own limited different individuals and in different ways,
ideas, dogmatic beliefs and, in collusion with even in the same individual in different stages
the king and the priest, creates a rule-book of his self-development and evolution. But
of rituals and common code to maintain the mind, unable to comprehend this vastness
their hegemony over the masses. Religion, and complexity and plasticity with which
especially an exclusive religion that discards God works, tends to crystallise everything
other approaches, is more of a socio-political into fixed, often narrow and rigid dogmas for
construct from the dead shell of what once all to follow. This tendency is seen sometimes
may have been some kind of a spiritual even in different paths of yoga, turning it into
seeking. That is why in India, the land or a sect if not a religion. Much attention is paid
the birthplace of yoga, the very way of ideal to outer details and external actions leading
life discovered by yoga was given a name to specialisation and over-specialisation of
that is at once universal and all-inclusive. each system.
It was called Sanatana Dharma, which very
simply means the eternal Law that governs What is lost sometimes in this emphasis
all existence here. Man can align with on methods and techniques is the core of
this law as it unfolds in and through Yoga. This core is aspiration, the original
the framework of our individual and seeking with which man started his journey.
collective existence or he can disregard Techniques will lead us to a point but we shall
it and follow whatever course his surface miss the real thing. We will not go beyond what
nature suggests. we aspire for through whatever technique

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