Swami Niranjanananda Saraswati
24 October 2018, Ganga Darshan Vishwa Yoga Peeth, Munger
Since 2014 people have become aware of the term ‘Yoga Chakra’. Prior to this, nobody had heard of it. When the satsangs and the teachings of Yoga Chakra were published after the World Yoga Convention of 2013, people realized that something new had started at BSY. The idea of Yoga Chakra is novel for everyone and they think I am the creator of this concept. In reality, I am only a postman who is delivering the post sent by my master. The Yoga Chakra was discovered in 1963. That was when the sannyasins of the ashram had called Sri Swamiji ‘Yoga Chakra Kalanidhi’, ‘one who artfully created the wheel of yoga’. That was the title given to him.
Yoga Chakra comprises of six yogas: hatha yoga, raja yoga, kriya yoga, karma yoga, bhakti yoga, jnana yoga. Out of the entire body of yoga in the tradition, Sri Swamiji chose these six, as he said that these yogas will fulfil the needs of human society in the coming times to elevate the lives of individuals, socially, mentally and spiritually. From 1963 to 1973, he trained us in Yoga Chakra. Thereafter, when we went out to society to propagate yoga, the full scale of the Yoga Chakra training was scaled down by Sri Swamiji, as he discovered that people in society would not be able to handle it. Their physical and psychological conditions, their family and social environments would not allow them to experience, understand or follow the Yoga Chakra path. Thus, a scaled-down version of Yoga Chakra was developed by Sri Swamiji consisting of a limited group of practices, which became known as the Satyananda Yoga system.
What people learn in the form of Satyananda Yoga is very basic. It is limited to practices that provide wellbeing to the body, emotions and mind, and allow the spiritual awareness to flourish. Due to people’s limitations, Sri Swamiji devised a simple program of yoga, comprising of pawanmuktasana 1, 2, 3, the standing and balancing series, the forward and backward bending series. From the entire body of pranayamas, which are powerful techniques, he selected a few simple ones: nadi shodhana, kapalbhati, ujjayi, bhramari, bhastrika, and a few others. Out of the entire body of raja yoga and pratyahara, he selected the practices of yoga nidra, antar mouna, ajapa japa and chidakasha dharanas. These are the practices that people use today and call Satyananda Yoga, and this is more than enough for those living in society.
Most people don’t need any practice beyond these, as they are not aspiring to be like Sage Gheranda, Sage Patanjali, Sage Yajnavalkya, Sage Vyasa, or Sage Satyananda. They aim at living their own social life with greater ease and comfort of body and mind. For them Satyananda Yoga is more than enough, as it fulfils that purpose of wellbeing. This is what was propagated in the first fifty years of the Bihar School of Yoga.
Many people say to me, “Swamiji, you are talking of yoga vidya now, but what about all the lectures of Swami Sivananda and Swami Satyananda? Are they not part of yoga vidya?” The reply to that is: what they have spoken is yoga vidya for them. For you it is only information, as you have not experienced it. You have not gone deep enough to experience what it means, you have only been going by intellectual understanding, not experiential understanding. Vidya is what is experienced, attained and applied. Swami Sivananda and Swami Satyananda were able to experience and live that.
In the second chapter, this has to be the effort: not merely know yoga but experience the depth of yoga and apply it in every moment of life. For this, we are going back to the teachings of Yoga Chakra.
The first spoke of the wheel of Yoga Chakra is hatha yoga. The focus of hatha yoga is not on physical exercise, but on harmonization of the two dominant powers in human life: the physical vitality and the mental vitality, the gross prana shakti and the subtle chitta shakti. To achieve this harmony, the journey in hatha yoga begins not with asanas but with purification and detoxification of the body. Everywhere in the world people do asanas and call it hatha yoga. That is a misinterpretation of hatha yoga. Asana is not the beginning of hatha yoga; rather, it is purification and detoxification of the body and attaining a level of concentration and stability in the mind. The practices of shatkarma are focused towards these aims.
Hatha yoga is complemented by karma yoga. They go together, as both deal with senses, sense organs, sense perceptions, prana; balancing, awakening and management of prana – both the physical and the mental.
Raja yoga and bhakti yoga complement each other. Raja yoga allows the mind to dissolve into higher states of experience. The gross mind is experienced, observed and dissolved into a higher experience. Raja yoga balances the manas and buddhi expressions, and bhakti yoga balances the chitta and ahamkara expressions. Chitta and ahamkara are not guided by logic; they are guided by bhava, sentiment, feeling and emotion. People call bhakti yoga the yoga of devotion. The scriptures say it is the yoga of love. If you can understand the yoga of love, then you will understand how far it is from the yoga of devotion. Thus, it is the balance of intellect and emotion that we see in raja yoga and bhakti yoga.
Similarly, kriya yoga and jnana yoga make a pair in the Yoga Chakra. The two go hand in hand as they deal with the higher dimensions of mind and prana. Through the kriyas you are able to overcome the instinctive and animalistic tendencies. However, before you overcome them, they become highlighted, as kriya becomes a process of purging. Kriya practitioners can sometimes become overly-reactive, but after the purging has taken place, the pranas are purified and separated from emotions and desires, then the quality of intellect changes. Now the intellect is not the worldly, materialistic intellect; it becomes the higher intellect, para buddhi.
In order to convert the lower intelligence into higher intelligence, there is a path, a sequence and a process. These are seven stages of change and experience described in jnana yoga.
The six spokes of Yoga Chakra are formed by the six yogas. Now another aspect. The outer circle of the wheel that connects all the spokes together is the yogic lifestyle, and the hub from which all the spokes emanate is the source of knowledge. That is the source of truth, auspiciousness and beauty: Satyam, Shivam, Sundaram.
From the hub of Satyam, Shivam, Sundaram, emerge the six spokes of the wheel, and they are connected together by the outer rim of lifestyle. This is what you have to understand in the second chapter. Now, it is the lifestyle you have to focus on, through which the experience of yoga vidya is enhanced.
Lifestyle is beautified by cultivating the positives, not by cultivating negativity, destructiveness and irritability. Positivity can be attained by managing and bettering life, by fine-tuning one’s lifestyle through yamas and niyamas. Generally people only know the five yamas and niyamas from the perspective of the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. That is raja yoga from the Samkhyan perspective, and in classical yoga too the yamas and niyamas are advised.
The first yama is manah prasad, happiness, and the first niyama is japa. It is an appropriate and systematic outlook, not imposed morality or ethics. Generally people define yamas and the niyamas as codes of morality and ethics. However, yamas and niyamas are conditions that naturally manifest in the mind when you are able to purify an area of the mind of conflicts, confusion and discord. Then positivity reigns in the mind.
Happiness is such a small thing, yet nobody is ever happy. People are forgetting how to be happy and universities are running courses on this. Is this not a crisis of human nature that we have to be taught in a degree course how to be happy? This unhappy individual wants to be enlightened! Then regulate the lifestyle. Manage your lifestyle. Don’t practise asana-pranayama. Start with the practice of turning your mind towards a positive direction. Extend the span of happiness in your life.
Whenever I go out anywhere, whether for a walk or a program, whether in the ashram or outside, I have made a rule: the first person I happen to see in the morning, it might be a complete stranger, I look at that person and give the biggest smile I can manage.
To be happy is the first yama, the first effort, in yoga lifestyle. Sri Swamiji always says that we are so obsessed by our own difficulties and problems that we don’t even recognize where we are and the effort we can make to become better. He says, “When a sick person comes to the ashram, I tell him that while you are in the ashram, do not think that you are sick. Think that you are healthy and do everything that a normal, healthy person does. Take out that idea, that thought that ‘I am sick’ from your mind. If you think you are sick, you will be sick. If you think you are healthy, you will be able to overcome your sickness in a shorter period of time.” Ultimately it is the mind that matters. Therefore, if the mental state is always that of happiness, your problems will be reduced by a large percentage.
The first niyama of yogic lifestyle is japa, as it gives you the ability to disconnect from the sensorial world and connect with your inner nature for a short while. The first disconnection from the material and the sensorial in life takes place in japa. Otherwise, you are connected to the senses and sense pleasures twenty-four hours of the day. You are all the time seeking the pleasures of the senses, nothing else. Even at night when you are sleeping you are connected to them. Your mind and nature always remain gross. However, when you do japa, wilfully and consciously you are able to disconnect yourself from the senses, sense objects and their experiences, and centre the whole awareness within. Thus japa becomes a process of learning how to disconnect from the overload and connect yourself with another socket of peace and happiness.
Manah prasad and japa are the beginning of the yogic lifestyle. Along with these yamas and niyamas, if you practise the six limbs of the Yoga Chakra, you will begin to realize and experience what yoga truly is.
