I am afraid all the major Yoga masters, the authorative Yoga texts, my own experiences and arguments from logic support what I am saying. Even the text Pradipika Siva mentioned to counter me supports what I am saying. It is obvious what I am saying here is right. In the end if I am right, you’re not mediating properly and will go on for years doing the same thing and get pretty much nowhere. So as I said it is either your loss or your gain.
The readers here can make up their own mind. Some will see merit in what I am saying and some will not. I am not saying all of this to convince, but to simply put the right information out there. I am afraid in my opinion, it is not me who is misleading anybody, but it is you by telling them to go sit in a corner, close their eyes and daydream and call that meditation. I have come across countless people who have been doing that for years and they are nowhere in their practice. Many give up meditation in frustration because they never get anywhere. Others turn meditation into a faith and act holy and spiritual, when in fact the reality is they are just as ordinary as everybody else.
If that is true, then Dhyana (meditation) would not be referred to as one of the limbs of yoga - it would be simply referred to as ‘something which happens’.
The meditation YOU are referring to is actually called Samadhi - but even then it is not ‘something which happens’. It is a state of awareness, and must be gradually cultivated. It too is one of the 8 limbs, and therefore is also not a final ‘something’: there are varying degrees of Samadhi, and until you have experienced them you would be better off not lecturing people as an authority. You may find yourself speaking to someone who has had direct experience of them, like myself.
You are speaking mostly from ignorance.
Awareness training is not Samadhi. If that was true I would be in Samadhi by simply reading a book, watching television, or writing this post. Awareness is part of the niyama santosha. It is a pre-meditation exercise which we inculcate in our daily life in order to prime our mind to make it fit for higher Yoga practice. This is why in the Yoga tradition the first few years of training did not involve any meditation, pranayama or even asana, but was about doing basic everyday chores with awareness.
Patanjali gave a sequence in order of the Samkhya cosmology. The first is the wordly part(yama and niyama) Then there is the physical body(asana) Then there is the energy body(pranayama) then the mental body(dharana) then the causal body(dhyana) and spiritual body(samadhi) Hinduism is all based on sequences and order of things. It is the same in the stages in life called the ashrams: student, household, forest-dweller and renunciant. It is also the same in society: labourer, merchant, admin and sage. The same in terms of worlds: physical plane, mental plane, spiritual plane.
The trouble with you is you want to run before you can walk. Good luck.
NO. asana is not more important than yama and niyama. I have met many people (including many yoga teachers) who practice asana very nicely, but have no awareness of, nor application of, the yama and niyama in their life. It’s not pretty.
Well, there you go then. They are not doing the proper practice, which includes Yogic lifestyle and diet as a preliminary. The results are they will not get the higher benefits of Yoga. Their loss.
This is total nonsense. There have been many enlightened masters who work amongst us as normal people. I have the privilege of knowing one, and he works harder than anyone I’ve ever met, has a 4 kids, and pays his bills.
Never heard of him. Can he levitate, have healing powers, transmit his consciousness into you, appear in many places at once? No? Then he is not enlightened.
I think we should use a bit of logic here. If meditation and yoga as its being practiced today works then where are all of those enlightened masters with their siddhis? hundreds of millions of people in the world are doing meditation and Yoga and yet everywhere I look I see ordinary people. The truth is, hundreds of millions of people are not doing Yoga and meditation properly(In fact they are not doing it at all) The science has been lost.
In fact forget the practice you need to go right to the basics and begin with theory. You clearly do not understand the theory.
