<div><em>As we celebrate International Yoga Day, the teachings of Paramahansa Yogananda guide truth-seekers on the spiritual path, says <strong>Hitendra Wadhwa, Professor of Practice, Columbia Business School and Founder, Institute for Personal Leadership</strong></em><br><br><br>Great movements seize the world’s imagination and trigger powerful transformations in human conduct. Gandhi’s teaching of Ahimsa (non-violence), for example, became the guiding force for the people of India to successfully wage a peaceful revolution against British rule. Ahimsa has since been adopted by many other groups engaged in social and political reform, such as those in the African American community in the 1960s who, stewarded by Martin Luther King, successfully used it to pursue the cause of civil liberties. </div><div> </div><div>By abjuring violence, we feel we are faithfully following Gandhi’s illumined path of Ahimsa. But like an iceberg, any outer transformation in human conduct is only a small fraction of the truth a great movement embodies. Those who have embraced Ahimsa solely as a practice of nonviolent behaviour have missed Gandhi’s deeper message. </div><div> </div><div>“Ahimsa”, he said, “is not the crude thing it has been made to appear. Not to hurt any living thing is no doubt a part of ahimsa. But it is its least expression. The principle of ahimsa is hurt by every evil thought, by undue haste, by lying, by hatred, by wishing ill to anybody. It is also violated by our holding on to what the world needs.”</div><div> </div><div>When we attune ourselves to a great movement’s deeper message, we discover that, at its root, it is inviting us to pursue inner transformation, not simply outer transformation. </div><div> </div><div>And so, as we celebrate International Yoga Day, perhaps we will benefit from reflecting not simply on the outer transformation that Yoga has come to stand for in modern times, but the possibilities it holds for inner transformation as well. </div><div> </div><div>Yoga, a discipline from India that is so ancient in its roots that we can only credit it to unknown truth-seekers from some glorious past era, has an outer form that has seized our collective imagination: for 30 minutes every day, disconnect from the world, take your body through an array of yoga poses, breathe deeply, keep the mind focused, and presto! You will emerge relaxed, rejuvenated, and ready again to re-engage with the relentless pace of life. </div><div> </div><div>By all counts, yoga is one of modern civilisation’s great movements. In the US itself, more than 20 million people today are pursuing yoga--one out of every 10 adults. This yoga revival is in direct response to peoples increased hunger for physical and mental well-being, and a growing suspicion that there’s more to the pursuit of happiness than the material accoutrements of modern civilisation. A panoply of yoga instructors have arrived to offer their own twists to ancient poses. Western inventiveness has flourished in the bountiful soil of yoga; today, some instructors are even offering Doga--yoga for your dog. </div><div> </div><div>But what is the deeper message of yoga? Is there something altogether more powerful for us to seek beyond outer transformation through lower stress, more toning, and greater fitness? Many practitioners sense that yoga is inviting them to embark on an inner journey, but don’t know where it will take them, and how to get there. </div><div> </div><div>For this deeper dive, we can turn to the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, one of the authoritative and few-surviving ancient texts on yoga. Patanjali teaches that “yoga” means “union”--the dissolving of one’s individual self in the larger ocean of consciousness that pervades the universe--and that to help us achieve this union is yoga’s real purpose. Now you might think, “What is this ‘universal consciousness’ that Patanjali is talking about? And how can I ever get there?”</div><div> </div><div>Enter Paramahansa Yogananda. Born in 1893 in Gorakhpur, India, this modern-day seer alighted on American soil at the young age of 27 with little money in his pocket but a firm resolve to reawaken humanity to the power of yoga for inner transformation. Over the next three decades he brought this message to packed audiences of thousands at congregations in all major US cities, dressing this ancient teaching in a practical modern form he called Self-realization – a journey he characterised as shedding your individual self (ego) and realising and reclaiming your true universal Self (soul). As people were being buffeted by the thunderous wrath of two world wars and a major depression, he exhorted them to practice yoga so they could discover that the spiritual anchorage they were seeking was already with them--in fact, it was within them. The successful yogi, he stated, “can stand unshaken midst the crash of breaking worlds.”As he traversed the continent delivering his message of yoga, US President Calvin Coolidge invited him to the White House for a personal audience. Today he is recognized among yoga experts as the father of yoga in the west. </div><div> </div><div>Great teachers look into the vast beyond and then craft their message to speak not just to their immediate audience but to future generations as well. As early as 1920, Yogananda recognised that yoga would be a boundless fountain to quench peoples’ growing thirst for meaning, authenticity and a personal experience of truth. So he laid the foundation of an institution, Self-Realisation Fellowship (SRF), along with a sister-organisation in India, Yogoda Satsanga Society (YSS), to ignite the inner flame of yoga in communities worldwide. He once said, “I don’t use religion for business but I use business principles in religion.” Today, there are hundreds of SRF/YESS meditation groups and centers around the world that serve tens of thousands of members. He also worked to develop living exemplars of his teachings by setting up a monastic order within SRF/YSS that today includes more than 250 monks and nuns dedicated to their own pursuit of soul-unfoldment and to serving his organisation’s mission. </div><div> </div><div>Yogananda’s teachings don’t simply stop at the idea of universal consciousness. He correctly anticipated the growing hunger among spiritual seekers for direct personal experience of the universal consciousness that the masters of yoga, and indeed mystics of every religious tradition, describe. He therefore synthesised a set of powerful but practical techniques to guide truth-seekers on the spiritual path all the way to the ultimate union, drawing on the eight steps laid out by Patanjali in the Yoga Sutras. </div><div> </div><div>The modern conception of yoga -- with its emphasis on outer transformation--is based on the third of Patanjali’s eight steps, “asana.” Asana emphasises physical fitness for the purpose of getting the body ready for the stillness that is required for the inner journey taken in the subsequent steps. But prior even to asana are Patanjali’s first two yoga steps of “yama” and “niyama” -- principles to guide one’s everyday conduct and to prepare oneself for inner realisation. Yoga emphasizes the importance of self-discipline as a foundation for harmonious physical, mental, and spiritual development. </div><div> </div><div>Yogananda’s particular genius was showing the modern applicability of these ancient principles, attuning himself to an audience who aspired as much to outer success as inner growth by delivering talks on topics like “The Science of Healing” and “The Art of Getting What You Want.”In that regard, he was a forerunner to 21st century psychologists, physicians, psychotherapists, and neuroscientists who are generating powerful scientific findings on human nature and well-being—all aligned with Yogananda’s teachings on consciousness, thoughts, emotions, habits and brain wiring. </div><div> </div><div>Patanjali’s final five steps beyond asana relate to a progressive deepening of the seeker’s journey toward realisation of the universal self, with meditation providing the pathway. However, Patanjali’s text on these final five steps is agonizingly cryptic, with no guidance on how to execute them. To fill this void, Yogananda, ever the spiritual innovator,introduced the West to an advanced but long-lost ancient technique of meditation, Kriya Yoga. Kriya, he offered, would take you on the ultimate journey of inner transformation, helping you tap into an ever-expanding love and ever-deepening joy that would spring from within. That, he asserted, was man’s true nature--a perfection that represents our permanent state of self within, even as it is so elusive to capture without.</div><div> </div><div>Kriya “works like mathematics”, he stated, emphasising the empirical, scientific nature of this technique. Through regular practice, he claimed, Kriya will change the neural pathways in your brain. Really? Can the act of mindful focusing and of interiorizing our consciousness actually bring about physical changes in the brain?Very few scientists at Yogananda’s time would have felt comfortable with his claims. Yet today revolutionary new findings in neuroscience are showing that meditation does in fact bring favourable changes in the neural pathways of the brain. Scientific laboratories are now stumbling into truths experienced by yogis across the ages in, as Yogananda would say, the inner laboratories of their personal experience.</div><div> </div><div>And what would be the markers that people could look for to assess their inner progress? Lower stress? Greater peace? He had begun his own quest for Self-realisation very early in life, a story vibrantly captured in the award-winning 2014 documentary, “Awake: The Life of Yogananda.” His youthful search culminated in his master Sri Yukteswar giving him the monastic name “Yogananda,” which means “bliss through yoga.” True to his name, he exhorted truth-seekers to savor the early rewards of peace and well-being, but to then seek out the ultimate prize: eternal bliss, universal consciousness. “When by constant practice of Kriya, the consciousness of [the] blissful state of the spiritual self becomes real, we find ourselves always in the holy presence of the blissful God in us.”God, to Yogananda, was thus not an external force to be idolized and appropriated by any particular religion, but an inner force to be awoken to and realised. </div><div> </div><div>To some, the yogic pursuit of inner perfection may appear a little selfish. Shouldn’t we be engaged in solving the world’s most vexing problems, rather than be withdrawn in blissful inner communion? In fact, one time, when Yogananda sat still, absorbed in a particularly blissful state of consciousness, his spiritual master admonished him, “You must not get overdrunk with ecstasy. Much work yet remains for you in the world". So Yogananda learned that this choice between outer service and inner joy represents a false dichotomy. The yoga he taught emphasizes balancing service with meditation, and highlights the expansion of consciousness that comes when we are able to go beyond our human self and open ourselves up, through inner realization, to a deeper connection with every living being--in fact, with every atom in the universe. “When the ‘I’ shall die, then shall I know who am I”, he stated. </div><div> </div><div>Yogananda make a triumphant return to India in 1935-36, where he spent time, among others, with India’s other great saints Anandamayi Ma and Ramana Maharishi, and nobel laureates C. V. Raman and Rabindranath Tagore. He also met with Mahatma Gandhi in 1935, amid the height of Gandhi’s political and social activism. Ever humble, Gandhi’s first commitment in life was to evolve himself, not the world around him. What better way to accelerate the inner journey than to pursue what Yogananda called “an airplane route” to universal consciousness, Kriya? So on this one sole occasion that life brought them together, Gandhi took initiation in Kriya Yoga from Yogananda. The bond between the two messiahs must have been very special; upon Gandhi’s assassination, Yogananda received and enshrined some of Gandhi’s ashes in the beautiful grounds of Lake Shrine, an iconic Self-Realization Fellowship temple in California. </div><div> </div><div>Since Yogananda’s passing in 1952, many teachers have followed his trailblazing path to bring yoga to our world, helping make it a fixture in popular culture as it continues to take hold with young and old, the elite and the ordinary, the spiritualists and the atheists. What distinguishes Yogananda from these subsequent emissaries is not simply that he paved the way for the modern yoga movement, but that from the outset he focused far beyond physical exercises and shone a powerful and practical torchlight on the path to yoga’s true purpose: actualising the infinite potentials within us all. </div><div> </div><div>“[Yogananda]’s probably been the greatest inspiration for me”, the quiet BeatleGeorge Harrison once said. "I keep stacks of [his book]Autobiography of a Yogi around the house and I give it out constantly to people. When people need 'regrooving,' I say read this, because it cuts to the heart of every religion.”</div><div> </div><div>Compare this toSteveJobs,whorarely revealed to people his fondness for Yogananda’s autobiography – the only book he had on his iPad. And yet, upon his passing, he arranged for every attendee at his memorial service to be given a box that contained his farewell message to them: the book “Autobiography of a Yogi.” </div><div> </div><div>So why is Yogananda not a pop icon at a time when yoga is the great movement of our times? During the 1920s, Yogananda, who was much in demand on the speaker’s circuit, consciously decided to withdraw from public speaking so he could focus on building his organization, recording his teaching, and mentoring his flock of early monastics. “I prefer souls over crowds”, he said. And then he added, “But I love crowds of souls.”With the growing interestin mindfulness and meditation, perhaps these words will prove to be more prophetic than wistful. </div><div> </div><div>On this first International Yoga Day,the time may have come to tip our hats to the teacher who first introduced the modern world to the transformative power of yoga as a timeless inner discipline. So as you roll out your yoga mat, get into your favourite yoga pose and feel a gentle zephyr of peace sweep over you, perhaps you can take pause to wonder at what experiences in consciousness may lie just beyond your present reach if you embark on yoga’s fuller, inner journey toward Self-realisation. Yogananda would have called those experiences “undreamed of possibilities.” </div><div> </div>
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