Yoga is not the right of a select few but is for all. If we are accustomed to the terms Asthanga Yoga, Hatha Yoga, Kriya Yoga, and many others, that is taken up and practiced by select groups of people seeking to better their lives physically and spiritually, the commoner is not left out from the mainstream. Everyone is engaged in Karma Yoga. Every one of us has done Karma Yoga at some time or other in our life. By the grace of the divine, then the guru comes to show the other yoga forms. Supramania Swami showed me Bhakti Yoga, by example. I saw his devotion towards his gurus. Tavayogi came to teach us Yoga Asanas and Pranayama as is known today as Raja Yoga, Patanjali Yoga, etc. Acharya Gurudasan taught us Kriya Yoga. We now await for Jnana Yoga or divine knowledge, the last pearl on the string, to dawn on us.
Swami Vivekananda in his book "Karma Yoga" mentions that, "In all creation--in animals, plants, and men--we find the more or less typical manifestation of all these different forces (Sattva, Rajas, and Tamas). Karma Yoga has specially to deal with these three factors. By teaching what they are and how to employ them, it helps us to do our work better."
"The life of every individual, according to the Hindu scriptures, has its peculiar duties apart from what belongs in common to universal humanity. The Hindu begins life as a student; then he marries and becomes a householder; in old age, he retires; and lastly he gives up the world and becomes a Sannyasin. To each of these stages of life, certain duties are attached. The four stages of life in India have in later times been reduced to two--that of the householder and of the monk. The householder marries and carries on his duties as a citizen, and the duty of the other is to devote his energies wholly to religion, to preach and to worship God."
"The life of the married man is quite as great as that of the celibate who has devoted himself to religious work. The scavenger in the street is quite as great and glorious as the king on his throne. Take him off his throne, make him do the work of the scavenger, and see how he fares. Take up the scavenger and see how he will rule. It is useless to say that the man who lives out of the world is a greater man than he who lives in the world; it is much more difficult to live in the world and worship God than to give it up and live a free and easy life."
The Swami adds that it is alright to go after wealth provided it is distributed among others. "If he gets riches, hundreds of others will be thereby supported." Like the poor and unfortunate, many sadhus too live off the alms given by householders and the public.
Going by our earlier research on karma, we had only considered them to be actions or deeds carried out in the past. Reading Swami Vivekananda's "Karma Yoga" and the 5 tenets as revealed by Agathiyar it seems now that karma constitutes both the result of our past actions and also the detailing of fresh actions that need to be taken.
Having lived a purposeful life that is both beneficial to the individual, family and friends and others, the community and society, and finally the nation, with the coming of a guru he dwells into the ways of saving his Atma. The guru teaches him the numerous forms of Yoga. If Swami Vivekananda wrote that Raja Yoga is based on the aphorisms or Sutras of Patanjali, Swami Prabhavananda in his book "Patanjali Yoga Sutras", published by Sri Ramakrishna Math, Chennai, writes that Patanjali's work is "a work of compilation and reformation, restated for the man of his period."
"References to yoga practices are to be found already in the Katha, Svtasvatara, Taittiriya, and Maitrayani Upanishads very many centuries earlier. Indeed the yoga doctrine may be said to have been handed down from prehistoric times."
Coming later, M.Govindan in his book "Babaji", published by Babaji's Kriya Yoga Order of Acharyas Trust, Bangalore, India, describes Kriya Yoga as a crystallization of the teachings and techniques of Yoga Siddhantham, the ancient teachings of the Yoga Siddhas, developed and promulgated by Babaji to have man realize his potential."
We are blessed to have these ancient techniques passed on to us by our learned gurus and upagurus. This has to be passed on too.
