The Process of Ashtanga-yoga

The ashtanga-yoga system is especially meant for human beings thinking to be the material body or mind, without accurate information about their actual spiritual identity.

By mechanical manipulation of the subtle life airs in the body the yogi tries to withdraw his mind from material sense objects and to become fixed in samadhi. Samadhi refers to the concentration of the mind on the Supersoul, the extension of the Supreme Personality of Godhead in every living entity's heart.

The process of Ashtanga-yoga will be accurately explained in the sixth chapter of Bhagavad-gita. Moreover, in this world-famous yoga book you will find complete information about all yoga processes...

Ashtanga means eightfold. The eight parts of the mystic yoga process are called:

• yama (prohibition of harmful behavior, i.e. meat-eating, sex, intoxication, gambling etc.)

• niyama (prescribed duties)

• asana (sitting postures)

• pranayama (breath control)

• pratyahara (withdrawal of the senses)

• dharana (concentration)

• dhyana (meditation)

• samadhi (trance).

By exercising the proper sitting postures or asanas it becomes possible to control the life-air in the body. When this is achieved, the mind can be fixed in pure consciousness, because it is connected to the movements of the life air. But although the mind may be controlled for the moment, this control will be lost instantly, if the yogi becomes overwhelmed by the desire for sense gratification.

On the topmost level of ashtanga-yoga, called samadhi, there is no difference between internal and external vision, because one will see the same absolute truth everywhere.

In his purport to Shrimad Bhagavatam 4.4.25, the world-renowned sanskrit scholar A.C. Bhaktivedenta Swami Prabhupada explains the ashtanga-yoga process in the following way:

"The yogic process is to control the air passing within the body in different places called sat-cakra, the six circles of air circulation. The air is raised from the abdomen to the navel, from the navel to the heart, from the heart to the throat, from the throat to between the eyebrows and from between the eyebrows to the top of the cerebrum. That is the sum and substance of practicing ashtanga-yoga.

Before practicing the real yoga system, one has to practice the sitting postures because this helps in the breathing exercises which control the airs going upwards and downwards. This is a great technique which one has to practice to attain the highest perfectional stage of yoga, but such practice is not meant for this age. No one in this age can attain the perfectional stage of such yoga, but people indulge in practicing sitting postures, which is more or less a gymnastic process. By such bodily gymnastics one may develop good circulation and may therefore keep one's body fit, but if one simply restricts oneself to that gymnastic process one cannot attain the highest perfectional stage.

The yoga process, as described in the Kesava-sruti, prescribes how one can control his living force according to his desire and transmigrate from one body to another or from one place to another. In other words, ashtanga-yoga practice is not meant to keep the body fit. Any transcendental process of spiritual realization automatically helps one to keep the body fit, for it is the spirit soul that keeps the body always fresh. As soon as the spirit soul is out of the body, the material body immediately begins to decompose.

Any spiritual process keeps the body fit without separate endeavor, but if one takes it that the ultimate aim of yoga is to maintain the body, then he is mistaken.

The real perfection of yoga is elevation of the soul to a higher position or the liberation of the soul from material entanglement. Some yogis try to elevate the soul to higher planetary systems, where the standard of life is different from that of this planet and where the material comforts, life-span and other facilities for self-realization are greater, and some yogis endeavor to elevate the soul to the spiritual world, the spiritual Vaikuntha planets. The bhakti-yoga process directly elevates the soul to the spiritual planets, where life is eternally blissful and full of knowledge; therefore bhakti-yoga is considered to be the greatest of all yoga systems."