Kuriakon - Infinity

Children of Light

Yogi

Yogi  - A yogi or yogin (in Sanskrit: योगी yogini is used as a feminine alternative) is a term for one who practices yoga. These designations are mostly reserved for advanced practitioners. The word "yoga" itself - from the Sanskrit root yuj ("to yoke") - is generally translated as "union" or "integration" and may be understood as union with the Divine, or integration of body, mind, and spirit.

In the Fourth Way teaching of Gurdjieff the word yogi is used to denote the specifically mental path of development, compared with the word fakir (which Gurdjieff used for a path of physical development) and monk (which he used for the path of emotional development).

In contemporary English yogin is an alternative rendering for the word yogi, a human being who is committed to the practise of yoga, usually in the more authentic sense of one who is bound by a code of moral conduct and restraint (including celibacy) with a view to the realization of moksha (liberation). Both words tend to conjure up the image of a semi-naked Indian ascetic with long hair but throughout the East, the words are often used to describe Buddhist monks or any lay person who is devoted to meditation. Yogins or Yogis in that sense are not necessarily fully enlightened as the following definition from the Nuttall encyclopedia suggests.

"Among the Hindus, a Yogan is one who has achieved his yoga, over whom nothing perishable has any longer power, for whom the laws of nature no longer exist, who is emancipated from this life, so that death even will add nothing to his bliss, it being his final deliverance or Nirvana, as the Buddhists would say."

 Yoga  - Yoga (Devanagari: योग) is a group of ancient spiritual practices originating in India. As a general term in Hinduism it has been defined as referring to "technologies or disciplines of asceticism and meditation which are thought to lead to spiritual experience and profound understanding or insight into the nature of existence. Outside India, Yoga has become primarily associated with the practice of asanas (postures) of Hatha Yoga (see Yoga as exercise), although it has influenced the entire dharmic religions family and other spiritual practices throughout the world.

Hindu texts discussing different aspects of yoga include the Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita, the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, the Hatha Yoga Pradipika, the Shiva Samhita, and many others.

Bhagavad Gita

The Bhagavad Gita ('Song of the Lord'), thought to have been composed in roughly the 2nd century BC, uses the term yoga extensively in a variety of senses. Of many possible meanings given to the term in the Gita, most emphasis is given to these three:

• Karma yoga: The yoga of action
• Bhakti yoga: The yoga of devotion
• Jnana yoga: The yoga of knowledge

The influential commentator Madhusudana Sarasvati (b. circa 1490) divided the Gita's eighteen chapters into three sections, each of six chapters. According to his method of division the first six chapters deal with Karma yoga, the middle six deal with Bhakti yoga, and the last six deal with Jnana (knowledge). This interpretation has been adopted by some later commentators and rejected by others.

Major branches of Yoga include: Hatha Yoga, Karma Yoga, Jnana Yoga, Bhakti Yoga, and Raja Yoga. Raja Yoga, known simply as Yoga in the context of Hindu philosophy, is one of the six orthodox (āstika) schools of thought, established by the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali.

Etymology
The Sanskrit term yoga has a wide range of different meanings. It is derived from the Sanskrit root yuj, "to control", "to yoke", or "to unite". Common meanings include "joining" or "uniting", and related ideas such as "union" and "conjunction". Another conceptual definition is that of "mode, manner, means or "expedient, means in general".
 
Literary sources
The main textual sources for the evolving concept of Yoga are the middle Upanishads, (ca. 400 BCE), the Mahabharata (from ca. 400 BC) including the Bhagavad Gita (ca. 200 BCE), and the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali (200 BCE-300 CE).

Yoga Sutras of Patanjali
In Indian philosophy, Yoga is the name of one of the six orthodox philosophical schools. The Yoga philosophical system is closely allied with the Samkhya school. The Yoga school as expounded by Patanjali accepts the Samkhya psychology and metaphysics, but is more theistic than the Samkhya, as evidenced by the addition of a divine entity to the Samkhya's twenty-five elements of reality. The parallels between Yoga and Samkhya were so close that Max Müller says that "the two philosophies were in popular parlance distinguished from each other as Samkhya with and Samkhya without a Lord.... The intimate relationship between Samkhya and Yoga is explained by Heinrich Zimmer:

These two are regarded in India as twins, the two aspects of a single discipline. provides a basic theoretical exposition of human nature, enumerating and defining its elements, analyzing their manner of co-operation in a state of bondage (bandha), and describing their state of disentanglement or separation in release while Yoga treats specifically of the dynamics of the process for the disentanglement, out outlines practical techniques for the gaining of release, or 'isolation-integration' (kaivalya).

Yoga and Tantra

Tantrism, is a practice that is supposed to alter the relation of the individual practitioner of Tantrism to the ordinary social, religious, and logical reality in which he or she lives. Through Tantric practice an individual perceives reality as maya, illusion, and the individual achieves liberation from it.

This particular path to salvation among the several offered by Hinduism, links Tantrism to those Dharmic practices such as yoga, meditation, and social renunciation, which are based on temporary or permanent withdrawal from social relationships and modes.

During tantric practices and studies, the student is instructed further in meditation technique, particularly chakra meditation. This is often in a limited form in comparison with the way this kind of meditation is known and used by Tantric practitioners and yogis elsewhere, but is more elaborate than the initiate's previous meditation. It is considered to be a kind of Kundalini Yoga for the purpose of moving the Goddess into the chakra located in the "heart," for meditation and worship.

Nirvana

Nirvana, in Buddhism, Jainism, and Hinduism, a state of supreme liberation and bliss, contrasted to samsara or bondage in the repeating cycle of death and rebirth. The word in Sanskrit refers to the going out of a flame once its fuel has been consumed; it thus suggests both the end of suffering and the cessation of desires that perpetuate bondage. Epithets of nirvana in Buddhism include "the free," "the immortal," and "the unconditioned." Nirvana is attainable in life, and the death of one who has attained it is termed parinirvana, or complete nirvana. This has often been interpreted as annihilation, but in fact the Buddhist scriptures say that the state of the enlightened man beyond death cannot be described. Nirvana in the different Indian traditions is achieved by moral discipline and the practice of yoga leading to the extinction of all attachment and ignorance.

Nirvana - a place or state characterized by freedom from or oblivion to pain, worry, and the external world.

Gospel of Thomas #90  Yeshua says: Come unto me, for my yoga is natural and my lordship is gentle—and you shall find repose for yourselves.

United

When we are united as being and non-being, spirit and flesh, Sophia and Christ, then we are one, the om, dynamic timelessness- the all-encompassing Tree of Life, pulsating in the living now of the Self which is beyond personality.

This happens as the kundalini within rises upward and out of the lotus- the crown chakra- exiting the confines of the body. Through this opening, at the top of the head, the serpentine flesh-consciousness is united with spirit, and Earth and Heaven commingle into one.
Though duality merges at the third-eye, the inner soul cannot get out through that chakra, but only through the crown chakra.
The inner sanctum lies above the crown chakra, in ‘the thousand-petalled lotus’, as it is called in the east. This is where Sophia rises out of the individual.

It is for this reason that Shiva is often depicted with his female aspect, Parvati, emerging out of the top of his head. It is also for this reason that most of the female Hindu deities are represented artistically as sitting upon a lotus- for they have risen into consciousness and then reside above the thousand-petalled lotus, which is the open crown chakra.
This emergence of the inner, divine feminine is the alchemical stage of purification, when the soul, grown conscious and enervated from the overtures of the spirit, rises out of the flesh through the crown chakra. Thus the soul of matter has been freed from limitation.

The Mother energy exists initially as a potent, writhing mix of molten, primordial chaos- a viscous pool of ethereal, unconditioned prima materia- which dwells in the root chakra, which is the earth. She then rises through the individual, up the kundalini pathway, and is transformed into Sophia- or the Goddess, or Psyche- after exiting the physical form, through the top of the head.

Immense energy is exchanged through the third-eye and crown chakra through which we are awakened to our eternal, androgynous, limitless true nature.
Spirit becomes dense like flesh through the crown chakra. The flesh becomes light as spirit, through the same.

The rising of the kundalini ends as the absolute union of Mother and Father forces, in the astral inner sanctum where one is divine.
Because the spirit has descended into the flesh, the soul, housed in the flesh, can now rise into union with the spirit.

'Third eye' development, imagination, and visualization are important ingredients in many methods to separate from the physical form. Intuition is also achieved through 'third eye' development. Knowledge and memory of the astral plane are not registered in full waking consciousness until the intuition becomes strong enough. Flashes of intuition come with increasing consistency as the 'third eye' as activated to a greater degree, through practice.

The pineal gland corresponds with divine thought after being touched by the vibrating light of Kundalini. Kundalini starts its ascent towards the head center after responding to the vibrations from the 'light in the head.' The light is located at the top of the sutratma, or 'soul thread', which passes down from the highest plane of our being into the physical vehicle.

The 'third eye,' or 'eye of Siva,' the organ of spiritual vision, is intimately related to karma, as we become more spiritual in the natural course of evolution.

As human beings continue to evolve further out of matter, on the journey from spirit to matter back to spirit, the pineal gland will continue to rise from its state of age-long dormancy, bringing back to humanity astral capacities and spiritual abilities.

At certain brainwave frequencies, a sense of ego boundary vanishes. In the theta state, we are resting deeply and still conscious, at the threshold of drifting away from or back into conscious awareness. As the brain enters deeper states, our consciousness is less concerned with the physical state, our 'third eye' is active, and separation becomes natural. Many native traditions and mystical practices refer to the ability of 'seeing,' or being aware of energy fields at higher levels. This abstract awareness is much more subjective and does not involve the normal level of mundane consciousness, which is mostly concerned with self-identity. This 'seeing' refers to the sight of the 'third eye'.

Consciousness is raised from an emotional nature into an illumined awareness when the pineal gland is lifted from dormancy. If the pineal gland is not yet fully developed, it will be in the course of evolution. When our sense of ego and personality are set aside and we keep our mental energy intact, we can become conscious of the non-physical, our inner self, the subconscious, through different practices to activate the 'light in the head.'