It is a fashion to ape the west lately. The richer you are, the more western you are. There is nothing wrong in this provided that we carry along our own good values. The tragedy is that there is a general assumption that all that was in our old book of wisdom and knowledge amounted to zero wisdom.
"I have never found one among them who could deny that a single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia." - Thomas Babington Macaulay
The fact was that they had a deep scrutiny into our ancient wisdom.
A classic example is "Surya Siddhanth" written at least a thousand years before Newton and his apple story about the discovery of Earth's gravitation. It is not just about gravitation but also contains detailed information about our solar system that matches the present scientific knowledge.
West was once sceptical of yoga and mocked it. People in India also, the pseudo intellectual class, started mocking yoga. Then in the second half of 20th century yoga became acceptable to the west and at this point in time it became acceptable to this class in India' also.
Yoga is not just , as is believed by common man, a few physical postures of body. This physical exercise , known as AASAN , is only a part of yoga and it is known as Hath yoga. Other parts of yoga are Gyan yog , Bhakti yog and Karm yog.
The ultimate purpose of yoga is Moksha, which means the soul getting rid of the trap of countless cycles of births and deaths.
If we go back in time we find that around two thousand years back there was a great metaphysical philosopher by the name of Patanjali who is credited for having authored a great book of yoga called "Yoga Sutra". At a subsequent date a commentary on these Yoga Sutras was also written and most scholars are of the opinion that this commentary was written by Patanjali himself though there is some controversy in this matter.
For hundreds of years Patanjali's Yog Sutra remained in obscurity until it was resurrected by Swami Vivekananda in his book Rajyoga which contained the yoga Sutra of Patanjali and a beautiful detailed commentry on these yoga sutras.
Yoga as understood and popularised in the west is generally the physical part of yoga which is essentially called Hath yoga. Even the meditation part of it, as practiced in the west, is essentially some kind of executive meditation which does not follow the strict principles of Patanjali.
The real purpose of yoga is, as the word YOGA denotes, the union of Shakti the mysterious energy hidden in the mooladhar chakra of the body (the bottom energy point) , to Shiva in the Shahasra chakra (the top most energy point) at the top of the crown. It is believed that when this happens, the soul is resurrected from the bond of the cycles of births and deaths and joins the great primordial energy called Brahma.
It is maintained that the prime energy in every living being, known as soul, is a part of the fountainhead of all energy, the DIVINE.
One of the four MAHAVAKYAS (the four great sayings of Upnishad) is TAT TWAM ASI - you are that.
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