Parampara means tradition, and that is necessary and important. You can now get your yoga training anywhere in the world. Spend two hundred hours, four hundred hours, become a member of this alliance or that alliance, this group or that group, get your degree and your support. Then you put up your signboard and start teaching yoga. That type of yogic understanding does not deepen your own experience; you only accumulate information. There is no understanding of information. You can be asked to read books and give an exam, yet you have no one to guide you through the book to make you understand what it says. A lot of the wisdom which becomes applicable in our own sadhana and practice is lost. All we retain is the necessary information which allows us to project ourselves as a yoga teacher, however there is no other connection to the vidya, the knowledge.
Bihar Yoga Tradition Teachings is the continuation of exploring the vidya, the yogic knowledge, and transmitting it. We are looking at two things. One is the vidya component which is eternal. We are not reinventing the wheel of yoga today. It is a subject that has been in people’s minds, in their life as part of their practice, since the time the rishis conceived of yoga and started to practise and teach to better the condition of human nature, behaviour and lifestyle. Vidya is constant, continuous, and individuals are transient. Today, you have an interest, so you come to learn something about yoga. Then you express your interest back home, you teach for a few years and then you stop. Times change, situations change, generations change. Your effort stops with you. It is very much an individual’s self projection, which makes you into a yoga teacher for a short period of your life. This yoga is taught more with material awareness not with spiritual awareness. Teachers are involved in material awareness, more than the spiritual awareness, and there is no growth and development of vidya also. A portion of what you have imbibed you have taught, and the whole aspiration ends with you in your life.
In vidya, the inspiration of the previous masters continues to guide and inspire you. It should also be known how they utilized this knowledge according to different times to help the individual and society, to understand that the knowledge can be applied in all situations, conditions and circumstances to improve it. Our connection between the vidya and the individual lineage is dependent on the common vision that the vidya and the tradition share. It is the connection between the individual and the vidya, which makes you appreciate and understand what you are doing and what its aim or the goal is.
Today, when you speak of yoga, people think of physical postures only. It is either a fashion or a brand. Beyond that people do not understand what yoga is. People see it as a brand or a fashion. The word yoga is associated ninety nine percent of the time with physical postures only. People talk like this: What are you going to do? I am going to do my yoga. What do you do in yoga? Oh, I do my cat pose, I do my scorpion pose, I do my head stand, I do my standing up, I do my stretches. That is how people today are defining yoga globally, as something physical. This leads to a different understanding of yoga, not as a subject which can develop the total life or a practice which can make you physically, psychologically and spiritually fit to survive in the world. It is seen more as a projection of oneself ‘I have a nice body’, ‘I practise my yoga’, ‘I do a few stretches every day’. It is like saying that the entire education system is only the primary class. There is no secondary level or college level, there is no university. Everybody thinks that yoga is the basic, primary asana practice and beyond that there is nothing. The whole understanding of yoga as a lifestyle is gone and the understanding of yoga as physical stretches only is being developed.
In the classical teachings of yoga, it was defined as a lifestyle not as a practice, as an action of life of which you are aware every moment to overcome self limitations. This understanding is now relegated to the background. When we connect with a tradition, the thoughts of people and the experiences of the masters, we realize that more than practice, yoga is an understanding of how to live a proper, balanced and harmonious life. When you think of this in relation to living a better life, then the thoughts shift from the asana practice to a lifestyle. There are not many branches of yoga. Yoga is only classical yoga, although people come out with brands and newness which they claim to be yoga.
In reality, yoga is only classical yoga. What is classical yoga? What is the meaning of the term ‘classical yoga’? Classical yoga is the presentation of the experiments and experiences that the yogic aspirants have gone through in their life when they move into a yoga practice. We shall come to understand this as we progress. It is the compilation of experiences and experiments that one has done to better one’s own life. This compilation has happened over thousands of years in yoga. We are not compiling our experiences for the first time. For thousands of years, people have compiled these experiences and shared that this is what they have experienced as yoga practitioners. Each group has given their view and opinion.
People have given their views on hatha yoga and the hatha yoga views are clearly defined in the Hatha Yoga Pradipika by Swatmarama; and in the Gheranda Samhita. The thoughts contained in these two books are totally different to each other although they belong to the same subject of hatha yoga. The presentation and explanation of hatha yoga is totally different. The reason is simple: two different groups practised hatha yoga. The practices and experiments are the same, yet the experience and understanding differs because of the different lifestyles and life ideologies that people followed. The Hatha Yoga Pradipika by Swatmarama was written for laypeople and people in society, whereas Gheranda Samhita was written by recluses who lived away from society and had more time to do their inner explorations. So the ideas, concepts and experiences are different in both groups. One speaks of bhumikas, the other one speaks of ghat. Bhumika is the foundation in life like stages or steps that you climb up; and the other speaks of ghatavastha, to see the whole body as the container, to discover what is in this container and to express the strength and quality of that container.
This as an example to understand that although practices are the same, people have had different experiences. They state clearly that this has been their experience and this is what they have seen or explored when they were practising or going through the yogic routine and lifestyle. One represents the temporary practice which you do for one hour, two hours, three hours to feel good, fit and happy. The other represents the experience of people who have immersed themselves in the practices and are willing to live yoga, not practise yoga. If I can be blunt, then Hatha Yoga Pradipika is to practise yoga and Gheranda Samhita is to live yoga. That is the difference. You practise for one hour, living yoga you do for twenty four hours, so naturally the experiences, the understanding and the application of the practice in life is going to change. This in the context of classical yoga.
No matter which yogic branch it is, they all have two aspects: one which is the temporary involvement and the other which is the deeper intense involvement. Even in jnana yoga, karma yoga, bhakti yoga, kriya yoga and raja yoga, the same thing happens. There are clearly two divisions of people who practise something for a short term and people who live something for long term. Those who practise something for short term are the teachers. Those who live it for a long term are the followers of a tradition. That is one of the major differences. For people who get their certificate it is a vocation and beyond that there is no further commitment or association with developing the awareness more intensely within themselves.
If you have the certificate or diploma, you are a teacher and you lose that connection to deepen your own understanding, explore your own nature. You simply remain a teacher. When you remain connected with the tradition, you do not identify with being a teacher; you identify with being a practitioner, a sadhaka, an explorer. If there is not going to be any responsibility or connection to oneself and the tradition, the learning stops at that point. If there is connection with vidya and the tradition, it means sincerity, seriousness and commitment, integrity and not hypocrisy. The whole perception, mind set, everything changes. A personal responsibility develops, and the connection to vidya results in transmission.
Transmission is the hallmark of Swami Sivananda, Swami Satyananda and the Bihar Yoga tradition. Swami Sivananda did not give 200 hours of yoga training to his disciples. It was more a transmission, living, experiencing and experimenting. Swami Satyananda said even one week is enough if you want to become a yoga teacher because you are not going to go very deep into it. You just need a little bit of an item which you can sell in the market to earn your living. If you want to deepen and explore yogic concepts, you have to immerse yourself in yoga. He provided that opportunity right from the beginning when he developed the Yoga Chakra.
2 March 2023, Bihar Yoga Tradition Teaching for Teachers, Ganga Darshan, Munger