YOG VIDYA AND YOG SADHNA
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find it out and live bv it. They are ethereal beings and live in the all-pervading ether with no limitations. It is the most suble of the enveloping sheaths, beyond which lies the state of Nirvana itself, perpetual bliss untrammeled by any koshas, ineffably serene, a sublime state of conscious rest in Omniscience.
3.
Ashtang Yoga and Modern Man
This then is the long and the short of the yoga system as originally propounded by Hiranyagarbha, and expounded to the world by Gaudapada and Patanjali, the well-known philosophers and thinkers. In these few pages, an attempt has been made to give a brief account of the yoga philosophy as it has come down to us from the hoary past, and which is still considered the keystone of the ancient wisdom of India. The yoga system is a discipline involving intense and solitary meditation coupled with physical exercises and postures to discipline and control the mind and the pranas, so as to make them run in a particular manner that may help in subduing the senses. As such, it is meant for the purification of the body and mind, and prepares the way for the beatific vision. Devotion to God or Ishzvara also plays an important part in the yogic realization. The personal God of the yoga philosophy stands apart in the yoga system because the final goal for some of the yogins is the separation of atman from the mind and not union with God. This system, therefore, always works in the domain of dualism. Its principal aim is the separation of the layered jiva from the embodied state so as to become atman, freed from the conditioned state of mind and matter. Both the understanding will and the oscillating mind then stop their individual working and become stilled, thus liberating the soul to shine in its own true and native light.