YOGA AND ITS OBJECTS - Part 1

Yoga Philosophy is one of the six systems of Hindu Philosophy which exist in India. Unlike
so many other philosophies of the world, it is a philosophy that is wholly practical. Yoga is an exact
science based on certain immutable Laws of Nature. It is well known to people of all countries of
the world interested in the study of Eastern civilisation and culture, and is held in awe and reverence
as it contains in it the master-key to unlock the realms of Peace, Bliss, Mystery and Miracle. Even
the philosophers of the West found solace and peace in this Divine Science. Jesus Christ himself
was a Yogi of a superior order, a Raja-Yogi indeed. The founder of the Yoga Philosophy was
Patanjali Maharshi, who was not only a Philosopher and a Yogi, but a Physician as well. He is said
to have lived about three hundred years before Jesus Christ.
Patanjali defines Yoga as the suspension of all the functions of the mind. As such, any book
on Yoga, which does not deal with these three aspects of the subject, viz., mind, its functions and
the method of suspending them, can he safely laid aside as unreliable and incomplete.
The word Yoga comes from the Sanskrit root “Yuj” which means “to join.” Yoga is a
science that teaches us the method of joining the individual soul and the Supreme Soul. It is the
merging of the individual will with the Cosmic or Universal Will. Yoga is that inhibition of the
functions of the mind which leads to the absolute abidance of the soul in its own real nature of
Divine Glory and Divine Splendour. It is the process by which the identity of the individual soul
and the Oversoul is established by the Yogi. In other words, the human soul is brought into
conscious communion with God. Yoga is the Science of sciences that disentangles the individual
soul from the phenomenal world of sense-objects and links with the Absolute, whose inherent
attributes are Infinite Bliss, Supreme Peace, Infinite Knowledge and unbroken Joy.
Yoga is that state of Absolute Peace wherein there is neither imagination nor thought. Yoga
is control of mind and its modifications. Yoga teaches us how to control the modifications of the
mind and attain liberation. It teaches us how to transmute the unregenerate nature and attain the
state of Divinity. It is the complete suppression of the tendency of the mind to transform itself into
objects, thoughts, etc. Yoga kills all sorts of pain, misery and tribulation. It gives you freedom from
the round of births and deaths, with its concomitant evils of disease, old age, etc., and bestows upon
you all the Divine Powers and final liberation through super-intutional knowledge

From - SRI SWAMI SIVANANDA