I already told you that I was giving the evening lectures in the last days for our group from Taiwan. I thought you might be interested in some of the points that I was talking about in those lectures.
Of course the subject of the first lecture was a very basic one: What is Yoga? I have written a lot about Yoga before, too, and everybody probably knows that the literal meaning of yoga is ‘uniting’. When you unite something, there are obviously two parts, which are separate. I tell you, you are one of the two parts. But what is the second part? With what are we trying to unite ourselves? With our source. With that what we belong to.
I explained what you have to unite with a small example:
You are standing in front of a river or an ocean. Now take a cup and fill it with water. If you have a look at the water in the cup now, you see that it can easily get dirty. Just take a little bit of sand or earth and put it in the water – it will get dirty. Now take the same amount of earth and put it in the river or ocean. Did it get dirty? No. Now you take the cup of dirty water and mix it back into the ocean. The water is clean again. You just did yoga.
You are the cup of water. In you, there is some water, which actually is part of that big ocean. The water is your soul and the ocean is that big soul with which we wish to get united. And when we get united, that is yoga. We actually are the water from the ocean.
We belong to that, what we wish to get united with. If you call this ocean God, you are God, too. If you call that ocean the universe, you are the universe, too. Who are you?
You are that.
If you have understood this principle, you have understood the basic principle of the Vedanta philosophy. It is just there. What makes you different from God? Only the cup, the limitations. The ocean is big and the water in the cup is limited. You don’t need to search far to find that which makes you complete, it is in you. Pour yourself, the water, into that ocean – that is yoga.
Today we want to wish one or our friends a very happy birthday through our diary: Iris. She sponsored the food for the children and as they have a Holi-Holiday today, we distributed special Holi food yesterday already. We wish you another great year of life full of love!
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i love it. i love such simple explanation… it flows… it feels sooo rigth and so fullfilling all… NAMASTETHANK YOU FOR SHARING! i love love love reading all you right!
TAT TVAM ASIThou art that!
I love your wonderful way of explaining this deep science and this thought which unites us more than any kind of yoga practice ever could! People tend to forget that Yoga is more than gymnastics, they think the Asanas and Hatha Yoga is Yoga. They need to understand this basic lesson first: Tat Tvam Asi! You are that what your neighbour is, too! No competition is necessary, because we are the same.
You are the water, you are the ocean, you are God and you are the universe. You are part of the ever-flowing river that is all life on earth. Flow with this river and see that you, too, are infinite!