SPIRITUALITY AND YOGA

In Hindi spirituality is known as adhyatma which means inside the soul. When you

look inward relinquishing your craving for outward attractions, when you guide your

consciousness to move inward and fossick through the halts, treasures and the

hidden powers of your inner self, you are in the realm of spirituality. Yoga means

 the communion of individual self with the God. It has got eight different stages

under three different heads:

a) Bahirang Yoga - It is related with the outer body

 postures and it is the thing what we commonly presume as Yoga. But it is just the

minuscule part of what actually Yoga is. Since we are standing at the level of

body consciousness, we start with the body. And to start with we give our

body strength by using different postures and by observing some outer principles

 like Yam, Niyam, Aasan, pranayam, Pratyahar etc.

b) Antarang Yoga - The internal journey or involution starts here. The stages are

Dharna and Dhvan. We can commonly call it meditation. Now the general ask is

what the meditation is. In common man's parlance meditation is a process of taking

you away from the intricate domain of mind.

c) BRAHMA YOGA- This is the third and the final halt of Yoga- the eighth stage

 which is otherwise known as Samadhi. It is also of two types. One is Savikalpa

(Discriminate) Samadhi and the other, the highest one is Nirvikalpa

(Indiscriminate) Samadhi. In this highest stage even the trinity of meditator,

meditated and the meditation vanishes past and there remains only Absolute Realty

 (Sat), Absolute Consciousness (Chit), and Absolute Bliss (Ananda) (Sachidananda ).

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