Yoga is probably as old as humanity itself. For it is a clear expression of our deepest longing. The desire to be completely at peace: with ourselves, with others, with the world, with life itself. A desire with which most of us are very familiar. A desire which most of us have known fulfilled. At least for a while. A desire which is in fact fulfilled daily in the depths of sleep. Although we can have no specific memories of that state, it calls to us. Even when body and mind have not been exerted we welcome sleep at the end of each day. For as long as we are awake both body and mind are conditioned to be active. We need, and we long for, occasional and regular release from that activity. It is to this longing that the encyclopeidic variety of yoga speaks.

As an expression of our deepest desire, yoga speaks to and from our depths. As an expression of our deepest desire, yoga speaks to us all. Its depths are echoed in its variety, its multiplicity. For the human temperament itself is infinite in variety, as it is in depth. Accordingly our deepest desire speaks to us through yoga in many, many tongues. So that, perhaps, there might be one, at least, for each of us to hear and understand.

But the tongues that speak in the name of yoga are not all true. While they may speak to our deepest longing, they do not necessarily offer fulfillment. This should not surprise us. Not all human effort is sincere or honest. Not all honest sincere effort is informed. Not all informed effort is effective. Not all effective effort is within our capability.

The sad fact is that yoga has become a circus. One in which an innocent and unsuspecting public is exposed to and exploited by all manner of travesty. Travesty that has shadowed yoga for a very long time: centuries, millenia even. But in a world in which the flow of information is uncontrolled and uncontrollable, this travesty invites tragedy. Despite the availability of unquantifiable amounts of data, the modern, educated human being is no less naïve than any noble savage. Data is not knowledge, and knowledge is not wisdom. Wisdom is as rare today as it has ever been. And even though we may seek out the wise to guide us, we rarely have enough wisdom ourselves to distinguish wisdom from knowledge, knowledge from information, information from rumour, rumour from deceit.

So we are left with our longings exposed to a Babel of tongues. Though we may recognise the words we do not necessarily understand the meaning they have been given by their speaker. But, speak as they do to our deepest longing, we give them meaning. Our own meaning, that they may give us some hope, even before we have put them to the test.

But hope can be a treacherous friend. It can blind us to deceit; it can fascinate us with rumour; it can addict us to information; it can enslave us to knowledge; it can isolate us from wisdom. For hope is an expression of dissatisfaction. When dissatisfaction makes us desperate, our judgement becomes clouded. When our judgement is clouded our scepticism, which is our main ally in our search for wisdom, yields to wishful thinking. When we indulge our wishful thinking wisdom is denied us.

It is to that wishful thinking that these words speak. Listen to them carefully, with your heart as well as your mind. Expose them rigorously to your scepticism, in thought, in observation, in action. Allow them to lead you deeper into your life. Do not simply filter them through your ideas, your beliefs, but take them deeper into your feelings, your experiences, your actions, your life. And let the living of your life in the light of their implications be the litmus by which their relevance be tested and known.

Yoga is nowadays a household word. Everyone has heard it. Yet so few have even the slightest idea of what it means. Even amongst those who subscribe to its practices. Even amongst those who have dedicated their academic careers to studying those practices. Even amongst those who are paid to explain and pass on those practices.   For yoga is as deep as life itself. It is also as pragmatic, as experiential as life itself.

Yoga brings with it out of the depths of history a remarkable promise. A promise so universal in its appeal that yoga has the power to cross every kind of boundary or border. A promise of happiness in the here and now. A promise of a life lived in satisfaction. A promise of peace in this lifetime. A promise that is only too often broken. A promise that is shattered on the reef of naivity, of wishful thinking.

Every one wants to be happy. Every one longs to be satisfied. Every one yearns for peace. Yet this wanting, this longing, this struggle is only rarely and temporarily fullfilled. This is not only because it can never be otherwise when fullfillment is sought in the transient and insubstantial objects of the material world. But also because when the seeking is turned inwards it is distorted by hope and wishful thinking.

Yoga is a process, and its methods also, independent of all technology; independent of all knowledge. It depends only on the willingness to clarify and refine the operation of the human nervous system. Each and every one of us is endowed with the necessary means to explore and benefit from yoga. Provided it is employed with sincerity. There is no need for any one of us to look to another to give meaning to our own experiences. They belong to each of us alone. It is only if they remain our own that they can give our own life its meaning.

We need no external authority to tell our liver how to purify our blood. We need no information to catch a fast moving ball in our hand. Equally we need no external authority to tell us what we should do with our lives, what to believe. Our beliefs will always be conditioned by our experiences, the actions that underpin our experiences will always be conditioned by our beliefs. Where our behaviour, our actions and our beliefs have failed to bring us fullfilment it is foolish to look to the actions, behaviour and beliefs of another. Yet what then are we to do?

Yoga is an invitation to fall back upon, clarify, refine and fertilise our own beliefs, behaviour and actions. It is not an invitation to replace one set of actions with another. It is not an invitation to replace one set of speculative assumptions with another. It is not an invitation to replace one internalised external authority with another. It is an invitation to enquire deeply into the actuality of our behaviour, actions, feelings, thoughts, beliefs.

This has been stated quite clearly by Patanjali, the acknowledged authority on yoga. While his initial definition of yoga is as a state of being, his later definit¡on is of the process that leads to that treasured state. The former he defines as freedom from identification with mental activity. The latter as passionate investigation of the nature of personal choice. In other words passionate investigation of the nature of personal choice leads to freedom.

Although freedom is a word much maligned by speculation and wishful thinking, personal choice is at the root of everyday action. So even though all kinds of esoteric and unverifiable mystifications have been attributed to the freedom of which yoga speaks, its methodology could not be more accessible. It depends not at all on knowledge, initiation, training, specialist skills or developed intelligence. It depends only on the desire to understand our actions.

This understanding has absolutley nothing to do with psychological or philosophical theories of meaning, volition or motivation. It has simply to do with the practical mechanism of action. How actions are caused, and how they bring about their results. As far as the realm of material objects is concerned this understanding is formulated in the laws of mathematics, phsyics and chemistry. When it comes to human beings there are many other pretenders: they are all irrelevant. If we are to get to the heart of life, we must, like the physicist, like the mathematician, use speculation only to guide our startingpoint, it cannot influence our findings.

Investigation of our actions is the heart of yoga. Our actions are there for us to observe, their consequences for us to recognise. We woke up, we got out of bed, we stubbed our toe, we applied some cream. It is here in this banal and potentially boring arena that the true fruit of yoga unfolds. Whatever practices we have become accustomed to on our mat, our cushion are not separate from this. They also are an arena for investigating the true nature of action. The beauty of those actions or techniques specific to yoga is that they focus attention inwards on the very process of action. The beauty of everyday actions is that they are available all the time. The problem with everyday actions is that they focus the attention outwardly on the fruits of our actions. The problem with yoga practices is that they are often extremely difficult. Nevertheless they are all actions, and until we see that they depend upon, and reveal to investigation, the same mechanism, we are at the mercy of those yogic practitioners whose functional prowess is greater than our own, but whose understanding of yoga is not.

But yoga yields its fruit not to the perfecting of action but to the investigation of action. And this is our common tragedy: that we believe that only through perfecting its techniques will yoga yield its fruits. But, thankfully, this could not be further from the truth.

canam ibiza 2004