The path of freedom

Clear explanations about what is the path, its origin and why it is called so: the path of Freedom? What is its yoga? Why would it be original?

en français

The path is not known in the West under this name. 

The reason is because the name is recent, 

more especially as it was named Madhyama-màrga 

or middle-path during five years 

but this name raised questions without end 

in connection with the medium-way of the Buddhist, 

then it takes again its first name. 

If the name is relatively recent, the spiritual path it indicates is old. Sometimes people ask what is its trend. Is it hindouiste? Buddhist? Invented? Syncretic? The best answer is: the path of freedom iis the path of the Knowledge (shruti), the path of yoga.We have yet to agree on this word, “yoga”. 

The original-yoga belongs to the Indian philosophical school Sàmkhya basing on the concept of the revealed Knowledge, Shruti. Some name it Veda. This school was the one to which belonged the writers of the Yogasûtra. But the Veda existed before the writing of any books, the shruti too. 







Simply within the civilisation where the path was born the writing did not exist. The Aryans did, while coming from Iran, gradually put in writing, in Sanskrit, this knowledge and named it Veda.

Yoga means freedom and union

 

The word yoga is a Sanskrit word meaning union since the eighth century before our era, because of the samnyàsin monk, Adi Shankara. Before him, at the time of the of the Yogasûtra drafting, between three hundreds and five hundred years earlier, this word meant Liberation and freedom. It indicates the fact of not being in the duality. 





 
Many methods, or sadhàna exist to work to reach the union, freedom and initially the major traditional paths [mārga] : the jnana, bhakti, karma and raja-yoga. 
 

There are many disciplines

There are many disciplines that call themselves yoga. The list would be too long, but by seeking a little on the web you can find them. Some are regularly invented. For some the yoga is hindouist. In truth the yoga existed before the Hinduism and when, around the 17th century before J-C, the Aryans arrive by waves to India, they bring the Sanskrit and the Vedas. They find, on the spot, the yoga practised by former inhabitants of disappeared cities [the harappan civilization]. 

 

These Aryans integrated this yoga in their beliefs and since that time the yoga is one of the six orthodoxe schools of the Indian philosophy āstika, the Sàmkhya school is one. Thereafter the hindouists integrated it in their dogmas as they integrated Buddha as an Avatar. But, once again, the yoga was already practised in India, in an area that become the current Pakistan, since unmemorable times, well before the Vedas, at the time where the human beings became sedentary and built cities, before the writing. 
 

An old tradition

 
The path belongs to the tradition of the yoga before the Vedas, the Jainism and the Buddhism. It should be named raja-yoga but the current raja-yoga, or ashtanga Yoga [the Yoga of the eight stages] has nothing to do with thepractice of the original-yoga. 





The Raja-yoga is recognised in the Yogasûtra of Patanjali but it exists, under its current form, since 1936. The Raja-yoga such as the path practices it, is also recognized in the yoga described in Bhagavad-Gîtâ and Yogasûtra without being neither hindouist nor vishnouist. Recently there is a new translation of the Yogasûtra (the treatise of yoga) which is the one of the origins according to the mystic to which its writers belonged. It is in free download on the blog.

This is why the name of “path of freedom” was given to the original-yoga. In short: the path is the path of the yoga of the origins, the path of freedom, the path of the unit, the path of the Knowledge, the Veda. 


 

The freedom

The freedom explained in this text is the one of the soul, the Conscience when it is not any more submitted to the mind's fluctuations, to the thoughts. The word yoga meant for a very long time "freedom", "liberation" before meaning "union" "unity"("unit"). It is what this text explains.

En français

This text is, truly, a Satsang given by sri Hans yoganand, in the ashram nandi-àlaya. It is published like an explanatory text on this blog, instead of being published as Satsang on the blog “Observance” because its explanations are welcomes here.

The Agya is a toolbox and the tools are its content, the three practices: the Duty, the Satsang and the Meditation. My teaching being contained in the Satsang. 
 

''The Agya is Duty, Satsang and Meditation '' 

[Bhaktimàrga 2-2-13]

This toolbox, what purpose does it serve ? It is used to reach the goal, the finality of the path of freedom. Freedom? Which freedom? The freedom of living happy, without the suffering, the confusion of a mind out of control and, in the long term, the Liberation of the incarnation chains.

 
Regarding the Liberation of the reincarnation chains, it is a little theoretical, all that, for you right now: you do not remember your last lives (what would not have immediate interest) and you cannot guess your possible next existence. 
 

Living is today

 
The only existence which should matter for you is the one you live now. In this life, the Freedom is not to be not reincarnated any more. Because as to be not reincarnated more, it is necessary first to die and I hope that to die is not your principal goal, in the life.

Thus the path of Freedom deals with a useful Freedom today, for you, in this existence. This path leads not only to the Freedom (that of the Liberation) but it gives a beautiful freedom at the same time as you go there, today, it is as for a pilgrimage: 

the pilgrim is happy to walk, 

to arrive is not the principal goal of the pilgrimage. 

 

The path, its practice (the Observance) set you free from your chains. Your chains connect you, they hold you motionless, captive. What these chains do hold you captive with ? With the illusion, the vanity, the suffering, the darkness.

What does that mean being captive of the darkness? To be a prisoner of the darkness means to be a prisoner of the ignorance. What is the ignorance? It is the ignorance of what ? It is the absence of Knowledge. What is this Knowledge? It is the Knowledge of God, a nontheoretical Knowledge, an intimate Knowledge of His Grace, His Light, His Holy-Name.
 

The path of yoga

  
 

The path of freedom is the path of yoga. 

The word yoga meant “freedom'' for very a long time, 

before meaning “union”, 

around the eighth century of our era 

under the influence of a wandering monk : Adi Shankara.

The Freedom of yoga let you get rid of your chains,

of the chains which hold you attached 

to the suffering of the ignorance darkness. 

When your soul evolves, 

it starts to remember the “lost paradise”, 

the Kingdom from where it is stemed 

and this memory plunges it in the suffering 

because it doesn’t know how to go back there, 

because of the ignorance. 

 

The soul that suffers is sufficiently evolved to realize that it misses something but not enough to be able to know what exactly nor how to find what it misses. The purpose of original-yoga, the path, its guide is precisely that one: to show what misses and how to make so that it does not miss any more.

 
The soul starts to leave its torpor, to wake up (not to confuse with the awakening, which is something else yet) and to suffer. An unconscious soul does not suffer. The carrier of a young soul is satisfied with the pleasure of living, when it is in position to do it, it doesn’t care of the rest. 
 

Sad acknowledgement

Around 45 and 60 years, the seeker often makes the sad acknowledgement that all what he lived, up to now, did not make him happy… and this acknowledgement is despairing, when the answer is not known, the solution to cure it. But it is necessary to pass by this stage to ask the good questions and to be able to hear the good answer. You make then a return on yourself. You are a loser, you do not have a Rolex, not more than any suits for 2000 dollars, you are jobless, divorced and you are scrambling just to survive. You wonder then if you are really a bummer. The world tells you “yes”, that you are losing, a social case, “thoothless” and that you wasted your life and I do tell you: '' come to me the bummer ones! '' God loves you!

 

You are perhaps a bummer to fight in a obscurantist society where the greatest value is the financial success, the force, the possession but you are not a bummer to love nor to be loved but the Love that you need will never come from people who live captive of the illusion and who are satisfied with.

 
 




You were not born to earn money, to vote, to reproduce you and to buy you a watch, a suit, a house, a car. You are better than that. Let me prove it to you.

The Agya is really the toolbox to free you, to achieve your goal. The three tools which it contains, the Duty, the Satsang and the Meditation have the utility to hold you the more centered as possible from the waking up till the going to bed. The fact of remaining as centered as possible allows you to replace your Conscience at the good place, allows you to identify you with the good person and this good person is you, your soul, not your mind, your thoughts nor your feelings. 

“The attachment is made with burning and endless desires 

Which chain you to the fruits of your acts “ 

[Bhaktimàrga 1-2-32]

With the three tools of the Agya you have what the necessary to remain master, as far as possible, of your moods.

The free-will

 
You have always the free-will to do it or not to do it. The free-will is still a complicated thing of because there is something in you who does not like what is simple, luminous, which does not like peace. This thing is your inertia, your laziness, this trend of the human being to go towards what is most obvious, coarsest, most immediately gratifying. Because of this same thing, the false-ego, that many people prefers the fat, salt, sugar, alcohol, the tobacco than salad, water, the boulgour and the tofu ! 
 

“Bhakti without freedom would be obligation ”

 [Bhaktimàrga 2-6-5]

A true spiritual-master will never force your free-will. Then ? How should you do to observe the Agya without failing too often ? How should you do, once you asked for and then received the four techniques of the original-yoga, to practise regularly ? You must be convinced of the utility to do it. How to be convinced, before having some evidences ? By propaganda ! Propaganda, here, is the Satsang. The Satsang can give you the desire for practising. It is one of its utilities.

Caution: the Satsang, which is company of the Truth, can be given only by somebody which knows it, this Truth. How should you do to know if the person who gives Satsang knows the Truth? You recognize a tree to its fruits.