Yoga as a Path Towards Social and Individual Perfection

Yoga is very much propagated and claimed in the context of achieving physical well-being because its beneficial effects on our body are well known.  This ensures that yoga not only does not lose its popularity but continues to gain more and more new followers. But yoga is much more and that is why everyone finds in it what they are looking for to improve their life. 

But yoga, as we have already said, is not only that. This is a philosophical discipline that has become a lifestyle based on renunciation and mastery of the mind, body, and senses. 

It is also a discipline that oscillates between science and metaphysics to which many researchers and Indologists have dedicated themselves, such as an excellent philologist and psychologist, a connoisseur of Indian culture and philosophy, Leon Cyboran (1928-1977), author of the Mystery of Yoga, who tried to carry out an arrangement of the system, revealing its mystery.

On this occasion, he considered it opportune to distinguish between the points of view from which this topic can be studied and evaluated. Thus, yoga can be seen from a social point of view, widely understood as a practice carried out in a group under the guidance of a teacher or as a personal exercise. Continuing, the first practice can be further divided into a largely scientific approach and a purely social approach.

From the scientific point of view, it is a persistent search for the truth up to its knowledge even if it were a partial and temporary truth, sometimes even only in the form of maximum probability and not absolute certainty. 

Obviously, this truth can also be sought and verified socially and not only individually, even if this second path is more taken. From the point of view of some teachings, it will be a question of taking a position to seek or verify whether the phenomena or reality that the yoga system describes are real or imaginary. 

This kind of truth will concern the natural sciences and psychology. On the other hand, scientists who represent most of the humanities will not really be interested in knowing if yogic phenomena are true and will seek a different truth.

In a scientific way, therefore, yoga can be looked at from different angles. For example, a biologist will be interested in the truth about the physiological phenomena of yoga. The doctor will seek the truth about the effects of yoga practice in the form of health recovery. The psychologist will check if the psychological phenomena together with their conditions describing the yoga system are real or imaginary and, if true if the object known or created by the yogi consciousness is real or imaginary.

As for the second group of approaches, namely the social one, it will mainly concern the yoga system itself as a work of culture as well as its creators. For example, a philologist will be interested in the truth about the original formulation of yoga texts, about the place they occupy in literature and thus will study their formal and content side. 

The historian will seek the truth about the personalities of the authors, about their opinions and influences that shaped it, about the role the authors played in history with their personalities and their work.

So we come to the position of philosophy which is specific here because its object can be anything in relation to everything. A philosopher may be interested in the truth on the same subject as any seeker, but in connection with all reality or essential.

A "fragment", an aspect of reality, as an object of cognition, is important to him as long as it can help in the search for the truth about the whole or essential reality. In turn, he can judge a "fragment" of reality, as far as general knowledge allows him.

The philosopher cannot deal only with the object of human cognition, but with it in connection with the man himself as a subject. Due to the inclusion in his subject of the search for the truth of man as a cognitive, sentimental, willing, and active subject, a philosopher is also a humanist in the full sense of the word.

Here we can clearly see that the search for truth is essential in the social field of science. It follows that love of truth and fidelity to truth should be an indispensable virtue of every representative of science.

A historian of Indian philosophy, researching the classical yoga system on the basis of preserved works, must use a philological, historical, and philosophical method to discover the correct views contained in the system. His search for truth can be limited to this. Furthermore, he could, from the position of a pure philosopher, take a position that determines how the views of the yoga system relate to reality. 

And what is this reality?

The detailed sciences give us only a partial and temporary truth about certain phenomena (so-called things). Since any philosopher and representative of particular sciences would probably agree with this point of view. On the other hand, most of the initial and final philosophical views are incompatible with each other; there is no concept, a truth universally accepted by philosophers. The conclusion is that our knowledge of reality - both from the point of view of empirical science and philosophy - is "intersubjectively subjective". Such a metaphilosophical position, however, can lead - according to some - to cognitive absurdity or - according to others - to the extreme pessimism of the belief that human cognition is powerless.

Yet man knows it. And the cognition of him "expands", "develops" in various directions "deep into reality". Furthermore, it offers practical advantages to an increasing extent. Not so long ago, according to Western culture, the macrocosm was very "small". There has been a cognitive expansion and we have made countless huge worlds available to our cognition. And behind it is a practical achievement, in which we have already taken the first step. It was the same with the microcosm.

The happiness drive consists of avoiding unpleasant things or seeking pleasure, peace, etc. From the psychological point of view, the life instinct seems to belong to this drive. This drive is also the basis of the ideals of happiness understood in various ways. Some understand that happiness can be achieved or maintained through constantly repeated sensory inputs; others believe they will protect them by living morally according to the dictates of their religion, etc.

The push for "beauty" consists of the need to [experience] heteropathic feelings, be they the so-called aesthetic experiences (the need for "external beauty"), or the so-called moral feelings (the need for "inner beauty"). Heteropathic feelings and the urge to live them occur not only in humans but also in animals, such as the female in relation to the young [in this case, the life instinct also obeys this urge]. From a personal point of view, yoga offers the hope of satisfying all of our basic impulses in nature.

What is the purpose of yoga? 

The goal of yoga is to satisfy all of our instincts. The purpose of yoga is not to suppress our nature, but on the contrary: its full satisfaction. Yoga promises to satisfy our happiness instincts through mental and physical exercises that accelerate the production of the happiness hormones: dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin, and endorphin.

The same thing happens with our power instinct as yoga allows us to practice dominating our mind and body. We can control ourselves or free ourselves from anything that dominates us, that binds us and keeps us oppressed. The yoga practiced assiduously promises us to satisfy our instinct for power in this way.

Furthermore, there is no doubt that as thinking beings we also have a cognitive instinct being guided by the innate curiosity that leads us to the desire to know. Yoga promises to satisfy our cognitive instincts as its main purpose is to know, to know the truth and reality of things.

But in addition to these instincts, let's say primary, we also have a more sublime instinct that could conventionally be called the moral or ethical instinct composed of some corrective heteropathic feelings, feelings directed to someone other than me. Man in his human fullness undoubtedly has a great need to satisfy even this instinct which in broad terms can be connected to new beauty, the beauty of the human soul. Yoga also promises to satisfy this type of need, the beauty of moral satisfaction, the satisfaction of the feeling of love.

In summary, therefore, we see that yoga offers all the methods of personal improvement through the transformation of one's consciousness. These methods are varied so that they can be used by people with different levels of mental development, with different temperaments and with different personality systems. Both the affectionate and cold cognitive types can find a method that suits them. Both the strong-willed type, prone to asceticism or concentration, and the hedonist, who first of all seeks his own happiness, can find their way and their goal here.