From: gpalo@digi.lonestar.org (Gerry Palo)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.usa,soc.culture.indian
Subject: Re: Why is Yoga considered an occult practise?
Date: 7 Jan 93 18:36:58 GMT
Organization: DSC Communications Corp, Plano, TX

I had problems replying to the following letter that appeared under a 
separate topic but which belongs to this thread, so I answer it here

In article <1993Jan6.225315.23475@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU> prh2s@faraday.clas.Virginia.EDU (Patr
ick Ray Harrison) writes:

[Patrick Harrison wrote an informative article on the practice of yoga
as a purely physical way of exercise and suggested that this is the way
that it is usually practiced in America today, quite separate from the
underlying spiritual and religious foundations of yoga.]

This sounds reasonable, but I don't believe that the way yoga is taught is
always so divorced from the spiritual world view behind it.  Some people
may see the very mention of the name as a trigger to suspect religious
indoctrination.  However, I have taken yoga classes along the line,
yoga for health, where the instructor for the most part gave physical exercises
in relaxing, stretching, and so on. But she would then have everybody
lie down and practice picturing various kinds of situations and "exercising"
the consciousness.  It is not surprising, this fine woman was very enthusiastic
about yoga, and she had learned it from a teacher who had of course trained
her in the meditative aspects of it, of which she was an enthusiastic proponent.
Many of the people in the class (which was held in a Quaker Meeting House) did
not mind this, but I did.  I think that her case is typical of many teachers
of yoga, who sincerely believe in it and who can't easily find the point where
the line crosses over.  Thus it is not a cut and dried thing.

Aside from teaching it in schools, I do think that yoga is perhaps a good thing
for many Americans today, especially who spend thirty to forty hours in front
of the body and consciousness debilitating television set. The problem remains
that, the more successful one is with the physical exercises the more one wants
to go further.  Adults should be free to follow their own judgement, but I don't
approve it for general use in a captive school situation.

Also, and I think this is the main thing, I am very concerned about these exer-
cises as done by children, whose organism is still growing.  There may be advo-
cates who say it helps them in this growth, but the ultimate aim of yoga is a
consciously willed control over an un- or semi-conscious breathing process.  If
it is to be applied to children at all, then much more needs to be known about
it.  I posted elsewhere that I would be interested to know whether and how it is
taught to children in India.

The original purpose of my posts was to point out that opposition to the teaching
of yoga in public schools does not necessarily imply narrow minded bigotry, and
that even those who oppose it out of a fundamentalist foundation may be sensing
a real problem, even though they can only put it in their own particular religious
terminology.  I.e., it is a legitimate controversy, and since it involves the 
destinies of our children, which our form of government and society goes out of
its way to protect, then it should be conducted on a high and serious plane of
discussion.

As for the relationship of yoga, in its earliest forms as well as the way it is
practiced today, to modern consciousness, I again post the title of a lecture
by Rudolf Steiner that indicates some reasons why present day conditions make
for difficulties with yoga as a path of development of consciousness. It is
called "The Change in the Path to Higher Knowledge").  This is not directly
apropos to the discussion, but it may point to some aspects of it indirectly.

Finally, I would repeat that in spite of the above, I am not so sure that for
a great many Americans today, some form of yoga exercise, done in the right
way,  may not be a very health-bringing thing and a boon to our culture as a whole,
including the Christian aspect of it.

Likewise, a deeper insight into the nature of yoga and into the nature of the human
being can allow us to form its practice in accordance with what the present
conditions call for.  But mass experimentation and a headlong rush into it
because "it works" or "it seems to work", underestimates the potential for both
health and injury of this practice, the magnitude of which was well known to 
the teachers of it in earlier times.

Gerry Palo (73237.2006@compuserve.com)