Yoga and the Quintessential Search for Holiness
Keywords:
holiness, yoga, religiosity, PartialityAbstract
The very word yoga has to do with holiness. Yoga derives from the root yuj which means to unite, to integrate and to make whole. Holiness, on the other hand is also derived from wholeness. Neither yoga nor holiness has much to do with pious religiosity. Both are related to asearch for right being and for a relationship with the' whole. Partiality and fragmentation-inner and outer-are the cause of sorrow, illusion. violence and of sin. The search for wholeness itself is holy and sacred. However. the sacredatti- tude to life is constantly menaced by forgetfulness and has to be recovered again and again. All spiritual effort is for the purpose of that recovery, for re-membering the fragmented self and for abiding in the state of recollection.
References
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R. Ravindra, "Yoga: The Royal Path to Freedom", in Hindu Spirituality: Vedas Through Vedanta, ed. K. Sivaraman, Vol. 6 of World Spirituality: An Encyclopedic History of tho Religious Quest (New York: Crossroads Publ., 1989) pp.177-191.
A. H. Armstrong and R. Ravindra, "The Dimensions of the Self: Buddhi in the Bhagavad Gila and Psyche in Plotinus." Religious Studies 16,1979, pp. 327·42. (Reprinted in Neoplatonlsm and Indian Thought, edited by R. Baine Harris (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1982.).
R. Ravindra, "Yoga and Knowledge", chapter 15 of Science and Spirit, edited by R. Ravindra (New York: Paragon HOUle Publishers, 1991). 8. In this connection, see R. Ravindra, "Perception in Physics and Yoga'·, Re- Vision: Journsl of Knowledge and Consciousness, 3, 1980,36-42.
