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Joe Kitson

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The Yoke of Yoga (text)

Yoga, let me say at the outset, is not a discipline of orthodox Christianity nor of those other religions of the book Islam and Judaism. Yoga is a subsystem of caste-orientated Hinduism, India’s main religion. Yoga, a self-control system of thought policing, is voluntarily imposed on seekers for a peace nearer to death than genuine tranquility (it kills off both sexuality and anger). The quelling of the heart and the calming of the mind just cannot be achieved without a lot of renunciation of powerful passionate emotions. But life is passionate emotions and is eternal youth – as long as it can be made to last. If one abnegates life one rejects one’s own youth and its energy. Christian monks, Muslim mullahs and Jewish rabbis have always warned about the callous self-destruction of spontaneous feeling implied in the thought-yoga systems. Total stoicism and thought-yoga are designed to make their practitioners fit like cogs into some ungrateful great wheel turning. Hindu caste society always prefers the lifeless, resigned and placid citizen to the rumbustuous lewd fellow when it comes to jobs. We know that the asanas or postures are good daily exercises, but Raja Yoga (the royal way of thought) quells the heart to produce employable conformist second- class citizens (or sexless non-combatants).

 

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