The Inner Game of Yoga

The Jnana Yoga notions given below are offered by

Victoria naGig, of Victoria’s Way, Roundwood, Wicklow.

There are as many formal Yoga practices as there are sports.

The type of Yoga (or sport) an individual practices depends on her or his temperament, physical and mental endowments and felt pain, loss or sense of incompleteness (hence need).

The form (or type) of Yoga practiced is the outer game.

However, all yogas, like all sports, pursue (or play) the same inner game, that is to say, they all attempt to achieve the same fundamental goal (or cluster of goals).

In short, Yoga as such (i.e. the inner game of Yoga) is quintessentially a problem solving technique, pretty much like the Buddhist Jhanas meditation method, each outer yoga practice being an application designed (i.e. tailor made) to solve a particular, i.e. personal problem (or need).

Unless the inner game, hence basic method, of Yoga is clearly understood and pursued, success at the outer practice, i.e. one’s personal Yoga practice, is unlikely to be achieved @ perfection.

The initial goal of Yoga is clearly stated by the Indian Yoga theorist, Patanjali, namely: “Yoga is the elimination (or restriction: Sanskrit: nirodha) of the fluctuations of consciousness (or mind).” Translated into everyday terms that means, “Yoga eliminates” (i.e. by means of suppression). Originally, the practice of Yoga served to eliminate (i.e. to restrict to zero, primarily in Jain Yoga)) the basic functions (or activities) of life namely mental operations, breathing and the intake of food, i.e. since activity produces karma, and all karma, since it produces further life, and life is deemed bad (save by the Bhagavadgita), consequently a sort of nightmare.

The true (or ultimate) inner game of Yoga is played to end all dreaming, thereby, or so it was, and still is, claimed, reverting the Yogi first to saguna Brahman realization (i.e. as in sattva, chittva, ananata (or ananda)), thereafter to realization either of absolute oneness with the (nirguna) Brahman (as promised by Samkhya) or the experience of the non-difference between the self (i.e. the atman) and the Self (i.e. the Brahman), as Adi-Shankara’s version of Vedanta claims.

The practical (or personally tailored) inner game of (mainstream) Yoga serves to change the horrible and painful nightmare of everyday life (or a part of it) into a pleasant dream (i.e. into a paranoid delusion). To that end, the actualities (or data) that make up life (i.e. of the flow of life that appears as personally generated after-image) are suppressed (indeed repressed) by more or less violent superimposition of data. In short, the actual data that make up life are crowded out by (or buried beneath, by being ‘yoked’ to) an intense flow of either neutral or pleasure inducing data that eventually either constitute the desired dream or whose very intensity produces either brief bursts or sustained periods of ecstasy (a side-effect of paranoia), the intensity of ecstasy being a function of the intensity of data focusing (read: concentration, read: yoking).

In other words, mainstream Yoga solves the problem by suppressing unpleasant symptoms/data, i.e. by crowding them out with neutral (as in Japa Yoga) or pleasant symptoms/data. In contrast, the (original) Buddhist meditation (i.e. problem solving) method of the Jhanas attempts to understand and then eliminated the cause (or dependent causes) of the unpleasant symptoms, indeed the causes of all symptoms (of which appear as more or less real, albeit superimposed after-image), and which result in some delightful, i.e. joyful and some sheer horrific outcomes.

The personal inner game (as against the formal elaborations of the outer game) of Yoga is played to develop a benign paranoia, i.e. the ability to enter into and live out a pleasant delusion, subject to personal control, as means of avoiding or evading the harsh realities, or some part thereof, of everyday existence. Obviously, developing a benign paranoia (from the Greek: paranoos, meaning; distracted mind) brings multiple benefits, but also serious dangers, for instance the delusion of grandeur (or, for instance, the delusion of omniscience as expressed by the Buddha) and the delusion of personal power (such as expressed by innumerable healers, specifically Reiki masters and mistresses and the never ending flow of God-men/merchants and God-women/merchants emerging from India).

Today, in the age of relativism, ‘Yoga is what you want it to be’, that is to say any discipline (i.e. as systematically and intensely applied data (or data sequence, hence function) superimposition) that squeezes out and therefore replaces a data flow that generates an unpleasant actuality. Once that is clearly understood, that is to say, once the source of personal ‘hurt’, or a deficiency (unfitness, hence survival threat) resulting in hurt, is clearly identified, then the choice of a suitable formal (hence outer) Yoga practice, and the most efficient mode of its application, can be determined. Practicing Yoga (or any sport, or indeed any activity) without knowing why or wherefore may be fun and good for your health, but does not lead to the achievement and stabilization of the desired goal, i.e. to becoming a winner and thereby experiencing the a winner, namely enlightenment and its joyful after-effects.

If you are interested to enquire deeper into the inner game of Yoga, bring me your solution (i.e. your understanding of Yoga and its role in helping you achieve your goal) and I’ll test it. No questions, please. Questions are for suckers. If your solution (emerging from you ‘male side’) survives challenge, then you’re on the right track. If it doesn’t, then you’re not.

May to August is the period to present your solution, sometimes in winter, when not in retreat. Ring 2818505. The place is Victoria’s Way, Roundwood, Wicklow.

I’m Victoria. Having spent the better part of my life as a spiritual ‘finder’ (rather than ‘seeker’/sucker) in India, examining and testing the achievement claims of Indian Yogis, both Hindu and Buddhist, and there apparently so diverse methods, you might like to challenge my solution with yours.

Obviously, donations are de rigeur, the bigger the donation, the more illuminating my response to your challenge and your enlightenment to it, possibly. This follows from ancient Hindu wisdom, paraphrased: “It’s only when you put your life on the line (or razor’s edge) that the truth (i.e. the true self) emerges.”