“Yoga” is a Sanskrit word that comes from the root- word yuj that means “to join or to unite”. Yoga, again, is both union and the means to union. What do we do through yoga? Two eternal beings God, the indefinite Being, and the individual spirit that’s finite being. In short they’re one, and according to yogic philosophy all spirits primordially reside in consciousness of that oneness. But in the descent into substantial humankind for the purpose of evolving and dragging its scope of consciousness, the individual spirit has lost both its mindfulness of that eternal union and the capacity to show the union on a practical status.
“According to the yogic philosophy it’s possible to rise completely above the illusions and miseries of life and to realize infinite knowledge, bliss, and power through enlightenment here and now while we are still living within the human body. If we don’t attain this enlightenment while we are still alive we’ll need to come again and again into this world until we’ve accomplished this appointed task. So it’s not an issue of selecting or rejecting the trail of yoga. It’s an issue of selecting it now or in the future life. it’s an issue of gaining enlightenment as soon as possible and avoiding the suffering within the future or postponing the trouble and browsing further suffering which makes no sense and is avoidable. This is often the meaning of Yoga Sutra 2:16: ‘The misery which isn’t yet come can and is to be avoided.’ No vague promise of an uncertain postmortem happiness this, but a particular scientific assertion of a fact verified by the experience of innumerable yogis, saints, and sages who have trodden the trail of yoga throughout the ages.”
We’re gods within God, limited spirits within the unlimited Spirit. But what’s “spirit”? Yoga tells us that spirit is consciousness; hereby we’re eternal consciousnesses, each of us eternally individual and distinct. For we don’t each possess an existence self-dependent of one another or self-dependent of God who’s the Supreme Spirit. Preferably, we hold our being from God as the waves hold their existence from the ocean. God is the eternal Root or Ground of our being, our superior Self. We aren’t God, but in some unspeakable form God is us, the Self of our self, the Spirit of our spirit. God is all, and we’re the parts, each of us retaining an eternal and irrevocable superiority. “The Atma and Paramatma are basically of the identical nature and portray the ‘multiple’ and ‘One’ facets of the same Reality. In Hinduism, the ‘One’ or the universal facet is emphasized to such an limitation that multiple people think that when Self- actualization takes place the Atma disappears totally and eventually into the Paramatma and its different identity is lost forever.
In God there’s harmony; in us there’s diversity. These two apparently contrary states accompany in superiority. Because of this we’ve the term advaita which doesn’t signify “one,” but simply “not two.” Else autocratic monism would be the eternal state, but it’s not; and neither is autocratic dualism. It’s neither One nor Two. It’s Not Two, a harmony that possesses diversity. It’s a mystery, but it can be caught on by direct experience, and yoga is the means to that experience.