The Essence of Yoga
by Paramhans Swami Maheshwarananda (Swamiji)

Yoga began with those basic questions that have been asked since ancient times:

“Who am I? Who is God? From where did I come? Why am I here? Am I fulfilling the duty for which I came?”

Through constant meditation on these questions, the ancient Yogis and sages developed the Vedanta philosophy, the highest philosophy in the world. Its main statement is the principle of non-duality: we are all One. This is not easy to understand, and is even more difficult to put into practice.

Everybody says: “My body, my feelings, my thoughts, my experiences.” Everyone identifies themself with the word “I”. Who is it that is saying “my and I?”

You are not your body, not your intellect, thoughts, feelings and experiences – but you are. Who? The Self.

The Self or the soul lives within the heart centre. It is the divine living light within us that never dies. Only the body is subject to death, not the soul. It lives eternally. It is life itself. The body depends on the law of nature, its principle is change. The spirit, known in yoga as the Atma, however is not bound to this law. How are we to understand that “We are all One?”

Take twenty bowls and fill them with water. Put them in the garden on a full moon night. You will see a moon in each bowl. Now look to the sky. There are not twenty moons, only one. It is the one moon which is reflected in each bowl.

In all living beings, humans and animals, lives a soul, it is the light from God. God is reflected in all living beings, like the moon in the water bowls. If the water is polluted, the reflection is unclear; the reflection is distorted by troubled water. But the moon itself is of course completely untouched. It is always the same, only the reflection shows differences. The water is the symbol for the human mind. If the mind is impure or restless, then it certainly influences the reflection of the divine light, but not God Himself.

God is in yourself, only your consciousness is not yet clear and open enough to recognise it. Whether a form of life is developed higher or lower, depends on the lucidity of the consciousness. The clearer the consciousness is, the stronger the light which it radiates. The first step to self-realisation therefore is to be conscious that you are divine, pure and indestructible. Only the bowl can be destroyed, not the moon. The vessel is finite, the essence is infinite.