The Heart and Purpose of Yoga

Workshops by Ravi Ravindra
at Aloha Keene Yoga Studio, Keene NH
on Saturday, October 7, 2023

The teaching of yoga is a science par excellence for a radical inner transformation of a searcher who is called to undertake the relevant practices with the ultimate aim of finding one’s unity with the Mysterious ONE that has created the entire cosmos. We will focus on the heart and purpose of yoga as expressed in the two classical texts: The Yoga Sutras and the Bhagavad Gita.

In order to understand the subtle teaching of yoga it is helpful to impartially and deeply study the relationship between the individualized prakriti in myself, represented by my body and mind, and the individualized Purusha, represented by the particle of Divinity or the Breath of God that is keeping me alive. Then I need to study the importance of and the difficulty in fulfilling the whole purpose of prakriti, which according to Pattañjali in the Yoga Sutras is to serve Purusha. The call is to be free of the ego-self, which is wholly occupied with me-my-mine, in order to be able to carry out the Divine will. We will explore the obstacles encountered by all the searchers and the necessary practices in order to overcome them.

The God incarnate Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita says that no action can be right until the actor is right; and that in order to be the right actor and to fulfill his responsibility (dharma), a searcher needs to underatke the discipline of yoga. But the discipline of yoga cannot be practiced without enagging in yajña (sacrifice). We will explore what is the right actor according to Krishna and the various forms of yoga taught by Him. The main yoga that Krishna teaches in the Bhagavdad Gita is buddhi yoga, the yoga of awareness. Awareness is the mechanism of transformation and gradually a seracher moves from reaction to response, from loving Krishna to being loved by Krishna and towards becoming an instrument of Krishna’s will.

Brief Bio of Ravi Ravindra: Ravi has been a professor in the departments of Physics, Philosophy and Religion at Dalhousie University, Halifax. Canada . He has authored many books including Science and the Sacred, The Yoga of the Christ, The Wisdom of Patañjali’s Yoga Sutras and The Bhagavd Gita: A Guide to Navigating the Battle of Life. More details at his website www.ravindra.ca.