Yoga Tradition of the Mysore Palace, The

Yoga as a spiritual discipline is discussed in the context of Indian metaphysical systems. Linkages have been made to the Yoga sutras, and I have gone on, as mentioned above, to write articles examining further the sutras of Patanjali. This examination has not been academic, but technical in terms of the philosophy, and speculative. This examination, interdisciplinary by nature, draws on and includes the work of practitioners of meditation…the work of people who have practiced yoga and meditation as a spiritual discipline.

Interestingly enough, in our own time, yoga has become a social phenomenon. This might be partly because the most recent innovative practitioners of yoga have been Vaishnavas who seem to be oriented more towards social organization—social systems, status, economics, however one wants to see it, than the Saivites who have had their heyday more than one hundred years ago and have formerly been on the fringes of social apparatus. Of course, the whole guru-éiya tradition is part of a social bonding complex and is particularly attractive at present to people who are alienated from family complexes; one of the most difficult aspects of our perilous modernism. I have heard a yoga student say, “Pattabhi Jois is like a father to me”. With such emotive social complexes, one IS invariably entangled in all the moralizing, status seeking and so on that goes with the territory. And the territory is social loyalty or grouping, competition and economics.