﻿Is there magic in Yoga and if so how is it
conceptualised? Stay tuned if you want to find out.
[Music]
Hello everyone. I'm Angela and welcome back to my channel. First of all,
I want to give a shout-out to my patrons, Andrew and Rune.
Thank you so much for pledging to my Patreon and for the extremely
interesting debates and discussions we are having in our community chat.
The subject of Yoga has been researched profusely and I always, always encourage you to do your own
research. All the information conveyed in my videos is drawn from academic research which
is often referenced on the screen and always mentioned in the infobox. That being said,
I cannot review every study or publication ever produced on the topics I address. Thus,
bear in mind that my videos are backed
by academic research but should be seen as a starting point to dive deeper into it yourself.
Premises are out of the way. Now, let's move on to it, shall we?
The two main sources, for this video’s content, are “A History Of Modern Yoga:
Patanjali and Western Esotericism” by Elizabeth De Michelis and the
brilliant contributions within the volume “Yoga Powers: Extraordinary
Capacities Attained Through Meditation and Concentration” edited by Johannes Bronkhorst.
Yoga is one of the six orthodox schools in the Hindu philosophy, more often referred to as
Hinduism. The original Sanskrit name, for these schools of thought, is Darśana which means view,
opinion and they are deemed orthodox because they recognize the spiritual authority of the
Veda and yes, I'm not using the English ‘s’ to make a plural when it comes to Sanskrit terms.
Yoga comes from the Sanskrit root ‘yuj’ and translates as yoking, joining, attaching,
harnessing. Yoga, which was likely a set of heterogeneous practices, became a tradition
or a system, thanks to the systematization operated by Patanjali - philosopher and
author of the Yoga Sūtra, where it stated, at the very beginning of the Yoga Sūtra,
that Yoga is the ceasing of mental processes which, in Sanskrit, is yogaś-citta-vṛtti-nirodhaḥ.
I won't go much further into the yogic tradition per se, as you would deserve a dozen of videos
to be tackled properly and I will now focus specifically on the element of magic in Yoga.
What I find really interesting, of the relations between Yoga and magic, is that sometimes you
have traditions where you have to practice techniques in order to gain certain powers. So,
it's like the powers, the extraordinary abilities that you can develop are your aim or your purpose
whereas in Yoga is quite different – as, basically, the powers that you are going to
develop during your spiritual path are, basically, some things quite unavoidable in your path,
in your journey towards divinity. In Sanskrit, there are a number of different words which
are used to describe the powers that you will obtain by following the yogic system.
In the Yoga Sūtra, we have, for example, jñāna which is knowledge or extraordinary knowledge,
Aishwarya which is mastery, Siddhi which is accomplishment, attainment,
Vibhūti which might be omnipresence and yet we may say that the most popular word,
which is used to describe the extraordinary abilities which are attained through Yoga,
is Siddhi so this is the term that we are going to use from this moment onwards. You may or may
not know that there is a difference between the YOGIN, which is the practitioner of Yoga,
and the SIDDHA which is the perfected master, and as you may notice the term Siddha has the same
root as Siddhi, which is the powers, basically, that you will attain on your yogic path.
These superhuman powers, which would be the Siddhi, are not considered, by them, disruptions
in the laws of nature but actually show mastery of nature - being an essential part of how nature
works. The main ways to obtain the Siddhi are the yogic concentration, also called Samādhi,
which would deserve a chapter on its own, the use of herbs, the use of mantra, aesthetic practices
such as the tapas, and also inborn abilities that the Yogin was born with. Something important about
the Siddhi or Siddhis, if we want to use the English plural on the Sanskrit term,
is that they cannot be used to change the fundamental order of the world. Otherwise,
they would work against a previously perfected Yogi's will and this is because every perfected
Yogin is an Īśvara, which is a lord who has merged with the essence of nature,
also called in Sanskrit Prakṛti, and has therefore become omnipotent and omniscient.
So it's clear that the Yogin, able to develop the siddhi,
is elevated to the level of God. These powers, it is important also to say,
that can be developed unintentionally in the Yoga or intentionally which happens in the Tantra,
for example. Magical powers in Yoga can therefore be seen as basically a state, that you have to
go through, on your path towards perfection, the perfected state of the Yogin, the Siddha.
These powers will basically tell the Yogin that he's on the right path because he has, he or she
has achieved divinity but at the same time, on the final stage towards the liberation, the Yogin has
to give up these superhuman powers because at that point, of the final liberation, the Yogin
has to give up the world of nature, the Prakṛti completely and exit the cycles of reincarnation.
So we may perhaps, in a simplistic way, see the path of the Yogin as starting from the point of
view of an individual living in nature, then this person conquers nature and is able to
be so embedded within it that is able to work through the laws of nature - not have power over
nature - but being so totally ingrained within it that you are able to move the fabric of reality.
This is the stage where the Yogin acquires the superhuman powers,
the siddhi. But then, moving forward, on his path, he will reach the final
liberation where even these powers have to be given up because, at that point,
the Yogin will not be at one with nature any more but will sort of exit and become
one with the spirit, with the Puruṣa, as it is called in Sanskrit - the spiritual realm.
As Gordon White points out, the Yogin is able to move between, inhabit and even create multiple
bodies. As with his power of expansion, this logical extension, of the Yogin perception,
also becomes a means by which the human Yogin is empowered to embody the universe as the one
in the many and the one in many is, in fact, the depiction of what nature is about and how
nature unfolds. So, as long as the Yogin is within nature and is able to conquer nature,
he will develop, he or she will develop, these superhuman powers.
Only at the final stage, when the Yogin will exit the realm of nature to fully embrace the realm of
Puruṣa, of the spirit, only then she will abandon these divine powers. He or she will also abandon
the divine abilities, which were up to that point necessary in the Yogin's journey, as the Yogin
needed to become a God before abandoning the realm where the divine power can manifest because there
is a manifested form. Therefore, abandoning every manifested form, every manifestation, even magical
powers, will not be needed any more as magic is a will that is turned into manifestation.
So it needs the will and it means the manifestation when the Yogin exited realms of
manifestation then magic cannot happen any more and yet it was necessary to reach that point.
Yoga has had a significant impact on Western esotericism so for instance, we have in Aleister
Crowley's works, such as “Magick” and “Eight Lectures on Yoga”, some techniques and practices,
of the yogic tradition, are described and implemented in his magickal system.
Let me know if you'd be interested in a specific video on Aleister Crowley and Yoga or even just
Aleister Crowley who was a very, very interesting character in the history of Western esotericism.
Hope you enjoyed this overview of magic in Yoga and how magic powers are conceptualized
in the yogic system. Let me know what you think in the comment section down below.
If you like this video SMASH the like button, subscribe to the channel,
activate the notification bell, and stay tuned for all the academic fun.
Bye for now. [Music]