Yoga and religion. Open yoga or closed yoga.

Is Yoga a religion?

No, yoga is not a religion. Yoga is a harmonious system of self-discovery. Everyone can practice yoga, and it doesn’t matter which religion a person believes in, or if a person believes in anything at all. Although sometimes we find terms and explanations in yoga related to religion (for example, the names of poses), but it should only be regarded as a tribute, appreciation to traditions and cultural mentality of the people among whom yoga has survived.

If yoga had been preserved in our country (editor’s note - Vadim is from Russia), perhaps we could use such characters as in our traditional fairy-tales like Vasilisa Prekrasnaya (Vasilisa the Beautiful or Vasilisa the Wise), Koschei the Immortal and Ivan Tsarevitch. We should also remember that the non-critical usage of the names and terms of Hindu mythology penetrates thoroughly day-to-day living of ordinary people as well as lives of scientists, cultural persons and politicians. This is specifics of the East, which at some extent has transferred to yoga, too. That’s why it is reasonable to relate to all this as to the characters and the terms of "Myths of Ancient Greece" used in European science.

According to yoga teaching we have to live many lives before we will reach the state without death. In many religions there is nothing said about many lives. Does yoga contradict with religion in this point?

No, there is no contradiction. All the true Teachers and saints in any religion gave such strong methods of spiritual growth that any sincere follower reached the highest state during one life. So there was no reason to talk about many lives if they could reach it all within just one. Yoga also recommends moving forward in your spiritual development as quickly as possible, ideally to pass all the way in one lifetime to avoid all the suffering caused by nescience.

Is yoga a secret knowledge? Is yoga open or closed system of self-exploration?

Yoga is a completely open system of self-exploration. It means that all the fundamental principles or axioms of yoga are available as much as it is possible for everybody who wants to study yoga. There are general statements in yoga (so-called “yoga axioms”) and all the exercises, practices, and other philosophical principles of yoga have resulted from them. These general statements in yoga were always publicly available, unlike in other religious and philosophical systems, where access to the fundamental principles of these systems has been closed to ordinary practitioners. Namely, the followers of these closed philosophical and religious systems had only directions without the slightest hint of how they were obtained, or had to rediscover logic and philosophy behind this practice. They were only required to believe.

Using modern computer terminology, we can say that yoga is an open source system and everyone is invited to study before using it or believing in it.

As a principle yoga teaching regards that spiritual knowledge should belong to all humanity, not to a handful of elected “supermen”. Another thing is that some of the specific practices or specific conclusions from the public fundamental principles of yoga sometimes are not very public, because untrained people can use them unwisely and cause harm to themselves and others.

We can use the following analogy - you can study nuclear physics at Engineering Physics Institute openly without any barriers. But you cannot find in the media the specific recommendations how to make a nuclear bomb “in the kitchen” because the consequences would be unpredictable.

Also yoga discloses all its principles, but there are practices into which you are allowed to enter only if teachers are sure that you observe the moral and ethical rules of life. Or you have to rediscover these practices yourself if you have not received a permission to access them. When you try to rediscover the desired practice, you take the time and effort and realize that you still will not get benefits without the observance of moral principles. It is just protection against fools.

So, yoga is the open system where all the basic statements and principles are open and available. Anyone can learn yoga based on these principles; rediscover all the techniques, exercises and practices which have ever been known. Moreover, the open system allows creating unique self-discovery practices, solving specific tasks, taking into account the place, time and life style of people who are interested in yoga. That is why yoga has survived through the ages, and has felt great at any time and place - in ancient times and medieval India as well as in the modern world in the West.

Knowing the axioms of yoga the Teachers adapt the teaching easily to different countries, nations and cultures. Yoga has never questioned the tradition, values of society, and the philosophical views of the people in the countries where it came to. Yoga integrates non-violently and harmoniously into people’s life and does not try to replace religion, science and medicine, as well as to impose a strange "yogic" style of life to someone.

And it goes well, because having a flexible logical system of basic statements, yoga adapts to the needs of people, regardless of their racial, ethnic or religious-philosophical affiliation and does it with flexibility and grace.

But, unfortunately, yoga is disappearing for a number of independent causes. And now we have fewer and fewer Yoga Teachers, who would understand the axioms of yoga and would be able to adapt the yoga practice to the modern conditions. And the system of axioms themselves survived in a stripped-down, highly compressed, abrupt form. It also impacts the possibility to make conclusions from the axioms regarding the specific yoga exercises. It is an art available only to those who devote themselves to yoga entirely.

So up to now, many exercises are given from one generation to the next one without understanding how they are derived from axioms. This is a good soil for bugs, misunderstandings and it even can lead to attempts to interpret yoga not as a live dynamic teaching, but as a set of dogmas, bookish and similar to sectarianism. The situation is joyless.

We need people who have strong understanding of the axioms of yoga, to process them through and by that to compensate the lost fragments of the yoga teaching.

It should also be remembered that although yoga is an open system of self-exploration, there are open and “closed” schools of yoga. “Closed” schools need to save what is left from yoga, and to ensure transfer of some knowledge to open schools, where they can be studied by everyone. Only the most proven yogis can get into such schools. It is the same as with the etalons of weight or length in science. The etalon of one kilogram is stored in Paris. Only some scientists have access to it and create other equivalents of weight to distribute them worldwide. The same way the closed schools of yoga keep the remaining knowledge safe to have a possibility to verify with an original.

The openness of yoga is the greatest treasure for humanity, the factor of knowledge retrieving and the guarantee that even after centuries yoga will remain the same beautiful, modern and attractive system.

The negative side of this openness is that there can be increasing number of half-trained people taking knowledge out of context and trying to make their own new psychological school, sect or medical panacea for all. This kind of people are quite dangerous for the great yoga teaching: having read a yoga book overnight or having passed a certified 2-week long yoga instructor course they start seeing themselves as yoga Guru. Some of them even try to get patent on it. That is funny and sad at the same time. It seems like thanks to this openness there will be no yoga student but everyone will see themselves as yoga teachers without any objective reason. Several years of training under the guidance of experienced teachers is required to get into a spirit of this teaching and immerse in it. In any case our yoga training takes four years, and even after it is completed our students keep on coming for classes and repeatedly study some yoga courses.