Adhyatma Yoga—An Overview

As a way of interior practice and reflection, yoga may be viewed as a response to the deepest urge of the human heart. This is the desire to expand in joy and knowledge, and to transcend limitations. Any teaching that shares this aim, and provides effective means to achieve it, is a form of yoga, whether or not that is the name given to it.

The word ‘yoga’ literally means ‘union’. It refers to a union which every human being, consciously or unconsciously, is striving to achieve: union with the supreme Reality. This motive power lies at the root of every religion and quest for truth, and in its essentials, is the product of no special age or people. Being universal and non-sectarian, those who practise the higher yoga revere all the great enlightened teachers and their writings, and are open to receive truth from whatever source it emanates.