Universality Is Not An Idea, It Is Reality
The word “yoga” essentially means, “that which brings you to reality”. Literally, it means “union.” Union means it brings you to the ultimate reality, where individual manifestations of life are surface bubbles in the process of creation. Right now, a coconut tree and a mango tree have popped up from the same earth. From the same earth, the human body and so many creatures have popped up. It is all the same earth.
Yoga means to move towards an experiential reality where one knows the ultimate nature of the existence, the way it is made.
Yoga refers to union not as an idea, a philosophy or as a concept that you imbibe. As an intellectual idea, if you vouch by the commonness of the universe, it may make you popular in a tea party, it may give you a certain social status, but it does not serve any other purpose. You will see, when things come down to even money – it does not even have to boil down to life and death – even for money, “This is me, that is you.” The boundary is clear; there is no question of you and me being one.
It actually causes damage to the individual if you intellectually see everything is one. People do all kinds of silly things because they (get) this idea that everybody is one, before somebody teaches them a good lesson and then they see, “This is me, that is you. No way to be one.”
If it becomes an experiential reality, it will not bring forth any immature action. It will bring forth a tremendous experience of life. Individuality is an idea. Universality is not an idea, it is a reality. In other words, yoga means you bury all your ideas.
Excerpted from here.
SEED QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION: How do you relate to the notion that universality as an intellectual idea is damaging while as an experiential reality, it is a tremendous experience of life? Can you share a personal story of a time when you experienced universality as your reality as opposed to an intellectual idea? What helps you move toward the experiential reality of your own nature?