Real Yoga

For the very serious Yogi, he must realize, in order to attain these high states of Spiritual evolution, through his own Will, exactly what this Earth Plane is really like. It is a Killing Field.

Virtually every species on this planet eats another species, or one of its own, to survive. This is how we live. In the raw, birds swoop from the heavens to clutch in their crushing claws a rodent, or a rabbit still writhing in pain and fear, and is eaten while still alive until merciful death enshrouds it.

Wild dogs and hyenas take their prey on the run. They are unable to choke the life from their prey, as a lion would, and have no choice but to begin to eat it alive until shock and pain cease its suffering within this poorly planned design — this unforgiving Concomitant Law.

Man thinks very highly of himself, yet even with the latest technology we are bound by these same killing laws. Hiding our abattoirs away from city centers and dressing our one–earth–family–creatures in fancy dressings on the shelves of butchers, does not deter the fact that we kill to survive also. We kill a host of animals, fowl and fishes in order to sustain life. We try as we evolve to make our deed more and more humane and palatable.

The cruelty of death in nature is an abominable act of poorly planned and designed slaughter. Just from this beginning point of survival it is horribly designed. No wonder some of the early Christian Monks thought of it as a testing ground, a hateful place, a place to get away from — to Heaven.

So many young students wish to attain this Oneness of Consciousness, yet in the arriving, they becomes empathetic not only with the joys of this life, and there are many, but also with the horrors of live conscious sentient creatures being torn apart. It is not an easy thing to climb the stairway to Spiritual Union. One suffers with every swollen bellied child, with every torn and suffering animal also and every human tortured and killed by another of his own species.

We try to abort the appearance of this realization by trappings, by rationalizations and by turning a blind eye to what is going on around us. Do you really think the God of your Dreams created a World like this? A Killing World?

How easily we deny cruelty's existence? We do it in so many ways. We wear robes of Religion, we pray in circles for peace — even in the face of the brutal killing man has done to his fellowman — all through history.

We join a Religion, a Cult, we seek the guidance of a Guru or someone who will show us the Spiritual Way and hopefully not have to come face to face with the reality of this World. We burn incense to eradicate the smells of death from our nostrils. We incant the name of one God or another in order to appease our own guilts.

What we never do is what is really needed to attain the high states of Spiritual Union with the Divine within us. I call it Divine because it transcends all the aforementioned horror and ills of this Concomitantly devlish World. What do we do? We perform a few Asanas, a few Sadhanas, a little this and a little that. We wear a Garland, chant a Mantra, perform Kirtan for our treasured Guru, but what ever we do it is never enough to reach even the first stage of transcendence, Samadhi.

How do we do this? We have had some fine examples in some of the great Yoga Masters — not always in what they said to do, but in what they did themselves. Ramana sat for 6 months in total stillness while ants and roaches crawled in to him. He was immovable. Buddha sat under the Bhodi Tree, also immovable until he had Enlightenment. Mad Monk Ramakrishna put himself through immeasurable practises and tests, communions, until Samadhi was reached.

From an historical point of view , unless you are ready to give up your time in this modern and busy world, it is nice to learn about Meditations and Spiritual thinking, but it will not get you Transcendence.

I will explain about Samadhi in another artilce and how some think that elevating the Mind to some lofty place — seeing some vision or other — and coming away with a good feeling, is Samadhi — it isn't!

I started this Article to acquaint You with the cold facts of this Killing Field. It was to bring You to what the cold hard facts are of YOG, uniting with the SELF and thus the PARAMATMAN.

Transcendence is not had by playing around with incense and ochre robes or prayer — they do though make you feel good, and if that is where you are at, all well and good. But if you are going for the black belt — you have to practise Real Yoga.

Articles by Swami Harinanda and Yogi Karmananda are © 2026 and are licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

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