10.10  The Spiritual Content of Yoga

When I first started studying Hindi religious literature I saw only the literal sense of it. From that representation Hindi spirituality appears to be a nonduality between God and human beings. This literal meaning is in sharp contrast with Western religious literature that includes Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. In this literature God and human beings are in an absolute duality with each other. According to this view no human being can appropriate anything Divine since the Creator must be separate and different from the created. Hence the Hindi religion and associated practice of Yoga are still today considered contradictory to each other, and should they be brought together, they would annihilate each other.

However this separatist perspective completely changes when we consider the correspondential sense of Sacred literature in Hindi and in Western religions. The correspondences are the same in all Sacred literature since what is involved belongs to the spiritual mind, and this is above and separate from the natural mind (see Section xx). The literal meaning of Sacred Scripture belongs to culture, religion, and belief systems in the natural mind, while the correspondential meaning of Sacred Scripture belongs to the universal human race, thus the mental world of every individual regardless of religion, culture, era, or planet. Swedenborg has confirmed by observation that those who are resuscitated are from diverse cultures and planets, and yet when they awaken in the spiritual mind after dying in the natural mind, they speak the same human language of eternity and acknowledge only one universal God (see Section xx).

By studying the correspondential sense of Hindi Sacred literature we can demonstrate that it is the same Divine Speech that issues from the one God who is surrounded by the Spiritual Sun, which flows into the mental world of humanity with living spiritual heat and light. This is a process of Divine good (spiritual heat) and Divine truth (spiritual light) inflowing into the spiritual mind of every human being. Then by correspondence, the natural mind reacts with representative content from the physical world and body. This is the chain of correspondences from God to human beings. God rules the human mind through this chain of correspondences. What these correspondences are has not been known to humanity for the past thousands of years, but has been revealed once more in the Writings of Swedenborg (see Section xx).

The practice of yoga has been adopted by millions of Americans in recent times. A search for yoga in Google gives more than 84 million sites that use this word. According to the definition provided with these results, yoga is

1. A Hindu discipline aimed at training the consciousness for a state of perfect spiritual insight and tranquility.
2. A system of exercises practiced as part of this discipline to promote control of the body and mind.

[Hindi, from Sanskrit yogaḥ, union, joining.]

Clearly this definition relates yoga practice to a spiritual discipline. The physical effort we put up when doing yoga poses and breathing is for the purpose of becoming more aware of our spiritual mind.

"Spiritual insight" refers to the rational understanding of the correspondential sense of Sacred Scripture, that is, of theistic psychology.

"Spiritual tranquility" refers to the heavenly feeling of peace that we experience when there is absence of temptations and conflicts. This is also called the Rest of Sabbath, meaning the absence of emotional conflict, anxiety, fear, anger, egotism, fantasy, envy, cruelty, restlessness, and all other negative emotions and intentions.

When all this negative activity ceases in our mental states, we experience the "peace that passes all understanding," which comes from total reliance and confidence in the omnipotence and benevolence of God operating in our mind and lives.

Fear is caused by insufficient love of the Divine Psychologist in our mind. This insufficient love comes from our inherited tendency to enjoy relying on our own self-intelligence rather than on our understanding of Sacred Scripture. The more we communicate with the Divine Psychologist in our mind, the more we have to rely on our knowledge from the correspondential sense of Sacred Scripture, also called, our doctrine of truth (see Section xx).

But we resist this reliance on the truths of Sacred Scripture. Why? Because these truths inform us that when we reach adulthood, we must stop enjoying the evil traits we have from both inheritance and acquisition.

Evil traits are those we rely on and enjoy all day long, and yet they are bad for us, and hurt others and society. Examples you can recognize in yourself are:

• inconveniencing others for the sake of self (e.g., being late, being loud, littering, aggressive driving, etc.)

• hurting others for the sake of gain (e.g., deceiving, cheating, manipulating, yelling at, taking advantage of, etc.)

• hurting one's growth and health (e.g., being overweight, neglecting daily hygiene like flossing the teeth, living in unclean environment as our room, car, office, clothes, closets, kitchen, stove, etc.)

Which ones of those listed do you yourself do or not do? Probably you do all of them, some of us more than others.

 You can see why we all need spiritual discipline, that is, the daily practice of exercises designed to bring these evil habits to our conscious awareness. We must have a spiritual motivation for this practice in order to become conscious of our evil habits of thinking and willing all day long every day. If this motivation is not spiritual, there can be no spiritual change or benefit in our character.

There are two types of spiritual discipline we can practice: continuous and occasional.

Yoga as it is practiced by most Americans is occasional since it is performed as a physical periodic session that may last a few minutes or an hour and a half. There is the tradition of carrying the yoga "breath" and "tranquility" to the rest of the day, but this is not usually part of the yoga practiced by most Westerners (although specific data on this is lacking).

The practice of continuous spiritual discipline in the Western cultural context takes the form of rational spirituality (see Section xx). For instance, people may read Sacred Scripture and study it by trying to extract its spiritual message. Few people today know correspondences from the Writings of Swedenborg or from the study of theistic psychology. Hence most people attempt to comprehend the spiritual message of Sacred Scripture by natural methods of understanding, rather than spiritual. What exactly is the difference?

Every method of interpreting Sacred Scripture that has been proposed and practiced is natural -- except the method of correspondences revealed by God in the Writings of Swedenborg (see Section xx). This is not an issue of authority, intellectual approach, religion, or preference. This is a scientific approach. Swedenborg is the only known scientist in history who has had the ability of being conscious in the spiritual mind, which is the mind of every human being in the afterlife of eternity (see Section xx).

Regardless of how intelligent, sincere, and authoritative are the interpreters of Sacred Scripture they carry no scientific weight because they are not based on empirical observations. This is required by science. The Swedenborg Reports are the only empirical observations we have of a scientist who was conscious for 27 years in the spiritual mind as well as in the natural mind. Through this unique ability granted him by God he was able to fulfill his Divine mission, namely, to publish his empirical observations of the spiritual correspondences in Sacred Scripture. The experimental method he used for this project was to read a verse of Sacred Scripture in the original natural language or its translation (Swedish, Hebrew, Greek, Latin), through his natural mind and physical eyes, on the one hand, and on the other, to read the corresponding verse in a copy of Sacred Scripture in the spiritual world of the afterlife.

Every human being when resuscitated in the spiritual mind no longer uses the natural language of their culture or community, but instead, a universal spiritual language that Swedenborg describes as very much like the thought-language we think in. If you want to know what that universal and eternal spiritual language is you need to focus in on your thinking all day long. This is a spiritual discipline called self-witnessing (see Section xx). It is spiritual because the purpose of this mental self-monitoring is to discover the content of our thoughts and feelings that forms our life all day, and then to amend them in accordance with the doctrine of truth we extract from Sacred Scripture. This is the purpose that makes continuous daily mental self-witnessing a spiritual practice or discipline.

As you get more skilled at mental self-monitoring you begin to discover on an empirical basis what is the relationship in your mind between the natural and spiritual layers. This relationship is called correspondences. By this exact method of comparison, Swedenborg was able to make lists of correspondences with each entry of a word or phrase in the natural language, and its spiritual signification or equivalent. For instance, in the most general terms only and without further details, we can write dictionaries of correspondences like this:

Sacred Scripture expressions in a natural language on earth	Spiritual correspondences in the universal human language of eternity
water, wine, lake, ocean, rain	specific varieties of truths, some in the natural mind, some in the spiritual mind
bread, house	forms of good, some in the natural mind, some in the spiritual mind
numbers 4, 40, 44, 400	undergoing spiritual temptation
number 3	what is complete, the last element, or the whole of the subject being discussed
God's anger, vengeance, destructive act	God's appearance to us when we knowingly break the Divine order, rule, or law
tree, plant, vine, fruit, flower, root, branch, leaf, grass	specific varieties of human activity in relation to one's character regeneration
gold, diamond	specific varieties of celestial mental states in the spiritual mind
silver, copper	specific varieties of spiritual mental states in the spiritual mind that are lower than the celestial states
bronze, iron, clay	specific varieties of natural mental states
Babylon, Philistines, Goliath, Judas	specific varieties of abusing one's knowledge of correspondences and of spiritual knowledge, e.g., gaining power and influence over people for enjoyment, gain, reputation, and adulation
Egypt, Pharaoh, horses	knowledge of correspondences, but without applying them to one's self-witnessing and character modification or regeneration
Jerusalem, Mount of Olives	the doctrine of truth that we extract for ourselves from the study of correspondences in Sacred Scripture
animals	every animal species corresponds to a general quality in the human mind (e.g., wild and poisonous species correspond to the specific varieties of evil affections, intentions, and the nature of their enjoyment)
days of the week, progression of the day from AM to PM, progression of seasons, the four quarters of directions, etc.	in Sacred Scripture all references to time and direction correspond to developmental states of our mind as we progress through the phases of regeneration and character reformation. Each reference to time and direction corresponds to particular types of thoughts and feelings that we have in that phase.
(For more examples of lists of correspondences, see Section xx.)

Everyone can understand correspondences because they are the basis of how we think in daily life, and how we describe our mental states through physical objects and events (e.g.,

• I've had a peach of a day

• I see what you mean

• He's got a good heart

• He rules with a strong hand

• Watch out he's a snake

• She's got a soft spot for you

• etc.

In each case we describe a mental state in terms of physical objects. We do this naturally, spontaneously, as part of our linguistic and semantic abilities. Hence it is we can understand each other's figurative speech that are correspondences. Note that these are natural-spiritual correspondences since physical objects are natural and mental states are spiritual (see Section xx). The natural and spiritual mind are each a mental organ (see Section xx). The layers of our mental organs from low and simple capacity to high and complex capacity, are tied to each other through the laws of correspondences that were established by God as part of creation (See Section xx).

What Swedenborg observed makes sense therefore, namely that the thousands of people he observed awakening in the spiritual mind, at resuscitation and immediately after dying, were able without exception and regardless of culture, to speak the one universal and eternal language, the language of thinking in the spiritual mind. This is because all along, since our birth, we had been thinking in this spiritual language as the backdrop of the natural language we were using and thinking in consciously. So our natural language expressions are correspondences of our spiritual language expressions, which is inborn and does not have to be learned.

More on correspondences in Section 1.1.4.3.2 and Section 1.8.8.1.

We now want to understand yoga practice in its true spiritual tradition of gaining understanding and control of the natural-spiritual correspondences between our body and our mind, that is, our physical organs and quality, on the one hand, and on the other, our mental organs and their quality.

Every physical body organ has a corresponding counterpart to our mental body organ. We are born with both bodies, the physical body in the physical world, connected by the laws of correspondences, to the mental body in the spiritual world of eternity. All our sensations, thoughts, and feelings are operations of the mental organs in eternity, and not at all of the brain or physical organs. Most of us take it for granted that our thoughts and feelings are in our physical body and the brain. But this is clearly impossible in scientific dualism where correspondences connect objects from different layers of existence, one physical in time, the other mental in eternity.

Literally and actually we are not on earth since we are our thoughts and feelings, and they are not on earth, but in eternity.

We can't have sensations, thoughts, and feelings without a mental body that contains mental organs. The operations of these mental organs are our thoughts and feelings. These mental operations are not on earth or in time. They have no mass and no energy. As your thoughts and feelings cumulate, your b rain does not weigh more since these mental substances do not have weight.

Yoga practice is the conscious connection between physical body parts and poses on the one hand, and on the other, the mental body parts and states. Yoga is therefore contributes to our study of correspondences in Sacred Scripture.

Consider the following description of Yoga in a medical encyclopedia at: 
http://www.answers.com/yoga&r=67

The term yoga comes from a Sanskrit word which means yoke or union. Traditionally, yoga is a method joining the individual self with the Divine, Universal Spirit, or Cosmic Consciousness. Physical and mental exercises are designed to help achieve this goal, also called self-transcendence or enlightenment. On the physical level, yoga postures, called asanas, are designed to tone, strengthen, and align the body. These postures are performed to make the spine supple and healthy and to promote blood flow to all the organs, glands, and tissues, keeping all the bodily systems healthy. On the mental level, yoga uses breathing techniques (pranayama) and meditation (dyana) to quiet, clarify, and discipline the mind. However, experts are quick to point out that yoga is not a religion, but a way of living with health and peace of mind as its aims. (...)

Modern psychological studies have shown that even slight facial expressions can cause changes in the involuntary nervous system; yoga utilizes the mind/body connection. That is, yoga practice contains the central ideas that physical posture and alignment can influence a person's mood and self-esteem, and also that the mind can be used to shape and heal the body. Yoga practitioners claim that the strengthening of mind/body awareness can bring eventual improvements in all facets of a person's life. (...)

Today (2007), yoga is thriving, and it has become easy to find teachers and practitioners throughout America. A recent Roper poll, commissioned by Yoga Journal, found that 11 million Americans do yoga at least occasionally and 6 million perform it regularly. Yoga stretches are used by physical therapists and professional sports teams, and the benefits of yoga are being touted by movie stars and Fortune 500 executives. Many prestigious schools of medicine have studied and introduced yoga techniques as proven therapies for illness and stress. Some medical schools, like UCLA, even offer yoga classes as part of their physician training program.
 

Classical yoga is separated into eight limbs, each a part of the complete system for mental, physical and spiritual well-being. Four of the limbs deal with mental and physical exercises designed to bring the mind in tune with the body. The other four deal with different stages of meditation. There are six major types of yoga, all with the same goals of health and harmony but with varying techniques: hatha, raja, karma, bhakti, jnana, and tantra yoga. Hatha yoga is the most commonly practiced branch of yoga in America, and it is a highly developed system of nearly 200 physical postures, movements and breathing techniques designed to tune the body to its optimal health. The yoga philosophy believes the breath to be the most important facet of health, as the breath is the largest source of prana, or life force, and hatha yoga utilizes pranayama, which literally means the science or control of breathing. Hatha yoga was originally developed as a system to make the body strong and healthy enough to enable mental awareness and spiritual enlightenment. (...)
 

The other types of yoga show some of the remaining ideas which permeate yoga. Raja yoga strives to bring about mental clarity and discipline through meditation, simplicity, and non-attachment to worldly things and desires. Karma yoga emphasizes charity, service to others, non-aggression and non-harming as means to awareness and peace. Bhakti yoga is the path of devotion and love of God, or Universal Spirit. Jnana yoga is the practice and development of knowledge and wisdom. Finally, tantra yoga is the path of self-awareness through religious rituals, including awareness of sexuality as sacred and vital.

There seems to be a conflict here between the medical and the spiritual perspective on yoga. Most Americans who practice yoga are Christians and there is a strong tendency to separate or divorce the physical and the spiritual aspects of yoga practice. Christians feel uncomfortable with the traditional yoga practice of ending practice sessions by folding the hands in prayer posture in front of the chest (heart) and reciting: The God in me greets the God in you and sometimes: The light in me greets the light in you. In theistic psychology we are able to look for the spiritual correspondences in yoga expressions and affirmations about spiritual life.

For instance, "the God in me" corresponds to the Divine Psychologist (see Section xx). The Divine Psychologist is just another name for God's activity in our mind. The term "Holy Spirit" in the New Testament Sacred Scripture has the same meaning in its correspondential sense. "To greet" corresponds to communication, friendship, and conjunction. Yoga as a Hindi word means unity or conjunction. "In you" and "in me" correspond to mind, thoughts, and feelings. So the expression: "The God in me greets the God in you" signifies that both of us are united to the Divine Psychologist in our mind. Or: that the same God operates my mind and your mind, and thus we are conjoined. The phrase: "the light in me greets the light in you" signifies that you and me receive our intelligence from spiritual light, which is from the Spiritual Sun, which is from the Divine Human or the universal God.

Another phrase that gives Western Christians a conflict or doubt about practicing yoga is cited above in the definition: "Traditionally, yoga is a method joining the individual self with the Divine, Universal Spirit, or Cosmic Consciousness." The conjunction of the individual with the Divine can be interpreted in terms of nonduality and duality (see Section xx). Nonduality says that when we are united to the Divine, we are Divine. This of course is not acceptable to Western religions like Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, which hold that God and human beings are of two separate and distinct natures forever and one cannot be transmuted into the other.

But there is a Christian tradition from the New Testament Sacred Scripture that affirms that God is in us and we are in God. This must be interpreted within dualism, namely that "being in God" and "God being in us" does not mean that we are Divine, but only that the Divine is active in our mind.

Hence it is possible to reinterpret the spiritual traditions attached to yoga by means of spiritual correspondences so that they become congruent with Western traditions of Sacred Scripture.

Quotes about yoga listed at The Quote Garden:   http://www.quotegarden.com/yoga.html

Yoga, an ancient but perfect science, deals with the evolution of humanity. This evolution includes all aspects of one's being, from bodily health to self-realization. Yoga means union - the union of body with consciousness and consciousness with the soul. Yoga cultivates the ways of maintaining a balanced attitude in day-to-day life and endows skill in the performance of one's actions.
~B.K.S. Iyengar, Astadala Yogamala

Yoga is the practice of quieting the mind.
~Patanjali, translated from Sanskrit

Yoga is invigoration in relaxation. Freedom in routine. Confidence through self control. Energy within and energy without.
~Ymber Delecto

Corpse pose restores life. Dead parts of your being fall away, the ghosts are released.
~The Quote Garden

When you inhale, you are taking the strength from God. When you exhale, it represents the service you are giving to the world.
~B.K.S. Iyengar

Inhale, and God approaches you. Hold the inhalation, and God remains with you. Exhale, and you approach God. Hold the exhalation, and surrender to God.
~Krishnamacharya

Balance of mind is called Yoga
~the Bhagavad Gita

 

10.10.1  The Wisdom of Yoga Sayings

Yoga sayings is the traditional method of expressing many relevant natural-spiritual correspondences. Here are samples of "Namaste" yoga that I collected from yoga practice lessons and commercially sold DVD.

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1. To take on one challenge today, one small challenge. What would that be?

2.  As if to say, I’m ready now, and it’s the readiness that matters.

3.  Gathering the heart and the mind to feel the depth of our lives.

4.  To meet yourself face to face without expectations. Such freedom does exist.

5.  Feeling yourself balancing the energies of giving and receiving equally, with no fear.

6.  To learn to be more gentle, more open, more honest.

7.  To trust in ourselves, to know that we can change for the better.

8.  As if to give up competing with yourself and simply see the honesty in your effort.

9.  Remember: every obstacle you meet in life can be seen as a block, or as an opportunity.

10.  As if to vow to ourselves to become ourselves, again and again.

11.  Feel your ground, feel your heart. Feel your body. Breathe your body. Let all the weight of the body fall down into the ground, leaving your body light.

12.  Give up competing with yourself and simply see the honesty of your effort.

13.  To trust in ourselves to know that we can change for the better.

14.  Freedom is moving, thinking, and speaking from a place of no ego.

15.  Let us meet in a place with no fences, endless sky, boundless potential, opening from the heart.

16.  To be annoyed by our restrictions is natural. To be free of them, is Yoga.

17.  Practice with effort, then letting go of the results of that effort.

18.  To be kind to others and to ourselves is as natural as a flower opening in the sun.

19.  To forgive weakness in others is to recognize and forgive weakness in ourselves.

20.  Bowing to the teaching that lies inside the heart, and the teaching is forgiveness, and forgiveness starts with oneself.

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Is there anything in the above yoga affirmations that is spiritually contrary to Sacred Scripture as it is known in Western cultures -- the Old Testament, the New Testament, the Koran, and the Writings of Swedenborg? 

To determine this we need to translate the literal meaning of each yoga saying into its correspondences. Remember that correspondences are revealed in Sacred Scripture and all Sacred Scripture is written in correspondences of Divine Speech (see Section xx). Hence if Yoga sayings contain a spiritual meaning through correspondences, it is objective evidence that Yoga Wisdom is a genuine spiritual doctrine derived from Hindi Sacred Scriptures such as the Upanishads and Bhagavad-Gita (see next Section).

The Wisdom of Yoga Sayings
Yoga Expressions Literal Meaning	Correspondences from Sacred Scripture	Spiritual Meaning or theistic psychology
1. To take on one challenge today, one small challenge. What would that be?	Challenge = striving to put our natural mind in an order that is compatible with our spiritual mind Today = the mental states we have	With every task all day long we need to invoke our spiritual truths. This is spiritual discipline.
2.  As if to say, I’m ready now, and it’s the readiness that matters.	Readiness, I’m ready = spiritual discipline applied to each task. That matters = what is critically important.	The most important aspect of spiritual discipline is to maintain it vigilantly with all tasks, without making exceptions.
3.  Gathering the heart and the mind to feel the depth of our lives.	Heart = the will or affective organ Mind = the understanding or cognitive organ Gathering = conjoining Depth of our lives = spiritual good and truth	Receiving spiritual truth requires intending and acting in accordance with the spiritual truth in our understanding.
4.  To meet yourself face to face without expectations. Such freedom does exist.	To meet yourself = becoming aware of your dual citizenship through the physical body and the mental body. Without expectations = not using our false ideas to filter spiritual truths Freedom = acting from truth rather than desire	Awareness of eternity requires that we not use natural ideas to comprehend spiritual truths.
5.  Feeling yourself balancing the energies of giving and receiving equally, with no fear.	Giving = intending and acting from truth Receiving = being open to truth and loving it With no fear = reliance on God	Loving truth and living according to it is possible only when we rely on God as the source of truth and good.
6.  To learn to be more gentle, more open, more honest.	More gentle = innocent or fearful of hurting any one More open = looking to a person’s good side rather than bad More honest = attributing all power to God	We need to understand that being good to others is possible only from God by acknowledging Divine Providence in everything.
7.  To trust in ourselves, to know that we can change for the better.	To trust in ourselves = to understand that God empowers our attempts when they are from good with truth Changing for the better = cooperating with God in our character reformation	We can become a good person only when we ask for that good from the source of good, or God.

Yoga Expressions Literal Meaning	Correspondences from Sacred Scripture	Spiritual Meaning or theistic psychology
8.  As if to give up competing with yourself and simply see the honesty in your effort.	As if = to act as of ourselves while knowing it is with God’s power Competing with yourself = believing that what you do is from you rather than from God To see the honesty of your effort = to knowingly act from God, but as if from self	Understanding that all that we do is from God allows us to avoid falsifying spiritual truth.
9.  Remember: every obstacle you meet in life can be seen as a block, or as an opportunity.	Obstacle in life = the enjoyment of inherited and acquired hellish traits Seen as a block = to deal with our hellish traits from ourselves Seen as an opportunity = to deal with them from the acknowledgement of  God’s Divine Providence in all details	We can stop enjoying our evils by appealing to God for the power to get rid of them and to hold them in aversion.
10.  As if to vow to ourselves to become ourselves, again and again.	As if to vow to ourselves = to  reaffirm our certainty that all things are from and by God To become ourselves = to regenerate our character and becoming heavenly in our enjoyments and traits Again and again = as a daily spiritual discipline	Attributing all things to Divine Providence allows us to carry out our daily spiritual discipline of character reformation.
11.  Feel your ground, feel your heart. Feel your body. Breathe your body. Let all the weight of the body fall down into the ground, leaving your body light.	Feel = become aware and understand it Your ground = the operations in your cognitive organ of the understanding and thinking Your heart = the operations in your affective organ of the will and intentions Your body = the operations in your sensorimotor organ that act together with the physical body’s operations Breathe your body = your actions have to follow the truth in your understanding Weight of the body = our resistance to act from good in the will through truth in the understanding Falling down into the ground = resistance to good in the will can be overcome through knowledge of truth in the understanding	Self-witnessing as a spiritual discipline allows us to become aware of our resistance to loving good and truth and to act accordingly.

Yoga Expressions Literal Meaning	Correspondences from Sacred Scripture	Spiritual Meaning or theistic psychology
12.  Give up competing with yourself and simply see the honesty of your effort.	Competing with yourself = alternating between attributing things to God and to self Honesty of your effort = attribute all things to God	To achieve spiritual enlightenment we must attribute all things to God and nothing to oneself.
13.  To trust in ourselves to know that we can change for the better.	To trust in ourselves to know = having peace of mind Change for the better = acquiring aversion for prior hellish enjoyments	Peace of mind and spiritual enlightenment are the result of the rejection of our inherited and acquired hellish traits.
14.  Freedom is moving, thinking, and speaking from a place of no ego.	Freedom = the mental state when we act from spiritual truths that we obtained from Sacred Scripture A place of no ego = the mental state when we act in freedom Moving = sensorimotor organ of sensations Thinking = cognitive organ of understanding Speaking = affective organ of willing	The only freedom we have is loving to act from the spiritual principles in Sacred Scripture. To act from one's own principles or that of someone else, is to be a slave to our inherited and evil ego.
15.  Let us meet in a place with no fences, endless sky, boundless potential, opening from the heart.	Let us meet = our desire to share spiritual truths with others who love good (Erecting) fences = mental states in which we falsify the truths in Sacred Scripture A place with no fences = our mental states that correspond to truths of Sacred Scripture Endless sky = endless progression in understanding deeper spiritual truths through our cognitive organ Boundless potential = endless progression in loving and willing these deeper spiritual truths through our affective organ Opening from the heart = the remains of our mental states of good and innocence that God preserves for our afterlife in the spiritual mind	In our heavenly mental states, our feelings, thoughts, and actions operate from the truths of Sacred Scripture that we have acquired and honored. In that state of mind, our intelligence develops endlessly and our abilities are endlessly extended to eternity. This is made possible by God who preserves all our states of innocence and good will, and preserves them for our eternity.
16.  To be annoyed by our restrictions is natural. To be free of them, is Yoga.	Our restrictions = wanting what is not heavenly To be annoyed = suffering negative consequences or experiencing negative emotions To be free = wanting what is heavenly or what is according to truth from Sacred Scripture Yoga = reformation of our character according to spiritual truth from Sacred Scripture (spiritual wisdom)	We stop enjoying life and being happy when we want what is contrary to the spiritual truths in Sacred Scripture. To regain our enjoyment and zest of living we can compel ourselves by spiritual discipline to stop wanting what is not heavenly, and to start wanting what is heavenly.
17.  Practice with effort, then letting go of the results of that effort.	Practice with effort = performing things as-if from self Letting go = attributing to God the power or efficacy of our effort Results of that effort = the works of Divine Providence which is in every detail of our lives	Our power to achieve things as-of self is the power of God cooperating and acting in our service. We endlessly increase in power to the extent that we attribute our power  to God empowering us for the sake of our spiritual development and eternity.

18.  To be kind to others and to ourselves is as natural as a flower opening in the sun.	To be kind = to avoid feeling and thinking denigrating things about someone As natural as a flower = to feel and think from heavenly sentiments and truths Opening in the sun = to receive spiritual heat and light from the Spiritual Sun of eternity	We receive goods and truths from God into our unconscious spiritual mind. We can have these now if we admit them into our conscious natural mind, which is done by always avoiding thoughts and feelings that are denigrating to someone.
19.  To forgive weakness in others is to recognize and forgive weakness in ourselves.	To forgive others = being kind = to avoid feeling and thinking denigrating things about someone To forgive ourselves = assessing ourselves in terms of how we affect others Weakness = inherited enjoyment of what is not good To recognize weakness in ourselves = acknowledging that we are in need of reformation of our inherited character	Being kind to others consists of caring how we affect them, realizing that everyone is born with an attraction to what is not good. We are as much as others, in need of changing how we think and feel about others.
20.  Bowing to the teaching that lies inside the heart, and the teaching is forgiveness, and forgiveness starts with oneself.	Bowing = accepting an idea as spiritual truth from Sacred Scripture or God  Teaching that lies inside the heart = the correspondential sense extracted from Sacred Scripture The teaching is forgiveness = all the Divine commandments summarized into one is the commandment to stop being unkind  to others Forgiveness starts with oneself = we are to  assess ourselves by how we affect others	Genuine spiritual truths are obtained by extracting the spiritual meaning of Sacred Scripture. The chief spiritual truth is that we must stop feeling and thinking denigrating things about others. Only then can we become kind and caring.

You can see for yourself from the above analysis that Yoga Wisdom, viewed in the correspondences of Sacred Scripture, is similar to theistic psychology, which is extracted by correspondences from Sacred Scripture (see Section xx).

10.10.1.1  The Correspondential Meaning of Asanas (Postures)

Let us examine the spiritual meaning of some Yoga asanas or body postures that are familiar to all who practice Yoga as a form of exercise.

From Wikipedia at:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asana

In the Yoga sutras, Patanjali describes asana as the third of the 8 limbs of classical yoga (raja yoga). These eight limbs are the yamas (restrictions), niyamas (observances), asanas (postures), pranayama (breath work), pratyahara (sense withdrawal or non-attachment), dharana (concentration), dhyana (meditation), and samadhi (realization of the true self and/or unity with god).^[6]

Asanas are the physical movements in a yoga practice. In combination with pranayama or breathing techniques, it constitutes hatha yoga.^[7] In the Yoga sutras, Patanjali describes "asana" simply as sitting meditation, suggesting meditation to be the path of samadhi, or self-realization.

(...)

Main article: list of hatha yoga postures

Sukkasana Easy Pose	Uttanasana Standing Forward Bend	Paschimottanasana Intense stretch of the west	Balasana Child's Pose
Adho Mukha Svanasana Downward Facing Dog	Bhujangasana Cobra	Dhanurasana Bow	Halasana Plow
Urdhva Dhanurasana Upward Bow	Sarvangasana Shoulder Stand	Shirsasana Head Stand	Shavasana Corpse Pose

Yoga Asanas (Body Positions) and Expressions	Correspondences from Sacred Scripture	Spiritual Meaning or theistic psychology
Namaste (the God in me greets the God in you)	God in me = the influx into our mental organs of spiritual good and light from the Spiritual Sun from God God in you = the acknowledgement of God's influx of good into every human being Salutes = acknowledgment or recognition of every human being as belonging to God	By saluting others with Namaste, we are affirming our deep spiritual commitment to honoring the good in every human being. The gesture symbolizes love for one's neighbor and commitment not to hurt the good in the neighbor in any way.
Guru (spiritual teacher)	Spiritual teacher = someone who represents the knowledge of spiritual truths from Sacred Scripture Guru = someone who teaches spiritual truths, not from himself or herself, but from Sacred Scripture	No one possesses spiritual truths from oneself, but only from Sacred Scripture. God is the sole source of spiritual truths in Sacred Scripture. Those who study and teach these spiritual truths out of love for truth, are noble and honored in the eyes of heaven and God.
Yoga Asanas (positions)	Yoga positions or asanas = various mental states as we go through character reformation and regeneration. The physical shape and form of the position, and the physical effort required on each body part, all correspond in detail to the structure or form of a particular mental state or necessary phase of development. These include having particular feelings, thoughts, and sensations.	Yoga is the practice of symbolizing spiritual truths and principles through precise body poses and movements. Each pose is recognized as one particular spiritual truth or principle given to us by Sacred Scripture. The physical effort involved in learning and performing each precise position, represents the mental effort required by modifying our reactions, thinking, and intending from less good to more good, reaching for perfection from God, who inflows into this mental effort and creates a heaven in our mind.
Prayer posture (hands together in front of the chest)	Prayer = communication and connection with God	Affirming our obedience to God and worship of God. Affirming our total dependence on God for all things no matter how small.
Bowing the head	Bowing = acknowledging the Divinity of God as Omnipotent, Omniscient, and Omnipresent	Affirming our recognition of God's presence in every detail, managing our mind, our lives, and our eternal future.
Our greatest potential lies in the realm of no ego. Let us meet there.	Our greatest potential = becoming a heavenly character Realm of no ego = shunning evils as sins Let us meet there = striving to achieve	Our inherited evil character can be regenerated into a heavenly character when we compel ourselves to resist doing and thinking the evil things that we enjoy.
Shevasana (corpse position)	Corpse = resuscitation, awakening in the spiritual mind of eternity; inner breathing or the breathing of the spirit body	Affirming our recognition of immortal life. Symbolizing our resuscitation at death in the spiritual mind of eternity.
Breathing: inhaling (deliberately and through the nose)	Inhaling = receiving influx of good and truth from God (descending line)	Affirming God's omnipresence with each breathing act -- inhaling -- corresponds to the influx of spiritual good and truth from heaven, which is life from God.
Breathing: exhaling (deliberately and through the nose)	Exhaling = acting in accordance with the good and truth received from God (ascending line)	Affirming our responsibility in the face of God with each breathing act -- exhaling --  corresponds to our behavioral intentions, or what we are moved to do for others.
Gesture of no fear (right hand raised facing outward, left hand by the side facing up)	Gesture = affirmation and communication No fear = reliance on God's loving Divine Providence in every detail of our life Right hand = giving Left hand = receiving	The gesture of no fear symbolizes our determination to see God's omnipotent management of every possible detail of our daily life and experience. We do this by balancing receiving and giving, descending and ascending.
Warrior pose	Warrior = resistance to temptations by means of truths from Sacred Scripture	The warrior pose symbolizes our commitment to resist doing what is bad or hurtful.
Rabbit pose	Rabbit = purification from falsities	The rabbit pose symbolizes our readiness to do what it takes to purify our false ideas that keep us in the enjoyment of evil.
Child pose	Child = innocence and obedience to God's truths and commandments	The child pose symbolizes our desire to be obedient to God and God's truths in Sacred Scripture.
Crane pose	Crane, swan = marriage love at the external or male dominant level of relationship between husband and wife	The crane pose symbolizes the first of three stages of marriage love between soul mates. It is in the natural mind. This is the natural marriage that is temporary and does not continue in the afterlife in eternity.
Bird of paradise  pose	Bird of paradise = marriage love at the middle or equity level of relationship between husband and wife	The bird of paradise pose symbolizes the second of three stages of marriage love between soul mates. It is in the spiritual mind. This is the spiritual marriage that continues in the afterlife in eternity.
Dove pose	Doves = marriage love at the inmost or unity level of relationship between husband and wife	The dove pose symbolizes the last of three stages of marriage love between soul mates. It is in the celestial mind. This is the celestial marriage that continues in the afterlife in eternity.
Meditation	Meditation = study and reflection on the spiritual truths in Sacred Scripture	Taking time out from our daily physical concerns of duty and work, in order to study and reflect upon the spiritual truths revealed in Sacred Scripture.
Right hand above left hand	Right hand = spiritual power of loving what is good Left hand = spiritual power of loving what is true Above = superior or more excellent spiritually, closer to God	Right hand over left hand is a symbolic gesture affirming our closeness to God though our love for what is good.
Left hand above right hand	Left hand above right hand = truth without good in it	Left hand above right hand is acknowledging that we are not yet fully in the order of God because we are  elevating truth above good, and that is the opposite of what God does and wants for us.
Earth-Rain Link movement	Earth = our conscious natural mind and its contents from experience and knowledge Rain = natural truths or scientific knowledge about the physical world	The earth-rain movement symbolizes the distinction of our natural life on earth from our spiritual life in eternity. In order to understand our spiritual life we need first to acquire ideas, concepts, and principles of the natural world in the natural mind.
Sun-Moon Link movement	Sun = the Spiritual Sun's aura surrounding God in eternity; love in the affective organ Moon = faith in the cognitive organ	We have two lives, one consisting of love or good from God, and the other consisting of faith or truth from Sacred Scripture. .
Lotus movement unfurling at the chest	Lotus flower = doctrine of truth and life from Sacred Scripture Unfurling at the chest = applying the doctrine of truth to willing and intending	The unfurling of the lotus movement at the chest region symbolizes the affirming that Sacred Scripture gives us the teaching or doctrine of truth that we must apply to our daily willing, thinking, speaking, and acting.
Sun salutations	Sun = God and the Spiritual Sun Morning, East = looking to God for enlightenment Saluting = affirming our relationship to God	Performing the sun salutation sequence of movements represents our looking to God for enlightenment and reaffirming our eternal relationship to God.
Heart Center (chest area)	Heart = affective organ of the will	The heart center represents our willing and intending, from which all else in us depends. If our willing is good, then our thinking, speaking, and acting will be good. If our willing is bad, then our thinking, speaking, and acting will be evil.
Touching one's forehead ("third eye") with the hands in prayer posture	Forehead = acknowledgment of our relationship to God Hands = our power to intend and do Touching = conjoining, uniting with	Touching the forehead with hands in the prayer position symbolizes our intention to think and speak only what is good so that we may get closer to God.
Feel the body grounded, one with the universe	Body grounded = the mind arranged in the order of heaven One with the universe = obedient to God's order	Affirming our connection to God through the truths of Sacred Scripture taken up into our understanding.

From the above analysis it is clear that people from all religions are able to affirm and confirm the spiritual truths that are symbolized in the performance of yoga postures and movements (asanas).

Most Americans who practice yoga postures as a beneficial physical exercise become familiar with a a few yoga words or expressions that are used by teachers and books. Let us analyze the correspondential sense of some of these to see how their spiritual meaning is congruent with the Sacred Scripture that is familiar to Americans, namely, the Old Testament, the New Testament, the Writings of Swedenborg, and the Koran (or Qu'ran).

When these yoga expressions are viewed in the literal sense, then their meaning and message is associated with the religions and cultures of India and the related spiritual philosophy called Buddhism. Similarly, when the New Testament is viewed in its literal sense by Christians, that spiritual message is rejected by Jews who rely only on the literal sense of the Old Testament, and also rejected by Islam, which relies on the literal sense of the Koran. Again, when one reads the Writings of Swedenborg in their literal sense, as do the members of the New Church (see Section xx), then the Christians, the Jews, and the Muslims reject it altogether as opposed to their religion.

So it is clear that the literal meanings of Sacred Scriptures, from all the major religions or cultures on this earth, appear to be opposed to each other, or in some way contradictory to each other, and hence unacceptable to each other.

 Swedenborg tells us that the ancient peoples on this earth, at the beginning of recorded history, also had different versions of Sacred Scriptures, and yet they never fought over religion or doctrine. Why not? What made them so peaceful to each other despite the differences in their cultural and religious beliefs about God?

The reason is that the ancient nations at one point, mostly focused on the correspondential sense of their Sacred Scripture. 

They could plainly see that the correspondential sense was the same regardless of the literal version in each culture and religion.

This is because the literal version was originally written by prophets or ancestors who studied and understood what they called the "science of correspondences" (see Section xx). Swedenborg tells us that at the historical beginning of written languages, writers always wrote in correspondences. Much later, after the science of correspondences was forgotten and lost, writers began writing in natural meanings, thus producing books, textbooks, manuals, and stage plays or fiction. By the time the Sacred Scriptures were written in Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Islam, Christianity, and New Church, all of it was written in a natural language describing visions and historical events. Since the science of correspondences was lost and forgotten, no one suspected that their own Sacred Scripture was written in the language of correspondences.  

The effect of this lack of knowledge of correspondences over the past millennia has been that all religions and doctrines about God and eternity, are based strictly on the literal sense of Sacred Scripture. This necessarily creates religions that are ethnic or cultural, and hence opposed to one another.

But by the 18th century God had gradually shaped the human mind on this earth that the era of modern science began and continued to develop. Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-172) was the first scientist prepared by God since his childhood, to develop the first modern scientific mind who could comprehend correspondences, integrate it into modern science, and explain it scientifically and rationally to others. This he accomplished in the collection of his 30 volumes, which in theistic psychology are called the Writings of Swedenborg Sacred Scripture (see Section xx).

Today theistic psychology has become possible because modern science is being taught in all public schools and universities across the globe. We can now translate all of the literal meanings of Sacred Scriptures in all religions, proving that they are compatible with each other since every Sacred Scripture in correspondences is Divine Speech, the Speech of the one God of creation and eternity (see Section xx).

10.10.1.2  The Correspondential Meaning of Mudras

 

The Abhaya "No-fear" Mudrā represents protection, peace,