Origins of Yoga - Part 2 : The rise of the Vedas

The Indus Valley culture lasted until the middle of the second millennium B.C. No one knows for certain how or why it disappeared. All we know is that contemporaneous with it thrived another, equally enigmatic culture, that of the Aryan people, who grouped themselves around the Saraswati river, now underground.

Their sacred wisdom was encoded in the Vedas, which are man's oldest records of knowledge and the only surviving evidence of the Aryan civilization. They are richly poetic, sensuous descriptions of the eternal drama of the creation, maintainence and dissolution of the universe, and are said to be truths intuited by enlightened Seers (Rishis)  at the beginning of this cosmic cycle. They have been passed down orally through a hereditary of Pundits to the present day. 

In their written form they are Sacred books of Hinduism - that loosely related group of religious beliefs and practices that is the offspring of Vedic and indigenous cultures. Indeed they are still revered as the fount of all knowledge of orthodox Hindus, who regard them as textbooks of eternal truth (santana dharma).

The Aryans saw no fundamental difference between the material and spiritual worlds, or  between the realms of mind and matter. Therefore it was of utmost importance that thought, speech and action be life-supporting - in harmony with all other levels of the universe.

As they lived by a code that sought to embrace all aspects of life, their society was organized as a microcosm of natural order. This was probably the origin of the later caste system.

One group of Vedic texts, the Upanishads, is specially concerned with Yoga. The oldest of the Vedic texts, tells us that this knowledge is eternal and absolute, because it dwells in the imperishable transcendental field of life.(Rig Veda).

The word Upanishad literally means to sit near, and this invokes the image of devotees or aspirants sitting at the feet of a master. Whether that master is a yogi, Zen master or Christian mystic, the transmitted teachings can be called a Upanishad. In fact, Juan Mascaro comments that the Sermon on the Mount, with the disciples at the feet of Jesus, can be considered a Upanishad.

The Upanishads which concern us in this context are of course the writings that sealed the close of the Vedic period, a great collection of spiritual texts which are the distillation of hundreds of years of oral teachings, which, until their committal to writing, were the secret preserve of the initiated. The Upanishads contain the highest wisdom, revealed to illumined sages in the depth of meditation. As such, one should not describe them as philosophy as we understand it. The Upanishads emphasise the importance of meditation and other yoga practices, so that their wisdom becomes clear as our hearts and minds become less opaque; we then realise for ourselves a wisdom that we feel in the marrow of our bones, and which remains constant and unshaken by the dry polemic of philosophical argument. The Chandogya Upanishad states that meditation is higher than thought.

The Upanishads are rendered in beautiful poetry, and wisdom is taught by sages, by the elements, by birds and animals, by father to son, and sage to king. We enter the timeless world of the "forest academies" where seekers sought out bramha-vidya, the "science of the Supreme". Eknath Easwaran describes them as ecstatic snapshots of supreme reality", and adds that unlike other great scriptures that look outward in reverence and awe, "the Upanishads look inward, finding the powers of nature only an expression of the more awe-inspiring powers of human Consciousness.