Yoga is the best-known practice of Hindu spirituality that is why it is incompatible with Catholicism. Inner Hinduism professes pantheism, which denies that there is only one infinite Being who created the world out of nothing.
They believe that they would be rewarded if they follow the ways of the gods that they worship and have a brief taste of heaven between successive rebirths on earth. To achieve this liberation the principal way is by means of concentration and self-control (yoga).
The spirituality of the Indians is perhaps best known by the practice of yoga, derived from the root yuj to unite or yoke, which in context means union with the Absolute.
A lot of stages are distinguished in the upward progress toward the supreme end of identification: by means of knowledge with the deity; the practice of moral virtues and observance of ethical rules; bodily postures; control of internal and external senses; concentration of memory and meditation finally terminating in total absorption (samadhi), when the seer stands in his own nature.
Although the psychic nature is way more valuable in yoga than the body, the body is the characteristic of this method of Hindu liberation.
Its purpose is to guard the best disposition of the body for the purpose of meditation. The practice begins with a simple device for deep and slow breathing.
The right nostril is stopped with the thumb, while the left nostril fills in the air, according to capacity. Then without any interval, He throws the air out through the right nostril, ejects through the left, according to capacity. The Hindus believe that practicing this three or five times at four hours of the day, in fifteen days or a month is said to purify the nerves.
After such preliminary exercises and more complicated practices are undertaken, but not without the guidance of a professional yogin, called a guru.
The meditative phase begins with fixing the mind on one object, which may be anything whatsoever, the sphere of the navel, the lotus of the heart, the light of the brain, the tip of the nose, the tip of the tongue, and such like parts of the body or also God, who on Hindu terms is the only real being who exists.
Gradually by the mere concentration of attention; the mind reaches a state of trance, where all mental activity stops and the consciousness rests in itself. The state of samadhi is the culmination of yoga and beyond it lies release. The life of the soul is not destroyed but is reduced to its unconscious and permanent essence.
