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Pitfalls of Yoga for Western Students
by sadh Sunday, Oct 6 2013, 12:36pm
international / prose / post

This short paper addresses the most common mistake western students make when engaging traditional eastern practical philosophies, Yoga in particular.

It is most unfortunate for westerners that most Yoga texts are rendered into English using the word ‘control’ when in actuality Eastern adepts are referring to ‘mastery,’ as control is a symptom of conservative ‘anal panic,’ which finds its genesis in the cocaine induced paranoid delusions of Sigmund Freud, a materialist (as was Marx) Jew by indoctrination.

Freud erroneously interprets human psychological development in terms of stages of control -- a very culture specific Judeo-Christian view, “subdue the earth” etc, from the OT -- imagine an Inuit or Australian Aboriginal confronting continuous nature (infinity) with little or no differentiation between somatic and psychological states, as something to be controlled or ‘subdued!'

Freud’s brain, amply fuelled on cocaine, viewed infants’ sphincter movements as the first stages of attempting to control one’s environment when reality dictated quite plainly that the motion Freud was referring to was simply shitting or bowel evacuation. However, few people are able to escape their inculcated cultural beliefs/ideologies regardless of how elaborately disguised their attempts may appear. Freud, like Marx (replacing God with ‘gold’) was simply re-presenting his materialist Jewish ideology through cocaine induced delusions.

Control is an imperative of the sick western conservative mind, which as we should be aware, cannot tolerate anything outside its influence; when conservatives encounter something new they must either control or kill it! Just look at America today with global surveillance, indefinite detention, presidential kill lists, permanent war and totalitarian police/TSA regulatory impositions on freedoms enshrined and guaranteed in the Constitution and Bill of Rights. So it is almost automatic to take for granted our tendency as westerners to achieve via control.

We have seen the results of this perverse world view with polluting interventions into the natural world, which now affects all life on earth -- a resounding endorsement of western perversity, no doubt! The difference between mastery and control should now be clear, one is a constructive while the other a destructive force/pursuit.

As an example of a western misinterpretation of Yoga, when we read pranayama is “gaining control over the prana” or universal vital principle, which nothing is able to control but everything is able to flow or harmonise with, we are able to appreciate why so many western students fail to achieve quiescence.

Traditional Taoist and Buddhist practices are less prone to these errors as they dispense with all notions of mastery and control. Readers would note that ‘desire,’ which is the root of ‘control,’ is anathema to Buddhism and is addressed as a serious cause of failure.

The safest and simplest way to achieve calm is to let go -- the universe is perfect and requires no assistance from terrestrial fleas attempting to exercise control over it (themselves) when the optimum method of gaining union is simply to harmonise with existence via release. We are not outside the ‘flow,’ however, attempting to control anything immediately severs our connection to harmony/infinity.

Peace and best of luck with your pursuits.