Yoga is a holistic approach to well-being. It helps to free us from physical, emotional stress but it is not a tool to acquire Self-knowledge or Brahma Gnana or Athma Gnana.+

Yoga is a holistic approach to well-being. It helps to free us from physical, emotional stress, but it is not a tool to acquire Self-knowledge or Brahma Gnana or Athma Gnana.

Manduka Upanishads:- Those who want Brahman will not practice control of the mind. That is Yoga for duffers. The others will inquire and practice discrimination. (p.231)

Sage Sankara in the commentary to "Brahma Sutras" "The highest beatitude is not to be attained by Yoga." (Sacred Books of the East Series page 298 Vol. 1.) And he also says Samadhi is the same as sleep (p.312)-- which indicates that yoga is not the means to Self-realization. And yogic Samadhi is not Advaitic -awareness.

Panchadasi: - ‘The impossibility of yoga arrives at a successful end to its practices. (P.509 v, 109)

Brih Upanishad: page 32:~ "Yoga does not yield truth or liberation."

One may read all philosophical, yogic, and cosmological teachings, but in the end, it finally says, "All is imaginative."

Brihad Upanishad: ~ It too declares Yoga cannot give you the truth.

Sage Sankara says: - Yoga is not the means of liberation. (one thirty-two and thirty-three of his commentary on Brihadaranyakopanishad).

Brihad Upanishad. (Page one thirty-three- first para):- Even yoga cannot give perfect concentration, and the only way to gain it is through philosophical realization. This confirms the Manduka Upanishads' statement that yoga can no more succeed than the ocean can be emptied with a blade of grass. (Page 133 – first para)

In Sutra Bashya and Manduka: ~ Samadhi and sleep are identical.

Brihad Upanishad does not advocate Samadhi.

Avadhuta Gita:-“The Atman cannot be purified through the practice of the six limbs of the yoga, or through the annihilation of the mind, or through the instruction of a teacher. The Atman is the Reality Itself and It is Purity Itself."

Ashtavakra Gita: ~ The fool tries to control the mind with the mind - what folly! The wise one delights in Self alone. There is no mind to master.

Upanishad and one will see that it says Atman, the Self is known by Reason alone, by the sharpened and Soulcentric intellect. Yet still, people worship Yoga and mysticism as the sole means of attaining Atman. The illuminations gained by yoga or by trance states are always temporary ones.

The essence of Mundaka is: Do not be satisfied with rituals, yoga, etc., which are good in their own way, but inquire. Into what? Brahman and Atman are things you can never see. So do not inquire into them. Inquire into the world around you, which you can see. Science tells you it is passing away every second. Everything is dying repeatedly. Where is it going? Thus, you follow up your inquiry into what you can lay your hands on. How can you inquire into Atma, which you cannot see? So, first we deal with the known and seen; this inquiry leads up to the unknown in the end.

Ish Upanishad declares: ~ “Those people who have neglected the attainment of Self-knowledge and have thus committed suicide.

Those people who have neglected the attainment of Self-knowledge and have thus committed suicide, as it were, are doomed to enter those worlds after death. This is a condemnation of people who do not try to attain Self-knowledge. They are, in a real sense, committing suicide, for what can be worse than being a slave to sense enjoyment, completely oblivious of the real purpose of life, which is to be one’s own master? ~ Santthosh Kumaar