Yoga as Union — The Fundamental Meaning
The root meaning of 'Yoga' (from 'yuj' — to yoke, to join, to unite) points toward the fundamental purpose of all yoga practice: the reunion of the individual consciousness with its universal source.
The Sanskrit root 'yuj' from which 'yoga' derives has two primary meanings: to yoke (to join two things together, as in yoking oxen to a plow) and to concentrate (to bring to a point of focused intensity). Both meanings illuminate different dimensions of yoga's purpose: as yoking, yoga unites individual consciousness with universal consciousness — the individual Atman recognizes its identity with Brahman; as concentration, yoga brings the scattered, fragmented mind to a single point of pure, focused awareness. The two meanings are ultimately the same: it is precisely the scattered, fragmented mind that experiences itself as separate from everything else, and it is the concentrated, still mind that naturally recognizes its unity with the ground of all being. Thus the two most fundamental definitions of yoga — as concentration and as union — are two descriptions of the same transformation from opposite ends.
Yoga is union — the reunion of individual consciousness with its universal source.
Anthropologist Gregory Bateson's definition of mind as 'the pattern which connects' suggests that yoga's union is not merely a subjective experience but reflects something real about the nature of consciousness: that awareness itself is fundamentally relational, and the sense of separation is the anomaly that yoga removes.
Universal Wisdom