MAGIC AND YOGA – LONG LOST TWINS FINALLY REUNITED! (Part One)

One of the salient differences between the Inner and Outer Worlds is that in the inner world one can construct something like a car without any effort, while in outer world it takes a lot of work and energy. Also in the inner world one can make things disappear, make people behave in any way one likes, create all sort of fantastical objects, change the past and create a definite future. From this we can observe that magic/wizardry can be interpreted as a way of trying to make the outer world and objects and people in it behave like the inner world. Thus magic can be seen as a way of attempting to transfer the properties of the inner world onto the outer world.

Could the concept of magic first have occurred to man wondering why he cannot manipulate, create and control the outer world objects as easily as the inner world objects.

Perhaps current public fascination with magic, as evidenced by popularity of Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings, could, at least partly, be attributed to the desire to impart some order onto the chaotic modern age world through the power of the mind.

MAGIC AND YOGA – LONG LOST TWINS FINALLY REUNITED! (Part Two)

Continuing on from the previous piece, we can now ask ourselves: Which human activity best fits the definition of transferring the properties of the Outer World onto the Inner World? We find that the practice of Yoga (the term “Yoga” I take to imply the intellectual and spiritual philosophy which originated in Ancient India rather than the physical exercises part) best fits this definition.

Consider the features of that quintessential example of the Outer World – the sky and in particular, the night sky. It is forever unchanging, utterly unaffected by any action of man or nature, overwhelming and all-encompassing in its serenity.

Could the concept of yoga have first occurred to a man staring at the night sky and wondering whether his inner world could acquire the same serenity, the same constancy, inflexibility and absolute resistance to any outer or inner force.

How liberating our lives would be if the properties of the inner and outer worlds were interchanged, so that we would have magical powers over the outer world and absolute yogic control over our inner world.

Instead we are left struggling all our lives, endeavoring to swap the properties of the two worlds, trying to make our inner world stable and serene and attempting to have at least some influence on the outer world.

Is it possible that Whoever created this world either punished us for some Original Sin, set a deliberate challenge to test our resolve to persevere or played a cruel practical joke on us all by intentionally reversing the inner and outer worlds’ features and thereby making our lives that much harder and complicated?

We can also see that magic and yoga are mirror images of each other, parallel processes both having the same aim – to interchange the properties of the Inner and Outer Worlds.

Note that if the above definitions of magic and yoga seem to be a little too simplistic and obvious it is only because we are so used to the way that we experience the Universe that we just automatically take it for granted that that's how the Inner and Outer Worlds are structured. We don’t give a second thought that we can so easily manipulate inner objects, just as we readily accept that we do not have the same powers of control over the outer objects. But this is an area that clearly needs to be investigated and explained, rather than just automatically accepted.