The literature of the yoga, from Patañjali’s Yogasūtra to Sri Aurobindo’s The Life Divine, has been exuberantly esoteric in nature. Most of them have been tantalizingly ciphered in such a way that grasping them often appears to be a Herculean task for an ordinary person. Even our contemporary masters of yoga are not free from the charge.

Whenever the word ‘Yoga’ is uttered, a very conspicuous confusion arises in the mind of the ordinary folks as they are often beguiled by the popular misconception that yoga implies the strenuous practices of the āsanas and prāṇāyamas. However, theoretically speaking, it is not so. Indeed the āsanas and prāṇāyamas are indispensible parts of the yoga, but they are not the whole. Now, the question arises: ‘What is yoga?’

Here in this issue, the authors have tried to simplify things for common readers.