Work · South Asian & Tibetan Philosophy
Raja Yoga
New York lectures with a translation of Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra: yoga as a science of the mind open to everyone.
Introduction
Vivekananda had come to the United States in 1893 for the Parliament of the World’s Religions in Chicago. In New York in 1895–96 he gave classes on yoga, which he published in London in 1896 together with his own translation of and commentary on Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra. He presents raja yoga, “royal yoga”, the yoga of mental concentration, as an experimental science that demands no faith, alongside the paths of work, devotion and knowledge. Breathing exercises and prana are explained partly in the language of the physiology and psychology of his day. Historians of modern yoga such as Elizabeth De Michelis regard the book as a founding text of modern yoga in the West.
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Connections
Builds on
- Yoga Sutrac. 400 · Patanjali
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