ABSTRACT
The “Origin”of Haṭha Yoga In yoga today, there is a widespread assumption that once, long ago, there was a pure and original yoga. This tradition is thought to have passed through a long lineage of adepts with a modest amount of change until it reached us in the modern era, where it has become contaminated with European Christian (or Buddhist or Muslim) notions and by the general tendency of contemporary capitalist culture to commodify everything. The sincere concern is voiced that what is sold as “yoga” in the West today is a derivative yoga that has transformed, and thereby lost, the core insights of the original yoga to the point that yoga and bhoga1 are not readily distinguishable. The concern is a diligent one, were it not complicated by the fact that many of the assumptions that underlie it are erroneous. Yet the intuition that animates this concern must be kept in play but with the condition that it becomes better informed about the actual circumstances of yoga and its evolution.
