ABSTRACT
The great synthesis of the philosophy of the Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita, dealt extensively with the subject of Yoga. However, the approach in the Gita is very general. It amounts to more of a survey and description of the principal schools of Yoga, an "exposition" of Yoga, with special emphasis on the importance of Bhakti Yoga. The Bhagavad Gita was composed with the population at large in mind. The nature of Yoga is widely misunderstood in the West, where it is often thought of as dealing exclusively with rather unusual body postures and breathing exercises. The roots of Yoga are widely believed to reach far back into the pre-Vedic past. At the very beginning of the Yoga Sutras, Patanjali makes the following statement, which nails down the goal of Yoga. The Samkya tradition is a straightforward example of dualism, the belief that there are two, not one, two fundamental kinds of reality: material reality and non-material reality.
