A Student's Guide to the History and Philosophy of Yoga - Revised edition - Peter Connolly
Background to Yoga Philosophy
A Student's Guide to the History and Philosophy of Yoga - Revised edition - Peter Connolly
Peter Connolly [+]
The Open University
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Peter Connolly (PhD) was, for many years, senior lecturer in Religious Studies at the University of Chichester, England, where he taught courses on Ethics, Indian Religion and Psychology of Religion. He has also worked as an associate lecturer in both Psychology and Religious Studies with the Open University and has delivered many courses on the history and philosophy of yoga for a number of yoga training institutions. He is fascinated by all forms of altered states of consciousness, has trained in Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) and hypnosis, and experimented with psychedelic chemicals and a variety of meditation techniques, including Divine Light, Lam Rim, Sant Mat, Transcendental Meditation and Buddhist Vipassana, all of which offer interesting perspectives on the psychology of religious experience.
Description
In order to understand the practices of mental and physical culture that go under the label of yoga it is useful to be aware of features in the Indian world view that make it different from its Western counterparts and provide a rationale for many of the teachings of different yoga schools. The Indian understanding of time, of human destiny and of the kinds of connections that exist between language, the physical world and the various realms within the physical world are all different from what is generally accepted in the West, and these differences can have quite a profound effect on how we make sense of yoga.