There is a reason why Chogyam Trungpa, one of the most influential teachers of Buddhism in history, named one of his first books “Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism”. Trungpa was far ahead of his time, and was wise enough to warn the people of the Western world, that the consumer culture that was thriving in in the West would not mix well with Buddhism, and in fact, it would make matters worse for those who sought to practice Buddhism, but did not acknowledge that they were unaware of the pursuit of what exists beyond the material world. Thus, we can use the lessons taught by Trungpa to guide us… yes, he is a Buddhist, but you do not have to be a Buddhist to see that he was right. The Church business has done quite well in modern capitalism, and what does not do well, disappears. This basic fact is what makes real spiritual nectar so evasive; we live in a place where if it does not profit, it dies. Thus, we must be real with ourselves; if we seek out yoga for the purpose of earthly gain, or if we seek a spiritual life because of the status or power that it gives us, we are playing into the hands of ego, one of the basic kleshas, the root causes of human suffering.

Avoiding spiritual materialism, or rigid dogmatism, is not easy because pursuing your spirit is frightening. Why is it frightening? The answer to this is in the yoga sutras. Human beings have a spirit, called a purusha. The spirit, or purusha (sanskrit), exists in a realm that is not necessarily manifested into the 3D time space continuum. In other words, purusha is not “real” if you want to define real as being measurable, or quantifiable. Yet, we see proof of purusha whenever we meditate, when we pray, or even see a beautiful sunrise. We may know that purusha exists, but we cannot quite grasp it.

Of course we cannot grasp it, because it isn’t there. This is not a mystery to the yoga sutras. The ancient yogis have already solved this riddle for you, and there is no longer any need to be concerned. Yoga is very clear that your spirit is quite separate from the physical realm. You may argue which one is superior to the other; this isn’t really the purpose of yoga. The purpose of yoga is to end suffering, so in order to end suffering, we seek out the root cause, and in yoga, the root cause is ignorance (avidya) of the distinction between matter (prakriti) and spirit (purusha). Thus, the concept of “union” and/or “one-ness” takes a back seat to pragmatism, where yoga tells you straightforwardly that you are two, and not one, in your current form (called a “jiva”). If you start to believe that you are god in your current form, you will suffer a terrible defeat and learn that you are nothing more than a human being. If you start to believe that there is no spirit within you, you will suffer from ignorance through not being aware of your eternal nature. Thus, it is important that we hold both of these facts concurrently, at the same time we heed the words of yoga teacher David Garrigues; we are of this world, and we are also not of this world but of someplace else.

Back to spiritual materialism. We can see why spiritual materialism is so common, because to quote Madonna (a former Ashtanga Yoga practitioner);

“we are living in a material world
And I am a material girl”

We are living in an age where our language, our education, and entire way of life is an indoctrination into the denial of spirit. We often times believe in spirit, but we do not believe we can access it. In fact, we have created a term “heavens” and often time we point up when we think of spirituality, because we must assume that if it is somewhere, it simply must exist in the material world. This is obviously silly, as the yoga sutras are very clear that the spiritual realm is amidst us, all around us, and within us. It is not something you can learn about through studying more and more about the material world, aside from the lessons taught from the catastrophes of reliving the temporary nature of the material world. A yogi not only embraces that the spiritual path means a weakening of the attachment to the material world, it also embraces the fact that as we get closer and closer to finding our true self that exists beyond this form, we find a type of peace that is unavailable to us any other way. When we begin to develop spiritually we find ourselves at peace, we become less stressed out, we become healthier; all of these things are byproducts of becoming connected, or in union, with the purusha, and this is why yoga creates health in our lives. That which created us, sustains us, heals us, and to which we return invariably. Yoga is a process of establishing a relationship with the part of us that exists beyond our bodies, beyond pain and suffering, and through that relationship, we come to find the truth of what we really are, and we see that this world is a game… a painful, delightful, tragic, beautiful game, that will come to an end for us. In discovering that the world is a game, we also discover why the game exists at all; we wanted this. We wanted to have experiences that would evolve us.

We are not in search of bringing more from the spiritual side into the material. We are not going on an acid trip and then tattooing OM symbols on our legs (or if we are, we are not worshipping our legs). We do not see the physical realm as a great place to store things up, in fact we see the physical realm, the 3 dimensional time space, as a place that is bound to destruction, and therefore, we recognize, without much insight required of us at all, that anything we bring to this place, will be gone very soon. The spiritual path is just that; spiritual. The very nature of pursuing your spirit requires you to look beyond the physical, and as a result, we become curious about what the spirit is, and that curiosity, if guided correctly, will find out.

Whatever you may believe about your spirit, you would likely not be interested in this kind of yoga, if you did not place a higher value on it than the average person. Dogmatism and spiritual materialism are for those who simply do not want to waste the time to explore the truth, and who may be too afraid what the truth may reveal about themselves and the world around them. They may be more interested in gaining attention, or bragging about their spiritual insights. They may feel safe by subscribing to an app, a church, a club, or some other organization that will appease their sense of estrangement from their spirit. But a person who is not willing to acknowledge the deep necessity of developing a relationship with your spirit, is not going to make the necessary sacrifices to draw close to it.

The person who wants to study yoga is not only open minded, but they are courageous. They are willing to abandon any concept or idea that goes against what they find to be true. They are the ultimate hypocrites; they realize that there is no contradiction whatsoever in believing something on day one, and completely denying that very same thing a day, or even a moment later. This lack of a base is what provides a path to finding a base which does not move; a spiritual base. We might find through the process of yoga that what we were practicing all along was only confirming our biases, and our commitment to ego. We might find through practicing yoga that we have played a nasty trick on ourselves, and convinced ourselves that we are something that we are not. If you are faced with this, please don’t worry, just keep going, its a natural part of the experience.

The Problem of “Religion”

When people who do not want to be indoctrinated into a set of religious beliefs, and who prize the claimed universality of yoga are often appalled to find that what they have been taught as the philosophy of yoga, is actually the philosophy of Eastern Religions; most commonly Hinduism and Buddhism.

While some folks do not appreciate religious ideals being blended into their yoga practice, others are delighted; they may see the religious worship as one one of the key values they sought in yoga. There are many people who did not find connection to a religion that was familiar to them, or was forced upon them, or perhaps they were brought up without religion at all, and the mysticism and exotic concepts of Eastern beliefs add flavor to their life in such a way that it enhances their yoga practice.

Either way you may see it, or in any other way you see it, consent matters, and often times people are studying yoga without actually knowing what it is, or at the very best, utilizing a great experience as a guiding principle to simply keep going, not really knowing the road ahead, what it will bring, or who or why it was drawn up and created. Many times we have seen people get neck deep into yoga, and then retreat (no pun intended) with great haste. It has also been the case that the most popular fad of yoga, goes out of style just as fast as it has gone in, and the former students find themselves on documentaries describing cultism, religious rituals they didn’t consent to, or even sexual assault, human trafficking, or other types of serious abuse.

Yoga as an industry has brought to the western world one of the most beautiful sciences of human history, but it has done so at great cost to the original intent, and it has created stigmas, stereotypes, and confusion for many people. So, one might ask if it is even possible to separate real yoga from the commodity that is sold to us, and the answer is yes, you just have to put in some effort, and be willing to trade off the spiritual materialism of the consumer culture around us, and instead accept a science that in many ways, is contrary to, and often times a direct rebellion against, the desire that human beings naturally have, to remain comfortable, to attain more, to overfill their cups, so to speak, with whatever it is they are enjoying at the time. Instead, to follow the science of yoga you must learn to be content (santosha) with less. You must learn to accept things as they are, to not avoid the pain associated with pleasure, but to embrace them as two sides of the coin of life. To be a true student of yoga, is to unite with your spirit (this is what “yoke” or “union” means in terms of yoga), as well as acknowledge your earthly form. Further, and perhaps most challenging, we must learn to identify with our spiritual presence and being, while at the same time having the humility to remain grounded in our physical bodies while we develop deeper understandings of just how ignorant and lost we really are… the courage to do that, for most of us, requires a path, a structure, and perhaps a teacher. That path, is yoga.