One of the many religion classes I took was called World Religions. I was pretty psyched about it as I was more than ready to expand my personal understanding of spirituality. I began learning in earnest about the strange and beautiful religions of the world; religions that for one reason or another made their mark on humankind and continue to. I learned in this surprisingly liberal academic environment about other denominations of Christianity like Mormonism and Lutheranism, but also religions that were foreign to me like Buddhism, Hinduism, Zoroastrianism, the Metu Neter, Judaism, Islam and lots more.

It’s been 25 years since college and my interest has not rested. The internet has been a magnificent resource for education and has expedited and satisfied much of my desire to know. The web is a miracle of sorts for those of us who once scoured encyclopedias, library reference systems and the yellow pages.

I like to look at religions from different angles and sides:

· What does the religion believe? How do they interpret and define the divine?

· What type of direct practice does the religion offer the entity?

· How open and clear are the leaders about the practice?

· What is the religions relationship with psychology?

· What type of evidence does the founder or followers offer in regard to direct spiritual experience?

It is popular to say that yoga is not a religion but I beg to differ because:

- Yoga is a set of specific practices for purposes of transcendence.

- Yoga involves belief in supernatural people. (See Bhagavad Gita, Yoga Sutras and/or Hatha Yoga Pradipika.)

Whether I like it or not, Yoga meets the definition of religion. A practice of the yogic religion may involve just yourself and God and the requirements. It could be you and a group of other believers, God, and the requirements. Or it might just be you and your guru, God, and the requirements.

Whatever the case, yoga is most certainly, as Wikipedia states “a cultural system of behaviors and practices, world views, sacred texts, holy places, ethics…that relate humanity to what an anthropologist has called "an order of existence". Different religions may or may not contain various elements, ranging from the divine, sacred things, faith, a supernatural being or beings or some sort of ultimacy and transcendence…"

So why should I say it loud and proud that Yoga is my religion?

Why should I?

Probably for the same reason other people are so happy when they find their religious path to the God they love.

Something happens in the heart.

1. It swells with joy. It must have been what Carl Boberg felt when he wrote the poem that became the hymn, “How Great Thou Art.”

'"Then sings my soul, my savior God to thee!

How great thou art! How great Thou Art!"

Yoga is the path for me to get to the abode of the Lord who I am inherently, spiritually-attracted to. But I had to find it.

I believe that the God of your heart, of your destiny, attracts you, waits for you and in the right circumstances can cause you to want to be devoted, want to worship, want to serve - if you only you are informed, conscious and sensitive to Him or Her. If only we weren't so distracted by other things.

And that is really what it took for me. Eliminating a lot of distractions. Social, dietary, media, all kinds of distractions were curbed and I still work on it every day. There’s always more to do but it’s a joyous kind of work, the kind we are lucky to have the opportunity to explore if not fighting for our lives here on this dog eat dog Earth. I had to follow higher instincts and keep going. Keep learning and keep meditating. Keep exploring my own heart and consciousness, developing spiritual insight as to who I am and who I actually relate to.

When I look back upon my efforts as a child trying to connect with the Jewish prophet Jesus, I now realize those efforts were also instinctive, yet circumstantial. Once I was free of the environment requiring my devotional cooperation, I came to accept that neither of us,

Jesus nor I, had an especially strong attraction for one another.

It’s nothing personal. Yet it is.

Deeply.

I was God-less for some time in those early days of exploring. And even though I had taken on the Yoga mantle I did not yet know why. I just knew I was strongly attracted to it. As I studied Hinduism I came to understand Yoga as the supreme path, the final endeavor a human can execute to ascend from this place.

It was not the yoga I found in yoga studios though, but rather the Yoga in the holy books.

The religious Yoga – the kind that makes the soul start to sing.

As I explored the principles found in the Yoga Sutras, it excited my inner need for advanced psychological study. Overwhelmingly. It met my needs for inducing direct supernatural experiences into my life, astral projections and lucid dreaming. It met my needs on countless levels I didn’t even know existed.

After many years of teaching what I knew of Yoga, I eventually read and studied a worthy translation and commentary of the renowned Bhagavad Gita. My heart overflowed for this

Lord Krishna who convincingly claims Himself as the originator of Yoga in the Bhagavad Gita.

I had found my source deity when I finally got down to serious study of Yoga and its source texts – for inevitably one finds when putting the puzzle of Yoga together that all roads lead to Lord Krishna.

For some people it is Jesus, for others it is Siva, Durga, Zeus, Artemis, Ra, Osiris, Isis, Buddha or any of the innumerable supernatural beings. I was already really head over heels for Lord Krishna when I read an abridged version of the Mahabharata by Chakravarthi Narasimhan. This history of Krishna’s amazing pastimes with a family of great leaders, the Panavas, deepened my feeling of devotion toward him. Additionally I began paying attention to the beautiful scripture called the Srimad Bhagavatam which reveals the fantastic past times of Lord Krishna’s childhood and young adulthood.

Intuitively, Yoga is the path for me to get to where I want to go spiritually. If that is not religion I don’t know what is. Some people are scared of the word, many of them ex-Catholics like myself. But I am not scared even though I am aware of how very wrong religion can go when it is institutionalized by men/women. Institutionalized religion is what causes such damage to the word, not religion itself.

Therefore, it is safe to say, that Yoga is religious and it is a religion. Just because it’s an every soul for itself type of practice, does not preclude it from being considered a religion