The Perfection of Yoga (Srila B.A. Paramadvaiti Maharaj)

Yoga.* Gurumaharaj from Kurukshetra, Berlin, 2013. Intimate, sweet, to the core.

"Deep yoga, inbound yoga – there you find your priorities."

"[The Srimad Bhagavatam] is telling us [about] the perfection of the yoga system. What is that perfection of yoga? That which removes all the illusion in our life and establishes us in a healthy and wholesome way."

"If you want to gain entrance into the real world of yoga, you have to find somebody who is the perfect yogi. The perfect yogi is the person who is surrendered to Yogeshvara. Yogeshvara is the master of all yogis. He is the Lord Himself, He is the Ishvara."

"Don't think that you can get all this information just by a few weeks of making a few exercises. [–] I've studied this topic for 42 years and I'm feeling that I'm just getting to the entrance."

"What is the essence of all this? This is really the most important question to ask."

"The [Vrinda] Inbound Yoga System is giving us a chance to become a member of that group of people who want to become instruments of Divine Love. The Instrument of Divine Love-yoga is really where everything you do has something to do with your connection with Ishvara."

"We have to also understand that of all the yogas, the most ecstatic execution of communion is when we pray to the Holy Name [chanting the Hare Krishna maha-mantra]: when we invoke the presence of Ishvara in our life to become an instrument of His. No yoga exercise is comparable to that. Even if you do the most incredible and difficult yoga exercises, it has nothing to do with that intensive conclusion and dedication: My Lord, let me be an instrument of Your love."

"I'm not doing yoga just for my self-improvement, my yoga is a kind of an expression of my wanting to be connected with Him."


____________________________________________________________
*Yoga (From Wikipedia):

The sanskrit word yoga has two possible roots: the word for yoke (as in yoking of oxen or horses), and the word for concentration. 

In the first case it means "to add", "to join", "to unite", or "to attach" in its most common literal sense, from the root yuj. This way yoga also takes on meanings such as "connection", "contact", "union". 
By figurative extension from the yoking of oxen or horses, the word has taken on broader meanings such as "employment, use, application, (compare the figurative uses of "to harness" as in "to put something to some use"). The same compound is also given a technical meaning in the Yoga Sutras (2.1), designating the "practical" aspects of the philosophy, i.e. the "union with the Supreme". (The union referred to in yoga is thus not a union of the body and the soul, as is often found in more west-oriented teachings, but of the soul and the Supreme.)

In the second case it means "to concentrate", from yuj samādhau (to concentrate). In this case it means an accumulation of a person's all powers, a concentration of the forces to one single point, a "to skill elevated contemplation": samadhi. Vyasa who wrote the first commentary on the Yoga Sutras states that yoga means samādhi (concentration).