Essential traditional revelations on the profound and lasting beneficial spiritual transformation that comes about through the proper perseverant and enthusiastic practice of the multi-millennial yoga techniques (1)
By Nicolae Catrina
In this lecture we will seek to identify, on a traditional basis, what are the main ingredients, so to speak, of a highly effective yoga practice, of a yoga practice that brings with it the beneficial spiritual transformation of our whole being, a transformation that is at the same time profound and lasting.
We will also seek to answer the natural question “How do we integrate these true essential ingredients of spiritual effectiveness over and over again, not only in our yoga practice, but even in our everyday lives?” In other words, how can we achieve through yoga practice a genuine and lasting spiritual transformation, a transformation that will then last throughout our life?
Indeed, although today yoga is most often reduced merely to ordinary psychosomatic gymnastics, the systematic practice of yoga techniques for maintaining or regaining an excellent harmony of the physical body and a state of perfect health is only one of the countless gifts of the multi-millennial yoga tradition.
In reality, yoga is first and foremost a spiritual practice and also a profound philosophy of life. It is a practice meant to reveal to us the truth of our existence, to help and impulse us again and again to identify, become aware of and then completely detach ourselves from the illusions, projections, delusions and the ignorance with so many faces, that characterise the common human existence. But all these extraordinary results are not possible without a genuine spiritual transformation, without a clear and constant elevation of our prevailing level of consciousness.
Therefore, it can be said that the beneficial evolutionary spiritual transformation is the fundamental criterion for the effectiveness of the yoga practice, and a truly transformative yoga practice always involves integrating into it certain aspects, or we could say esoteric ingredients, without which the practice in question greatly diminishes or may even completely lose its transformative spiritual value, being then reduced to a mere physical activity.
It is also essential for us to remember that only a truly transformative yoga practice will reveal who we really are or what our purpose in this world is.
But what does spiritual transformation actually mean, concretely speaking, inclusively from the perspective of our everyday existence? If we were to describe and define the spiritual transformation from the concrete perspective of our daily lives, we could say that every genuine spiritual transformation reveals to us a clearly superior reality, a new way of being, of feeling, of thinking, of acting, which is much higher than the previous one. Thanks to a profound and genuine spiritual transformation, higher, even sublime facets of our being are also revealed to us, facets that we did not even suspect before.
Therefore, when we practice yoga for an extended and lasting spiritual transformation, it is absolutely necessary for us to acquire and maintain a higher level of consciousness at all times.
In concrete terms, this means thinking differently, feeling differently, acting differently than usual, and by different we of course mean something clearly and obviously superior to our previous ways of thinking, feeling and acting. Therefore, life itself constantly offers us countless objectifications of our spiritual transformation.
If, for example, in the same situation, we now, instead of reacting automatically, stereotypically, as we used to do before, answer to that situation consciously and wisely, this is a clear and indisputable proof that we are indeed spiritually transformed. But if we react in a similar way to situations similar to those in the past, we are clearly not transformed at all or almost not at all.
Our whole being, the subtle energies that animate our being, everything is superiorly different from our previous state.
This means that we have been spiritually transformed. On the other hand, if we are exactly the same person so to speak, i.e. we think, feel, live, act and react exactly as we did when we were not yet practicing yoga, it means that our yoga practice is severely undermined by the faulty way we are doing it at the moment. It means that our yoga practice is lacking those essential esoteric ingredients which, if present, would give it an amazing effectiveness.
It is also necessary for us to understand that the spiritual transformation truly manifests itself and is objectified only in the present moment, not in our imaginative projections or in our memories of, for example, a time in the past when we practiced yoga intensively and achieved wonderful spiritual states and experiences.
A true spiritual transformation gives us the freedom to live the present moment without being conditioned by various patterns and automatisms of thinking, feeling or acting. If we do not acquire this freedom to choose how we want to act in the present moment, then it means that the old behaviour habits, the old habits of our ego are preventing us, for the time being, from reaching a real state of spiritual transformation and, as a result, we end up acting over and over again, just as we did before practicing yoga.
We all know many cases of yogis and yoginis who, although they have theoretically been practicing yoga for many years, still face the same and the same problems, they remain conditioned by the same and the same patterns and automatisms in their thinking, in the way they interact with the others, in their emotional dynamics, in their love relationships, etc.
Such situations are, of course, by no means accidental. They reflect and highlight, in addition to the almost complete absence of those essential ingredients of the effectiveness of the yoga practice, also a deep, acute misunderstanding of the fact that the spiritual transformation, which certainly occurs through our adequate yoga practice, cannot stay, it cannot be lasting and stable if after having practiced yoga we live, think, react as we did before, when we were not yet practicing yoga. In other words, it is not enough, even in the case of an adequate spiritual practice, in which there are to some extent also those essential ingredients of its effectiveness, it is, therefore, not enough to feel different, in a superior way to how we were before that practice and almost immediately after we have finished our practice, to return to our old patterns and habits of thinking and behaving.
Such behaviour is as if, let’s say, we started the morning with a very healthy breakfast, but then, for the rest of the day, we eat only a food lacking in nutrients, an unhealthy food or, as it is often called, junk food. Obviously, that healthy breakfast cannot counteract or neutralise all these.
In order to achieve a true, stable and constant spiritual transformation, it is also necessary for us to align our behaviour, thinking, communication or interaction with the others as often as possible with our spiritual goals. For example, to align our thoughts with our actions, to make decisions that reflect our new existential condition.
It is necessary for us to live, to be in a state of superior occult resonance, as close as possible to the one we have during our yoga practice. If we really want everyone else, the entire universe to treat us in a superior way, different than before, it is absolutely necessary that our intentions, our thinking, our decisions correspond, as level of vibration, as state of occult resonance, to our level of consciousness that we reach in certain peak spiritual experiences. Only in this way will we achieve and maintain ourselves in a genuine superior state of spiritual transformation.
In practical terms, this implies a creative process on our part, a process by which, metaphorically speaking, we memorise and make permanent our new existential condition. For example, every time we have a decision to make, or when we have an important meeting, or in any event that is important to us, we can ask ourselves inside what we would say, what we would do, how we would walk, how we would feel, how we would talk, etc., if we were now what we aspire to be permanently, if we were now and always at that higher level of consciousness that we aspire to achieve.
It is very important and very necessary for us to act in this way, because let us not forget that previously, in so many years or in decades, we have maintained and reinforced more and more the old behaviour, decision-making or thinking patterns and habits and, in the absence of adequate, even exemplary attention, these old automatic mechanisms of our ego can easily return.
So, by doing this, we expand or extend more and more our yoga practice, our spiritual practice outside the period of explicit practice, that is when we perform the various yoga techniques and methods.
We can test ourselves, with the greatest ease, the objective level of our current spiritual transformation. Thus, it is enough for us to answer honestly and sincerely the question: Are we now at the same level of inner peace, spiritual detachment, wisdom, etc. that we have reached, for example, in the various yoga meditation techniques? Or are we now truly capable to respond in a different, superior and wise way to situations similar to those in which we previously responded in a stereotypical automatic way? Our honest answers to such questions will reveal the extent to which our spiritual transformation, which we have achieved through proper yoga practice, has begun to be also integrated into our everyday lives.
As to the deepening of self-knowledge through genuine spiritual transformation that is also integrated into our daily lives, it is necessary, from a traditional perspective, for this self-knowledge to encompass all the four so-called chambers of our personal lives.
The first of these four chambers comprises those aspects that are known both to ourselves and to the others. Here, in this room, symbolically speaking, is our public image. It is how we are generally known to everyone.
The 2nd room contains those aspects of our personality that we know but others do not. Here are those sides or facets of our personal lives beyond our facade or public image. Also present here are the various personal secrets, aspirations or hidden desires that are not told to anyone.
The 3rd room of our personal life comprises those aspects that are known to others but not to us. It is what others see in us, but we cannot see in ourselves. It may be different potentialities or qualities of which we are not yet aware and about which the others, for example close friends or loved ones, can give us revealing, very valuable information. This also includes those lower aspects which we cannot yet be aware of or which we refuse, even subconsciously, to admit, but which require, for a true spiritual transformation, to be completely known and then totally alchemised.
Finally, the 4th symbolic room of our personal life includes those aspects of us that neither we nor the others know. Here, in this most mysterious and hidden dimension of our being, all that exists is, for now, invisible to us, but perfectly visible to God. This is why the multi-millennial yoga tradition states that we can achieve a genuine and complete self-knowledge when we know ourselves through the eyes of God metaphorically speaking, when we allow God to reveal to us what we do not know and could not know about ourselves in the absence of the Godly revelation of our true, essential identity, which is called in the yoga tradition the supreme, immortal and Godly Self, Atman, in Sanskrit.
Therefore, to ignore God’s presence in our lives is in fact to ignore ourselves, that is to ignore our true identity. By ignoring or being almost completely unaware of God’s presence in our lives, we will always remain alienated from ourselves. But when, through proper and effective yoga practice, we enter this most mysterious room of our life, of our being, then both our essential identity, the one given to us from the very beginning by God Himself, our essential Self, Atman, and our spiritual destiny in this life, or our personal dharma in Sanskrit, will be revealed to us by God’s grace.
The vast majority of human beings spend almost their entire existence in the first symbolic room, that of superficial interactions, of the so-called public life, or in the second symbolic room, where they delude themselves into being what they actually are not.
Genuine self-discovery only begins to emerge in the 3rd and especially in the 4th symbolic room of our lives.
Only in this way do we stop being strangers to ourselves and realise that true inner freedom can only be found when we remove the masks and facades that protect our ego. But all of this requires a profound and above all honest self-observation on our part, and this will not always please our ego. However, if we truly aspire to spiritual transformation, to discover who we really are, beyond appearances, then this is the only viable and wise alternative for us.
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yogaesoteric
October 23, 2025
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