App Detail » Ernest Wood's: Great Systems of Yoga

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Great Systems of Yoga
by Ernest Wood

This is a short review of the major schools of yoga, including Hindu, Buddhist and Sufi varieties. Wood, whose translation of the The Garuda Purana is also at this site, was a founding Theosophist and wrote extensively on Hinduism, and Yoga in particular. His works on the subject are written for Western readers, and where he needs to use Sanskrit or other esoteric terms, he takes care to explain them. He was a practicing Yogi for most of his lifetime.

Contents:
The Ten Oriental Yogas;
Patanjali's Raja Yoga;
Shri Krishna's Gita Yoga;
Shankaracharya's Gnyana Yoga;
The Hatha and Laya Yogas;
The Bhakti and Mantra Yogas.

About the Author:
"Professor Ernest Egerton Wood (18 August 1883 in Manchester, England; - 17 September 1965 in Houston, United States) was a noted yogi, theosophist and author of numerous books, including Concentration - An Approach to Meditation and Yoga.

He was also a Sanskrit scholar. Wood received his education at the Manchester College of Technology, where he studied chemistry, physics and geology. Because of an early interest in Buddhism and Yoga, he also started to learn the Sanskrit language. As a young man, Wood became interested in Theosophy after listening to lectures by the theosophist Annie Besant, whose personality impressed him greatly.

He consequently joined the society's Manchester lodge, then one of the world's largest, and in 1908 followed Annie Besant to India after she had become President of the Theosophical Society Adyar. Wood soon became one of her assistants, working in close contact with both Annie Besant and Charles Webster Leadbeater, who had arrived in Adyar in 1909. Due to his close working relationship with Leadbeater, Wood was in a position to observe the discovery of the boy Jiddu Krishnamurti by Leadbeater, who soon declared him to be the vehicle for the "coming World Teacher". Wood's own eyewitness account of the events surrounding this discovery is detailed in his autobiography, Is this Theosophy...?, published in 1936, and in two articles written after that. At the suggestion of Annie Besant, Wood became deeply engaged in educational work. Since 1910, he served as headmaster of several schools and colleges founded by the Theosophical Society. He became Professor of Physics, Principal and President of the Sind National College and the Madanapalle College, both teaching colleges of the Bombay and Madras Universities.

He actively promoted theosophical ideas by conducting lecturing tours and publishing numerous articles, essays and books on a variety of theosophical subjects, among them a Digest of Helena P. Blavatsky's Secret Doctrine. His lecturing led him to places all over India, and he also traveled to many countries in Asia, Europe, and the Americas. India stayed his place of residence until the close of World War II, when he relocated to the United States. It was only after becoming disillusioned about the future of the Theosophical Society that Wood started to devote himself primarily to a thorough study of the yoga ..." (Quote from sacred-texts.com)

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• June 20, 2014 New version 2.0