Why on earth did the ancient Indian sages create it at the first place?
They knew that the human brain eventually will evolve over time and will have the intelligence needed to decipher many things that nature speaks to us every moment in its own language since the beginning of time. But, they possibly also knew that equipped with the power of intelligence, a man can think and think and once in a while may lose the very direction he started with. They probably eventually felt the necessity to develop techniques to equip humans with the intelligence to control their intelligence.
Yog gives your soul a direction, which if walked along, will lead to a peaceful life, with the possibility of a bit of 'success' thrown in too.
It is so weird when we refer to the concept of 'soul'. I mean what is it? I was also bugged with this question many a times. I have head a lot of explanation on it, but to my dismay, found them not so perfect. They had their own loopholes. Eventually I gave it some thought.
I found out that the 'soul' we refer to every now and then, is another synonym for 'consciousness'. Our 'consciousness' gives meaning to everything we see, we hear, we touch, we think and perceive. But at the root, 'consciousness' is the resultant effect of the numerous electrons that flow through our brain. So, to me, eventually it seemed, the 'soul' is just the software running our brain. Our brain provides the basic circuitry on which, these electrons flow. Our brain actually has a lot of circuitry in the form of groups of neurons or nerve cells, which hold our memories and we retrieve our memories from them. And there is no denial that our 'consciousness' is just a vast collection of these memories lurking here and there in our brain in the form of these 'groups of neurons'.
When we die, the circuitry is destroyed, hence are the memories and thus the soul. So, I finally arrived at the conclusion that the soul is there in us till we are alive and after that, there is nothing. Because, all the memories that used to exist in the form of those neurons are not alive anymore and eventually they decay.
So, till the soul is in us, we have the chance to keep it satisfied, happy. Yog is the tool that will empower us to keep our soul healthy.
It is really weird as to how our health gets affected by the health of our soul. Have you ever noticed, when you are depressed, your health deteriorates? Well this brings us to the point where we can divide our soul into two parts, the one which we can voluntarily control and the other which we can't. But these two parts are pretty much related. You will notice that when you are depressed, there is something wrong with your voluntary part, right? But, then you become sick, may be because the involuntary part of your soul, which used to control your other bodily functions is adversely affected. May be your liver is not functioning properly and not cleaning your blood properly causing dark circle beneath your eyes or may be you are falling sick because your immune system is not working to the extent it should.
This phenomena where your voluntary part affects your involuntary part, thus affecting the quality of life you lead, was observed by those sages of the olden times. They somehow figured it out that, if we keep the voluntary part of our soul healthy, it will help to keep all those involuntary things, going on in our body, healthy.
