osho.on.yoga
First, yoga is not a religion, remember that. Yoga is a pure science just like mathematics, physics or chemistry. If Christians discovered the laws of physics, that does not mean that physics is Christian. Physics remains just a science. Yoga is a science too. It is just an accident that Hindus discovered it. It is not Hindu. It is pure science, pure mathematics of the inner being.
The greatest name as far as the world of yoga is concerned is Patanjali. No one else compares to him. Patanjali was an enlightened person like the Buddha,, like Krishna, like Christ, like Mahavira, Mohammed & Zarathustra, but he was different from them in one way. Buddha, Krishna, Mahavira, Zarathustra and Mohammed were great founders of religions. They changed the whole pattern of the human mind, but their approach was not scientific.
Patanjali was like an Einstein in the world of the Buddhas. He was a phenomenon. He could have easily been a Noble Prize winner like Einstein or Bohr or Max Planck, Heisenberg. He had the same attitude, the same rigorous scientific approach. He was not a poet; Krishna was a poet. He was not a moralist; Mahavira was a moralist. He was basically a scientist, thinking in terms of laws. And he formulated the absolute laws of the human being, the ultimate working structures of the human mind and reality.
Yoga is concerned with your total being, with your roots. So with Patanjali you will be trying to know the ultimate laws of being; the laws of transformation,, the laws of how to die and how to be reborn again, the laws of a new order of being. That is why I call yoga a science.