Questioner: I just wanted to request you to help us in knowing something about being Yogi and how it is different from being Karma Yogi?
Acharya Prashant: Yog is one. It's just that it is expressed in various ways; Yog is union, coming together of the many. So, when you talk of Union, which is actually reunion, first of all, you have to figure out what is it that is divided or fragmented. Otherwise, it is absurd to talk of putting things together if we do not know what is it that is scattered and fragmented. What is it that is scattered and fragmented in our lives? What is it that remains scattered? It's the mind, right? Mind. So, mind keeps wandering, mind keeps going hither thither in search of something elusive.
Yog, therefore, is about giving mind that which it really wants; all the stuff that the mind can think of, the mind has already tried it - maybe not all the variants that are possible, but fundamentally, principally, all that is materially available to be tried, the mind has already tried it. It's just that, in absence of attention, the mind does not quite see that any future attempts at self-gratification will not bear fruit, because those attempts will just be a repetition of the past attempts.
So, whatsoever is available in the world, in the Realm of the Mind itself, the mind has already tried it an infinite number of times, exhausted all the possibilities. The mind has been trying all those things since millions of years. And those things have not quite succeeded in satisfying the mind. Therefore, Yog is about encouraging the mind to look at its own quest.
In layman language, Yog then is then about inquiring into one's desires: what's going on? What do I want? Why do I keep looking this way and that way? What is that one piece of news my ears are eager to hear?
