An Introduction to Yoga

‘An Introduction to Yoga’ by Annie Besant gives an overview of Yoga, in order to ready the student to take up, for practical purposes, the Yoga sutras of Patanjali, the chief treatise on Yoga. This book leads to the way where tranquility can be attained that can make life peaceful and healthy.

Annie Besant explains the theory of spiritual development based on the teachings of yoga. In the first lecture, ‘The Nature of Yoga’, Besant talks about consciousness, what is divine, and how they interrelate. The second lecture views the six Indian schools of philosophy, mostly comparing and contrasting yoga to Samkhya and Vedanta—the schools in that yoga is most closely linked. The third lecture views yoga as applied science. Finally, the fourth lecture discusses the practice of yoga. The book also contains some discussion of diet and statements on purifying the physical body.

Annie Besant was a leading member of the Theosophical Society, a feminist and political activist, and a politician in India. She had a close relationship with Charles Bradlaugh, MP, a free-thinker who was often known as the 'Member for India'. Having declared herself an atheist, Annie Besant was drawn to other ideas of spiritualism and joined the Theosophical Society in 1889. She was very close to the co-founder, Madame Blavatsky, and allowed Blavatksy to live in her house in St John's Wood from 1889. In 1907, after the death of Colonel Olcott, Besant was made President of the Theosophical Society.

In 1911, Besant brought Jiddu Krishnamurti and his brother to England and acted as their guardian. She proclaimed in 1927 that Krishnamurti was the 'coming', i.e., messiah, and was devastated when he left the Theosophical Society in 1929.

Besant also campaigned for the rights of Indians and for Indian 'home rule'. She launched the Home Rule League in 1916, modelling the Indian plight on that of Ireland. She was a member of the Fabian Society, owing to her close relationship with George Bernard Shaw. In 1917 she became the first woman president of the Indian National Congress at a session in Calcutta.