The flower-garden Religion, sacrifice and yoga The significance of the asanaPracitcal aspects for working with the exercisesRelaxationThe beginning of the exercises - the cosmic prayerThe preparatory standing positionsThe triangle and the wide circleThe shoulderstand with plough and bridgeThe inclined plane with triangleThe lying-triangle positionsThe fishThe treeThe tip-toe positionThe St. Andrew¿s crossThe balance positionThe carefree faceThe balancing head-knee positionThe locustThe bowThe horseThe half-diamondThe crow positionsThe head-knee position and the twistThe camel and the diamondThe sitting twistThe turtleThe wheelThe yoga sleepThe peacockThe cobraThe complete bowThe doveThe headstand, the scorpion and its cycleThe half-moon and the dancerThe crow and the handstandLecturesAbout attitudeSpiritual sadhanaIn comparison to the way of practising yoga now familiar in the West, this spiritually and artistically-oriented path of spiritual training places less emphasis on a technical method and more on the uniqueness of meditation in its pictures and choice of words. The exercises have been taken from the broad dimension of hatha-yoga and have a deeper and newer meaning through a living, spiritual vision. This spiritual or super-sensory perspective gives the exercises a sensitive and artistic character, which raises them above a mere training in yoga and gives them that touch of the soul, free of the body. Reading and working with the texts, contemplating the pictures and repeated practice in following the message leads seeking students to a spiritualising of the body which grows ever deeper and more intense. With this artistically-oriented path of practice they receive that mysterious, other-worldly spiritual fire which leads them from within outwards to initiation and realisation.The path, which begins in the intangibility of the soul and so in the source of meditation, free of the physical and even of the mental and emotional worlds is barely comprehensible to our Western world of consciousness. We could assume that people would have to begin the path of yoga with physical exercises and work from here up to an ascent into the subtle and spiritual planes. But such a path from below upwards seems only valid in a very qualified and limited way and so the emphasis here lies in dedication and work with the inspired words, which when repeated give meditation and the descent of an etheric abundance and bliss. Critical opponents, who usually come from the Western ranks of yoga and the church, do not recognise the profound difference between the conventional planes of thinking and the imaginative and inspired way of seeing, which embraces the soul-planes in a much broader and intangible dimension.The spiritual path described here is therefore not a typical path of practice which begins in the physical and clears the way upwards to the spirit. It is exactly the opposite. The path is a creative source of the spirit in its expression and begins in the pathless and formless and leads from the incomprehensible into comprehensible form. The process of progressive change, which concerns all the mental aspects and ultimately also the body in its coarser manifestation, lasts several years and needs repeated confrontation and work. This is not a fast path which might perhaps be concluded by a fiery experience of enlightenment. The path of transformation is a devotion of the whole of life and needs a limitless surrender of the self, which fits the highest spirit of yoga and is comparable in the West to the sacred sacrifice of the earlier Christians.