Advanced Yoga Quotes

Someday I will have revenge. I know in advance to keep this to myself, and everyone will be happier. I do understand that I am expected to forgive N and his girlfriend in a timely fashion, and move on to a life of vegetarian cooking and difficult yoga positions and self-realization, and make this so much easier and more pleasant for all concerned.

The two seem, at first glance, to be opposed, but when you have advanced a little in both, you find that concentration learned in Yoga is of immense use in attaining the mental powers necessary in Magick; on the other hand, the discipline of Magick is of the greatest service in Yoga.

An advanced yoga practice has less to do with what happens when you roll out your mat and move through your practice and more to do with what happens when you roll up your mat and move through life.

Building a healthy relationship with the most advanced technology app on the planet – Our own breath.

This is the magic formula – desire toward a goal, which spawns action toward that goal. Continuous desire is the fuel. Daily action is the fire. The word “continuous” is important, as is the word “goal.” Without these two operative functions, desires are scattered, actions are unfocused, and not much happens. With them, anything is achievable.

It is not necessary that you should compare yourself with others, or imagine yourself greater or higher than them. In fact, such comparisons are to be regretted, and are unworthy of the advanced Ego, being a mark and indication of a lack of development, rather than the reverse. In the Meditation simply ignore all consideration of the respective qualities of others, and endeavor to realize the fact that YOU are a great Centre of Consciousness—a Centre of Power—a Centre of Influence—a Centre of Thought. And that like the planets circling around the sun, so does your world revolve around YOU who are its centre.

Sadhana Sit in any comfortable posture, with your spine erect, and if necessary, supported. Remain still. Allow your attention to slowly grow still as well. Do this for five to seven minutes a day. You will notice that your breath will slow down. What is the significance of slowing down the human breath? Is it just some respiratory yogic acrobatics? No, it is not. A human being breathes twelve to fifteen times per minute, normally. If your breath settles down to twelve, you will know the ways of the earth’s atmosphere (i.e., you will become meteorologically sensitive). If it reduces to nine, you will know the language of the other creatures on this planet. If it reduces to six, you will know the very language of the earth. If it reduces to three, you will know the language of the source of creation. This is not about increasing your aerobic capacity. Nor is it about forcefully depriving yourself of breath. A combination of hatha yoga and an advanced yogic practice called the kriya, will gradually increase your lung capacity, but above all, will help you achieve a certain alignment, a certain ease, so that your system evolves to a state of stability where there is no static, no crackle; it just perceives everything.

The soul of the primitive man reincarnated almost immediately after the death of the physical body, because the experiences gained were mostly along the lines of the physical, the mental planes being scarcely brought into play, while the higher and spiritual faculties were almost entirely obscured from sight. Life after life the soul of the primitive man lived out in rapid succession. But in each new embodiment there was a slight advance over that of the previous one. Experience, or rather the result of experiences, were carried over, and profited by. New lessons were learned and unlearned, improved upon or discarded. And the race grew and unfolded.

Like any other science, yoga is applicable by people of every clime and time. The theory advanced by certain ignorant writers that yoga is “dangerous” or “unsuitable” for Westerners is wholly false, and has lamentably deterred many sincere students from seeking its manifold blessings. Yoga is a method for restraining the natural turbulence of thoughts, which otherwise impartially prevents all men, of all lands, from glimpsing their true nature of Spirit. Like the healing light of the sun, yoga is beneficial equally to men of the East and to men of the West. The thoughts of most persons are restless and capricious; a manifest need exists for yoga: the science of mind control.

The man in this stage of consciousness thinks of his "I" as a mental thing, having a lower companion, the body. He feels that he has advanced, but yet his "I" does not give him the answer to the riddles and questions that perplex him. And he becomes most unhappy. Such men often develop into Pessimists, and consider the whole of life as utterly evil and disappointing—a curse rather than a blessing. Pessimism belongs to this plane, for neither the Physical Plane man or the Spiritual Plane man have this curse of Pessimism. The former man has no such disquieting thoughts, for he is almost entirely absorbed in gratifying his animal nature, while the latter man recognizes his mind as an instrument of himself, rather than as himself, and knows it to be imperfect in its present stage of growth. He knows that he has in himself the key to all knowledge—locked up in the Ego—and which the trained mind, cultivated, developed and guided by the awakened Will, may grasp as it unfolds.

If there are always forces around which are concerned to depress and discourage, there are always forces above and around us which we can draw upon, - draw into ourselves to restore, to fill up again with strength and faith and joy and the power that perseveres and conquers. It is really a habit that one has to get of opening to these helpful forces and either passively receiving them or actively drawing upon them - for one can do either. It is easier if you have the conception of them above and around you and the faith and the will to receive them - for that brings the experience and concrete sense of them and the capacity to receive at need or at will. It is a question of habituating your consciousness to get into touch and keep in touch with these helpful forces - and for that you must accustom yourself to reject the impressions forced on you by the others, depression, self-distrust, repining and all similar disturbances. ... it is part of the experience of those who have advanced far in Yoga that besides the ordinary forces and activities of the mind and life and body in Matter, there are other forces and powers that can act and do act from behind and from above; there is also a spiritual dynamic power which can be possessed by those who are advanced in the spiritual consciousness, though all do not care to possess or, possessing, to use it, and this power is greater than any other and more effective. The invisible Force producing tangible results both inward and outward is the whole meaning of the Yogic consciousness. Your question about Yoga bringing merely a feeling of Power without any result was really very strange. Who would be satisfied with such a meaningless hallucination and call it Power? If we had not had thousands of experiences showing that the Power within could alter the mind, develop its powers, add new ones, bring in new ranges of knowledge, master the vital movements, change the character, influence men and things, control

By doing something small to honor the commencement of the various episodes of the day, our whole being has a chance to refocus, and the ensuing experience is received in a much different way. This simple yet profound practice can thus infuse us with a greater sense of ease and vitality as we advance through the dance of life. As Byrd Baylor writes:    Some people say there is a new sun every day, that it begins its life at dawn and lives for one day only. They say you have to welcome it. You have to make the sun happy. You have to make a good day for it. You have to make a good world for it to live its one-day life in. And the way to start, they say, is just by looking east at dawn. When they look east tomorrow, you can too. Your song will be an offering—and you’ll be one more person in one more place at one more time in the world saying hello to the sun, letting it know you are there. If the sky turns a color sky it never was before, just watch it. That’s part of the magic. That’s the way to start a day1.

Other centuries sought safety in the union of reason and religion, research and asceticism. In their Universitas Litterarum, theology ruled. Among us we use meditation, the fine gradations of yoga technique, in our efforts to exorcise the beast within us and the diabolus dwelling in every branch of knowledge. Now you know as well as I that the Glass Bead Game also has its hidden diabolus, that it can lead to empty virtuosity, to artistic vanity, to self-advancement, to the seeking of power over others and then to the abuse of that power. This is why we need another kind of education beside the intellectual and submit ourselves to the morality of the Order, not in order to reshape our mentally active life into a psychically vegetative dream-life, but on the contrary to make ourselves fit for the summit of intellectual achievement. We do not intend to flee from the vita activa to the vita contemplativa, nor vice versa, but to keep moving forward while alternating between the two, being at home in both, partaking of both.

In his discussion of Trika Yoga Abhinavagupta begins with the most advanced approach, and then presents successively easier methods one by one in descending order. This is another example of his particular approach to yoga. His intention is to make the best and the quickest method of yoga immediately available to all aspirants. If they succeed at the highest level, they need not go through the long chain of lower stages. However, if certain aspirants feel that they cannot handle the most advanced path successfully, then they are free to move along a more structured path and to choose any of the methods that accommodate their psychophysical capacity. The important point is that spiritual students should not assume that they are not fit for the most advanced method. Why should people resort to riding on a bullock cart when an airplane is at their disposal? If, however, they are unable to handle the superior vehicle successfully, they can choose some other more appropriate form of transportation. — B. N. Pandit, Specific Principles of Kashmir Shaivism (3rd ed., 2008), p. 94–95.

In this simple observation about the nature of human consciousness lies a challenge that was taken up sometime in the course of Hinduism’s long development: focus the mind so that the tumble of extraneous thoughts is slowed, then stilled altogether. The practice that developed, which we know as meditation, is of unknown antiquity. It was certainly already in use when the Upanishads were put into writing circa –6C. An archaic form may be inferred from the Rig Veda, which takes the practice back at least to –1200. If recent arguments that the Rig Veda dates to the Indus-Sarasvati civilization hold up, then we must think in terms of an additional millennium or two during which some form of meditation was practiced. I have dated the culmination of the development of meditation to –2C because that is the most popular dating for the life of Patanjali, the Hindu sage who is seen as the progenitor of classical Yoga, an advanced system of meditation. Since its initial development in India, forms of meditation have become part of most religions and of a wide range of secular schools as well. In the West, despite the importance of forms of meditation in Catholicism and some Protestant Christian churches, the word meditation has become identified with some of the flamboyant sects that attracted publicity in the 1960s and 1970s. In some circles, meditation is seen as part of Asian mysticism, not a cognitive tool. This is one instance in which Eurocentrism is a genuine problem. The nature of meditation is coordinate with ways of perceiving the world that are distinctively Asian. But to say that the cognitive tool called meditation is peculiarly useful to Asians is like saying that logic—my next meta-invention—is useful only to Europeans. Meditation and logic found homes in different parts of the world, but meditation, like logic, is a flexible, powerful extension of human cognitive capacity.

Greed presents itself as the longing for both the material and the nonmaterial, especially wanting more than is needed. However, whatever you stockpile - be it diamonds, big houses, fame, money, proficiency at advanced yoga poses, or less flashy things, you will inevitably encounter two certainties. First, ... all will be lost. Second, these things in and of themselves will never satisfy your cravings, which are expressions of your feelings of fear and emptiness. You see, sometimes we temporarily lose our way, becoming convinced that if we acquire this thing or that skill, we will finally become acceptable to ourselves and to the world. In our fear, we have forgotten that we are already whole.

It should always be understood that we are weak and that the material energy is very strong. To adopt spiritual life is more or less to declare war against the material energy. The material energy is trying to entrap the conditioned soul as much as possible, and when the conditioned soul tries to get out of her clutches by spiritual advancement of knowledge, material nature becomes more stringent and vigorous in her efforts to test how much the aspiring spiritualist is sincere. The material energy, or maya, will then offer more allurements.

Real yoga practice is to control the senses and, after such control is established, to concentrate the mind on the Nārāyaṇa form of the Supreme Personality of Godhead, Śrī Kṛṣṇa. Lord Kṛṣṇa is the original Personality of Godhead, and all the other Viṣṇu forms – with four hands decorated with conch, lotus, club and wheel – are plenary expansions of Kṛṣṇa. In Bhagavad-gītā it is recommended that one meditate upon the form of the Lord. To practice concentration of the mind, one has to sit with the head and the back in a straight line, and one must practice in a secluded place, sanctified by a sacred atmosphere. The yogī should observe the rules and regulations of brahmacarya – to strictly live a life of self-restraint and celibacy. One cannot practice yoga in a congested city, living a life of extravagancy, including unrestricted sex indulgence and adultery of the tongue. Yoga practice necessitates controlling the senses, and the beginning of sense control is to control the tongue. One who can control the tongue can also have control over the other senses. One cannot allow the tongue to take all kinds of forbidden food and drink and at the same time advance in the practice of yoga. It is a very regrettable fact that many unauthorized so-called yogīs come to the Western countries and exploit people’s inclination towards yoga practice. Such unauthorized yogīs even dare to say publicly that one can indulge in the habit of drinking and at the same time practice meditation.

Specific exercizes to trigger neurogenetic imprints are not to be found in yogic teaching; it usually happens, if at all, after many years of expertise in the kind of advanced rajah yoga that develops Circuit V somatic bliss. Heavy does of LSD, of course, always trigger temporary Neurogenetic vistas.

Birla Trimaya Shettigere will assist with advancing great emotional well-being. It's essential to make a space where you can withdraw from the buzzing about of the rest of the world and focus on taking care of oneself. You can lay out an everyday care practice by pondering or rehearsing yoga. Get some down time for you and enjoy taking care of oneself exercises like washing up, paying attention to music, or rehearsing appreciation.

Yoga engages both the mind and body by combining the regulatory power of our breath with movement. As we advance in the practice, increasingly challenging poses begin to test our body’s physical limits, further stressing our system, and offering an opportunity to reconnect with the calming power of our breath.

The real self is pure spirit, a spark of the divine fire. This spirit is encased within numerous sheaths, which prevent its full expression. As man advances in development, his consciousness passes from the lower planes to the higher, and he becomes more and more aware of his higher nature. The spirit contains within it all potentialities, and as man progresses he unfolds new powers, new qualities, into the light.

vayu. Another

Indeed, anxiety or angst, as term-coiner Søren Kierkegaard first meant it, is the feeling that matures us, after we take “leaps of faith” into life, into

Given the choice, most children would have ice cream for dinner. Similarly, yogis prefer the highs of yoga, the so-called “good practice.” But just as healthy children require vegetables and whole grains, advanced yogis need to be challenged during practice. The peak experiences we have during practice may keep us coming back to the mat, but it is the difficult and unpleasant aspects of practice that make us strong and prepare us for the challenges of life.

Join Lakshmi Rising's 200-Hour Yoga Teacher Training in Barcelona for a transformative journey. Immerse yourself in advanced practices, deepen your knowledge, and embrace the vibrant energy of Barcelona while earning your certification from a renowned school.

200 Hour Yoga teacher Training Barcelona Join Lakshmi Rising's 200-Hour Yoga Teacher Training in Barcelona for a transformative journey. Immerse yourself in advanced practices, deepen your knowledge, and embrace the vibrant energy of Barcelona while earning your certification from a renowned school.

The general consensus was that chief officers were a different breed. Their well-honed sense of self- and pension-preservation seemed to take priority above all else. The so-called College of Policing Strategic Command Course had a lot to answer for in churning out these clones, but whatever else took place to train chief officers, one thing he knew for sure: it included a form of yoga that was so far advanced that no matter what their size or shape, it showed them how to

Any interest in Yoga, in miracles or psychic powers, not based on that humbleness of the soul which is the beginning and the end of all true spiritual light and love is at its best something of scientific interest, and at its worst it is that pride and desire for power which are the surest signs of spiritual darkness. Let us take an interesting psychological experiment: thought-transmission or thought-reading [.......] The person in deep sleep reads accurately what is written, and when the same experiment is repeated with success several times with different words and numbers not the slightest doubt is left in the mind of the operator that thought-transmission, or thought-reading, is a fact. And when he hears long arguments to the contrary by those who of course have not practised the experiment he cannot but smile. Well, what does the experiment prove? Only that, to quote Hamlet again, There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy. But supposing that after this experiment we could attain all the psychic powers promised in Yoga, does this mean that we have advanced a single step on the spiritual path? Of course not. We have learnt something of amazing psychological interest; but we have not advanced on the path of love. We may even have gone backwards if the slightest pride or self-satisfaction has infected our mind. Those who rely on physical miracles to prove the truth of spiritual things forget the ever-present miracle of the universe and of our own lives. The lover of the physical miracle is in fact a materialist: instead of making material things spiritual, as the poet or the spiritual man does, he simply makes spiritual things material, and this is the source of all idolatry and superstition. Leaving aside the question that matter and spirit may simply be 'different modes, or degrees in perfection, of a common substractum ', as Coleridge says, and the Upanishads suggest, there is the far greater question that in everything spiritual there is an element of beauty which is truth, and which we find in faith, but which is lacking in fanaticism and superstition.

Philosophically, bandha means “bound,” implying entrapment to your worldly impressions (samsaras). As yogis we are working toward liberation (moksha). Physically, the three primary bandhas are: 1.Mula Bandha, the root lock, is the contraction of the perineum, turning the energy upward instead of down and out. 2.Uddiyana Bandha, the abdominal lock, is a suction of the abdomen pulling the energy inward and upward, like a “J” formation up the spine. 3.Jalandhara Bandha, the chin lock, doesn’t allow the energy to dissipate through the top but preserves it in the throat and chest. When all are simultaneously engaged, they form the Maha Bandha, meaning the Great Lock. Engaging Maha Bandha releases stored prana from its associated energy center, letting it flow freely throughout the body. Bandhas are an excellent resource for the day-to-day advancement of your practice.

He would momentarily relive all the joyous and sad moments of his life and understand their deeper significance. He would recognize an overall pattern that is the essential structure informing his mode of existence in the hereafter and his eventual rebirth. Self-transcending spiritual practitioners will undoubtedly have many of the above experiences in common with worldly individuals. But they will presumably look back upon fewer missed opportunities for self-improvement and inner growth. In their depth-mind there will be powerful impressions that are incompatible with re-embodiment in the material realm. If the practitioners are advanced, these subliminal activators (samskāra) will outweigh all others. Individuals who have always lived typical human lives invite rebirth (punar-janman) as typical human beings. But those Yoga practitioners who model their whole existence not on mere human standards but on the ultimate Reality will, if they have succeeded in setting up incisive enough impressions in their depth-memory, merge with that Reality. And if these practitioners are sufficiently advanced on the spiritual path, they will be able to monitor the process of dying and so ensure that no vestiges remain in their depth-mind, which would force them to assume another physical body. In fact, the conscious departure from this world is one of the sure marks by which one can recognize a genuine yogin or yoginī. The Self-realized adept regards the body like a vessel that is engulfed by space, both within and without, the space being the omnipresent Reality itself. Death does not shake an adept in the least. Many moving stories are told by disciples who have witnessed their guru’s exit from the world—“with a single breath” and a smile. A dying yogin in agony or a state of stupor is almost a contradiction in terms. The maxim holds: Show me how you die, and I show you who you are. But, the reader may ask, what if the Yoga adept drowns unexpectedly or is killed by a stray bullet? Will the element of surprise not outwit him or her? The traditional answer is a most emphatic No. There can be no surprise for the enlightened being—hence the smile. Otherwise we would have to assume that the universe is ruled by chance, which is an assumption that is explicitly rejected by the Yoga masters. In whichever way the masters of Yoga take leave from this world—and, as the poet knew, death has ten thousand doors—they will have foreknowledge of their death. There are too many well-attested examples for this to be purely fictional icing on the cake of hagiolatry. How such knowledge is obtained remains a mystery that need not concern us here. The process of conscious exit from the body, however, is not a secret—at least not in principle. The archaic Chāndogya-Upanishad (8.6.5–6) discloses the following: Now, when he thus departs from this body, then he ascends upward with these rays [of the Sun]. Uttering [the sacred syllable] om, he dies. As soon as the mind is cast off, he goes to the Sun.

To the man who has begun to hate himself, the gate to degeneration has already opened; and the same is true of a nation. Our first duty is not to hate ourselves, because to advance we must have faith in ourselves first and then in God.

Be still, and know that I am God," sings the Biblical Psalmist. This simply means that the movement of thoughts and emotions is to be brought to an end by entering the deepest degree of contemplation. The same teaching is given in the Bhagavad Gita. "As the wick of an oil lamp placed in a wind-free spot is flickerless, so is the yogi of mastered mind who practises union with the God-Self.

Facts don’t change minds as often as they confirm what the mind insists on believing. Therefore, the path from faith to facts is much more fragile than we like to think, and along the way are crouching adversaries—hidebound beliefs, stubborn biases, ad hominem attackers, skeptics who know in advance that X cannot be true, and the most elusive of adversaries, collective consciousness. Mass opinion can stop an unwelcome fact in its tracks, which has happened for centuries when miracles, wonders, magic, and the paranormal have been too uncomfortable to confront. Behind the cliché that you create your own reality there is a shadow: If you don’t create your own reality, it will be created for you.

For most people, psychic abilities manifest spontaneously and are rarely under conscious control. The experiences tend to be sporadic and fragmentary, and the most dramatic cases occur mainly during periods of extreme motivation. By contrast, the siddhis are said to be highly reliable and under complete conscious control; as such they could be interpreted as exceedingly refined, well-cultivated forms of psychic phenomena. The more advanced siddhis are said to include invisibility, levitation, invulnerability, and superstrength, abilities often associated with comic book superheroes. All these abilities are also described in one form or another in shamanism and in the mystical teachings of religions.

What does True Wireless Earbuds Mean Where are my earphones? Ahh!! There they are….and they are tangled (with irksome scream inside your head). There is nothing more frustrating than going on a search operation for your headphones and finally finding them entangled. Well thanks to the advance technology these days one of your daily struggles is gone with the arrival of wireless earphones in the market. No wire means no entanglement. ‘Kill the problem before it kills you’, you know the saying. Right! So what actually truly wireless earbuds are? Why should you replace your old headphones and invest in wireless ones? Without any further delay let’s dig deep into it. image WHAT ARE TRUE WIRELESS EARBUDS? A lot of people misunderstand true wireless earbuds and wireless earphones as the same thing. When it’s not. A true wireless earbuds which solely connects through Bluetooth and not through any wire or cord or through any other source. While wireless earphones are the ones which are connected through Bluetooth to audio source but the connection between the two ear plugs is established through a cable between them. Why true wireless earbuds? Usability: Who doesn’t like freedom! With no wire restrictions, it’s easier to workout without sacrificing your music motivation. From those super stretch yoga asanas to marathon running, from weight training to cycling - you actually can do all those without worrying about your phone safety or the dilemma of where to put them. With no wire and smooth distance connection interface, you have the full freedom of your body movement. They also comes with a charging case so you don’t have to worry about it’s battery. Good audio quality and background noise cancellation: With features like active noise cancellation, which declutter the unwanted background voice giving you the ultimate audio quality. These earbuds has just leveled up the experience of music and prevents you from getting distracted. Comfort and design: These small ear buddies are friendly which snuggles into your ear canal and don’t put too much pressure on your delicate ears as they are light weight. They are style statement maker and are comfortable to use even when you are on move, they stick to your ear and don’t fall off easily. Apart from all that you can easily answer your call on go, pause your music or whatever you are listening, switch to next by just touching your earplugs. image Convenience: You don’t necessarily have to have your phone on you like the wired ones. The farthest distance you could go was the length of the cable. But with wireless ones this is not the case, they could transmit sound waves from 8 meter upto 30 meters varying from model to model. Which allows you multi-task and make your household chores interesting. You can enjoy your podcasts or music or follow the recipe while cooking in your kitchen when your phone is lying in your living room. Voice assistance: How fascinating was it to watch all those detective/ secret agent thriller movies while they are on run and getting directions from their computer savvy buddies. Ethan Hunt from Mission Impossible….. Remember! Many wireless earphones comes with voice assistance feature which makes it easy to go around the places you are new to. You don’t have to stop and look to your phone screen for directions which makes it easier to move either on foot or while driving. Few things for you to keep in mind and compare before investing in a true wireless earphones :- Sound Quality Battery Life Wireless Range Comfort and design Warranty Price Gone are those days when true wireless earbuds were expensive possession. They are quite economical now and are available with various features depending upon different brands in your price range.

Shreeom has discovered five impediments to the practices for advance devotion for a knowledge- (i) Laya-to feel ever increasing drowsiness while doing Egyes, Japs, Taps, Dhyan, yogas, meditation or spiritual practice chanting mantras, listening to and remembering the glories of the Bhagawan's knowledge. (ii) Viksepa- To maintain mundane associations while practicing even the external forms of Bhakti or devotion. (iii) Apratipatti- Disinclination for bhajana or spiritual endeavors even when realizing one's Laya or methods of chanting and doing. (iv) Kasaya-From anger to happy, death to immortality, darkness to light, unreal to real and education to knowledge. (v) Rasasvada- To think of sensual enjoyment, intellectual idolizing collaboration and worldly pleasures while engaged in bhajana or practices of Bhakti.

One of the most valuable forms of yoga is the yoga of constant remembrance. Its subject may be a mystical experience, intuition, or idea. In essence it is really an endeavour to insert the transcendental atmosphere into the mundane life. The method of this exercise is to maintain uninterruptedly and unbrokenly the remembrance of the soul's nearness, the soul's reality, the soul's transcendence. The goal of this exercise is to become wholly possessed by the soul itself. This constant remembrance of the higher self becomes in time like a kind of holy communion […] "Be with IT" is the best advice for those who can understand it.

Experience shows that if a sufficiently deep level--not necessarily the deepest level but one that corresponds to what the yogis call savikalpa samadhi, which is not as deep as nirvikalpa--if that can be attained and then prolonged sufficiently in time, an artist or a writer can draw from the experience creative power for his work.

Everything is taken away from him; he is nothing and has nothing; yet he still feels one thing which utterly compensates for this loss. He feels the presence of the Overself [...] In the practice of Indian Yoga, Nirvikalpa Samadhi is considered to be the farthest point to which the practitioner can travel. Nirvikalpa Samadhi is the condition of the emptied mind, without any trace of thought, whether of the world or of the person himself; yet fully aware [...] So many conversations on the words of Jesus have taken his sentence "I and my Father are one" to mean a kind of union like marriage. But they overlook the fact that married couples still remain couples, still express the number two. Jesus did not say, "I and my father are two." The number one is definitely not two. For Jesus found, as every other man who attains that stage of consciousness finds, that when contemplating the Infinite Life-Power (which he named the Father) he himself vanished. There was then no other consciousness except that of the Infinite itself. For That was the substratum of his own "I." But what happened in his contemplation two thousand years ago still happens today; the same discovery is made when the illusion of egoity vanishes.

People join companies. They leave managers. Therefore, to keep your team happy and engaged, you need one thing above all else: great managers — not free lunches or yoga classes! As Gallup notes, “Managers account for at least 70% of variance in employee engagement scores.” And great managers are not just born; they are continually advancing their skills and those of their employees.

In the introduction, we derived one general prediction for beginning and intermediate practitioners of meditation from both the Hindu and Buddhist approaches (meditation yields generally positive psychological effects), but we did not deal with predictions that refer to advanced or final stages in the meditation practice. Here is such a prediction. Both Hindu and Buddhist approaches hold that practitioners of meditation might develop a kind of supercognition, special abilities (siddhis) that exceed our normal abilities. Buddhist theory predicts that six kinds of siddhis might arise.… Notably, the least spectacular one, destruction of the defiling impulses, is seen as the most significant. The others are psychokinesis, clairaudience, telepathic knowledge, retrocognitive knowledge …, and clairvoyance. The Yoga Sutras report more of these siddhis as a result of extended yoga practice. In both the Hindu and Buddhist approaches, siddhis are not regarded as very important, and the Buddha, as well as famous yogis, has warned of the dangers inherent in the siddhis.… Nonetheless, a theory about the effects of meditation would not be complete without consideration of these altered states of consciousness. There is some evidence that such states can occur spontaneously …, but the effects found in meta-analyses are usually quite small.… To the best of our knowledge, nobody has yet examined whether the respective effects are more pronounced for experienced practitioners of meditation, as both the Hindu and Buddhist approaches would predict

So far, we’ve learned that there are rational, evidence-based reasons to accept that some of the siddhis—the ones that have been repeatedly tested under controlled conditions—are real. We’ve seen evidence suggesting that advanced meditation may be associated with improved psi performance. And, except for rare individuals and some advanced meditators, among the general population we’ve seen that these abilities tend to be weak, sporadic, and uncontrollable. From a scientific perspective, the mere existence of these phenomena, regardless of how weak or unreliable they may be, is astounding. It tells us that the modern understanding of the human mind, which is based on the neurosciences and its approach to studying brain function, has completely overlooked a fundamental aspect of our capacities and potentials. It says that both science and religious scholarship have prematurely discarded stories about the siddhis as mere superstitions. Undoubtedly many of those legendary tales are pure fantasy. But we now know that some of them described dazzling gems that have been obscured by the distortions of history. Identifying and polishing those gems with modern techniques opens the real possibility of discovering whole new realms of knowledge. Over time, as mainstream interest in studying the capacities of advanced meditators increases, we are likely to understand psi and the siddhis in new ways. As that happens, more integrated models of reality will arise, and eventually technologies may be developed. How long do we have to wait before this knowledge is pragmatically useful? Not too long.

Dalai Lama Even given positive results of experiments, it is exceedingly difficult for the Western-acculturated mind to accept that supernormal abilities really do exist. The Dalai Lama is often asked about this issue, and he wrote about it in his autobiography: Many westerners want to know whether the books on Tibet by people like Lobsang Rampa and some others, in which they speak about occult practices, are true. They also ask me whether Shambala (a legendary country referred to by certain scriptures and supposed to lie hidden among the northern wastes of Tibet) really exists.… In reply to the first two questions, I usually say that most of these books are works of imagination and that Shambala exists, yes, but not in a conventional sense. At the same time, it would be wrong to deny that some Tantric practices do genuinely give rise to mysterious phenomena.6 This statement is cautiously worded, and appropriate for a spiritual leader who was also a political leader for many years. The upshot of his answer is that yes, advanced meditative practices do give rise to some strange effects, and for the most part these practices have been ignored by science. The Dalai Lama has been personally interested in promoting science-spirit dialogues, but at the beginning these talks were not easy to arrange, even for him. Within meditative traditions advanced methods are considered a secret doctrine, and as we’ve seen repeated in the Yoga Sutras, demonstrating one’s abilities for secular reasons is strongly taboo. Nevertheless, the Dalai Lama believed it was important to get science to investigate these phenomena: I hope one day to organise some sort of scientific enquiry into the phenomenon of oracles, which remain an important part of the Tibetan way of life. Before I speak about them in detail, however, I must stress that the purpose of oracles is not, as might be supposed, simply to foretell the future. This is only part of what they do. In addition, they can be called upon as protectors and in some cases they are used as healers.… Through mental training, we have developed techniques to do things which science cannot yet adequately explain. This, then, is the basis of the supposed “magic and mystery” of Tibetan Buddhism.6

Coincidentally, the recent excitement in astrophysics over the discovery of dark matter and energy reached a similar conclusion. That is, if present cosmological models are correct, then the entire theoretical edifice for the origins and structure of the universe rests upon 4 percent of the detectable universe, leaving 96 percent completely unknown. Similarly, the scientific framework for biology firmly rests upon DNA, but as much as 96 percent of DNA has no known biological function, earning it the label “junk” DNA. Such fundamental unknowns will likely yield to future scientific advances, but the present state of ignorance should remind us to cultivate humility about what we think we understand. The fact is that the more science discovers about the nature of reality, the more we discover how little we actually understand.

Well look, it seems as though you do have some experience now at least of threefold bliss, luminosity, and emptiness that is such an important feature of the first yoga. On top of that, you are in an excellent position, having had introduction from myself and having all the things on your side that you have going for you. But look out! Your mind is probably not strong enough yet that you can go wandering into town, as a lot of yogi-types would, drinking liquor and womanizing, and trying to incorporate that into your practice. Instead, and until you have advanced far enough that you can actually take these things onto the path, you should be practicising! — Gampopa to Phagmo Drupa (Duff T. Gampopa Teaches Essence Mahamudra: Interviews with His Heart Disciples, Dusum Khyenpa and Others. Padma Karpo Translation Committee, 2012. Pp. xxviii-xxix)

The process of giving is an essential aspect of reaching the advanced stages of kundalini unfoldment and continuing progress on the path of yoga. The more we are able to give, the more we are able to receive in terms of our own spiritual evolution.

The secrets of advanced meditation were shrouded in secrecy because of respect for, and even fear of, their innate power. Just as governments guard state secrets of power, the ancient yoga masters guarded these secrets of spiritual power. They believed that power has the capacity to corrupt, and that it would be disastrous for the wrong person to learn these secrets.