Feuerstein Quotes

The postures are only the "skin" of yoga. Hidden behind them are the "flesh and blood" of breath control and mental techniques that are still more difficult to learn, as well as moral practices that require a lifetime of consistent application and that correspond to the skeletal structure of the body. The higher practices of concentration, meditation and unitive ecstasy(samadhi) are analogous to the circulatory and nervous system." Georg Feuerstein The Deeper Dimension of Yoga

Boredom is a sign that you're detached from your own bodily experience and aren't living in the present moment.

Hip hop in my veins, if you cut cut me I will bleed.

When I die, put my ashes in the trash bag I don't care where they go Don't waste your money on my gravestone I'm more concerned about my soul Everybody's gon' die Don't everybody live though

Welcome to the bottom of hell They say pain is a prison, let me out of my cell

I heard that pictures don't change Just the people inside of 'em do Whoever told you that life would be easy I promise that person was lyin' to you

To have a "light-bulb moment", the power has to be on.

A disharmonious mind is disturbing in itself, but sooner or later it also causes physical problems.

Listen, yeah everybody wants change Don't nobody wanna change though Don't nobody wanna pray Till they got something to pray for Now everybody's gon' die But don't everybody live though Sometimes I look up to the sky And wonder do you see us down here?

It's hard to get a break when the door's ain't open It's hard to get a shot when the gun ain't loaded And it's hard to make a living when nobody wanna notice. Hold it What am I insane maybe, plain crazy

All I ever wanted was somebody to hear me And all I ever wanted was somebody to feel me And everybody wanna tell me that I'm out of my head

I don't know what it's like to be addicted to pills But I do know what it's like to be a witness it kills

Yeah, I know those drugs got you held captive I can see it in your eyes, they got your mind captured Some say it's fun to get the high but I am not laughing

I ain't gon' say that I forgive you cause it hasn't happened I thought that maybe I feel better as time passes If you really cared for me, then where you at then?

I guess that pills are more important, all you have to say is no But you won't do it will you? You gon' keep popping 'til those pills kill you I know you gone but I can still feel you

Attitudes are enduring tendencies in your mind that show themselves in your behavior as well as your speech. Yoga encourages you to examine all your basic attitudes toward life to discover which ones are dysfunctional so that you can replace them with more appropriate ones.

And there's a lot of responsibilities that I neglected I had a lot that was bottled inside, couldn't express it And this pain won't leave, I can feel the depression It's taking over my body, feels like I'm always stressing...I lay awake at night and think, my thoughts are relentless I need a moment to breathe, I need a moment to vent this I seem to be the only person that I play pretend with

I don’t wanna hear the sorry’s I’m tired of all the talkin’ to be honest I would rather see a difference Yeah, you pass me in the hallway But you ain’t say a word to me Lately all I ever feel is distant You don’t care that you lost me What’s wrong with ya

You see the same God that you saying might not even exist Becomes real to us, but only when we dying in bed When ya healthy it's like, we don't really care for Him then Leave me alone God, I'll call you when I need you again Which is funny, everyone will sleep in the pews Then blame God for our problems like He sleeping on you We turn our backs on Him, what do you expect Him to do? It's hard to answer prayers when nobody's praying to you

Ultimately, there can be no complete healing until we have restored our primal trust in life.

The guy had to be at least a thousand years old and he came with the personality of a rotting corpse… oh lucky her." Destiny Found, 2010

Oh, that’s cute,” Sebastian chuckled. “The dragon has a crush on you, Kitten.” -Destiny Fulfilled, 2010

CHOOSE A SUBLIME IDEAL If you dedicate yourself to a sublime ideal, your life will continually grow in richness, strength and intensity. It is like a capital investment: you place your capital in a Heavenly bank so that, instead of deteriorating or going to waste, it increases and makes you richer. —Omraam Mikhaël Aïvanhov

Don't talk to me like I don't know what you feeling 'Cause I was there with you back in the beginning Quit looking away when I talk, let me finish I'm tryna be honest, you're tryna forget me, ugh What's wrong with you, hey? I know that you got a lot on your plate You keep telling me I should get out of your way But I can't see how you gon' lie to my face Don't tell me you fine 'cause I know that you not so don't even try And what we gon' live for in this life full of pain 'Til we're eighty and one day we'll get up and say we regretted our lives That's where we going Do not pretend like you don't even notice Funny thing is that you already know it I'm starting to think that you like how I feel so be lost in the moment

Auschwitz?! That is a name I had heard before. There is not much time for thinking. It had been raining here not so long ago. The asphalt of the wet, wide platform reflects the light of the high lighting-poles. The row of armed SS men competes in howling with their dogs they hold on leashes

East and West, as well as North and South, need each other. Our species can no longer afford to be self-divided. Our future depends on whether we as individuals and as societies can learn - quickly - from the experiences of the different branches of our single human family, and discover how to live in harmony with one another.

The true and full object and utility of Yoga can only be accomplished when the conscious Yoga in man becomes, like the subconscious Yoga in Nature, outwardly conterminous with life itself and we can once more, looking out both on the path and the achievement, say in a more perfect and luminous sense: “All life is Yoga.” (Aurobindo 1976, 4)

Oh. My. God!” “Not exactly, and I’m not an angel either.” -Destiny Calling, 2009

You call it music, I call it my therapist.

Beth drummed her fingers on the tabletop. “I don’t know what you guys think, but it’s not that.” Colin laughed loudly, “Thought you said you didn’t know what we thought?” -Destiny Found, 2010

This transubstantiated body is also styled ativahika-deha or “superconductive body.” This omnipresent, luminous vehicle is endowed with the great paranormal powers (siddhi) acknowledged in all the scriptures of Yoga and Tantra. In the Yoga-Bîja, we find the following stanzas: The fire of Yoga gradually bakes the body composed of the seven constituents [such as bone, marrow, blood, etc.].

Every interaction and every conversation were replaying in her scattered mind. It was like having the last two months of her life on TiVo and the damn thing was stuck in fast forward. -Destiny Found, 2009

Yeah, they told us that time flies, didn't know what it means Now I feel like we just running around tryna Catch it and hoping to cut up its wings But that ain't gon' happen Joy, when was the last time we had it? I don't remember 'cause all that we do Is go backwards but that's what you get When you live in the past And I know we breathing but we not alive Really, is this the way we wanna die? 'Til you got everything bottled inside If only they knew what goes on in our minds I know what you thinking so don't try to hide Why do you look at me like you surprised? If you really mean what you write in these lines Why don't you fix it? 'Cause I'm getting tired Yeah, I can no longer do this Ever since you fell in love with the music See, you find a way to express what you feel But the moment that you get away from the mic You don't know what you doing Is it clear to you yet? I don't know what's going on in your head But eventually, you'll have to deal with the things That you talk about yeah, but I guess until then, we're lost

Yeah, we used to talk like best friends I remember that I guess I don’t know what happened to us Now you got me questionin’ what trust is You told me you would be there for me Yeah, but you ain’t really mean it did ya Now you wanna jump ship Leave me here alone Well, I’m used to it Everybody else did Who you havin’ fun with Don’t tell me I don't wanna know every time I ask I just feel sick You're the one that jumped in Told me you had some feelins Now you tryin’ to tell me that is not true I ain’t gotta clue Who I’m lookin’ at right now, but I know the person that I’m lookin’ at is not you Yeah They say that you are who you hang with Maybe that’s the reason you been changin’ Maybe that’s the reason why I’m feelin’ like you’re dangerous And every time we talk it’s like I’m talkin’ to a stranger

Those of us directed towards the right were lined up in threes with much shooting and beating. I was in the first row, at the platform’s edge. Suddenly, we see a group of older women and women with children nearing the road, under the platform. In the first row I see my mother supported on both sides by two friends. She too becomes aware of me. And out of the throat of this reticent, soft-spoken woman who I don’t remember ever raising her voice, breaks out a terrible, desperate, piercingly loud, howling shout: ‘GYURIKA!!!

Aurobindo’s orientation has yielded important new insights into the thought of the Vedic seers (rishi), who “saw” the truth. He showed a way out of the uninspiring scholarly perspective, with its insistence that the Vedic seers were “primitive” poets obsessed with natural phenomena like thunder, lightning, and rain. The one-dimensional “naturalistic” interpretations proffered by other translators missed out on the depth of the Vedic teachings. Thus Sūrya is not only the visible material Sun but also the psychological-spiritual principle of inner luminosity. Agni is not merely the physical fire that consumes the sacrificial offerings but the spiritual principle of purifying transformation. Parjanya does not only stand for rain but also the inner “irrigation” of grace. Soma is not merely the concoction the sacrificial priests poured into the fire but also (as in the later Tantric tradition) the magical inner substance that transmutes the body and the mind. The wealth prayed for in many hymns is not just material prosperity but spiritual riches. The cows mentioned over and over again in the hymns are not so much the biological animals but spiritual light. The Panis are not just human merchants but various forces of darkness. When Indra slew Vritra and released the floods, he not merely inaugurated the monsoon season but also unleashed the powers of life (or higher energies) within the psyche of the priest. For Indra also stands for the mind and Vritra for psychological restriction, or energetic blockage. Aurobindo contributed in a major way to a thorough reappraisal of the meaning of the Vedic hymns, and his work encouraged a number of scholars to follow suit, including Jeanine Miller and David Frawley.2 There is also plenty of deliberate, artificial symbolism in the hymns. In fact, the figurative language of the Rig-Veda is extraordinarily rich, as Willard Johnson has demonstrated.3 In special sacrificial symposia, the hymn composers met to share their poetic creations and stimulate each other’s creativity and comprehension of the subtle realities of life. Thus many hymns are deliberately enigmatic, and often we can only guess at the solutions to their enigmas and allegorical riddles. Heinrich Zimmer reminded us: The myths and symbols of India resist intellectualization and reduction to fixed significations. Such treatments would only sterilize them of their magic.

In yoga . . . many may take one path as a key in order to experience self-realisation while others take another path, but I say that there is absolutely no difference between the various practices of yoga.” —B. K. S. Iyengar, The Tree of Yoga, p. 15

When I die, put my ashes in the trash bag, I don't care where they go. Don't waste your money on my gravestone I'm more concerned about my soul.

My approach to spiritual life is integrative rather than sectarian. I hold all liberation teachings in the highest regard, even when I do not feel moved to practice them personally.

The Purānas, which are encyclopedic repositories of traditional wisdom, including everything from cosmology to philosophy to stories about kings and holy men. They contain many yogic legends and teachings. The following are especially important: the Bhāgavata-Purāna (also known as Shrīmad-Bhāgavata), Shiva-Purāna, and Devī-Bhāgavata-Purāna (a Tantric work). The so-called Yoga-Upanishads (some twenty texts), most of which were composed after 1000 C.E. and include three extensive works: the Darshana-Upanishad, Yoga-Shikhā-Upanishad and Tejo-Bindu-Upanishad. The texts of Hatha-Yoga, such as the Goraksha-Samhitā, Hatha-Yoga-Pradīpikā, Hatha-Ratna-Avalī, Gheranda-Samhitā, Shiva-Samhitā, Yoga-Yājnavalkya, Yoga-Bīja, Yoga-Shāstra of Dattātreya, Sat-Karma-Samgraha, and the Shiva-Svarodaya, which are all available in English. Vedāntic scriptures like the voluminous Yoga-Vāsishtha, which teaches Jnāna-Yoga, and its traditional abridgment, the Laghu-Yoga-Vāsishtha, both available in English renderings. The literature of the bhakti-mārga or devotional path, which is especially prominent among the Vaishnavas (worshipers of Vishnu) and Shaivas (worshipers of Shiva). There is a considerable literature on bhakti in both Sanskrit and Tamil, as well as various vernacular languages. In particular, I can recommend Nārada’s Bhakti-Sūtra, Shāndilya’s Bhakti-Sūtra, and the extensive Bhāgavata-Purāna, which is a detailed (mythological) account of the birth, life, and death of the God-man Krishna, with many wonderful and inspiring stories of yogins and ascetics. This beautiful work contains the Uddhāva-Gītā, Krishna’s final esoteric instruction to sage Uddhāva. Goddess worship from a Tantric viewpoint is the core of the Devī-Bhāgavata-Purāna, which should also be studied. In addition, sincere Yoga students should also read and ponder the great yogic texts associated with the different schools of Buddhism and Jainism. To encounter the world of Yoga through its literature will challenge the practitioner in many ways: The texts, even in translation and with notes, are often difficult to comprehend and demand serious concentration and perseverance. Yet we do not have to become scholars, but our study (svādhyāya) will show us what it takes to be a real yogin and what magnificent tools Yoga puts at our disposal. It will also further our self-understanding and strengthen our commitment to practice. In his Treasury of Good Advice (1.6), Sakya Pāndita, who was one of the great scholar-adepts of Vajrayāna Buddhism, wrote: Even if one were to die first thing tomorrow, today one must study. Although one may not become a sage in this life, knowledge is firmly accumulated for future lives, just as secured assets can be used later.

Yoga, whether dualist or nondualist, is concerned with the elimination of suffering (duhkha). Here suffering does not mean the pain resulting from a cut or the emotional torment experienced through political oppression. These are simply manifestations of a deeper existential suffering. That suffering is the direct outcome of our habitual sense of being locked into a body-mind that is separate from all others. Yoga seeks to prevent future suffering of this kind by pointing the way to the unitary consciousness that is disclosed in ego-transcending ecstatic states. From the viewpoint of traditional Yoga, even the pleasure or well-being (sukha) experienced as a result of the regular performance of yogic postures, breath control, or meditation is suffused with suffering. First of all, the pleasure is bound to be only temporary, whereas the innate bliss (ānanda) of the Self is permanent. Second, pleasure is relative: We can compare our present sense of enjoyment with similar experiences at different times or by different people. Thus, our experience contains an element of envy. Third, there is always the hidden fear that a pleasurable state will come to an end, which is a reasonable assumption. Yoga is a systematic attempt to step out of this whole cycle of gain and loss. When the yogin or yoginī is in touch with the Reality beyond the bodymind, and when he or she has a taste of the unalloyed delight of the Self, all possible pleasures that derive from objects (rather than the Self) come to lose their fascination. The mind begins to be more equanimous. As the Bhagavad-Gītā (2.48), the most popular Hindu Yoga scripture, puts it: “Yoga is balance (samatva).” This notion of balance is intrinsic to Yoga and occurs on many levels of the yogic work. Its culmination is in the “vision of sameness” (sama-darshana), which is the graceful state in which we see everything in the same light. Everything stands revealed as the great Reality, and nothing excites us as being more valuable than anything else. We regard a piece of gold and a clump of clay or a beautiful person and an unattractive individual with the same even-temperedness. Nor are we puffed up by praise or deflated by blame. This condition, which is one of utter lucidity and serenity, must not be confused with one of the many types of ecstasy (samādhi) known to yogins. Ecstasies, visions, and psychic (paranormal) phenomena are not at all the point of spiritual life. They can and do occur when we earnestly devote ourselves to higher values, but they are by-products rather than the goal of authentic spirituality. They should certainly not be made the focus of our aspiration. Thus, Yoga is a comprehensive way of life in which the ultimate Reality, or Spirit, is given precedence over other concerns. It is a sacred path that conducts us, in the words of an ancient Upanishad, from the unreal to the Real, from falsehood to Truth, from the temporal to the Eternal.

The idea that the invisible realm is populated with beings (deities = angels) who are somehow relevant to human beings in the visible realm does not necessarily exclude a felt sense that behind all manifestation is just One Being. In monotheism, that Singularity is given a personal face (usually that of the “Creator”). In philosophical nondualism, the same Singularity is understood in abstract terms as an impersonal “It.” Both orientations have coexisted in India since time immemorial. Yoga operates with both a personalist conception of a Supreme Person (be it God or Goddess) and an impersonalist notion of an Absolute (often called brahman). Sometimes, as in the Bhagavad-Gītā (Lord’s Song), an attempt is made to integrate both ideas. Thus some forms of Yoga are more religiously oriented, while others tend to be more philosophical. For example, there are numerous religious elements connected with Bhakti-Yoga, the path of devotional self-surrender to the Higher Reality, whereas Jnāna-Yoga, the path of self-transcending wisdom, tends to be more philosophical or metaphysical. However, Yoga’s growing technology of physical and mental practices came to be associated with a nondualist (advaita) metaphysics. According to the earliest teachings of Hindu nondualism, as contained in the Upanishads, the multifaceted world is an emanation from the singular transcendental Reality called brahman (“that which thrives”).5 Yoga was introduced as a way back to that Singularity (eka). The sages experienced that unitary Reality, which is supraconscious and utterly blissful, as being the core not only of the whole universe but also of the human personality. As the core of the personality it was called “Self,” or ātman. The Sanskrit term yoga was accordingly redefined as the “union” between the lower or embodied self and the transcendental Self (ātman), and this is still the prevalent understanding of the word inside and outside India. However, even Yoga as union includes an element of yoking, for the lower self cannot merge into the higher Self without proper focusing of attention.

Knowledge in the abstract is merely a titillation of the intellect, an inconsequential stimulation of a segment of our total humanness. To fulfill itself, knowledge must find expression in the body. More than that, it must transmute the body by the power of its truth. And it is truth, not knowledge, which is replete with power. The power associated with knowledge is manipulative power, such as political leverage or overpowering influence. The power inherent in truth, however, is transformative in the deepest sense. It is capable of remaking the person in the light of truth. What truth? Or should we be speaking of truths? To hold true, truth must be singular. Always. A multiplicity of truths is a contradiction in terms. The custom of speaking of many truths arose out of the loss of truth and its substitution by countless facts. But facts are not truth. Only wisdom (prajnā) is truth-bearing (ritambharā) and therefore liberating. Truth is Reality without conceptual blinders. To the degree that the path of science is illumined by the ideal of truth, it has the capacity of guiding the scientist, step by step, to the discovery of truth—not merely factual truth but the kind of truth that sees everything in context and also preserves that context. A consideration of the larger context of human life must include reference to humanity’s evolutionary potential, including its possible spiritual destiny. Thus science can serve as a stepping-stone to the “evolutionary science” of Yoga, that is, to spiritual discipline through which our full potential is revealed. Yoga’s techniques of concentration and meditation, if mastered, disclose the transcendental possibilities of the mind, which allows us to experience truth at the highest level, as “ultimate Truth” (paramārtha-satya).

According to Patanjali, there are many (perhaps even innumerable) transcendental Selves, just as Nature comprises countless individual forms. However, only the Selves are conscious. Nature is insentient, and this includes the mind! The seemingly independent consciousness of the mind (citta) is thought to be entirely due to the “proximity” of the Self’s supraconscious awareness (cit). Nature and its products can never evolve to become the Self, and the Self does not emanate the different categories of Nature. Creation is a process whereby the transcendental foundation (pradhāna) of Nature gives rise to lower levels and forms of existence. The Self, or Spirit, is merely a witness of this cosmic process, which runs its course automatically, just as the ultimate destruction of the visible and invisible universe is preprogrammed. The Self is neither born nor dies. It is indestructible because it does not consist of any parts. Only from the viewpoint of the unenlightened mind does the Self, or transcendental Consciousness, appear to be implicated in the various realms of Nature. For Patanjali, the purpose of Yoga was to extricate the Spirit from its involvement in the processes of Nature. That involvement is a case of mistaken identity: the Self falsely identifies with the body-mind, thus causing the phenomenon of individuated consciousness, which suffers its presumed limitations.

The definition of art is problematic, but, simplistically, it is the application of skills to the creation of aesthetic values. Science can be defined as the methodical pursuit of knowledge about the phenomena of the physical world on the basis of unbiased observation and systematic experimentation. Roughly speaking, the objects of art and science are beauty and truth, respectively. Yoga is an art because it evidently does not have the mathematical exactitude of the natural sciences. The British-American mathematician-philosopher Alfred North Whitehead once remarked: “Art flourishes when there is a sense of adventure, a sense of nothing having been done before, of complete freedom to experiment; but when caution comes in you get repetition, and repetition is the death of art.”2 These comments apply to Yoga quite well. It is an incredible adventure of the spirit, which seeks to create an altogether new destiny. Each time the practitioner applies the wisdom of Yoga to life’s many situations, he or she must engage the process as if it were the first time. Thus Yoga is continuous self-application but not merely repetition. The Sanskrit term abhyāsa, which literally means “repetition,” has the primary meaning of “practice” in the context of Yoga, and practice calls for what the Zen masters call “beginner’s mind.” Any efforts to squeeze Yoga into the much-celebrated scientific method is doomed to failure, which is not to say that Yoga cannot or should not be studied rigorously from a scientific perspective. In fact, since the 1920s various research organizations and individual researchers have conducted such research, especially medical investigations, with varying degrees of success, and their findings have definitely been helpful in appraising Yoga’s effectiveness.3 Yet, Yoga is not completely subjective and inexact either. It proceeds according to careful rules established over a long period of (repeatable) personal experimentation.

In his book The Art of Yoga, B. K. S. Iyengar calls Yoga a “disciplinary art which develops the faculties of the body, mind and intellect” and whose “purpose is to refine man.”4 Initially he practiced Yoga for health reasons, but gradually he developed the yogic postures into an art form bringing “charm and delicacy, poise and peace, harmony and delight in presentations.”5 Undoubtedly he relates in this artistic way to the rest of Yoga as well. At the same time, Iyengar—whose method of āsana practice is the most exacting of all—makes it clear that the yogic techniques, if practiced correctly, have predictable results. Iyengar sees the relationship between art and science as follows: “Art in its initial stages is science; science in its highest form is art.”6 That is to say, at first the artist must master technique (the scientific part of art), just as the scientist who wants to master science must see beauty in truth. The delight and awe of mathematicians when looking at a particularly concise formula is a well-known manifestation of artistic sensibility. Long ago, Pythagoras knew of the meeting place of science (in the form of mathematics) and art (in the form of music). Even before him, the Indians had discovered the same connection, as expressed in their Shulba-Sūtras. Yoga practitioners look upon their own body-mind as an artistic instrument that can be explored fairly precisely by carefully observing the timehonored rules of the yogic heritage. This effort yields what the Western esoteric traditions call the “music of the spheres”—the mystical sound om reverberating throughout the cosmos followed by the wondrous realization of absolute oneness (ekatva) beyond all qualities.

WHEN PEOPLE DISCOVER that there is such a thing as spirituality, they understandably feel as excited as did Columbus upon setting eyes on the shores of America. Spirituality affords them a broader vista than they ever considered possible. They suddenly realize that conventional society is designed—partly consciously but for the most part quite unconsciously—to prevent us from seeing our full potential as human beings. Conventional life primarily revolves around the pursuit of rather limited goals: physical comfort, material possessions, sex, emotional gratification, mental stimulation, and power. According to Hinduism, there are four legitimate pursuits to which we can dedicate our time and energy: (1) artha—material welfare, (2) kāma—physical, emotional, and intellectual satisfaction, (3) dharma—morality (notably, justice), and (4) moksha—spiritual fulfillment. Much, if not most, of conventional life falls into the categories of artha and kāma. Our civilization has invented countless ways to keep our attention focused on comfort and pleasure. Every year billions of dollars are spent in advertising to make sure that we keep up our consumption of material goods, whether we need them or not, and that we strive for a “comfortable” life. Dharma is pursued in a much more limited way. Our moral standards appear to be at an all-time low, which is in keeping with the Indic notion of the kali-yuga or dark age, which is expected to prevail upon Earth for many millennia more. By comparison, the contemporary New Age belief in the imminent upliftment of humankind, by magical fiat and without any effort at all, appears like a mere whimsical hope. We must acknowledge that American society in particular suffers from widespread injustice in the legal system and that litigation has become a way of life. If moral integrity is not high on our list of priorities, spiritual aspiration is almost entirely absent from our lives. Few people really understand what spirituality is, and fewer still actively pursue a spiritual path.

When a Western seeker encounters spirituality, he or she must come to terms with the four core pursuits of material welfare, physical-emotional-intellectual satisfaction, and moral integrity. Central to spiritual practice are self-inspection and self-understanding. We must be willing to examine our habit patterns: how we act and react in all kinds of situations. Then we must be willing and able to also understand what we see about ourselves. The next step is to eliminate those habit patterns that are not conducive to further spiritual growth and replace them with positive habit patterns. Newcomers to spiritual life often do not realize that spiritual practice requires consistent self-application, that is, a measure of effort. They tend to assume that their peep beyond the walls of conventional life is sufficient in itself. But to see a boat is not the same as rowing it to the other shore. Intellectualizing spiritual life is less than helpful.

The next hurdle is the recognition that we have many deeply ingrained habit patterns that take time—a lot of time—to change. At first the typical neophyte is sure that he or she has a tremendous capacity and will grow more quickly than others. Then the sobering realization dawns that the degree of self-transformation is equal to the effort made. If neophytes have persisted thus far, they will almost inevitably encounter doubt (samshaya)—doubt about their own capacity; doubt about their teacher; doubt about the efficacy of the teaching. It is not far from the truth to say that practitioners who do not befriend doubt are bound to become self-deluded. If there really is no doubt or self-delusion, then they are quite simply enlightened. Another obstacle, not often identified, is the fact that practitioners’ karmic tendencies (read unconscious or semiconscious habit patterns) are magnified because awareness is enhanced through regular practice. This can be likened to a bright searchlight shining deep into the well of the mind. In the depth of the unconscious reside all kinds of unpleasant realities that get flushed out by steady application to self-inspection and self-understanding. At times, the unconscious materials that drift into the conscious mind seem overwhelming, and then it becomes clear that spiritual life is a form of brinkmanship. The Indic tradition speaks of the razor-edged path. Gradually spiritual practitioners learn to overcome their intrinsic materialism (i.e., constantly thinking in terms of the visible reality only). There is a progressive loosening of the ego knot or “self-contraction” (ātma-samkoca) by which the ordinary individual anxiously seeks to hold everything together. Spiritual practitioners learn to be humorous about everything, including themselves. Life is seen from a new perspective: as a strange play in which we are willy-nilly involved and which we can either misunderstand and suffer or understand and transcend even while being fully engaged in its drama. Practitioners must prevail over spiritual materialism—the false sense of accumulating “higher” experiences. They can realize inner freedom only to the extent that even the goal of liberation is renounced. Liberation, or enlightenment, is not a thing to be attained or acquired. It is living in the moment from the most profound understanding and without egoic attachment to anything. Those who parade their extraordinary spiritual accomplishments in front of others are possibly the least illumined of all. They merely substitute material commodities for “spiritual” merchandise. The Indic heritage knows of many adepts who after years of intense practice achieved a high state of consciousness or astounding paranormal ability only to promptly plunge from grace. The higher the adept’s elevation, the steeper the drop into oblivion and misery. Therefore the authorities of Yoga ever admonish practitioners to be circumspect, to keep their attainments to themselves, to focus on the cultivation of moral integrity, understanding, self-transcendence, and not least service to others.

Third, in our addiction to the rational consciousness and its countless props we believe the myth that we are really powerless to do anything about it. Addicts typically feel disempowered. The object to which they are addicted seems to them bigger and more powerful than their will. Similarly, stuck as we are in the lopsided worldview spawned by the rational consciousness, which tends to discredit other forms and states of consciousness, we do not believe that there is anything we can do about our situation. As addicts of the rational consciousness we do not believe in a universe that is inherently benign. We refuse to consider that the world we live in is actually comprised of the kinds of dimensions of reality that religions and spiritual traditions talk about. We disallow ourselves the possibility of inner or spiritual growth, because our view of human potential is limited to the capacities of the rational mind, which is viewed as the finest product of evolution. Fourth, like the typical addict, we tend to weave all kinds of explanatory tales to justify our present condition to ourselves and to each other. In this category belongs the “everybody thinks so” attitude, which is modeled not on the few exceptional men and women who can see farther than the rest, but on the lowest common denominator of understanding and living: a flagrant perversion of the democratic ideal. In other words, through word magic we engage in an act of massive repression by which we deny ourselves the opportunity to grow; we deny ourselves access to those forms and states of consciousness that our rational consciousness forces us to deny and belittle. Thus our experiential repertoire remains limited, even truncated. Fifth, addicts tend to be inflexible, dogmatic, and arrogant about defending their position, and we addicts of the rational consciousness are subject to the same mood. Because we have entrenched ourselves in an untenable position, in which the rational ego rules supreme, we meet any challenge to our unviable approach to life with haughty intransigence. We need to be right, because our entire worldview and life-style are at stake. And yet, sixth, like true addicts, those of us who are transfixed in the rational consciousness are deeply suffering our mood of separation, self-centeredness, and self-fragmentation. All life, observed Gautama the Buddha, is suffering. But there is suffering and then there is suffering. It appears that whenever we take the presumed independence of the human personality too seriously, cutting ourselves off from other beings and regarding the world as an enemy to be conquered, we become our own source of suffering. This suffering is superimposed on any adversity and pain we may experience as part of our human adventure on this planet. It is a psychological malaise from which we can recover only when we stop pinching ourselves. Our addiction to the “normal” rational consciousness is so potent that we cannot easily shake this habit even when we have realized that our habit of egoic self-encapsulation is artificial and self-inflicted and resting on a denial of the essential interconnectedness and interdependence of everything.

It is impossible for one who is lodged in mundane consciousness to evaluate definitively the competence of any guide to transformation and transcendence, without having already attained to an equal degree of transcendence. No number of “objective” criteria for assessment can remove this “Catch-22” dilemma. Therefore the choice of a guide, path, or group will remain in some sense a subjective matter. Subjectivity, however, has many modes, from self-deluding emotionality to penetrating, illuminative intuition. Perhaps the first job of the seeker would best be to refine that primary guide, one’s own subjectivity.10 Ram Dass (Richard Alpert), who has functioned on both sides of the fence (as a devotee of Neem Karoli Baba and as a teacher in his own right), has made the following complementary observation: Some people fear becoming involved with a teacher. They fear the possible impurities in the teacher, fear being exploited, used, or entrapped. In truth we are only ever entrapped by our own desires and clingings. If you want only liberation, then all teachers will be useful vehicles for you. They cannot hurt you at all.11 This is true only ideally. In practice, the problem is that in many cases students do not know themselves sufficiently to be conscious of their deeper motivations. Therefore they may feel attracted precisely to the kind of teacher who shares their own “impurities”—such as hunger for power—and hence have every reason to fear him or her. It seems that only the truly innocent are protected. Although they too are by no means immune to painful experiences with teachers, at least they will emerge hale and whole, having been sustained by their own purity of intention. Accepting the fact that our appraisal of a teacher is always subjective so long as we have not ourselves attained his or her level of spiritual accomplishment, there is at least one important criterion that we can look for in a guru: Does he or she genuinely promote disciples’ personal and spiritual growth, or does he or she obviously or ever so subtly undermine their maturation? Would-be disciples should take a careful, levelheaded look at the community of students around their prospective guru. They should especially scrutinize those who are closer to the guru than most. Are they merely sorry imitations or clones of their teacher, or do they come across as mature men and women? The Bulgarian spiritual teacher Omraam Mikhaёl Aїvanhov, who died in 1986, made this to-the-point observation: Everybody has his own path, his mission, and even if you take your Master as a model, you must always develop in the way that suits your own nature. You have to sing the part which has been given to you, aware of the notes, the beat and the rhythm; you have to sing it with your voice which is certainly not that of your Master, but that is not important. The one really important thing is to sing your part perfectly.

To state the obvious, conventional folk have always had their problems with spiritual teachers. The neglect or even oppression of the Hebrew prophets and the Christian mystics is well known to historians. Mohammed, founder of Islam, was badly treated by his own people. So was Jesus of Nazareth. So was Baha’ullah, founder of the Baha’i faith. Gautama the Buddha survived a murderous plot against him by his own cousin. His older contemporary Vardhamana Mahāvīra, founder of Jainism, was ill treated in his younger years as well. Socrates, an early European guru, was forced to drink the poison cup, as his philosophical wisdom was felt to corrupt the youth and thus threaten the very fabric of Athenean society.

Like one’s parents, the initiatory guru makes a deep spiritual connection with the initiate, which is thought to endure beyond the present lifetime. Initiation occurs at various levels and through various means. In most instances it consists of a formal ritual in which the guru transmits a portion of his spiritual power (shakti) awakened through a mantra that is whispered into the disciple’s left ear. But great adepts can initiate by a mere touch or glance or even simply by visualizing the disciple. Sri Ramakrishna, the great nineteenth-century master, placed his foot on Swami Vivekananda’s chest and promptly plunged his young disciple into a deep state of formless ecstasy (nirvikalpa-samādhi). THE GURU AS TRANSMITTER According to Indic Yoga, the guru is a teacher who not merely instructs or communicates information, as does the preceptor (ācārya). Rather the guru transmits wisdom and, by his very nature, reveals—to whatever degree—the spiritual Reality. If the guru is fully enlightened, or liberated, his every word, gesture, and mere presence is held to express and manifest the Spirit. He or she is then a veritable beacon of Reality. Transmission in such a case is spontaneous and continuous. Like the Sun, to which the sad-guru or teacher of the Real is often compared, he or she constantly transmits the liberating “energy” of the transcendental Being. In Yoga, with adepts who are not yet fully liberated, transmission is largely but not exclusively based on the teacher’s will and effort. Many schools also admit of an element of divine grace (prasāda) entering into the configuration for which the teacher serves as a temporal vehicle. Thus the traditional teacher plays a crucial role in the life of the disciple. As the Sanskrit word guru (meaning literally “weighty”) suggests, he or she is a true “heavyweight” in spiritual matters. THE GURU AS GUIDE Apart from triggering and even constantly reinvigorating the spiritual process in a disciple, the guru also serves as a guide along the path. This occurs primarily through verbal instruction but also by being a living example on the spiritual path. Since the path to liberation includes many formidable hurdles, a disciple is clearly in need of guidance. The written teachings, which form the precious heritage of a given lineage of adepts, are a powerful beacon along the way. But they typically require explanations, or an oral commentary, to yield their deeper meaning. By virtue of the oral transmission received from his or her own teacher or teachers and also in light of his or her own experience and realization, the guru is able to make the written teachings come alive for the disciple. This is an invaluable gift.

But great adepts can initiate by a mere touch or glance or even simply by visualizing the disciple. Sri Ramakrishna, the great nineteenth-century master, placed his foot on Swami Vivekananda’s chest and promptly plunged his young disciple into a deep state of formless ecstasy (nirvikalpa-samādhi). THE GURU AS TRANSMITTER According to Indic Yoga, the guru is a teacher who not merely instructs or communicates information, as does the preceptor (ācārya). Rather the guru transmits wisdom and, by his very nature, reveals—to whatever degree—the spiritual Reality. If the guru is fully enlightened, or liberated, his every word, gesture, and mere presence is held to express and manifest the Spirit. He or she is then a veritable beacon of Reality. Transmission in such a case is spontaneous and continuous. Like the Sun, to which the sad-guru or teacher of the Real is often compared, he or she constantly transmits the liberating “energy” of the transcendental Being. In Yoga, with adepts who are not yet fully liberated, transmission is largely but not exclusively based on the teacher’s will and effort. Many schools also admit of an element of divine grace (prasāda) entering into the configuration for which the teacher serves as a temporal vehicle. Thus the traditional teacher plays a crucial role in the life of the disciple. As the Sanskrit word guru (meaning literally “weighty”) suggests, he or she is a true “heavyweight” in spiritual matters. THE GURU AS GUIDE Apart from triggering and even constantly reinvigorating the spiritual process in a disciple, the guru also serves as a guide along the path. This occurs primarily through verbal instruction but also by being a living example on the spiritual path. Since the path to liberation includes many formidable hurdles, a disciple is clearly in need of guidance. The written teachings, which form the precious heritage of a given lineage of adepts, are a powerful beacon along the way. But they typically require explanations, or an oral commentary, to yield their deeper meaning. By virtue of the oral transmission received from his or her own teacher or teachers and also in light of his or her own experience and realization, the guru is able to make the written teachings come alive for the disciple. This is an invaluable gift. THE GURU AS ILLUMINATOR Tradition explains the term guru as being composed of the two syllables gu and ru; the former is taken to represent darkness, while the latter is said to stand for its removal. Thus the guru is a dispeller of spiritual darkness, that is, he or she restores sight to those who are blind to their true nature, the Spirit. If we compare the ego to a black hole from which no light can escape, the guru is like the radiant sun: an ever-lustrous being that illumines every dark niche in the disciple’s mind and character.

But great adepts can initiate by a mere touch or glance or even simply by visualizing the disciple. Sri Ramakrishna, the great nineteenth-century master, placed his foot on Swami Vivekananda’s chest and promptly plunged his young disciple into a deep state of formless ecstasy (nirvikalpa-samādhi). THE GURU AS TRANSMITTER According to Indic Yoga, the guru is a teacher who not merely instructs or communicates information, as does the preceptor (ācārya). Rather the guru transmits wisdom and, by his very nature, reveals—to whatever degree—the spiritual Reality. If the guru is fully enlightened, or liberated, his every word, gesture, and mere presence is held to express and manifest the Spirit. He or she is then a veritable beacon of Reality. Transmission in such a case is spontaneous and continuous. Like the Sun, to which the sad-guru or teacher of the Real is often compared, he or she constantly transmits the liberating “energy” of the transcendental Being. In Yoga, with adepts who are not yet fully liberated, transmission is largely but not exclusively based on the teacher’s will and effort. Many schools also admit of an element of divine grace (prasāda) entering into the configuration for which the teacher serves as a temporal vehicle. Thus the traditional teacher plays a crucial role in the life of the disciple. As the Sanskrit word guru (meaning literally “weighty”) suggests, he or she is a true “heavyweight” in spiritual matters. THE GURU AS GUIDE Apart from triggering and even constantly reinvigorating the spiritual process in a disciple, the guru also serves as a guide along the path. This occurs primarily through verbal instruction but also by being a living example on the spiritual path. Since the path to liberation includes many formidable hurdles, a disciple is clearly in need of guidance. The written teachings, which form the precious heritage of a given lineage of adepts, are a powerful beacon along the way. But they typically require explanations, or an oral commentary, to yield their deeper meaning. By virtue of the oral transmission received from his or her own teacher or teachers and also in light of his or her own experience and realization, the guru is able to make the written teachings come alive for the disciple. This is an invaluable gift. THE GURU AS ILLUMINATOR Tradition explains the term guru as being composed of the two syllables gu and ru; the former is taken to represent darkness, while the latter is said to stand for its removal. Thus the guru is a dispeller of spiritual darkness, that is, he or she restores sight to those who are blind to their true nature, the Spirit. If we compare the ego to a black hole from which no light can escape, the guru is like the radiant sun: an ever-lustrous being that illumines every dark niche in the disciple’s mind and character. This illuminating function depends on the degree of the guru’s own realization.

Spiritual teachers, by their very nature, swim against the stream of conventional values and pursuits. They are not interested in acquiring and accumulating material wealth or in competing in the marketplace, or in pleasing egos. They are not even about morality. Typically, their message is of a radical nature, asking that we live consciously, inspect our motives, transcend our egoic passions, overcome our intellectual blindness, live peacefully with our fellow humans, and, finally, realize the deepest core of human nature, the Spirit. For those wishing to devote their time and energy to the pursuit of conventional life, this kind of message is revolutionary, subversive, and profoundly disturbing.

This involves a deep commitment to self-transformation, submission to a course of discipline by which the mind is tricked out of its conventional habit patterns, and a loving regard for the guru, who must be viewed not as an individual but essentially as a cosmic function. That function is designed to obliterate the illusion of discipleship. Thus the spiritual process between guru and disciple is of a highly paradoxical nature: In order to open to the guru’s transmission and allow it to work the miracle of transformation in us, we must assume the role of the disciple and hence deem the guru as external to ourselves. Yet the guru’s transmission stems from the Spirit itself, which is not separate from us, since it is our very own ultimate identity. The whole spiritual path shares in this paradox. The reason, Yoga tells us, is that while we are inherently free, we do not at present realize this in every moment. Instead we consider ourselves conditioned by all kinds of limiting factors. This turns us into seekers. The search ends when we fully and in every moment live in and as the Spirit, which is truly indivisible whole, whereas the so-called individual is in fact a fragmented being conjured by the illusion of the ego. The guru is the ultimate ego buster. Even while the guru has immense sympathy for the disciple who still thinks of himself as a finite island unto himself—an illusion that is fraught with suffering (duhkha)—the guru constantly and patiently attempts to draw the disciple out of himself and into the supra-individual and universal Self. In this task the guru is governed by wisdom (prajnā) and compassion (karunā), which are themselves supraindividual capacities that are oriented toward the Spirit rather than the finite human personality.

Disciples by their very nature are prone to misconceptions, projections, illusions, and delusions that prevent or delay a constructive relationship with the guru. Therefore the guru is primarily responsible for providing a viable avenue of self-transcending discipline for the disciple.

Disciples by their very nature are prone to misconceptions, projections, illusions, and delusions that prevent or delay a constructive relationship with the guru. Therefore the guru is primarily responsible for providing a viable avenue of self-transcending discipline for the disciple. DISCOVERING THE INNER GURU It is part of the disciple’s self-understanding that he or she must ultimately transcend the external guru and discover the guru as a spiritual function or principle within. In their hurry for enlightenment, Western disciples all too often discard the external guru prematurely, leading them to the risk of further self-delusion. They then readily make the claim of being their own guru. However, short of ultimate realization, the only inner guru accessible to the average individual is the self, or ego. Since Yoga recognizes the egoself as the cause of unenlightenment, the guidance of the ego cannot possibly lead to the highest realization. Instead of being a dispeller of spiritual ignorance, the ego as guru merely pushes the disciple into deeper ignorance, confusion, and ultimately despair. Thus, until the disciple is mature enough to discover and properly respond to the guru principle within, he or she should clearly practice guru-yoga in regard to an external teacher.

There are of course several ways of looking at grace. We could, for instance, see it as a function of our own stock of good karma. According to the age-old teaching of karma—the moral law of causation—we reap what we sow. Thus our good thoughts, our positive emotions or dispositions, and our morally sound actions create good karma for us. In other words, we are our own source of grace. I believe that most of the experiences we attribute to “grace” are simply good karma manifesting for us, without the involvement of any other agent. However, I also believe that there are occasions when an apparently objective agency—residing in the subtle or even the transcendental dimensions of existence—favors us in some way. Tradition, moreover, speaks of the guru’s grace and reminds us that the true teacher (sad-guru) is never far from the ultimate Reality. In other words, his or her grace is divine grace. Sincere Yoga practitioners, especially those resorting to prayer, are likely to encounter graceful interventions more frequently than others. To quote Swami Niranjanananda again, “In order to be the recipient [of grace] one has to go through self effort.”3 This very recognition lies behind Patanjali’s recommendation to practice īshvara-pranidhāna, which broadly can be translated as a “positive regard for a higher principle.” More narrowly, we can understand it as devotion to the Lord (īshvara), whom Patanjali considers to be a special kind of purusha, or transcendental Spirit. However we may conceptualize the ultimate Being, there is always room in our practice for opening to grace. As part of this, Western Yoga practitioners, instead of relying exclusively on postures, breath control, and meditation, might also want to include the beneficial traditional practice of prayer (prārthanā).

Tapas is any practice that pushes the mind against its own limits, and the key ingredient of tapas is endurance. Thus in the archaic Rig-Veda (10.136), the long-haired ascetic or keshin is said to “endure” the world, to “endure” fire, and to “endure” poison.1 The keshin is a type of renouncer, a proto-yogin, who is a “wind-girt” (naked?) companion of the wild God Rudra (Howler). He is said to “ascend” the wind in a God-intoxicated state and to fly through space, looking down upon all things. But the name keshin harbors a deeper meaning, for it also can refer to the Sun whose “long hair” is made up of the countless rays that emanate from the solar orb and reach far into the cosmos and bestow life on Earth. This is again a reminder that the archaic Yoga of the Vedas revolves around the Solar Spirit, who selflessly feeds all beings with his/her/its compassionate warmth. The early name for the yogin is tapasvin, the practitioner of tapas or voluntary self-challenge. The tapasvin lives always at the edge. He deliberately challenges his body and mind, applying formidable will power to whatever practice he vows to undertake. He may choose to stand stock-still under India’s hot sun for hours on end, surrounded by a wall of heat from four fires lit close by. Or he may resolve to sit naked in solitary meditation on a windswept mountain peak in below-zero temperatures. Or he may opt to incessantly chant a divine name, forfeiting sleep for a specified number of days. The possibilities for tapas are endless. Tapas begins with temporarily or permanently denying ourselves a particular desire—having a satisfying cup of coffee, piece of chocolate, or casual sex. Instead of instant gratification, we choose postponement. Then, gradually, postponement can be stepped up to become complete renunciation of a desire. This kind of challenge to our habit patterns causes a certain degree of frustration in us. We begin to “stew in our own juices,” and this generates psychic energy that can be used to power the process of self-transformation. As we become increasingly able to gain control over our impulses, we experience the delight behind creative self-frustration. We see that we are growing and that self-denial need not necessarily be negative.

For instance, if a person practices tapas in order to acquire paranormal abilities (siddhi) that will impress or overpower others, he or she consolidates rather than transcends the ego and thus becomes diverted from the path. If, again, a practitioner confuses the balanced self-challenge of genuine tapas with merely painful penance, springing from sheer ignorance and a subconscious masochism, he or she is bound to reap only pain and suffering that will undermine his or her physical health, possibly contributing to emotional instability or even mental illness. Two and a half thousand years ago, Gautama, the founder of Buddhism, learned the important difference between genuine (i.e., self-transcending) tapas and misconceived penance. For six long years he pushed himself until his bodily frame became emaciated and was close to collapse, but still without yielding the longed-for spiritual freedom. Then his inner wisdom led him to take the middle path (madhya-mārga) beyond damaging extremes. Gautama abandoned his severe, self-destructive tapas and nourished his body properly. His fellow ascetics, who had always looked to him for inspiration, thought he had returned to a worldly life and shunned him. Later, after Gautama’s spiritual awakening, their paths crossed again and his radiance was so impressive that they could not help but bow to him with utmost respect. Genuine tapas makes us shine like the Sun. Then we can be a source of warmth, comfort, and strength for others.

In his Viveka-Cudāmani (vs. 77), the famous Vedānta master Shankara characterizes objects (vishaya) as “poison” (visha), because they tarnish consciousness by distracting it from its real task, which is to mirror reality. Our attention is constantly pulled outward by objects, and this externalization of our consciousness prevents us from truly being ourselves. “When the mind pursues the roving senses,” states the Bhagavad-Gītā (2.67), “it carries away wisdom (prajnā), even as the wind [carries away] a ship on water.” Sense perceptions pollute our inner environment, keeping our mind in a state of turmoil. We are forever hoping for experiences that will make us happy and whole, but our desire for happiness can never be satisfied by external experiences. “Whatever pleasures spring from contact [with sense objects], they are only sources of suffering,” declares the Bhagavad-Gītā (5.22). To find true happiness and peace, we need to unclutter our mind and remain still. The fatal consequences of focusing on objects rather than the ultimate Subject, the Self, are described very well in that ancient Yoga scripture (2.62–63): When a man contemplates objects, attachment to them is produced. From attachment springs desire [for further contact with the objects] and from desire comes anger (when that desire is frustrated]. From anger arises confusion, from confusion [comes] failure of memory; from failure of memory [arises] the loss of wisdom (buddhi); upon the loss of wisdom, [a person] perishes. Emotional confusion (sammoha) profoundly upsets our cognitive faculties: We lose our sense of direction, purpose, and identity. The Sanskrit word for this state is smriti-bhramsha or “failure of memory/mindfulness.” When we fail to “recollect” ourselves, wisdom (buddhi) cannot shine forth. But without wisdom, we, as members of the species Homo sapiens, are doomed to forfeit not only our status as human beings but our very life. Spiritual ignorance is binding and ultimately ruinous. Wisdom can set us free. In Shankara’s Ātma-Bodha (vs. 16), we read: Even though the Self is all-pervading, it does not shine in everything. It shines only in the organ-of-wisdom (buddhi), like a reflection in a clear medium [such as water or a mirror]. The “organ of wisdom,” which is often called the “higher mind,” is predominantly composed of sattva, the lucidity factor of the cosmos. There is a family resemblance between the sattva and the Self, and this curious affinity makes it possible for the Self’s radiant presence to manifest itself to human beings.

The remaining challenge is to realize our higher or true nature in the midst of daily life. This is the ideal of “spontaneous ecstasy” (sahaja-samādhi), which is stable and permanent. This sublime condition of enlightenment is the same as “living liberation,” about which Shankara says in his Viveka-Cudāmani (vs. 438): He who never has the thought of “I” with regard to the body and the senses and the thought of “this” in respect of something different to the “That” [i.e., Reality] is regarded as a [being] who is liberated in life (jīvan-mukta).

For Western students, this represents a particular challenge, as the meaning of the yogic symbols is seldom obvious. Basically, we can distinguish two kinds of symbolism: a spontaneous, “natural” symbolism and an artificial symbolism. Both arise from the higher mind (buddhi), which is the preferred mental organ of the Yoga adepts. The lower mind (manas) is logical and literal; the higher mind is translogical and metaphoric. The buddhi is an impersonal agency, which functions as the organ of wisdom and also acts as the depository of the deep symbols or archetypes. It has much in common with the concept of the universal unconscious in Jungian psychology. Unlike English, the German language makes a useful distinction between Vernunft and Verstand, which fairly accurately correspond to buddhi and manas respectively. The former is the fertile ground in which creativity, poetry, and symbolism flourish.

Shiva’s world-destroying dance is another potent symbol that can be understood both cosmologically and psychologically. From a yogic perspective, the dance disentangles all the mental webs by which we have imprisoned ourselves through our incessant karmic activities or volitions. Shiva, as Natarāja (“Lord of Dance”), is the destroyer of our delusions and illusions. He is an inner force that undermines our laboriously created conceptualizations of the world, so that we may see reality “as it is” (yathā-bhūta). The Goddess Mohinī (“She who deludes”) is thought to tempt us with misconceptions and delusional fantasies, so that only serious spiritual seekers can find their way to Reality. The elephant-headed, pot-bellied God Ganesha, again, is traditionally called upon to remove all such obstacles. Each deity represents a particular symbolic function whose depth we can plumb only when we delve into our own psyche by means of Yoga. The artistic representations of the numerous deities of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism all are full of yogic symbolism. That symbolism is most prominent in the profound teachings of Tantra. To appreciate this fact, we just need to look at the esoteric meaning of hatha—as in Hatha-Yoga, a branch of Tantra. The dictionary meaning of the term hatha is simply “force” or “power,” and the commonly used ablative hathāt means “by force of.” Esoterically, however, the syllables ha and tha—quite meaningless in themselves—are said to symbolize “Sun” and “Moon” respectively. Specifically, they refer to the inner luminaries: the “sun” or solar energy coursing through the right energetic pathway (i.e., the pingalānādī) and the “moon” or lunar energy traveling through the left pathway (i.e., the idā-nādī). Hatha-Yoga utilizes these two currents—corresponding to the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems respectively—in order to achieve a psychoenergetic balance and mental tranquillity. When this energetic harmony is achieved, the central channel (i.e., the sushumnā-nādī) is activated. As soon as the life force (prāna) flows into and up the central channel, it awakens the serpent power (kundalinī-shakti) and pulls it into the central channel as well. Thereafter the kundalinī rises to the crown of the head, leading to a sublime state of mind-transcending unified consciousness (or nirvikalpa-samādhi, “formless ecstasy”).

The process of voluntary self-limitation and self-challenge bears the name tapas in Sanskrit, which means literally “heat” or “glow.” The ancient sages (rishi) pointed to the Solar Being as the primary practitioner of tapas and in fact as the originator of Yoga.

Tapas is any practice that pushes the mind against its own limits, and the key ingredient of tapas is endurance. Thus in the archaic Rig-Veda (10.136), the long-haired ascetic or keshin is said to “endure” the world, to “endure” fire, and to “endure” poison.1 The keshin is a type of renouncer, a proto-yogin, who is a “wind-girt” (naked?) companion of the wild God Rudra (Howler). He is said to “ascend” the wind in a God-intoxicated state and to fly through space, looking down upon all things. But the name keshin harbors a deeper meaning, for it also can refer to the Sun whose “long hair” is made up of the countless rays that emanate from the solar orb and reach far into the cosmos and bestow life on Earth. This is again a reminder that the archaic Yoga of the Vedas revolves around the Solar Spirit, who selflessly feeds all beings with his/her/its compassionate warmth. The early name for the yogin is tapasvin, the practitioner of tapas or voluntary self-challenge. The tapasvin lives always at the edge. He deliberately challenges his body and mind, applying formidable will power to whatever practice he vows to undertake. He may choose to stand stock-still under India’s hot sun for hours on end, surrounded by a wall of heat from four fires lit close by. Or he may resolve to sit naked in solitary meditation on a windswept mountain peak in below-zero temperatures. Or he may opt to incessantly chant a divine name, forfeiting sleep for a specified number of days. The possibilities for tapas are endless. Tapas begins with temporarily or permanently denying ourselves a particular desire—having a satisfying cup of coffee, piece of chocolate, or casual sex. Instead of instant gratification, we choose postponement. Then, gradually, postponement can be stepped up to become complete renunciation of a desire. This kind of challenge to our habit patterns causes a certain degree of frustration in us. We begin to “stew in our own juices,” and this generates psychic energy that can be used to power the process of self-transformation. As we become increasingly able to gain control over our impulses, we experience the delight behind creative self-frustration. We see that we are growing and that self-denial need not necessarily be negative. The Bhagavad-Gītā (17.14–16) speaks of three kinds of austerity or tapas: Austerity of body, speech, and mind. Austerity of the body includes purity, rectitude, chastity, nonharming, and making offerings to higher beings, sages, brahmins (the custodians of the spiritual legacy of India), and honored teachers. Austerity of speech encompasses speaking kind, truthful, and beneficial words that give no offense, as well as the regular practice of recitation (svādhyāya) of the sacred lore. Austerity of the mind consists of serenity, gentleness, silence, self-restraint, and pure emotions.

All spiritual traditions regard our ordinary human condition as somehow flawed or corrupt, as falling short of the unsurpassable perfection or wholeness of Reality. As a process of transformation, Yoga endeavors to re-form or, in the words of the Christian mystic Meister Eckhart, even “super-form” the spiritual practitioner. The old Adam has to die before the new super-formed being can emerge—the being who is reintegrated with the Whole. Not surprisingly, this transmutation of the human personality is also often couched in terms of self-sacrifice. In gnostic language, the “lower” reality must be surrendered, so that the “higher” or divine Reality can become manifest in our lives. For this to be possible, the spiritual practitioner must somehow locate and emulate that higher Reality. He or she must find the “Heaven” within, whether by experiential communion or mystical union with the Divine or by an act of faith in which a connection with the Divine is simply assumed until this becomes an actual experience. Spiritual discipline (sādhana), then, is a matter of constantly “remembering” the Divine, the transcendental Self, or Buddha nature. There can be no such transformation without catharsis, without shedding all those aspects of one’s being that block our immediate apperception of Reality. Traditions like Yoga and Vedānta can be understood as programs of progressive “detoxification” of the body-mind, which clears the inner eye so that we can see what is always in front of us—the omnipresent Reality, the Divine. So long as our emotional and cognitive system is toxic or impure, that inner eye remains veiled, and all we see is the world of multiplicity devoid of unity. The modern gnostic teacher Mikhaёl Aїvanhov remarked about this: Not so many years ago, when people’s homes were still lit by oil lamps, the glass chimneys had to be cleaned every evening. All combustion produces wastes, and the oil in these lamps deposited a film of soot on the inside of the glass, so that, even if the flame was lit, the lamp gave no light unless the glass was cleaned. The same phenomenon occurs in each one of us, for life is combustion. All our thoughts, feelings and acts, all our manifestations, are the result of combustion. Now it is obvious that in order to produce the flame, the energy which animates us, something has to burn and that burning necessarily entails waste products which then have to be eliminated. Just as the lamp fails to light up the house if its glass is coated with soot . . . similarly, if a man fails to purify himself he will sink deeper and deeper into the cold and dark and end by losing life itself.

The single most important Hatha-Yoga technique of purification is a particular type of breath control that is performed by breathing alternately through the left and the right nostril. This practice is intended to remove all obstructions from the network of subtle channels through which the life force circulates, thus making proper breath control and deep concentration possible. In the ordinary person, state the scriptures of Hatha-Yoga, the circulation of the life force is obstructed. The technique of alternate breathing is known as nādī-shodhana. When the subtle conduits (nādī)—or arcs of the life energy—are completely purified, the life force can circulate freely in the body, and it becomes amenable to voluntary control. Already Patanjali noted in his Yoga-Sūtra (2.52) that breath control has the effect of removing the “covering” (āvarana) that prevents one’s inner light to manifest clearly. The objective of Hatha-Yoga is to conduct the life force along the body’s central axis to the crown of the head. This flow of prāna through the central conduit—called sushumnā-nādī—is thought to awaken the full psychospiritual potential of the body. This potential is better known as the “serpent power” (kundalinī-shakti). When the kundalinī is awakened from its dormant state in the lowest center (cakra) at the base of the spine, it rushes up to the crown center. This ascent is accompanied by a variety of psychic and somatic phenomena. These include visionary states and, when the kundalinī reaches the top center, ecstatic transcendence into the formless Reality, which is inherently inconceivable and blissful. As the kundalinī force is active in the crown center, the rest of the body is gradually depleted of energy. This curious effect is explained as the progressive purification of the five elements (bhūta) constituting the physical body—earth, water, fire, air, and ether. The Sanskrit term for this process is bhūta-shuddhi. Purification of the body not only leads to health and inner balance but also affects the way in which a person perceives the world. This is clearly indicated in Patanjali’s Yoga-Sūtra (2.40), which states: Through purity [the yogin gains] a desire to protect his own limbs [and a desire for] noncontamination by others. The decisive phrase sva-anga-jugupsā has often been translated as “disgust toward one’s own body,” but this is not at all in the spirit of Yoga. Jugupsā is more appropriately rendered as “desire to protect.” The adept is eager to protect his body against contamination by others. This is combined with an inner distance from one’s own physical vehicle through sustained witnessing.

Silence is not merely a discipline; rather, it is primarily a state of being. It is in, through, and as silence that we discover our authentic identity, the Self (ātman, purusha). Thus silence partakes of the golden nature of the ultimate Reality. By comparison, speech is like the silver-bodied Moon, which has no light of its own but is illuminated by the radiance of the Sun. Through silence we can attune ourselves to the supreme stillness of the single Being, which is utter silence that is never disrupted by sound. Jean Klein, a twentieth-century exponent of Advaita Vedānta, comments: The Self is silent awareness and cannot be defined in terms of a silence as opposed to noise. How should we react towards silence or its opposite? If you want to rid yourself of agitation so as to attain a state of silence, you reject, you fight, you defend yourself. But if on the contrary you were to accept it, the agitation—which is part of this silence—will disappear within it. Then you will reach the silence of the Self, beyond silence and agitation.2 Once that great, sustaining Reality has been discovered, all our actions, thoughts, and utterances become spontaneous signals of that infinite silence, which is sheer bliss. Thus, the words of the enlightened adepts have transformative power, because they address that part in us which instinctively knows of that unsurpassed silence. Just as in ordinary life, speech and silence are intimately interwoven, so also in spiritual life do they complement one another. This has been recognized particularly in Taoism. In the language of the I Ching, speech is yang, or the masculine pole of silence; silence is yin, or the feminine pole. Together they are responsible for the creativity of human interaction. In spiritual life we cultivate sacred silence to regenerate our inner being so that we can return to our daily activities and to speech from a new perspective. In his monumental work A Study of History, the great British historian Arnold Toynbee has written about the creative withdrawal of the spiritual heroes of the past—the founders and inspirers of religions. They sought out the wilderness in order to find the fountain of truth within their own being. Then they returned, strengthened and ready to uplift humanity by sharing with others their extraordinary discovery. “Silence,” said Ovid, “is strength.” We need not have the spiritual standing of a Moses, Jesus, Mahāvīra, or Gautama the Buddha to practice sacred silence and benefit from it.

Looked at differently, these various levels are possibilities of “bodily” existence. Depending on which “body,” or state of existence, we set our heart on, we will obtain that very form of embodiment once we have quit our present physical vehicle. Thus we may resume a human form, become an angelic being (deva) inhabiting the subtle realm, sink into the cosmic matrix itself as a prakriti-laya, or recover our true identity as the Self in the blissful “company” of the Divine Person, Lord Krishna. The phrase “to set one’s heart on something” is perhaps more expressive of the intended meaning of “remembering” than is “thinking.” The latter has too abstract a flavor, while the former is indicative of a deep-level process. This becomes clear when one realizes that one of the synonyms of “meditation” is in fact “remembering.” Meditative remembering means sending taproots down into the hidden recesses of our being, into the depth-mind (buddhi). The depth-mind is the storehouse of the essence (i.e., karmic deposits) of our world experience. It has been likened to a net whose knots are the impressions left behind by our volitional activity. Meditation is a partial enactment of the process of dying. Conversely, death is the meditative process taken to its logical conclusion. At death, the mind disentangles itself from the physical body, and the center of identity is shifted to the subtle vehicle—the so-called astral body or “subtle vehicle” (sūkshma-sharīra). The quintessence of the contents of the mind, in the form of the subliminal impressions (samskāra) stored away in the depth-mind, is the factor that determines the after-death fate of the deceased according to the iron-law of moral retribution or karma.

Some critics acidly observed that people throughout the ages have always believed they were living in particularly crucial times. There is some truth to this criticism, because human history is indeed continuously decisive, for in humanity’s march through time every step determines the future of our species. But only the cynic would sneer at the idea that some steps, some historical periods, are more decisive than others—not only in the shaping of a particular race or nation, but for humanity as a whole. Possibly one such decisive historical threshold was what the German philosopher and psychiatrist Karl Jaspers styled the “axial age”—the period between 800–500 B.C.E. when “thought turned back upon thought”: the epoch of Confucius, Lao Tzu, Buddha, Zoroaster, Heraclitus, Plato, and Socrates.1 In the West, this development gradually led to what can only be described as the enthronement and autarchy of cold reason and the consequent suppression of nonrational modes of consciousness. As many contemporary thinkers have shown, this inflation of ratio lies at the root of today’s moral and spiritual bankruptcy, and its disastrous effects can be witnessed all around us (and in us, if we care to look). What is perhaps most disheartening is that this lopsided orientation to life is now being thrust upon the “underdeveloped” world, which merely magnifies the existing threat to our planet’s ecology and to the survival of countless life forms, not least our own human species. When we take stock of the folly of humankind we begin to realize the extent of the global problems induced, in the last analysis, by hypertrophied (egocentric) reason. We may also be impressed with the traditional Hindu explanation of the particular spirit of our era. For, according to the computations of the Hindu pundits, we are well into the “dawn phase” of the kali-yuga, or “dark age.” Like so many premodern mythologies, Hinduism views the evolution of humanity as a cyclical process of progressive moral degeneration from an original state of purity and spiritual wholeness. The

But Hindu chronology does not stop there. The four world ages are collectively known as a mahā-yuga or “great age,” and it is thought that two thousand of these supercycles form but a single dawn and night (called kalpa) in the life of the Creator (God Brahma). His life-span extends over a “century,” that is, a period of 311,040,000,000,000 human years. At the demise of the Creator, the whole manifest universe becomes dissolved. After an immeasurable period, the process is reversed and the whole cycle of space-time existence starts all over again. A truly awesome vision! It leaves no doubt about the utter insignificance of the human race, never mind the individual. Only liberated beings (jīvan-mukta) have cause for humor, for they alone stand well clear of this cosmic perpetuum mobile. Their dissolution is not merely a temporary respite from the whirling wheel of existence, but it amounts to a permanent establishment in the transcendental condition of Being-Consciousness-Bliss. This unsurpassable attainment is called “absolute dissolution” (atyantika-pralaya) and is distinct from both pralaya and mahā-pralaya. Where do we of today stand in this immense time game? As I have mentioned already, we find ourselves in the opening phase of the last of the four world ages.

The following is a quotation from the Mahābhārata that describes our present era and the immediately preceding yuga, revealing a progressive deterioration of humanity’s moral fiber. Again, in the dvāpara-yuga the moral order (dharma) exists [only] half. [God] Vishnu becomes yellow, and the Veda is now fourfold [i.e., the original wisdom is split into the four Vedic hymnodies]. Thence, some [adhere to] four Vedas, others to three Vedas, or two Vedas, or a single Veda, while yet others have no hymns [at all]. Thus, owing to the broken traditions, rites become manifold and creatures, fond of austerities and almsgiving, become rajas-motivated2. Due to ignorance about the single Veda, the Vedas become multiple and because of the collapse of truth, few adhere to truthfulness. Many diseases appear for those who have fallen from truth, and there are desires and disasters caused by fate. Afflicted by these, [some] men perform very severe austerities; others, filled with [worldly] desires or desiring heaven, conduct sacrifices. Thus with the onset of the dvāpara, creatures perish through their lawlessness. In the kali-yuga, O Kaunteya, the moral order (dharma) exists by one quarter only. With the onset of this tamas-motivated3 age, O Keshava [i.e., God Vishnu] becomes black (krishna). The Vedic ways of life end, and so do the moral order, sacrifice, and rites. Plagues, disease, sloth, blemishes such as anger, as well as calamities, sickness, and afflictions prevail. In the course of the yugas, the moral order diminishes increasingly. With the diminution of the moral order, the people (loka) diminish. This description of the kali-yuga is not as daunting as it is in some other scriptures. But the message is clear enough: Ours is a sinister age. What thinking person would not agree? Can we not, by now, fill a whole library with tales of human foolishness, of humanity’s thoughtless interference with the life-world and its almost unbelievable lack of concern for fellow beings, both human and nonhuman? Is there no hope, then, for humankind? Is historian Oswald Spengler’s dark prophecy of the decline of the West (and with it, also of the East) coming true?4 Or are there, today, forces at work that countermand the Zeitgeist, the spirit of the age? This latter appears to be the case. It could not be otherwise. Or else our species would have perished long ago, right at the outset of the kali-yuga. The kali-yuga, then, does not signal total spiritual darkness or inevitable doom. Inverting a popular maxim, one can perhaps say that where there is shadow there is also light. Here and there, the present dark age is pierced by shafts of light. It is not without its benign counterbalancing influences.

Prince Arjuna, though born into the warrior estate, was at heart a peace-loving man. When the two colossal armies lined up on opposite sides, he began to have serious doubts about his task. It was not so much personal fear of death that swayed his heart but, rather, acute moral qualms. Has anyone the right, he wondered, to use force in order to promote the larger good? His dilemma was greatly aggravated by the fact that among those whom he was supposed to fight—maim and possibly kill—were kinsmen and revered teachers. Arjuna’s duty as a warrior was clear enough; he had to fight. But the moment he contemplated the larger implications of this action, he was terrified to abide by his decision to reconquer his lost kingdom. Arjuna’s attitude is typical of human life itself. We are all the time engaged in decision-making or in decision-avoidance. The more consciously we live, the more we realize that life is really an incessant stream of potential decisions. Arjuna, as we know, did fight his war and also emerged victorious. But first he had to learn an important spiritual lesson. Lord Krishna, who acted as his charioteer, convinced the prince that his whole confusion was the result of a faulty perspective. The God-man demonstrated to the prince that the problem that caused him such anxiety was a problem conjured up by the ego. It had no existence apart from the ego. The divine teacher made Arjuna understand that we can never transcend our circumstances merely by closing our eyes, by avoiding action, by dropping out. Even avoidance is an action, which will have its inevitable repercussions since avoidance is rooted in the ego. What Lord Krishna recommended instead was a cognitive shift, a new view of the whole matter: away from the delimiting, anxious ego and toward the boundless Self. All action must be sacrifice, he explained. We must not hold on to any conventional ego-derived scheme. Only when we abandon the delusion that we, as ego-personalities, are the ultimate initiators of actions can we have knowledge of what is truly right and good. That is to say, when we discover the “witness,” the transcendental Self, we realize that life unfolds spontaneously and mysteriously, and that the ego is merely one of the countless forms arising within the flux of life. For the Hindu authorities, the general deterioration of spirituality and the decline of humanity’s psychological health in no way precludes the possibility of spiritual aspiration and success. It is nowhere denied that contemporary humanity, feeble as it may be in comparison to its ancestors, can swim against the stream. On the contrary, all spiritual teachings affirm that we must do our utmost to cultivate spiritual values in the midst of the great darkness surrounding us.

Writing in 1964, C. G. Jung accurately observed: Modern man does not understand how much his “rationalism” (which has destroyed his capacity to respond to numinous symbols and ideas) has put him at the mercy of the psychic “underworld.” He has freed himself from “superstition” (or so he believes), but in the process he has lost his spiritual values to a positively dangerous degree. His moral and spiritual tradition has disintegrated, and he is now paying the price for this breakup in worldwide disorientation and dissociation.3 Once we accept that we do not live in the best of all possible worlds, we can perhaps also see that we are coresponsible for our present situation. As Jung observed, we must see the shadow in our own psyche if we want to perceive reality clearly or, as the Buddhists put it, “see things as they really are.” We cannot become whole without this work on our shadow, the swampland consisting of all those aspects of our personality that we prefer to deny and instead project onto others: egotism, fantasy, greed, cowardice, laziness, irrationality, fanaticism, etc. To put it starkly: In order to become whole, we must discover the potential of terrorism in the complex circuitry of our own psyche. Terrorism is an expression of spiritual deafness, moral blindness, and irrational anger. Only when we can acknowledge the presence of these dark forces within us can we take responsibility for them. This brings me back to the mental discipline of Karma-Yoga by which action is transformed in such a way that it is not rooted in the shadow and therefore is not karmically tainted. Morally and spiritually sound action must be accompanied by self-observation, self-understanding, self-acceptance, self-transformation, and self-transcendence. Without these disciplines, we are likely to succumb to projection and wrong action (vikarma). These, in turn, are not conducive to inner and outer peace. On the contrary, if our behavior fails to be anchored in sound spiritual virtues and practices, it will predictably cause disturbance, disharmony, harm, hurt, and even chaos in the world. Krishna taught that there are circumstances when it is not only appropriate but essential to take a firm stand against evil. He was not a romantic pacifist who, in the interest of an abstract principle (however noble), allows evil to conquer good. When the moral or spiritual order is at stake, we must actively oppose the forces that seek to undermine it. He even condoned war to accomplish this end, though a war not tinged with hatred and conducted for selfish reasons.

Human consciousness is characterized by a strong extravert tendency that reaches for objects via the senses. Hence the Yoga masters call for the control of both the mind and the senses, citta-nigraha and indriya-nigraha. Buddhist Yoga speaks of three types of “thirsting” (trishna), or grasping: (1) thirsting for things of the world, (2) thirsting for rebirth, and (3) thirsting for liberation. While thirsting for liberation is preferable over the other two, it still represents a limitation. Therefore it, too, must be overcome. Nirvāna (nonblowing) was originally defined as the nonblowing of the wind of desire—for anything, including the impulse toward liberation. Nirvāna is realized only when every form of grasping is transcended. According to an old Buddhist model, human life unfolds as a play of twelve factors of dependent origination (pratītya-samutpāda): Ignorance (avidyā), which gives rise to Volitional activity (samskāra), which can be bodily, vocal, or merely mental and which represents either meritorious or demeritorious karma; this leads to Consciousness (vijnāna), which causes “Name and form” (nāma-rūpa), which stands for what today is called the body-mind as a whole and which gives rise to The “six bases” (shad-āyatana) consisting of the five senses and that part of the mind which processes sensory input; this leads to Contact (sparsha) with sense objects, which gives rise to Feeling (samveda), comprising pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral sensations; this evokes Craving (trishna), or the desire to unite with pleasant or separate from unpleasant experiences, which leads to Grasping (upadāna), which consists in one’s holding onto specific experiences, views, behaviors, or the sense of self as such; this causes “Becoming” (bhava), or a particular state of existence that corresponds to a person’s inner constitution, which leads to Birth (jāti), or the actual incarnation as a specific individual, which brings Ageing and death (jarā-marana). This causal nexus seeks to explain cyclic existence (samsāra) in terms of an individual’s journey from birth to death to rebirth, ad infinitum. This model makes it clear that cyclic existence is not due to any outside agency but the human mind itself. In other words, we are creating our destiny in every moment. Yoga further tells us that samsāra is not inevitable but that we can stop the vicious cycle by modifying our volitional activity and behavior. This good news is fundamental to all forms of Yoga. Greed is a phenomenon of the unregenerate psyche, which is under the spell of the conditioned nexus and has not taken control of its own destiny. Freedom from greed comes with nongrasping (aparigraha), which is based on the recognition that we are inherently complete and need nothing for our perfection.

The fact that self-transcendence is even possible indicates that Consciousness exceeds our biological and mental-psychological conditioning. If self-transcendence is so natural to our being, why does it appear to be so difficult? The simple answer is that our conditioning to identify not with our true Self but any number of substitute identities is extraordinarily strong and requires a powerful sustained effort on our part to be overcome. We must dismantle our misidentifications as we become progressively aware of them, not merely once but over and over again until this new habit of discernment (viveka) is firmly established. Then, regardless of the circumstance, we can remain in a witnessing disposition instead of losing ourselves in our habit patterns. The discovery of the Self as the witness (sākshin) of all mental contents—whatever the level or state of consciousness—is a most important event in our life as spiritual practitioners. This witnessing is not merely an intellectual activity, for the intellect is transcended in the process of witnessing. Rather it is a tentative or, when the process has fulfilled itself, the actual and permanent recovery of our Self-Identity. The Yoga of witnessing is buddhi-yoga, the yogic path of wisdom through which we perceive our habitual and therefore binding (karmic) patterns of thought and behavior. The term buddhi stems from the same verbal root (budh) as bodha meaning “enlightenment/awakening” and buddha (awakened). Thus when wisdom dawns in us, our sense of identity shifts from the body and mind and the external world to the witnessing Self. To the degree that this shift has occurred within us we are free. This inner freedom from our karmic conditioning coincides with our realization of undiluted happiness or bliss (ānanda), which, like Being and Consciousness is a hallmark of the transcendental Self. Self-realization is the end of all suffering (duhkha). This is the highest human objective. We are not born to suffer. Suffering is merely a function of our spiritual ignorance (avidyā), which occludes our innermost identity, the ātman. When we have realized the ātman, the body, the mind, and the world at large cease to be objects for us. We recognize them as our very Self. Then our Self-vision (ātma-darshana) encircles everything. We realize ourselves as the ultimate essence and foundation of all beings and things. Yet we no longer fix on particular beings and things—i.e., on a particular body, mind, or world—as demarcating us. We see through all eyes, we hear through all ears, breathe through every breathing being in the universe, illuminate every single mind, shine in every star, and also are spread out infinitely in the interstices between galaxies and even between the infinite universes that constitute the cells of our space-transcending, time-transcending Being-Consciousness (sac-cid). Tat tvam asi!4 That art thou!

mind and breath (or life energy) are closely connected. Influencing the one means influencing the other. When we are upset, we breathe faster. When we are calm, our breathing slows down. Yogins understood this early on and invented a battery of techniques for controlling the breath in order to control the mind. These techniques are called prānāyāma, which is widely translated as “breath control.” The literal meaning of this Sanskrit term is “lengthening of the life energy.” This is accomplished through breathing rhythmically and slowly and through the special yogic practice of prolonged retention of the breath, either before or after inhalation. In Patanjali’s eightfold path, breath control constitutes the fourth limb. He did not describe or prescribe any specific technique, and elaboration was left to the adepts of Hatha-Yoga many centuries later. They, like most other Tantric adepts, were eager to explore the prāna-maya-kosha, or the “etheric body,” and its subtle energetic environment. By contrast, most contemporary schools of Hatha-Yoga ignore prāna and prānāyāma, just as they ignore the mental disciplines and spiritual goals, and instead promote a plethora of physical postures (āsana). This emphasis is problematical, as it has led to an unfortunate reductionism and distortion of the traditional yogic heritage. The gradual re-inclusion of prānāyāma into contemporary Hatha-Yoga, however, is very promising, because this practice sooner or later leads to an experiential encounter with prāna, which is distinct from mere oxygen. According to Yoga, we are meant to live a full 120 years. Since we take 21,600 breaths every day, the total number of breath in our lifetime will be 946,080,000 breaths. This may seem like a lot, but we also know that life goes by very quickly. Therefore it makes sense to want our every breath count, and Yoga makes this possible. 53 Cultivating Wisdom WISDOM ARISES IN US whenever the quality of sattva grows stronger in the mind. Sattva, which literally means “being-ness,” is one of three primary qualities (guna) of creation. The other two qualities are rajas (the dynamic principle) and tamas (the principle of inertia). These primary qualities underlie absolutely everything that is other than the superconscious Spirit, which is pure Awareness. According to Yoga and Sāmkhya, they are the behavioral modes of prakriti, often translated as “Nature” but standing for the universe in all its dimensions. Together, in various mixtures, they shape all forms at whatever level of existence, material and mental. Only at the transcendental level of prakriti—which is called prakriti-pradhāna or “creatrix foundation”—do the three qualities exist in perfect balance. As soon as this primordial balance is disturbed, the process of creation sets in, beginning with the most subtle (mental) manifestations and terminating with the material realm. Sattva represents the principle of lucidity or transparency, as it manifests in and through wisdom. Just as the moon, which has no atmosphere, oceans, or vegetation, reflects the light of the sun, so sattva reflects the super-conscious Spirit

In the third chapter of this “Song of the Lord,” Krishna instructs Arjuna—and us—in what is called “skillful action.” Krishna argues that activity is an inseparable attribute of finite existence. Nothing that exists in the realm of Nature is, in the last analysis, inactive. The cosmos (prakriti), which is composed of three types of primary qualities (guna), is a perpetual motion machine. If it ceased to move even for a moment, the cosmos would collapse. This view coincides with the findings of modern physics, which has revealed to us a universe that is continually vibrating. Therefore, concludes Krishna, it does not make much sense to want to abstain from action. Mere inactivity is not the answer to our existential problems. It is fine to renounce the world and dedicate one’s life to contemplating the Divine, providing one can really do it. But few people have the necessary stamina for the rigors of such a solitary lifestyle. Besides, argues Krishna, there is a better way to Self-realization (or God-realization) than renunciation. And that is to continue to be active but to act free from egoic attachment. In this way, the continuation of human life is ensured, while at the same time it is being transformed by one’s self-transcending disposition. Krishna’s activist gospel, then, does not ask us to carry on as usual. True, the karma-yogin continues to get up in the morning, use the bathroom, eat breakfast, go to work, interact with people during the day, return home, eat dinner, spend time with the family, read, listen to music, make love, and sleep. But he endeavors, by degrees, to do all this with a subtle yet significant difference: All of these actions are engaged in the spirit of self-surrender. In other words, they are all opportunities to go beyond mere egoic preferences and fixations and to cultivate instead quiet awareness and communion with the Divine. An important aspect of the practice of Karma-Yoga is the nonneurotic disinterest in what Krishna calls the “fruit” (phala) of one’s actions. Ordinarily, our actions are governed by so-called ulterior motives—those mostly hidden expectations that would see us rewarded for our deeds. For instance, by putting in an extra hour at work, we secretly, or otherwise, hope to impress the boss. By taking our children to sporting events on Saturdays, we hope for them to share our own excitement, or by sending them to medical school, we seek to live out our own dreams through their lives. By helping an elderly or blind person cross the street, we expect, below the threshold of our conscious mind, to be thanked and thus receive an emotional boost. Or, more subtly, we may do things out of a sense of duty, but without heart. In that case, our actions remain as self-involved as ever. Grim determination is no substitute for the spirit of self-transcendence.

Here we are interested in the dynamics of a true loving relationship between sexual partners. They are by definition “equal,” for their surrender must be mutual. Of course, such mutual surrender presupposes great individual maturity. Starry-eyed teenagers who have “fallen” in love are incapable of this act, although to outsiders and to themselves, they may seem to be completely absorbed in one another; in fact, their “love” is a subconscious projection of themselves onto the partner. Strictly speaking, they love themselves in the other. Hence, when reality hits, they “fall out of” love again. That not only teenagers but also so-called adults succumb to this “falling in and out of” love is a commentary on their level of maturity. I am making so much of this because in spiritual surrender, the element of mature love is present as well. When the lover surrenders “body and soul” to the beloved, really what she or he yields up is the usual self-identification with the body and with bodily and emotional and even mental processes. There is a melting away of conventional propriety, shame, and guilt. Indeed, lovers delight in pouring their hearts out to one another, in confiding long-kept secrets or long-cherished hopes, and in “daring” each other to demonstrate their love by overcoming inhibitions and taboos. They are self-forgetful—or so it seems. At least they are on the way to being self-forgetful. That they never quite succeed is as obvious as it is subtle. Their surrender is necessarily incomplete, because their love is imperfect. This lies in the nature of ordinary human love, however extraordinary it may be by conventional standards. Perfect love is possible only with regard to a perfect “object” or, to be more precise, when love is without a specific object but includes all possible objects, the whole universe. This, again, means that perfect love is possible only when there is no ego to create the usual barrier—however tenuous—between an experiencing subject and an experienced object. A genuine loving relationship, especially at the height of its sexual expression, approximates this condition of subject-object transcendence. But it only approximates it. For this condition of near-genuine love to turn into genuine love, the lovers’ images of each other (and of themselves) would have to be sacrificed. In other words, it is only when they come to love the whole person that they love perfectly. Here “whole person” refers to the human being in his or her entirety, comprising both the visible aspects and the invisible dimension; as a manifestation of the Whole (or God) and as that unmanifest Whole itself.

In the following paragraphs I will show how faith and surrender are present in the practice of all the limbs of Yoga. The foundation of any authentic yogic approach is moral discipline or yama (restraint or control). This is meant to regulate the social behavior of spiritual practitioners. Moral integrity is a must for the yogins and yoginīs who do not wish to fall prey to any attitudes and habits that countermand their spiritual aspirations. Through the universal application of the rules of yama, they ensure that they will never abuse the power—whether psychic or social—that is acquired in Yoga. There are five such rules. The root of all of them is said to be nonharming (ahimsā). This Sanskrit word is also frequently translated as “nonviolence.” It consists in unconditional nonmaliciousness toward all beings at all times and in all situations. Ahimsā has to be practiced not only in deed, but also in word and in thought. Thus it includes refraining from gossip and even thinking ill of a person, a whole group of people (e.g., xenophobia, racism, etc.), or even animate beings in general (i.e., speciesism). This presupposes a considerable degree of detachment or dispassion (vairāgya), which, as readers of the Yoga-Sūtra will know, is one of the two poles of Yoga—the other pole being constant application (abhyāsa) to the practical disciplines. How can ahimsā be said to be an expression of surrender and faith? The faith component in it is found in the recognition that our authentic Being, the Self, is beyond hurt (ahimsā), beyond ill (anāmaya), beyond sorrow (aduhkha), beyond pain (aklesha). We may surrender to it by acknowledging that our own authentic Being also is the authentic Being, or Self, in all other creatures and by treating them not as potential or actual enemies but as that universal benign Self. The virtue of nonharming, then, is grounded in the recognition that there is no cause for fear with regard to anybody or anything, since everyone and everything is that same Reality, or Singularity. Once we have overcome this fundamental fear, which is conjured up by the ego experiencing itself as an island apart from others, we also will be able to practice nonharming with consummate skill. The second constituent of the category of yama is truthfulness (satya). Here the traditional scriptures again demand of us that we cultivate this virtue in action, speech, and thought. The yogins or yoginīs who practice truthfulness in this way cannot possibly be prone to lying, hypocrisy, or deception. It is easy to see how this virtue is rooted in the moral principle of nonharming. Our faith in truthfulness is our faith in Truth, also called satya. And Truth is another name for the transcendental Reality, the Self. The Self is that in which there is not a single trace of falsehood; it is the Real. The sages also refer to it as tattva (thatness) and tathatā (thusness).

The Self is not conscious in the ordinary sense of the word. However, it is also not unconscious. It is, rather, pure Awareness or Superconsciousness (cit). All other attributes are simply superimpositions, projections of the mind. For the Self to reveal itself in its native splendor, all these projections must be withdrawn, or pierced through. This is achieved by means of the via negativa of the neti neti method. This approach of negation is succinctly illustrated in the Nirvāna-Shatka (Six [Stanzas] on Extinction), which is one of the many didactic poems attributed to Shankara. The full text reads as follows: I am not the mind or the wisdom faculty (buddhi), the I-sense, or thought; neither hearing nor the tongue; neither the nose nor the eyes; nor am I ether, earth, fire, or air. I am Shiva in the form of Awareness (cit) and Bliss (ānanda). I am Shiva. I am not what is called the life force (prāna), nor am I the five airs [circulating in the body]; nor the seven [bodily] constituents; nor the five [bodily] sheaths. I am also not mouth, hands, feet, genitals, and anus. I am Shiva in the form of Awareness and Bliss. I am Shiva. I am Shiva. I have neither hatred nor passion, neither greed nor delusion; neither exhilaration nor the mood of envy. I am without virtue or prosperity, without lust or liberation. I am Shiva in the form of Awareness and Bliss. I am Shiva. [In me there is] neither good nor evil, neither happiness nor suffering, neither mantra nor pilgrimage, neither the Vedas nor sacrifices. I am not food, the eater, or eating. I am Shiva in the form of Awareness and Bliss. I am Shiva. I am not [subject to] death, fear, or category of birth. I have no father or mother; [in fact, I have] no birth. I have no relatives or friends, no teacher or pupils. I am Shiva in the form of Awareness and Bliss. I am Shiva I am undifferentiated, of formless form. Due to [my] omnipresence I am everywhere [present for the benefit of all the senses. I am neither in bondage nor in liberation. [I am] immeasurable. I am Shiva in the form of Awareness and Bliss. I am Shiva.

Many of the early Upanishads are in dialogue form, which gives us a sense of participating in the disclosure of the Upanishadic secrets. We encounter such charismatic wisdom teachers as Yājnavalkya, King Ajātashatru, and Uddālaka, who were once surely inaccessible to all but the most serious seekers after wisdom. It is quite amazing that today we can obtain inexpensive paperbacks that reveal what was once the most concealed esoteric teaching and the price of which was certainly much higher than a few dollars: it called for obedience and submission to a teacher, often for many long, trying years, before anything at all was disclosed to the student. Perhaps because we think we can come by this wisdom so easily and cheaply, we generally do not really value it. For instance, how many of us have actually changed our lives significantly after delving into these esoteric scriptures? The transmission of the Upanishadic teachings was not merely a matter of passing on theories. Rather it involved the transmission of the spiritual force or presence of the teacher, who had at least glimpsed the Self, if not fully realized it. Hence the qualified aspirant was expected to be like an empty vessel into which the guru’s grace and wisdom could be poured. The Upanishadic sages showed little concern about justifying any of their teachings philosophically, precisely because their verity could be demonstrated to the initiate through direct transmission. Only as other metaphysical traditions—both Hindu and non-Hindu—started to rival Advaita Vedānta, did the Vedānta teachers have to become more sophisticated philosophers and defenders of their faith.

The gāyatrī is explained in many places in the Sanskrit literature. For instance, the Tripurā-Tāpanī-Upanishad, a fairly late work belonging to the Shākta tradition, connects this mantra with the worship of the Goddess Tripurā. She is celebrated as the great Power (Shakti) behind all manifestation. In that scripture, we learn that the Sanskrit word tat (“that”) refers to the eternal, unconditioned Absolute (brahman), the transcendental Reality out of which the world in all its many layers has evolved. Savitur (or Savitri), the Upanishad further tells us, refers to the primal power of the Goddess Tripurā, even though the Sanskrit name Savitri is a masculine word standing for the “Impeller,” that is, the Sun or Solar Spirit. Savitri must not be confused with the Goddess Savitrī, who presides over all learning but also over the mighty river by the same name that once flowed from the Himalayas to the Indian Ocean. The name Savitri derives from the verbal root su meaning “to urge, instigate, impel,” which is closely related to the second connotation of this root, namely “to extract, press.” What Savitri extracts out of himself are two closely connected things: life-giving light and warmth. Varenyam means “most excellent” or “most beautiful,” designating that which has no superior. This word qualifies the term bhargas. Bhargo (from bhargas or “splendor”) is said to be the transcendental aspect of Savitri, which strikes us with awe—a splendor that cannot be seen with human eyes but that discloses itself only to the inner vision of the great Yoga adept. Devasya (from deva) means “of God,” that is, “of Savitri.” Dhīmahi means “let us contemplate” and implies a heartfelt desire to focus the mind on the ultimate Reality through the medium of contemplation (dhī). In the Rig-Veda, the archaic term dhī stands for the later term dhyāna, which means “meditation/contemplation.” Dhiyo (from dhiyas) is the plural of dhī. Repeatedly the ancient sages fixed their minds on that One, and contemporary yogins still follow the same age-old practice. As their contemplations deepen, Savitri increasingly illuminates the mind. Yo (from yah) is simply the relative pronoun “who,” which here refers to God Savitri. Nah means “us/our” and qualifies the contemplations of the sages. Pracodayāt is derived from the verb pracodaya (meaning “to cause to be inspired”). Without Savitri, the masters of yore felt, their contemplations lacked inspiration. Only Savitri could inspire or illuminate their inner world, just as he illuminates the Earth through his radiant physical body (the visible solar orb).

According to an esoteric explanation, the Sanskrit term mantra signifies “that which protects (trāna) the mind (manas). Specifically, mantra is a sound (letter, syllable, word, or phrase) that is charged with transformative power, such as the letter a, the sacred syllable om, the word hamsa, or the phrase om mani padme hūm. Thus a mantra could be explained as a potentized sound by which specific effects in consciousness can be produced. Most high-minded practitioners are reluctant to use mantras for anything other than the greatest human goal (purusha-artha, written purushārtha), which is liberation. In Tantric rituals, mantras are used to purify the altar, one’s seat, implements such as vessels and offering spoons, or the offerings themselves (e.g., flowers, water, food), or to invoke deities, protectors, and so on. Yet, the science of sacred sound (mantra-shāstra) has since ancient times been widely put to secular use as well. In this case, mantras assume the character of magical spells rather than sacred vibrations in the service of self-transformation and self-transcendence. The serpent energy hidden in the body is associated with the Sanskrit alphabet constituted of fifty basic letters, or sound vibrations, which go into the making of mantras. In contrast to ordinary words, however, mantras most often do not have a particular meaning, and their potency is tapped into through frequent repetition, whether mentally, whispered, or aloud. It is not commonly understood that for a sound to be a mantra, it must have been given in the context of initiation (dīkshā), whether formally or informally. Only then does the mantra have truly transformative power. For a mantra to become “active” or “awakened,” it must be recited at least 100,000 times. A mantra lacking in “consciousness” is just like any other sound. As the Kula-Arnava-Tantra (15.61–64) states: Mantras without consciousness are said to be mere letters. They yield no result even after a trillion recitations. The state that manifests promptly when the mantra is recited [with “consciousness”], that result is not [to be gained] from a hundred, a thousand, a hundred thousand, or ten million recitations. O Kuleshvarī, the knots at the heart and throat are pierced, all the limbs are invigorated, tears of joy, gooseflesh, bodily ecstasy, and tremulous speech suddenly occur for sure . . . . . . when a mantra endowed with consciousness is uttered even once. Where such signs are seen, that [mantra] is said to be according to tradition. Mantras of concentrated potency are known as “seed syllables” (bīja). Om is the original seed syllable, the source of all others. The Mantra-Yoga-Samhitā (71) calls it the “best of all mantras,” adding that all other mantras receive their power from it. Thus om is prefixed or sometimes also suffixed to numerous mantras, such as om namah shivāya

The seventh limb of the classical yogic path is meditation (dhyāna). This is a deepened state of concentration in which the same object is held unwaveringly for a long period. It is a more complete form of surrendering the mind. It is no longer a mental effort, but a state of reposing in a noncontracted condition of the body-mind. This condition is beautifully described in a passage in the ancient Chāndogya-Upanishad (7.6.1) where we can read: “Meditation certainly is more than thought (citta). The Earth meditates as it were; the atmosphere meditates as it were . . .” That is to say, meditation is abiding in the natural state, without mental complications. The practitioners of Yoga surrender the mind’s tendency to appropriate different objects, whether external or internal. Instead they trust in the Self as the Experiencer of all, the unfailing Continuity behind the incessant change of the finite world. The last limb of Patanjali’s eightfold path is samādhi, which is generally rendered as “ecstasy.” The world-renowned historian of religion Mircea Eliade proffered an alternative rendering—enstasy. This coinage takes into account that samādhi is not so much a state of exuberance, as suggested by the word “ecstasy,” but a condition of great stillness and focusedness in which we “stand in” (en stasis) our true nature. Eliade’s coinage, however, has not achieved wide currency, and therefore, after using it in several of my publications, I reverted to the more common term “ecstasy.” The previously described techniques of concentration and meditation cause a slowing down of the movement within the mental world. In the state of samādhi, our inner architecture can be said to collapse altogether. For the practitioner surrenders the characteristic feature of human consciousness, which is its bipolar nature, its tension between subject and object. In samādhi, the experiencing subject becomes the contemplated object. At the highest level of this paradoxical condition, the experiencing subject awakens as the transcendental Self, realizing that he or she has never been anything else but the Self.

Often called the “serpent power,” the kundalinī is the Energy of Consciousness (cit-shakti), or Goddess Power (devī-shakti). According to Tantric metaphysics, the ultimate or divine Reality is far from impotent and possesses all conceivable (and inconceivable) powers. On the one hand, it is pure Consciousness; on the other, pure Energy. The Tantric branch of Kashmiri Shaivism speaks of the ultimate Reality as a supervibration (spandana). Everything else is but a stepped-down version of that incomprehensible vastness of Energy. The energies of the manifest physical cosmos are a mere trickle by comparison. It is the life energy (prāna) that animates and sustains the human body; but it is the kundalinī that, when awakened from its dormant state, transforms the body from a sentient biological organism into a field of light transcending the laws of Nature and fully responsive to the enlightened will of the Yoga adept. The goal of all schools of Tantra-Yoga, as with any form of Yoga, is enlightenment or liberation. But many Tantric schools seek the kind of enlightenment that includes the body and the world. Thus the Tantric adepts speak of a vajra-deha (“adamantine body”) or divya-deha (“divine body”). The kundalinī is instrumental in the creation of this extraordinary vehicle of the enlightened adept. According to Tantra, it underlies all spiritual evolution. Not all branches or schools of Yoga, however, avail themselves of this concept. In fact, this concept did not come into vogue until the emergence of Tantra around 500 C.E. Thus it is not mentioned in the Vedas, the early Upanishads, the Bhagavad-Gītā, or the Yoga-Sūtra (c. 200 C.E.). But later texts, like the Bhakti-Sūtras ascribed to Nārada and Shāndilya respectively, make no reference to it. There is some discussion about whether the Tantric claim to the universality of the kundalinī is in fact correct, or whether enlightenment is possible without the involvement of the kundalinī process. Since there have been adepts who claimed to be enlightened but did not experience the typical symptoms of a kundalinī awakening, we may assume that enlightenment is possible without manifestation of the typical symptoms, such as the experience of explosive luminosity, inner sounds, sensations of heat, dizziness, drowsiness, inability to sleep, and so on. In his book The Kundalini Experience, the American psychiatrist Lee Sannella makes the useful distinction between the kundalinī proper and what he calls the physio-kundalini, that is, the psychosomatic manifestations of awakening.1 The twentieth-century sage Ramana Maharshi, who, as far as anyone can tell, was genuinely enlightened, made the point that the kundalinī rises from whatever lakshya (locus of concentration) an adept has chosen. In

The kundalinī is thought to exist in the dormant state at the basal center where she must be awakened and invited to rise along the central channel to the top of the head where she reunites with pure Consciousness. This reunion is described as the communion of Shiva and Shakti, God and Goddess, or Consciousness and Energy. On the complete ascent of the kundalinī, the individuated consciousness of the adept at least temporarily melts away in the state of nirvikalpa-samādhi or transconceptual ecstasy. While this state reveals our true nature—as the transcendental Being-Consciousness-Bliss (sat-cid-ānanda)—it excludes body awareness. It could therefore be considered an incomplete enlightenment. So long as the unconscious contains karmic seeds awaiting fruition, this elevated state of consciousness sooner or later is replaced again by the ordinary state of awareness. Through repeated awakening of the kundalinī and nirvikalpa-samādhi, the karmic seeds can be gradually thinned out. Ultimately, the Tantric yogin seeks to “irrigate” the body with the nectar of immortality that oozes from the awakened thousand-petaled center. This esoteric process transfigures and transforms the ordinary physical body into a supraphysical energy body endowed with extraordinary capacities (siddhi) and immortality. For this to occur, the adept must transcend even nirvikalpa-samādhi and attain complete enlightenment in the waking state as well. This final ecstatic condition is not, strictly speaking, a state of consciousness. It is that which is Real. In the Tantric tradition, it is sometimes known as sahaja-samādhi or spontaneous ecstasy, which is constant and continuous. This realization has been summed up in the Buddhist Tantric formula “samsāra = nirvāna,” or immanence equals transcendence.

The practice of radical self-transcendence can be described as conscious growth toward the transcendental or transpersonal Self-Identity, the ātman. Some call this “God-Consciousness.” The Self of Vedānta/Jnāna-Yoga is also completely different from the Self talked about by Jungian psychotherapists. The Jungian Self is the ego-transcending spiritual center of the mature human personality; it is not a superconscious transcendental Being. The Self, or ātman, of Vedānta is by definition beyond space-time and the whole body-mind complex. It is not a property of the individual person. Therefore, the Self is never “my” self, nor is Self-realization “my” Self-realization. When Self-realization happens, “I” am not there! So long as we believe that we are a particular man or woman, with a particular character and distinct tendencies, habits, or likes and dislikes, we live out of the ego-fiction. Then we necessarily fear the loss of what we consider to be our “own”—our various material and intellectual possessions as well as our social relationships. Above all, we fear the death of the individual we believe ourselves to be. But when there is genuine understanding or wisdom (prajnā), we begin to see a larger truth. We may even catch a glimpse of the Being-Consciousness-Bliss (sat-cid-ānanda) that is the underlying Identity not only of “me” but of all beings who, from the unenlightened point of view, appear to be separate entities. Even describing that Ultimate as Being (sat), Consciousness (cit), and Bliss (ānanda) is saying too much. Hence some sages, especially in Buddhism, have preferred to call it “Emptiness” (shūnyatā). The wisest among them have remained silent.

Ever since the Prajnā-Pāramitā-Sūtras, or the scriptures on the perfection of wisdom, practitioners of Mahāyāna and Tantrayāna have sought to cultivate the recognition that all phenomena are empty (shūnya): Everything that we could possibly point to, talk about, or even merely think of is a conceptual construct. Hence, according to the masters of Mahāyāna and Tantrayāna, nothing that is composite has any essence (sva-bhāva); everything is “without self” (nairātmya). In its most developed form—that of the Madhyamaka school founded by Nāgārjuna—this teaching came to mean that nothing is independently real. In his Madhyamaka-Kārikā (24.18), Nāgārjuna notes that it is the Buddha’s teaching of “dependent origination (pratītya-samutpāda) that we call ‘emptiness’ (shūnyatā).” Everything arises in dependence on causes and conditions or what in modern ecology is known as the “web of life” or “interconnectedness.” When we think of a star, for instance, we must admit that it is not so much a stable thing but a very complex process of limited duration. The same is true of our body, the mind, and every other conceivable thing. But in order to navigate in the world of appearances, we artificially construct a cosmos populated by stable things, as if these had inherent existence. The problem with this is that we begin to take them very seriously—including our body-mind—and start reacting either by attracting or rejecting them. In the case of our body, we even go so far as to identify with it, and as a result we suffer all kinds of negative consequences, notably the fear of death. The cure, according to Mahāyāna and Tantrayāna, is to cultivate the vision of emptiness, realizing of course that “emptiness” itself is a mental construct and therefore empty of inherent existence. Practitioners who forget this truth are apt to take shūnyatā itself as a definitive view (drishti) rather than as an antidote to all abstractions, which is the intended purpose. This kind of thinking has led to accusations of nihilism: that nothing whatsoever is real at any level and that nirvāna therefore is a completely meaningless and undesirable goal. In fact, both nihilism and realism are erroneous. Already the Buddha declined to speculate about the nature of nirvāna; he simply wanted to point a way to its realization. The Madhyamaka school simply developed this fundamental teaching along rigorous logical lines, focusing on the art of refutation of all possible metaphysical standpoints. But the language of emptiness is not meant to be merely a game of logic. Its real function is to shatter the conceptual mind and guide it to the truth about phenomena. For this emptiness must not only be understood intellectually but experienced through the cultivation of wisdom and compassion by means of the ten stages of the bodhisattva path.

Ever since the Prajnā-Pāramitā-Sūtras, or the scriptures on the perfection of wisdom, practitioners of Mahāyāna and Tantrayāna have sought to cultivate the recognition that all phenomena are empty (shūnya): Everything that we could possibly point to, talk about, or even merely think of is a conceptual construct. Hence, according to the masters of Mahāyāna and Tantrayāna, nothing that is composite has any essence (sva-bhāva); everything is “without self” (nairātmya). In its most developed form—that of the Madhyamaka school founded by Nāgārjuna—this teaching came to mean that nothing is independently real. In his Madhyamaka-Kārikā (24.18), Nāgārjuna notes that it is the Buddha’s teaching of “dependent origination (pratītya-samutpāda) that we call ‘emptiness’ (shūnyatā).” Everything arises in dependence on causes and conditions or what in modern ecology is known as the “web of life” or “interconnectedness.” When we think of a star, for instance, we must admit that it is not so much a stable thing but a very complex process of limited duration. The same is true of our body, the mind, and every other conceivable thing. But in order to navigate in the world of appearances, we artificially construct a cosmos populated by stable things, as if these had inherent existence. The problem with this is that we begin to take them very seriously—including our body-mind—and start reacting either by attracting or rejecting them. In the case of our body, we even go so far as to identify with it, and as a result we suffer all kinds of negative consequences, notably the fear of death. The cure, according to Mahāyāna and Tantrayāna, is to cultivate the vision of emptiness, realizing of course that “emptiness” itself is a mental construct and therefore empty of inherent existence. Practitioners who forget this truth are apt to take shūnyatā itself as a definitive view (drishti) rather than as an antidote to all abstractions, which is the intended purpose. This kind of thinking has led to accusations of nihilism: that nothing whatsoever is real at any level and that nirvāna therefore is a completely meaningless and undesirable goal. In fact, both nihilism and realism are erroneous. Already the Buddha declined to speculate about the nature of nirvāna; he simply wanted to point a way to its realization. The Madhyamaka school simply developed this fundamental teaching along rigorous logical lines, focusing on the art of refutation of all possible metaphysical standpoints. But the language of emptiness is not meant to be merely a game of logic. Its real function is to shatter the conceptual mind and guide it to the truth about phenomena. For this emptiness must not only be understood intellectually but experienced through the cultivation of wisdom and compassion by means of the ten stages of the bodhisattva path. The inherent selflessness or emptiness of beings notwithstanding, a bodhisattva is altruistically dedicated to their liberation.

Either through effort alone or through a combination of effort and grace, we can overcome our spiritual ignorance and actively shape our future destiny. If belief is involved in some schools of Yoga, it plays only a preliminary role. The accent is typically on wisdom (jnāna), even in the more sophisticated approaches of Bhakti-Yoga, the devotional path. The impulse to attain freedom—or, in the bhakti-oriented schools, union with the Divine—underlies all yogic effort. Only in this way can the practitioner be assured of not getting stuck along the path. This impulse is known as mumukshutva, the desire for liberation, wholeness, perfection, or lasting happiness. With the sole exception of this desire, or impulse, all desires (kāma) relate to either the physical world or some subtle object or state, including heaven. Since all manifestation (vyakta)—whether coarse (sthūla) or subtle (sūkshma)—is finite, none of these desires can give us true fulfillment. They are, to put it differently, all part of the world of change (samsāra). The impulse to liberation, however, is directed toward the unmanifest (avyakta), infinite Reality. Having kindled the impulse toward ultimate freedom and adopted an appropriate spiritual path, the practitioner gradually sheds ignorance (or sin) and simply awakens as the ever-present Real. Even this experience of awakening is merely a metaphor. From the perspective of the ultimate Reality (which has no perspective at all), nothing ever happened. We were never ignorant, self-divided, or unhappy, and therefore we also did not awaken. Whenever we talk about the fully liberated or enlightened being, we inevitably get trapped in paradoxes or doctrines. And yet, tens of thousands of adepts have risked opening their mouths in order to convey something of the Unthinkable or Unspeakable to (apparent) others. When we examine the Hindu concept of liberation, or enlightenment, we find that it comes in two fundamental forms: bodiless liberation (videha-mukti) and living liberation (jīvan-mukti). The former type implies perfect transcendence not only of the human condition but of embodiment as such. It is a state of being that is utterly formless and wholly apart from the universe in all its many levels. This is the great spiritual ideal promulgated in the philosophical traditions of Mīmāmsā, Nyāya, Vaisheshika, Ishvara Krishna’s school of Sāmkhya, some Vedānta teachers (like Bhāskara, Yādava, and Nimbārka), and apparently also Patanjali’s school of Yoga. The second type of liberation, jīvan-mukti, is the ideal favored by most teachers of Hindu, Buddhist, and Jaina Yoga. It can be said to be India’s most important contribution to world spirituality. Living liberation, or liberation while still alive in a body, is the idea that it is possible to be inwardly absolutely free while yet simultaneously appearing as an embodied individual.

Although complete removal is not possible, neutralization (abhibhava) is possible. Just as watery liquidity can be neutralized by mixing [water] with earth, or fiery heat by means of mani, mantra, and so on, just so all the fluctations (vritti) of the mind can be neutralized by means of the practice of Yoga. In describing the condition of the jīvan-mukta, the embodied liberated being, Vidyāranya quotes profusely from the Yoga-Vāsishtha. This extensive Kashmiri work, which is presented as a dialogue between the Sage Vasishtha and Prince Rāma, states (5.90–98): He is a jīvan-mukta for whom, even though he is busy with ordinary life, all this ceases to exist and [only] the space [of ultimate Consciousness] remains. He is a true jivan-mukta whose face neither flushes nor pales in pleasure or pain and who subsists on whatever comes his way. He is a true jivan-mukta who is awake when sleeping, who knows no waking, and whose knowledge is entirely free from any vāsanā. He is a true jīvan-mukta who, though responsive to feelings such as attachment, hatred, fear, and other feelings, stands wholly pure within, like space. He is a true jīvan-mukta whose real nature is not influenced by egotism and whose mind is not subjected to attachment, whether he remains active or is inactive. He is a true jīvan-mukta whom the world does not fear and who does not fear the world, and who is free from joy, jealousy, and fear. He is a true jīvan-mukta who is at peace with the ways of the world; who, though full of all learning and arts, is yet without any; and who, though endowed with mind, is without it. He is a true jīvan-mukta who, though deeply immersed in all things, keeps his head cool, just as anyone would, when engaged in attending to other’s affairs; and whose Self is whole. After leaving the condition of living liberation, he enters into liberation after death, on the disintegration of the body by lapse of tenure, even as the wind comes to a standstill. Depending on their operative karma—the so-called prārabdha-karman—the sages look and behave differently. Some, like the famous King Janaka, are very active; others prefer silence and the solitude of forests or mountains. Some let the body drop as it will; others undertake the gargantuan discipline of transmuting the body into light, as is the objective in some Tantric teachings. These external distinctions tell us nothing about the spiritual realization of those sages. All of them, however, can be expected to emanate a palpable peace that, in the words of Saint Paul, “passeth all understanding.

yama—moral discipline comprising nonharming (ahimsā), nonstealing (asteya), truthfulness (satya), chastity (brahmacarya), and nongrasping or greedlessness (aparigraha) 2. niyama—self-restraint comprising purity (shauca), contentment (samtosha), asceticism (tapas), self-study (svādhyāya), and devotion to the Lord (īshvara-pranidhāna) 3. āsana—posture (specifically for meditation) 4. prānāyāma—breath control 5. pratyāhāra—sensory inhibition 6. dhāranā—concentration 7. dhyāna—meditation, or sustained and deepening concentration 8. samādhi—ecstasy, or merging in consciousness with the object of meditation Together the eight limbs lead practitioners out of the maze of their own preconceptions and confusions to a sublime state of freedom. This is accomplished through the progressive control of the mind (citta). Beyond the highest ecstatic state lies the freedom of the transcendental Self, which is the pure Witness (sākshin) of all mental processes. For Patanjali, Self-realization is kaivalya, or the “isolation” or “aloneness” of that transcendental Witness. The many free Selves (purusha) all intersect in infinity and eternity. Enlightenment, or liberation, consists in simply waking up to our true nature, which is the transcendental Spirit, or Self. HATHA-YOGA The word hatha means “force” or “forceful.” Thus Hatha-Yoga is the “forceful Yoga” or “Yoga of Force,” meaning the Yoga of the inner kundalinī power. This branch of Yoga, which is particularly associated with Matsyendra Nātha and Goraksha Nātha, two perfected masters or siddhas, is a medieval development arising out of Tantra. It approaches Self-realization through the vehicle of the physical body and its energetic (pranic/etheric) template. In the first instance, Hatha-Yoga seeks to strengthen or “bake” the body so that practitioners have a chance to cultivate higher realizations. Secondly, it means to transubstantiate the body into a “divine body” (divyadeha) or “adamantine body” (vajra-deha), which is endowed with all kinds of paranormal capacities. Thus, the disciplines of Hatha-Yoga are designed to help manifest the ultimate Reality in the finite human body-mind. Sri Aurobindo put it this way: The chief processes of Hathayoga are āsana and prānāyāma. By its numerous Asanas or fixed postures it first cures the body of that restlessness which is a sign of its inability to contain without working them off in action and movement the vital forces poured into it from the universal Life-Ocean, gives to it an extraordinary health, force and suppleness and seeks to liberate it from the habits by which it is subjected to ordinary physical Nature and kept within the narrow bounds of her normal operations. . . . By various subsidiary but elaborate processes the Hathayogin next contrives to keep the body free from all impurities and the nervous system unclogged for those exercises of respiration which are his most important instruments.1

The path of Jnāna-Yoga, which has been described as “a straight but steep course,”4 is outlined with elegant conciseness by Sadānanda in his Vedānta-Sāra, a fifteenth-century text. Sadānanda lists four principal means (sādhana) for attaining emancipation: 1. Discernment (viveka) between the permanent and the transient; that is, the constant practice of seeing the world for what it is—a finite and changeable realm that, even at its most enjoyable, must never be confused with the transcendental Bliss. 2. Renunciation (virāga) of the enjoyment of the fruit (phala) of one’s actions; this is the high ideal of Karma-Yoga, which asks students to engage in appropriate actions without expecting any personal reward. 3. The “six accomplishments” (shat-sampatti), which are detailed below. 4. The urge toward liberation (mumukshutva); that is, the cultivation of the spiritual impulse, or self-transcendence. The six accomplishments are: 1. Tranquillity (shama), or the art of remaining serene even in the face of adversity. 2. Sense-restraint (dama), or the curbing of one’s senses, which are habitually hankering after stimulation. 3. Cessation (uparati), or abstention from actions that are not relevant either to the maintenance of the body or to the pursuit of enlightenment. 4. Endurance (titikshā), which is specifically understood as the stoic ability to be unruffled by the play of opposites (dvandva) in Nature, such as heat and cold, pleasure and pain, or praise and censure. 5. Mental collectedness (samādhāna), or concentration, the discipline of single-mindedness in all situations but specifically during periods of formal education. 6. Faith (shraddhā), a deeply inspired, heartfelt acceptance of the sacred and transcendental Reality. Faith, which is fundamental to all forms of spirituality, must not be confused with mere belief, which operates only on the level of the mind. In some works a threefold path is expounded: Listening (shravana), or reception of the sacred teachings Considering (manana) the import of the teachings Contemplation (nididhyāsana) of the truth, which is the Self (ātman) Step by step, the practitioner peels away all the veils concealing the ultimate Truth, which is the singular Spirit. This realization brings peace, bliss, and inner freedom.

The objective of Karma-Yoga is stated to be “action freedom.” The actual Sanskrit term is naishkarmya, which literally means “nonaction.” But this literal meaning is misleading, because it is not inactivity that is intended here. Rather, naishkarmya-karman corresponds to the Taoist notion of wu-wei, or inaction in action. That is to say, Karma-Yoga is about freedom in action, or the transcendence of egoic motivations. When the illusion of the ego as acting subject is transcended, then actions are recognized to occur spontaneously. Without the interference of the ego, their spontaneity appears as a smooth flow. Hence truly enlightened beings have an economy and elegance of movement about them that is generally absent in unenlightened individuals. Behind the action of the enlightened being there is no author; or we could say that Nature itself is the author. Action performed in the spirit of self-surrender has benign invisible effects. It improves the quality of our being and makes us a source of spiritual uplift for others. Lord Krishna, in the Bhagavad-Gītā, speaks of the karma-yogin’s working for the welfare of the world. The Sanskrit phrase he uses is loka-samgraha, which literally means “world gathering” or “pulling people together.” What it refers to is this: Our own personal wholeness, founded in self-surrender, actively transforms our social environment, contributing to its wholeness. “Mahatma” Gandhi was modern India’s most superb example of a karma-yogin in action. He worked tirelessly on himself and for the welfare of the Indian nation. In pursuing the lofty ideal of Karma-Yoga, Gandhi had to give up his life. He did so without rancor, with the name of God—“Rām”—on his lips. He embraced his destiny, trusting that none of his spiritual efforts could ever be lost, as is indeed the solemn promise of Lord Krishna in the Bhagavad-Gītā, which Gandhi read daily. Gandhi believed in the inevitability of karma, but he also believed in free will.

INTEGRAL YOGA All the branches of Yoga described so far were creations of premodern India. With Sri Aurobindo’s Integral Yoga we enter the modern era. This Yoga is a vivid demonstration that the Yoga tradition, which has always been highly adaptive, is continuing to develop in response to the changing cultural conditions. Integral Yoga is the single most impressive attempt to reformulate Yoga for our modern needs and abilities. While intent on preserving the continuity of the Yoga tradition, Sri Aurobindo was eager to adapt Yoga to the unique context of the Westernized world of our age. He did this on the basis not only of his own European education but also his profound personal experimentation and experience with spiritual life. He combined in himself the rare qualities of an original philosopher and those of a mystic and sage. Aurobindo saw in all past forms of Yoga an attempt to transcend the ordinary person’s enmeshment in the external world by means of renunciation, asceticism, meditation, breath control, and a whole battery of other yogic means. By contrast, Integral Yoga—which is called pūrna-yoga in Sanskrit—has the explicit purpose of bringing the “divine consciousness” down into the human body-mind and into ordinary life. While Aurobindo certainly did not deny the value of asceticism, he sought to assign to it its proper place within the context of an integral spirituality. He argued that the ancient Hindu thinkers and sages took very seriously the Vedāntic axiom that there is only a single Reality but failed to do proper justice to the correlated axiom that “all this is Brahman.” In other words, they typically ignored the presence of the nondual Divine in and as the world in which we live. Aurobindo’s “supramental Yoga” revolves around the transformation of terrestrial life. He wanted to see paradise on Earth—a thoroughly transmuted existence in the world. Integral Yoga has no prescribed techniques, since the inward transformation is accomplished by the divine Power itself. There are no obligatory rituals, mantras, postures, or breathing exercises to be performed. The aspirant must simply open himself or herself to that higher Power, which Sri Aurobindo identified with The Mother. This self-opening and calling upon the presence of The Mother is understood as a form of meditation or prayer. Aurobindo advised that practitioners should focus their attention at the heart, which has anciently been the secret gateway to the Divine. Faith, or inner certitude, is deemed a key to spiritual growth. Other important aspects of Integral Yoga practice are chastity (brahmacarya), truthfulness (satya), and a pervasive disposition of calm (prashānti).

Our lives have become incredibly complicated, with stress relentlessly undermining our health and sanity. In other words, the yogic work of self-transformation encounters similar challenges to bygone ages, which had their own pathologies. Yoga is a well-trodden path to inner freedom, peace, and happiness. It puts us in touch with what Abraham Maslow called “being values,” without which our lives are superficial and ultimately unfulfilling.2 Yoga offers answers to the fundamental questions of human existence: Who am I? Why am I here? Where do I go? What must I do? Whenever we pause long enough in the midst of our hectic lives, these questions surface from oblivion. When they do, few people have plausible answers for them. But without such answers, we are merely adrift. Yoga can provide direction today as efficiently as it did five or more millennia ago. It is for everyone. Its various approaches are not only not antithetical but positively complementary. They make up a spectrum of possible engagement of the yogic path to liberation. Whatever our particular temperament or orientation, we can find a resonating yogic approach that will lead us out of confusion and unhappiness. Shri Yogendra, founder-president of the Yoga Institute in Santa Cruz (a suburb of Bombay, India) addressed the notion that ancient Yoga is unsuitable for modern life as part of a larger pattern of prejudice: . . . a busy man regards it as a waste of time which he could utilize to better purpose; the normally healthy man believes he has no need for it; the non-conformist and the unconventional dislike the very idea of following anything which demands their loyalty or devotion; the youth believes it is for the old, and the luxury-loving persons could not think of being simple, while many opine that Yoga and modern life are self-contradictory and need not be attempted.3 These excuses say nothing about Yoga but everything about the ordinary individual, who is always looking to preserve the status quo. Yoga, of course, actively undermines conventional patterns of existence, at least insofar as they prevent inner freedom, peace, and happiness. In that sense it is a radical teaching, which goes to the root (radix) of the problem: lethargy, fear of change, prejudice, self-delusion—all of which can be summarized as ignorance (avidyā). The whole purpose of Yoga is to remove ignorance, which is in the way of enlightenment. Therefore Yoga speaks to every single unillumined person in the world.