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Sacred Body, Sacred
Spi ri t
A Personal Guide to the Wisdom of
Yoga and Tantra
By The Same Author
Tantra: Te Yoga of Love and Awakening
Sacred Body, Sacred
Spi ri t
A Personal Guide to the Wisdom of
Yoga and Tantra
Ramesh Bjonnes
Copyright © :c:: by Ramesh Bjonnes
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright
Conventions. Published in the United States by InnerWorld Publications,
PO Box :o:,, San Germán, Puerto Rico, ccoï,.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: :c::,c,;;o
Cover Design © Donna Wilson McClure
Author Photograph: Maya Verzonilla
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form
or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,
recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without
permission in writing from the publisher, except for the inclusion of
brief quotations in a review.
ISBN ,;ï-:-ïï:;:;-:,-;
To Shrii Shrii Anandamurti, the teacher of my teachers, who said
that Tantra “is the process of transforming one’s latent divinity
into Supreme Divinity. A person who, irrespective of caste, creed
or religion aspires for [such] spiritual expansion…is a Tantric.”

“Ramesh Bjonnes oﬀers rich insight into Tantra for the current age,
reaching back into the hoary past, while sustaining a clear focus in
the present. Tis book is a source that any person, lay or scholar, will
beneﬁt from reading, because here is a practitioner whose ﬁne mind
reaches into his heart, converging one into the other. Bjonnes is now an
important voice for the study of living Tantra, a cynosure where past,
present, and future spiritualities commingle in a rich understanding of
esoteric teachings and practices.”
—Douglas Brooks, Professor of Religion, Rochester University,
author of Auspicious Wisdom
“ Tese writings on yoga, Tantric philosophy and spiritual ecology
have the lucidity of insight that comes only to those who have had the
good fortune to have a long and close relationship with a true teacher,
and who have devoted years to actualizing the instructions they were
given.”
—David Crow, author of In Search of the Medicine Buddha
“Te writings of Ramesh Bjonnes cut right to the core of the spiri-
tual journey. His essays, while down to earth and easy to understand,
express very deep thoughts and feelings. His words enter through my
mind and then travel to my heart, where they blossom like beautiful
ﬂowers of love and truth.
–Jai Uttal, Grammy-nominated world musician
“Ramesh Bjonnes is one of the ﬁnest yoga historians in the United
States. He has a deep understanding of yoga philosophy and a deep
personal practice. He is a profound and humble teacher who brings
insight as well as personal experience to his lectures. I highly recom-
mend him.”
–Kaoverii Weber, founder Subtle Yoga
“Sacred Body, Sacred Spirit is an inspiring and provocative book.
Tese essays have been among the most consistently popular ever on
our website; they have also generated some of our most robust and
enlightening debates.”
—Bob Weisenberg, Associate Publisher, Elephant Journal
Contents
Introduction :
Part One: Sacred Rivers: Te History of Yoga and Tantra 
Brief History of the Yoga and Tantra Tradition ::
Tree Ways to View the Ancient History of Yoga :o
Before Buddha was a Buddhist, He was a Tantric Yogi :¡
How Old Is Your Yoga Practice? :,
Dispelling a Myth About Women and Yoga ,¡
Part Two: Te Path of Love and Ecstasy 
Te Yoga of Tantric Love: Seven Reasons Why it’s Not Just
About Sex ¡:
Tantra and Sex ¡ï
Yoga for Lovers ,:
Can Orgasm Lead to Enlightenment? ,,
Tantric Love: Why is Krishna Blue and Radha Golden? ,ï
Tantra and Kundalini: Uncoiling Te Sacred Snake of Sex
and Liberation oc
Fat, Naked and Enlightened: Te Crazy Yogis of Love o,
Tantra: Te Yoga of Union o;
Part Tree: Te Wisdom of Yoga 
Yoga Means Union: Te Spiritual, Historical and Psychological
Reasons ;:
Tantra and the Yoga Sutras: If Patanjali Had Been a Woman ;ï
A Comparative Examination of the Body-Mind-Spirit
Connection ïc
Yoga and Reincarnation: To Believe or Not to Believe? ï,
Your Mind Is More Powerful Tan Your Brain ïï
Religion, Science, or Dharma: What’s the Diﬀerence? ,:
Yoga and Activism ,,
Can We be Spiritual without Transformation: A Tantric
Perspective ,,
Tree Ways to Practice Yoga :c:
Tree Ways to Enlightenment :co
What is Rajadhiraja Yoga? ::,
What the Bleep is Dharma? ::;
Part Four: Te Spirit of Practice 
Te Power of Sitting Now ::,
Te Yoga of Fierce Enlightenment ::o
Is Yoga an Art, a Science, or a Religion? :,:
Yoga: Multiple Pathways to the Path of One! :,,
Bhakti Yoga: the Cure for Spiritual Heart Disease :,,
Diet for a Yogi Planet :¡:
Why do People Chant OM at the End of Yoga Class? :¡o
Why do Modern Yogis Believe Brahmacarya Means Celibacy? :¡,
Yoga May Be Bad For Your Health: Seven Ways to Avoid
Yoga Injuries :,:
You Are Already Enlightened! True or False? :,¡
Ten Simple Secrets to a Great Meditation Practice :oc
Twelve Ways to Meditate Like a (Real) Yogi :o:
Why are People Afraid of the Tantric Guru? :o,
Why Yogis Eat Carrots Rather than Cows :;c
Tantric Ethics for Self and Society :;,
Te Power of Mantras :;o
Tantra Practice: Tree Steps to Meaningful Mindfulness
Meditation :;ï
Introducing a Meditation Practice :ï:
Select Bibliography :ï¡
Acknowledgments :ïï
Introduction
An Integral Perspective on Tantra and Yoga
Taxria is cixiiaii\ xxowx in the West as “the yoga of sex.” In
this book, you will be introduced to a more integral form of Tantra.
You will be introduced to what Tantric author Vimala McClure calls
“the yoga of everything.”
In an article by Nora Isaacs in Yoga Journal, several prominent yoga
teachers predicted that Tantra will be the “next step in America’s spiritual
evolution.” Tis next step seems to have already started, not only in
America, but all over the world. A good indicator of the growing inter-
est in Tantra is that Georg Feuerstein, one of the world’s most proliﬁc
authors on yoga, changed the title of his :c:: edition of Te Encyclopedia
of Yoga to Te Encyclopedia of Yoga and Tantra. Another indicator is
the growing interest in the writings and workshops of Hindu religious
scholar and Tantric practitioner Douglas Brooks, as well as the writings
and teachings of other popular authors on Tantra, such as David Frawley,
Lama Yeshe, Robert Svoboda, and Swami Satyananda Saraswati. Hence,
this change of title is not only timely, it is essential—because these two
traditions are intimately linked. In the words of the founder of the
Bihar School of Yoga, Swami Satyananda Saraswati, “Te techniques
of Yoga have their source in Tantra and the two cannot be separated.”
Tere are many forms and schools of Tantra, some genuine and many
not-so-genuine. In the West, there are neo-Tantric schools of sacred sex
that have little or no resemblance to traditional Tantra, and in India,
there are people who proclaim to be Tantric masters, but who in reality
are charlatans and tricksters, and many of them are simply dabbling in
black magic and superstition. However, Tantra also represents a long
and rich tradition that is perhaps best described as the inner essence of
yoga. Within this illustrious and old tradition, there are many diﬀerent
schools and sub-schools emphasizing diﬀerent aspects of the vast universe
of Tantric practice and philosophy. In this book, you will be introduced
to those aspects of Tantra that includes the practice of physical yoga
2 saciio noo\, saciio siiiir
exercises, devotional dancing, mantra meditation, chanting, breathing
exercises, visualization techniques, philosophy, sacred cosmology, and
holistic medicine.
Most Western books on Tantra inform us that it is some form of
esoteric sexual practice. But much of the writings on Western sex-Tantra
have actually been lifted from the pages of the Kama Sutra, a Hindu
text on lovemaking, which no doubt has its own sensual beauty to oﬀer,
but this text is essentially neither part of Tantric nor yogic literature.
While good food and adequate amounts of money are essential
ingredients in a happy life, better health is not gained by overeating on
organic cuisine and true wealth is not found in the hoarding of material
things. Likewise, integral Tantra is not the path of indulgence, nor the
path of mere sensual gratiﬁcation. Hence, on the subject of indulgence
in drink and sex as a path to liberation, the Kularnava Tantra text speaks
with a straightforward voice: “If [you] could attain perfection (siddhi)
merely by drinking wine, all the wine drinking rogues would attain
perfection. If mere intercourse… would lead to liberation, all creatures
of the world would be liberated…” Not surprisingly, many people are
searching for a more authentic and holistic experience of Tantra. Tis
search was reﬂected in the article “Tantric Sex” in O: Oprah Magazine,
where its millions of readers learned that Western Tantra has been
“overly sexualized.”
Tantra is about ﬁnding balance in all aspects of our lives. In its essence,
it is about seeing and realizing that everything we do can become a
sacred, spiritual act. Tantra simply means spiritual transformation, the
path to inner liberation. Irrespective of religion, the spirit of Tantra can
be awakened in all genuine spiritual practice. For Tantra is not based on
religious faith or belief; it is based on spiritual practice. Tantra, like all
genuine spirituality, is a state of being.
Te Sanskrit word Tantra literally means the practice that leads to
spiritual liberation. So, while Tantra signiﬁes the various ancient yogic
practices and their particular history, the path of Tantra can also be
loosely characterized as the universal quest for union with God in all
the world’s wisdom traditions, in all paths that lead to liberation.
Tantric yogis embrace both unity and duality, both wholeness and
opposites. Tey have realized that these opposites dissolve in Brahma,
in Spirit—and that the inner essence of all life and all things are bliss
and love. Tat is why Tantra is often called the path of ecstasy, or the
path of love.
, ixriooucriox
Neuroscience, through the research of Dr. Candace Perth, has now
recognized that we humans are “hardwired for bliss.” Similarly, Tantra
believes that everything is divine—that every form, particle or atom
of this universe has an inherent capacity to reveal the Divine. Tantra
boldly claims that not just everyone, but everything, is at its core, God.
Tantric spirituality means that in order to experience sacredness in
everyday life, we must practice spirituality—yoga postures, meditation,
prayer, chanting, and dancing—diligently and with total abandon. We
must walk our spiritual talk passionately. It’s that simple. In other words,
daily spiritual practice is essential in achieving results on the path of
Tantra. Indeed, all sacred paths worthy of their prayer beads would agree.
Tantra signiﬁes a spirituality that is vigorous and fearless—a spiri-
tuality that encourages and enables us to overcome limitations, pho-
bias, worries and egotistical tendencies head-on. Tantra is about the
alchemical use of energy, the ability to transform desire into bliss, and
violence into peace.
For the Tantric understands that all dualities, all conﬂicts and oppo-
sites, all forms and energies are diﬀerent expressions of God that ulti-
mately dissolve in a state of nondual unity and peace. In other words,
personal transformation is to live like the Spanish poet Antonio Machado
and let “the bees in our heart” make honey out of all our past mistakes.
And in letting the bees of the heart do their work, we practice Tantra.
A Brief Introduction to Tantra Philosophy
In India, Tantra means science, practice, art, as well as a path of libera-
tion, freedom, and bliss. As the yoga of everything, Tantra is an inte-
gral practice and a lifestyle for body, mind, and spirit. Tantra is also a
worldview, a philosophy and a practical cosmology to live by.
While some spiritual paths negate the world, Tantra embraces the
world. Te life-aﬃrming Tantra seeks freedom and liberation in the
world, not from the world. While some spiritual paths aﬃrm that life
is suﬀering, the dynamic path of Tantra aﬃrms that life can be joyful.
While some spiritual paths seek salvation in heaven, Tantra seeks libera-
tion while we are still alive here on earth. In the spiritual practices of
Tantra, the sacred and the mundane, the heart and the spirit, the move-
ment of the body, the stillness of meditation, and the ecstasy of chanting
are all celebrated together in dynamic balance. As Douglas Brooks, the
eminent religious scholar and Tantric practitioner in the Rajanaka Yoga
4 saciio noo\, saciio siiiir
tradition said in an interview, “Tantra begins with the aﬃrmation of
the gift of being human. In every possible way; as a physical being; as
an emotional and intellectual being and as a spiritual being.”
In the cosmology, or creation philosophy, of Tantra, the Cosmic
Consciousness of Shiva and the Cosmic Energy of Shakti are always
entwined like the embrace of two celestial lovers. Metaphorically speak-
ing, Shiva’s Cosmic Consciousness is inherent in everything, and Shakti’s
Cosmic Energy creates everything. Metaphorically, they are two sides of
the same androgynous expression of the nondual Oneness of Brahma.
Hence, in Tantric cosmology, God and Goddess merge in the ocean of
nondual Oneness. Tis ancient Tantric concept of yoga appeals to our
contemporary, ecological sensibilities: everything is one; everything is
interconnected; everything is sacred.
Tantric yoga is a practice of earthly balance and spiritual union, a
practice embracing both worldly achievements and spiritual peace. In
Tantra, there is no inherent contradiction between the sacred and the
mundane. First a yogi attempts to harmonize body and mind, then to
live in harmony with the world. Ultimately, he or she seeks spiritual
union—the union between the human soul and the cosmic essence of
Brahma. Since everything is Brahma, for the Tantric yogi, the mundane
and the Divine are one. Te body is thus the “outer layer of the mind”
and the mind a sacred vehicle for the expression of spirituality. Still, in
the ultimate sense, the spiritual cannot be expressed in words. Spirt is
experienced by merging our individual minds in the atman, the soul,
at which point our individual soul merges in the paramatman, the
cosmic soul, at which point the yogi becomes speechless in the myste-
rious splendor of ultimate union. And in Tantra, the path toward this
state of nondual union is not belief, not dogma, but practice. Tantra
is, therefore, often described as an intuitive science.
Te goal of Tantra’s physical and mental exercises is to create a
healthy body and mind and thus a conducive environment for spiritual
practice—for meditation. Te physical exercises are part of a nested
continuum, from body to mind to spirit. Te body is thus a springboard
from which a self-inspired and sustainable spirit can soar.
Te intertwined distinctions Tantra makes between body, mind, and
spirit is a brilliant insight. Although everything is sacred, Tantra real-
izes that both the physical body and the mind are impermanent states
of being; only spirit is unchanging. Any improvement on the physical
or mental levels can thus never be perfect, can never be ultimately
, ixriooucriox
fulﬁlling. No matter how perfectly toned our body is, it will never
be perfect enough. And soon the body will age. It may start to ache.
Disease may come. No matter how intellectually smart we are, we can
never know everything.
So, the Tantrics of old would agree with visionary poet William
Blake when he said: “He who binds to himself a joy does the winged
life destroy. But he who kisses the joy as it ﬂies lives in eternity’s sun
rise.” In other words, the ﬁnal satisfaction lies beyond both body and
mind, in the peaceful domain of spirit, where all limitations and con-
tradictions dissolve, like salt in the ocean. Hence, we are not just this
body; we are not just this mind; we are so much more; we are spiritual
beings. Trough the practice of Tantric yoga and meditation, we can
achieve this realization of spiritual union and inner peace.
Tantra represents integrated practice—the yoga of body, mind and
spirit. In some yoga studios and ashrams outside India, we see this Tantric
spirit emerging. Here, yoga is no longer just practiced for physical ﬁt-
ness; the essence of a deeper, subterranean ﬂow of yoga philosophy and
practice is also being taught. In these new environments, yoga is being
cultivated as an integrated spiritual practice. Harmoniums and tablas
are placed before outstretched yoga mats; yogis in tight clothing are
loosening up their bhakti souls to Indian chants by kirtan singers Jai Uttal
and Krishna Das; Ayurvedic massage and herbs are being introduced;
many yoga teachers end their classes with meditation; popular yogis
such as Sean Corn see Karma Yoga, or service, as a way to heal, express
gratitude and to stay centered. Tese are all signs of a holistic tapestry
being woven together from all the integrated strands of wisdom that
yoga has to oﬀer. In other words, we are presently witnessing a reemer-
gence of a more traditional Tantra and yoga, not only in India, but all
over the world. Still, it is relatively rare to see the deeper meditation
techniques of Tantra, which the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali only alludes to,
being taught in the West today. But I believe it is only a matter of time
before more of these subtle and powerful practices, some of which will
be mentioned in this book, will become more commonplace.
Te Book’s Title
Sacred Body, Sacred Spirit is an expression of the essence of Tantric
wisdom. Sacred Body represents Shakti, the dynamic power of creation.
In the cosmology of Tantra, Shakti is the feminine life force in nature,
6 saciio noo\, saciio siiiir
the creative upward moving and vital force that brings a plant into full
bloom, and the power of decay that returns the same plant to the soil.
She is the Goddess of Energy, the universal prana, or vital life force
keeping our own bodies alive and healthy. Te same vital life force
also manifests as the energy of kundalini, which we humans express as
sexuality, creativity and spirituality. As Cosmic Goddess, she has the
magnanimity of a mother and embraces all of creation—birth, life, and
death—in the inﬁnite, cosmic womb of her inner being.
Te Sacred Spirit of Shiva represents the stillness in all things, the
witnessing I in the depth of our soul, the consciousness in all beings and
the spiritual ground of all things. Te Sacred Spirit of Shiva is awake and
alive in all of us. Tantra sees consciousness stirring in all animals and
plants. Tantra also sees consciousness as dormant potential in all material
things. Tus, everything is sacred. Te Sacred Spirit is God in all living
beings and the sublime consciousness in all the world’s manifestations.
Te Sacred Spirit of Shiva is the God of Consciousness, the universal
spirit and intelligence within and beyond the world. In humans, it is the
reuniﬁcation of Shakti’s kundalini energy with Shiva as consciousness
that brings liberation and freedom through the practice of meditation.
In Tantra, the Cosmic Consciousness of Shiva and the Cosmic
Energy of Shakti are always united in the bond of cosmic love. If Shakti
is the visible seed, Shiva is the seed’s invisible oil. If Shakti is one side
of a sheet of paper, then Shiva is the other. Together they are the dual
components of Brahma. As cosmic potential, they rest together in the
nondual ocean of Supreme Consciousness, or Brahma. Te Cosmic
Energy of Shakti creates the world and all its beings, and the Cosmic
Consciousness of Shiva is the dormant essence of all things, the mind
of animals, and the conscious awareness of human beings.
To live in accordance with the universal wisdom of Tantra is to
embrace duality and unite in nonduality. To embrace Shakti through
spiritual practice is thus to awaken the possibility of uniting with Shiva
and experience their unity in the form of spiritual awakening, love and
bliss.
Te Use of Sanskrit
Tis book contains the use of Sanskrit words describing various yogic
and Tantric concepts. Some words, such as karma, kundalini, guru, and
chakra, will be familiar to most readers. Words that are less in common
; ixriooucriox
usage, such as samskara, or vritti, have generally been translated in paren-
thesis and/or explained in more detail. Te word used to indicate the
Divine or God in Sanskrit is generally the neuter word Brahman. In this
book, however, I have used the less common nominative singular form
Brahmā. Tis noun has a generalized and abstract meaning in Sanskrit.
As stated above, it means Supreme Consciousness. Brahma was the
preferred term used by my spiritual teacher, Shrii Shrii Anandamurti
(a. k. a. P. R. Sarkar), an Indian philosopher, Tantric master, Sanskrit
linguist, philosopher, composer, economist, and author of over :,c
books. While Anandamurti is still relatively unknown outside his home
land, the former President of India, Giani Zail Singh, said that he was
“one of the greatest modern philosophers of India.”
Since the word yoga has become an integral part of our vocabulary,
it is generally not capitalized. I have chosen to capitalize yoga, however,
when the word is used to indicate a speciﬁc path, or aspect of yoga,
such as the paths of Bhakti Yoga, or Hathta Yoga. Similarly, the words
Tantra and Tantric are also capitalized, since these terms are often used
to indicate a speciﬁc spiritual path or tradition, such as when writing
“the Vedic and Tantric tradition,” for example.
Part One
Sacred Rivers: The History of Yoga
and Tantra
Brief History of the Yoga and
Tantra Tradition
Ir is coxxoxi\ niiiivio that the ancient yoga tradition’s spiritual
quest culminated about 200 nci, when the Indian sage Pantanjali
composed his inﬂuential Yoga Sutras. According to some yoga scholars,
this event signiﬁes the Classical Period of Yoga (200 nci to 400 ci).
Te practice of Archaic Yoga, or the earliest forms of yoga, emerged,
according to these scholars, in the ancient Vedas about 3000 years before
Patanjali. Indeed, this is how most yogis in the West think about the
ancient history of their practice; that it originated in early Vedic culture
(3000 nci), ﬂourished during the Epic Yoga period of the Upanishads
and the Bhagavad Gita (600 nci), and culminated in the Classical Yoga
of Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras (200 nci). But, according to other scholars
and masters of yoga and Tantra, this view disregards signiﬁcant aspects
of yoga’s illustrious story, namely the important inﬂuence of Tantra
from the very beginning of Indian history.
Patanjali wrote that the goal of yoga is inner peace, or, as he put it, “the
cessation of mental propensities.” To reach this goal of spiritual tranquil-
ity, he prescribed the eight-limbed path of Asthanga Yoga. In Patanjali’s
comprehensive system, yoga postures, or asanas, forms only one of the
eight parts, which are: yama and niyama (ethics), asanas (yoga posture
exercises), pranayama (breathing exercises) prathyahara (sense withdrawal),
dharana (concentration), dhyana (meditation) and samadhi (spiritual
peace). Tis system, also termed Raja Yoga, built upon much earlier forms
of yoga as well as the Samkhya philosophy. Samkhya was, in turn, inspired
by the prehistoric Shaiva Yoga tradition, today better known as Tantra.
In short, as many Indian yoga scholars will acknowledge, the spiritual
history of India can largely be divided (and united) around these two
sacred rivers—the Vedic and the Tantric. Of these two traditions, it was
the Tantric river that, for the most part, inﬂuenced what we today think
of as the yoga tradition, or the practice of yoga postures and meditation.
In other words, yoga is not just a Vedic tradition, its practices and history
has much more in common with the Tantric tradition.
12 saciio noo\, saciio siiiir
Most Western writers on yoga believe that Tantra emerged in India
in the Middle Ages, a few hundred years after Patanjali, from about ¡cc
ci to ::cc ci, when most Tantric texts were written. It is becoming
increasingly evident, however, that this Renaissance period of Indian
culture was simply a re-emergence of a much older, oral tradition that
goes back into prehistory. In other words, Tantra, and thus yoga, is
more likely as old as human civilization itself.
Te spiritual re-emergence spurred by the Tantric yogis of the Middle
Ages is perhaps unprecedented in the written history of the world’s
wisdom traditions. From that period, Hatha Yoga, Kundalini Yoga,
Bhakti Yoga, Kashmir and Bengal Tantra, and so many other yoga
systems, became an integral part of Indian culture, and these paths,
especially various forms of Tantra, infused Jainism, Buddhism, and
Hindusim with new vitality. In other words, traditional yoga as a system
of personal transformation as we know it and practice it today, and
which has been promoted by modern teachers such as Ramakrishna,
Vivekananda, Yogananda, Anandamayi Ma, Shivananda, Satyananda
Saraswati, Gurumayi Chidvilasananda, Anandamurti, and others, is
deeply inﬂuenced by Tantra.
Te modern yoga posture movement in the West—which origi-
nated with Krishnamacarya, in the early :,ccs, and his students
B.K.S. Iyengar and Patabhi Joise, who brought the teachings to the
West—is largely based on Tantric Hatha Yoga with an admixture of
Western inspired gymnastics. Hence, the oral tradition of Tantra,
which is thousands of years older than its written version in the various
Tantras from the Middle Ages, has been modiﬁed over thousands of
years. Today, the many popular schools and teachers of yoga largely
promote a body-oriented practice for enhancing physical and mental
health—but even this form of posture yoga has its roots in Tantra in
the form of Hatha Yoga.
Tere is general academic agreement in the West that Tantra is at
least ﬁfteen hundred years old, and written evidence of Tantra dates
back to the Gupta Period (,:c to ,,c ci). Tere is also wide academic
agreement that the posture yoga we practice today has its origins in
the Tantric Hatha Yoga movement of the Natha sect, which dates its
origins to the eighth century ci according to Western scholars and to
the fourth century nci according to adherents of the tradition itself.
While the ﬁrst manual on Hatha Yoga, the Hatha Yoga Pradipika,
authored by Svaratmana, is only about ﬁve to six hundred years old, it
:, saciio iiviis: rui uisroi\ oi \oca axo raxria
is widely acknowledged by scholars and adepts of the path that Tantra
and the practice of yoga are much older than the late Middle Ages.
Researchers studying the Paleolithic Kebara cave in Israel have
concluded it features the burial of a medicine woman, or shaman,
from the Natuﬁan culture (::,,cc-,ccc nci). Buried along with her
were dozens of animal items indicating to researchers that she was a
shaman in close communication with these animal spirits. Similarly,
in India, archeologists have uncovered artifacts resembling yoga poses,
such as the Pashupatinath ﬁgure sitting in goraksasana, a yogic bandha
pose said to stimulate the arousal of the spiritual kundalini force.
Surrounding the yogic ﬁgure are also animals, thus evoking a link
to shamanism, but also to the idea that yogis are in control of their
animal instincts, their wild, animal nature. Te ﬁgure was uncovered
by Sir John Marshall in :,:; and dates back to about ,,cc nci. Other
“yogi-like” artifacts found at Mehrgarh date as far back as o,cc nci.
Since the goraksasana is a rather sophisticated yogic pose, it is fair to
assume that specialized Tantric yoga was practiced at an early age, no
doubt thousands of years before the Tantra Renaissance of the Middle
Ages. Another ﬁgure from the same period as the Pashupatinath ﬁgure
features a dress made of bilva leaves. Tese sacred leaves have been
commonly used in the worship of Shiva, the so-called King of Yoga,
for thousands of years.
Another entry point into the antiquity and non-Vedic origins of yoga
and Tantra is the Samkhya philosophy, one of the six schools of orthodox
Indian philosophy and undoubtedly the single most important school of
thought within Indian Yogic spirituality next to Vedanta. Te Samkhya
Karika text from :cc ci was one of the main inﬂuences regarding the rise
of the Tantras as a body of literature. Te sage Maharishi Kapila is said to
be the original author of this text of dualistic philosophy. Considered to
be the philosophical basis for Ayurveda, India’s ancient medical system,
Samkhya is already mentioned in the Mahabharata about six hundred
years earlier. Interestingly, in the Mahabharata, the Samkhya philosophy
has a distinct nondual ﬂavor. What is most important, perhaps, is that
Samkhya contains most of the many philosophical attributes we have
become accustomed to in enumerating yogic, Ayurvedic and Tantric
philosophy, namely Purusha or Shiva (Consciousness), Prakrti or Shakti
(Energy), the three attributes of nature (peaceful, energetic, and static),
the ﬁve elements of nature (space, air, ﬁre, water, and earth), and many
other properties featured in the cosmology of Tantra Yoga.
14 saciio noo\, saciio siiiir
While the Mahabharata epic dates to ¡cc nci, it is commonly under-
stood that Krishna, its main protagonist, lived much earlier. According
to most scholars and recent archeological ﬁnds oﬀ the coast of India,
he most likely lived around :,cc nci. Anandamurti, who considers
Samkhya the world’s ﬁrst philosophy, claims that this is also the time
period in which its author, sage Kapila, lived. Since Samkhya, in its
nondual version, is mentioned in the Mahabharata, it is possible that
the early forms of Samkhya philosophy may also have been nondualistic.
Or, as in the later Tantra philosophies, early Samkhya could have been
expressly qualiﬁed nondualistic. Tat is, Samkhya could have possibly
expressed the idea that Brahma is One and changeless, but that the world
of form is pluralistic and undergoes change. At any rate, that idea has
become one of Tantra’s brilliant insights—that Brahma is both One and
Many, Brahma is both Consciousness (Purusha) and Energy (Prakrti).
Te question about the nature of reality has been ﬁercely debated
among Indian philosophers throughout the ages. While the Vedantic
teachers have argued that spiritual reality is absolute, real and nondual,
and that the world is simply unreal, the Samkhya philosophers have
argued the opposite, that reality is dualistic, not singular but plural.
Te South Indian Ramanuja (::cc ci) tackled this debate elegantly by
promoting his qualiﬁed nonduality, which is also the central thesis of
Tantric philosophy from Abhinava Gupta to Anandamurti. Tis phi-
losophy states that Consciousness (Purusha/Shiva) is unqualiﬁed and
beyond sensory perception and can only be realized in deep meditation.
Energy (Prakrti/Shakti), on the other hand, is that which binds the
unqualiﬁed Purusha and thus creates the qualiﬁed world, or nature. In
this way, Tantra strikes a rational yet transcendental balance between
Samkhya and Vedanta.
While written texts of yogic and Tantric philosophy are of fairly
recent origin, it is reasonable to conclude that these texts, whether in
the form of the Samkhya, the Yoga Sutras or the Tantras, are grounded
in an ancient culture nearly seven thousand years old. Tis culture is
devoted to intense inner yogic practice, as opposed to the more external
rituals of the Vedic Brahmin priesthood. You will of course also ﬁnd
Brahmin priests in India who are well versed in the practical aspects
of Tantra, but, generally speaking, if you want to study Vedic chants,
you will study with a Brahmin priest, and if you want to learn Tantric
practice, you will study with a swami, a sadhu or a guru from the
Tantric yoga tradition.
:, saciio iiviis: rui uisroi\ oi \oca axo raxria
Tantra prides itself on being a practical art and science rather than
a philosophy. Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, while deeply philosophical in
nature, are fundamentally rooted in the practices of Tantra. All of the
eight limbs of this classical system of yoga are basically Tantric, and,
according to Anandamurti, these practices were systematized by Shiva
thousands of years before Patanjali’s philosophical treatise. Prior to that
time, Tantra most likely had its early roots in the shamanic tradition
of prehistoric India.
Adi Shankara (ïcc ci), the famous founder of Vedanta, is also widely
recognized as an inﬂuential Tantric teacher and practitioner. In other
words, the teachers and philosophers of yoga and the authors of Ayuvedic
texts gained their insights and revelations from the practice of Tantra,
from the practice of mantra meditation, breathing and concentration
exercises. Since the core impetus of Indian spirituality has been personal
liberation, these great thinkers were ﬁrst and foremost Tantric yogis and
secondarily authors of science, mathematics, grammar, medicine and
philosophy. Indeed, the tradition of Tantra and yoga itself is proud to
proclaim that it is “ninety-nine percent theory and only one percent
philosophy.” In the words of proliﬁc yoga writer David Frawley, ”Tantra
is the practical and energetic application of all the yogic wisdom of life.”
16 saciio noo\, saciio siiiir
Three Ways to View the Ancient
History of Yoga
Ixoiax civiiizariox ixiicio anour eleven thousand years ago,
during or shortly after Neolithic farming settlements were established
in the Fertile Crescent, in the Middle East, during the period often
referred to as the cradle of civilization. Recent research into this impor-
tant period of history has revealed that India was, in so many ways, also
the cradle of human civilization, not just geographically and culturally,
but also spiritually.
One of the ﬁrst areas on the planet where people settled to farm
and create urbanized city complexes on a considerable scale, was South
Asia—the area that today includes India, Pakistan and Afghanistan. In
Mehrgarh, for example, an area in Pakistan, wheat, barley and eggplant
were cultivated, sheep and cattle were domesticated, and people lived
in cities as early as nine thousand years ago.
India was also the birthplace of the world’s ﬁrst great religions,
Buddhism and Jainism. More signiﬁcantly, long before the birth of
Buddha (,cc nci), India had already developed the sophisticated sci-
ences of yoga, meditation, Ayurvedic medicine, and one of the world’s
most sophisticated and spiritual languages, namely Sanskrit.
While there is general agreement among scholars regarding the
antiquity of India’s civilization, there is less agreement about how and
when it developed its advanced culture and sacred traditions. Tere are
currently three main theories on ancient Indian history:
:. Most Western and Indian academics hold the view that India was
invaded by Vedic Aryan settlers around :,cc nci. Tese Aryans worshiped
the sun god, Surya, and brought with them their Rig Vedic religion. Tis
religion was largely based on sacriﬁces and rituals oﬀered to please and to
plead with the gods in order to fulﬁll their wishes and demands.
Tese patriarchal and martial Aryans, these academics claim, soon
conquered northern India and destroyed the great Indus Valley civili-
zation, where yoga was already practiced by Tantric (Shaiva) ascetics.
Tey massacred people and reduced the surviving Dravidian shudras
:; saciio iiviis: rui uisroi\ oi \oca axo raxria
to slavery without regard for rank or learning.
Tis conﬂict has been described in the famous epics, the Mahabharata
and the Ramayana. Over time, India became a blended civilization—part
Aryan Vedic, part Dravidian Shaiva, with a liberal admixture of Jain
and Buddhist traditions—and this blended culture is what we today
know as Indian civilization.
:. Western yoga scholars, including Georg Feuerstein and David
Frawley, as well as some Indian writers, especially within the funda-
mentalist Hindutva movement, subscribe to the theory that there was
never an Aryan invasion around :,cc nci, and that yoga comes solely
from the Vedic tradition. Tis “One River Teory” proclaims that the
Indus Valley was not destroyed by Aryan warriors, as many academics
claim, but instead by climatic changes. According to these writers, the
Aryans are indigenous to India and represent everything that is noble
about Indian culture.
In their book In Search of the Cradle of Civilization, Georg Feuerstein,
Subash Kak and David Frawley outline seventeen points for why the inva-
sion never took place. In one of these points, however, they reﬂect on the
possibility that the Aryan settlers arrived in India at a much earlier date.
,. Tis last option brings us to my own “Two River Teory” and
the idea that the history of yoga represents a blend of the Tantric and
Vedic traditions of India. According to Puranic history as well as recent
genetic science discoveries, the Vedic Aryans arrived in India at an early
age, most likely as early as ;ccc–,ccc nci. Terefore, the blending of
the Vedic and Tantric (Shaiva) cultures of India had already matured
by the time the Indus Valley civilization was depopulated around :ccc
nci, not by violence but by climatic changes.
Not long after, around :,cc nci, India produced the world’s ﬁrst
coherent philosophy and cosmology, namely sage Kapila’s Tantric-
inspired Samkhya philosophy, which today is popularly known as the
philosophy of Ayurveda, India’s ancient medical science.
About seven hundred years after Kapila, some of the greatest spiritual
literature the world has ever witnessed, namely the oral teachings in the
epic Mahabharata, the Vedantic Upanishads, the spiritual teachings of
the Gita, and the historical mythology of the Ramayana were written
down for the ﬁrst time.
And around :cc nci, the sage Patanjali wrote his Yoga Sutras and
codiﬁed the oral teachings of the Tantric yogis for the ﬁrst time in the
form of Asthanga, or Raja Yoga.
18 saciio noo\, saciio siiiir
Tese three versions of Indian history may seem entirely at odds,
but there are important overlapping agreements, and the theories do
in some ways compliment each other. Te ﬁrst theory has dated the
Aryan invasion rather late (:,cc nci) and does not reﬂect the genetic
research of Dr. Spencer Wells, who claims the invasion started much
earlier—about ;ccc–,ccc nci. In other words, if the migration took
place several thousands of years earlier, the alleged violent invasion
around :,cc nci is highly unlikely. Indeed, as suggested as a possibil-
ity by Feuerstein, Kak and Frawley—proponents of theory number
two—this migration started when the Rig Vedic Aryans arrived via the
Russian steppes and the deserts of Iran more than three thousand years
before the Indus Valley was abandoned. In other words, there was an
Aryan invasion, but it started thousands of years before the commonly
accepted :,cc nci date.
In Feuerstein’s new version of his book Te Yoga Tradition, he simi-
larly suggests the Indo-European Aryans arrived in India as early as
o,cc nci, which is also what genetic science has concluded. Looking
for better pastures for their cattle, and for other riches, these skilled
warrior nomads arrived in successive raids and migrations over a period
of several millennia.
Genetic science and archeology have determined the Vedic Aryans
arrived in an already inhabited land, and its peoples—the Dravidians,
Mongolians and Austrics—had already developed a sophisticated, urban
culture, and the art and science of Tantra Yoga was already in practice
among them. In other words, by the time the Indus Valley was ﬁnally
abandoned due to climatic changes around :,cc nci, the indigenous
Indians and the invading Aryans had already experienced three thousand
years of conﬂict and gradual integration.
Hence these peoples, representing diﬀerent civilizations, cultures and
outlooks—one we may broadly term Vedic/Priestly, and one we may
broadly term Tantric/Yogic—gradually formed what we today know as
the Indian, or Hindu, civilization. Tese two rivers, the Vedic and the
Tantric form two diﬀerent worldviews; the ﬁrst is primarily ritualistic
and religious, while the latter is primarily empirical and spiritual.
Together they have also inﬂuenced and formed the foundation of
what we practice as yoga today. Of these two rivers, however, Tantra has
by far been the most inﬂuential in shaping the practice of both physical
and meditative yoga. In the words of Swami Satyananda Saraswati: “Te
yoga we know today was developed as part of the tantric civilization
:, saciio iiviis: rui uisroi\ oi \oca axo raxria
which existed in India…more than :c,ccc years ago. In archeological
excavations made in the Indus Valley at Harappa and Mohenjdaro,
now in modern Pakistan, many statues have been found depicting
deities resembling Lord Shiva and Parvati performing various asanas
and practicing meditation.”
If we synthesize these three divergent views of the history of the
Tantric and Vedic tradition into a coherent vision, the following time-
line emerges:*
9000–5000 BCE—Proto-Tantra
Rudimentary forms of shamanistic Tantra practiced by Dravidians and
Mongolians. Proto-Tantric city complex established at Mehrgarh around
occc nci. Small groups of Vedic Aryans move into India bringing with
them the oral teachings of the Rig Veda, which was largely composed
outside India.
5000 BCE—Tantra Systematized by Shiva
Agama and Nigama, the philosophical and practical teachings, are given
by Shiva and his wife Parvati. Shiva introduces concept of Dharma—the
path of spirituality and righteousness. He also introduces Tantra Yoga,
including practices such as asanas, pranayama, dharana, pratyahara, and
dhyan, as well as two versions of the Panchamakaras (Five Ms), one for
the common people and one for yogis. Shiva also reﬁnes and system-
atizes Ayurvedic and Tantric medicine, often termed Vaedik Shastra,
or Siddha Medicine. Moreover, Shiva formulates the marriage system,
the musical octave and mudraic dances (with his wife Parvati). Tantric
yoga spreads to other parts of Asia, Europe and the Middle East. Larger
groups of Vedic Aryans migrate into India.
5000–2000 BCE—Tantra-oriented Civilizations in India
Tantric civilization established in Kota, Rajasthan, more than seven
thousand years ago. Shiva establishes a city in Kashi (Benares), on the
banks of the river Ganges. Te Dravidians establish a Tantra-oriented
civilization in the Indus Valley region. Tis civilization gradually fuses
with the Vedic civilization and the Vedic warrior clans eventually
gain political and economic control, but the people’s religion remains
20 saciio noo\, saciio siiiir
markedly Tantric Shaiva inspired. People worship the Mother Goddess
and also the Father God (Pashupati). Tantric yogis understand these
expressions as Shakti and Shiva, the dual nature of Brahma. Te three
other Vedic texts—the Atharva Veda, the Sama Veda, and the Yajur
Veda—are composed as oral teachings during this period.
2000 BCE—Transformation of the Original Shiva Tantra
Shiva Tantra (also termed the Shaivite tradition) transforms into two
branches of yoga, the Gaodiya and the Kashmiri Schools. Te Gaodiya
School was popular in East India (Bengal) and was only marginally inﬂu-
enced by the Vedas. Te Indus Valley civilization, which by then is a fusion
of Tantric and Vedic inﬂuences, is abandoned due to climatic changes.
1500 BCE—Krishna and Samkhya
Krishna formulates three branches of yoga—action (Karma), devo-
tion (Bhakti) and knowledge (Jnana). His teachings greatly inﬂuence
the later school of Vaishnava Tantra. Yudhistira, a disciple of Krishna,
popularizes the Tantric practice of prananyama, or breathing exercises.
Tantric and yogic teachings spread all over the Far East. Te Samkhya
philosophy based on Tantra is written by Kapila; this text is also called
Kapilasya Tantra.
700–300 BCE—Te Upanishads, Te Bhagavad Gita,
Mahabharata
Tese written texts, also referred to as the Fifth Veda, emerge as an
expression of the fusion between Tantric yoga, Vedic philosophy and
various historical events.
200 BCE—Patanjali
Inspired by both Tantric yoga practice and Samkhya philosophy,
Patanjali systematizes important aspects of Tantra into the eightfold
path of Asthanga Yoga, also termed Raja Yoga. Te idea that Brahma
comprises both Shiva and Shakti is now widely accepted and consum-
mated in the Ardha-Narishvara, an idol depicting half a man (Shiva)
and half a woman (Shakti).
:: saciio iiviis: rui uisroi\ oi \oca axo raxria
100 CE—Tirumular
Shiva Tantra adept from South India. Proponent of Bhakti Yoga and
the author of the famed Tirumantiram, considered one of the greatest
yogic canons of all time.
400–1200 CE—Tantra Shastras
Most of the important Tantric yoga texts were written in this period,
and thus to many scholars this was the “Tantric era” of Indian spiritu-
ality, but in reality the Tantric age started in ,ccc BCE and lasted for
thousands of years. Such texts include the Kularnava Tantra and the
Mahanirvana Tantra.
600 CE—Age of Buddhist, Hindu and Jain Tantra
Tantra Shastras are written and inﬂuence various schools of Buddhism,
Hinduism and Jainism. Shiva Tantra evolves into ﬁve branches, or
Paincha Tantra: Shaiva Tantra, Vaishnava Tantra, Shakta Tantra,
Ganapatya Tantra and Saora Tantra. Famous Buddhist Tantric yogis from
this period and onward include Naropa, Milarepa, Saraha, Prahevajra,
Je Tsong Khapa and Wanchuchuk Dorje.
800 CE—Yoga Vashista
Tis great Tantric yogi returns from China where he learned the subtle
practice of Tantra meditation. His esoteric teachings on Tantric medita-
tion and philosophy are compiled in the book, Yoga Vashista.
900 CE—Abhinava Gupta
Tis Tantric Renaissance man revives Kashmir Shaivism, lays the foun-
dation of Indian aesthetics, and writes an encyclopedia on nondualist
Tantric yoga.
1000 CE—Kularnava Tantra
Tis seventeen-chapter work contains over two thousand verses and is
considered one of the most important Tantric texts.
22 saciio noo\, saciio siiiir
1000-1200 CE—Te Nathas Develop Hatha Yoga
Te founder of this movement, Matsyendranath, was a Shaiva Tantric
whose main disciple, Gorakshanath, systematized and further advanced
the practices of Hatha Yoga.
1100 CE—Mahanirvana Tantra
Considered by some as the most important of the Hindu Tantric
scriptures, this fourteen- chapter text deﬁnes yoga in accordance with
Shiva’s teachings as the union of individual self (Jivatman) with the
Cosmic Self (Paramatman).
1271–1296 CE—Jnaneshvar
A genius Renaissance man and Tantric adept, Jnaneshvar composed the
Gitagovinda at the age of :,, an epic poem reenacting the Bhagavad
Gita. Merging the Vaishnava movement with Kashmir Shiva Tantra,
Jnaneshvar created a popular Bhakti movement in north India. Te
nineteenth-century sage Ramana Maharishi called him the “king of
saints.”
1300–1700 CE—Yogic Scriptures
During this period many important yogic scriptures based on ancient
oral teachings, such as the Agama and Nigama teachings, and dedicated
to Shiva were written by Tantric yogis. Tese include Shiva Samhita,
Hatha Yoga Pradipika, Gheranda Samhita and several Yoga Upanishads.
1500 CE—Caetanya Mahaprabhu
A Tantric adept, Caetanya is undoubtedly the most well known and
celebrated Bhakti yogi of India.
1500–2000 CE —Tantra Inﬂuences Many Spiritual
Teachers and Paths
Some well-known spiritual teachers and leaders inﬂuenced by Tantra
include Kabir, Guru Nanak, Paramahansa Ramakrishna, Mirabai, Swami
:, saciio iiviis: rui uisroi\ oi \oca axo raxria
Vivekananda, Swami Shivananda, Nityananda Avadhuta, Anandamayi
Ma, Swami Laksman Joo, Swami Ram Tirtha and Ramana Maharishi.
Tantric philosophy and practices greatly inﬂuence several schools of
Buddhism and, in general, all the movements within the Hindu yoga
tradition. Contemporary Budhiist Tantric teachers include HH Dalai
Lama, Lama Yeshe, Tulku Rgyen Rinpoche, and Jamyang Khyentse
Chokyi Lodro.
1914 CE—John Woodroﬀe
Te seminal book Te Principles of Tantra is ﬁrst published. Woodroﬀe’s
second classic on Tantra, Te Serpent Power, was published in :,:ï.
1900–2010 CE—Krishnamacarya and others
Krishnamacarya (:ïïï-:,ï,), an inﬂuential Indian Yoga teacher, healer
and scholar, modernizes the ancient Hatha Yoga system by incorporating
Western-style gymnastics. Some of his students include many inﬂuential
yoga teachers, such as B. K. S. Iyengar, K. Pattabhi Jois, Indra Devi,
and others. Tese students become the teachers of many of the most
popular yoga teachers working in the West today.
1922–1990 CE— Anandamurti
Anandamurti synthesizes the main features of Shiva’s original teachings,
incorporates Ashtanga Yoga, Hatha Yoga, unites the essence of the Five
Schools of Tantra, and develops a comprehensive system of Tantra Yoga
for the current era based on a new collection of Tantric sutras in the
book Ananda Sutram.
*Most dates are approximate.
24 saciio noo\, saciio siiiir
Before Buddha was a Buddhist, He
was a Tantric Yogi
Tui sroi\ anour Buooua’s enlightenment under the ﬁg tree in
Bodh Gaya is commonly told in books and lectures by Buddhist teach-
ers. A less familiar story, perhaps, describes his wandering ways before
he became known as Sakyamuni Buddha. Here, then, is a brief history
about yoga in context of the life and time of Buddhism’s founder.
But ﬁrst some deﬁnitions of terminology to give this article a bit of a
historical context:
Tantra: a spiritual path and practice that leads to liberation; also
called Shaivism; the yogic practices developed by the indigenous non-
Aryans of India.
Yoga: a spiritual path and practice originally based on Tantra that
blended with the Vedic tradition; this Tantric/Vedic synthesis produced
scriptures such as the Upanishads, the Bhagavad-Gita, the Yoga Sutras
and the Tantras.
Veda: a sacred tradition based on religious rituals brought to India
by the Aryans; there are four Vedic scriptures and Indian civilization
is largely a blend of the Vedic and Tantric traditions and scriptures.
Buddha and the Tantric Mystics
Alain Danielou writes in his book Shiva and the Primordial Tradition:
“Te pre-Aryan civilization, which in proto-historical times had extended
its inﬂuence as far as Western Europe, had not been annihilated by the
invaders and had to a great extent continued to exist parallel to Vedism.
Te ancient concepts of Shaivism, Tantrism, Shaktism, and Yoga, together
with the ancient Samkhya philosophy, lay beneath the surface and con-
tinued to reappear at every level and in every period.” Here, Danielou
points toward something not commonly mentioned in Western Yoga
circles: that Yoga and Tantra existed independent of the Vedic tradition
and then blended into it, just like the colors of Mayan shamanism have
blended with the religious fabric of Catholicism in Central America.
:, saciio iiviis: rui uisroi\ oi \oca axo raxria
If we use religion and mysticism as analogies, then Aryan Vedism
represent religion and Tantra Yoga represent mysticism. Two archetypes,
two icons are revealed: the priest and the yogi. Or these: the interpreter
and the mystic, the believer and the practitioner. For the sake of histori-
cal and psychological simplicity—for in reality the priest and yogi, at
least in India, are often various psychological and cultural aspects of
the same person—we will assume that the priest is a Vedic Brahmin
and the yogi a Shaiva Tantric.
So, this is what mystic and historian Alain Danielou wants us to real-
ize: Indian sacred tradition is largely made up of these two archetypes,
just like the Christian tradition is made up of priests and mystics, both
religious ﬁrebrand dogmatists such as evangelical preacher Jerry Falwell
and spiritual ecstatics such as St. Teresa of Avilla. And sometimes these
archetypes emerge as a mixture of attributes and behaviors, as in the
case of many contemporary priests and believers.
Danielou is also reminding us that yoga is much older than Patanjali
and his Yoga Sutras (:cc nci); that yoga did not originate in the Vedas
as most scholars and contemporary yogis believe—and that yoga is
inherently not a religion of belief but a set of practices, a philosophy
to live by.
Yogis, just like Christian mystics, have often been heretics who cul-
tivated their wisdom in silence in forest ashrams and mountain caves.
Teir untamed culture was gradually absorbed by mainstream Vedic
society over a period of thousands of years. Te young Buddha was
often seen wandering among these yogi outcasts.
Buddha, Tantra and the Vedic Priesthood
Georg Feuerstein writes in his book Tantra: Te Path of Ecstasy: “Every
educated Hindu has looked upon Tantra as running parallel and in
close interaction with (rather than merely in opposition to) the Vedic
heritage. Tey distinguish between Vedic and Tantric—vaidika and
tantrika—currents of Hindu spirituality.”
Anandamurti echoed this thinking in his seminal essay Tantra and
Indo-Aryan Civilization when he wrote: “After the Vedic Aryans came
into India, two types of practice used to take place side by side: on the
one side, the sacriﬁcial ﬁres of the rishis…and on the other side, the
non-Aryans’ Tantra sadhana, the practice of self-control and attainment
of divine knowledge.”
26 saciio noo\, saciio siiiir
Tese two sacred rivers of India stretch far back into historical antiq-
uity, but they have often had a rocky relationship, much more rocky
than the Western yoga community acknowledges.
Before the Buddha became the Buddha, the Enlightened One, he had
been a yogi, a mystic wanderer, a Shaiva Tantric. Moreover, together
with his friend Mahavira, later recognized as the founder of the Jain
religion, he spoke out against the excesses of the Vedic priesthood: the
animal sacriﬁces, the caste system, the opulence of the temples. And
thousands of years before that, Shiva and his followers were often in
conﬂict with the same Vedic Aryan invaders.
Te Buddha, after leaving behind his life as a prince, became a yogi
quite familiar with the various practices of Tantra: mantra meditation,
kundalini awakening, asana practice, fasting, the smearing of the body
with ashes, the begging of food from a human skull.
According to Alain Danielou, there has been a tendency in India to
view yoga and Tantra as more recent traditions, as “new developments,
except when they have been envisaged solely in relation to Vedic civiliza-
tion.” Just like the Christian priesthood eventually closed the book on
Jesus’ revolutionary revelations and encased them as the ﬁnal “word of
God” in the Bible, so has the Indian Brahmin priesthood claimed the
often heretical wisdom of yoga as their own.
Buddha and the Yogis
After Buddha, or Gautama, renounced his life as a prince, he joined various
groups of wandering yogis and Shaiva Tantrics. One of these yogis was
named Makkhali Gosala. Alain Danielou writes in his book the Play of the
Gods: “Te ﬁgure of Gosala is very important, for in presenting a diﬀer-
ent version of the old culture, until then ignored and rejected by [Vedic]
Aryan society as the superstitions of despicable slaves, he attracted those,
such as Mahavira and Gautama, who were dissatisﬁed with Vedic rigidity,
and he aroused a sudden interest in the antique pre-Aryan philosophy
[Shaiva Tantra] within the good society of the period.”
Mahavira traveled with Gosala for six years, and Buddha joined these
wandering ascetics for three or four years. In the commentary on the
Avashyaka Sutra by Jina Dasa, which gives a rather complete picture of
the life of Mahavira, we learn of the story of his travels in the company
of Gosala. Eventually, Gosala had an argument with his two young and
outspoken disciples over points of doctrine, and they separated.
:; saciio iiviis: rui uisroi\ oi \oca axo raxria
Te argument they pondered was the following: is our life predestined,
or do we have free will? Gosala argued that human beings were under
the complete control of a cosmic principle while the two young rebels,
Gautama and Mahavira, argued that, through yoga, one was no longer
under the spell of determinism. Trough yogic practice and ethical behav-
ior, they argued, one could get one leg up on one’s karma—and be free!
Gautama was not a slacker monk. He had intense spiritual ambitions.
He knew how to fast and sit in lotus position for days on end without
losing his concentration, without moving his body. Tis we learn through
his encounter with two other yogic teachers, namely Arada Kalapa of
Magadha and Rudraka Ramaputra of Vaishali.
Sage Kalapa taught the coming Buddha a yogic practice enabling him
to experience the state of no-thing-ness (akimcanya-ayatana). Indeed,
the young Buddha-in-the-making entered these trance states with ease
and Kalapa soon asked him to share the leadership with him in his order
of yogis. But the young former prince declined his oﬀer.
Buddha then joined the order of sage Rudraka Ramaputra, whose
teachings held within its nondual vision the prediction of new heights
of spiritual evolution. Trough these new practices, the young spiritual
athlete became intimately familiar with a state of “neither consciousness
nor unconsciousness” (naiva-samjna-asmajna-ayatana).
Still, the ﬁerce yogi’s thirst for enlightenment was not quenched. He
was not convinced he had attained the spiritual plateau of permanent
awakening, or enlightenment. Terefore, he picked up his begging bowl
and moved onwards.
Buddha, Tantra and Enlightenment
Lalan Prasad Singh writes in Tantra: Its Mystic and Scientiﬁc Origins:
“When Siddhartha was moving about in Bihar in search of Truth, he
met Sanjaya, a great Tantric near present Gaya, and was initiated by
him into Tantra sadhana.” Little is known about the exact practice
Buddha embarked upon, but it is commonly accepted that he ended
up meditating under a banyan (ﬁg) tree.
“According to the accepted Tantric belief and usage,” writes Lalan
Prasad Singh, “the banyan-tree is one of the ﬁve trees recognized as
Kula-trees. It is, therefore, not without any reason that Siddhartha
performed his sadhana [spiritual practice] under the famous banyan-
tree near Gaya and attained spiritual enlightenment (Buddhahood).”
28 saciio noo\, saciio siiiir
When I lived in an ashram in Nepal in the early ïcs, I was initiated
into the practice of Tantric dhyan meditation, which corresponds to the
seventh limb of the Asthanga Yoga of Patanjali. Te practice—which
culminates after performing the other three meditation lessons of this
well known eight-limbed path, namely pratyahara, pranayama, and
dharana—involves using an internal image as a point of concentration
and gateway to eventually achieve an inner state of nondual peace.
Since Tantra embraces opposites, one employs, in meditation, the
paradoxical practice of concentrating on a form, or ﬁgure—such as a
deity, or a geometric yantra—to reach the formless. Te energy of the
opposite is used to go beyond both energy and polarity to reach a state
of peaceful union. In Buddhist Tantra, for example, this meditation is
often referred to as the practice of thing-ness to reach no-thing-ness.
Similarly, in Bhakti Yoga, one may use desire and longing to go beyond
attachement and reach a state of no-desire and no-longing.
Some years later, I picked up a copy of Andrew Harvey’s excellent
travel book Journey to Ladakh in which he describes in detail a Buddhist
Tantric practice that is stunningly similar to my own. Tese practices
are nearly as old as the Himalayan hills; they are generally not taught
by Vedic priests; they are taught in secret, and they are generally not
described in books, or sutras, not even in the Yoga Sutras. With some
variation, however, they are taught in Buddhist Tantric circles. Indeed,
the Buddha himself must have practiced and taught similar techniques
to his disciples.
According to Lalan Prasad Singh, “some scholars think that Nagarjuna,
the founder of the Madhyamika school [of Buddhism], is the real expo-
nent of Buddhist esotericism. [In] our view it is the Buddha himself
who is the founder of Tantrism in Buddhism.”
In other words, when looking at a Buddha statue, we see the outer
form of the inner yoga, the inner Tantra of enlightenment. For Buddha
was a yogi both before and after he became the Buddha.
:, saciio iiviis: rui uisroi\ oi \oca axo raxria
How Old Is Your Yoga Practice?
Maix Sixciirox’s Yoca Boo\ is a well written and thoroughly
researched book on how modern Hatha Yoga, or “posture practice,” as
he terms it, has developed and changed within and after the practice left
India about one hundred years ago. In other words, it’s a near perfect
book about the practice and history of modern yoga.
Te book is mainly about how yoga’s modern proponents—T.
Krishnamacarya and his students K. Pattabhi Jois and B. K. S. Iyengar—
mixed their homegrown Hatha Yoga practices with European gymnastics.
Rather than remaining in the caves of the Himalayas these yogis lived
in the city and embraced the oncoming European cultural trends. Tey
especially embraced its more “esoteric forms of gymnastics,” including
the inﬂuential Swedish techniques of Ling (:;oo-:ï,,).
Singleton uses the word yoga as a homonym to explain the main goal
of his thesis. He emphasizes that the word yoga has multiple meanings,
depending on who uses the term.
Tis emphasis is in itself a worthy enterprise for students of every-
thing yoga; to comprehend and accept that your yoga may not be the
same kind of yoga as my yoga. Simply, that there are many paths of
yoga. In that regard, this is by far the most comprehensive study of the
culture and history of the inﬂuential yoga lineage that runs from T.
Krishnamacarya’s humid and hot palace studio in Mysore to Bikram’s
artiﬁcially heated studios in Los Angeles.
Singleton’s study on “postural yoga” makes up the bulk of the book.
He also devotes some pages to outline the history of “traditional” yoga;
from Patanjali to the Shaiva Tantrics who compiled the Hatha Yoga
tradition in the Middle Ages and penned the famous yoga text books,
the Hatha Yoga Pradipika and the Geranda Samhita.
It is while doing these examinations that Singleton gets into water
much hotter than a Bikram sweat. Tus, I hesitate in giving Singleton
a straight A for his otherwise excellent dissertation. He claims his
project is solely the study of modern posture yoga. If he had stuck to
that project alone, his book would have been mostly great and received
accolades. But unfortunately, he commits the same blunder so many
30 saciio noo\, saciio siiiir
modern yogis do. All homonyms are equally good and valid, these
contemporary yogis claim, except that homonym, which these cultural
relativist yogis perceive as an arrogant version of yoga, namely tradi-
tional yoga. Te traditional yogis, they claim, think that their practice
is a deeper, more spiritual, and authentic form of yoga. Modern yogis
like Singleton, on the other hand, claim that such ranking is unfair: all
yoga is equally good, they argue. No yoga is better or more advanced
than any other type of yoga.
Tis kind of ranking is counterproductive and a waste of time,
maintains Singleton. In other words, the only ranking allowed is no-
ranking. Te only judgment allowed is no-judgment. But in all their
feverish no-judgment, they seem to forget that their no-ranking is also
a form of judgment. Indeed, their position is rather contradictory: the
only people allowed to judge are those who claim they do not judge!
Georg Feuerstein can easily see past such superﬁcial contradictions.
Undoubtedly one of the most proliﬁc and well-respected yoga scholars
outside India today, he is one of those traditionalists who hold yoga
to be an integral practice—a body, mind, spirit exercise. So how does
Feuerstein’s integral yoga homonym diﬀer from the non-integral modern
posture yoga homonym presented to us by Singleton?
Simply put, Feuerstein’s insightful writings on yoga have focused
on the holistic practice of yoga, on the whole shebang of practices that
traditional yoga developed over the past ﬁve thousand-plus years: asanas
(postures), pranayama (breathing exercises), chakras (subtle energy
centers), kundalini (spiritual energy), bandhas (advanced body locks),
mantras, mudras (hand gestures), etc.
While posture yoga primarily focuses on the physical body, on doing
postures, integral yoga includes both the physical and the subtle body
and involves a whole plethora of physical, mental and spiritual practices
hardly ever practiced in any of today’s modern yoga studios.
Singleton mentions all this in his book’s “Concluding Reﬂections.”
In other words, it is strategically important for Singleton to criticize
Feuerstein’s interpretation of yoga, a form of yoga which is pretty
similar to my own, in order to contrast it with his own philosophy
of yoga.
Singleton writes: “For some, such as best-selling yoga scholar Georg
Feuerstein, the modern fascination with postural yoga can only be a
perversion of the authentic yoga of tradition.” Ten Singleton quotes
Feuerstein, who writes that when yoga reached Western shores it “was
,: saciio iiviis: rui uisroi\ oi \oca axo raxria
gradually stripped of its spiritual orientation and remodeled into ﬁt-
ness training.”
Singleton then correctly points out that yoga as ﬁtness training had
already started in India. He also correctly points out that ﬁtness yoga
is not opposed to any “spiritual” enterprise of yoga. But that is not
exactly Feuerstein’s point. Feuerstein simply points out how the physi-
cal exercise part of modern yoga lacks the deep “spiritual orientation”
found in traditional yoga. And that is a crucial diﬀerence.
Ten Singleton exclaims that Feuerstein’s assertions miss the “deeply
spiritual orientation of some modern bodybuilding and women’s ﬁtness
training in the harmonial gymnastics tradition.”
While I am quite clear about what Feuerstein means by “deeply spiri-
tual,” I am still not sure what Singleton means by it from just reading
Yoga Body. And that makes an intelligent comparison diﬃcult. Hence,
why did Singleton bring this up in his concluding arguments in a book
devoted to physical postures? Surely to make a point, and since he did,
it seems imperative for me, a so-called traditional yogi, to respond.
According to Feuerstein, the goal of yoga is enlightenment (sama-
dhi), not physical ﬁtness, not even spiritual physical ﬁtness; not a
better, slimmer physique, but a better chance at spiritual liberation.
For him, yoga is primarily a spiritual practice involving deep postures,
deep study and deep meditation. Even though postures are an inte-
gral part of traditional yoga, enlightenment is possible even without
the practice of posture yoga, a fact indisputably proven by such sages
as Anandamayi Ma, Ramana Maharishi, Ramakrishna, Nisargadatta
Maharaj, and many others.
Te broader question about the goal of yoga, from the point of view
of traditional yoga is this: is it possible to attain enlightenment through
the practice of ﬁtness yoga alone? Te answer: Not very easy. Not even
likely. Not even by practicing the kind of ﬁtness yoga Singleton claims
is “spiritual.”
According to integral yoga, the body is the ﬁrst and outer layer of
the mind. Enlightenment, however, takes place in and beyond the ﬁfth
and innermost layer of the mind, not in the physical body. Hence, from
this particular perspective of yoga, ﬁtness yoga has certain limits, simply
because it cannot alone deliver the desired results, namely spiritual
liberation. To attain liberation, the goal of traditional yoga, we need to
practice not only the yoga of the body, but also the yoga of the mind, as
well as the yoga of the spirit. We need to meditate. Interestingly, Iyengar,
32 saciio noo\, saciio siiiir
one of posture yoga’s main teachers, said recently that he wished he had
started meditation practice much earlier in life. Now in his nineties,
Iyengar did not start meditating before he was more than sixty years old.
Similarly, Feuerstein and all of us so-called traditionalists are simply
saying that if your goal is spiritual enlightenment, then ﬁtness yoga
probably won’t do the trick. You can stand on your head and do power
yoga from dawn to midnight, but you probably won’t be much more
enlightened by it.
Hence, the yogis of old designed sitting yoga postures (padmasana,
siddhasana, viirasana, etc.) for such particular purposes as enlightenment
practice, or meditation. Indeed, they spent more time sitting still in
meditation than moving about doing postures, since it was the intense
sitting practices that induced the desired trance states of enlightenment,
or samadhi.
Many famous Indian yogis have proven it is possible to be enlight-
ened without intensely practicing the various Hatha Yoga postures.
On the other hand, enlightenment will not easily be achieved by just
practicing these postures, however, no matter how “spiritual” Singleton
claims they are. Tese are the kinds of layered insights and perspectives
missing in Yoga Body. Hence, his criticism of Feuerstein at the very end
of his book seems rather shallow and kneejerk.
Singleton’s sole focus on describing the physical practice and his-
tory of modern yoga is comprehensive, probably quite accurate, and
rather impressive, but his insistence that there are “deeply spiritual”
aspects of modern gymnastics and posture yoga misses an important
point about yoga. Namely, that our bodies are only as spiritual as we
are. Spirituality, claims traditional yoga, comes not from the body
but from that soulful space in our hearts and minds, deep within and
beyond the body.
Yoga Body thus misses a crucial point many of us have the need and
right to express: yoga is not just a physical practice; yoga is a holistic
practice in which the physical body is seen as the ﬁrst layer of a series
of ascending and all-embracing layers of being—from body to mind to
spirit. And ultimately, the body itself is the dwelling place of the Spirit.
Indeed, the body is the sacred temple of the Spirit.
And where does this yoga perspective hail from? According to
Feuerstein, “It underlies the entire Tantric tradition, notably the
schools of Hatha Yoga, which are an oﬀshoot of Tantrism.” In Tantra,
it is indeed clearly understood that the human being is a three-tiered
,, saciio iiviis: rui uisroi\ oi \oca axo raxria
being—physical, mental and spiritual. Hence, the Tantrics very skillfully
and carefully developed practices for all three levels of being.
From this ancient perspective, it is very gratifying to see how the more
spiritual, all-embracing Tantric and yogic practices such as posture yoga,
mantra meditation, breathing exercises, kirtan, and scriptural study are
increasingly becoming integral features of many modern yoga studios.
So, can we have both a limber physique and a sacred spirit while
practicing yoga? Yes, we certainly can. Te more holistic our yoga
practice becomes—that is, the more spiritual practice is added to our
posture practice, the more these two seemingly opposite poles—the
body and the spirit—will blend and unify. Unity was, after all, the
goal of ancient Tantra.
Perhaps soon someone will write a book about this new, ever-growing
homonym of global yoga? Mark Singleton’s Yoga Body is not such a book.
But a book about this, shall we call it, neo-traditional, or holistic form
of yoga is a vitally important cultural exploration.
34 saciio noo\, saciio siiiir
Dispelling a Myth About Women
and Yoga
Soxi coxrixioiai\ \oca niocciis in America believe that
women were not allowed to practice yoga until about ﬁfty years ago.
One reason such myths are popular here in the West, I think, is that
the mythmakers often proclaim that yoga is mainly the practice of
Hatha Yoga, mainly standing on your head doing asanas, or yoga
postures. But perhaps these modern yogis are standing with their
heads in the sand.
Western academicians claim that Hatha Yoga developed in the Middle
Ages, because that is when the Hatha Yoga Pradipika was ﬁrst published.
Tis book contains descriptions of twenty seven yoga postures, the most
essential postures for spiritual growth. Western academicians conﬁrm
that these postures were developed by Shaiva Tantrics, in particular the
Natha yogis. Tey often fail to emphasize, however, that the Shaiva
culture was already several thousand years old prior to the writing of
the Hatha Yoga Pradipika (we know this from the Puranas and other
texts not yet translated into English containing the oral history of India)
and thus we may conclude that yoga postures are likely to be thousands
of years old as well.
Tink about it this way: We know that Sequoyah developed the
Cherokee alphabet in the early :ïccs and that the ﬁrst Cherokee
literature was published in :ï:;. Does this mean that the Cherokee
language is only about two hundred years old? Does this mean that
the Cherokees did not have an oral history or spiritual ceremonies
before this time? Of course not. Tis is the kind of logic the Western
yoga academicians use when discussing the history of yoga. Te
practice of yoga did not start at the time the ﬁrst literature of yoga
was published—these practices, just like the religious practices of the
Cherokee, are thousands of years older.
Hence, they tear the Indian oral history to shreds and claim that
whatever archeological evidence exists—the Shiva seals, for example,
of a yogi in the rather complex goraksasana position, which carbon
,, saciio iiviis: rui uisroi\ oi \oca axo raxria
dating has conﬁrmed is over ﬁve thousand years old—is not conclusive
enough to conﬁrm that yoga postures existed in India three thousand
years before Christ.
If we modern yogis want to know more about the history of yoga
practice and culture, it’s important to study and include the oral history
of yoga. Just like shamanism, yoga has mostly been an oral tradition for
thousands of years. Hence, if a sophisticated asana like the goraksasana
existed thousands of years ago, it is also, as the oral tradition claims,
highly likely many other types of asanas existed as well.
Indeed, according to the oral yogic tradition, yoga is thousands of
years old, and Hatha Yoga has been practiced since the beginning,
which the carbon dated Shiva yogi seals quite conclusively conﬁrm.
More importantly, these practices were also open to women.
One of the main texts on yoga, the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, mostly
uses the word asanas to describe the position used for meditation, the
lotus, or half lotus position. Tere are no other asanas described in the
Yoga Sutras. Hence, it is convenient to claim, as most yoga academi-
cians do, that Hatha Yoga developed much later.
Te Yoga Sutras is not a how-to book on practicing yoga postures;
it’s a philosophical treatise on the eight limbs of yoga. But there are no
disclaimers in the Yoga Sutras proclaiming that women cannot perform
yoga. More importantly, yoga is not only the practice of physical pos-
tures, yoga is also the practice of meditation, the practice of chanting,
praying, studying scriptures, dancing ecstatic dances, etc.
Hence, the famous spiritual teacher Anandamayi Ma (,c April :ï,o
- :; August :,ï:) would certainly qualify as a yogi, or more properly
stated, a yogini. During her inﬂuential life, she attracted thousands of
followers who saw her as an embodiment of the Goddess and a true
practitioner of yoga.
Another reason this myth about women and yoga has come about
has rather dark origins: India, like so many other places on the planet,
is sexist and racist. Women have been treated like second-class citizens
in India for centuries. But yoga is not the cause of this sexism. Men are
the cause. Sexist, elitist, bigoted men are the cause.
Historically, India has had two great, sacred inﬂuences: the Vedic
and the Tantric. And it is the latter stream of sacredness that supplied
the esoteric and physical technology of yoga. Not the Vedic stream.
While the Vedic tradition has had a dismal track record in relation to
women, Tantra has done a much better job. Just consider this quote
36 saciio noo\, saciio siiiir
from the Yoni Tantra, written about ﬁve hundred years ago, and a classic
of Shakta (a branch of Tantra) literature:
“In Kaula every woman is thought of as a manifestation of the
Goddess. No man may raise his hand, strike or threaten a woman.
When she is naked, men must kneel and worship her as the Goddess.
She has equal rights with men on all levels.”
Troughout the history of Tantra Yoga, a tradition that most likely
grew out of shamanism, women have been held in high regard. Why? In
part, because Tantric culture has been largely matriarchal, not patriar-
chal; moreover, in Vedic culture, only men were teachers, but in Tantric
culture, both men and women were teachers.
While there is plenty of evidence of suppression of women in India,
and also evidence of women not being able to read or study the scrip-
tures, dance, practice yoga, etc., there is little evidence within traditional
yogic or Tantric culture to support the myth that women have not been
allowed to practice yoga until recently.
True, women have not been allowed to be Vedic priestesses in India.
No one can argue against that. But women have been allowed to be
yoginis for thousands of years. Te way out for women in Vedic society
was that they were allowed to be swamis, ochre clad holy women, or
yoginis. Tat tradition has been alive and well in India for thousands
of years and it represents a fusion of Tantra and Veda.
More importantly, within non-Vedic culture, where Tantra was
widely practiced, women have always been allowed to teach and practice.
Indeed, in Tantric yoga, women have been gurus, healers, yoginis, and
Goddesses since the beginning of time.
Women have always been allowed to practice yoga in India, at least
within the traditional culture of India where Tantra has been inﬂuen-
tial—in Bengal, Kashmir, and parts of South India. It is, unfortunately,
true, however, that India has long been suﬀering from the inﬂuence of
many Vedic dogmas. Tese dogmas have also inﬂuenced the practice
of yoga. Moreover, all of the famous Hatha Yoga teachers coming out
of India in recent years have been men.
But it is not true that women were only allowed to practice yoga until
recently. Women have been practicing and contributing to the yoga tra-
dition for thousands of years, as students, teachers, scholars and gurus.
In fact, it is estimated that about one million of the approximately ten
million sadhus of India, the traditional ascetics, or yogis, are women.
Te Bauls of Bengal are ecstatic singers, dancers and meditators who
,; saciio iiviis: rui uisroi\ oi \oca axo raxria
have wandered all over India since the Middle Ages. Many of the Baul
ecstatics are women, and some of the well-known female yoginis and
gurus, including the well-known teachers Anandamayi Ma, Arcanapuri
Ma, and Laksmi Ma, were inspired by the Bauls.
Te number of female yoga adepts may have been considerably higher
in India’s past, however, when Tantra was more commonplace. Acclaimed
yoga scholar Georg Feuerstein writes in his book Te Yoga Tradition:
“Allama Praphudeva [a Tantric yogi from the Natha tradition] was
a contemporary of Basava (:::c-::oï ci) and the head of an order that
included three hundred realized practitioners, sixty of whom are said
to have been women.”
If we consider a yogini to be someone only practicing yoga postures,
there are few prominent yoginis in Indian culture, primarily because
Hatha Yoga is just one of many branches on the large tree of yoga.
However, if we by the word yogini also refer to all the mystics who
meditate, sing devotional songs, practice solitude, fasting, and other
spiritual austerities, then there have been millions of such yogini prac-
titioners and gurus throughout the ages.
Ironically, in America, more than eighty percent of those practicing
Hatha Yoga today are women. If we include all the Buddhist, Zen and
Hindu meditators as yogis, as well as all other mystics, which we should,
then the number of men will of course increase. But since this essay
is about women, here is a short list of a few great women yoginis from
India to dispel the myth that women were only allowed to be yoginis
before quite recently:
Anandamayi Ma, renowned yogini and guru inspired by the Baul
Tantric tradition in Bengal (nineteenth century)
Mirabai—celebrated poet, singer, and renowned Bhakti Yogi (ca.
fourteenth century)
Sarada Devi—Bengali yogini and spiritual head of the Ramakrishna
Mission after her husband Ramakrishna’s death (nineteenth century)
Kaoshitaki—Yogini, great scholar and wife of the celebrated yogi
Maharishi Agastya, from South India (ca. early Middle Ages)
Karkati Rakshasi—Ayurvedic doctor and one of India’s ﬁrst yogini
surgeons, apprentice of Shiva (the King of Yoga (ca. ,ccc nci) (surgery
was part of ancient Tantric Ayurvedic medicine but not practiced in
areas were Vedic dogmas were dominant, due to caste prejudices)
Part Two
Tantra: The Path of Love and
Ecstasy
The Yoga of Tantric Love: Seven
Reasons Why it’s Not Just About
Sex
Ox soxi \ocic axo spiritual paths, the attitude to life is via negativa;
the world is seen as a cause for suﬀering and therefore gives us a sense of
false identity when we are attached to it. Te yogi’s task then becomes
to disengage, to become free from suﬀering or from attachment, to
become a witness to it all. But that is not the attitude of Tantra. In
Tantra, we actually want to get engaged and tangled up in the world
with our spirit still shining.
Te attitude of Tantra is that even our suﬀering, our attachment,
is our yoga, our spirituality. In Tantra, all problems are potential
friends, allies, a support system for deeper understanding, deeper
love.
Te key to being a Tantric yogi or yogini is to embrace duality and
then go deep into it and then beyond it. Why? Because duality is just
another expression of nonduality. In other words, there is, according
to Tantra, Spirit, God, Awareness, and Consciousness in everything.
Even in suﬀering. Even in pleasure.
Tis knowledge, this wisdom, is called madhuvidya, or honey knowl-
edge, the idea that the bees of Sprit can potentially turn everything we
do and feel, even failure, into nectar.
Here, are seven unique ways of Tantric spirituality:
:. Tantra embraces the idea that attraction is the law of the universe.
And then, like a tai chi master, Tantra moves with the energy of
attraction toward freedom from attachment, from suﬀering. We are
attracted to inspiring art, romantic sex, beautiful music and poetry;
we are attracted to the Divine.
When we are attracted to the Divine, it is called prema, or spiritual
love. When we are attracted to money, land, fame, sex, it is called kama,
42 saciio noo\, saciio siiiir
or desire. In Tantra, the yogi is advised to turn kama into prema—to
see everything as sacred, as Divine.
For those pure in mind, everything is pure.
--Georg Feuerstein, from Tantra: Te Path of Ecstasy
Bees are attracted to pollen, some lilies have a romantic relationship with
the moon, and mystical poets, such as Rumi and Mirabai, are insanely
attracted to the Divine. For in Bhakti Yoga, the yoga of Divine Love,
we express our spirituality through longing and love for God. Bhakti
yogis see emotions—even anger, even loneliness—as great vehicles to
enhance spiritual devotion. Trough spiritual longing, we open our
hearts for greater vulnerability and union, greater ecstatic bliss and
communion with the Divine. Tat is, if we really and truly long for
sacred communion.
In truth there is neither purity nor impurity. Terefore, he who
is free from such notions is happy.
--Vijana Bairava Tantra
Tantra is often called the path of ecstasy. Like all spiritual paths, Tantra
is not a dogma, not a religion, nor a belief system—even though it is
classiﬁed as a religion by many scholars and believers. Even though
many writers refer to Tantra as either Hindu Tantra or Buddhist Tantra,
this path is, in its inner essence, a spiritual practice, a way of life and a
philosophy that expresses the perennial essence of our human quest for
spiritual realization. It is, like your posture yoga practice, just what it is
in the moment. It simply is a state of being, a lifestyle, and a worldview.
:. Tantra sees everything as sacred.
Everything is God or Goddess. Te consciousness within everything,
the latent intelligence in the universe is God, or Shiva. Te latent energy,
the creative force of the universe is Goddess, or Shakti. Together, in
cosmic union, these alchemical lovers unite as Brahma, the ultimate
Cosmic Consciousness beyond name, form, attachment.
Abhinava Gupta wrote in his text Te Tantra Loka: “Jagadananda, or
world bliss, is the understanding that the realization of the Self includes
everything, within and without.” So, in Tantra, everything is Brahma.
Everything is sacred. Everything we experience is an opportunity to
practice yoga. Tat is, yoga is not just a practice on a mat a few times
¡, raxria: rui iaru oi iovi axo icsras\
a week; yoga is something we can practice with each breath, thought,
and action. Yoga is a state of mind, a way of being.
Tantra represents our universal quest for truth. Tantra thus embraces
and reaches beyond both the worlds of science and religion. Based on
a spiritual worldview and yogic practices, the Tantric lifestyle helps us
to invoke the sacred in everyday life.
,. Tantric love is a form of Bhakti Yoga.
Tantra cannot be divorced from the inner essence of its own spiri-
tual heart, from the experience of Bhakti, or the expression of spiritual
love. American poet Robert Bly aptly describes Bhakti Yoga as the path
where “the bee of the heart stays deep inside the ﬂower, and cares for
no other thing.”
One early morning a few years ago, while waiting for Robert Bly to
get ready so I could drive him to the airport after a poetry reading and
a workshop I had organized for him, he asked me: “Do you know what
this country needs?” And without letting me get much time to suggest
an answer, he simply said, “Praise!”
Tis event took place at around , AM, but the popular poet was
wide awake and alive and started reciting from memory various sacred
poems satiated with the ﬁerce sweetness of Bhakti, including these
lines by Kabir, from his popular book Kabir: Ecstatic Poems: “When
the Guest is being searched for,/ it is the intensity of the longing for
the Guest that/ does all the work./ Look at me, and you will see a slave
of that intensity.”
Tis focus on passionate love is integral to Tantra. As a spiritual
practice, Bhakti Yoga turns desire and attachment, the very antith-
esis of spiritual liberation, into an alchemical fuel for love and the
emancipation of Spirit by worshiping all as God. Tus, the bee of
the heart goes so deep into what it loves that it transforms into love
itself. To become that love is the goal of the love-intoxicated path
of Tantra.
Tantric love is thus about creating spiritual oneness and union. Tantra
is about feeling connected to and awed by the spiritual essence of the
universe. And what is this essence? It has many names: God, Spirit,
Godhood, Tao, Allah, or simply the One.
Kevala Bhakti is considered the deepest form of Bhakti Yoga. Te
devotee simply loves the Divine without asking anything in return.
Kevala means only, so the devotee loves for the sake of love, only love.
44 saciio noo\, saciio siiiir
Kevala Bhakti is not attained by baths, exercises, or eﬀorts.
—Anandamurti, from Subhasita Samgraha
Tat is, Kevala Bhakti is revealed in the heart when the alchemy of
longing has been exhausted and turns into pure love, pure being.
¡. Tantra is cosmic union. Tantra is worldly union.
In Tantra, the essence of the universe is called Brahma, or Cosmic
Consciousness. And, as mentioned above, this Brahma is composed
of Shiva and Shakti, the dual expressions of Brahma. How? Just like
light and heat are inseparably one with ﬁre, yet they are also the dual
expressions of ﬁre.
Shiva is Brahma as pure Cosmic Consciousness, and Shakti is Brahma
as Cosmic Creative Energy. Tat is, Shiva is the consciousness and
intelligence inherent in all of creation and Shakti is the force of nature
that created you and me.
Shiva and Shakti, like a wave and a particle in quantum physics, are never
separate. Tey are always together, always one. Tey are simply two diﬀer-
ent expressions of the same universal Brahma. Remembering these primal
aspects of the world, we open up to see and experience oneness in duality
everywhere. We open up to feelings of spiritual connectedness and love.
Te primal, evolutionary force of Shakti—which is both real and
symbolic—is that which inspires us toward illumination and wisdom.
Yet the same force has the capacity to blind us, to drive us away from
truth and self-realization. Hence, Tantra is worldly union when we truly
experience the world as spirit, as sacred.
Te real knowledge issues from the mystic uniﬁcation of Shiva
and Shakti. It is the cause of liberation.
-—Tantraloka

,. Tantra is not about indulgence, not about more sex, more money,
or more vitality.
Tantra can lead us into thinking that, if all is sacred, then more of
everything is better. More sex. More money. In actuality, Tantra warns
us that everything in this world can be a trap, and can lead to pain.
Tat’s because the duality of wisdom and ignorance, Vidya and Avidya
Shakti, exists at the very root of creation and life itself. Tus, no matter
at which stage we are on the spiritual path, there is always the possibility
of making mistakes, of being a failure.
¡, raxria: rui iaru oi iovi axo icsras\
So, Tantra is about being aware, being connected to the Divine when
you live your life, when you are making love and money. But that takes
practice. Tat takes discipline. So Tantra is not about indulgence; Tantra
is about deep practice, deep meditation, and deep love while engaging
with the world.
Hence, there is always a need for spiritual vigilance, always a need
to personify a deep, spiritual ethic, and always a need to transcend our
own limitations and ignorance. Duality and nonduality can thus walk
down the road of life, hand in hand.

Tose who let the body decay, destroy the spirit;
And they won’t attain the powerful knowledge of truth.
Having learned the skill of fostering the body,
I fostered the body, and I nurtured the soul.
Te Perfect One has entered the temple of the body.
—Tirumular (seventh-century Tantric sage)
o. Tantra is the path of sacred love and (sometimes) the path of sacred sex.
Te path of Tantra is about experiencing spiritual bliss, to soak
the human heart with divine Spirit. Tus, it is often said in the yogic
scriptures that Bhakti Yoga, the path of ecstatic love, is the best and
safest path.
Tis Yoga of Love is beautifully exempliﬁed in the life and poetry of
Rumi, who said, “Te taste of milk and honey is not it. Love instead
that which gave deliciousness.”
Tat’s Madhuvidya. Tat’s honey knowledge.
In other words, love that which is within and beyond all physical
forms and expressions. Love that which is within and beyond food, sex,
fame, and money. Especially when eating, having sex, attaining fame
and earning money!
“Just as the waters enter the ocean, full and of unmoving
ground, so all desires enter him who attains peace, but not
the desirer of desires.”
-—Bhagavad Gita
;. Tantra is seeing love in everything.
Tantra is the path of via positiva. Tantra is an aﬃrmative path.
Te path of embracing life’s challenges. Tere is no need to kill the
46 saciio noo\, saciio siiiir
Buddha on the path of Tantra. Just embrace him. Just love him. As the
Tantrics will say, when you cultivate love for that which gives you all
that is delicious in life, namely Brahma, you will eventually experience
love in everything. Tat is the spirit of Tantra. Tat is the alchemy of
Tantric love.
Tis, then, is the path of Tantric love—the path that leads us to
experience the unity of Shiva and Shakti in our own hearts and minds,
and, hence, to the realization that the Divine can be experienced
everywhere.
When salt dissolves, it becomes one with the ocean. When my
ego dissolved, I became one with Shiva and Shakti.
-—Jnaneshvar (Tantric sage)
Tantra is the yoga of transformation and of transmutation. Trough
the spiritual practices of posture yoga, mantra meditation, pranayama,
chanting, etc., a Tantric churns longing into love and melts separation
into togetherness. Tis form of alchemical spirituality, where even our
failures can become “honey knowledge,” is insightfully and lyrically
articulated in this poem by the Spanish poet Antonio Machado (:ï;,-
:,,,), translated by Robert Bly.
Last Night, As I Was Sleeping
Last night, as I was sleeping,
I dreamt --marvelous error!—
that a spring was breaking
out in my heart.
I said: Along which secret aqueduct,
Oh water, are you coming to me,
water of a new life
that I have never drunk?
Last night, as I was sleeping,
I dreamt -- marvelous error!—
that I had a beehive
here inside my heart.
And the golden bees
were making white combs
¡; raxria: rui iaru oi iovi axo icsras\
and sweet honey
from my old failures.
Last night, as I was sleeping,
I dreamt -- marvelous error!—
that a ﬁery sun was giving
light inside my heart.
It was ﬁery because I felt
warmth as from a hearth,
and sun because it gave light
and brought tears to my eyes.
Last night, as I slept,
I dreamt -- marvelous error!—
that it was God I had
here inside my heart.
48 saciio noo\, saciio siiiir
Tantra and Sex
Tui siiiiruai iiacrici oi Tantra, this practical path of self-real-
ization, has often been misunderstood and misrepresented. In ancient
India, for example, Tantra was often practiced at night in secret by
Vedic priests who were bound by dogma not to admit to its powerful
transformative eﬀects.
According to Georg Feuerstein, in the West, Tantra has most com-
monly been reduced to “a mere discipline of ritualized or sacred sex. In
the popular mind, Tantra has become the equivalent to sex. Nothing
could be farther from the truth!”
It is indeed inaccurate to equate the transcendental bliss achieved
in Tantric samadhi (Oneness with Consciousness)with the physical
pleasure of sex.
Te reason for this misunderstanding in the West has mainly arisen
from a lopsided interpretation of the so-called Five M’s. “It is so called,”
writes Feuerstein, “because the names of the ﬁve ‘ingredients’ or ‘sub-
stances’ (draya) in the ritual all start with the letter M: Madya (wine
or liquor), Matsya (ﬁsh), Mamsa (meat), Mudra (parched grain) and
Maithuna (sexual intercourse).
Tese Five Ms are also referred to as the ‘ﬁve principles’ (panca
tattva). Feuerstein describes how the ﬁrst four ingredients of these so-
called “left-hand path” practices of Tantraare “all thought to have an
aphrodisiacal eﬀect,” although “scholars have speculated a great deal”
about the fourth ingredient.
“Te ﬁnal ritual ‘ingredient,’ Maithuna,” he writes, “epitomizes the
entire Tantric program… Te sexual union between male and female
practitioner… the utterly blissful transcendental identity of Shiva and
Shakti, God and Goddess.”
But that does not mean, as the mythmakers will want us to believe,
that sex epitomizes the entire Tantric program!
In actuality, the spirit of Tantra implies that ordinary activities and
enjoyments such as eating, playing, writing, and sex are seen as relative
expressions of the Absolute. Tey are thus imbued with sacredness and
spirituality.
¡, raxria: rui iaru oi iovi axo icsras\
However, this does not mean that eating large amounts of certain
kinds of food or having excessive sexual activity will automatically
intensify one’s spiritual vision. Tantra sees nothing wrong with seek-
ing pleasure, as this indeed is the underlying reason for our quest for
the ultimate spiritual pleasure, or ananda (bliss). But these mundane
pleasures, according to Tantra, are minor and temporary replicas
of the ultimate spiritual union with Brahma. Moreover, practiced
in excess, they tend to turn us into compulsive slaves rather than
liberated souls.
We humans desire and deserve endless pleasure, but pleasure derived
solely from the senses, from material things, are limited. Why? First,
the source of pleasure, the physical world, is limited. You may only
have so much money or so much sex; it’s not in endless, inﬁnite supply.
Hence, these ﬁnite things cannot satisfy our inﬁnite desires, nor our
desire for inﬁnite peace.
Secondly, the mind derives pleasure from objects as long as that
object satisﬁes our karma (or samskaras), that is, our desires are based
on unfulﬁlled fruits of our past actions. But once those past, unfulﬁlled
needs have been fulﬁlled, we look for new enjoyments.
Tirdly, our sense organs, which enjoy sensual and physical pleasures,
are themselves limited. Tey will wear out, get old, used up. What used
to feel or taste so good will after a few dozen or a thousand repetitions,
feel somewhat lackluster and boring.
We humans continually look for new stimuli, for new ways to get
satisfaction. But if you do your yoga right, sooner or later you will realize
that nothing in this physical world can give inﬁnite pleasure forever.
Tus, the common misconception in Western New Age circles, that
sexual Tantra is some kind of pathway toward salvation, is contrary to
the inner essence of this ancient and sublime practice. Because true,
lasting pleasure comes, according to Tantra, not from physical objects
and attachments, but from within.
Te left-hand path as described by Feuerstein above was originally
prescribed by Shiva as a path of moderation, not excess, as is often the
case at seminars promoting what Feuerstein calls Neo-Tantrism and
others humorously refer to as California Tantra.
Te main idea behind the practice of the left-hand path is to practice
spirituality (sadhana) while in the midst of enjoyments. It was both
prescribed as a means of reducing one’s intake of wine and meat and,
at the same time, to harbor divine feelings while relishing their delights,
50 saciio noo\, saciio siiiir
and ultimately to rise above the transient nature of these earthly plea-
sures all together.
For the spiritually inclined yogis, those who want more than material
wealth and a great looking body, the Five M’s have a diﬀerent, more
subtle meaning. As Feuerstein writes, “In the right-hand schools [the
Five M’s] are understood symbolically and are completely internalized.”
Here is a brief overview–based on ancient Tantric aphorisms–of how
to interpret the Five Ms when they are internalized:
Madhya (wine)–to enjoy the sudha or somadhara, which, while in
deep meditation, is a hormonal secretion from the pineal gland. A
second meaning is that it refers to the spiritual aspirant’s ecstatic or
intoxicated love of God.
Mamsa (meat)–one who has control over his or her speech, or one
who surrenders all actions–good, bad, sinful, righteous, or wicked–to
God, is said to be a practitioner of mamsa yoga.
Matsya (ﬁsh)–refers to the subtle science of pranayama (breathing
exercises), and also to the feeling of deep compassion arising in a spiri-
tual person’s heart.
Mudra (grain)–avoidance of bad company, as bad company leads to
bondage and good company leads to liberation.
Maethuna (intercourse)–the purpose of maithuna yoga is to raise
the Shakti (divine energy, also called kundalini), located at the lowest
vertebra of the spine, and unite it with Shiva in the spiritual energy
center at the top of the head, near the pineal gland.
It is thus more exact to describe Tantra as a comprehensive spiritual
science, which is what the word tantra itself implies. Te etymological
meaning of tantra is as follows: tan means to expand and tra means
to liberate.
Tus Tantra is the spiritual science that liberates the spiritual prac-
titioner or yogi from limitations, from the mind trapped in delusions,
be they physical, mental or spiritual.
Tantra is thus a path, not about sexual indulgence, but a path that
personiﬁes the very essence of yogic nondualism, of seeking the ultimate
and inﬁnite pleasure: oneness, or union with the Divine.
Not only will this yoga make us free. It really is free!
Anyone, says Tantra, with a human body and a human mind can
transcend ordinary existence and realize life’s ultimate moment of plea-
sure, the cosmic eﬀulgence of God, Spirit or Brahma. Here and now.
In this body, on this very earth. Not in heaven, not tomorrow. Now!
,: raxria: rui iaru oi iovi axo icsras\
Yoga for Lovers
Tui icsraric ioiri\ oi Mirabai and Kabir has been sung in India
since the Middle Ages. Even long before their contemporaries, St.
Teresa in Europe and Rumi in the Middle East, mystic lovers have
known that their divine aﬀair with the Beloved comes and goes. Still,
they keep loving the Divine, even when no one seems to be listening.
Because, to paraphrase Rumi: the longing for the Beloved is in itself
God’s response. Tere is no need for any other sign from God than that.
And eventually, for some of the most saintly of yogis and mystic lovers,
enlightenment becomes a steady inner blossom: small love ﬁnally sees
through the eﬀulgent eyes of Big Love. Lover and Beloved become One.
Once, while living on the banks of the Bagmati River in Nepal, I
was walking down to the river to take my daily bath. After crossing
one sand dune after another, I suddenly saw a ﬂock of a hundred swans
in the distant sands. When I got closer, however, I realized the swans
were people dressed in white. Sitting cross-legged, these hundred or so
wandering ascetics were reciting the poetry of Kabir.
After ﬁnishing my bath and my meditation on the river banks, I
started to walk back to the small ashram where I was living. Te swans
of Kabir, these lovers of spiritual poetry had mysteriously lifted and
moved away, the foot prints of their limber legs still visible in the sands.
Kabir says to all breathing, loving yogis:
When you really look for me, you will see me
instantly—
You will ﬁnd me in the tiniest house of time.
Kabir says: Student, tell me, what is God?
He is the breath inside the breath.
And, to those who think their aching heart has only lived and loved once:
If you make love with the divine now, in the next life
you will have the face of satisﬁed desire.
Kabir says: When the Guest is being searched for,
52 saciio noo\, saciio siiiir
It is the intensity of the longing for the Guest that
does all the work.
Look at me, and you will see a slave of that intensity.
In other words, if you feel you have done these practices, sung these
songs of devotion in some other life time; it’s because you have. And if
meditation comes really easy to you, and you can’t seem to wipe that
satisﬁed glow oﬀ your face; it’s because you have lived it again and again.
American poet Jane Hirshﬁeld writes of the mystic, female yogi and
poet Mirabai:
She…oﬀers two central teachings of liberation, each grounded
in her ﬁerce and unwavering passion. One is the consummate
freedom passion calls up in us, and the other is the surrender
of self that passion’s fulﬁllment requires. In these two ways,
Mira demonstrates over and over, that the lover meets fully
and intimately the energies of awakening. And through read-
ing her poems, we begin to discover that these two teachings
are not separate.
Mystic yogis like Mirabai knows that owning the latest yoga water
bottle, burning incense for statues of Krishna and Buddha, and eating
nothing but organic vegetables from Whole Foods, can’t possibly buy
us enlightenment. Forget it, she says, only the deep passions of Bhakti
Yoga can bring us closer to our Beloved’s arms.
Mirabai sings:
If we could reach him by munching lettuce and dry
leaves
Ten the goats would surely get the Holy One
Before us!
If stone statues could bring us all the way,
I would have adored a granite mountain years ago.
Mirabai says: Te heat of midnight tears will bring you
to God!
Listen, my friend, this road is the heart opening….
She is not saying we should leave our organic vegetables behind, of
course. She is simply reminding us that the yogi worship of the inner
,, raxria: rui iaru oi iovi axo icsras\
Beloved is ﬁerce and non-compromising. Mirabai gave up a comfort-
able life and a husband and became a dancing wanderer. Kabir gave up
religious security and dogmas and gave us iconoclastic teachings that
speak to the hearts of mystics from all traditions.
Are we ready for this kind of wild abandon, or are we too timidly
attached to our Prius’ and our cappuccinos? Can we only stomach the
self-help love handed to us by Oprah or Dr. Phil?
Robert Bly writes: “Kabir mocks passivity toward holy texts, toward
popular gurus, and the passive practice of Yoga, but we must understand
that he himself is ﬁrmly in the guru tradition and that he followed an
intricate path, with ﬁerce meditative practices….”
In other words, this kind of passionate love for Spirit is not found
on the cover of Yoga Journal. It is rare, even in places like San Francisco
and Santa Fe.
Kabir’s poetry also tells us that we don’t quite get it by singing kirtan
once a month in a yoga studio, or by chanting Om once a week at the
beginning and end of yoga class.
Kabir says:
Breathe in that word out of which the Whole Milky
Way has come!
Tat word is your Teacher; I heard that sound, and I am its
disciple.
How many are there alive who has taken in its
meaning?
But there’s hope. If we have known the intensity of human love,
we have also experienced the intensity of the spiritual love Kabir
speaks of.
When we want Tat, which is deep inside, as much as we desire water
when we are really thirsty, or as much as we once intensely desired our
partner’s love, then we know the kind of spiritual devotion Kabir and
Mirabai speaks of.
In Tantra, that kind of longing becomes the fuel on the ﬁre of Bhakti
Love. It becomes part of the Ishvara Pranidhana the Yoga Sutras speak
of; part of our wholehearted dedication to spiritual practice. And we
taste that everything we do can become part of the practice, can become
madhuvidya, worldly experience laced with spiritual honey.
Filled with this kind of ﬁerce Love, our heart and mind unites in the
54 saciio noo\, saciio siiiir
pranendrya, the seat of intuition in the heart chakra, where our longing
and seeing embrace in the stillness of peace.
Ten we know that the Yoga of Love still sits deep inside our heart,
like a bee inside a ﬂower.
Note: All translations of Kabir and Mirabai by Robert Bly and Jane
Hirshﬁeld.
,, raxria: rui iaru oi iovi axo icsras\
Can Orgasm Lead to
Enlightenment?
Oxi oi rui xaix diﬀerences between authentic Tantra and Western
Neo-Tantra is this: some of the followers of the latter believe orgasm
can result in enlightenment. It is true that enlightenment may include
orgasm, but the latter does not automatically cause the former.
Ten there would be a lot of enlightened sex practitioners out there.
And I mean truly enlightened, as in the case of one man named the
Buddha.
Sex is a form of bliss, no doubt. But it is a short-lived sensual bliss
that does not automatically lead to full-blown spiritual bliss. Indeed,
I have yet to read or hear of someone who has achieved permanent
enlightenment via the path of sexual practice alone.
I have read, however, that one well known Neo-Tantric teacher made
the rather preposterous claim that Buddha could not have achieved
enlightenment without ﬁrst having had sex with his wife Yasodhara.
According to Georg Feuerstein, such teachers “confuse Tantric bliss
(ananda or maha-sukha) with ordinary orgasmic pleasure.” Yes, how
can sensual pleasure and spiritual bliss be the same? Sex is sensory, yogic
bliss is extrasensory. As Nisargadatta Maharaj said in his remarkable
book I Am Tat: “Love is a state of being. Sex is energy. Love is wise.
Sex is blind.”
Tis blind force of sex can sometimes release powerful kundalini
energies, however, resulting in amazing inner ecstasies. But sex is not a
unique gateway to bliss. Music, dance, drumming, chanting, and yoga
asanas can also release these energies. In fact, Bhakti Yoga is all about
opening our heart chakra; letting ourselves dance into ecstatic trance
on waves of repetitive music and chanting.
Te term for mindfulness in Sanskrit is smrti—to recollect, to remem-
ber to be in the present moment, now and in the future. In Tantric
practice, one will also remember the nature of the breath, that the
breath is Consciousness. As Kabir said, the Divine is the breath within
the breath.
56 saciio noo\, saciio siiiir
Tus we may term Tantric meditation “meaningful mindfulness;”
the remembering not only to meditate on the breath but also remem-
bering that the breath itself is Consciousness; the Inner Witness; the
Real Self.
Tis form of meditation has the capacity to take us into a deeper state
of silence and spiritual depth than mere mindfulness. And, when remem-
bering, when having attained continuous mindfulness one attains dhruva
smrti; that is, one experiences continuous remembering. Remembering
what? Te remembering that all objects of one’s attention are sacred,
are divine, are bliss.
If you’re one of those lucky few, like the Indian sage Ramana
Maharishi, the rapture may strike when you are quite young, as it did
to him when he was innocently lying down in savasana (corpse pose)
on the ﬂoor to “experience death.” But such cosmic graces are only
showered upon the karmically endowed few. And, if we want these
ecstasies, these ﬂeeting, nondual ﬂashes of insight to become long last-
ing and ﬁnally permanent, we need to practice powerful Tantric and
yogic techniques that awaken the slumbering kundalini force at the
bottom of our spine.
After several such enlightenment experiences, sometimes in front
of a statue of Shiva, the already highly evolved Ramana Maharishi sat
in silent meditation for days and weeks, without need for food or sex.
Soon his realizations matured into a permanent state of being. Into a
permanent state of love.
Ramana was a natural sage from birth. We, on the other hand, we
need to work on our practices a little more intensely and frequently.
We need to open, strengthen, purify and balance our chakra ener-
gies through asanas, pranayama, dhyan, kirtan, etc, so that we can truly
experience and embrace the kundalini force when it actually manifests
its inner petals in blazing splendor. We certainly won’t be able to master
this esoteric science after a weekend course in Neo-Tantra.
If sex was a means to full-blown enlightenment, the great scriptures
and the sayings of the saints would include such proclamations. But,
I’m sorry to say, Neo-Tantrics, you will not ﬁnd a sutra in which the
Buddha proclaims that ejaculation equals enlightenment.
Nor will you ﬁnd any written or oral (pun intended) indication that
his enlightenment had much to do with his previous sex life.
Te genuine power and inner essence of Tantra lie in its ability to
transmute our desires. Yes, to transmute. Not to indulge, not to cling,
,; raxria: rui iaru oi iovi axo icsras\
but to alter, transform and metamorphose our desires into non-attached,
free-ﬂowing and mind-blowing bliss.
Tantra is known for its straightforward, body-embracing attitude.
Tantric teachers shoot straight from the hip. Just contemplate these
words of one of my favorite Tantric teachers, Lama Yeshe: “Tere is
no reason at all to feel guilty about pleasure; this is just as mistaken as
grasping onto passing pleasures and expecting them to give us ultimate
satisfaction,” he writes in his widely acclaimed book Introduction to
Tantra: Te Transmutation of Desire.
Lama Yeshe also points out that the Yab-Yum Tanka does not rep-
resent sexual intercourse but “the experience of total unity—of method
and wisdom, bliss and emptiness—characteristic of the fully enlightened
state.” In other words, the cosmic union of Shiva (consciousness) and
Shakti (kundalini) in Tantric practice as well as cosmology.
So to conclude our short escapade into the world of Tantric love:
sex is a passing pleasure; enlightenment is the ultimate, lasting satisfac-
tion.
58 saciio noo\, saciio siiiir
Tantric Love: Why is Krishna Blue
and Radha Golden?
Tui Taxriic ixiiaxariox ioi the symbolic colors of Radha’s
golden and Krishna’s blue bodies is that these eternal lovers represent the
creative lightning ﬂash of Shakti and the blue ocean of Shiva. Tantric
lovers representing yogic nondual union.
When we look at the ocean from afar its surface appears to be blue,
but if we cup some ocean waters in our hands, then the ocean is trans-
parent. Te same holds true if we come close to the transparent being
of Consciousness, of Shiva, of Krishna.
He appears blue from a distance, but up close, through our nondual
gaze of meditational ecstasy, the Blue Krishna becomes transparent, as
transparent as Consciousness, as Shiva himself.
Hence Krishna is the devotional aspect of Shiva, of Consciousness.
In Tantric philosophy, in yogic philosophy, the devotional Krishna is
in essence the same as Purusha, the same as Consciousness.
So, when we chant the name of Krishna during kirtan, we sing the
praises of Consciousness. Te heart-melting blue boy represents nondual
awareness, nondual Consciousness, the nondual God Shiva, nondual
Purusha. Many names, some devotional (Krishna), some Tantric (Shiva),
some philosophical (Purusha) for the same nondual aspect of reality.
Krishna’s sensuous and captivating consort Radha likewise takes part
in her divine play with her lover Krishna and represents the creative
aspect of nondual reality, that which creates the world of form. She is
Shakti, the Goddess of creation, she is Prakriti.
Together Radha and Krishna dance and merge into one single current
of nondual delight. Tey are not two; they are One.
As per Tantra, you cannot realize the Absolute Divine without danc-
ing in the world of the relative. Without dancing, moving, expressing
in the form of a human body; we cannot experience the ethereal and
divine. Tus the body too is divine.
Likewise, you cannot truly understand the traps of relativity with-
out knowing the vast radiance of the Absolute. Tus, the arms ﬂung
,, raxria: rui iaru oi iovi axo icsras\
ecstatically toward the sky and the feet ﬁrmly rooted on the earth are
one body.
Krishna’s love is focused on the sparkling eyes of Radha. And her
loving being plunges into the vast ocean of Krishna’s gaze. Tus the
Absolute Krishna is expressed through the eyes of the relative reality of
Radha. Two cosmic beings, One Cosmic Love.
Tat’s the Tantric story of the two radiant lovers—Radha and Krishna.
Hence yoga, from a Tantric perspective, is both worldly and other-
worldly, both physical and metaphysical.
60 saciio noo\, saciio siiiir
Tantra and Kundalini: Uncoiling
The Sacred Snake of Sex and
Liberation
Aii wi uuxaxs uaiowiiio for sex and liberation? According to
Tantra Yoga, yes we are!
In the book Gods of Love and Ecstasy, Alain Danielou links the spiri-
tual hearts of the Indian God Shiva with the Greek God Dionysus. In
these two divine characters of magic and transcendence, East and West
meet, both literally and symbolically.
When mystical labyrinths appeared in the earth of Crete some four
thousand years ago, Shaivism (Tantra Yoga) had already existed in India
for thousands of years. “Since its remotest origins, Shaivism has been
inseparable from Yoga,” writes Danielou. He also claims that Shaivism
as a sacred, yogic culture stretched over a vast area—from India way
into Greek and Celtic Europe.
In other words, the inner labyrinth of yoga, the kundalini, which is a
coiled up snake of creativity, sex and spiritual liberation at the bottom of
our spines, also manifests as exterior labyrinths of the earth, as symbolic
representations of the inner journey of yoga. And Danielou believes
these shamanic and yogic snakes crawled to the West from India and
can be found in caves and earth circles from the Ganges to England.
When you walk a labyrinth counterclockwise, you symbolically
unwind the cosmic coil of kundalini, you liberate yourself from the
earth cave of the muladhara chakra. And this spiritual uncoiling from
the inside is the awakening of Shakti, the kundalini, so that she can
unite with Shiva in the sahasrara, the crown chakra.
Tis whole inner enterprise of uncoiling the inner labyrinth is
what we call yoga. And it is an enterprise that’s been going on for
a few thousand years longer than the world’s oldest yoga mat, since
when people did their asanas on dirt, sand and rock, since when
people did their meditation naked in rain and frigid weather in the
Himalayas.
o: raxria: rui iaru oi iovi axo icsras\
All energy is lodged in this ﬁrst chakra, the abode of the Shakti.
Indeed, there are four fundamental vrittis, or human longings, associ-
ated with this chakra:
Dharma—psycho-spiritual longing
Artha—psychic longing
Káma—physical longing
Mokśa—spiritual longing
In other words, the ﬁrst chakra is not merely the “lowest” chakra, it is
also the seat of our spiritual longing for both liberation and dharmic
action. Indeed, our thirst for both physical and spiritual love comes
from this inner labyrinthine cave. Tus, according to Tantra, we are
hardwired for spirituality, for dharma, for bliss. We are hardwired
for lust, as well, but even as much for liberation, for spiritual union,
for yoga.
Tat’s why in India, you will see people worshiping vaginas and penises
made of stones. Te vagina, the yoni, or Shakti, is the earth labyrinth,
the energy from where everything is created. Tis coiled female energy
surrounds the male phallus, the linga, or Shiva, the self-born conscious-
ness erect and alive in all things.
As you can see, Tantric yoga was not created by puritans, but also
not by hedonists. For these yogis of old, they knew that above the ﬁrst
chakra there were numerous challenges ahead. Tese challenging vrittis,
including hatred, deceit, possessiveness, cruelty, fear, and arrogance,
and many more, are located in clusters of six, ten, twelve, sixteen and
two, around the other chakras.
As you can see, most of these vrittis are more psychologically chal-
lenging than the four primary ones located in the muladhara chakra.
But there are also positive ones, including hope, eﬀort, discernment,
and perhaps the most important of all, the love vritti located in the
heart chakra.
Furthermore, there is the human capacity for awakening spiritual
knowledge, the famous para vritti located in the ajina, or eyebrow chakra.
Te Tantric science of kundalini, chakras, and vrittis—and how these
esoteric, inner expressions are awakened, balanced and alchemically
tuned by Hatha Yoga and meditation—is complex and beyond the
scope of this short essay. But the heart of this science is reﬂected in the
labyrinth of the earth and kundalini of the body.
62 saciio noo\, saciio siiiir
In other words, the spiritual energy labyrinth inside us, the kundalini,
is reﬂected in the sacred revelation of the earth labyrinth. As inside,
so outside.
Our spiritual practice, our yoga, helps us uncoil and liberate the
kundalini labyrinth and thereby free us from its containment in the
earth chamber of the ﬁrst chakra.
o, raxria: rui iaru oi iovi axo icsras\
Fat, Naked and Enlightened: The
Crazy Yogis of Love
Tuiii’s niix xuxiious ciaz\ yogis of love and radical spirituality
throughout the history of yoga.
Te Buddhist tradition is of course well known for its crazy-wisdom
teachers. Marpa, Milarepa and Drukpa are some of the more famous of
the wild ones from the past, while Chögyam Trungpa was contemporary.
But the yoga tradition also has its own gang of crazy-wisdom adepts.
Te avadhutas, for example, are Tantric yogis known to roam around
naked, eat and drink out of human skulls, meditate and sleep in crema-
tion grounds and otherwise commit multiple acts of random wildness.
All for the glory of Shiva, the so-called King of Yoga.
Te Bhakti yogis were mad minstrels of the heart. Kabir, for example,
the most famous Bhakti poet in India, was part unorthodox Suﬁ and
part eccentric Hindu. He was a weaver known to fall oﬀ his stool into
the lap of his Beloved when reciting his poems.
Robert Bly writes in his introduction to his book Kabir: Ecstatic Poems:
“Kabir in his joyful poems delivers harsh and unorthodox opinions.
He enters controversies.”
Kabir, a radical iconoclast during the ﬁfteenth century, broke the
dogmas of both Hinduism and Islam by declaring that God was beyond
both holy scriptures and religion.
Kabir wrote about those yogis thinking it’s all about the proper
clothing, or the proper morals:
“Te Yogi comes along in his famous orange. But if inside he is col-
orless, then what? Suppose you scrub your ethical skin until it shines,
but inside there is no music. Ten what?”
And here’s what he has to say to the spiritual bookworms among us:
“Te sacred books of the East are nothing but words. I looked
through their covers one day sideways…if you have not lived through
something, it is not true.”
But while Kabir may have seemed wild and untraditional, he was
also squarely on the path of practice.
64 saciio noo\, saciio siiiir
“Kabir mocks passivity toward holy texts,” writes Bly, “toward popular
gurus, and the passive practice of yoga, but we must understand that he
himself is ﬁrmly in the guru tradition and that he followed an intricate
path, with ﬁerce meditative practices, guided by energetic visualizations
of ‘sun’ and ‘moon’ energies.”
(In this insightful prose, Bly is referring to the ida (moon) and
pingala (sun), the nadis that cross the kundalini channel along the
spine—thus forming the six chakras, the sixth being the one between
the eyebrows—until they end in each nostril.)
Te Bhakti poets would also dance and sing themselves into ecstatic
trances, especially women. Mirabai was the most celebrated of the many
spiritual courtesans of the God-man Krishna. Tey swirled, they wept,
they kicked all habits of convention. All for the glory of wildly embrac-
ing their inner Beloved.
Mirabai’s family tried to tame her wild Bhakti energies by keeping
her trapped in a loveless marriage, but to no avail.
She sang:
“Friend, listen: this love doesn’t come or go. One sip from the cup
of that sweetness, the world starts to spin. Now I’m drunk for life.
Unsoberable. Tell them it’s useless to try.”
In other words, if your friends and family is giving you trouble because
of your weird new habit of dancing with your invisible Beloved during
kirtan, just tell them this kind of madness is incurable.
One of the most celebrated of all crazy-wisdom yogis in India was the
Tantric wildman Trailanga Swami. Fat, naked and seriously enlightened,
he was a legendary spiritual ﬁgure from Bengal.
I was ﬁrst introduced to him by an avadhuta a few months before
leaving for India on what became a nearly three-year immersion into
Tantric yoga.
The avadhuta told me that Trailanga was famous for his many
occult powers. Since he was always naked, he was sometimes
arrested by the stuck-up British for indecency. One day in court,
he defecated on the floor, and then he smeared his body with his
own stool. “Take a look at my new clothes,” the silent yogi ges-
tured. Utterly disgusted, the judge shouted: “Get him out. Get
him out of my courtroom.”
Another time, he miraculously escaped prison. Standing on the prison
roof, his imposing, fat body was a testament to the ﬁerce stubbornness
of absolute freedom.
o, raxria: rui iaru oi iovi axo icsras\
Trailanga remained silent most of his life, and despite his corpulent
form, he apparently hardly ate. After practicing meditation for twenty
years, he met his guru Bhagiratnanada and soon thereafter set out on
a pilgrimage that eventually led him to Varanasi, where he lived most
of his long, colorful life.
He died in that sacred city, which is considered the winter abode of
Shiva, in :ïï;. Some biographical sources claim he was several hundred
years old.
Tis colorful yogi—whose corpulent body, although naked, might not
be a good ﬁt for the pages of Yoga Journal—is a testament to the fact that
the inner esprit of Indian yoga does not work well with commercialism.
In India, if you are a crazy-wisdom sage, nakedness and wildness is
rarely a problem. Tat kind of Puritanism was introduced by the British,
but, after Independence, it’s no longer enforced.
While in India, I met another avadhuta—not as corpulent as Trailanga,
and certainly not as old, but he nevertheless had a healthy pot belly.
He had spent most of his twenties doing meditation for up to twenty
hours a day and eventually developed many occult powers. He could
move objects, he could read people’s minds.
Finally one day, his guru called him to his room: “From today, your
powers are in my hands,” the guru said. “You are not able to handle
them properly.”
Te avadhuta told me that this was the best day of his life. Having
realized his mistakes and thus unburdened by the ego’s spell of psychic
powers, he could now focus on his original pursuit in life, the love of
God.
“Bhakti Yoga, devotion for God,” is all we need, he told me.
So, what is the moral of these stories, these poems, these words?
Te moral is certainly not that crazy behavior equals enlightenment—
but simply that enlightened behavior can merit seemingly abnormal
behavior.
Enlightened teachers sometimes resort to spiritual shock therapy to
jolt us out of our spiritual complacency and the false security of dogma
and convention. Tis, I think, is especially good for us who grew up
under the inhibiting Puritanism of Christianity.
It’s as my friend Lindsay wrote during an email conversation we
had about ecstatic kirtan dancing. Strongly feeling that kirtan is
important for us Western yogis, she wrote: “We live in the aftershock
of Protestantism.”
66 saciio noo\, saciio siiiir
Lindsay does not mean, of course, that all Protestants are stuck up
folks unable to ﬂing their heart-doors open to the Divine. She means,
I think, that we’ve been sitting on our hands in church for too many
centuries, and it’s time to let those arms and legs loose for the praise
of God.
But, that’s not all. Kabir, that wild poet, has a warning for all who
think that ﬂamboyant body-yoga exhibitionism is a sign of spiritual
achievement.
No matter how ﬂawless our asana, not matter how wild our kirtan,
it’s how we are moved under the skin that’s important.
Here’s how Kabir reminds us of that:
“Go over your beads, paint weird designs on your forehead, wear your
hair matted, long and ostentatious, but when deep inside you there is
a loaded gun, how can you have God?”
John Lennon was indeed right: All we truly need is love.
Kabir’s love, of course, was not just made of ﬂower power. His was
also the kind of love totally unafraid of both living and dying. His was
a radical, uncompromising kind of love, and always ready to share it:
“If anyone needs a head, the lover leaps up to oﬀer his. Kabir’s
poems touch on the secret of this bhakti.”
o; raxria: rui iaru oi iovi axo icsras\
Tantra: The Yoga of Union
Taxria is oirix caiiio the yoga of sex.
But Tantra is also about another form of intercourse or union, about
spiritual union. Let us look at the ancient scriptures of yoga to see what
the Tantric spirituality of union is all about.
Te two most important interpretations of the word yoga are oﬀered
by Patanjali and by Shiva. Patanjali explains in his famed Yoga Sutras that
yoga means “the suspension of all mental tendencies or propensities.”
In other words, one attains inner peace when the mind is void of
distractions, void of thought. Tis rather dry deﬁnition of yoga never
appealed to me, nor did it ever quite take hold in Indian culture.
Shiva’s popular Tantric deﬁnition is more heart-centered and soul-
ful and also the most popular in India. Yoga, said Shiva, according to
the Tantric scriptures, is that process that creates unity between the
individual soul and the Cosmic Soul.
No matter which philosophical interpretation you prefer, yoga is the
inner state of well-being we feel when there is harmonious interaction
between body, mind and spirit.
As a lifestyle, yoga is a path of self-discovery. Trough Hatha Yoga,
pranayama, chanting, study, and meditation, yoga promotes physical
health, mental balance and spiritual peace, and union.
Spiritually, the Tantric deﬁnition of yoga is “union” and refers to the
state of enlightenment and ecstasy achieved in samadhi, the experi-
ence of union with the Divine. As an art and a science, yoga aids us in
developing a more healthy and balanced lifestyle.
Te spiritual state of yoga, or union, is often expressed through spiri-
tual love or Bhakti Yoga. Tus people who simply meditate or chant
the name of God are also yogis.
In traditional temple sculptures, and also in Buddhist Tantra,
the spiritual, nondual union with the Divine is symbolized by two
lovers in a tight embrace. Yogic union is also described in statues
depicting half a man and half a woman, the Ardha Narishvara statue
in which Shiva and Shakti, the male and female aspects of God,
form a cosmic union.
68 saciio noo\, saciio siiiir
In the Maya Tantra, one of the ancient texts based on Shiva’s teach-
ings, yoga is deﬁned as “the unity between the individual soul and the
universal soul.”
In another Tantric text, the KularnavaTantra, the attainment of yogic
union is poetically described as “water pouring into water.”
Today, many popular writers on yoga, including Deepak Chopra,
have adopted this Tantric interpretation of the word yoga, that yoga
means “union.”
Here is a story about the experience of yoga as union with God:
Te ﬁrst Indian yogi to visit America, Swami Vivekananda gained
worldwide fame at the :ï,, World’s Parliament of Religions in Chicago,
and eventually became the most well-known disciple of the Tantric sage
Shrii Ramakrishna.
Once, while having a discussion with a friend about whether it was
true that all material things are God, Ramakrishna walked up to them,
inquired aﬀectionately about what they were talking about and then
touched the young Vivekananda while he himself went into yogic
trance, or samadhi.
“At the marvelous touch of the master,” Vivekananda recalls, “my
mind underwent a complete revolution. I was aghast to realize that
there really was nothing whatever in the entire universe but God. I
remained silent, wondering how long this state of mind would continue.
It didn’t pass oﬀ all day. I got back home, and I felt just the same there;
everything I saw was God.”
So, the spiritual goal of yoga is to unite the individual soul with the
Cosmic Soul, to pour the waters of our heart into the waters of the
Cosmic Heart. Tis ecstatic love union is called yoga. And this yogic
trance, this samadhi, this spiritual fusion of the one into the One, is
the ultimate goal of yogic practice.
Part Three
The Wisdom of Yoga: The
Psychology and Philosophy of
Tantra
Yoga Means Union: The Spiritual,
Historical and Psychological
Reasons
Ir is coxxoxi\ uxoiisrooo that yoga means union, oneness, bliss.
It is not so commonly understood, however, that Patanjali, the so-called
originator of Classical Yoga, had nothing to do with it.
Patanjali, whose philosophy of the Yoga Sutras is becoming increas-
ingly inﬂuential in Western yoga circles, never emphasized yoga as
union, but rather described yoga as suspension, as restriction, as duality.
Yoga scholar Georg Feuerstein remarks in Te Yoga Tradition that
Patanjali’s dualistic philosophy never quite took hold in devotion-ori-
ented India, where yoga as union, bliss, even love, has had a prominent
place for thousands of years. At least since the time of Krishna, whom
Feuerstein suggests was a historical person, and whom some scholars
estimate to have lived about :,cc nci.
In Krishna’s Bhagavad Gita, the great yogi warrior and Godhead of
the Indian Bhakti movement, emphasizes that yoga is union, love, the
source of all things:
He who is rooted in oneness
realizes that I am
in every being, wherever
he goes, he remains in me.
When he sees all beings as equal
in suﬀering or in joy
because they are like himself,
that man has grown perfect in yoga.
(BG o.:,-,:)
Here, Krishna speaks from deep inside the guru tradition, in which the
guru (Krishna), God (Brahma), and the world are in union. Krishna
aﬃrms this spiritual truth in a language reminiscent of the mysticism
72 saciio noo\, saciio siiiir
of the Greek neo-platonic wisdom teacher Plotinus and Christian
sages such as Meister Eckhart. All of these teachers thus conﬁrm that
nondual wisdom represents a universal spirituality beyond religious
and cultural diﬀerences.
If we fast forward three thousand ﬁve hundred years from Krishna’s
time, we encounter the book Flow: Te Psychology of Optimal Experience
by Mihali Csikszentmihalyi, and we will ﬁnd a remarkable congruence
of thought between the ancient yoga of Krishna and contemporary
psychology. Flow, says Csikszentmihalyi, is experienced when we are
in a state of deep, concentrated enjoyment, when we are absorbed in
an activity that leaves us in a state of eﬀortless and unself-conscious
buoyancy and control.
Let us contrast the insight of ﬂow and yogi union with Patanjali’s
most famous yoga sutra—yogah citta vritti nirodhah—by using the
translation of Georg Feuerstein:
Yoga is the restrictions of the ﬂuctuation of consciousness.
Tere is not much mention of ﬂow or unity in Patanjali’s sutra.
Feuerstein’s translation gives us a sense that yoga is a discipline to
chastise the mind into submission. And that’s not Feuerstein’s personal
intention. Rather, it seems to be Patanjali’s.
Feuerstein’s translation is indeed a lot closer to the literal meaning
of Patanjali’s words than most other translations I have read. Because,
as some writers on yoga have pointed out, many “translations” of this
particular sutra reﬂect an attempt at making it sound more Tantric,
more heart-centered, more nondual, union-and-ﬂow-like than what
Patanjali’s words seem to imply.
Tere are no phrases indicating “heart” or “unity” or “oneness” in
Patanjali’s original sutra. According to contemporary Tantric yoga phi-
losopher and Sanskrit linguist Anandamurti, who interprets this sutra
much like Feuerstein, Patanjali’s intent was that a yogi must suspend
his or her “mental tendencies” (vrittis) in order to ﬁnd peace.
But, says Anandamurti, someone in a coma has also suspended his
or her mental tendencies, and someone in a dreamless state of sleep will
not experience any mental expressions. Rather, these inward states of
“emptiness” seem to be qualitatively diﬀerent than the state of union
Krishna speaks of.
It appears, then, that in this sutra Patanjali describes some of the
psychological eﬀects of yoga—the absence of mental disturbances—
rather than the inner revelation and feeling that the deep meditational
;, rui wisoox oi \oca
practice and devotion of yoga evokes. Hence, Anandamurti reminds us
that the idea that yoga means unity did not originate with Patanjali.
Indeed, the idea that yoga means union is rather absent in the Yoga
Sutras.
Te idea that yoga means union, Anandamurti attributes to Shiva,
the King of Yoga. Shiva said that yoga means “the unity between the
individual soul and the cosmic soul.” Tat is, yoga reﬂects a sentiment
of heart-centered devotion: the unity between our heart and the cosmic
heart, or the unity between oneself and the Other. And here is the
Sanskrit transliteration of Shiva’s saying about yoga as union: samyoga
yoga ityukto jivatma paramatmanah.
Te Sanskrit word yoga itself has two meanings, writes Anandamurti.
It originates either from the root verb yuj with the suﬃx ghain and thus
means “addition,” or from the root verb yuinj and the suﬃx ghain and
thus it means “uniﬁcation.”
Tus the ancient gurus Shiva and Krishna, and Csikszentmihalyi, the
contemporary psychologist, have similar ideas about what the inner,
experiential state of mind of a yogi is, and that state seems to contrast
with what Patanjali had in mind. For Patanjali, if we take him at his
own words, yoga meant the “suspension of our mental tendencies” or
“the restrictions of the ﬂuctuations of consciousness.” Patanjali wants
us to control those vrittis in the citta, in the mind, and that process,
he says, is what yoga is.
From Shiva’s Tantric perspective, yoga would be experienced as fol-
lows: when our individual mind has calmed its “tendencies” of boredom
and anxiety and its focused, yet dynamic ﬂow dips into the inﬁnite ﬂow
of consciousness (paramatma), then, he says, we experience yoga as a
feeling of union, a feeling of ﬂow.
Hence, while Patanjali does not use the term union, there may
be a link between his Yoga Sutras and the other two great sources of
yoga—Shiva and Krishna. And that link may lay in the way that ﬂow
or union or yoga is achieved.
Te state of ﬂow, or, for our purposes, the state of yoga,
Csikszentmihalyi claims, exists in a dynamic space somewhere between
anxiety and boredom. We humans often ﬂuctuate between these three
states. We are anxiously tapping our ﬁngers when contemplating the
fear of the future or the guilt of the past. We are bored into limp inac-
tion when contemplating our dismal present. But we enter a state of
ﬂow the moment we engage in challenging but rewarding activities
74 saciio noo\, saciio siiiir
such as music, art, writing, gardening, sports, and, of course, yoga
and meditation, activities that let us enter a more challenging and
rewarding state of ﬂow.
Why? Because we shift our attention from the distracting chatter
of the mind, the parts of the mind that are either anxiety ridden or
stiﬂingly bored. In that state of ﬂow, the ﬂuctuations of the mind that
Patanjali is talking about—those vrittis of desires, guilt, hurt, pain—
no longer sidetrack us, no longer produce feelings of either anxiety or
boredom. In that state of ﬂow, we enter the world of union, an inner
awe of concentrated bliss; we enter the state of being that Krishna is
talking about in the Gita, the state of union Shiva exempliﬁed as an
inner revelation of oneness. If not the full-blown spiritual states of
union, or samadhi—which are rather rare in yoga—we experience at
least a psychological resemblance of it.
What do I mean by that? Tere are doors, mirrors, or stages of
perception. And as these “doors of perception” are “cleansed” through
spiritual practice, to use William Blake’s famous metaphor, we experi-
ence deeper and deeper states of yoga. In other words, there are various
stages of union. Our feelings of awe and mystery are just the beginning
stages of the journey, which culminates when we become one with the
mystery, one with the cosmic soul itself. Tat is, when we experience
the ultimate union Krishna often speaks of in the Gita.
To understand these stages of union, it is instructive to take a look at
Anandamurti’s “yogic mind model.” Tis model diﬀers from the more
commonly known Vedantic model of the koshas, or sheets of being.
Tere are, in addition to the body, ﬁve states of Anandamurti’s yogic
mind. Te three ﬁrst stages in this model roughly correspond to the
Jungian psychological model:
Conscious mind (kamamaya kosha): this state of mind has three func-
tions: to sense external stimuli, to have desires based on those stimuli,
to materialize actions based on those stimuli.
Subconscious mind (manomaya kosha): this state has four func-
tions: memory, contemplation, experience of pleasure and pain,
dreaming. Tere may be temporary feelings of deep union and awe
at this stage.
Unconscious mind (atimanasmaya kosha) is the state of intuition and
creative insight; the mind of sublime poetry, art, inventions, psychic
awareness, etc. For yogis, there will often be an experience of prolonged
periods of union during meditation at this stage.
;, rui wisoox oi \oca
Subliminal mind (vijanamaya kosha): this level of mind has two
main functions—deep discrimination between what is “truth and
untruth,” and detachment. It is in this state one starts to experience a
near continuous ﬂow of freedom, wholeness, and union, as well as a
host of other attributes, including ecstasy, grace, undisturbed attention,
spiritual success, etc.
Causal mind (hiranmaya kosha): this is the last or highest stage of inner
yogic union, the feeling that there is only a thin veil between our self
and the Divine. It reﬂects the mindset of many great yogis and gurus,
while the greatest of them, the enlightened beings, can also pierce this
last veil and permanently rest in the Cosmic Soul itself.
When the veil between the hiranmaya kosha, the ﬁfth stage of the
above model, and the Cosmic Mind of Brahma becomes nearly absent,
the result is a near-constant perception of great clarity, wisdom and bliss.
Metaphorically speaking: the below has become one with the above;
the doors of perception have been cleansed.
Tis yogic mind model represents the totality of the human mind, or
individual soul, the jivatman, and when all of these ﬁve levels of mind
have been cleansed or made transparent through meditation, the jivat-
man merges in the paramatman, the human soul merges in the Cosmic
Soul, or Brahma. Te jivanmuktis, the liberated souls, the enlightened
yogis, live in this realm, on this threshold between the two worlds of
being. And that stage of awareness is the ultimate state of yogic union,
the union between the personal soul and the Cosmic Soul. Here, the
yogi truly experiences that the above has merged with the below. Heaven
has indeed become the world within; the world has indeed become
sacred; everything has indeed become divine.
In other words, Patanjali’s, Shiva’s and Krishna’s ideas about yoga are
not exactly the same.
What is especially lacking in Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, claims Anandamurti,
is the idea that yoga means juice, ﬂow, dynamism, the idea that life, when
lived to its fullest, is vibrant; that the cosmos itself is one vibrating, eco-
logical, pulsating organism. Tus, yoga, for the Tantric, is union with
that ﬂowing organism of the cosmos, whereas yoga for Patanjali indicates
a moving away from the world, a renunciation of the world.
And for Krishna, and for Shiva, the center, the source of that ﬂow,
that cosmic rasa, is God, or Bhagavan. “Every living entity, every ani-
mate and inanimate entity, is dancing according to the ﬂow of that rasa,
according to the vibrational expression of that rasa,” writes Anandamurti.
76 saciio noo\, saciio siiiir
When movement is the nature of life, how can yoga be without
ﬂow? More to the point, the nature of the whole universe is ﬂowing,
dynamic, and pulsating. So, rather than suspending our vrittis, our
mental tendencies, the Tantric yogi will embrace them, will love them,
and then they are all oﬀered as a gift of surrender to the cosmic ﬂow.
Tus, the Tantric yogi will attempt to make all ordinary tendencies
spiritual, sacred, and ﬂowing.
Hence, the simple yet profound proclamation: I am Tat. I am one
with Tat. I am one with God. I am one with Krishna. I am one with
my Higher Self. I am one with that transcendent ﬂow that runs and
pulsates through and within everything. When that profound idea, that
feeling, is available to us while performing an action, then we experience
yoga; then we are in the ﬂow of yoga.
Tantra Yoga, then, is attraction toward that ultimate ﬂow. Tantra Yoga is
thus not revulsion from what we do not like, not disgust toward anything,
nor suppression of our basic desires. Yoga is much more psychological,
much more elegant: yoga does not turn attraction into repulsion by saying
NO to life. Rather, yoga says YES to life by seeking and seeing the bright
side of everything, by seeing the wisdom, and ultimately by seeing union
as an available source of inspiration in everything.
Simply put, yoga is about seeing union, seeing God, consciousness,
oneness, sweetness, and love in everything we do. Moreover, yoga is
not theory, yoga is practice, yoga is living and being. “It is not enough
to know how to do it,” Csikszentmihalyi writes, while acknowledging
that yoga is an “enormously sophisticated” way to experience ﬂow, “one
must do it, consistently, in the same way as athletes or musicians…”
And, so, in that light, yoga is practice, yoga is discipline. And the
more sophisticated the practice and the discipline, the deeper the ﬂow,
the deeper the state of mind and focus, and the more overwhelmingly
meaningful our sense of union with the Other, with Tat, becomes.
Here are some of the commonalities between the psychology of ﬂow
and the spiritual practice of yoga:
Flow is concentration—as during meditation and asana practice
Flow is increasing sophistication and challenge—as during the practice
of more advanced asana and meditation techniques
Flow is unself-conscious behavior—as during chanting and dancing
in Bhakti Yoga, or during deep meditation, or simply right now!
Flow is being in the present moment—as during mantra/breath
recitation while walking, biking, eating, loving
;; rui wisoox oi \oca
And, there is another commonality between the yoga of union and
Csikszentmihalyi’s ﬂow: the way to happiness lies not in mindlessly
following our hedonist desires, but rather in ﬂowing with our call for
mindful challenges.
So, what are the signs that we are experiencing yoga in our life?
Bill Walz, a meditation and mindfulness teacher at the University
of North Carolina writes: “True spirituality requires experiencing a
self-transcending connection with Life and with others, but when we
live trapped within this disease of self-absorption, the truly spiritual
experience is impossible.” And according to the eminent psychologist
Abraham Maslow: “Te sacred is in the ordinary…to be looking else-
where for miracles is a sure sign of ignorance…everything is miraculous.”
And when we feel that miraculous feeling, we practice the yoga of ﬂow.
78 saciio noo\, saciio siiiir
Tantra and the Yoga Sutras: If
Patanjali Had Been a Woman
Ii Parax;aii uao niix a woman, he may have sounded a lot like
Nischala Joy Devi. An internationally renowned yoga teacher, she is
the author of Te Secret Power of Yoga, a book in which she uncovers
the “heart and spirit” of the Yoga Sutras.
Devi’s translation of Patanjali’s most famous sutra—yogah citta vritti
nirodha— is so sweet, Tantric and heart centered that it makes all
previous translations of these Sanskrit words look as if written by male
experts hell-bent on mind control. Indeed, when I read the Yoga Sutras,
I sometimes feel as if Patanjali himself was hell-bent on mind control.
Devi’s warm, simple, and deeply personal translations are diﬀerent
from any I have read before. Ironically, they remind me of the liberal
way Robert Bly—a very sweet but also a very manly man—translates
Rumi, Kabir, or Mirabai. Tere’s a personal directness, liberty, and
freshness in each line that other translations lack.
She writes that the above sutra, in which Patanjali explains the mean-
ing of yoga, should be interpreted as follows: “Yoga is the uniting of
consciousness in the heart.”
Compare this to her male counterpart, Georg Feuerstein’s translation:
“Yoga is the restrictions of the ﬂuctuation of consciousness.”
Devi’s translation gives us a feeling of warmth, unity, and hope; that
yoga is about opening ourselves into a state of being already known
to our hearts. Feuerstein’s gives us a sense that yoga is a discipline to
chastise the mind into submission.
Feuerstein’s translation is indeed a lot closer to the literal meaning of
Patanjali’s words than Devi’s. Citta means mind, or consciousness. Vritti
means tendency or ﬂuctuation. Nirodha means restriction or suspension.
Tere is really nothing about the heart or about unity in Patanjali’s
original sutra. In the words of my guru, Anandamurti, who interprets
this sutra much like Feuerstein, Patanjali meant that a yogi must suspend
his or her “mental tendencies” (vrittis) in order to ﬁnd peace, and thus
to experience the goal of yoga.
;, rui wisoox oi \oca
In fact, Anandamurti reminds us that yoga also means unity, that yoga
also is a devotional concept, that yoga also is the path of the heart—and
that this profound idea comes from Tantra, not from Patanjali.
In Tantra, it is said that yoga means the unity between the individual
soul and the cosmic soul, the unity between your heart and the cosmic
heart, the unity between you and the Beloved. And as mentioned before,
the Sanskrit transliteration for that is: samyoga yoga ityukto jivatma
paramatmanah.
In other words, Nischala Joy Devi’s translation of Patanjali’s Yoga
Sutra :.: reads a lot like the way yoga is explained in Tantra: that yoga
is the path of the heart; that our consciousness abides in the heart; that
yoga means union.
But for Patanjali, yoga seems to have meant something else: not union,
but the “suspension of our mental tendencies” or “the restrictions of
the ﬂuctuations of consciousness.”
Here’s another angle. Te word citta, which is integral to understand-
ing this sutra, is often translated as “consciousness,” but it really means
“mind.” Our vrittis, our desires, our wants, our endless mental tenden-
cies, they reside in our mind, in our citta. And Patanjali wants us to
control those vrittis in the citta, in the mind, in order to experience yoga.
But in Tantra the way toward yoga is not simply through control
but through the way of union. In Tantra the path of yoga is the path of
alchemical transmutation rather than through ﬁerce control. And the
way of transmutation goes through the heart, not through the mind,
and through consciousness, not through the intellect.
Resembling this heartfelt spirit of Tantra, Nischala Joy Devi writes:
“When this sutra is referencing only the mind, the emphasis is on
control, restraint, or some form of restriction. It encourages students
to be harsh with consciousness.”
Because of this harshness of language, of interpretation, of phi-
losophy—for Patanjali was ﬁrst and foremost a philosopher—the Yoga
Sutras never became popular with the masses in India. Not in the same
way Shiva and Krishna have touched the hearts of the Indian people.
Because the Indian people, writes Gregory David Roberts in his best-
selling book Shantaram, are all about the heart. Tey live and breathe
ﬁrst and foremost in the heart.
And so do women. And so do the Tantrics. And that is why I prefer the
Tantric interpretation of yoga: that yoga is about uniting consciousness
through the way of the heart, through the way of love for the Divine.
80 saciio noo\, saciio siiiir
A Comparative Examination of the
Body-Mind-Spirit Connection
Accoioixc ro xax\ siiiiruai traditions, the human mind can
be divided into various levels or spheres. As mentioned earlier, in yoga
psychology these levels of mind are termed koshas. Indeed, it is said
that “the human being is composed of ﬁve layers of mind, just like
the banana ﬂower.” Te body, or annamaya kosha, comprises the sixth
layer. Each one of these “petals” envelopes the other and, depending on
your perspective, progressively conceals or reveals the ultimate reality,
Spirit or God.
According to the yoga philosophy of Vedanta, an individual is com-
posed of ﬁve such sheaths. Te ﬁrst sheath is the annamaya kosha, the
physical body. Te second is the pranamaya kosha, or the sheath com-
posed of life force. Tis is the connecting link between the physical body
and the mind, the sphere of emotions. Te third is the manomaya kosha,
or the rational mind. Next comes the vijanamaya kosha, the sheath of
intuition; the subtle mind. Te ﬁfth and last sheath is the anandamaya
kosha, the deep, inner level of blissful transcendence.
In Mahayana Buddhism, there are eight levels of consciousness. Te
ﬁrst ﬁve represent the ﬁve senses. Te next layer of the mind is based
on sensory experience. Te seventh layer, called manas, refers to both
higher mind and the center of the illusion of the separate self. Te ﬁnal
level is the alayavijnana, the veil before alaya or pure Spirit.
Yoga emphasizes the importance of understanding the essential nature
of this spectrum of consciousness—how the individual mind rests within
and is part of the soul (atman). And, through an integral Body-Mind-
Spirit practice, how the mind expands into this soul and ﬁnally, with
its crystal-clear perception, unites with the Cosmic or Divine Soul.
Here is a contemporary yogic elaboration of these sheaths, developed
by my teacher, Anandamurti. Tis model expands on the Vedantic
version by dividing our individual Body-Mind-Spirit into seven levels,
including its many sub-functions:
:. Annamaya Kosha—the physical body, composed, as in Ayurveda,
ï: rui wisoox oi \oca
of the ﬁve elements: ether, air, ﬁre, water, earth. Te body is controlled
by the ﬁrst layer of mind, the kamamaya kosha.
:. Kamamaya Kosha—this state of mind is the “desire” kosha. Also
known in Jungian psychology as the conscious mind.
It has three functions: a) sensing external stimuli from the outside
world through the sense organs of the body, b) having desires on the
basis of those stimuli, and c) acting to materialize those desires by using
the motor organs.
Tis layer of the mind controls the motor organs and the instincts;
it activates the body to satisfy the basic instincts of hunger, sleep, sex
and fear.
,. Manomaya Kosha—the mental layer of mind. Also referred to in
Jungian psychology as the subconscious mind.
Tis state of mind controls the conscious mind. It has four functions:
a) memory, b) rationality, c) experience of pleasure and pain based on
reactions from past deeds, d) dreaming.
¡. Atimanasa Kosha—the supra-mental or subtle mind, the layer of
direct knowing, creative insight and extrasensory perception.
Although most people spend the majority of their lives in the kama-
maya and manomaya koshas, sometimes this layer is accessed through
deep contemplation, artistic inspiration, or intellectual discovery. When
that happens, a deep yearning for Spirit is felt, and perhaps even a direct
experience of Spirit is experienced. Jung called this layer of the mind
the unconscious.
,. Vijinamaya Kosha—the ﬁrst layer of the causal mind, also called
the “special knowledge” kosha. In this level of mind one is able to pierce
through the veil of the gross, objective reality and get a glimpse of the
world as it really is—simply Spirit. Many divine attributes are expressed
through this state of mind: mercy, gentleness, serenity, non-attachment,
steadiness, success, cheerfulness, spiritual bliss, humility, magnanimity
and more. Tis kosha has two main functions: discrimination (viveka)
and non-attachment (vaeragya).
Spiritual discrimination means to be able to discern between relative
and absolute truth. Spiritual non-attachment does not mean to escape
the world but rather to embrace it as Spirit; to see that all is divine.
o. Hiranamaya Kosha—subtle causal mind, also referred to as the
“golden” kosha, because of its eﬀulgent, blissful expression. Here the
feeling of “I” is only latent, only a thin veil separates the spiritual prac-
titioner from the Soul. A person in this unusual and sublime state of
82 saciio noo\, saciio siiiir
mind has approached the dawn of true awakening and experiences the
all-pervading state of Cosmic Consciousness.
;. Atman—beyond mind, the Soul, the Cosmic Consciousness. Te
sixteenth-century Christian mystic St. John of the Cross explained well
the highest state of God-consciousness: “...the soul appears to be God
more than a soul. Indeed, it is God by participation.”
No matter which model of the Body-Mind-Spirit connection you
are used to, what is important is this: Trough the immense scope of
these levels of mind, or spectrum of consciousness, the human mind is
ﬁnally enveloped in pure Spirit and is able to realize oneness with the
Divine. And although each tradition explains these layers somewhat
diﬀerently, it is a natural and universal process of gradual unfolding
and eventual full awakening.
As John Caird said so beautifully in his book An Introduction to the
Philosophy of Religion, “to appropriate that inﬁnite inheritance of which
we are already in possession.”
But, perhaps none could have expressed this simple yet advanced
process better than the poet and artist William Blake: “If the doors of per-
ception were cleansed, man would see things as they really are—inﬁnite.”
My own spiritual teacher, Anandamurti, notes that in order to expe-
rience this cosmic state of mind one must cleanse one’s perception by
converting “the mind into a real mirror, every kosha has to be made
transparent and crystalline....”
But how? Trough the study of spiritual scriptures; through yoga
practice; through prayer and fasting; through ecstatic dancing and
chanting, and most importantly, the yogis claim, through the practice
of meditation. Or, as Anandamurti says: “Trough the medium of
kosha-wise meditation... the fuller the entire entity will become with
divine radiance, with divine bliss.”
Te universal aspect of this process is illustrated by the writings of
many mystics and saints from various traditions. St. John of the Cross
perfectly echoes the yogis of India: “A soul makes room for God by
wiping away all the smudges and smears of creatures, by uniting its will
perfectly to God’s...” “When this is done the soul will be illumined by
and transformed in God. And God will so communicate his super-
natural being to the soul that it will appear to be God himself and will
possess what God himself possesses.” In other words, the mysticism of
Christianity and the mysticism of Tantra speak with one voice.
ï, rui wisoox oi \oca
Yoga and Reincarnation: To Believe
or Not to Believe?
Tui niiiii ix iiixcaixariox—ruar souls migrate from life to
life, body to body—is not, as many believe, just a yogic, Buddhist and
Eastern tradition. Tis doctrine has also been part of the Greek, neo-
platonic tradition, Judaism, some forms of Christianity, and even the
Viking tradition. Reincarnation was accepted by such historic ﬁgures
as Pythagoras, Plato and Socrates. It is also a common belief of pagan
religions, such as Druidism, and the idea is common in many tribal
societies around the world, in places such as Siberia, West Africa, North
America, and Australia.
According to his deeds, the embodied self assumes successively
various forms in various conditions.
—Shvetashvatara Upanishad
Te idea of reincarnation—that our mind and its unexhausted karmic
reactions keep assuming new bodies in order to fulﬁll its destiny until
ﬁnal enlightenment—was hardly on my mind at the beginning of
my yogic journey. Only when I arrived in India and Nepal, where
this idea is as commonly accepted as basmati rice, did reincarnation
become part of my vocabulary. And, one ﬁne day, it became part of
my deeper identity.
It happened one sunny afternoon, when I received initiation into
Tantric dhyan meditation at the banks of the Baghmati River in Nepal.
I was sitting there relaxed and thinking of nothing in particular. My
meditation teacher was meditating in front of me, and I looked past
the men bathing their elephants in the river, across to the other side
where steep Himalayan mountains towered into a cobalt blue horizon.
Suddenly, it struck me like a lightening bolt: I have been here before.
I have lived here before. I have even sat here on this bank before, learn-
ing meditation, just like I am doing right now. It was not the dizzy and
vague feeling of déjà vu. It was a feeling of palpable certainty: I knew
84 saciio noo\, saciio siiiir
this place. I was familiar with these people, these languages, and these
practices. I had returned home.
A few seconds after these thoughts crossed my mind, my teacher
opened his eyes and said: “Yes, I think you are right, you have been
here before.”
Te origins of the notion of reincarnation appear in written form in
the philosophical traditions of Greece from about the sixth century nci.
During the Iron Age, the Greek Pre-Socratics discussed reincarnation,
and the Celtic Druids also taught a doctrine of reincarnation.
Te origin of the Indian reincarnation idea can be found in the
non-Vedic and oral Sramana and Tantric traditions. Having been part
of the oral tradition of India since antiquity, the concept enters his-
torical, written records rather late, with the adaptation of ideas such
as karma, samsara and moksha in the Upanishads (ca ;cc nci) and
other scriptures.
Some scholars suggest that the idea is original to the Buddha. But a
more likely possibility is that it originated in the much more ancient
Shiva-religions of the pre-Indo-Aryan Ganges Valley, as well as in the
prehistoric Dravidian traditions of South India.
While reincarnation is not as commonly accepted in the Western
world, some scientists, such as the late psychiatrist Ian Stevenson,
former head of the Department of Psychiatry at the University of
Virginia, have studied this phenomenon and concluded that it is a real
possibility, not just a belief system. Te author of Where Reincarnation
and Biology Intersect, Stevenson studied over three thousand cases of
“possible reincarnations” in Africa, Alaska, Europe, India and both
North and South America.
He reported that the children he studied generally started to speak
of their past lives between the ages of two and four. Tey then ceased
to do so by age seven or eight. Te children had often died a violent
death, and they had clear memories of how they had died. My guru,
Anandamurti, used the term “extra-cerebral memory” to describe this
kind of non-brain-dependent memory of a past time when the soul
lived in another human body.
After interviewing the children, their families, and others in the
community, Stevenson would identify if there had been a living person
who satisﬁed the various claims and descriptions collected, and who had
died prior to the child’s birth. Stevenson collected over forty cases with
physical evidence relating to birthmarks and birth defects of children,
ï, rui wisoox oi \oca
which he claimed matched wounds recorded in the medical or post-
mortem records for the individual identiﬁed as the past-life personality.
Hence, the title of his compelling book.
One of the most dramatic examples of reincarnation stories I have
heard was told to me recently on my trip to Copenhagen by my Danish
friend Espen Hansen (not his real name). Since he was young, he had
recurring dreams and memory ﬂashbacks from a life as a member of
the Nazi party during World War II.
He has extra-cerebral memories of helping French Jews escape their
ultimate fate of being sent to the gas chambers. He also “remembers”
that he was ﬁnally executed by hanging for these and other renegade
actions.
Tese dark and disturbing memories were fatefully re-awakened by
a mysterious meeting Espen had with a beautiful Greek woman named
Helena. She was working in a restaurant in Iceland, where he lived
with his family for about ﬁfteen years. Helena was the daughter of a
Greek shipping magnate who had recently gone bankrupt. Destitute,
she ended up as a waitress in Iceland.
One day, while Espen was leaving the restaurant where he usually
dined with business clients, Helena asked him: “Do you remember
me?” Puzzled by the question, he simply responded: “Of course. I come
here all the time.”
But that was not what Helena meant. She took him aside and told
him that they had known each other in a previous life. He had helped
her during World War II, she claimed. She was a Jew, living in Paris,
and he was a Nazi.
Espen was stunned. But, strangely, these startling claims made com-
plete sense to him.
For months, before this fateful meeting with Helena, he’d actually
started to believe he’d been Carl Heinrich von Stulpnagel in a previous
life. Stulpnagel was a German general and a member of the July :c
Plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler, and although responsible for atrocities
against Jews, he also apparently did help some Jews escape during the
war. And when he found out that Stulpnagel was hanged for treason
on August ,c, :,¡¡, his chronic neck and back pain indeed took on a
new, historical and fateful signiﬁcance.
Over time, Espen and Helena became very close friends. Today, Espen
is a Kriya yogi, writer and ﬁlmmaker working on a documentary about
meditation. Helena has become a well known photographer and lives in
86 saciio noo\, saciio siiiir
an ashram in India. Even though they live on two diﬀerent continents,
they still keep in touch.
Just as the body casts oﬀ worn out clothes and puts on new
ones, so the inﬁnite, immortal self casts oﬀ worn out bodies
and enters into new ones.
—Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita
But is it possible that a former Nazi, even though he wanted to destroy
Hitler’s regime, can become a yogi in his next incarnation? Diﬃcult
question, indeed. Yogic believers in reincarnation will counter by saying
that it is not only our karma from one life that determines our destiny
in the next. In other words, Stulpnagel could have been a real good
guy, even a yogi in a long ago, previous life.
Because of all these philosophical conundrums, I understand why
many contemporary yogis do not care about the doctrine of reincar-
nation, and why many even think it is superstitious and totally bunk.
Moreover, even though reincarnation is a part of yoga philosophy, a
belief in reincarnation is not a prerequisite for doing a proper headstand
or to sit in lotus position repeating a mantra.
What does Patanjali, the great philosophical authority on yoga say
about reincarnation? Actually not much. But without the context of
reincarnation, “Patanjali’s Aphorisms are worthless,” writes William Q.
Judge in his :ïï, translation of the Yoga Sutras. “Take No. :ï, Book
III, which declares that the ascetic can know what were his previous
incarnations with all their circumstances; or No. :,, Book II, that while
there is a root of works there is fructiﬁcation in rank and years and
experience. Both of these infer reincarnation. In Aphorism ï, Book IV,
reincarnation is a necessity.”
But whether you believe you’ve been born again and again or not, it
really does not matter much to your practice either way. However, as
both a Viking and a yogi who strongly feels that I have lived in India
before, I guess I am fated to be a believer in this born-again-and-again
doctrine. For reincarnation also appear in Norse mythology, you see.
Indeed, the belief in reincarnation was probably commonplace among
the Vikings since the annotator of the Poetic Edda wrote that people
formerly used to believe in it:
“Sigrun was early dead of sorrow and grief. It was believed in olden
times that people were born again, but that is now called old wives’ folly.
ï; rui wisoox oi \oca
Of Helgi and Sigrun it is said that they were born again; he became
Helgi Haddingjaskati, and she Kara the daughter of Halfdan, as is told
in the Lay of Kara, and she was a Valkyrie.”
But these days, I am more yogi than Viking, perhaps even more Indian
than Norwegian. So I cannot but help becoming inspired, uplifted
and awed by cosmic and timeless words like these from Krishna in the
Bhagavad Gita:
Te soul is birthless, eternal, imperishable and timeless and is
never terminated when the body is terminated.
In other words, we never really die. Only the body dies. Ten the body
is recycled and becomes part of the earth. Te mind is also recycled and
becomes part of the cosmic sky-cycle of birth and rebirth.
88 saciio noo\, saciio siiiir
Your Mind Is More Powerful Than
Your Brain
Tui cii\, roiu-iixi sunsraxci of our brain is busy all day long
ﬁring oﬀ billions of neuron messages to thousands of neuron connec-
tors. Tis neuron-ﬁring brain is inside our organism, inside our body,
but according to yoga philosophy, the brain is still exterior to the mind.
To the subjective mind, the brain is a physical object.
We can cut open our brain, we can examine all its parts and chambers,
we can touch it, we can analyze its molecules. But we still cannot touch
or see the mind. Because the mind is an interior level of our being. And
interiors cannot be cut open with a knife. Interiors must be interpreted.
If you want to know what my mind is like, you must communicate
with me. Poking my brain won’t do much. Hooking my brain up to
an EEG machine can tell you many things about my brain activity,
but not so many details about how I feel or what I see. You, a human
being, not a machine, must ask me how I feel.
Reality is not just objective. It is also subjective. Yes, my heart rate
goes down when I meditate. And this phenomenon can objectively
be registered on a machine. But this tells you nothing about what I
subjectively feel when my heart rate goes down. In order to know that,
you must talk to me. You must empathize.
Talking and empathizing is what the yogis have done for thousands
of years. Talking about their inner world, what they experienced, what
they realized. Te yogis are therefore scientists of both the exterior and
interior realms. Tey noted down very systematically all their observa-
tions; and that is why we should listen to them, not just the Western
material scientists.
Te yogis talk about objective and subjective reality. Tis means that
the objective reality is the outer, physical reality, and the mind is the
inner, mental and spiritual reality. In a manner of speaking, the brain is
enveloped by the much subtler and larger mind. Te best way to explain
this in yoga terminology is through the kosha system, which is universally
accepted within the yoga community. According to Vedanta, the ﬁve
ï, rui wisoox oi \oca
koshas, or layers of the human being are: Annamaya (body and brain),
Pranamaya (the energetic body) Manomaya (mind body) Vijanamaya
(wisdom level), Anandamaya (bliss level).
Te human being is thus like a banana ﬂower: one layer envelopes
the other, one layer subtler than the last—ﬁrst the crude anatomy of
body and brain, then the energetic anatomy of nadis and kundalini,
then the mind and its ever-increasing subtle layers of mind, wisdom
and bliss. Te brain is thus the outer layer of the mind. But according
to yoga, it is not synonymous with the mind.
All these koshas are interrelated and the brain would not function
without these higher and deeper functions of the mind and soul, nor
would the mind and soul be able to express themselves without the
brain. But according to most neuro-scientists, the brain and the mind are
synonymous. Our mind, our consciousness is nothing but neurological
interactions in the brain. To these scientists, if there is a God at all, He
or She is simply an image or an idea conjured up by the neurological
ﬁreworks behind the walls of our bony skull.
According to yoga, the brain is an interactive tool of the mind, but
the mind is much larger and subtler than the brain. Some scientists, like
biologist Rupert Sheldrake, maintain that the mind is an “information
ﬁeld” that is connected to but extends far beyond the periphery and
function of the physical brain.
Another way of explaining the mind/matter conundrum is oﬀered by a
range of thinkers and scientists through the theory of panpsychism. Tis
idea, which is remarkably similar to yoga philosophy, is advocated by both
theologians and scientists, from David Ray Griﬃn to David Chalmers.
Panpsychism asserts that consciousness, as is explained in yoga and
Tantra, is found everywhere and is a fundamental property of the uni-
verse—all the way down to atomic particles. Tus rocks and salt crystals
have what Chalmers call “protoconsciousness.”
But perhaps the new science of complexity explains all this even more
“scientiﬁcally” by stating that, yes, consciousness does arise from the
brain, but it simply cannot be reduced to the brain. As in Tantra, the
science of complexity acknowledges the biological roots of the mind,
but it also maintains that we are more than our neurons. In other words,
the complex and subjective experiences of our thoughts and emotions
when we walk, talk, read or listen to music cannot simply be reduced
to neurological patterns in the brain.
Te human mind has a unique, interior experience all of its own.
90 saciio noo\, saciio siiiir
Tis becomes especially clear in regards to the realm of spirituality.
Because it is universally accepted that people with mystical experiences
report that these occurrences are “more real” than anything else they
have experienced. In other words, the experience of spirituality is not
merely triggered by sensory or neuro-chemical pleasures. Tese experi-
ences are of a higher or deeper nature than that which we ordinarily
encounter every day.
Tey belong to the purely interior and subjective realm of the mind.
But since material science is not equipped to understand the subjec-
tive or spiritual part of reality, it regards such experiences as unreal or
something simply produced by the brain itself.
Te human brain and mind are constantly interacting. Tese two
ﬁne-tuned mechanisms are, according to yoga cosmology, integral expres-
sions—one lower and one higher, one external and one internal—of
Cosmic Consciousness made perceptible in human beings.
Philosopher Jan Smuts reminds us that nature, and thus evolution,
“is an interlacing network of wholes.” Both the brain and the mind are
perfect examples of these interlacing wholes, but the mind’s whole is
much larger, much broader in scope than the brain. Terefore the brain
is enveloped by the mind, not the other way around.
In the book Te Mind and the Brain, Jeﬀrey M. Schwartz, M.D.,
and Sharon Begley actually document how the mind is more expansive,
powerful and creative than the brain by illustrating through PET scans
that willful meditation practice can actually alter the brain’s physiology.
Tey have proven that we can—as in fact yogis have maintained for
thousands of years—will ourselves to become better human beings. Not
only that, we can, in eﬀect, even alter brain function through the use
of mindfulness, through the practice of spiritual intention.
According to yoga philosophy, the brain and the mind are both
exceptional and mysterious expressions of the cosmic unfolding of
Consciousness, of Brahma. Te brain and the mind are also perfect
examples of nature’s duality of Brahma’s oneness, of the interlacing
relationship between matter and Consciousness, between what Tantra
calls Shiva (Consciousness) and Shakti (Energy/Matter).
Troughout evolution, on both the grand cosmic scale, as well as
in the minutest expressions of matter, Shiva and Shakti are but two
expressions of the One Universal Being. In human beings, these cosmic
dualities of Shiva and Shakti are magniﬁcently expressed in the form
of the mind and the brain.
,: rui wisoox oi \oca
Religion, Science, or Dharma:
What’s the Difference?
Tui woio iiiiciox coxis from the Latin religare, which means
to unite again with the Source, or with God. In other words, the word
religion means much the same as the word yoga, which in its Tantric
deﬁnition means “to unite, to become one with.”
Troughout history saints from various religions have described their
ecstatic experience of God-intoxication as gnosis, samadhi or satori.
Religion in its truest sense is thus a path, which, if practiced diligently,
eventually leads to the experience of unity with God, Spirit, Allah.
In its truest, deepest essence, religion is the same as spirituality.
But that’s not always the case. Religion has also been one of the most
divisive and bloody forces on the planet—the source of many despi-
cable dogmas and irrational creeds we sure (as hell!) can live without.
Just think witch burnings and gay hating and no-other-God-but-mine
hating! But let’s get back to the deeper meaning of religion. In Sanskrit,
the ancient concept of yoga means to become “one with paramatman,
one with the Cosmic Soul.” In so many words, when our individual
soul experiences oneness with the Cosmic Soul.
Tus, at the heart of every authentic religion lies an understanding
that there is an all-pervasive state of reality–God, Brahma, Tao—and
that this reality can be experienced within through the practice of yoga,
meditation, prayer, chanting.
“Te Kingdom of God is within you.”
—Luke :;.::
As comparative religious scholar Huston Smith has explained, each
religion embraces the Great Chain of Being. According to this view,
humans throughout history have viewed reality as a hierarchy of
levels–from matter to body to mind to spirit. All these levels are
ultimately enfolded by the Source, the Ground of Being, by God,
Consciousness, or Spirit.
92 saciio noo\, saciio siiiir
But unfortunately religion is not always the same as spirituality.
Religion has often kept people away from the experience of spirituality.
“Tou shall have no other gods before me.”
—Ten Commandments
A widow should be long suﬀering until death, self-restrained
and chaste.
A virtuous wife who remains chaste when her husband has
died goes to heaven.
A woman who is unfaithful to her husband is reborn in the
womb of a jackal.
—Te Laws of Manu, Chapter , verse :,o-:o:,
Dharmashastras (Sacred Hindu text)
While the originators of religion may have experienced a deep sense of
union with Universal Consciousness and also subscribed to the near
universal belief in the Great Chain of Being, the same religions, which
generally were established years after the founders died, are neverthe-
less riddled with myths and dogmas. Tat is, religions are often the
opposite of spirituality.
Te Hindu Vedas, for example, contain some of humanity’s most
ancient and sublime spiritual revelations, but Hinduism is also full of
dogmatic injunctions (such as the caste system) that serve to separate
and discriminate rather than unite and embrace people. Hinduism is
also full of irrational myths: a dip in the sacred Ganges in the holy city
of Varanasi (Benares) will bring you to heaven when you die. And other
such fundamentalist nonsense!
And there are still plenty of fundamentalist followers of Christianity
who believe in such irrational hogwash as the virgin birth, the physi-
cal resurrection, and that creation was consummated in only six days.
No wonder the exponents of science and rationality revolted against
such illogical doctrines. Tat said, scientiﬁc rationalism has failed
miserably in its critique of the innermost spiritual truths of religion,
in its critique of what is often called “perennial philosophy,” “universal
truths,” or simply “spirituality.”
Why? Because objective science and rationality cannot describe,
experience or proclaim the truth or veracity of something that can only
be experienced subjectively and is beyond the rational. Objective science
,, rui wisoox oi \oca
can determine that you meditate, but the same science cannot describe
your spiritual experience. Even the person experiencing samadhi will
have an impossible task explaining how it feels!
Te rational can only approximate the transrational. Objective science
can never fully explain subjective truth. Tat’s why even scientists resort
to poetry, to myth, to explain certain objective truths. Tat’s indeed
why we have language, why we have maps. But language and maps are
not the same as reality, neither objective nor subjective reality.
Ilya Prigogine is best known for his deﬁnition of dissipative structures
and their role in thermodynamic systems far from equilibrium, a discov-
ery that won him the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in :,;;. He likened his
discovery, which basically reverses the second law of thermodynamics,
to the dance of Shiva. Because in closed thermodynamic systems there
is no exchange of energy or entropy with the environment. Tere is
dynamic equilibrium. Tus his evocation of Shiva’s dance, who dances
in eternal dynamicity beyond both life and death!
So, both science and religion uses metaphor to explain certain truths.
No problem there. Te problem arises when we take the metaphors—the
virgin birth, the resurrection, the virgins in heaven, the ﬂames of hell,
the matter-is all-there-is, the-brain-is-all-there-is theories—literally.
Tat’s when the trouble starts.
Trouble starts when we take all that science has to oﬀer and believe
that is all there is. No wonder we ended up with a world of lean yogis
without soul, buildings without sacredness, things without depth.
Tere’s trouble when science says that the sensory world is everything.
Objectivity is everything. We end up with a ﬂat world devoid of inner
transcendence, inner subjectivity, inner spirit.
But those scientists who understand the mystery, the sacred, they
become poets, mystics, spiritualists. Why? Tere is simply no other way
to explain the unexplainable.
Te most beautiful and most profound experience is the sensa-
tion of the mystical. It is the source of all true science.
—Albert Einstein
Benedictine monk and author David Stendl-Rast explains the impor-
tance of distinguishing between the essence of religion and its insti-
tution or dogmas: “Religion…should be written with a capital R to
distinguish it from the various religions. Translated into everyday
94 saciio noo\, saciio siiiir
living, Religion becomes spirituality; institutionalized it becomes a
religion.”
Te main point here is not one of semantics but to understand the
essence of what some call Religion, universal religion, the perennial
philosophy, spirituality.
Or dharma. Which, to me, is the same as spirituality and Religion,
but very diﬀerent from religion with a small r.
Let me explain. Te Sanskrit word dharma means “an object’s or a
being’s inner nature.” In the context of humanity’s search for peren-
nial wisdom, spirituality is the dharma or inner characteristic of that
human condition. In fact, dharma is often translated as “the spiritual
path.” Dharma just is, and to be human is to become one with that
which just is.
Tus spirituality supports and includes rationality and science.
Religion, in its various guises, on the other hand, is often based on a
literal translation of irrational myths and legends and thus is often in
conﬂict with both human nature and science.
Also, because religions generally depend more on scripture and
beliefrather than, as in spirituality, on practice and experience, we may
term it a dogma. It is also often in conﬂict with basic human values and
therefore unable to inspire and guide humanity on its march toward
creating a universal and truly integrated society.
So, for the sake of a theoretical deﬁnition of the diﬀerence between
religion (dogma) and spirituality (dharma), let us say that religion con-
tains both certain universally accepted truths as well as many irrational
dogmas, while spirituality soars beyond and above these irrational
limitations. It contains truth, beyond words, truth that can only be
approximated by poetry, dance, song, truth in its most unblemished
and sacred form.
Another way of making this distinction is to say that religion, with
its emphasis on external rituals, is exoteric, and that spirituality, with
its emphasis on sacred, meditative practice, is esoteric. In conclusion,
spirituality, not religion, is the only power that is universal, sublime,
and silent enough to truly unite human society.
,, rui wisoox oi \oca
Yoga and Activism
“A x\sricisx ruar is only private and self-absorbed leaves the evils of
the world intact and does little to halt the suicidal juggernaut of history;
an activism that is not puriﬁed by profound spiritual and psychological
self-awareness and rooted in divine truth, wisdom, and compassion will
only perpetuate the problem it is trying to solve, whatever it’s righteous
intentions.” –Andrew Harvey
Enlightenment, in other words, is not an escape from the world but
a true return to the world.
In the words of sages and pundits from various wisdom traditions
and backgrounds, we see a common, golden thread: enlightenment is
being in this world but not of it. Enlightenment is having your head
and heart in the wide open sky of spirit and your feet ﬁrmly planted
in the garden of life.
In other words, enlightenment means transformation, transforming
us and the world at the same time. Enlightenment means to be an inte-
gral person working toward creating an integral world. Enlightenment
means being a spiritual activist.
So what do the great wisdom traditions say that urges us to be active
in this world? From Buddhist and Hindu Tantra, we learn:
“Brahma (Cosmic Consciousness) is the world.”
“Nirvana and samsara are not two.”
“Shiva (Cosmic Consciousness) and Shakti (Cosmic Energy) are one.”
“Brahma is the composite of Shiva and Shakti.”
In other words, the nondual philosophies of Tantric Yoga, for example,
teaches us about inner and outer ecology; that the world of spirit (Shiva)
and the world of matter (Shakti) are essentially an integrated whole;
are one in Brahma.
In the words of Ken Wilber: “Te point, we might say, is that the
circle of Ascending and Descending energies must always be unbroken:
‘this world’ and the ‘other world’ united in one ongoing, everlasting,
exuberant embrace.”
In the words of my Tantric guru, Anandamurti: “Yoga means uni-
ﬁcation…We must have yoga in all the three levels of life. If there
96 saciio noo\, saciio siiiir
is yoga only in the spiritual level and there is no yoga in the psychic
and physical level, what will happen? Te very existence of human
beings will become unbalanced, human equipoise will be lost. So
we must have yoga, or rather yoga-oriented movement, in each and
every sphere of life.”
But not all yoga philosophies have urged the same balance; not all
yogis have lived ﬁrmly rooted in this world. In Vedanta we are taught
that this world is an illusion. Consequently some yogis have ﬂed this
world to seek salvation in spirit only.
Tere are always exceptions. Even though Vivekananda was a follower
of Vedanta and did not think posture yoga (asanas) was very important,
he was a political activist in his native India.
Still, I favor those who clearly favor balance in their world view.
“Yoga in each and every sphere of life.” Tat is, when we buy yogurt
a yogi is to consider not only how deliciously it melts on the tongue
and how good it is for health but also how good it is for the planet’s
health—how and where it was grown by farmers, animals and dirt.
Tat is yogic ecology.
Yoga is then to ask ourselves: is this yogurt both organic and local?
If not, is it better to buy this local yogurt even though it is not organic,
like that popular brand over there, which is produced two thousand
miles away? Tese are questions on the yogi/activist’s mind; these are
questions every earth-yogi must make and answer. And, yes, these are
questions without clear cut and easy answers.
Because, if all is one, the way my food is made and where it comes
from matters. Because, if all is one, the less suﬀering I cause animals
and the environment matters.
If all is one, as yoga says, it all matters. Not just my personal body
and soul, but also the body and soul of others, the body and soul of
animals, of plants. Te body and soul of those people living over there.
But let’s not climb too high up on the ecological or activist pedestal.
I have Appalachian hillbilly neighbors who eat bears and have never
heard the word asanas. Tey grow most of their own food and generally
live lives much greener than I do, even though I try to shop local and
organic and grow some veggies and live in a so-called green community.
To be a yogi activist, then, is to look the world straight in its face
and answer all the uneasy questions in life and come up with workable,
conscious compromises. Because, here on this dusty earth, perfection,
like the sexy perfection in that sleek, sensual body of the Lululemon
,; rui wisoox oi \oca
yogi, that kind of perfection is not the perfection the yogi activist will
always ﬁnd or even want.
Yogi perfection is, ﬁrst of all, a state of mind, a state of heart, a state
of consciousness; then that state of mind urges us into imperfect action.
Imperfect action in the world of Shakti, the world of samsara.
Still, we act by thinking, by feeling, that this world is also Brahma,
also Consciousness, also sacred. In Tantra that is acting from the state
of madhuvidya, from the heart of honey knowledge. We act as if the
world is a sweet and sacred place to live. Always.
If all is potentially sweet, if all is potentially one, how our economy
runs, how our resources are shared, it matters. It can be part of our
yoga, our enlightenment enterprise, to Occupy Wall Street. We can
do yoga by occupying space on the sidewalk to protest the ﬁring of
workers. It can be yoga to say ENOUGH IS ENOUGH to the CEO
and the board of directors, who, like heroin addicts, stole the wages of
these workers to increase their quarterly proﬁt ﬁx. Not to demonstrate
because it is hip, but simply because it matters.
It can be yoga to say ENOUGH IS ENOUGH without hating those
you say ENOUGH IS ENOUGH to.
In some of my retreats, I teach a meditation and visualization
exercise developed by spiritual activist Andrew Harvey in which the
aim is to break our hearts open to the world, to passionately ﬁnd that
heartbroken space within which resonates with that which is broken
outside us.
Because that which is broken can heal, and that act of healing is yoga,
that act of healing is spiritual activism. Tat act is part of the idea that
samsara and nirvana are one, the idea that Shiva and Shakti are one in
Brahma. Te idea that what is above is also below.
Tat is Tantra, that is yoga. Tat is what the yogic transformation
enterprise is all about: to blend that which is within us with that which
is outside us. Tat is the sacred and often complex and neglected
enterprise of yoga.
Yoga can mend ligaments, backs, hearts—and yoga can, in small and
big ways, mend the world.
My guru, Anandamurti, had a saying: yoga is self-realization and
service to the world. Living according to that saying landed him in jail,
and he became the Nelson Mandela of yoga.
Because, if yoga is all about navel watching and retreating from this
world, then what kind of yoga is it? Te yoga of a selﬁsh, lonely, separated
98 saciio noo\, saciio siiiir
soul in the body of a sexy Lululemon ad? Te yoga of a body-denying
ascetic whose nails are too long to feed himself?
It is no accident that religious enterprises which are about going-
to-heaven-only and yogic enterprises which are for-myself-only have a
one-dimensional resemblance to economists who deﬁne human behavior
and aspirations in purely economic terms.
Te economic human sees greed as good; that selﬁsh aspirations are
solely what an economy is built upon. And that ﬁctionalized version
of reality has created a ﬁctionalized, phantom economy based on greed
and speculation.
Likewise, the ego-driven yogi mistakes the beautiful body in the
mirror for the beautiful self within.
And the ascetic thinks that by denying the body it will eventually
evaporate into the transparent purity of soul.
Body obsession and proﬁt obsession and ascetic-escaping-the-world
obsession thus share similar traits: they have great diﬃculty embracing
reality in its wholeness, in its imperfect, complex yet sacred earthiness.
If yoga is holistic, which I believe it is, then part of its holism lies
in its ability to embrace opposites and see the oneness in diversity and
complexity. Yoga thus is not only about occupying the mat, the cushion
and Wall Street, but about occupying the whole of reality, the whole of
life in all its divine, imperfect and vast sacredness—in each and every
moment of our lives.
Tat, and nothing less, is the yoga of imperfect perfection, the yoga
of enlightenment with both a small and capital E. Tat is the yoga of
sacred activism.
,, rui wisoox oi \oca
Can We be Spiritual without
Transformation: A Tantric
Perspective
Soxi iioiii ox rui spiritual path, especially some Buddhists and
nondualists, say that we do not need to transform, do not need to
change in order to be spiritual. According to Tantra, change is natural
to the human self, the body-mind.
Change is life.
But also according to Tantra, there is a changeless Self, which never
changes, to which the changing self wakes up, discovers, embraces,
and is absorbed into through transformative expansion. Tus there is
both transformation and no-transformation. Change and no-change.
According to Tantric Yoga the spiritual realm is the one changeless
Being, or Brahma. Tis changeless realm, this Brahma, from which
everything originates, from which everything is preserved and from
within which everything dies and is destroyed, consists of two polari-
ties: Shiva (Consciousness) and Shakti (Energy).
Shiva is that aspect of Brahma which is changeless, pure, subtle, the
deep within, the deep inner world of all manifest beings, the deep inner
space of the outer world, of matter, of the atomic world and beyond.
Shiva is pure consciousness, pure intelligence, from which even
some quantum physicists now believe everything originates. Shiva is
that oceanic space within, that cave in the cosmic heart, that which we
experience while deep-diving the conscious and subconscious monkey-
minds and enter the super-conscious mind of revelation and peace in
our meditation.
In other words, in order to be awed by and to experience the inner
thrill of Shiva Consciousness, we undergo a shift in awareness, an inner
transformation with the help of Shakti energy, with the help of our will
power, our emotions, and our sexual energy.
Because Shakti is pure energy, that which creates, that which binds
consciousness into form, into life, creativity and ﬁnally into death.
100 saciio noo\, saciio siiiir
By riding the energy of Shakti, the kundalini of transformation and
creativity, we embrace Shiva, the Changeless.
Tantra is the process of transforming one’s latent divinity into
Supreme Divinity. A person who, irrespective of caste, creed
or religion aspires for [such] spiritual expansion…is a Tantric.
—Anandamurti
Tantric yoga teaches us that if this unchanging reality, this Shiva
is close to our heart, close to our inner mind in daily contemplation,
in daily practice, then it is much easier to accept and welcome and
challenge the turbulence of change—the pain of physical and mental
suﬀering that also is an inevitable part of life. Hence, Tantra is to live
in the balance of these two realms.
By meditating on that Changeless Entity, that deep inner space of the
cosmos, we embrace change, we accept change, we thrive on change in
the form of Shakti, the goddess of transformation, creativity, destruc-
tion, and death.
By meditating on that Changeless Entity, we associate with the
wave of breath that is always connected to the deep spiritual ocean
within. And we know, we realize, from experience, when we become
less agitated, angry, or irritated, that both Shiva (the changeless) and
Shakti (that which always changes), these twin archetypes, are always
alive within us.
Contemplate life as inﬁnite, undivided, ever present, ever active,
until you realize yourself as one with it.
—Nisargadatta Maharaj
We know that when death strikes, when sickness strikes, that this
change is inevitable, that it is Shakti’s nature to change form, to trans-
form, but that Shiva always remains, formless and deeply whole within
and beyond.
We know that beyond duality there is nonduality—that beyond both
the deep subjective I of consciousness within and the objective yogic
energy body that is healthy one day and sick the next, that beyond
those polarities of our being there is only Brahma, only Consciousness.
So, what is Tantric yoga, Tantric meditation? To shift our attention
toward Shiva, toward Purusha, toward Consciousness, by embracing
:c: rui wisoox oi \oca
the energy of Shakti, the energy of Prakriti, the energy of transforma-
tion and change.
Shiva in us never changes, but the Shakti in us always undergoes
transformation. And it is our choice to use our Shakti energy wisely or
to use it destructively. In other words, we practice yoga, we meditate in
order to bypass distraction and destruction and to experience wholeness
and unity—the subtle, changeless aspects of our soul, of our spirit.
Ecstatic devotion to the Divine Mother [Shakti] alternated with
serene absorption in the ocean of Absolute Unity [Shiva]. He
thus bridged the gulf between the personal and impersonal,
the immanent and transcendent aspects of reality.
—Swami Nikhilananda describing the Tantric spirituality of
Shrii Ramakrishna
And here’s the secret, the beauty of this transformation: by becoming
more like the changeless, we can constantly undergo change more grace-
fully. We embrace change as pain and suﬀering and joy more peacefully.
In other words, we do change, we do transform when we perform
spiritual practice. Otherwise why bother to practice or to read and be
moved by the great spiritual masterpieces, such as the Gita? Otherwise
why do Buddhists practice tonglen, mindfulness and ethics if not to
gracefully transform that in us which needs to undergo change in order
to be awestruck by and perceive the changeless?
We do the practice, the asanas, the deep breathing, the counting of
beads, the mantra repetition, to calm down the choppy winds of the
mind, so that we may move into silence, ﬂow toward the breath within
the breath, toward the changeless nature of Spirit, toward Shiva, that
unfathomable void that never undergoes any change.
We do this practice, sometimes painfully, and sometimes gracefully.
But we do it to generate change. And we are transformed by this arousal
of Shakti energy in our body and in our mind. In turn, we are changed
by it, except that part of us, that inner witness, that Shiva, that great
cosmic I, that nondual awareness which never undergoes any change;
that quiet breath within our breath, that witnessing I in the quiet hur-
ricane of our life.
102 saciio noo\, saciio siiiir
Three Ways to Practice Yoga
Do \ou iiacrici \oca to get a ﬂexible body, a bendable brain, an
enlightened spirit, or to achieve a little bit of everything? Either way,
you are not the ﬁrst. Yoga has experimented with all these paths and
expressions for centuries.
But while looking at nearly twenty years of cover photos on a popular
yoga magazine recently, it seemed as if modern yoga practice is primar-
ily designed for the body, for outer appearance, ﬁtness and ﬂexibility.
It also appeared as if yoga is primarily designed for perfectly shaped
white women. Quite strikingly, the covers illustrated that a radical
change took place some time in the late nineties.
Prior to that time, the magazine covers were artsy, the content often
philosophical. But from then onward, the covers featured only attractive
women with serene yoga-smiles and bodies exuding a wholesome allure.
Still, the increasing popularity of yoga, in all its profane and divine
manifestations, is a healthy and welcoming sign. As a young female
yoga teacher told me: “I came to the deeper understanding of yoga
by starting out thinking that yoga was only about physical ﬂexibility.”
She quickly learned that yoga was so much more. She learned that
yoga was about ﬂexible bodies and ﬂexible minds moving together,
moving together toward Spirit.
In India, around two hundred years before Christ, Pantanjali wrote
in one of his famous yoga sutras that the goal of yoga is “the cessation
of mental propensities.” (But in reading his text, you will not ﬁnd any
information about perfect anatomical alignment or sculpted hips.)
Patanjali’s main focus remained way beyond bone and ﬂesh, and to
enable people to reach this goal of spiritual tranquility, he systematized
Ashtanga Yoga based on already known yogic wisdom and practice.
In this comprehensive system, yoga postures, or asanas, forms only
one of eight parts: yama and niyama (ethics), asanas (yoga exercises),
pratyahara (sense withdrawal), dharana (concentration), pranayama
(breathing exercises), dhyana (meditation) and samadhi (spiritual peace).
Tis system, often termed Classical Yoga by Western yoga schol-
ars, built upon much earlier forms of yoga, including Samkhya
:c, rui wisoox oi \oca
philosophy, Tantric (Shaiva) meditation practices, and also on
Vedanta.
Te goal of yoga, said Patanjali, is not just to attain control of the
body, but rather to tame the mind. Te ﬁnal spiritual goal of yoga, he
said, is reached when the mind is free of thoughts, desires and needs.
While Patanjali’s philosophy was dualistic, in the creation philosophy
of Shaivism, or Tantra, the cosmic consciousness of Shiva and the cosmic
energy of Shakti were entwined like the embrace of two cosmic lovers.
Shiva’s cosmic consciousness is inherent in everything, says Tantra—
in the body, in the soul—while Shakti’s cosmic energy is that which
metaphorically takes Shiva by the hand and creates everything, the
body and the soul. Tese twin lovers were also known as Purusha and
Prakriti in the dualistic philosophies of Samkhya and Ashtanga Yoga.
Metaphorically, these “opposites” are two sides of the same androgy-
nous being; two dualistic sides of the nondual oneness of Brahma.
And they were ﬁguratively expressed in ancient art in the androgynous
Ardhanarishvara statue.
Tis ancient Tantric concept of yoga appeals to my contemporary,
ecological sensibilities: everything is one, everything is interconnected.
Where there is energy, there is consciousness. Where there is conscious-
ness, there is energy.
In Tantra, the goal of yoga is explicitly both Spirit-centered and body-
centered. Because Shiva and Shakti are one. Tantric Yoga is therefore a
practice of both earthly balance and spiritual union.
First a yogi attempts to harmonize body and mind, then to live in
harmony with the world. Ultimately, he or she seeks samadhi, or spiri-
tual union—the union between the human soul, or jivatman, and the
Cosmic Soul, or paramatman.
But that’s not always the case. Not all yogis have viewed the body in
the same positive light as Tantra.
Indeed, many famous modern yogis, including Vivekananda, did not
think much of Hatha Yoga, or posture yoga, at all. Tis body-negation
has been common in India since ancient times and is, in part, due to
the inﬂuence of Vedanta, which viewed the body and the world as an
illusion. In other words, yoga has expressed itself in diﬀerent ways
throughout the centuries; some forms viewed the body as divine, others
as an illusion, or even sinful.
Ecstatic dancing and spiritual longing were also integral parts of
some forms of yoga, most notably Bhakti Yoga. Today, these timeless
104 saciio noo\, saciio siiiir
expressions are bursting out of yoga studios, where kirtan artists such
as Jai Uttal, Krishna Das and Wah! combine the sacredly inward with
the beat-savvy outward rhythms of both East and West.
With the help of poets and translators like Coleman Barks, the medi-
eval mystic Rumi is now a bestselling poet among yogis in America.
Tese are expressions of yoga practitioners’ deep search for magic, ecstasy
and otherworldly love.
Meditation practice and classes on yoga ethics are also becoming an
integral part of an increasing number of yoga teachers’ oﬀerings. Yes,
in many yoga studios ﬂexible bodies and ﬂexible minds are fusing into
spiritual union and oneness.
But in studios where there is a clear focus on yoga as a ﬁtness exercise,
kirtan artists are generally not invited. Tis type of body-focused posture
yoga has its roots in the tradition developed about a hundred years ago
by Krishnamacarya, who mixed ancient yoga with modern gymnastics.
Tis new Hatha Yoga tradition, in which meditation plays a minimal
or non-existent part, has exploded in popularity and multiplicity in
recent years in the US and Europe.
Te goal of yoga’s physical exercises in Tantra, for example, was to
create a healthy body and mind and thus a conducive environment
for spiritual practice—for meditation. Te physical exercises are part
of a nested continuum, from body to mind to spirit. Tat’s why it was
emphasized in the Hatha Yoga Pradipika that Raja Yoga and Hatha
Yoga should be practiced hand in hand.
And that is perhaps why B. K. S. Iyengar, the modern Hatha Yoga
master par excellence, said that he wished he had started to meditate
when he was younger, not at sixty-plus.
Te body is thus a springboard from which a self-inspired and sus-
tainable spirit can soar. Many of the ﬁtness yogis and yoginis of today
may not see it the same way. For them, a beautiful, healthy body and
an alert mind is more likely the main goal.
In other words, if yoga makes me more ﬂexible, more relaxed, more
beautiful, so that I can be more eﬃcient, more powerful, more attractive,
why ask for more? Why ask for more, if the body simply is a springboard
from which a dazzlingly successful me will ascend?
Many of the yogis of old, however, did indeed ask for more. Te
intertwined distinctions they made between body, mind and spirit is a
brilliant insight of yoga practice and philosophy.
Yoga teaches us that any improvement on the physical or mental
:c, rui wisoox oi \oca
levels can never be perfect, can never be ultimately fulﬁlling, and will
always leave us shortchanged. Truth is, that perfect body will never
quite be perfect enough.
But, truth be also told, some yogis of old were as extremely body-
negative as many of today’s yogis are extreme in their hedonistic body
positivity. In other words, there is a lack of ecology, of balance in each
of these approaches, in the cult of the Yoga Journal body-sculpting
women as well as in the body-negating cult of yogis who deny the body
through their sickly display of atrophying arms or legs.
Tantra has attempted a diﬀerent approach, and has often walked that
ﬁne balance beautifully by embracing both body and soul, both Shakti
and Shiva, both Prakriti and Purusha, both the inner and outer world.
Te physical realm of our existence is indeed limited. Te body will
ﬁnally age. It may start to ache. Disease may come.
I am not this body, the spiritual yogi would say. I am not this mind.
I am Tat. I am divine.
Behind the sensuous gloss on the covers of today’s yoga magazines, I
do see some glimpses of the deeper, subterranean ﬂow of yogic wisdom
and practice.
In yoga studios all over the world, harmoniums and tablas are placed
before outstretched yoga mats. Some are even dusting oﬀ Krishna’s
urging by doing selﬂess service or social change activities.
Ayurvedic massage and herbs are integral healing modalities of
many yoga studios. Many yoga teachers end their classes with at least
rudimentary forms of meditation.
Tese are all signs of a holistic tapestry being woven together from all
the integrated strands of wisdom yoga can oﬀer. So let these questions
linger: Why do yoga? For the body? For the mind? For the soul? For
the whole being? Whatever our answer, our practice will reﬂect it, our
lifestyle, our talk and our walk. In that regard, there is nothing new
under the yogic sun.
Keeping this perspective in our mind, like a silent mantra behind
silent lips, will keep us more balanced, more honest, more authentically
yogi-like—both on and oﬀ the mat.
As Rumi says, it is indeed important to know what you want. Because,
says this wise poet of ecstasy: “Tere is a subtle truth: whatever you
love, you are.”
106 saciio noo\, saciio siiiir
Three Ways to Enlightenment
Ix iiaiir\, ruiii aii many more, perhaps as many as there are
yogis, but just for the sake of limited space and the topic of this essay, I
will introduce three distinct and inﬂuential philosophical paths within
traditional yoga philosophy.
While doing so, we will look at each philosophy’s unique way to
uncover the essence of yoga, which, according to Michael Stone, author
of the insightful and very readable Te Inner Tradition of Yoga, is simply
this: to teach us “that all forms of clinging create suﬀering.”
However, while all paths of yoga teaches us about the futility of
attachments to our ego: the way our body looks, how much money
we make, how big/small our nose is, etc., not all paths of yoga puts so
much emphasis on the avoidance of attachment and of suﬀering.
Buddha said that suﬀering exists; it has a cause; it has an end; and
it has a cause to bring about its end. While Buddhism emphasizes suf-
fering, Tantra instructs us that the practice of yoga reveals feelings of
joy, freedom, wholeness, bliss, love, awe, expansion, oneness. Krishna’s
sublime stories in the Gita are also about a diﬀerent mind-set: to see all
as love, embrace all as sacred, see all as one.
A yogi, whose life’s goal is to end suﬀering, achieves enlightenment
through detachment leading to transcendental absorption. Tis path
of discernment, this path of calm, focused discrimination is diﬀerent
from the path of celebratory union, the path of sacred embrace as
emphasized in the heart-centered Bhakti Yoga of Kabir, or the ecstatic
Kali-worshiping Tantra of Ramakrishna. Yet, as we will see, all yogic
paths are intertwined like threads in a meditation rug. Tey have much
more in common than not.
Brief outline of three traditional paths of yogic
enlightenment:
Patanjali’s Yoga, or dvaita; traditionally considered a dualist school of yoga.
Adi Shankara’s Vedanta, or advaita; traditionally considered nondu-
alist, or mayavada (the doctrine of illusion/only Brahma/God is real).
:c; rui wisoox oi \oca
Tantra, or advaita-dvaita-advaita; traditionally nondualist; but more
appropriately a nondualistic-dualistic-nondualist philosophy bridging
the philosophical dichotomy between Patanjali Yoga and Vedanta.
Patanjali Yoga and Tantra
Te Classical Yoga of Patanjali is in traditional India also referred to as
Patanjali Samkhya, Patanjali Tantra, or Raja Yoga. Tis is not acciden-
tal. When referred to as Samkhya, it is because Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras
follow and expand upon the tradition of the incredibly sophisticated
philosophy of Kapila’s Samkhya, which is also the philosophical foun-
dation of Ayurveda, India’s yoga-based medical system.
Hence, to deeply understand the principles of both Ayurveda and
yoga, studying the detailed and logical cosmology of Samkhya philoso-
phy is exceedingly instructive.
Samkhya is also sometimes referred to as Kapila’s Tantra, after its
founder Kapila, to indicate its link to early Shaivism (followers of
Shiva) or ancient Tantra. Samkhya is also termed Tantra Shaivism,
and Ayurveda is also characterized as “Tantric medicine,” or “Siddha
medicine,” especially in East and South India.
In other words, while there are distinct diﬀerences between these
important schools and practices, there are many more integrating simi-
larities. While Patanjali followed in the footsteps of Kapila, he again
built upon the works of the ancient Vedic and Tantric (Shaiva) sages
of the past. Most all of the meditation teachings outlined in the Yoga
Sutras, for example, are practiced widely among all yogic traditions.
Likewise, Shankara was a Shiva Tantric and presumed to be the
founder of Vedanta (see Georg Feuerstein’s Te Yoga Tradition ) who
followed in the footsteps of Patanjali, and the Tantric sages of the
middle ages, those naked sadhus who penned the textbook Hatha
Yoga Pradipika. But, in true Indian tradition, he advanced his own
philosophical school, and he was known as a ﬁerce debater and logician,
often debating Buddhist monks.
Te Natha Tantrics of the Middle Ages, who wrote the Hatha Yoga
texts dedicated to Shiva, followed in the footsteps of an old oral tradition
in part recorded in the Puranas, the Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita,the
Tantras, and the Shiva Samhitas. Tese yogis hailed from a fertile Tantric
tradition that in many ways was distinctly non-Vedic and perhaps reached
as far back into antiquity as ﬁve thousand years before Christ.
108 saciio noo\, saciio siiiir
Tis potpourri of ideas and practices spawned a plethora of philo-
sophical sub-schools and traditions with names and founders, practices,
myths and meanings as numerous and colorful as the patterns in an
Indian sari, but according to Anandamurti, Satyananda Sarasvati, Lalan
Prasad Singh, and others, all these schools are in essence Tantric.
Let us take a brief look at these three schools:
Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras
Patanjali’s philosophy (approximately :cc BCE) recognizes the Self
(Purusha) as a transcendental, all-pervading entity and as a state of mind
actualized by a self-realized yogi. Te opposite reality of the Self is the
World (Prakrti) with all its numerous physical and mental manifesta-
tions. Te yogi’s delusion according to Patanjali is the preoccupation
with the world, the senses, the body, etc.
Tus, in his dualistic view of realty, Patanjali encourages the yogi,
by following the eight limbs of yoga, to disengage and withdraw from
the world through ethical behavior, study, postures, breathing exercises
and meditation to reach samadhi, the ﬁnal absorption in the Self. Te
false identiﬁcation with the world is the allure that draws the yogi away
from the inner world of the one true Self.
Patanjali did not promote union with the Self through longing and
heart-centered worship or meditation as in Bhakti or Tantra Yoga.
Rather his way to liberation and enlightenment is to escape suﬀering
via discernment, introspection, and meditation.
Patanjali draws a distinct separation between the Self and the non-
self; it is evidently not a yoga of union. Tis is how yoga scholar Georg
Feuerstein reads him: “Given Patanjali’s dualist metaphysics, which
strictly separates the transcendental Self from Nature and its products,
[union] would not even make any sense.”
For yoga philosopher and psychologist Michael Stone, we have lost
nothing and gained everything with such an attitude. Yoga, according
to Stone, is not an act of unity. Tis turns yoga into a “willful activity,”
he writes; quite the opposite of what Patanjali intended.
Yoga, according to Stone, “means that everything is interdependent…
not something we seek outside ourselves or a willful attempt at union,
but the recognition, in the present moment, of the uniﬁcation of life.”
A yogi on Patanjali’s path gradually discover a deeper recognition
of the inner Self, and eventually realizes, through skillful separation of
:c, rui wisoox oi \oca
truth from untruth, the nondual awareness of the transcendental real-
ity. Hence, the path of duality, artfully practiced, leads to nonduality
and enlightenment. Tis process toward enlightenment according to
Patanjali does not occur through union, but as a process of identity, of
identifying with the transcendental, not with the worldly.
Te strength and beauty of Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras lies, I think, in his
insightful gifts of philosophical detail on the path of discerning what
the Self is not. Moreover, the Yoga Sutras’ contemplative stanzas and
practical insights about meditation are an integral part of many yogis’
daily practices both on and oﬀ the cushion/mat.
Te Yoga Sutras are not an instruction manual in meditation, however.
A competent teacher who can impart the practical lessons of pratyahara
(sense withdrawal), pranayama (breathing exercises), dharana (concen-
tration) and dhyana (focused ﬂow) is thus essential in order to develop
a daily, personal meditation practice.
Advaita Vedanta
Shankara, or Shankaracharya (approximately ïcc AD), was a Shaiva
Tantrika, or practioner of Tantra who, like many Indian ascetics, was
a follower Shiva. He believed in Nirguna Brahma, or Purusha only.
His theories are reminiscent of shunyavada in Buddhism, the doctrine
of emptiness. Unlike Patanjali, he did not believe in the existence of
jagat, or the physical world, and he promoted Gunanvita Mayavada,
the doctrine of illusion.
Shankara’s doctrine was summed up in the following sutra:
Brahma satyam jagat mithya, jivo brahmaiva na parah
Brahma is the only truth, the spatial-temporal world is an illusion, and
there is ultimately no diﬀerence between Brahma and the individual self.
Shankara was a great logician and traveled throughout India teaching
his new doctrine. During his short, thirty-two-year-old life, he managed
to unite the various Hindu sects and to greatly reduce the inﬂuence
of Buddhism in India. Because of his philosophical uniﬁcation of two
seemingly disparate philosophical concepts, atman (individual self ) and
Brahma, many think of him as the most brilliant philosopher, a kind
of St. Tomas of Aquinas, in the history of Indian thought.
As a Tantric yogi, Shankara taught the practices of kundalini yoga and
the esoteric science of mantra meditation. In Swami Vivekananada (:ïo,-
:,c:) we witness a modern exponent of Vedanta and simultaneously a
110 saciio noo\, saciio siiiir
teacher following the eight-fold path of Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, or Raja
Yoga. Moreover, Vivekananda, was an ardent social reformer and not
exactly one to act as if the world was an illusion.
Shankara’s doctrine of illusion undoubtedly has had many negative
social eﬀects in India by enslaving people to fatalist dogmas steeped in
caste, myth and oppression. Yet, in giant personalities like Vivekananda
and Aurobindu (:ï;:-:,,c), both greatly inﬂuenced by Patanjali and
Shankara, we witness a modern integration reconciling the deep spiritual
introspection of yogic India with western Enlightenment rationality
and social reform.
In other words, we see in Vivekananda and Aurobindu a fruit-
ful integration of the dualism of Patanjali with the non-dualism of
Shankara. Quite tellingly, Aurobindu called his yoga Integral Yoga and
Georg Feuerstein thinks it is Aurobindo, more than any other yogi,
who epitomizes the birth of modern yoga in the world. Te millions of
“posture yogis” in the West would perhaps disagree and instead think
of Krishnamacarya as a more likely candidate.
Tantra
If the Vedanta of Vivekananda, or Deepak Chopra—who makes a point
about not being a Hindu but rather a follower of Vedanta—signiﬁes
the modern version of ancient yoga, it is perhaps Tantra, more than
any other form of yogic philosophy, that embody a post-modern and
integral vision.
Philosopher Ken Wilber maintains that the nondualism of Tantra
brings together the inseparable and eternal unity of Purusha and Prakrti
in a “nondual embrace” of fundamental importance to yogic philosophy.
Tis logical embrace seems to reconcile the best of Patanjali with the
best of Shankara, the essence of dualism with the essence of nondualism.
Interestingly, many believe that Tantric yoga represents most all yogic
practice: the science and practice of mantra, kundalini, chakras, asanas,
pranayama, dhyan, etc., as opposed to the Vedic aspects—the ﬁre rituals,
chanting, scriptural study, etc—of the vast body of Indian mysticism.
Written down as philosophy, however, the oral tradition of Tantra
is a relative latecomer in India and is associated with the “Tantric
Renaissance” of the Middle Ages, when almost all of the Tantric texts
dedicated to Shiva—its alleged originator and King of Yoga—were
authored.
::: rui wisoox oi \oca
According to Feuerstein, “By unifying the mind—that is, by focusing
it—Tantra Yoga uniﬁes the seemingly disparate realities of space-time
and the transcendental Reality.” In other words, Tantra uniﬁes the
duality of Patanjali with the nonduality of Vedanta.
Tat is, Tantra seems to bridge the contradictions between Vedanta’s
the-world-is-an-illusion theory with Patanajali’s the-world-is-a-dis-
traction philosophy by exclaiming that both the world and Spirit are
Brahma, and that all is real. Tantra, like Krishna in the Gita, instructs
us: I am Tat, I am always uniﬁed with Tat. I am Consciousness, and
Consciousness made the world.
Hence the use of will, the practice of observation, discernment,
love, are not at all contradictory to Tantra. (Indeed, lest we become
lazy deadbeats, we need to employ our will at almost every turn of the
way in life.) Each aspect of reality complements each other in a cosmic
embrace of spiritual union. Purusha and Prakrti, these universal oppo-
sites of Spirit and ﬂesh are truly one in Brahma, truly two aspects of
the same Transcendental Consciousness. Tus speaks Tantra.
Te biggest challenge for the followers of Vedanta is perhaps to avoid
confusing the intellectual understanding of nonduality with the actual
experience of it. To free oneself from the idea that “I am enlightened
just because I think I am.”
Te challenge for the dualist, on the other hand, is to let go of the
mind and also to perceive the world openly through the heart.
For Tantra, perhaps the biggest challenge is the idea that, since
Spirit is everywhere, therefore anything goes; therefore any behavior
is spiritual behavior; therefore, as we see in so many neo-Tantric
circles, the ﬂesh is hedonistically mistaken for Spirit and indulgence
equals transcendence.
A Common Philosophical Weave
Te truth is, we can learn from, and integrate, all of these philosophical
yogic paths into our own. Dualism is part of realizing non-dualism.
Without a body, without experiencing separation and longing, we cannot
practice the yoga of nondualism in the ﬁrst place. Tus all three visions
are balanced and interconnected.
Although I personally favor Tantra, this impossibly tongue-tied
philosophical vision we may call nondualistic-dualistic-nondualism,
I humbly bow to the rich inner wisdom of all three paths. And rest
112 saciio noo\, saciio siiiir
assured, enlightenment is inherent in all of them, just like the breath
of the sacred is inherent in all of us.
We exist in this world. We are not an illusion. Nor is the world an
illusion, nor does it have to be a trap of the ﬂesh. Both we and the world
are physically and spiritually vibrant, real and present in all our glory.
All of the time! Yet, when we are trapped in the world, we mistake the
unreal for the real, the rope for a snake, and life’s lessons do indeed
become ﬂeeting and illusory.
Te inner spirit of these three paths to enlightenment is perhaps most
beautifully summed up in the koan-like words of the great nondual
sage Ramana Maharishi:
Te world is illusory;
Brahma alone is real;
Brahma is the world.
::, rui wisoox oi \oca
What is Rajadhiraja Yoga?
Nivii uiaio oi Ra;aouiia;a Yoga before? You are not alone. Up
until a few years ago, I had not heard of it either, even though I had
been practicing it for quite a while.
If you’ve heard of Raja Yoga—Vivekananda and many other great
yogis’ term for the Asthanga Yoga of Patanjali—you are half way there.
As you know, Raja Yoga means the Yoga of Kings, or the Royal Path.
And Rajadhiraja Yoga simply means the Royal’s Royal Path. It simply
implies a more subtle, more internalized path of meditational yoga.
If you meditate using concentration and a mantra, you might even
practice part of it.
Rajadhiraja Yoga is part of the practice of pranayama (breathing
exercise), for example. But it diﬀers from Hatha Yoga pranayama.
Suppose you practice pranayama concentrating on your breath but
without the use of a mantra. Tat’s Hatha Yoga pranayama. However,
if you practice pranayama with your breath, the use of a mantra, and
simultaneously concentrate on a chakra, as well as on the meaning of
the mantra, all in one synchronized ﬂow, that is Rajadhiraja Yoga.
Sounds like a complicated practice. But so is playing the guitar,
until, that is, you become proﬁcient in improvising and getting your
ego-mind out of the way, and let yourself ﬂow.
In other words, in Rajadhiraja Yoga we use the body and its energies
(proper seat, or asana, and breathing), as well as the mind, for trans-
mutation and transcendence into the realm of Spirit.
So, in relation to Asthanga Yoga and its eight limbs, when you practice
pranayama according to the principles of Rajadhiraja Yoga, you employ
asana (sitting pose) pranayama (breath), pratyahara (sense withdrawal),
dharana (concentration), and dhyana (spontaneous ﬂow meditation). In
other words, you practice ﬁve of the eight limbs of Patanjali’s Asthanga
Yoga. Even six, if you have an experience of samadi.
Can you do all that while practicing one yoga posture after another
in a studio together with thirty other fast-moving-and-breathing Hatha
Yoga bodies? Only in theory. But in real life it’s not that simple; at least
not if you want to experience the full beneﬁt of the practice.
114 saciio noo\, saciio siiiir
One will deﬁnitely beneﬁt both mentally and spiritually by internal-
izing one’s posture practice through focus on the breath or a mantra in
class or at home, as many yogis do, but such exercises (japa kriya) do not
give you the same beneﬁts or the same experiences as a deep Rajadhiraja
Yoga practice while sitting in lotus or half lotus in deep silence.
Tere is a reason why corpse pose is practiced lying down instead of
standing; there is also a reason why meditation is practiced in certain
asana positions—simply to enhance the full beneﬁts of the practice.
In traditional yoga, time is divided between posture yoga practice, as
in Hatha Yoga, and sitting-still-meditation practice, as in the meditation
practices of Asthanga Yoga, Raja Yoga and Rajadhiraja Yoga. For the
yogis of old, there was a time and place for various kinds of practice.
Mixing everything up, or just sample diﬀerent techniques from the
vast smorgasbord of yoga, like we often do today, will not, according to
traditional yoga, give all the body-mind-spirit beneﬁts yoga has to oﬀer.
In other words, Hatha Yoga, or posture practice, prepares the physi-
cal, energetic and mental bodies for the inner transformation that takes
place during spiritual meditation in Asthanga Yoga and Rajadhiraja Yoga.
An aching, stiﬀ, or tense body is not conducive for deep meditation.
Nor is a mind going wild on multiple cups of coﬀee or being frazzled
from too many rapid, diverse and heated yoga movements over an
extended period of time.
However, deep yoga practices such as Rajadhiraja Yoga are often able
to contain the paradoxes of the body and the mind. Aging and aching
bodies, as well as our restless minds can, with the power of yoga, be
trained by the power of the body and mind and then transcended by
the spaciousness of Spirit.
In other words, we exercise the body to relax, to detoxify, to become
ﬂexible, to enable it to endure. Terefore posture practice is a great aid
for meditation.
Sometimes, though, in deep contemplation, an experienced meditator
may not notice that the legs have fallen asleep or that the left knee is
aching. But after meditation, he or she is reminded that the body could
beneﬁt from a detox, a knee massage and a more regular or particular
asana practice.
When we slow down at the end of posture practice and end in corpse
pose; when we get up and chant before meditation; when we induce
wholeness and stillness and the mental space necessary for the sense
withdrawal in pratyahara, and when we, in sequential fashion, bring the
::, rui wisoox oi \oca
mind into its own essential stillness in harmony with the breath, and
when we focus in on a chakra, the mantra and its spiritual meaning,
then we practice Rajadhiraja. All in one beautiful ﬂow.
So, who developed Rajadhiraja Yoga, and how old is it? Maharishi
Astavakra, while living at Vakreshvar (a place of pilgrimage in India),
introduced Rajadhiraja Yoga and gave the ﬁrst initiation in that school
to a young prince named Alarka. Tis likely occurred some time before
Patanjali (:cc BCE). In other words, Rajadhiraja Yoga is at least ::cc
years old and forms the basis of the subtler, meditational aspects of
Asthanga Yoga as well as the many schools of Yoga and Tantra that
preceded Patanjali.
As an historical aside, it is interesting to note that asta means “eight,”
as in the eight limbs of Asthanga Yoga. Legend has it that Astavakra
received this name because his body was crippled in eight places.
May Astavakra’s crippled body inspire us to overcome our own physi-
cal and mental limitations and challenges, as he overcame his own, and
brilliantly conceived a form of nondual yoga that gains transformational
insights from the dualistic paradoxes of life.
Like so many other forms of Yoga, Rajadhiraja Yoga grew out of
the ancient practices of Shiva Tantra. Shiva is, after all, considered the
King of Yoga in India, and Shaivism or Tantra is the trunk that so many
branches of yoga stem from, including Hatha Yoga.
In their subtle form, the practices of such meditational yoga are
common in both Hindu and Buddhist Tantra. In Hindu Tantra,
Buddhist Tantra, and Rajadhiraja Yoga, the concept of Paramashiva
(Great Consciousness, Great Void) is recognized implicitly or explicitly.
In the body-positive Rajadhiraja Yoga, as in all Tantric yoga, the
body is real, the mind is real, and the spirit is real. Te body and mind
are thus vehicles to express and experience the Divine by transcend-
ing body-mind limitations as witnessed and experienced while in the
womb of pure Sprit.
Tis body-positive attitude is expressed in this passage from the
Kularnava Tantra:
“For the purpose of attaining knowledge, the virtuous person pre-
serves the body with eﬀort. When knowledge aims at both yoga and
meditation, you will be liberated quickly.”
So, the body is not viewed as sinful, limiting, or an illusion in this
type of yoga practice. Nor is it simply viewed as an alluring sex symbol,
as a tool of sensual attention and attraction. Rather it is viewed for what
116 saciio noo\, saciio siiiir
it is, a paradox of pain, grace, limitation and beauty, and all paradoxical
realities can become a sacred vehicle for grounding and transformation.
Pain and illness can give us as much insight as grace and beauty.
While a crippled body is no limitation for enlightenment, a ﬁt and
beautiful body is not a goal in itself. No matter what our body looks
like, it is the temple we have been gifted—a temple in which we may
practice the silence of deep meditation, the translucent source of joy
and peace in life.
::; rui wisoox oi \oca
What the Bleep is Dharma?
You’vi uiaio ruis uii, spiritual term thrown around by yogis for
a while. You’ve heard it thrown around by Buddhists the likes of Jack
Kerouac, who wrote that ultimate hipster book Te Dharma Bums.
You’ve likely even used it yourself. But what really is the inner, spiri-
tual meaning and signiﬁcance of this ancient Sanskrit word? And does
it mean the same for everybody?
Most often, we think of the word dharma, or dhamma in Pali, as per-
taining to the teachings of the Buddha, or to Hinduism in the teachings
of the Vedas. Te Buddha, while completing his teachings, remarked,
Eśa dhamma sanantana; “Tis is the eternal dharma.”
To live according to dharma, it is said, means to live according to
one’s religion, or to live according to universal law.
But since religions diﬀer in so many fundamental ways, how is it
possible that my yoga dharma—which I don’t even think of as a religion
but instead of as a spiritual path—can be the same as your Buddhist
dharma? Or even your Christian dharma? And does it really matter?
Can’t we just celebrate the diversity of religions, of our spiritual points
of view? Can’t we just agree to disagree?
It matters, I think, that we come to some common understanding
of what spirituality, or religion, or dharma is, because as long as I insist
that my belief is diﬀerent, or worse—better than yours—then we’re in
deep trouble. And we’ve been in deep trouble for too long.
When people’s religions, people’s dharmas are threatened, then wars
break out, wars with both words and swords. And soon the religious
blood starts to ﬂow.
And, frankly, at this time in the evolution of humanity, when fun-
damentalist religions are threatening our safety and sanity, we need to
do better than that. We need to ﬁnd a common ground, a perennial
wisdom that can unify us beyond religious diﬀerence, practice and
dogma. But is that possible?
We have already seen that representatives of both Yoga and Buddhist
dharma have the ability to speak a language of freedom and universal
unity, a language that can bring us beyond dogmatic diﬀerences.
118 saciio noo\, saciio siiiir
Vivekananda, the ﬁrst Indian yogi to come to the West, spoke about
religious universalism. He said: “Te idea of an objective God is not
untrue—in fact, every idea of God, and hence every religion, is true,
as each is but a diﬀerent stage in the journey….”
And if we venture even further into India’s past, the Rig Veda, the
world’s earliest sacred scripture stated: Ekam sat vipra bahauda vadanti,
which means, “to what is One, the sages give many names.” In other
words, there’s only one common, universal, spiritual truth, which we
approach in so many diﬀerent ways and give so many diﬀerent names.
Te Dalai Lama says that compassion is that which unites all reli-
gions; that each religion share kindness and care toward other human
beings as a common goal.
But back to the word dharma, for I think it contains a clue to our
real spiritual commonality. What does it actually mean?
Te word dharma actually means “nature, property, law.” Hence we
can say that it is the nature or property of a ﬂame to burn, the nature
or property of a ﬁsh to swim, and thus the dharma of water to ﬂow.
But what is the nature or property of a human being? To seek pleasure,
to seek happiness, to seek enlightenment!
Unlike plants and animals, whose dharma it is to follow the simple
laws of nature, whose dharma is easily fulﬁlled (just look at your dog,
or your cat!), our human dharma is more expansive: we want unlimited
pleasure, unlimited happiness. Hence, say the sages of the old and new
age, our dharma is the search for spiritual happiness, for enlightenment.
If we seek that ultimate happiness the way animals do, mainly through
our simple needs of the ﬂesh, mainly by satisfying our hedonistic needs
for food, sex and freedom from fear, we are following svabhavik dharma,
our animal dharma.
But how can we satisfy our cosmic needs for enlightenment, our
inﬁnite needs for union with God, with Spirit, with the Void, through
these limited means? How can sexual satisfaction give us the ultimate
high, that cosmic realization of our true Self, our ultimate freedom
from samsara?
It cannot. Because we cannot satisfy an unlimited need for pure
awareness, for Cosmic Consciousness, for God, for the Void, through
limited means.
Hence, there is also something called Bhagavat (great) dharma in
yoga, the dharma or path of spirituality, the path of the real human
dharma. Because our need is greater than that of a plant or a dog, we
::, rui wisoox oi \oca
seek ultimate freedom, we seek the great dharma. Te Buddhists call
this path simply dharma, or dhamma.
I think it is fair to say, then, that both yogis and Buddhists share
the same goal, share the same dharma, share the same desire for
enlightenment!
Yes, I know. I can hear the voices of protest: our paths are so diﬀer-
ent, even our ﬁnal goal is diﬀerent. But I do not think so. Our language
may be diﬀerent, our name for that ultimate state of enlightenment
may be diﬀerent, our practices may be diﬀerent, but the ultimate
goal is not diﬀerent. Enlightenment is one for all. And that is our
common dharma.
“All religions are one,’ said the seventeenth-century visionary poet
William Blake. And he was a Christian! Te fourteenth-century Indian
poet-guru Kabir, while ﬁercely anchored in yogic practice, spoke to the
common spiritual heart of both the Hindu and Muslim faiths.
Likewise, Aldous Huxley, who sought illumination in both psychedel-
ics and yoga, found enough common evidence among the world’s mystics
to declare that there is a perennial wisdom river that runs through all
religions. One river that ends in the same universal sea.
And Huston Smith, the well-known philosopher of religions, said: “It
is possible to climb life’s mountain from any side, but when the top is
reached the trails converge.” Te trails converge because human nature,
human dharma is the same: to satisfy our inner thirst for illumination.
Tat’s why we pray, do yoga, meditate, chant, prostrate, breathe
slowly through one nose at a time. Tat’s why we write love poetry to
God all night. Tat’s why we dance and whirl as if we’re perfectly and
wildly free.
But not so fast you say. Tere are too many diﬀerences among us,
too many philosophical and ritualistic divergences that do not converge
in the same dharmic sea.
I agree. And that is both the problem and the solution. “A clear-
eyed understanding of our religious diﬀerences may be the best hope
for promoting cooperation among diﬀerent religions,” writes religion
writer Don Harper.
Boston University religion scholar Stephen Prothero, author of God
is Not One, protests this notion that all religions share a fundamental
goal. Huston Smith is wrong, he says. Prothero also contradicts Swami
Sivananda, who said, “Te fundamentals or essentials of all religions
are the same.”
120 saciio noo\, saciio siiiir
To which Prothero replies, “Tis is a lovely sentiment, but it is untrue,
disrespectful, and dangerous.” He thinks that the only way towards
cooperation is by understanding our diversity, our diﬀerences.
I agree. I agree with both Huston Smith and Stephen Prothero.
Dharma is not either/or. Dharma is yes/and. We need to see and pro-
mote both universal unity and tolerance. Because there is both unity
and diversity in nature. And if dharma represents natural law, the two
wings of the dharmic bird are called unity and diversity.
Or think of it as a dharmic nest. While the sticks used to build my
yogic dharma may point in quite diﬀerent directions than those used
to build your Buddhist dharma, on the inside both nests are round and
whole. On the inside they both hold and support the nondual grace of
the Void, the nondual grace of Pure Consciousness.
Part Four
The Spirit of Practice: Yoga and
Tantra in Daily Life
The Power of Sitting Now
Lixi so xax\ oruii spiritual seekers, I love the legendary little book
by the famous, contemporary German-Canadian spiritual teacher,
Eckhart Tolle, Te Power of Now.
But I love my daily meditation practice even more than the beautiful
and wise words in Tolle’s book.
What’s missing in Tolle’s book, for me, is a personal technique, a
personal method as simple and transformative as those meditation
techniques invented in India thousands of years ago, and which each
day enables so many of us to feel the Power of Now, from our rear
ends all the way up our spiritually inclined, kundalini climbing spines.
What Eckhart Tolle has given us are wise words on pages of bestselling
paper, and, for me, these words are important reminders for living life
between the meditation sittings. But they do not take me to that deep
space of Now in the same way my meditation practice does.
My sitting practice gives me each day a direct pathway into my own
heart and mind. Into that space where heart and mind may act in one
harmonious ﬂow. Like a silent symphony. And I would not exchange
that experience, that practice, for any book, not even Eckhart Tolle’s.
Te Power of Now we achieve while sitting in meditation is often
incredibly blissful. For me, deﬁnitely more blissful than music, art,
sex—and deﬁnitely longer lasting. But not always.
Because spiritual work—such as sitting on a cushion repeating a
mantra tied to the sonic tune of our silent breath and concentrating on
a chakra tied to the sonic tune of our even more transcendent soul—is
not always spiritually blissful, nor even spiritually insightful.
An angry and very articulate Zen monk perceptively wrote about this
in an article in Buddhadharma magazine. Spiritual practice, he wrote,
is “transformative, and this kind of transformation can get messy. Te
Sanskrit term for this is clusterfuck.”
What this wiseass Zen monk means is that meditation—not the
listening-to-relaxing-music-kind, but the kind that’s designed for spiri-
tual transformation—stirs things up. It often creates the perfect little
teacup of a storm in your head and heart, where all the stuﬀ you’ve been
124 saciio noo\, saciio siiiir
repressing your whole life (and from many other lives) may suddenly
come ﬂoating up to the surface of your dark, introverted soul.
Transformative meditation is, therefore, not for psychological sissies.
It takes courage to face and contemplate all the creepy demons suddenly
let loose from the inside out. All those three- and ten-headed “devils” the
Buddha faced under the bodhi tree before his ﬁnal enlightenment—and
we must face the same psychological demons, as well.
In modern lingo those devils are simply all the bad news you see on
your ego-screen while meditating. Bad news about your self-esteem,
your diet, your marriage, your relationship, your job, your family, your
life in general. All those contemporary devils we all know too well. And
that’s one important reason why I think so many people ﬁnd it hard to
sit in meditation, day in and day out; why so many leave the practice, a
few months or years before it really gets to be transformative and truly
and totally fulﬁlling.
You have certainly heard stories about how meditation makes you
calmer, more centered. But did anybody tell you this peaceful experi-
ence sometimes is just the calm before the perfect psychological storm?
When this inferno suddenly hits your conscious mind, you may
not be prepared to face it. And, since spiritual meditation practice
comes without a psychology degree, or a therapist, you may decide to
discontinue the practice, ﬁnally seek a therapist, pick up yet another
copy of a self-help book, or simply continue your less psychologically
confrontational Hatha Yoga practice with renewed inspiration and
vigor. Ten you may say to yourself, “Tis is really all the yoga I need.”
But if you want more? Ten you must face your lousy karma, or more
philosophically correct, your lousy samskaras, head on. Tese physical
and psychological imprints are stored in your pain body, the armor we,
according to Eckhart Tolle, surround ourselves with, the armor of the
body, the armor of the ego, the armor of the false you.
In yogic and Sanskrit terminology, the messy psychological stuﬀ
our armor is built of is our samskaras, psychological imprints from
past actions and experiences. Unresolved and unﬁnished psychologi-
cal business. Our hush-hush family traumas, repressed angers, untold
fears, and secret desires. In other words, all the repressed, unconscious
material Freud said we invented religion in order to escape.
According to yoga, Freud had it almost right. Meditation practice was,
in part, invented, not to escape something, but to transform something,
to transform the sludge of our repressed samskaras, and through sitting
::, rui siiiir oi iiacrici
practice to dissolve this syrupy mess from our emotionally stuck hearts
and soul. Hence, we may think of meditation mantras as microbe-eating
organisms that dissolve the oily sludge from the inner, watery ocean
of our being.
But not so fast. Before the sludge particles are dissolved for good, the
meditation practice stirs it all up and makes it all visible to ourselves,
our friends, our spouses, our co-workers. More visible than ever before.
Tis unconscious sludge is now expressed with renewed energy in the
form of anger, irritability, impatience, lust, jealousy, greed. Or whatever
other dysfunctional malady you may suﬀer from. Hence, the apt term
“the enlightened neurotic.”
Spiritual practice and spiritual growth does not always equal psycho-
logical growth. Terefore it’s a good idea to combine cushion practice
with mat practice. It’s also a good idea to combine meditation with psy-
chological work, with ethical work (yama and niyama), with service and
activism, with devotional practice (kirtan). Simply sitting on the cushion
is not enough. Our whole being must be engaged and transformed.
To paraphrase the famous sage and muckraker Charles Dickens:
meditation can be the best of times, it can be the worst of times, it can
be the moment of wisdom, and it can be the moment of madness. But
one thing is for certain, if practiced properly and diligently, it can be
one of the most honest, truthful, important, longest (and blissful) Now
Moments of your life. Again and again.
As yoga teacher and psychotherapist Michael Stone says: “Tis
takes us to one of the simplest aspects of practice: being honest. Once
we train the mind to see the body as the body, to be with the breath
without distraction, and to stay present even during diﬃcult mental and
physical states, a natural outcome is being honest about what we see.”
Often we don’t see who we really are because we are so wrapped up in
the image of ourselves colored by our mental imprints, our samskaras.
Meditation helps us to gradually gain the insight that being in the
Now is a condition of freedom beyond contradictions and limitations,
beyond our samskaras.
Tis state of inner union or wholeness that comes with prolonged
meditation practice, what many also call bliss, is a state where there is
no need to resolve the contradictions of our life, because all opposites
have already been solved. We are then in that state where everything
begins and everything ends, in wholeness, in union, in bliss, in love.
We are truly in the Power of Now.
126 saciio noo\, saciio siiiir
The Yoga of Fierce Enlightenment
Wuix I was iivixc in Nepal, one of my best friends, a Nepali
shopkeeper, was initiated on the Tantric path of yoga by my teacher,
Acarya Sumitrananda. In order to receive the teachings he had to cut his
Brahmin tread. Unlike in the Vedic tradition, the Tantric tradition as
taught by Anandamurti does not uphold the unjust caste system, thus
my friend had to give up his white “sacred thread,” the main visible
sign of his high caste status.
A few days after his initiation, he vanished without a trace. Some
months later, I learned he had been abducted by his family. “You will
remain an upper caste Brahmin,” they threatened him, “or we will
banish you from the family forever.” With his religious tail between
his legs, he decided to keep his white cotton thread as a symbol of
his superior status in Hindu society. Te only time he appeared at the
ashram after that episode was as an immigration informer. He knew
that some of the foreign yogic monks in training had stayed a few
weeks past their visa status. So, as revenge for his Tantric troubles,
he helped the immigration authorities arrest these Western yogis so
they could be deported.
His family’s dogma walked over his yoga and forced him to abide by
medieval customs akin to slavery. Tese arcane and inhuman cultural
customs, upheld by Vedic cultural injunctions—and even supported
by most Indian yogis—still maintain their outdated stranglehold on
Indian and Nepali society. A similar tradition, which also hails from the
ancient laws of Manu, is reﬂected in the treatment of Indian widows,
who, according to custom are not allowed to remarry but must instead
lead the life of an ascetic. As portrayed in the ﬁlm Water by Deepa
Mehta, many such widows live in ashrams plagued by corruption and
exploitation and some of them end up as prostitutes. According to
an age-old custom, Indian widows had three options: to marry their
husband’s younger brother; throw themselves on their dead husband’s
funeral pyre; or lead a life of self-denial.
Both religiously and culturally, India and Nepal are complex places.
Unlimited freedom, philosophical sophistication and deep ethics live
::; rui siiiir oi iiacrici
side-by-side with cruel bondages and outdated dogmas. You may, like so
many holy men do to this day, walk around naked in ashes, but you may
not practice your yoga freely for fear that your family will disown you.
Tis point is powerfully illustrated in the beautifully shot documentary
Fierce Light by Velcro Ripper. In this ﬁlm, a Dalit woman—a casteless
person at the bottom of the Indian social pyramid—tells the story of
her people. She especially talks about the women, who are often beaten,
raped, and enslaved by men—but without any consequence. All in the
name of the Hindu caste system, which has been oﬃcially outlawed
since Mahatma Gandhi’s time, but which still is widely practiced and
is still silently supported by yogis from many traditions.
Dalits have historically been associated with “impure” occupations
such as leatherwork, butchering, or removal of rubbish, animal carcasses
and waste. Dalits also work as manual laborers cleaning streets, latrines,
and sewers. Engaging in these activities is considered to be polluting
and contagious. Hence, crossing the shadow of a Dalit may pollute the
soul of a Brahmin.
As a result, Dalits are still segregated and banned from full participa-
tion in Hindu social life. Tey may not enter a temple or a school, for
example, and are often required to stay outside the village. Tis plight
eﬀects over :oc million people in India, about :/; of the population.
Historically, a few brave souls have, however, stood up for these
down trodden masses in India, including the famous poet Kabir, the
enlightened Buddha, and Mahavira, the founder of the Jain religion.
My own spiritual teacher, Anandamurti, openly inspired people in the
sixties to marry across caste boundaries. He called these unions “revo-
lutionary marriages.” Tese radical “love marriages” across class and
caste boundaries upset a lot of important people in India. Moreover,
thousands of intellectuals and government oﬃcials started to embrace
his subversive teachings.
My guru also advocated economic change. He talked about sharing
the wealth, and about instituting a maximum wage, not just a mini-
mum wage. He talked about “cosmic property” as opposed to private
property. He talked about the earth belonging to us all—not just all
humans, but also to animals and plants. He called this concept neo-
humanism—the love for all beings.
But spiritual teachers in India are not supposed to talk about such
subversive topics, of course. Tey are supposed to sit peacefully count-
ing the beads on their prayer malas. Not surprisingly, he upset many
128 saciio noo\, saciio siiiir
people in high and important places. Finally, in :,;:, he was imprisoned
on false charges for nearly eight years.
With the help of Amnesty International and attorneys from Europe
and Canada, he was ﬁnally released in August of :,;ï, free of all charges.
Tese attorneys called his trial “politically motivated.” Anandamurti,
on the other hand, stated that he was only motivated by the love of
justice and truth.
Tis is an old, familiar story. Te great sacred activist, Giordano
Bruno, was burned at the stake by the Catholic Church in the year
:occ for being both a devotional mystic and a rational scientist. He
did not want religious dogmas to hold his inner visions and convictions
in rusty chains of superstition; thus, he died rather than giving up his
spiritual freedom. He believed this truth to be so forcefully evident
that he let himself be consumed by the ﬂames of religious hatred. Not
surprisingly, in yogi-like fashion, Bruno also believed in reincarnation.
In the words of Anandamurti: “You will have to advance with the
true spirit of genuine social service, because the very characteristic of
dharma is to promote the cause of welfare. Dharma and welfare are
inseparable. Religion and intolerance have created enormous harm in
the world; they have caused torrents of blood to stain the rivers red.”
In these words, my teacher reminds us that dogmatic fundamentalism
is all around us. Indeed, it is still very prevalent in India, the homeland
of yoga. We hear so much about Islamic fundamentalism, but we hear
very little about Hindu fundamentalism. It is hidden among us yogis.
We often remain silent about the insidious slavery of caste; and too often
we remain silent about the slavery of religious dogma. In service of the
sacred, we must stand up; stand up with the force of ﬁerce enlighten-
ment. We must speak up against such injustices.
So when you see a famous male yogi adorned with the white thread
of Brahmin superiority, I urge you to let him know that you do not
accept this thinly disguised thread of caste diﬀerence. In the words of
Anandamurti: “Te ritualistic diﬀerences in various religions are quite
marked. By accentuating these diﬀerences, medieval and even contem-
porary people have not hesitated to cause heavy bloodshed. However,
in spiritual sádhaná, there is no place for the diﬀerences in nationality,
race, language, or religion. Everyone has a singular dharma named
spirituality, and only this is worth calling dharma.”
We must distinguish between spiritual practice (dharma) and the
dogmatic rituals in various religions. As long as we emphasize the
::, rui siiiir oi iiacrici
diﬀerences between the rituals and do not focus on the spiritual essence
of our quest for truth, humanity will experience hatred, distrust, irra-
tionality, and fundamentalism.
Anandamurti and other revolutionary teachers echo the message of
the perennial philosophy espoused by Aldous Huxley: that there is a
common, non-dogmatic spiritual core in all religious teachings that
represents humanity’s “one religion.” Tis universal dharma is what
yoga is about. Hence, we yogis should say no to dogma, no to caste,
no to psychic bondage, and no to injustice in the name of religion. Let
that be the ﬁerce ﬁre of our yoga.
Anandamurti spoke about dogma vs. dharma in this way: “Te most
detrimental thing for human society and human progress is dogma.
What is dogma? Where there is no logic, where there is no support of
intellectuality, where there is no debate and free discussion… genuine
dharma is based on logic and supported by intellectuality. In the case of
dharma, people are convinced by logic; and people analyze and accept
it after free and frank discussion….”
In other words, spirituality is not dogma. Spirituality is dharma. So
someone else’s dogma cannot crush our dharma, because our spirituality,
our yoga, is free. Dharma can outlive even the ﬂames of the inquisition.
Giordano Bruno’s quiet bravery of embracing both spirituality and sci-
ence in the face of the inquisition is proof of that. Dharma can outwait
the dark shadows of ignorance.
Writer and activist Andrew Harvey, who coined the phrase sacred
activism, says that religious fundamentalism is one of the most pressing
problems in the world today. In India, the homeland of yoga, religious
dogma in the form of caste is still one of those dark, pressing secrets
most people are afraid to talk about.
Te dark hours of the inquisition ended with the rise of Western
enlightenment. Today we need a similar enlightenment coming from
the East. We need more yogis of the East coming out of their caved
closets to stand up for a similar rational enlightenment. Yes, when will
contemporary yogis of the East have the moral courage to speak out
against the outdated caste system?
Te perception of many historical personalities has greatly changed
with the times. Nelson Mandela was once in jail for twenty-ﬁve years
for “terrorism.” Today he is a celebrated statesman. Anandamurti, my
guru, was once feared as a menace to Indian society. As of this writ-
ing, twenty-two years after his death, his work is regularly featured in
130 saciio noo\, saciio siiiir
major Indian newspapers; universities hold conferences discussing his
contributions to economics, linguistics, music, Tantra and yoga. He has
ﬁnally become a celebrated and respected renaissance man.
:,: rui siiiir oi iiacrici
Is Yoga an Art, a Science, or a
Religion?
Yoga as Science
Before we take a closer look at these questions, let us try to understand
the meaning of the word science. Tose who argue that yoga is not a
science use the word science in a rather limited way. In other words,
they subscribe to “scientism,” the reductionist idea that science is only
related to any of the branches of natural or physical sciences. To them,
science does not apply to the other branches or systems of knowledge,
including yoga. But, as we shall see below, the dictionary does not deﬁne
the word science in such a narrow way:
:. A branch of knowledge or study dealing with a body of facts
or truths systematically arranged and showing the operation
of general laws: the mathematical sciences.
:. Systematic knowledge of the physical or material world
gained through observation and experimentation.
,. Any of the branches of natural or physical science.
¡. Systematized knowledge in general.
,. Knowledge, as of facts or principles; knowledge gained by
systematic study.
o. A particular branch of knowledge.
;. Skill, esp. reﬂecting a precise application of facts or prin-
ciples; proﬁciency.
Te communal and personal practice of yoga for the past ﬁve to seven
thousand years most certainly applies to most of these deﬁnitions. Take
deﬁnition number two: yoga is clearly a “systematic knowledge of the
physical or material world gained through observation and experimenta-
tion.” Indeed, this is what distinguishes yoga from being a religion, a
dogma, a belief system, because over thousands of years, yogis observed
132 saciio noo\, saciio siiiir
humans, animals, and the natural world in order to gain knowledge
about the body, the senses, the breath, and the way certain movements
eﬀected their health and well-being.
In other words, the ancient Hatha Yogis were scientists. Tese sages
of old said, “If you practice these kinds of exercises, you will be slimmer,
you will be stronger, more ﬂexible, and best of all, you will be able to
sit for a long time without discomfort during meditation.” Tese yogis
also observed and documented that, “If you eat the herb brahmi, your
concentration will improve; if you eat the herb ashvaganda, you will
gain strength and stamina.”
Tey gained all this knowledge not through belief and superstition
but through systematic observation of their physical bodies and the
environment. Hence, yogis were deﬁnitely scientists. Trough the sci-
entiﬁc eﬀorts of trial and error, they discovered that some foods were
good for contemplation, and others, such as garlic and black tea, were
not so good.
Deﬁnition number three: yoga is a “branch of natural or physical
science” for basically the very same reasons as outlined above.
Deﬁnition number four: yoga is part of “systematic knowledge in
general.”
One of the things that struck me when I ﬁrst started practicing yoga
and meditation was how systematic it was. Te same goes for Ayurveda,
the medical science of yoga. I studied Ayurveda at the California College
of Ayurveda with an engineer, and one of his main observations was
how systematic, rational and logical Ayurveda was.
When I started practicing yoga in India, nobody told me to simply
believe this or that. Instead I was presented with a body of quite ratio-
nal, systematic forms of knowledge. In addition, I was told: try this
out in this and that way, and if you do, you will have such and such
experience. And indeed I did. And millions of others have had similar
experiences. So, yoga is very systematic, very scientiﬁc.
Let us conclude by saying that yoga is also the following: ,)
“Knowledge, as of facts or principles; knowledge gained by systematic
study; o) a particular branch of knowledge;
;) skill, especially reﬂecting a precise application of facts or principles;
proﬁciency.”
Anybody serious about their yoga practice knows quite well that
yoga is all of the above.
:,, rui siiiir oi iiacrici
Yoga is an Art
Just take a look at ninety-three-year-old B. K. S Iyengar in one of his
artfully executed poses, and we soon realize that all yogis worthy of
their yogi pants are artists. Or take a look at the well known American
yogi, Sean Corn, a great artist of both body and mind.
And if you practice meditation, you will quickly realize it is both a
science and an art. Yogic meditation is a science because it was devel-
oped through repeated experimentation and observation, and it is also
an art because in order to do it deeply and blissfully, you must apply
your own imagination and creativity. Or just take a look at a Buddha
statue. I can think of no greater spiritual art than that image, that pose
of deep, sensuous enlightenment.
Yoga is a Spiritual Path
Yoga is not a religion. Yoga is a spiritual path. Te fact is, you can hail
from any religion and still practice yoga. No problem. Why? As I dem-
onstrated initially, yoga is more a science and an art than a religion. Yoga
is an empirical path of body-mind-spirit transformation. It’s that simple.
Some people who only practice Hatha Yoga believe that the rest
of yoga—the philosophy, the chakras, the meditation, the Ayurvedic
stuﬀ—is all about religion. But that is a limited view. Many writers
on yoga say that yoga comes from the religious texts of the Vedas. But
that is also a limited view. We can divide the Vedas into two portions:
the karmakanda (ritualistic portions of the Vedas) and the jinanakanda
(philosophical portions).
Te karmakanda teachings are the oldest portions of the Vedas, and
they contain rituals and prayers to appease the gods, request a good
harvest, etc. Tese rituals are the yajinas, or sacriﬁces—including animal
sacriﬁces—of the Vedic priests, and they are found in the four Vedas
of ancient times.
Te jinanakanda portion, or the philosophical writings of the Vedas,
are the deeply yogic scriptures found in the Upanishads, the Bhagavad
Gita, and the Brahmanas. Tese Vedic scriptures are more recent (;cc
BCE or so) and are a result of a rich blend between yogic and Tantric
practice and Vedic philosophy.
Hence, while the philosophy of yoga is expressed in these more
recent, so-called Fifth Vedas, the practical knowledge, the science of
134 saciio noo\, saciio siiiir
yoga, belongs to the oral teachings of the yogis and the Tantrics, and
these oral teachings originated thousands of years earlier.
Te yogis applied the same rigorous trial and error experimentation to
the practice and science of meditation as they did while developing the
Hatha Yoga asanas. Let me explain: Hatha yoga pranayama is generally
practiced without a mantra, and it has many health beneﬁts. A friend
of mine recently dramatically reduced the symptoms of a severe case of
psoriasis (ﬂaking, itching and inﬂammation of the skin) by practicing
this type of pranayama. No Western medical doctor, the so-called real
scientists, had been able to help him. For him, this kind of pranayama
became a body-mind exercise as it balanced his prana and manipura
chakra and thus his digestive system and puriﬁed his blood.
Te limitation with this type of pranayama, though, as with all Hatha
Yoga, is that it does not induce a deeper state of spiritual awakening and
bliss, at least not in a systematic, meditative way. To do that, you need
to practice Raja Yoga pranayama. Tis type of pranayama is practiced
with a mantra, which makes the practice more psycho-spiritual, because
you ideate on going beyond the chatter of the mind; you ideate on
becoming one with Spirit. And slowly, with each deep breath, you start
to experience the vast inner NOW of silence and being. You become
the breath of Spirit itself; the kundalini, the inner breath of the spine,
and the ideation on the meaning of the mantra, slowly breathe you into
a state of higher consciousness.
Tat is the practice of yoga as a spiritual path. At least that is one
of the many ways in which yogis developed meditation techniques to
let us embrace the inner union with Spirit, which is the goal of yoga.
Hence, yoga is all of the above: a science, an art, and a spiritual path.
:,, rui siiiir oi iiacrici
Yoga: Multiple Pathways to the Path
of One!
Is ruis uiaoiixi a contradiction, a misunderstanding, a philosophi-
cally incorrect statement? Perhaps not. Yoga is not an either/or lifestyle.
Yoga is a yes/and lifestyle. But what do I mean by that?
In the West, yoga is often synonymous with posture practice, with
various forms of Hatha Yoga. In its homeland India, a yogi can be
anyone from a meditating swami to a ganja smoking sadhu, anyone
from an ochre-clad Tantric to a poor, Bhakti-singing ecstatic to someone
practicing yoga in an upper class studio in New Delhi.
In its essential purity, yoga is rooted in its body practices, in its tran-
scendent mental outlook, and in its inclusive spirituality. Yoga is body-
centered, mind-expanding, and spiritually uplifting. Yoga is yes/and.
For Patanjali, yoga was a deep methodology of personal transforma-
tion, which, in its purest essence transcends both religion and dogma.
Tus, you will ﬁnd hashish-smoking sadhus in India, deeply steeped
in religious tradition, reciting Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras along the burning
ghats of Varanasi; you will ﬁnd bespectacled pundits leaﬁng through
his works in Sanskrit in small, dusty rooms. You will not ﬁnd, however,
people dancing and chanting in entranced inwardness to the wisdom of
Patanjali’s sacred texts. His work was much too philosophical for that.
Ecstatic yogis include the medieval poet iconoclasts Kabir and
Mirabai. Te fearless Kabir stepped on religious dogma as if dusty dirt
under his naked feet. Beyond convention, he embraced both Islam and
Hinduism. Tus, today, you will ﬁnd both Muslim and Hindu villagers
singing his songs with equal amounts of devotion. And, as Kabir himself,
who was ﬁercely on the guru path, these devotees are also yogis—they
are yogis of the heart.
Mirabai broke the chains of a loveless marriage and embraced her
ﬁerce love as a whirling Bhakti Yogi in her songs of longing for her
beloved Krishna. All over India, yogis of the soul sing her songs until
the heart wishes their sweet weeping will never end. Until, for some, the
singing ﬁnally ends in an inner trance of Kevala Bhakti—when lover and
136 saciio noo\, saciio siiiir
Beloved are embracing as One. To a yogi in this ﬁerce and sweet state of
Kevala Bhakti, everything is Brahma, everything is experienced as Spirit.
For the great orator, Advaita Vedantin, and majestic meditator,
Swami Vivekananda, yoga was Sanatan Dharma, the great religion of
the human spirit, colorfully expressed in the form of an intellectually
sophisticated and modern Hinduism. He urged us to change, both
ourselves and the world. For another Vedantin, the quiet sage of South
India, Ramana Maharishi, yoga was the ocean of silence within. His
spiritual realization was both a detached witness to the world and a
sharp sword of discrimination that ﬂashed like a beacon of life’s ultimate
wisdom. He hardly practiced asanas beyond his meditation poses; he
did not urge anyone to change the world, except the world within. He
was the ultimate yogi of the I AM.
In America, in sweaty yoga studios, posture yogis, who may never have
seen a live sadhu or been to India, practice with the fervor of Olympic
athletes. Tey speak of their body-mind-spirit practice, yet they may
never meditate, except, perhaps, on their breath when they move. And
move they do, beautifully, artfully, sometimes even nakedly.
Teir body is their song, their body is their prayer. And, at other
times, the body is the biggest part of their ego. Nevertheless, they are
also yogis. Tey are as much a yogi as the chillum-smoking sadhu sitting
by the ever-ﬂowing river of the Indian cultural imagination.
So how can yoga be all that—and even more? Simply because yoga
represents multiple paths and practices. Yoga is practice for the body,
yoga is practice for the heart, yoga is practice for the spirit, and for the
human imagination. Yoga is deep, spiritual intention, deep, spiritual
being in the moment while you are in the ﬂow of doing what you love.
In that spirit, yoga can be music; yoga can be walking; yoga can
be plain sitting; plain doing nothing. Tat is, if you invoke the spirit
of yoga into those prosaic moments of life. Otherwise it is just plain
doing nothing.
In order to invoke the spirit of yoga, the sages developed various
practices. So what distinguishes yoga from other daily activities is its
deep methodology—a science, a practice, and a lifestyle of the body,
the mind, and the spirit. Yoga tones the body, focuses our intention
and expands our awareness.
Intention and attention gives yoga practice the ability to both deepen
and transcend our everyday awareness. If we practice posture yoga and
our attention is both breath and body, we tone the body and align our
:,; rui siiiir oi iiacrici
awareness with the deeper recesses of our mind. Our awareness expands.
Te moment expands.
If we add spiritual ideation and a mantra to that practice, the quality
of our awareness may deepen or expand even more, since the mantra
is our mental asana, and it has cosmic power all of its own. And if we
practice sitting meditation after our mantra-and-breath-focused posture
practice, our awareness becomes more subtle and still, more inward and
blissful. A sacred symbiosis has been created.
In yoga, we employ a conducive methodology and practice to achieve
certain physical, mental and spiritual results or experiences. If you
want your yoga poses to aﬀect your mood and your glands and your
endocrine system more than your alignment, you practice a certain
way, you breathe a certain way.
Likewise, when you meditate, diﬀerent methodologies and techniques
produce certain results. Some practices will calm you, some will ener-
gize you; some will help you focus the mind. Others will help you do
all of the above. Yet other practices may produce a spontaneous inner
magic that transcends all diﬀerences, even mind itself. Te yogi will
then experience unity beyond technique, a sense of spiritual oneness
and deep peace.
Te spiritual consummation of yoga, according to the Tantric yogis,
is union in the realm of spirit. And spirit, by its all-pervading nature
resides in both heaven and earth, and it transcends and includes body
and mind.
Yoga is transformation. At its best, yoga reﬁnes both body and mind,
so that their functions may emulate and reﬂect the world of nature,
of spirit. Yoga is to bring a part of heaven into the world of body and
mind. Or to experience that body and mind are both heavenly. Hence,
the Tantric concept of the body as divine temple.
On some paths of yoga, such as in Vedanta, body and mind are seen
as illusions, as diversions of spirit. Te orthodox Vedantic yogi will
shun the body and the world and anything else diverting his or her
attention from dwelling in the heavenly Spirit realm. Tat is also yoga.
Tis is quite a diﬀerent path from Bikram’s, whose aging yet handsome
personality projects a conﬁdent physicality, wealth and power that is
far from illusory.
So how to make sense of all this? Do all these paths lead to the same
place or are they all as divergent on the spiritual inside as they look on
the physical outside?
138 saciio noo\, saciio siiiir
Some insist that deep, meditative experiences can be as easily induced
while doing asanas or bike riding. Tey insist scratching our butt is no
diﬀerent than having a samadhi experience. I suggest it depends on who
does the scratching. Is it you, or the Buddha? Saying all experiences are
the same is as untrue as saying that you can perform your asana postures
in your mind while meditating and reap the same physical beneﬁts.
Tere are levels of interior transcendence, just as there are levels of
proﬁciency in doing asanas. Tere are levels of depth, levels of intensity
in our inner experiences. Tere are levels of being, or koshas in yoga,
which will determine the level of depth of our perception, feeling, or
experience. Hence there are many types of samadhi experiences, many
types of psychological ecstasies, or trances.
As you practice your yoga asanas according to your teacher and your
style, you will get certain results. Tese results are achieved by follow-
ing the science, the methodology of yoga. Similarly, the methodology
of meditation is practiced on its own terms, in its own realm, with its
own goals. And this practice of inner yoga is also, like posture yoga,
part art and part science.
Te point is, there are many forms of yoga, and they will all give you
diﬀerent results and experiences. If your aim is spiritual realization, then
make meditation and study and chanting your primary focus—daily
and intensely—with asana and a vegetarian diet thrown in for good
balance. If your goal is deep ﬁtness and a wholesome lifestyle, then keep
doing your asanas regularly (and eat your veggies, too!)
Te good news is that we are all yogis! And, in the ultimate spiritual
sense, the path of yoga is both one and many. Just like the colorful garden
of humanity itself! One humanity, many people. One yoga, many paths.
:,, rui siiiir oi iiacrici
Bhakti Yoga: the Cure for Spiritual
Heart Disease
Ix rui ciiar riaoiriox of the Bhagavad Gita and other Eastern
sacred scriptures, it is often said that the gateway to the Divine is through
the heart of love, the path of Bhakti, the path of intense passion and
loving adoration for the Divine.
Poetic giants and mystical geniuses such as Rumi were the embodi-
ment of this sacred path of passion. In the words of Rumi:
From beyond the intellect beautiful Love comes...
And from beyond Love, that One who cannot be
described, who can only be called “Tat” keeps
coming.
But how do we ﬁnd “Tat” in our life? How do we experience “Tat”
in others and in nature?
As Rainer Maria Rilke—arguably one of the greatest poets to be
born on Western soil—wrote in Te Sonnets to Orpheus: “Praising is
what matters.”
It is through praising the Divine in everything that our heart opens
up and expands to dissolve all barriers of duality and separation.
Bhakti Yoga is thus the gracious act of oﬀering of love and gratitude
to “Tat.” Trough loving praise for the existence of “Tat” in all
others, we can connect with the spiritual heart of everybody around us.
Trough an all-embracing awe of the presence of “Tat” in nature, we
can celebrate the oneness of creation. Tat is Bhakti Yoga, the perennial
cure for the aching emptiness we sometimes feel inside.
Te great sages have always reminded us of the importance of Bhakti,
of love for the Divine. Teir reminders cannot be underestimated. My
guru, Anandamurti, used to say that spiritual praise or devotional love
“is the highest and most valuable treasure of humanity.”
And what is the role of this love, this devotional sentiment? “To
transform our worldly existence into the supreme spiritual stance.”
Tis kind of transformation is exactly what our self-obsessed and
narcissistic Western world needs. Despite our many technological
140 saciio noo\, saciio siiiir
wonders, our materialistic culture is suﬀering from a chronic case of
spiritual heart disease. And what is the cure for this disease? Bhakti
Yoga, a daily, transformational diet of divine praise, adoration and love.
Here are a few ways to practice Bhakti Yoga:
Chant your heart away with kirtan.
Play kirtan at home or in the car.
Dance while singing kirtan.
Join a kirtan group at your local yoga studio.
Write love poetry to the Divine.
Write love poetry to your lover as if he or she is divine.
Read or sing the Bhakti poetry of Rumi, Kabir, Mirabai, and
others.
Read the Gita and other sacred books.
Love the Divine in nature by watching the stars at night,
walking in the woods, meditating and practicing yoga in awe-
inspiring places.
Praise your family and friends as manifestations of the Divine.
Eat and drink as if your meal is divine nectar.
Te heartfelt love of the Divine is our most delicate and tender inner
asset. Like a delicate plant, it must be nurtured and preserved. Bhakti
Yoga is to love the world as God and Goddess.
Bhakti Yoga is to cultivate the dynamic harmony between the mate-
rial, mental and spiritual realms. To love and live the dance of opposites
as if all is One.
Tat vision has always been and will always be the sweet song of
Bhakti Yoga. Its melody and metaphors may change from time to time,
but its transcendental beauty, charm and wisdom will forever remain
unchanged.
:¡: rui siiiir oi iiacrici
Diet for a Yogi Planet
“Asx ax\ xuxnii oi yogis to describe their diets and you’ll likely
get responses as varied as the styles they practice. Many traditionalists
see yoga as being inextricably linked with the meatless path, citing
numerous ancient Indian texts to prove their conviction. Others put
less stock in centuries-old warnings like “the slaughter of animals
obstructs the way to heaven” (from the Dharma Sutras) than in what
their bodies have to say. If eating ﬂesh begets health and energy, they
argue, it must be the right choice for them—and their yoga.” –Jennifer
Barret, in Yoga Journal
It might be true that the yogi diet today is as varied as the yoga styles
we practice, but not so in the past. Te yogis of old were consistently,
if not vegan, at least vegetarian.
I think the main reason for this diﬀerence is that most yoga today
is still very body-focused, whereas yoga traditionally has been mainly
spirit-focused. Asanas, diet, pranayama, and meditation have tradition-
ally been practiced for ethical and spiritual reasons, secondarily for
physical health and well-being.
Even though many yogis today claim otherwise, asanas were tradi-
tionally practiced as a preparation for meditation, even Hatha Yoga.
Indeed, in the Hatha Yoga Pradipika, its author, Svatmarama, invokes
the names of many of the sages who came before him. His list of names
leads us to conclude that the yoga described by Svatmarama is at least
contemporary with that of Patanjali (:cc nci), whose inﬂuential Yoga
Sutras were in turn a codiﬁcation of theory and practice that had existed
in India for several millennia.
In other words, I do not concur with those who claim that Hatha
Yoga developed as an oﬀshoot of yogic spirituality in the Middle Ages.
Hatha Yoga, just like Patanjali’s teachings, had been in existence in
India for thousands of years, from the beginning of yoga’s long and
illustrious history.
If we carefully read Svatmarama’s work, we will notice how his trea-
tise incorporated ideas from the much earlier Yoga Sutras, the Yoga
Upanishads, the Puranas, the Bhagavad Gita and even older scriptures.
142 saciio noo\, saciio siiiir
Hence, rather than being a book about the cult of the body, the Hatha
Yoga Pradipika leads the practitioner from the culture of the body
towards the culture of the soul. Indeed, the Hatha Yogis themselves
proclaimed that “without Raja Yoga, Hatha Yoga is useless.”
In India, it is the ancient Shiva and not Patanjali, nor the Hatha
Yogis, who is considered the King of Yoga. Hence, the ﬁrst verse of the
Hatha Yoga Pradipika reads: “Reverence to Shiva, the Lord of Yoga, who
taught Parvati Hatha wisdom as the ﬁrst step to the pinnacle of Raja
Yoga.” And at the end of the verse, we are reminded that all Hatha Yoga
“practices serve only for the attainment of Raja Yoga.” Tat is, posture
yoga has traditionally been used as preparation for meditation, to train
the body and mind to sit still for long hours in meditation.
Terefore there should be no surprise that the yogic canon, the
Bhagavad Gita, is pretty straightforward about what yogis should eat.
Tis popular and sublime scripture teaches us that sattvic foods, such
as fruit, vegetables, grains and milk products, are good for body, mind
and spirit and that this type of a diet promotes “vitality, health, pleasure,
strength, and long life.” Meat, ﬁsh, and alcohol, or tamasik foods, on
the other hand, causes “pain, disease and discomfort.”
One is dearest to God who has no enemies among the living
beings, who is nonviolent to all creatures.
—Te Bhagavad Gita
Some scholars, however, point to the early Vedic peoples and their
culture’s lust for animal sacriﬁces—therefore, they argue, not all yogis
were vegetarians. But other scholars, including yours truly, will point
out that yoga culture actually had very little in common with early
Vedic culture. Te nomadic Vedic people were hunters and herders
who imported their sacriﬁcial practices from outside India. When they
arrived around ,ccc nci, the Indians already practiced yoga, grew rice
and dwelled in urban cities, such as Mehrgarh (;ccc nci), now believed
to be one of the oldest cities in the world.
How do we know this? Archeological evidence points to an early
form of yoga and meditation practice that existed as early as ¡ccc–,ccc
nci, a time when some believe Shiva, the King of Yoga, lived in the
Himalayas in the summer and in Kashi (Varanasi) in the winter.
In other words, since the early yogic tradition had developed inde-
pendently of the Vedic tradition, it had advanced its own peculiar
:¡, rui siiiir oi iiacrici
sensibilities, including an aversion for meat and a penchant for steamy
dishes of rice, chapatti, samosa, and lentils. India was, after all, the rice
and vegetable basket of the world during that time. (Consequently, India
also had the majority of the world’s population, estimated at being only
about ﬁve million people. Like today, only a small minority of these
ancient peoples practiced yoga.)
According to the Puranas, Shiva, the royal teacher of yoga himself,
instructed even the common people to reduce their intake of meat and
wine, what to speak of the cave-dwelling, navel-and breath-watching
yogis. It is therefore safe to assume that, for several millennia, the
ancient yogis and Tantrics lived, for the most part, outside of the Vedic
Brahmin priest culture, and that they were taught to abhor animal
slaughter. Over time, as some Brahmin priests adopted yogic ways,
they also became vegetarians.
Te Buddha and his friend Mahavira—the founder of the Jain reli-
gion, in which ahimsa, or nonviolence, is the cornerstone—were two
such yogi vegetarians. On their path to religious fame in India and
beyond, they became infamous for protesting the Vedic slaughter and
sacriﬁce of animals.
We do know that Patanjali, the great yogi-scholar, emphasized in his
system of Ashtanga Yoga that ahimsa, the practice of non-harming and
nonviolence, is a necessary step toward higher wisdom and enlighten-
ment. In other words, vegetarianism is also an important tenet of yoga,
because of its ethical foundation, not just because it was beneﬁcial for
the practice of yoga. It is unlikely, however, that Patanjali invented
yogic vegetarianism anymore than he invented yoga. Both practices
had already coexisted for several millennia.
As long as we are living in physical bodies we will continue to
cause some harm to others on this planet. So the practice of
Ahimsa becomes one of trying to cause the least amount of
harm. Everyone knows that eating a vegetarian diet uses up
the least amount of natural resources and so causes the least
amount of harm to the whole planet.
—Jivanmukta co-founder, Sharon Gannon, from
Vegetarianism and Yoga
In other words, if we intently listen with our whole being while in the
midst of our yogic asanas, we realize we are connected to the whole
144 saciio noo\, saciio siiiir
earth and her beings, and thus we will naturally choose to cause the
least harm. We will naturally choose to become vegetarians or vegans.
My own experience? I became a vegetarian for ethical reasons ﬁrst.
About a year before I encountered yoga, I walked through a large,
modern slaughterhouse. When I realized I had been eating live beings
treated in such a cruel way, I decided to discontinue stuﬃng my body
with hormone-induced, artiﬁcially colored, dead ﬂesh. After that expe-
rience, Patanjali had an easy way of convincing me that ahimsa makes
total yogic sense.
Te single most important part of your yoga practice is the
strict adherence to a vegetarian diet, a diet free of needless
cruelty, harm and injustice. Ahimsa is not an optional part of
the program, it is the ﬁrst step.”
—Jivanmukta co-founder, Sharon Gannon, from
Vegetarianism and Yoga
So, should yogis be omnivores, vegetarians or vegans? I think the answer
depends on where we most focus our attention. Do we listen to the
needs of our bodies, or do we listen to the more subtle needs of our
hearts? Do we listen to the needs of the Earth, or the needs of animals
or plants? I think the answer depends on how we listen to our bodies,
our hearts and our environment.
It is said that the great yogi Caetanya Mahaprabhu had such a tender
heart for the environment that he rescued plants creeping onto the
road to help them avoid injury by oncoming feet, hooves and wheels.
After embracing body, mind and spirit as inherent and interdepen-
dent parts of the cosmos, countless yogis have, for thousands of years,
chosen the less cruel path when selecting their sustenance. For the
sake of the earth, their bodies, minds and spirits, they have practiced
vegetarianism or veganism.
But it is not an easy choice: Should yogis be omnivores, vegetarians
or vegans?
Contemporary yogi omnivores argue that we have to kill in order
to eat. Others argue that they cannot function optimally without
eaing meat. In truth, no matter what diet we subscribe to, we all
have to kill other beings to survive. Even vegans kill lower life forms
in order to live. Even an aspiring vegan Buddha would have to kill
lower life forms in order to attain enlightenment. So, how much
:¡, rui siiiir oi iiacrici
killing should we enlightened human yogis allow ourselves? A cow
or a carrot?
Te traditional yogi answer is that we should kill as few living beings
as humanly possible in order to stay alive. Hence, it is better to eat carrots
rather than cows, because cows are more complex and conscious beings
than carrots. Consequently, yogis have traditionally been vegetarians.
Which part of yourself do you listen to before you eat? What type
of diet will people ideally have on your yogi planet? Why is it unthink-
able for most people to eat their own pets for dinner but to have no
qualms about eating cows, chicken and sheep from factory farms? If in
doubt about the ethical ramiﬁcations of killing animals, please go visit
a slaughterhouse—then make up your mind!
146 saciio noo\, saciio siiiir
Why do People Chant OM at the
End of Yoga Class?
Oi rui xax\ xaxis for God, OM is most likely the oldest and one
of the most widely used throughout Indian history. OM’s signiﬁcance
as a sacred syllable in Indian spiritual culture is illustrated by this
simple story.
Tere was once a sadhu who owned nothing but a water pot and a
book. Every day, he would worship the book with oﬀerings of ﬂow-
ers, and then he would read the book with intense concentration for
hours on end.
One day, a curious onlooker asked the sadhu what book he was
reading. Without answering, the sadhu simply handed him the book.
When the onlooker opened it, he discovered the book contained only
two words written in bold red letters on every page: Om Rama.
Te sadhu explained: “What’s the purpose of reading many volumes
of books? God is the origin of all sacred books and scriptures, and there
is no diﬀerence between God and his name.”
In the Vedas, we are told: “In the beginning was the Lord of creatures,
and second to him was the Word, and the Word was truly the supreme
Brahma.” And in the Christian Bible, which, according to some writers,
uses the word OM in the form of Amen, it is stated in the ﬁst verse of
the Gospel of St. John: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word
was with God, and the Word was God.”
In other words, it is commonly understood throughout human
sacred history that the idea of God and the word that symbolizes God
are inseparable, that words truly are what they express.
Te sacred sound OM is commonly understood in Tantra as the
cosmic sound vibration that originates, maintains and reabsorbs every-
thing in the universe. What is not so commonly recognized, however, is
that the Sanskrit letter rr, which is located in the throat, or vishuddha,
chakra, is the acoustic root of the sacred OM sound.
According to Tantric science, the ﬁfty Sanskrit letters correspond to
the ﬁfty root sounds located in the chakras. Tese root sounds again
:¡; rui siiiir oi iiacrici
represent vrittis or mental tendencies (love, hate, hope, fear, etc) which
are clustered around the chakras.
Hence, Sanskrit is a language that vibrates our being from within.
Tat’s why Sanskrit is a profoundly spiritual language. Te sonic vibra-
tions and combination of letters in the Sanskrit mantras harmonize
our chakras and link our own individual vibration to the vibration of
the cosmos.
Tat’s the sacred reason for the great spiritual vibrations generated
when chanting Sanskrit mantras during kirtan! And that’s why this
revered sound is often chanted at the beginning and conclusion of yoga
practice and during so many other sacred ceremonies. But how can the
letter rr be the acoustic root of the famous OM sound? Indeed, what
is actually the origin of the OM sound?
According to Tantric philosophy, the physical universe comprises
three elements: creation (A), preservation (U) and destruction (M).
Hence the letters A+ U + M = OM. But that is not the end of the story;
the dot (.) and the crescent that forms part of the OM symbol are also
important. Te dot represents the unmanifest universe; the crescent
represents the principle of transmutation from the non-physical to the
physical universe. Hence, OM is the acoustic root of creation, preserva-
tion and destruction. OM also represents the principle of transmutation,
the devolution from pure Cosmic Consciousness to the physical world.
Even though the sonic sound OM (which symbolically includes the
dot and the crescent) is the acoustic root of this universe, the OM sound
is nevertheless a combination of sounds, thus it requires an acoustic
root of its own. In Sanskrit, the acoustic root of another root sound is
called atibija, or mahabija.
So the letter rr is the mahabija of OM. Hence, from the point of
view of phonetics and the science of combining sounds, the rr sound
is an integral part of the Sanskrit alphabet and the acoustic root of the
sacred syllable OM.
Tere is also a more down-to-earth explanation for using OM as the
most sacred syllable. OM is perhaps one of the most comprehensive,
most complete words to be found, simply by the way it is pronounced.
When pronouncing this sacred word, we combine all possible positions
of the throat, mouth and tongue. You start with A, the root sound,
in the back of the throat without touching the tongue or palate. You
continue with the O sound by rolling through the mouth from throat
to the lips. And you conclude pronouncing the sacred syllable with
148 saciio noo\, saciio siiiir
M by closing the lips. Hence, that is how AUM, or OM, yoga’s most
sacred and complete word, is produced.
In his bestselling book, Light on Yoga, world-renowned Hatha Yoga
teacher B. K. S. Iyengar, describes the psychological and spiritual reasons
for chanting OM. “Te letter A symbolizes the conscious or waking
state,” Iyengar writes, “the letter U the dream state, and the letter M
the dreamless sleep state of the mind and spirit.” He further writes
that in its totality as a symbol, OM stands for the “realization of man’s
divinity within himself.”
:¡, rui siiiir oi iiacrici
Why do Modern Yogis Believe
Brahmacarya Means Celibacy?
Tui riix ioi xixoiuixiss in Sanskrit is smrti—to recollect, to
remember to be in the present moment, now and in the future. In
Tantric practice, one will also remember the nature of the breath, that
the breath is Consciousness. As Kabir said, the Divine is the breath
within the breath.
Tus we may term Tantric meditation “meaningful mindfulness;” the
remembering not only to meditate on the breath but also remembering
that the breath itself is Consciousness; the Inner Witness; the Real Self.
Tis form of meditation has the capacity to take us into a deeper state
of silence and spiritual depth than mere mindfulness. And, when remem-
bering, when having attained continuous mindfulness one attains dhruva
smrti; that is, one experiences continuous remembering. Remembering
what? Te remembering that all objects of one’s attention are sacred,
are divine, are bliss.
Yama and niyama, which includes brahmacarya. Most interpreters
translate this Sanskrit word as celibacy, or total sexual abstinence.
Why has this word been interpreted as celibacy? Yes, why has a word
so deeply mystical and spiritually all-embracing been reduced to the
avoidance of sex? Te literal meaning of brahmacarya is “to remain
attached to Brahma”. Te meaning of practicing brahmacarya is thus to
treat all objects or beings with which we come in contact as expressions
of Brahma and not simply as crude, limited forms.
By means of such an ideation, even though the mind wanders from
one object to another, we are not detached from Spirit. We infuse
everything with reverence and sacredness.
Whether we are eating breakfast or making love, if our ideation is
that our food or lover is an expression of God or Spirit, we are indeed
practicing brahmacarya.
During ancient, Tantric, or Shaiva times, this meaning of brahmacarya
was apparently accepted. Later, when Indian society was dominated by
Vedic priests and Vedic dogmas, fear and inferiority complexes were
150 saciio noo\, saciio siiiir
infused in people’s minds. In turn, people started believing that they,
by leading regular lives, had committed a serious sin, and that they
indulged in activities against brahmacarya. Te monks, who observed
celibacy, were therefore thought to be far more spiritually advanced and
thus could maintain their political hegemony and religious superiority.
Make no mistake about it. I am not downplaying the spiritual ben-
eﬁts of authentic celibacy. I am also not saying that sexual indulgence
is a form of spiritual practice. It is not. But brahmacarya has nothing
to do with abstinence or celibacy. Brahmacarya is a state of being, a
state of consciousness. Tat is the Tantric interpretation and also the
literal meaning of these Sanskrit words. I think it’s time modern yogis
start embracing the deeply spiritual meaning of this word from our
Tantric heritage.
:,: rui siiiir oi iiacrici
Yoga May Be Bad For Your Health:
Seven Ways to Avoid Yoga Injuries
A iiiixo oi xixi recently mentioned on her Facebook page that she
practices yoga. To her great surprise, she received an angry response
from a friend who said that after trying Power Yoga, she got seriously
injured. Not surprisingly, the woman discontinued her yoga practice,
and she is now urging other people to stop this “painful” form of exercise.
Yes, indeed, the wholesome practice of yoga can sometimes be bad
for your health.
Carol Krucoﬀ reported in Yoga Journal that increasing numbers of
yoga injuries are being reported to medical oﬃces these days. Even
insurance agencies are paying out an increasing number of yoga-related
injury claims. Krucoﬀ herself is one of the practice’s many victims.
She “felt a sickening pop in [her] hamstrings” after practicing Utthita
Padangusthasana (Extended Hand-to-Big-Toe Pose).
“Hamstring tears heal slowly,” she wrote, “and mine required rest
and extensive physical therapy. It took me six months to be able to
run again and more than a year to fully extend my leg in Hand-to-
Big-Toe Pose.”
While yoga injuries are not at all as frequent as bicycle injuries
or soccer injuries, for example, they do sometimes happen, and it is
important to be careful. Here are a few tips to prevent injuries:
:. Easy does it. Practice yoga gently, especially in the beginning,
and in coordination with the breath. Te literal translation of the
word asana (yoga posture) is, after all, “comfortably or easily held
posture.”
By gently massaging and pressurizing the various endocrine glands
in the body, the various yoga poses are balancing the chakras and the
hormonal secretions from many important glands.
Tese glands include the prostate and perineum, gonads, testes and
ovaries, adrenals, pancreas, thymus, para-thyroid, thyroid, pituitary
and pineal, all glands that, when properly balanced, positively aﬀect
our physical health, mental mood and spiritual well-being.
152 saciio noo\, saciio siiiir
Practicing yoga too energetically, or too forcefully, may not give the
same physical, mental and spiritual health beneﬁts as doing the poses
slowly, in harmony with the breath, and with ease.
:. Combine yoga with a meditation practice. Yoga postures are
of two kinds: :. those primarily for physical and mental health and
secondarily for spiritual elevation, and :. those primarily for spiritual
elevation.
Hence, many yoga postures were clearly not just designed for the
body. Tey were developed for the mind and spirit as well.
It is, according to Anandamurti and other Tantric teachers, essential
for optimum physical, mental, and spiritual development to combine
yoga exercises with meditation. Indeed, it is said in the Tantric scriptures
that physical yoga (Hatha Yoga) should be combined with spiritual
yoga (Raja Yoga).
,. Listen to the body. Pain is an indication that you should stop;
take a deep breath and be gentle with yourself. Pushing the body too
far may lead to injury.
¡. Yoga is not a competitive sport. Besides—showing oﬀ may not
just increase your ego, it may lead to injury. Serious injury.
Here’s some sage advice from Carol Krucoﬀ: “I learned the hard way
that there is no place for showing oﬀ in yoga.”
So, don’t succumb to peer pressure or to a zealous teacher urging you
to perform a-next-to-impossible pose when you know in your heart
that you are not ready for it. You may soon end up on your back at the
chiropractor’s oﬃce.
,. Pick an experienced teacher. Yoga’s popularity has resulted in a
shortage of experienced teachers and sometimes teachers with inad-
equate training are being hired at a studio. “Even new graduates from
highly reputable teacher-training programs often lack experience,”
wrote Krucoﬀ. Indeed, this potentially hazardous combination—new
student and inexperienced teacher—is one of the leading causes of
“injury-overzealousness.”
o. Know the weakest links. Te lower back, knee and neck are usually
the parts of the body that are injured the most during yoga practice.
If you are a couch potato, trying to sit in lotus position or do head-
stand the ﬁrst time you practice yoga is deﬁnitely not advisable!
;. Accidents do happen. A few years ago, I tore my meniscus while
falling sideways in the bed of my friend’s pick-up truck when it jerked
into motion.
:,, rui siiiir oi iiacrici
For a long time, I had pain in my meniscus when I sat in medita-
tion. Too immersed in my mind and spirit, I did not listen to my body.
Ten suddenly one day bending down to pick something up from
the ﬂoor, my knee went out. Te pain was excruciating, and the healing
process took a painstakingly long time.
For nearly two years, I was unable to perform my asana postures prop-
erly and also unable to sit in siddhansana (half lotus) during meditation.
Our bodies change with age. Sometimes we sleep improperly, or we
slack oﬀ on our practice and become less ﬂexible. Suddenly the body
says “pop.”
So, once again, listen to the body.
Listen carefully. Treat it gently. One yoga pose at a time. And remem-
ber, you are not doing yoga for anybody but your own body, mind
and soul.
154 saciio noo\, saciio siiiir
You Are Already Enlightened! True
or False?
You uavi uiaio ir many times. You have heard it from New Age
gurus. You have heard it from contemporary nondual teachers on the
popular lecture circuit. You have heard it from Indian gurus. You have
also heard it from some Indian anti-guru gurus.
You have heard that you are already enlightened. You have heard you
have already arrived. All it takes is to put your attention to that part of
you which is already enlightened, and voila, you are home free in your
inner state of everlasting nondual bliss.
Some New Agers even say: it does not matter if you are ignorant
or enlightened, it’s all the same. Samsara or nirvana—it’s all the same
enlightened breath. No matter what, you have always been in an ever-
present state of enlightened arrival.
It really sounds great. It really sounds convincingly plausible. But is it?
In other words, is instant enlightenment really that easy? Or is it more
truthful to say, as they do in the ﬁnancial world, “if the deal sounds too
good to be true, it really is too good to be true?”
To cut to the chase, straight to the vegan substance of the matter: if
yoga philosophy is our guide, do any of these statements make sense?
Enlightenment is a complicated term carrying a lot of historical
and psychological baggage. For starters, many people who claim the
high hat or turban of enlightenment have displayed many less than
enlightened personality traits. Habits such as alcoholism, smoking
and sex with students have been explained away as part of the crazy
wisdom of the enlightened soul, who displays such ﬂamboyant ten-
dencies to impart to the students some secret teachings beyond their
rational understanding. Te wilder the sex, the more crazy wisdom
the teacher displays.
In some Left-hand Tantric and Buddhist schools, there may have been
some genuine sages who ﬁt this category, but it is impossible to know
as their behavior transcends ethical, social and psychological boundar-
ies. Hence, when some teachers leave a trail of wounded women and
:,, rui siiiir oi iiacrici
generally confused students in their wake, it is diﬃcult to vouch for
their “enlightened behavior.”
Ten there are “enlightened” teachers who, as Yogananda said, are
considered saints, because “a saint is a sinner who never gives up.” In
other words, they are genuine adepts and teachers with genuine human
ﬂaws and humble hearts walking the potholed path toward sainthood,
toward enlightenment.
Ten there are those like my own teacher, Anandamurti, who deﬁes
categories, who are both giant intellectuals (he authored more than
three hundred books on everything from Tantra to economics to yoga
psychology, and he composed more than ﬁve thousand Indian classi-
cal songs) and humble yogic sages who are walking encyclopedias of
wisdom and sitting saints of spiritual eﬀulgence (he revived dozens of
Tantric meditation practices and wrote perhaps the ﬁrst complete set
of Sanskrit yoga sutras since the Middle Ages).
Ten there are those sages, like Ramana Maharishi, who are not
famous for their intellectual erudition or contributions to music or
science but simply for their eﬀulgent transcendence and genuine love-
hearts of quiet beatitude.
Outwardly, enlightenment is not a plateau of spiritual arrival, a
mountain top of psychological traits that looks the same to all who
look for the signs of recognition. Only inwardly are the signs the
same.
Enlightenment is, after all, an inner place of soul awareness, unfettered
by outer accomplishments, a place of silent and constant all-pervading
bliss in a world of constant change. And, I believe, there are very few
who have arrived here. Tere are very few Einsteins of yoga, indeed.
Even so, according to yogic scriptures, we all have the potential to arrive,
to let the mystery of that sacred space be revealed to our inner sight.
Most importantly, glimpses of insight, glimpses of enlightenment are
available to us all—all day long.
It is very much in harmony with yoga philosophy, in fact, to say that
all human beings have the potential for enlightenment. Why? Because
Consciousness, or Brahma, the enlightened awareness is ever present.
It is the ground of being, it is the core awareness of our soul, the ever-
present witness of our mind; the I AM of our being.
Using diﬀerent philosophical terms, Krishna spoke of it, Patanjali
preached it, Ramana Maharishi lived it, and Nisargadatta Maharaj
seemed to breathe its essence with every word.
156 saciio noo\, saciio siiiir
According to the yoga scriptures, we require only three practices to
arrive in that enlightened state: chanting the name of the Divine; think-
ing of the Divine, meditating on the Divine. It’s that easy.
Tey all say it’s that easy, right?
Wrong.
Anandamurti, my guru, said: “struggle is the essence of life” and
“love is all there is.” Practiced together, these two quotes are no longer
contradictory; they teach us how spiritual practice creates a beautiful
and intense friction in the mind, a one-pointed spark that illumines
us from within, and when, during intense meditation, during intense
inquiry, or contemplation, this spark reaches the heart, all we feel is
love. All we feel is the ojas, the vitality of the soul.
“When the Guest is being searched for, it is the intensity of the long-
ing for the Guest that does all the work. Look at me, and you will see
a slave of that intensity.” –Kabir
In sum, the potential for enlightenment is available to all, because
it is the ground of everyone’s being, but enlightenment is not simply
to know this intellectually, enlightenment is realizing it with our
whole being.
Before Eckhart Tolle wrote his nondual bestseller Te Power of Now,
he sat on a park bench meditating for months on end; before that he
was severely depressed. People took him for a crazy fool. In other words,
he spent a long time suﬀering in the dual realm before he glimpsed
there was a way out of his spiritual nightmare, a way out of his feeling
trapped in the dark night of his soul.
If we read Tolle’s book thinking that we will soon arrive at enlighten-
ment just by reading it, just by thinking about his teaching a few times
a day, just by thinking about the idea that we already are enlightened,
then we are not quite ready to do the work, the struggle, the sadhana.
We are not ready to go through the same intense seeking that Tolle
himself went through.
Most of us seem to want instant gratiﬁcation. But true spiritual
practice is quite the opposite of instant gratiﬁcation. It’s intensely and
radically diﬀerent.
Just think Nisargadatta Maharaj. To be able to speak the words of
wisdom in that ,,c-page masterpiece of a book, I Am Tat, he spent
years meditating ceaselessly under the tutelage of a guru. In other words,
he was a ﬁerce meditator for eighteen-plus hours a day for years before
he could say (and truthfully mean):
:,; rui siiiir oi iiacrici
“You are already perfect. What you seek is to express in action what
you are. For this you have a body and a mind. Take them in hand and
make them serve you…Go for it resolutely.”
What I am getting at is this: we need to go for it resolutely, just like
Ravi Shankar. To become Ravi Shankar, the world famous classical
maestro, he practiced for years for eight to twelve hours a day on his
sitar. For master Iyengar to become the Hatha Yoga genius that he is,
he molded his body and mind for hours on end, day in and day out.
Why would it be any diﬀerent for someone who trains his or her mind
to become one with Spirit?
Perfection in body and mind takes practice, intense practice. Tere
is simply no way around it. Instant enlightenment is only possible
after years, even life times, say the yoga scriptures, of prolonged
and intense practice. Terefore it’s no longer instant; it’s a gradual
unfolding into ever-present origin, into ever-present awareness. An
ever-present unfolding into the awareness of that which we already
are. All of the time.
And what is this enlightened state of mind, this spiritual love?
“Kabir will tell you the truth: this is what love is like: suppose you
had to cut your head oﬀ and give it to someone else, what diﬀerence
would that make?” —Kabir
Tat is, the sages walk into death’s teeth with the same detached
attitude as they have when changing a shirt. What is this body, anyway,
this head? Simply a container for a wandering, eternal soul!
We are divinely enlightened all of the time, because that is the
ground of our being. Like oxygen, it’s ever present in our blood. But if
we intellectually take that for granted, it is similar to the way we take
it for granted that our oxygenated blood is keeping us alive. Which
is to say: we are simply oblivious. It’s the same as being unconscious.
Unaware. And enlightenment is the opposite—it means to wake up
from unconsciousness, from oblivion.
In other words, thinking about enlightenment, or contemplating
the great wisdom of the Gita and the Upanishads, even to be awed to
tears by those same words, is not the same as actually experiencing
enlightenment.
“Te sacred books of the East are nothing but words. I looked
through their covers one day sideways. What Kabir talks of is only
what he has lived through. If you have not lived through something,
it is not true.” —Kabir
158 saciio noo\, saciio siiiir
Enlightenment is such a ﬁercely one-pointed state of mind that
Ramana Maharishi was completely oblivious to the world for long
periods of time. Tat is, until he found his balance and this world and
the next became one seamless being, like water ﬂowing into water, like
butter hidden in the whiteness of milk.
Tinking we have arrived is being caught in a subtle intellectual game
of make-believe—the mind thinking it is what it is not. And enlight-
enment is not at all about thinking or believing we are enlightened.
Rather, it is a state beyond thinking, beyond belief.
In his small classic book, Coming Home: Te Experience of Enlightenment
in Sacred Traditions, Lex Hixon describes Ramana Maharishi as a person
who achieved “natural enlightenment;” someone who after several near-
death experiences entered a state of natural, nondual awareness. He
would eventually be drawn, like a spiritual moth to the source of light,
to a Shiva temple on Mount Arunachala where his “mood of unity con-
sciousness” would become an enduring, twenty-four-seven experience.
Is it easy to experience and to maintain this state of natural
enlightenment?
“Precisely because unsupported by intellectual or emotional articula-
tion, [this state] can be painfully diﬃcult to sustain. Constant vichara
[the inquiry meditation taught by Ramana] resembles the attempt to
remain awake for days at a time. Te sleepiness that overwhelms us in
this attempt is distraction from the source of awareness by the various
objects or structures of awareness. Tis path of staying awake to primal
awareness, which Ramana characterized as most direct and simple, is
perhaps the most demanding of all.”
Not only is vichara meditation the most demanding practice, all
authentic spiritual practices are the most demanding of all. Each one.
Tat is, all spiritual practice aiming at enlightenment involves an inten-
sity of focus normally reserved for mad artists, acrobats, and daredevils.
In other words, to be abnormally awake, we need an insane drive for
uncertainty, an inner thrill seeker’s love of the unknown. Otherwise the
magnetic pull of “real life’ will simply be too strong. To stay in touch
with our enlightened self, that part of us which we always and truly are
at all times, is as intense a practice as trying not to fall asleep for days
on end. Tat is, until that practice becomes natural, becomes the very
breath of our being.
So, yes, it is true that we all have the capacity for enlightenment,
but it is not at all true that having this capacity means that we all are
:,, rui siiiir oi iiacrici
already enlightened. What matters is to have the spiritual desire and
stamina to remain awake to the intensity of natural awakening. One
breath, one mantra, one asana at a time.
In that state “water” and “wave” are the same thing. In that state
“inside” and “outside” are the same thing. In that state “body” and
“spirit” are the same thing.
When we are intensely seeking Sprit in our practice, Spirit reveals
itself in our body, in our very soul. Often instantly and unexpectedly!
“When you really look for me, you will see me instantly—you will
ﬁnd me in the tiniest house of time. Kabir says: Student, tell me, what
is God? He is the breath inside the breath.” —Kabir
160 saciio noo\, saciio siiiir
Ten Simple Secrets to a Great
Meditation Practice
:. Cool body, cool mind.
Before meditation, clean your body and mouth by taking a bath,
gargling, etc. If you meditate immediately after taking bath, your body
and mind will feel fresh and awake. During the day or evening, you
may take a yogic half bath by cooling arms, face, navel, neck and feet
with cool water. Also cleanse the mouth and nose with water.
:. Sacred space, silent mind.
Sit on a meditation blanket or pillow made of wool or any other
non-conductive material. Keep one blanket that is only used for your
personalmeditation. Use a wool blanket, because wool is a good insu-
lator from the electrical currents in the earth. Create a sacred pitha in
your place of spiritual practices by only using it for meditation or study
of spiritual scriptures. Do not meditate on your bed, as it will tend to
make you sleepy. Keep one room, or at least part of a room, where there
is no activity except meditation. It need not be a large space—three to
four square feet in a corner is suﬃcient. By doing your daily medita-
tion there, you will gradually create a strong, spiritual vibration, so that
merely sitting there will elevate your mind.
,. Straight spine, concentrated mind.
Although meditation is relaxing, it is not the same as relaxation, so
maintain alertness by sitting with a straight spine. When your spine is
completely straight, it can carry more easily the spiritual energy of the
kundalini. By raising your head high and sitting erect, your mind will
be alert and awake. Relaxing your back somewhat, allowing your spine
to curve even a little, will likely cause your mind to become drowsy
and wander.
¡. Slow breath, deep soul.
Breathe slowly and deeply. Yogic and Tantric scriptures state that
controlling the breath is the key to controlling the prana (vital energy
of the body), and controlling the prana is the key to controlling the
mind. Do not hold your breath or strain, but allow your breathing to
:o: rui siiiir oi iiacrici
naturally become slower and deeper. Tis will gradually induce a deeper
and deeper state of calm, concentration and bliss.
,.Sacred books, sacred spirit.
Maintain spiritual ﬂow by reading spiritual books daily.
o. Open eyes, focused mind.
Repeat your mantra or sing kirtan as much as possible throughout
the day. Repeating your mantra with your eyes open is called ardha
iishvara pranidhana, or half meditation; it gives the beneﬁts of mantra
repetition without the full beneﬁts of closing and stilling all the sensory
and motor organs. It is not a substitute for full meditation, but it will
maintain the vibration of your mantra in the mind, and thus will give
you deeper meditation when you do sit.
;.Mantra dance, mantra ﬂow.
Dance kirtan daily by singing loudly. When we dance kirtan before
meditation all our sensory and motor organs become stimulated with
the spiritual wave of the mantras. Let yourself go!
ï.Lonely space, silent mind.
Perform meditation in a quiet and lonely place in the forest, moun-
tains or by the ocean on a regular basis.
,. Spiritual friends, spiritual ﬂow.
Enjoy satsang (the spiritual company of friends) as often as possible.
To be in the company of other yogis sharing experiences and stories
helps in keeping our mind in a spiritual ﬂow.
:c. Hatha yoga for mind and spirit.
Perform asanas daily. Practicing yoga postures daily is essential in
maintaining healthy glands and balanced secretions of hormones. Slow
asana postures, breathing slowly and holding the breath at particular
intervals, is the most conducive yoga practice to meditation. (Hot and
fast ﬂowing yoga is not!) Te gradual ﬂexing of the body that takes
place during asanas helps greatly in sitting motionlessly in meditation
for longer periods.
162 saciio noo\, saciio siiiir
Twelve Ways to Meditate Like a
(Real) Yogi
Wu\ oo so iiw American yogis practice meditation? And, if they
do, why do they often practice Buddhist meditation? Why do so few
American yogis know what Asthanga Yoga meditation is all about?
Because very few yoga teachers actually know how to teach the
meditation techniques mentioned in the Yoga Sutras.
American yogis may know the philosophy of Asthanga Yoga; they
may have read the Yoga Sutras many times, but when they want to learn
meditation, they often end up learning Buddhist meditation. Why?
Because very few American yoga teachers know how to teach the
meditation techniques Patanjali outlined in the Yoga Sutras.
Moreover, the Yoga Sutras is not an instruction manual in meditation.
Te meditation techniques integral to the eight limbs of Patanjali’s
Asthanga Yoga are still largely taught personally by a guru and for free
in the old Tantric fashion. Tat is also why so few in the West know
how to teach them.
Here is a list of the most common and classical meditation styles
integral to Asthanga Yoga, Kriya Yoga or Tantra Yoga. Tis list is not an
instruction manual, but it gives you an idea of how they are practiced
and what some of their beneﬁts are.
:) Sadhana: a general Sanskrit term for spiritual practice or medita-
tion. Sadhana means to make an eﬀort, a sustained spiritual endeavor,
to perform spiritual practices daily. In a sense, this term is synonymous
with the English word meditation and may refer to many diﬀerent
practices; the whole shebang of yogic meditation styles.
:) Dhyan Mantra: A Sanskrit verse listing the attributes of a deity
and used to visualize that deity in meditation.
,) Pranayama: the process of controlling or regulating the breath or
prana and thereby increase concentration and intuition.
Hatha Yoga pranayama is generally performed without ﬁxing
the mind in a certain chakra and without Dhyan or repetition of
a mantra.
:o, rui siiiir oi iiacrici
Yudhistira pranayama, which is commonly performed in Tantra, is
performed while concentrating on a chakra, repeating a mantra and
ideating on Supreme Consciousness/God/Sprit. Pranayama is the fourth
limb of Asthanga Yoga.
¡) Pratyahara: a yogic practice of withdrawing the mind from the
physical senses and the mind itself in order to experience deep concen-
tration and peace during meditation.
Pratyahara is the ﬁfth limb of Asthanga Yoga.
In Tantra Yoga there are three common forms of Pratyahara:
A) Bhuta Shuddhi: a process of withdrawing the mind from the
external world.
B) Asana Shuddhi: a process of withdrawing the mind from bodily
sensations and concentrating the mind in a chakra.
C) Citta Shuddhi: a process of withdrawing the mind from thoughts
and meditating on a spiritual idea, form, or mantra.
,) Dharana: concentration; ﬁxing the mind in a certain point or chakra
during meditation while repeating a mantra or performing visualization.
Dharana is the sixth limb of Asthanga Yoga.
o) Dhyan: advanced meditation; meditation on Supreme
Consciousness/God/Spirit; unbroken ﬂow of mind moving toward
union with Supreme Consciousness/God/Spirit. Tis practice is also
common in Buddhist Tantra and is the seventh limb of Asthanga Yoga.
;) Chakra Niyantrana: a speciﬁc meditation technique used to con-
trol the chakras.
ï) Chakra Shodana: a speciﬁc meditation technique used to purify
the various chakras.
,) Madhuvidya: often termed “the sweet science; using a mantra with
ideation on Supreme Consciousness/God/Spirit before performing an
action, and thus making the action free of karmic reactions.
:c) Madhya Sadhana: a system of Tantric meditation used to stimu-
late the production of amrita, an intoxicating hormone from the pineal
gland.
::) Maethuna Sadhana: a system of Tantric meditation to control
the kundalini energy.
::) Samadhi: the ﬁnal result of meditation; absorption of the mind
in Supreme Consciousness/God/Spirit; union with same; various stages
of spiritual absorption and bliss; a natural attainment and state of
mind as a result of long term meditation practice; the eighth limb of
Ashtanga Yoga.
164 saciio noo\, saciio siiiir
Te ﬁve limbs of Asthanga Yoga mentioned above represents vari-
ous forms of yogic or Tantric meditations. Te three remaining limbs
of Asthanga Yoga are :) Yama (social ethics), :) Niyama (personal and
social ethics) and ,) Asanas (physical postures, or Hatha Yoga, for health,
well-being and meditation).
:o, rui siiiir oi iiacrici
Why are People Afraid of the
Tantric Guru?
To xax\ siiiiruai siixiis in the West today, the Guru is a relic
from the past. Apart from having a yoga teacher at a studio, most of
us do not want to be spiritually beholden to anyone but ourselves, our
friends and community.
Te Guru in Yoga
Troughout the history of yoga, however, the authentic guru has often
been regarded as an essential spiritual guide. In yoga, the genuine spiri-
tual master is one whose mind is the embodiment of spiritual eﬀulgence,
one whose personality is inexpressible, mysterious and powerful, one
who is always in a state of natural, intoxicated bliss.
Troughout human history, there have lived but a few such illumi-
nated beings, such God-like humans in ﬂesh and blood, whose teachings
resonate with the perennial wisdom of all sages of the past.
Tese “Einsteins of consciousness” hold the initiatory secrets to
reveal Spirit, bring down spirituality on earth, and unravel the serenity
of enlightenment. Such beings are the living testament of a spiritual
lineage as old as civilization itself.
As the word connotes in Sanskrit, a guru is that being who, by dint
of his or her enchanted spiritual genius, is able to help us “dispel dark-
ness,” to “remove ignorance” from our hearts and minds.
In other words, a guru (gu+ru= dispeller of darkness) is the one who
removes the veil of existence and lets us see the true face of reality. Te
guru is the one who helps us move from the path of avidya to the path
of vidya, from the path of ignorance to the path of knowledge.
Since there is much skepticism, controversy and misunderstanding
about gurus in the West today, it is important to understand in essence
who the guru actually is.
In Tantra it is said that the quintessential guru is beyond physical form:
brahmaeva gururekah naparah—the guru is none other than Brahma,
166 saciio noo\, saciio siiiir
no one else. In other words, your guru’s form and personality, no matter
how beautiful and great, is not the guru. God is ultimately the only guru.
All great masters have clearly understood this. Jesus Christ explained
this in his saying, “I and my Father are One.”
Lord Buddha explained this with the utterance, “My thoughts are
always in the Truth. For lo! My Self has become the Truth.”
And Lord Krishna when he said, “I am the goal of the wise man,
and I am the way.”
Although great world teachers, such as Shiva, Krishna, Buddha,
Jesus, and others, have been distinct historical personalities with distinct
physical bodies and explicit sets of esoteric teachings, their spiritual
consciousness was attuned to the One God of all, the One Formless
Guru of us all.
Tus, the manifestation of the physical, historical guru is an indis-
pensable gateway to the Divine. And they remain so, even after they
are physically no longer with us, for it is their timeless Being and their
Divine Presence that we venerate and love.
Do You Really Need a Guru?
Tere is no absolute need to have a physical guru in your life. You
may, for example, feel devotion for a great spiritual master who has
already left his or her body. What matters is your love for that master
and your ability to internalize the master’s teachings and extraordinary
state of consciousness.
When Rumi’s guru, Shams, suddenly disappeared one day, Rumi
went looking for him. After years of searching all over, one day in
Damascus, Rumi realized Shams was within him. Tere was no longer
any need to search in the world for his guru. Rumi had himself become
the embodiment of the guru and his teachings.
What is a Guru, Anyway?
If your goal is to ﬁnd a guru, here are four important insights to keep
in mind:
:. Tere are various kinds of gurus. Many so-called gurus who have
arrived in the West are teachers and not authentic, self-realized gurus.
And, unfortunately, some of these teachers do not deserve the uncon-
ditional veneration bestowed upon them.
:o; rui siiiir oi iiacrici
:. If the teachings of a not-so-enlightened teacher belong to a genuine
spiritual lineage, his or her teachings will still beneﬁt you. Hence, it is
important to be devoted to the practice and the teachings while also
being a discerning disciple.
,. While there have been many great sages and gurus throughout
history, there has only been a few mahagurus. A so-called great guru,
a mahaguru is a human being whose consciousness remains a bridge
between this world and the spiritual world. Forever awake, the mah-
agurus are walking gods and goddesses whose consciousness is a door
always ﬂung open into inﬁnite awareness.
¡. In Tantra, there is the concept of Taraka Brahma—which literally
means “the bridge between the unmanifest and the manifest worlds.”
Taraka Brahma exists at the tangential point between these two worlds.
In Tantra, the mahaguru and Taraka Brahma are synonymous; they are
the historical gateways to the Divine.
Gurus and Ethics
Great gurus lead lives imbued with an impeccable spiritual ethics.
While the Romans and the priests of ancient Palestine felt justiﬁed
attacking Jesus and his inspired followers for political reasons, they were
unable to ﬁnd any ﬂaws in his personal morality.
Likewise, after years of opposition against Shiva and his Dravidian
followers, the invading Vedic Aryans in India had to conclude that Shiva’s
spiritual personality and leadership qualities were beyond reproach.
Modern Gurus: True or False?
Hence, the vast majority of the so-called gurus who have visited the
West since the :,ocs, do not qualify as mahagurus. Most of them are
not even qualiﬁed to earn the title guru, because they are mostly teach-
ers and seekers struggling with many of the same human desires, needs
and faults as their students.
Hence the many reports of unenlightened behavior by so-called gurus
who have misled their students through abuses of power, corruption
or sex; hence the many excuses and cover-ups to deny such immoral
behavior.
Sometimes abusive, destructive and immoral behavior has been writ-
ten oﬀ as crazy wisdom. Tat is, one is told the teacher is enlightened
168 saciio noo\, saciio siiiir
and just displaying strange behavior to teach the student some important
lesson in surrender or devotion.
Or one is told the student lacks spiritual understanding, or is simply
unable to see that the teacher is a mirror of the student’s own limitation.
So, we must make up our own hearts and minds. Are we presented
with the classic denial tactics used by groups where the victim is blamed
for the group’s or the teacher’s transgressions? Or are we truly in the
company of an unconventional, enlightened being?
Because so many students of Eastern spirituality have been faced
with these complex questions, it is natural that many spiritual seekers
today are skeptical of the guru-disciple relationship.
Tis dilemma can be resolved by, ﬁrst of all, recognizing that, irre-
spective of the teacher’s qualities, the true guru is none other than the
formless Brahma, the omnipresent God within and beyond us, the one
and only true Teacher of all.
Second, it is best to connect with a trusted guru or lineage with a
known history of one or a few recognized and respected preceptors.
And third, treat all teachers in the lineage, except your carefully
chosen guru, as guides, not gurus. Tese teachers will often share many
of the same personality ﬂaws an average seeker on the same spiritual
path is faced with.
What is most important, after all, are the invaluable lessons you
learn from practicing the authentic teachings of an authentic lineage.
So, even if you have been misled by a less-than-perfect teacher, you
need not leave the path.
Te ideal spiritual teacher is a living example of the teachings he or
she espouses. Some teachers, however, have great intellectual knowledge
of spiritual philosophy and practice, yet their personal conduct is less
than exemplary.
One such teacher’s controversial lifestyle was brought to the attention
of the Dalai Lama by a group of Western Buddhist monks. What would
be his advice, they wondered. Te Dalai Lama’s reply was profound and
unmistakable: “One’s view may be as vast as the sky,” he said, “but one’s
regard for cause and eﬀect should be as ﬁnely sifted as barley ﬂour.”
Te Guru as Archetype
Each spiritual path approaches the guru as archetype in diﬀerent ways,
but, in essence, the spiritual goal of each path is the same: to reach the
:o, rui siiiir oi iiacrici
state of nondual awareness. While the Zen Buddhist tradition sternly
instructs us to “kill the Buddha” in order not to search for help from
a superior being, the Tantric tradition instructs us instead to embrace
lovingly the Buddha ﬁgure as guru, as manifestation of our Divine Self.
Trough devotional visualization, the guru’s form is embraced in the
devotee’s heart and mind. Tus visualized, the guru’s mythic appearance
will focus the mind to go beyond the mind and thus evoke the formless
panorama of nondual divinity.
In Tantric yoga, all forms are considered sacred, especially the form
of the enlightened guru, who becomes a powerful gateway to Spirit. But
this is not idol worship. Te guru’s form is simply used as an archetype,
as a psychological tool to reach a spiritual goal, but he or she is not seen
or believed to be the spiritual goal itself.
In Andrew Harvey’s book Journey to Ladakh, such a meditation
practiceis beautifully described by a Tibetan Tantric Buddhist master,
thereby illustrating the similarities among the various Tantric schools.
Likewise, the image of Jesus has been invoked for centuries by Christian
mystics who desire to drink from the deep well of the Cosmic Christ.
Devotion to an authentic guru and lineage is an invaluable tool
on the path of spirituality. But this devotion must be carefully evalu-
ated by our own rational and ethical standards. In other words, if you
choose the guru path, if you do not hate the idea of having a guru, it is
as important to be a qualiﬁed student as it is to have a qualiﬁed guru.
170 saciio noo\, saciio siiiir
Why Yogis Eat Carrots Rather than
Cows
Yoga for the Earth.
Why do yogis select food from the vegetable kingdom rather than the
animal kingdom? Read on and ﬁnd out!
According to the Santiago theory, developed by Francisco Varela
and Humberto Maturana, the process of cognition is intimately
linked to the process of life. Hence, the brain is not necessary for
the mind to exist. While a worm, or a tree, has no brain, they still
have a mind.
For the ancient sages of India, it was impossible to draw a ﬁnal line
between animate beings and inanimate things. According to yoga phi-
losophy, there is consciousness even in the so-called inanimate world
of rocks. Tis type of consciousness is dormant, as if asleep, because
there is no nervous system in rocks to express it.
“High” and “Low” Consciousness in Nature
Since mind or consciousness is part of all living beings and lies dormant,
even in so-called inanimate objects such as rocks, sand or mud, there
is an intrinsic, spiritual oneness in all of creation.
Tus, according to Tantric yoga philosopher Anandamurti’s world-
view—whose ideas have combined yoga philosophy with an evolutionary
understanding of the world we live in—we grant existential rights or
value to all beings, whether soil, plants, animals or humans.
He concedes that, in principle, all physical expressions of Cosmic
Consciousness have an equal right to exist and to express themselves,
but also that some beings have higher consciousness than others and
thus “more rights.”
Evolution is irreversible — amoebas eventually evolve into apes,
but apes never transform into amoebas — thus Tantra and yoga also
acknowledges “higher” and “lower” expressions of Consciousness in
:;: rui siiiir oi iiacrici
nature. Tis diﬀerentiation is crucial—and forms the basis for why
yogis eat veggies rather than veal.
According to yoga, there is unity of consciousness amongst all beings,
because we all come from, and are created by, the same Spirit, by the same
Cosmic Consciousness. But nature is also inﬁnitely diverse, and thus
consciousness is also expressed in various ways, both “high” and “low.”
Hence, a seedling is more complex and therefore more conscious than
an acorn, and an oak is more complex and conscious than a seedling.
Ecological Ethics According to Yoga
Another way of expressing this is that a dog has more capacity for mental
reﬂection and self-consciousness than a ﬁr tree. Both are conscious
beings, both are manifestations of Cosmic Consciousness, both have
mind, and both have equal existential value — but because of the dif-
ference in expression of depth and quality of consciousness, the dog is
higher on the natural hierarchy of being than the ﬁr tree.
So when we develop our ecological ethics, both the “low” and the
“high” expressions of nature must be valued and accounted for.
Nonhuman creatures have the same existential value to themselves
as human beings have to themselves. Perhaps human beings can under-
stand the value of their existence, while an earth worm cannot. Even
so, no one has delegated any authority to human beings to kill those
“lower” creatures.
But to survive, we cannot avoid killing other beings.
To solve this dilemma, a yogi selects articles of food from among
those beings where development of consciousness is comparatively low.
If vegetables, corn, bean and rice are available, cows or pigs should not
be slaughtered. As philosopher Ken Wilber maintains, it is better to
eat carrots rather than cows.
Secondly, before killing any animals with “developed or underde-
veloped consciousness,” a yogi must consider deeply if it is possible to
live a healthy life without taking such lives.
Tus, in addition to existential value, various beings, based on their
depth of consciousness, have a variable degree of what is often termed
“intrinsic value.” Te more consciousness a being has, the deeper the
feelings, and the more potential for suﬀering. Eating plants is therefore
preferable to eating animals. As George Bernhard Shaw once said,
“Animals are my friends … and I don’t eat my friends.”
172 saciio noo\, saciio siiiir
Yoga and Sustainability
It is also ecologically more sustainable to extract nourishment from entities
lower down on the food chain. Vast land areas are used to raise livestock
for food. Tese areas could be utilized far more productively if planted
with grains, fruits, vegetables and legumes for human consumption.
It is estimated that only ten percent of the protein and calories we
feed to our livestock is recovered in the meat we eat. Te other ninety
percent goes literally “down the drain.”
In addition to existential value and intrinsic value, all beings have
utility value. Troughout history, human beings usually preserved those
creatures that had an immediate utility value.
We are more inclined to preserve the lives of cows than of rats, for
example. But, because of all beings’ existential value, we cannot claim
that only human beings have the right to live, and not non-humans.
All are the children of Mother Earth; all are the oﬀspring of Spirit or
Cosmic Consciousness.
Sometimes it is diﬃcult to know what the utilitarian value of an
animal or a plant is; therefore we may needlessly destroy the ecological
balance by killing one species without considering the consequences of
its complex relationship or utility value to other species.
A forest’s utility value, for example, is more than just x number of
board feet of lumber. It serves as a nesting and feeding ground for birds
and animals; its roots and branches protect the soil from erosion; its
leaves or needles produce oxygen; and its pathways and camp grounds
provide nourishment for the human soul.
As a whole, the forest ecosystem has an abundance of ecological,
aesthetic and spiritual values that extend far beyond its beneﬁts in the
form of tooth picks or plywood.
All of nature is endowed with existential, intrinsic, and utility value.
Tis hierarchical, and ultimately holistic understanding of evolution
and ecology, formulates the basic foundation for a new and potentially
groundbreaking ecological ethics deeply grounded by the philosophy
of yoga.
If we embrace the divinity in all of creation, the expression of our
ecological ethics will become an act of sublime spirituality. Our con-
servation eﬀorts and our sustainable-resource use will become sacred
oﬀerings to Mother Earth, and ultimately to Cosmic Consciousness,
the God and Goddess within and beyond nature.
:;, rui siiiir oi iiacrici
Tantric Ethics for Self and Society
As rui iioviin cois, one falsehood can spoil a thousand truths.
Balanced and authentic conduct is therefore considered the foundation
for living a life imbued with sacredness. Ethics is the soil and water we
all need in order to sprout and grow so that we can openly bask in the
sunshine of spirituality.
Te practice of Tantra embraces all aspects of our lives, and so our
ethics—our guiding principles of conduct—are seen as essential step-
ping stones toward spiritual growth. Te guidelines below are thousands
of years old. Tey are not commandments but rather teachings to be
contemplated and rationally adjusted as we are faced with the struggles,
compromises, paradoxes and beauty of daily living. Scholars maintain
that their historical origin is uncertain, but Anandamurti claim they were
ﬁrst taught by Shiva, the King of Yoga, over ;ccc years ago. As scripture,
they were ﬁrst mentioned in the Tantric-inspired Puranas thousands of
years ago, then in Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras. Since then, they have become
an integral part of yoga practice. Tose students and practitioners of
yoga who are already familiar with the Yamas and Niyamas may learn
some new insights from the perspective of Tantra, especially from the
Tantric interpretation of Brahmacarya.
Yamas—acts of integrity:
:. Ahimsa—the least harm possible. Te essence of the practice of Ahimsa,
which literally means “no harm,“ is to refrain from causing undue harm
to other living beings. Made famous by Mahatma Gandhi’s non-violence
movement, this yogic decree is actually not a principle of absolute non-
violence, which is practically an impossible goal to uphold. Sometimes
the lesser of evils must be chosen. Sometimes a ruthless dictatorship
inﬂicts more harm than does a violent uprising against it. So, a choice
to struggle, even with weapons, while it cannot be called non-violence,
may still uphold the principle of Ahimsa. Indeed, our very existence
causes violence and death every day. Even if we are vegans, and our diet
consists of only fruits, grains and vegetables, we must destroy life to live.
174 saciio noo\, saciio siiiir
:. Satya—honesty. Practicing Satya is to speak truth with a spirit
of kindness.
,. Asteya—not stealing. On the face of it, Asteya seems like a simple
principle—do not steal. But it also refers to what we withhold from
others. It speaks directly to our greed. Do our riches deprive others
of their rights? Do we feel like stealing or cheating because we do not
think we have enough?
¡. Brahmacarya—follow God, follow love. In many schools of yoga,
Brahmacarya refers to leading a chaste life; to be a celibate, or to restrain
sexual activity. However, Tantra interprets this diﬀerently. In Sanskrit,
the word Brahma refers to God, and carya means to move. Hence,
Brahamcarya has nothing to do with sex; instead it means “to move
with God, to follow God.“ In other words, Brahmacarya reminds us
that Brahma or God permeates every atom of the universe. It is a true
principle of sacredness. It advises us to love all, and to feel that each
act is an act of sacredness.
,. Aparigraha—simplicity. While Brahmacarya inspires our subjec-
tive realization of the oneness of God, Aparigraha reminds us of the
objective adjustments we must make in order to live as if all beings
matter. Hence, we do not let greed dominate our actions; we lead
simple, sustainable lives.
Niyamas—healthy practices.
Tese principles help us build a lifestyle that supports the values of Yama.
Tey are steps we can take to make our lives richer and more sacred.
:. Shaoca—clarity. Often termed “cleanliness,“ Tantric yogis deﬁne
Shaoca as “clarity“ instead, because it also refers to such values as being
clear, simple, and direct.
:. Santosa—mental ease, balance. Santosa is the contentment
that comes from accepting ourselves and others just the way we are.
When we connect to the love we feel from within and the love we
feel in others, we become content and at peace. We feel and act from
a place of sacredness. More importantly, Santosa is our ability to be
at peace even during stressful situations. To be in balance when the
world is not.
,. Tapah—giving of ourselves. When we practice Tapah, we are will-
ing to undergo sacriﬁces in order to help others and to serve a spiritual
cause. We are willing, for example, to spend less on ourselves in order
:;, rui siiiir oi iiacrici
to help someone in need. Ultimately, Tapah means to truly serve the
other as we would like to be served in return.
¡. Svadhyaya—spiritual understanding. Understanding the spiritual
gems hidden deep in the scriptures is a genuine, spiritual practice. Hence,
we read and contemplate sacred scriptures every day.
,. Ishvara Pranidhana—spiritual practice. Te literal meaning is “to
take shelter in the Supreme Being.” In Tantra, spirituality is both a prac-
tice and an experience. Meditation is a spiritual practice, and as a result,
we have spiritual experiences. Hence, we practice sitting meditation
twice a day, in the morning and in the evening. Te rest of the day, we
take shelter in God by the repetition of a siddha mantra, and through
the Madhuvidya practice (seeing God/Spirit in everything), we become
a conduit of sacredness. Hence, by practicing Ishvara Pranidhana, all
of life can become a spiritual practice.
All of these timeless, ethical guidelines—which are interpreted here
from a Tantric perspective—can be applied in daily life, while we face
all the contemporary issues and challenges related to relationships,
parenting, community, ecology, politics, economics, etc.
176 saciio noo\, saciio siiiir
The Power of Mantras
Aii xaxrias aii woios, but not all words are mantras.
Some years ago, when I was living and teaching as a yogic monk,
I initiated a young man into the Tantric path of yoga. According to
traditional custom, after he had received his meditation instruction,
I whispered a mantra into his right ear and told him to close his eyes
and silently meditate as per my instructions.
A few seconds later, he fell backwards with a powerful and ecstatic
shout and landed on the ﬂoor with a blissful expression on his face.
Tis spiritual knockout almost ﬂoored me as well.
As a novice monk, I had seen people fall into cosmic ecstasy (samadhi)
before, but never like this, only seconds after initiation, only seconds
after silently repeating a siddha mantra.
Such is the power of mantras. Tey can catapult our bodies and
minds into Spirit with the force of a lightening bolt.
According to the yogic science of Tantra, this world of matter is
simply an ocean of energy. Even Western science would agree to that
now. Going a step beyond Western science, Tantra furthermore states
that this energy (Shakti) is conjoined with Consciousness (Shiva) as the
two poles of the same ultimate, nondual reality.
So, when the young man fell backwards and experienced nondual
bliss, it happened, in Tantric terms, due to the force of Shakti. Tis
primal force of nature literally kick-started his kundalini Shakti and
united him with her cosmic consort Shiva in an accelerated and exhila-
rated union of cosmic oneness. He was literally blessed out of this world
and blissed into the next!
How is this possible, simply by repeating a few gibberish syllables? (First
of all, let me make a disclaimer: this does not happen to everybody, of
course. It is very rare, and Tantra explains that these sudden enlightenment
experiences occur due to a person’s spiritual karma from previous lives)
It happens because mantras are sacred words engineered to undo
our minds of its fetters, unload its karmic baggage, liberate it from its
past entanglements, compost its desires and aﬄictions, so that we can
awaken, see and experience our true, inner nature. But how?
:;; rui siiiir oi iiacrici
According to the esoteric science of Tantra, all these karmic fetters,
these vrittis, of the mind are located in the various chakras, and they
are each endowed with a sound energy.
Te yogis of old discovered this in deep meditation and thus equipped
the Sanskrit alphabet with a phonetic ability that no other language
has: the ability to liberate us with repeated use.
Tere are ﬁfty of these vrittis, or sonic fetters, some positive (hope,
love), some negative (hatred, jealousy) located in the chakras. Hence,
there are also ﬁfty letters in the Sanskrit alphabet.
Te meaning of the word mantra is literally “that sound, that word
that liberates the mind.” (man=mind and tra=liberate). But there is
an additional element that makes the Tantric mantras powerful: the
power of the guru.
Great gurus, who are skilled in this alchemical science, are able to
empower mantras with spiritual potency. In the words of yoga scholar
George Feuerstein: “[A word] acquires mantric value only when it has
been empowered by an adept and transmitted to a disciple.”
For the practitioner of mantra meditation three things are important:
:) to use a proper siddha mantra, empowered by a legitimate guru, :)
to know and meditate on the exact inner meaning of the mantra and
,) to use the correct pronunciation.
Because of these three criteria, not all Sanskrit words are siddha
mantras or eﬀective tools at cultivating spiritual growth and liberation.
To use a mantra from a book is therefore not as eﬀective as when
instruction has been given by a teacher through the process of initiation.
Moreover, Vedic chants, even though they are in Sanskrit, do not have
the same spiritual potency as these siddha mantras.
Still, we all feel the unique vibrational power of mantras when we
chant kirtan or recite a Sanskrit sutra. And that vibrational power has
been gifted us by the mystical and scientiﬁc insights of the ancient yogis.
So, as I wrote above, all mantras are words, but not all words are
mantras.
178 saciio noo\, saciio siiiir
Tantra Practice: Three Steps to
Meaningful Mindfulness Meditation
Max\ riacuiis oi Buoouisx and yoga promote and teach the
practice of mindfulness. When practicing mindfulness, for instance by
watching the breath, one maintains attention on the chosen object of
awareness. Whenever the mind wanders away, one faithfully returns
back to refocus on the breath.
Te term for mindfulness in Sanskrit is smrti—to recollect, to remem-
ber to be in the present moment, now and in the future. In Tantric
practice, one will also remember the nature of the breath, that the
breath is Consciousness. As Kabir said, the Divine is the breath within
the breath.
Tus we may term Tantric meditation “meaningful mindfulness;” the
remembering not only to meditate on the breath but also remembering
that the breath itself is Consciousness; the Inner Witness; the Real Self.
Tis form of meditation has the capacity to take us into a deeper state
of silence and spiritual depth than mere mindfulness. And, when remem-
bering, when having attained continuous mindfulness one attains dhruva
smrti; that is, one experiences continuous remembering. Remembering
what? Te remembering that all objects of one’s attention are sacred,
are divine, are bliss.
Step one. Developing a Tantric Worldview.
Tantric Philosophy says: Shiva shaktatmakam brahma. Brahma is the
composite of Shiva and Shakti.
Tis Sanskrit sutra by Anandamurti contains the basic concept of
Tantric philosophy, that Brahma, the Supreme Entity, is One but has
two aspects, namely Cosmic Consciousness, or Shiva, and Cosmic
Energy, or Shakti.
In this physical world of duality, these two appears to be separate, but
after attaining knowledge of nondual Brahma, one sees only One. Tere
is no diﬀerentiation, only One without a second. On a metaphysical
:;, rui siiiir oi iiacrici
level, the ultimate reality, Brahma, is expressed in the “polarity” of Shiva
and Shakti. Within our own conditional reality, this is expressed as the
dualities of male and female, objective and subjective, masculine and
feminine, without and within.
Shiva and Shakti, as the perfect unity-principle, also symbolize
integration, in Jungian terms, for example, the integration of animus
and anima. In Taoism, the Chinese expression of Tantra, they are the
esoteric twin pair yin and yang.
Psychologically, this unity principle represents our need to integrate
our male and female energies. Neurologically, it represents the inte-
gration of the right and left hemispheres of the brain. Ontologically,
it is expressed when scholars seek to integrate spiritual and scientiﬁc
knowledge. Ecologically, it represents the interrelationship of all of
creation. Spiritually, it represents the way we contemporary yogis inte-
grate spiritual exercises, such as meditation and chanting, and physical
exercises, such as asanas, into our daily lives. As within, so without. As
above, so below.
Step two. Developing a Tantric Vision Trough
Madhuvidya.
As you can see, Tantric metaphysics has far-reaching implications for
how we can ﬁnd balance and harmony in our daily lives.
Deeply contemplate this Tantric unity principle of the cosmos: Feel
how everything is an expression of Brahma, of Consciousness. Feel how
everything is divine. Feel how everything is sacred.
Now, envision how the Tantric principles of wholeness embrace every-
thing, even contradictions and unpleasant experiences. Use this vision
to embrace aspects of life you are afraid of, issues you reject or hide.
Move beyond conﬂict and pain, and discover joy and peace in polarity.
Everything in this world contains Cosmic Consciousness, or Shiva,
and Cosmic Energy, or Shakti. All things and beings are created by
Shakti, or Comsic Energy, and all things have in them the latent force
of Shiva, or Cosmic Consciousness.
Tus, all things are, in essence, Brahma. In this physical world of
duality, things and people appear to be separate, but after attaining
knowledge of nondual Brahma, one sees that all are One.
Try to ﬁnd as many situations as you can during the day when you
can contemplate this union of Shiva and Shakti as Brahma, this duality
180 saciio noo\, saciio siiiir
in Oneness. Try to feel that your food is Brahma before and during a
meal. Try to feel that your friend, partner or spouse is Brahma when
talking to him or her.
Try to see and feel Brahma in everything and everyone you encounter.
Te more you remember doing this, the more you will become con-
nected to the world around you in a deeply spiritual and sacred way.
Tis is madhuvidya, or honey knowledge, the remembering that
everything is divine honey. Everything. Tis is meaningful mindfulness.
Step three: Meaningful Mindfulness Meditation.
So when a Tantric yogi sits with his or her eyes closed in either lotus
position, half lotus, or in any other relaxed position with the back
straight, and meditates on the breath, with a mantra, focusing on a
chakra and the meaning of the mantra, that whole process becomes
one continuous meaningful remembering.
And even after sitting meditation, one may continue the remember-
ing by repeating the mantra during japa practice all day long. One may
keep doing this over and over until one feels relaxed and natural and the
mind is focused on the breath. Ten imbue the breath with meaning-
ful mindfulness; that is, start to feel that the breath is Consciousness,
divine, God, sacred, love, whatever heartfelt feeling comes to mind that
also represents divinity in your life.
When one sits down to eat, feel that the food is sacred, divine, God,
and so on. Whenever any action is performed, that action is also divine,
also sacred.
And when this practice is natural and continuous, it becomes dhruva
smrti, the state of always being in the presence of meaningfulness, of
divinity, of the sacred. Of always being in the now.
Tis is easier said than practiced, of course, but the habit of sitting
every day, twice a day, then doing japa during the day, remember-
ing the Divine before acting, before seeing, touching, etc., and also
during the act itself, then singing kirtan, and doing yoga exercises
on the breath, with a mantra, one is gradually reminded of the inner
meaning of life; the inner mindful meaning of life: that it is sacred,
blissful, always.
And if one forgets one can always go back to the meaning, to the
mindful remembering. Always. To paraphrase Rumi: if you wonder
whether there is divinity, whether God responds to your meditation,
:ï: rui siiiir oi iiacrici
your longing for Tat, then remember, it is the longing itself, the practice
itself, that is the message, the return message from the Divine.
Yes, the eﬀort itself, even the process of forgetting and then returning,
is part of the practice, is meaningful, is divine. Always.
182 saciio noo\, saciio siiiir
Introducing a Meditation Practice
Ix rui riaoiriox oi yoga and Tantra, the practice of meditation is
taught by a guru or someone authorized by the guru to teach on his or
her behalf. Most of these meditation techniques are taught according
to the individual needs and spiritual development of the student; they
are taught without any written notes, and they are practiced in silence.
My guru, Anandamurti, re-introduced all the lessons of Asthanga
Yoga as described (but not taught) by Patanjali in the Yoga Sutras, in
additions to many other higher lessons of Tantra that have been nearly
forgotten. He also introduced a new siddha mantra, or empowered
mantra, which consists of three Sanskrit words: Baba Nam Kevalam.
Baba means “beloved” or “dearest” and it refers to your deepest Self,
the Inﬁnite Consciousness, Sprit, or Brahma. Nam means “name,” and
Kevalam means “only.” Tus the literal name of the mantra is “Only
the name of the Beloved.”
Tis mantra can be used as a beginner’s meditation practice. When
repeating this mantra in silence internally with closed eyes and an erect
spine in either lotus position, half lotus, cross legged, or in a chair,
imagine that Inﬁnite Consciousness is all that exists, and that its nature
is peaceful, omnipresent and loving. It is important to keep that idea of
the mantra in your mind while you silently repeat the Sanskrit words.
You may also chant this mantra over and over to any peaceful and
melodic tune you like until you feel enveloped in a peaceful trance. It
is very beneﬁcial to chant for ﬁve to ten minutes or more before using
the same mantra in silent meditation.
If your mind wanders during meditation, simply bring it back to the
repetition of the mantra and imagine that your thoughts are passing
by in your mind like clouds in the sky. Try to meditate for :, minutes
twice a day, morning and evening on an empty stomach and follow the
other suggestions about meditation in the section of this book called
Ten Secrets to a Great Meditation Practice.
After a few weeks or months practicing in this way, you may want
to synchronize this mantra with your breath. Start by focusing your
attention on your breath and take a few deep but slow breaths. Let
:ï, rui siiiir oi iiacrici
your mind gently ﬂow with your breathing for a while. When you
feel peaceful and relaxed, start to repeat Baba Nam while breathing in,
and Kevalam while breathing out. Now you are synchronizing your
breathing with the mantra and the meaning of the mantra. Let your
mind ﬂow, and when you loose concentration, simply bring it back to
the breath and the mantra and the meaning of the mantra.
Meditation is all about being in the moment and that requires atten-
tion, focus, ﬂow and ﬁnally the feeling of union with it all. Union and
ﬂow with the breath, the mantra and its meaning. Union is, after all,
what the practice of yoga and Tantra is all about.
If you wish to learn deeper, more sophisticated meditation lessons
from a teacher visiting your area, please contact me through my blog:
www.eightfold-path.com
Select Bibliography
Introduction
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Marga Publications, Calcutta, :,,¡
Brooks, Douglas, from an interview on the blog “Shivers Up the
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Part One
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:,,o
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:,,¡
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Tirteenth Century, Cambridge University Press, :ccï
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New York, :cc¡
Part Two
Tantra: Te Path of Love and Ecstasy
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Marga Publications, Calcutta, :,,¡
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:,,:
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186 saciio noo\, saciio siiiir
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188 saciio noo\, saciio siiiir
Acknowledgments
Te initial writings of this book began with a virtual meeting of the
minds. In the spring of :c:c, Kaoverii Weber, my friend and the founder
of Subtle Yoga, introduced me, via email, to the publisher of Elephant
Journal, Waylon Lewis, and associate publisher, Bob Weisenberg. Tis
encounter led to many fruitful and sometimes ﬁerce discussions about
everything yoga and Tantra with Bob and other yogis of the virtual
realm. Many of these essays grew out of such discussions and, to my
great surprise, they each ended up being read by hundreds and, then,
thousands of people on the journal’s website.
I am honored to have been part of Elephant’s yoga writing crew and
the website’s exploding growth from it’s humble beginnings during that
time when Waylon was not sure if he’d be able to pay his mortgage or
not. Some of these essays received more than a hundred comments,
which helped sharpen my left brain, deepen my yogic concentration and
inspire my right brain to even more creativity. I am especially thankful
to Bob Weisenberg, Matt Helmick, Matthew Remski, Carol Horton,
Julian Walker and countless other regular readers and fellow writers for
their constructive comments, disagreements and general high spirit of
mutual respect and support.
Tese essays would not have been read by so many people without
the social marketing help of these incredibly supportive yogis, healers,
Buddhists, environmentalists and volunteer staﬀers: Ben Ralston, Lynn
Hasselberger, Ben Riggs, Tobye Hillier, Tanya Lee Markul, and Braja
Sorensen. I have never met any of you, but I love you all!
Many heartfelt thanks to Dada Nabhanilananda for our many creative
discussions about writing and for rejecting all my initial book titles, until
I ﬁnally settled on this one. A sincere namaskar to Devashish Donald
Acosta for being the most cool-minded editor/publisher any writer could
ask for. And a ﬁnal, deep thank you to Robert Bly for teaching us all
that writing is a spiritual practice; that, in those long moments of deep
ﬂow, the sadhana of writing is a silent unfolding of the heart’s wisdom,
and in its best moments, a solitary form of Bhakti Yoga.
About The Author
Ramesh Bjonnes is co-founder of the Prama Institute, a holistic retreat
center in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. He is a certiﬁed
yoga health educator, a popular yoga columnist for the award-winning
Elephant Journal, and a lecturer on yoga philosophy and history to
yoga teachers and students in the United States and Europe. He has
been practicing and teaching Tantric yoga and meditation since :,;¡.
For more information about Ramesh and his work, please visit:
www.eightfold-path.com.

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